Why is it that Americans are so willing to use military force to affect political change in another country? Why could neoconservatives assert that American forces would be 'welcomed' to Iraq, and have anyone believe it? Some would say it's because the U.S. has never been invaded. The argument is that all other great powers experienced invasion and occupation in WWII, except Britain, which still experienced major bombing of its cities, but the U.S. knows nothing of the humiliation, or the sense of pointless destruction that comes from invason and occupation. This, they say, is the reason why Americans are so cavalier about using military force to spread their 'values.'
It's partly true to say that the US has never been invaded. To find an invasion, one has to look all the way back to the American Civil War, when the rebellious Confederate States were invaded, largely destroyed, and occupied by the US military, much as is happening to Iraq today. Americans who grow up in the South often have an accute sense of having been invaded and occupied, during the Civil War and Reconstruction.
The parallels between the American Civil War and the one in Iraq do not end there.
In Iraq as in the South, the goal of the US Government is 'regime change.' In the South, their aim was to change the 'regime' of slavery and its attendant economies, because the South's slave-based agricultural export economy offended northern sensibilities, and their share prices. Today in Iraq their goal is to change the 'regime' of 'Bathism,' a secularist nationalist ideology modeled loosely on European Fascist/Phalangist movements, dominated in Iraq by Sunni Moslems. The Sunnis are painted as bad guys, as a minority which used force and the dictatorship of Saddam Hussein to dominate and terrorize the poor helpless Kurds and Shia. That is certainly one way of looking at it. But the Sunnis and ex-Bathists in Iraq have a lot in common with the disposessed Planter class in the Reconstruction. On the one hand, they represent the old regime, the one the US is trying to change, but on the other hand, they represent much of the pool of available talent that actually knows how to make things work.

In the effort to build a government, army, and police force in Iraq, the U.S. planners continue to be puzzled at the low quality of the recruits that come to them, not to mention the mass infiltrations. But any reader of Southern literature would know that those who cooperate with an invading army are beneath contempt, scalawags, traitors. Only very marginal people, with no respect to lose would come forth and actually offer themselves to serve the U.S. Occupying Forces. Anyone with 'friends' or 'family' would be so afraid of shame and retribution they would never be seen appearing to fraternize with The Yankees.

The ferocity of the terrorist attacks in the Iraqi Insurgency continues to take U.S. officials by surprise. The irony is that so many members of the occupying forces are Southerners from proud military families, most male members of which having been members of the Klu Klux Klan back in the days when it was fashionable. Today, the boot is on the other foot. The Iraqi Insurgency has a lot in common with the KKK, usually considered the largest domestic terrorist organization in the US. Both operate as open secrets in order to maximize their power to intimidate. The goal in both instances was/is to use terror and intimidation to preserve some part of the old power structure in the face of 'regime change' forced from outside. The methodology in both instances involves/ed ominous warnings scrawled on public walls punctuated with the mutilated remains of people who'd pissed them off and had been made 'examples.' It must be noted that the KKK was successful in its goals because it was a clandestine extension of the normal power structure: veteran officers, land-owners, lawmen. There was no other power anyone could turn to that wasn't most likely part of it. Similarly, the respected and responsible 'tough men' of the Sunni Iraqi community have probably been approached, asked to join the 'network,' or whatever, and if they were reluctant, perhaps they were threatened, or worse. Few would be reluctant indeed. Only the terminally anti-social would refuse the introduction to join up with the Local Group, kind of like neighborhood watch, I imagine, but a bit more pro-active.


In occupying Iraq, as in occupying the South, the U.S. Army is a bit confused about exactly what its goals are. It wants to promote Democracy, but not if that Democracy is going to end up substantially resurrecting the old regime. It wants to promote some highly progressive societal change, polititcal reform, and economic transparency, but not if it is going to be a threat to either the oil flow or the no-bid contracts. The U.S. military occupying the South had a similar confusion, from some in Congress who wanted real equality between the races (provided the races stayed in the South and did not move North or West) and others in Congress simply wanted to hurt the South any way they could in revenge for 'causing' the war, while others, probably most, just wanted to get back to business-as-usual as soon as possible. So with this broad spectrum of intent going into what the military was ordered to do, and then with the military's special ability to interpret orders in its own way, and finally the practical reality of the facts on the ground, it should be no surprise that so much does not work now as it did not then.