WASHINGTON, April 24 (UPI) -- The UPI think tank wrap-up is a daily digest covering opinion pieces, reactions to recent news events and position statements released by various think tanks. This is the first of several wrap-ups for April 24. Contents: Bogus lessons from Iraq war; Sen. Santorum and privacy.
The Cato Institute
WASHINGTON -- Avoiding bogus lessons from the Iraq war
by Ted Galen Carpenter
Bush administration leaders already seem to be drawing several lessons from the Iraq conflict. Unfortunately, many of those lessons are erroneous. If the United States bases its foreign policy on those bogus lessons, the outcome could be extremely unpleasant.
-- Bogus lesson 1: The relatively easy military victory means that the occupation of Iraq should go equally well.
The administration and its supporters place great stock in the scenes of Iraqis in Baghdad and elsewhere welcoming U.S. troops as liberators. But that initial reaction does not solve the numerous underlying religious, ethnic, and ideological tensions in that society that could make the occupation a frustrating and dangerous enterprise.
Iraq is an inherently fragile, artificial entity that the British cobbled together after World War I from three very different provinces of the defunct Ottoman Empire. Washington has pledged to preserve the unity of the country, but that could prove extremely challenging.
The Kurds in the north clearly want so much political autonomy that they would have a de facto independent state -- a development that could fragment the country and deeply alarm neighboring Turkey. The Shia Muslims in the south may also want a state of their own and may gravitate toward radical Islam to implement their political agenda.
Given the potential for turbulence, the U.S.-British occupation of Iraq is likely to resemble the U.S. experience in Lebanon in the early 1980s, the British experience in Northern Ireland from the early 1970s to the late 1990s, or the current Israeli experience on the West Bank. The emergence of suicide bombers during the war is not a reassuring development. At the very least, the occupation is likely to prove more difficult than the military conquest.
-- Bogus lesson 2: Given the ease of the military triumph in Iraq, the United States should consider applying the same treatment to Syria, Iran, North Korea, and other rogue states.
The hawks need to put their "triumphalism" on a leash. Just because the Iraqis exhibited tactical incompetence by deploying many of their forces in the open desert where they could be devastated by U.S. air power instead of forcing the coalition troops into engaging in extensive urban warfare, does not mean that a future adversary will make the same blunder.
Moreover, Iran and North Korea are far more formidable adversaries than Iraq could ever hope to be. Indeed, U.S. intelligence sources believe North Korea already has a small number of nuclear weapons, and Iran is likely to have some in the near future.
There is no doubt that the United States would ultimately prevail in such struggles. But the question is at what cost? Engaging in a series of wars against unfriendly countries may be emotionally appealing to hawkish elements, but it is the foreign policy equivalent of Russian roulette. It is possible to win at that game a number of times. But sooner or later the hammer will come down on a live round.
-- Bogus lesson 3: The angry "Arab street" is a myth.
That assumption misconstrues the nature of the problem. The danger is not so much that angry Muslim mobs will instantly sweep friendly governments from power. The principal danger is that the United States has so alienated Muslim populations that thousands of new recruits will gravitate to al-Qaida and other terrorist organizations, thus expanding the threat to the United States. Another danger is that public anger at the United States will reach the point that even those governments that might want to have close relations with Washington will find it politically impossible to do so.
One should also keep in mind the possible time lag. The U.S. victory in the first Persian Gulf War did not immediately translate into terrorist retaliation. It was more than two years before the World Trade Center bombing, more than seven years before the bombings of the embassies in East Africa, and more than a decade before Sept. 11. The retaliation was slow in coming, but come it did.
-- Bogus lesson 4: The United States is now so powerful that it does not need to care what other powers say or do.
Some hawks even want to engage in diplomatic and economic retaliation against France, Germany, and Russia for daring to oppose U.S. policy toward Iraq. That would be a profound mistake. America needs the cooperation of those and other countries for a multitude of enterprises.
For example, we want them to devote great energy to eradicating al-Qaida cells and starving the organization of funds. We want Russia to cut off nuclear technology exports to Iran and to help resolve the North Korean nuclear crisis.
Those countries are far less likely to be cooperative if the United States tries to bully them. Americans need to understand just how unpopular the Iraq war was in the rest of the world. If Washington does not change its behavior, the United States could end up being an isolated and hated country with other major states conspiring to undermine its power. That might not matter a great deal in the short run, but over the coming decades such a development would be disastrous.
It is imperative that the administration and the American public learn lessons from the Iraq war. But it is equally imperative that they are not the wrong lessons.
