If China (or aliens) had invaded the US, would you join the invader's army?

By Jay Bookman
Republished from The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

If you want to understand why it’s so difficult to build a new Iraqi army that is willing to fight and die for a new Iraq, a little imagination is a very helpful thing.

More specifically, it helps if you can imagine what is unimaginable. Imagine that some foreign power – say, China – has invaded and occupied the United States, imposed a form of government similar to that of China and is now recruiting Americans to serve in a new American army, to be trained by and to fight alongside the Chinese military that is now occupying our country.

That, in a rough sense, is what we’re trying to accomplish in Iraq.

Given that situation, what sort of Americans do you think would volunteer to serve in this Chinese-sponsored army? Hardly the cream of the crop.

And would those volunteers have the respect and support of their fellow Americans? No. They would probably have to hide their faces from the rest of us when they went on patrol alongside Chinese troops in American neighborhoods, just as Iraqi troops do now.

Furthermore, would such men take pride in their service, or would it be a source of inner shame? Would such troops be willing to fight and die for each other, and for their Chinese sponsors, or would they melt away when things got hard?

Who would fight harder under those circumstances – those drawn to serve in this new army by the promise of a paycheck, or those Americans who were fighting to drive the Chinese invaders out of our country?

The analogy is far from perfect, of course. Whatever the motivation for our invasion of Iraq, it did have the beneficial effect of removing Saddam Hussein from power, and that still counts for something among many Iraqis.

Furthermore, the new Iraqi government, however ineffective it might be, was at least elected by the Iraqi people. And many of the insurgents have targeted innocent Iraqi civilians in a horrifically brutal terrorist campaign, making it much easier to argue that a new Iraqi army is protecting Iraqis rather than aiding in the American occupation.

All of those are mitigating factors. But there’s still something deep in the gut of any human being – something that crosses all cultural lines – that resents the occupation of one’s country by foreigners. That sentiment is as certain as sunrise, and it is unforgivable that American officials did not account for it in claiming that our troops would be greeted by Iraqis with flowers and candy.

Today, we can preach to the Iraqis all we want about individual rights and the rule of law and democratic self-government. We can tell them that they now have sovereignty, that we’re remaining in Iraq just to help them.

But all that fine talk goes for naught when uniformed Americans stop and search Iraqis at gunpoint, humiliating them before their wives and daughters. The relationship then is not about equality, it’s about power: We have it, they don’t, not even in their own country, not even in their own homes.

In the immediate wake of our invasion, experts talked of having a window of opportunity, a brief period of time in which U.S. officials had to get control of the security situation, surrender day-to-day control of Iraq and withdraw the bulk of our troops. If we stayed beyond that window, they warned, Iraqi resentment would grow so great that our presence would become more of an obstacle than a benefit.

Most such estimates put that window at roughly three months. When those initial three months passed and it became clear that withdrawal was not yet an option, a team of five experts assembled by Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld traveled to Iraq to assess the situation.

While the panel reported “rising anti-Americanism in parts of the country,” it also held out hope that the window might be held open slightly longer. To do so, however, “the entire effort [must] be immediately turbo-charged.”

“The next three months are crucial to turning around the security situation, which is volatile in key parts of the country,” the panel reported to Rumsfeld.

That was almost two years ago.

Jay Bookman is the deputy editorial page editor. His column appears Mondays and Thursdays.