January 22, 2007

Do You Really Know These People You’re Fighting?

 

When President Bush threatens the Iranians about their “meddling” in Iraq, he unconsciously displays a serious blind spot in his view of the world. This limitation has had a disastrous impact on our foreign policy and is likely to limit advances in the future.

 

On the most simple-minded level, it’s difficult to grasp a U.S. president accusing another country of “meddling” in Iraq. We invaded that country, overthrew its government (the main positive outcome of all this) and initiated a dynamic that resulted in torture of Iraqi citizens, thousands of Iraqi deaths, many at the hands of our own military, an ongoing civil war and the decimation of the country’s infrastructure for many years to come. We don’t allow meddling, unless of course it’s done by us.

 

If this had been only a slip of the tongue, it would bode less badly for our future. I’m afraid the president and his closest confidants may see no contradiction in this juxtaposition of words and action. How can that be when the two seem so inconsistent to the rest of us?

 

Both the answer and the administration’s view are quite simple. These folks believe that what we do is good and what people we don’t like do is evil. Others meddle; we liberate. This perspective is characteristic of many fundamentalist and ideological belief systems, and makes it difficult for the believer to see an adversary’s situation clearly or to absorb any contrary information.

 

This perspective can create a sense of unity among the believers. But it also can keep those believers out of sync with the rest of the world. Large human systems, including the complex international community, function most effectively when participants have accurate and consistent views of reality and each other. Participants can disagree about the future, and even compete strongly. But they must have compatible views of the present to be able to work out stable arrangements, for both collaborating and competing. I-Thou approaches are not only more human. They are also more strategic, political and practical. A too-narrow belief system makes effective communication impossible.

 

Caricatures and stereotypical images of adversaries have been with us for some time. Thoughtful people have attempted to help us understand this phenomenon and its often devastating repercussions.

 

For example, Clint Eastwood’s movie Letters from Iwo Jima confronts our World War II stereotypes of the Japanese. During WWII we Americans represented good in the world. The Japanese (and Germans, but especially the Japanese) represented something close to pure evil, to many Americans less than human, who needed to be separated from the rest of the U.S. population. Rumors of Japanese torture of American prisoners and other atrocities were widespread. These images perhaps enabled us to do inhuman things to other human beings, when that seemed necessary for our own survival.

 

In the movie we get to see the Japanese as human beings - dealing with similar pain, and possessing inhuman images of their own enemy – us. Imagine – people believing that we tortured prisoners – certainly a result of malicious propaganda. Seeing this movie at the time might have made it more difficult for our soldiers to do what seemed necessary during the battle. Seeing it now helps us see the distortion in those perspectives. This level of understanding is, of course, easier to come by after much time has past since the conflict, especially if the former enemy is now an ally and business partner.

 

What does all this suggest about now? I suggest two points: 1) When dealing with adversaries, it behooves us to understand accurately their reality, including any truth in their way of seeing us and the world; and 2) Even when adversaries become enemies, we can still benefit from remaining clear about their humanity and reality, to preserve any possibility for communication, with them and others, to make good decisions of our own, and perhaps to separate the less committed from their ranks. Seeing ourselves as totally good, and the other as totally evil, may have some value in all-out war, but also can help get us into that state.

 

Might someone make a movie 50 years from now entitled Letters from Jihad? I wonder what it might tell us about our current adversaries and enemies. I wonder if some of that might be useful to know now. It’s a question that is worth pondering.

 

To offer feedback on this column, click here.