Resolving Middle East Conflict

Nearly five years into a war that might drag on for decades, Vice President Dick Cheney visited Iraq and declared, "If you look back on those five years, it has been a difficult, challenging but nonetheless successful endeavor." SeattlePI

The US will complete its mission in Iraq to ensure the country does not become a base for attacks on Americans, Vice-President Dick Cheney has said. BBC

It would be needless to suggest that Cheney is wrong, at least by the standards of much of the world. By his own standards, those of the Bush Admin, the job won’t be finished until they get their hands on Iraqi oil.

Other countries involved in both Iraq and Afghanistan have quite a different view of these conflicts. Without the priority of pillaging oil reserves or spreading fear and loathing these conflicts aren’t wars at all, but reconstruction efforts. Even the ‘War on Terror’ has taken on a new reality.

John Caligari is a brigadier in the Australian Army and commander of the 3rd Brigade based in Townsville. The brigade is the army's most readily deployable. A quarter of his 4000 troops are on deployment in East Timor or the Middle East.

From a great depth of experience Caligari is critical of the mindset of some other national military leaders. Of the Americans in Iraq, he says: "They're in armoured vehicles where they don't open the windows. They don't talk to the people; they don't care about the people."

As for the French, whom he worked with in Somalia, he is even harsher. "The French are rigid, very disciplined colonial masters. They believe the only way of treating the Africans was harshly because that's how you got anything from them; that's how you kept them under control," he says. Model of a modern digger

The fact is, Caligari makes sense. He believes the complex post-September 11 war fighting environment necessitates the development of soldiers who can think for themselves, rather than soldiers who are robots.

"… you get better soldiers if you spend more time on education and less on training," he says. "Training is characterised by what to think. Education is characterised by how to think."

He talks about a phenomena called ‘mission creep’ and provides a startling example of Australian soldiers in Iraq.

Despite having no experience running water systems, they found themselves working in the Iraqi water board. How did they do it? They jumped on the internet, of course. The Chicago water board, the soldiers discovered, has a very informative website.

The bottom line is conflict in Iraq and Afghanistan might well have been inevitable, but not to rape the countries resources, rather to support the many in those countries who want basic human rights.

It is about attitude and the attitude America took into these conflicts was bound to be lose/lose for everyone. The sooner the US move out and leave it to countries with the attitude, and troops with the education the sooner the world will start moving in the right direction again.

I guess that’s my next US visa request down the toilet…