The Foreign Service Journal, January 2008

want to believe that our experience is a template for soci- eties trapped in repression or tradition. As a result, Americans have difficulty accepting that religion, ethnic affiliation, family or other traditional insti- tutions often control human behavior more than does alle- giance to Western-style democracy. We also tend to forget that without the underlying values of democratic gover- nance — compromise, tolerance, respect for majority rule and minority rights, freedom of speech and conscience — elections are meaningless, and the American model with- ers into irrelevance. Our zealous commitment, however, often controls and defines reality — at least in the short term. “Those villages all voted, Dell,” my boss, a jut-jawed, ramrod-straight Army colonel declared. “Nothing else matters.” After all, the United States had invested heavily in proving that democracy worked in Vietnamese villages. “Sir, to be honest, some of those councils were selected ahead of time by village elders. The elections were just window-dressing to appease Saigon.” The colonel roared in response to his civilian subordinate’s unwelcome candor. “I don’t care! We reported 100-percent election success. That’s what Saigon and Washington wanted, and we gave it to them.” From the White House to the working level in districts and provinces, a relentless propaganda of success ruled our decade-long Vietnam experience. Prefiguring our current commitment in Iraq, the crusade in Southeast Asia seized on all available evidence (especially the American weak- ness for statistics) to validate the nationbuilding vision. But the legendary “light at the end of the tunnel” we per- ceived turned out to be a roaring locomotive of harsh real- ity headed straight for us. Change Must Come from Within In 2000, George Bush and his principal foreign affairs adviser, Condoleezza Rice, sharply criticized the Clinton administration’s nationbuilding efforts and rejected any U.S. role as a global policeman. The Bush administration reversed direction sharply after 9/11, however, arguing that Islamic terrorism created a new, overriding mandate to transform Middle Eastern societies. Terrorism replaced communism as the global enemy that drives, sanctions and sometimes distorts America’s worldwide mission. Even accepting the new strategic vocation, however, does not change the practical reality we experienced in Vietnam and continue to ignore today: the United States has limited competence and capability, especially in the short term, to transform traditional values and behavior. Our economic, political and educational programs can sup- port modernizing, democratic trends, but the main impulse must originate in the local society, with change evolving over an extended period of time. Pretending that American resolve can accelerate or even miraculously sub- stitute for this process only invites frustration and disillu- sionment. It happened in Vietnam, and history is now repeating itself in Iraq. We Americans are idealistic, optimistic, confident. Such qualities tamed the frontier and built the most successful and enduring democracy in human history. But that same resolute determination flounders in societies with completely different cultural and historical backgrounds. In Vietnam, and now in Iraq, we have been handicapped by a paucity of diplomats and soldiers who know the language and culture. Heavy reliance on the ubiquitous interpreters only creates another layer of potential misunderstanding and false intimacy. Without the local language — and the associated grasp of local behavior, customs and traditions — Americans are blind men and women in dark rooms groping wildly to compre- hend. As Graham Greene describes the young idealist in his classic 1955 novel, The Quiet American : “I never knew a man who had better motives for all the trouble he caused.” America’s newest quagmire recalls a conversation I had a few years ago with an elderly Vietnamese man at a Borders bookstore in Tyson’s Corner, Va. We were inspect- ing a shelf of books about Vietnam, and our common inter- est led to a long discussion in the store’s café. A small, frail man with a tired, resigned look on his face, Minh had been an officer in the South Vietnamese army, spent five years in a re-education camp, and then escaped to join his fami- ly in the United States. “You Americans never understood our country.” His English was halting, heavily accented, but fluent. “You’re right,” I agreed. “But the Vietnamese never understood the Americans either.” Mr. Minh sipped his tea. “Perhaps. All the talk about democracy confused my people. It really did not seem to have anything to do with them. They wanted only to be left alone and survive, the way Vietnamese have done for centuries. We were just a stage for your foreign policy. It became your war and not our war. Once you gave up and left, there was no reason to fight.” J A N U A R Y 2 0 0 8 / F O R E I G N S E R V I C E J O U R N A L 51 Our mission in Iraq is even more fragile and shaky than in Vietnam during the early 1970s.