[Vision2020] What Would George, Abe, and Genghis Have Done?

[nickgier at adelphia.net]

December 29, 2006,  10:22 am
The New York Times
What Would Genghis Do?

The Los Angeles Times op-ed page convenes a panel of four historians to discuss how a great military leader of the past might have handled the Iraq war. Joseph Ellis, writing about George Washington, acknowledges the ridiculousness of the exercise, . . . [but]still takes a stab at finding a usable history lesson from Washington’s life. He writes:

    Like the British decision to subjugate the American colonies, the Bush decision to democratize Iraq has been misguided from the start. The administration never appreciated the odds against its success, and it disastrously confused conventional military superiority with the demands imposed on an army of occupation.

    No man in American history understood those lessons better than Washington, who viewed them as manifestations of British imperial arrogance, which he described as “founded equally in Malice, absurdity, and error.” If dropped into Baghdad, he would weep at our replication of the same imperial scenario. 

Harold Holzer, the author of “Lincoln at Cooper Union: The Speech that Made Abraham Lincoln President,” finds the lessons easier to draw. He writes:

    So what might Lincoln do today?

    First, focus on the real enemy: terrorists. When advisors suggested he start a war with England merely to woo patriotic Southerners back into the Union, Lincoln replied: “One war at a time.” He also rejected adventurism against French-controlled Mexico. Today Lincoln would fight only the war that needs fighting.

    Second, embrace flexibility. Seek the right generals, strategies, troop levels and weaponry, and be willing to change course and personnel swiftly.

    Third, communicate objectives with frequency, passion and precision. No one can match Lincoln’s eloquence, but no president should abandon Lincoln’s commitment to engage the public.

    Fourth, spend more time at the front. Lincoln visited the troops often, absorbing their pain and boosting their morale. Maybe his case was better, but his manner of symbolizing it was best.

    Finally, abandon the notion of divine will to justify war. Even the pious Lincoln came to realize it was fruitless, even sacrilegious, to invoke God as his ally. “In great contests each party claims to act in accordance with the will of God,” he lamented. “Both may be, and one must be, wrong.” As Lincoln understood: “The Almighty has his own purposes.” 

Adrian Goldsworthy, author of “Caesar: Life of a Colossus,” suggests that Julius Caesar would have won the war but that the United States might not prefer to have Caesar in charge. After all, “He left Gaul to make war on his own country.”

But if not Caesar, how about Genghis Khan? Jack Weatherford, author of “Genghis Khan and the Making of the Modern World,” thinks the Mongol empire wasn’t as tyrannical as it is remembered. Weatherford writes:

    The Mongols spared anyone with a craft, such as carpentry, writing, pottery, weaving or metal working. They fiercely enforced religious freedom, which created an essentially secular state. In Baghdad, they gave many of the caliph’s palaces to Mongol allies for more practical uses. They lowered taxes for merchants and eliminated them for religious, medical and educational professionals. They educated women along with men. For all subjects, they instituted harsh laws enforced equally under nearly incorruptible officials.

    Fundamentalist Muslims look back at Mongol secularism as a scourge. But, although U.S. rule in Iraq has produced a constant flow of refugees, particularly religious minorities, out of the country, under Mongol rule Christian, Muslim, Jewish and even Buddhist immigrants poured into the newly conquered Iraq to live under the Great Law of Genghis Khan. It was said that during this time a virgin could cross the length of the Mongol Empire with a pot of gold on her head and never be molested.

    By the time of the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq, the political achievements of the Mongols had been forgotten, and only the destructive fury of their wars was remembered. Yet under the Mongols — and the legacy of Genghis Khan — Iraq enjoyed a century of peace and a renaissance that brought the region to a level of prosperity and cultural sophistication higher than it enjoyed before or after. Any country with a bent for empire could do worse than learn from Genghis Khan.