Into the quagmire

http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,3604,1026106,00.html

After the latest attacks on coalition forces and now UN personnel the US must be wondering why the original script, so persuasive in its simplicity, has become so distorted and bitter. Instead of freedom there has been a struggle of sectional, if not national, liberation against the occupying forces. What was supposed to be a re-enactment of the landing on the Normandy beaches in 1944 looks like the descent into the Vietnam quagmire after the Gulf of Tonkin incident in 1964.
What has gone wrong?

To begin with, the US message of liberation has never been unadulterated. It has been said that there are two Americas, that of the Declaration of Independence and that of the CIA and the Pentagon. "Our commitment to liberty is America's tradition", said George Bush aboard the USS Abraham Lincoln on May 1, but he also announced that "the United States upholds these principles of security and liberty in many ways". Of course all conquering nations argue that they are exporting liberty or civilisation or both, and end up exploiting them and suppressing opposition in the name of security. The French constitution of 1946 said that the French would never use force against the liberty of any people, and that at a time when they were putting down nationalist revolts in Algeria, Syria, Vietnam and Madagascar. But few are deceived by their own rhetoric of liberation as much as the Americans are, or so ill-equipped to understand that an occupied people might not see things in the same way.