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3 Bush: In the footsteps of
Napoleon By Juan Cole
November. When the assault,
involving air power and artillery, came, it was
devastating, damaging two-thirds of the city's
buildings and turning much of its population into
refugees. (As a result, thousands of Fallujans
still live in the desert in tent villages with no
access to clean water.)
Bush must have
been satisfied. Heads rolled. More often, faced
with opposition, the US Air Force simply bombed
already-occupied cities, a technology Napoleon
(mercifully) lacked. The
strategy of ruling by terror
and swift, draconian punishment for acts of
resistance was, however, the same in both cases.
The British sank much of the French fleet
on August 1, 1798, marooning Napoleon and his
troops in their newly conquered land. In the
spring of 1799, the French army tried - and failed
- to break out through Syria; after which Napoleon
himself chose the better part of valor. He slipped
out of Egypt late that summer, returning to
France. There, he would swiftly stage a coup and
come to power as First Consul, giving him the
opportunity to hone his practice of bringing
freedom to other countries - this time in Europe.
By 1801, joint British-Ottoman forces had
defeated the French in Egypt, who were transported
back to their country on British vessels. This
first Western invasion of the Middle East in
modern times had ended in serial disasters that
Napoleon would misrepresent to the French public
as a series of glorious triumphs.
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. The despotism (but also
the weakness) of the Mamluks and of Saddam Hussein
proved sirens practically calling out for Western
interventions.
According to the rhetoric
of liberal imperialism, tyrannical regimes are
always at least potentially threats to the
republic, and so can always be fruitfully
overthrown in favor of rule by a Western military.
After all, that military is invariably imagined as
closer to liberty since it serves an elected
government. (Intervention is even easier to
justify if the despots can be portrayed, however
implausibly, as allied with an enemy of the
republic.)
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.
Juan Cole teaches Middle Eastern
and South Asian history at the University of
Michigan. His most recent book Napoleon's Egypt: Invading the
Middle East (New York: Palgrave Macmillan,
2007) has just been published. He has appeared
widely on television, radio and on op-ed pages as
a commentator on Middle East affairs. He has
written, edited or translated 14 books and has
authored 60 journal articles. His weblog on the
contemporary Middle East is Informed Comment.
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