(Ted Galen Carpenter is vice president for defense and foreign policy studies at the Cato Institute and is the author or editor of 15 books on international affairs.)
The Reason Foundation
LOS ANGELES -- Private parts: Rick Santorum's gay problem
by Ronald Bailey
Pennsylvania Senator and chairman of the Republican Senate Caucus Rick Santorum has hit the buzzsaw of history with his recent comments on homosexuality.
Santorum told a wire service: "I have no problem with homosexuality. I have a problem with homosexual acts. As I would with acts of other, what I would consider to be, acts outside of traditional heterosexual relationships. And that includes a variety of different acts, not just homosexual. I have nothing, absolutely nothing against anyone who's homosexual. If that's their orientation, then I accept that. And I have no problem with someone who has other orientations. The question is, do you act upon those orientations? So it's not the person, it's the person's actions. And you have to separate the person from their actions."
Santorum claimed he was just offering his opinion of the case now before the U.S. Supreme Court in which two gay men are challenging Texas' sodomy laws. In this case, two men, John Lawrence and Tyron Garner, were arrested by police answering a false report of "an armed man going crazy." Instead, upon entering Lawrence's home, the police found them engaged in anal sex. Texas' Homosexual Conduct Law punishes certain private sex acts when they are committed by same-sex couples, but not by heterosexuals.
Amusingly, Santorum carefully told the wire service that he did not oppose just homosexual acts but also "acts outside of traditional heterosexual relationships." Therefore, to be consistent, Santorum would presumably oppose the Texas sodomy law on the grounds that it permits heterosexuals to get away with such "non-traditional" activities as oral and anal sex and anything to do with whipped cream.
However, most news stories have overlooked the more chilling fact that Santorum's views on homosexuality came up in the broader context of the right to privacy. Santorum thinks privacy is a bad idea.
"If you make the case that if you can do whatever you want to do, as long as it's in the privacy of your own home, this 'right to privacy,' then why be surprised that people are doing things that are deviant within their own home? If you say, there is no deviant as long as it's private, as long as it's consensual, then don't be surprised what you get. You're going to get a lot of things that you're sending signals that as long as you do it privately and consensually, we don't really care what you do. And that leads to a culture that is not one that is nurturing and necessarily healthy. I would make the argument in areas where you have that as an accepted lifestyle, don't be surprised that you get more of it," said Santorum according to the transcript of his wire service interview.
Santorum is undoubtedly right -- if people feel freer of the constraints imposed by the prying eyes of their neighbors, they will explore different ways of expressing themselves and enjoying life. This traditionally was why many people fled farms and small towns for the anonymity of the big cities. As the German aphorism says, "City air makes men free."
Privacy allows people to engage in all kinds of activities of which others might disapprove, ranging from religious worship, membership in dissident groups, recreational drug use, reading pornography, and yes, consensual sex acts between adults. The rising demand by Americans for an expanding sphere of privacy is the buzz saw into which Santorum stumbled.
Just consider the change in American attitudes toward homosexuality over the past three decades. Futurist Alvin Toffler suggested in his 1970 classic "Future Shock": "As homosexuality becomes more socially acceptable, we may even begin to find families based on homosexual 'marriages' with partners adopting children."
This was a scandalous notion at the time, but today 21 states have precedents allowing gay couples to adopt. As all the world knows, Vermont now permits "civil unions" between same sex couples.
Polls indicate that Americans are becoming more accepting of homosexuality. A Gallup poll in the late 1990s showed a declining majority (59 percent) of Americans still agreed with Santorum that homosexuality is "always wrong." That is most likely an expression of their religious convictions.
But in what could be interpreted as strong support for their fellow citizens' privacy rights, recent polls find that in the same time period, 52 percent of Americans regarded homosexuality as an acceptable lifestyle while 44 percent found it unacceptable. Furthermore, 54 percent favored legalizing consensual homosexual activity between adults, while only 42 percent opposed legalization.
Santorum believes that acceptance of homosexuality and other "deviant" sexual practices is "antithetical to a healthy, stable, traditional family." Just as Toffler was prophetic about the growing acceptance of homosexuality, he was also prescient about what would likely happen to family structures.
"Minorities experiment; majorities cling to the forms of the past," Toffler wrote. "It is safe to say that large numbers of people will refuse to jettison the conventional idea of marriage or the familiar family forms. They will, no doubt, continue searching for happiness within the orthodox format."
So relax, Sen. Santorum, and leave people alone. It's none of your business anyway.
(Ronald Bailey is Reason magazine's science correspondent.)
