Bush: In the footsteps of Napoleon

By Juan Cole
Asia Times

".......Ending the era of liberal imperialism

Between 1801 and 2003 stretched endless decades in which colonialism proved a plausible strategy for European powers in the Middle East, including the French enterprise in Algeria (1830-1962) and the British veiled protectorate over Egypt (1882-1922). In these years, European militaries and their weaponry were so advanced, and the means of resistance to which Arab peasants had access so limited, that colonial governments could be imposed.

That imperial moment passed with celerity after World War II, in part because the masses of the Third World joined political parties, learned to read and - with how-to-do-it examples all around them - began to mount political resistance to foreign occupations of every sort. While the 21st century American arsenal has many fancy, exceedingly destructive toys in it, nothing has changed with regard to the ability of colonized peoples to network socially and, sooner or later, push any foreign occupying force out.

Napoleon and Bush failed because both launched their operations at moments when Western military and technological superiority was not assured. While Napoleon's army had better artillery and muskets, the Egyptians had a superb cavalry and their old muskets were serviceable enough for purposes of sniping at the enemy. They also had an ally with advanced weaponry and the desire to use it - the British Navy.

In 2007, the high-tech US military - as had been true in Vietnam in the 1960s and 1970s, as was true for the Soviets in Afghanistan in the 1980s - is still vulnerable to guerrilla tactics and effective low-tech weapons of resistance such as roadside bombs. Even more effective has been the guerrillas' social warfare, their success in making Iraq ungovernable through the promotion of clan and sectarian feuds, through targeted bombings and other attacks, and through sabotage of the Iraqi infrastructure.

From the time of Napoleon to that of Bush, the use of the rhetoric of liberty versus tyranny, of uplift versus decadence, appears to have been a constant among imperialists from republics - and has remained domestically effective in rallying support for colonial wars......

For both Bush and Napoleon, the genteel diction of liberation, rights and prosperity served to obscure or justify a major invasion and occupation of a Middle Eastern land, involving the unleashing of slaughter and terror against its people. Military action would leave towns destroyed, families displaced and countless dead.

Given the ongoing carnage in Iraq, Bush's boast that, with "new tactics and precision weapons, we can achieve military objectives without directing violence against civilians", now seems not just hollow but macabre. The equation of a foreign military occupation with liberty and prosperity is, in the cold light of day, no less bizarre than the promise of war with virtually no civilian casualties.

It is no accident that many of the rhetorical strategies employed by Bush originated with Napoleon, a notorious spinmeister and confidence man. At least Napoleon looked to the future, seeing clearly the coming breakup of the Ottoman Empire and the likelihood that European powers would be able to colonize its provinces. Napoleon's failure in Egypt did not forestall decades of French colonial success in Algeria and Indochina, even if that era of imperial triumph could not, in the end, be sustained in the face of the political and social awakening of the colonized. Bush's neo-colonialism, on the other hand, swam against the tide of history, and its failure is all the more criminal for having been so predictable. "