Scholar on Iraq: "The Iraq War as The Plague"

http://mondoweiss.observer.com/2006/06/at-us-naval-war-college-scholar-likens-iraq-to-plague.html

At The Naval War College the question posed to the panel of scholars was 'What is the path to success in Iraq'?

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The last one to speak was the one who had used the word "folly" in the program: John J. Mearsheimer of the University of Chicago. Mearsheimer is 58. He told the audience that when he was a teenager, he had enlisted in the Army. Then he'd spent 1966-1970 at West Point. Then he said this:

I remember once in English class we read Albert Camus's book The Plague. I didn't know what The Plague was about or why we were reading it. But afterwards the instructor explained to us that The Plague was being read because of the Vietnam War. What Camus was saying in The Plague was that the plague came and went of its own accord. All sorts of minions ran around trying to deal with the plague, and they operated under the illusion that they could affect the plague one way or another. But the plague operated on its own schedule. That is what we were told was going on in Vietnam. Every time I look at the situation in Iraq today, I think of Vietnam, and I think of The Plague, and I just don't think there's very much we can do at this point. It is just out of our hands. There are forces that we don't have control over that are at play, and will determine the outcome of this one. I understand that's very hard for Americans to understand, because Americans believe that they can shape the world in their interests.

But I learned during the Vietnam years when I was a kid at West Point, that there are some things in the world that you just don't control, and I think that's where we're at in Iraq.


The panel was over. For a moment or two there was stunned silence, and then applause—at once polite, sustained and thunderous.

...what is going on in Iraq and the ME in general is absolutely under control. The clusterfuck that is Iraq has been engineered to generously line some pockets and instill fear and hatred among the proles so that larger plans can be inplemented, both political and economic.

The War Party is in control, as it has been for much of human history.

But to your larger point we are in agreement. Things work out in their own time frame. In essence, there is no shortcut. We must stumble our way through the darkness, both personally and collectively, until we are awakened from our illusions.

It is unfortunate that such a journey seems to be paved on the shattered stones of human misery.