Many have cautioned against evils of empire

A good reading list for Iraq Study Group
- Martin F. Nolan

Sunday, November 26, 2006


They are awash in words, flooded with advice and sweating to meet a deadline. The 10 members of the Iraq Study Group are the hope of many for a solution to the war in Iraq. They may not need a reading list, but they can find relevant wisdom in the writings of Joseph Conrad, Rudyard Kipling and even a recent volume by one of their own members, James Addison Baker III.

But first, they might consult "A Dictionary of Cliches" by Eric Partridge on two of their targets, slogans posing as policy alternatives. "To cut and run" sounds like a cowboy movie sneer, but the phrase is not from Hopalong Cassidy but Horatio Hornblower: "To decamp, or depart, hurriedly: colloquial. Nautical: from cutting the cable and running before the wind."

American naval heroes like John Paul Jones and Stephen Decatur did not consider this tactic cowardly. Seeing the sails of a larger enemy force, a prudent captain cut his anchor, ran, regrouped with his fleet over the horizon and lived to fight another day.

Today it would be called "redeployment," a phrase used in 2005 by Rep. John Murtha, D-Pa., when he shed his hawkish feathers and redirected the national debate on Iraq. The subsequent political uproar obscured Murtha's detailed strategy "to create a quick-reaction force in the region" and "to create an over-the-horizon presence of Marines."

By definition, cliches are phrases that have lost much of their meaning. "To stay the course" Partridge defines as "To endure; to pursue a task, a course of conduct, to the appointed end: colloquial: from horse racing." Propagandists have excised the crucial second half of that phrase: to the appointed end.

Thus, definitions of success appear and disappear and predictions of victory crash and burn. The Bush administration's talk of "war" and "wartime" has become a cliche in itself. Americans no longer believe in a war without mobilization, a military draft, higher taxes or even rationing gasoline.

The Iraq Study Group's report, due next month, will likely make more news in its emphasis on diplomacy rather than military strategy. One of its sponsors is the U.S. Institute for Peace. An emphasis on statecraft will be newsworthy precisely because diplomacy is so novel a notion in the Bush era.

The commissioners share bipartisanship, patriotic instincts and "former" in front of their titles. They will appreciate the candor of their co-Chairman Baker, who calls his memoirs "Work Hard, Study ... And Keep Out of Politics!" based on advice from his grandfather he heeded only partially.

Hooked on politics and public service, Baker confesses that "as my public prominence diminished, I also discovered that I could stand on busy street corners and walk through airports without being recognized. This was liberating in a way, but also -- truth be told -- disquieting."

Cynical gossips presume Baker is an emissary from the president's father to save Junior's bacon. To Beltway Freudians, let the co-chairman speak for himself: "Early in his first administration, President George W. Bush asked me to let him know each time I came to Washington, and I do. When it's convenient for him (and it usually is), he asks that I drop by for a private visit at the White House. I usually stay about 30 to 45 minutes. We discuss whatever is on his mind -- sometimes foreign or economic policy, sometimes politics, sometimes personnel. He wants me to be candid and frank, and I am. This idea that he is overly sensitive to critical comment is not accurate, as far as I'm concerned. And despite what a lot of pundits may imagine, I always speak for myself, not as a conduit from the president's father or anyone else."

Diplomacy requires a sense of self-awareness, a candid appraisal of the U.S. position in the world.

A new biography by historian Robert L. Beisner, "Dean Acheson: A Life in the Cold War," reveals why Harry Truman's secretary of state has become a topic of favored reading among diplomats. The late 1940s accelerated the decline of empire and the rise of new nations, many with artificial borders like Iraq's. Since 1945, the membership of the United Nations has almost quadrupled, from 51 to 192. What Acheson told West Point cadets on Dec. 5, 1962, now applies to America: "Great Britain has lost an empire and has not yet found a role."

Neocons now seldom talk of a "unipolar world" and barely whisper their once-favorite adjective of world ambition, "hegemonic." Because the end of empire is so important, the study group members should read Joseph Conrad, whose first language was Polish and whose subject matter was colonial adventure.

In "Heart of Darkness," Conrad relived his days as a seaman piloting a steamboat up the Congo River. His forecast of colonialism's eventual fate is bleakly accurate: "I foresaw that in the blinding sunshine of that land I would become acquainted with a flabby, pretending, weak-eyed devil of a rapacious and pitiless folly."

Conrad's contemporary, Kipling, was 31 when the British Empire paused for a monthlong celebration of Queen Victoria's diamond jubilee. "At the back of my head there was an uneasiness ... and a certain optimism that scared me," the world's best-known writer recalled.

On July 17, 1897, the Times printed his "Recessional," a caution against imperial excess:

God of our fathers, known of old,

Lord of our far-flung battle-line,

Beneath whose awful hand we hold Dominion over palm and pine --

Lord God of Hosts, be with us yet,

Lest we forget -- lest we forget! ...

Far-called, our navies melt away;

On dune and headland sinks the fire.

Lo, all our pomp of yesterday Is one with Nineveh and Tyre!

Judge of the Nations, spare us yet, Lest we forget -- lest we forget!

In 1892, Kipling wrote:

And the end of the fight is a

tombstone white with the name of

the late deceased, And the epitaph

drear: "A Fool lies here who tried

to hustle the East."

Kipling knew empire in all its glory and grimness. He also knew that the noblest intentions can be poisoned by hubris.



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The task force
The Iraq Study Group, created by Congress, is a bipartisan task force charged with bringing "fresh eyes" to the conflict that began in 2003:

Co-Chair James A. Baker III, former secretary of state;

Co-Chair Lee Hamilton, former Democratic representative from Indiana;

Lawrence Eagleburger, former secretary of state;

Vernon Jordan Jr., senior managing director, Lazard, Freres & Co.;

Edwin Meese III, former attorney general;

Sandra Day O'Connor, former Supreme Court associate justice;

Leon Panetta, former White House chief of staff;

William Perry, former secretary of defense;

Charles Robb, former U.S. senator;

Alan Simpson, former U.S. senator.

Martin F. Nolan, who lives in San Francisco, read many commission reports when he was Washington bureau chief for the Boston Globe. Contact us at insight@sfchronicle.com.

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