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| Volume XII, Fall 2005, Number 3 |
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EXCERPT
Interview with Richard Armitage |
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| Mr. Armitage was undersecretary of state 2001-2005. He served as
assistant secretary of defense in the Reagan administration. The following
interview was conducted by Anne Joyce, editor of Middle East Policy, on
July 21, 2005. |
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Q: People compare the situation in
Iraq with Vietnam. How do you see the
similarities? Were there major surprises
in Iraq?
MR. ARMITAGE: The major difference
between Iraq and Vietnam is the fact that
the insurgents in Iraq, unlike the Vietcong
and the North Vietnamese, are not offering
an alternative to the people of Iraq. They
are offering just further death, destruction
et cetera, whereas in Vietnam there was at
least an alternative that the Vietcong and
the North Vietnamese were offering.
Beyond that, in my point of view, all wars
generally look the same. You’ll find that
the initial plans don’t survive the first
contact with the enemy.
Of course there were surprises. One
of the biggest surprises in Iraq was the
extent to which the
society has become
a criminal
society. That
statement has a lot
of implications.
The first implication
is they were
used to working
around authority.
Second, they were
used to coping.
And this development
of coping
mechanisms
actually meant that
at the end of the day, after the speed of our
invasion, the population was not in shock
and in awe of us, as the populations in
Germany or Japan were. This was just
another thing they had to cope with. They
had developed these skills over the years of
Saddam Hussein, and they had sharpened
them during the years of the sanctions.
Q: Considering that Colin Powell
was secretary of state, why was the
Powell Doctrine not followed, using
overwhelming military force?
MR. ARMITAGE: That is something that
should be directed to the Department of
Defense. He was secretary of state, and
had the Powell Doctrine been followed, in
my view, we would be in a lot better place
today. But in my personal view, there
were some in the Department of Defense
who wanted to have the anti-Powell
doctrine.
Q: What should our approach to
Syria be? Bashar al-Asad is new on the
job perhaps. Should we engage him or
try to isolate him?
MR.
ARMITAGE: At
some point in time,
you are no longer
new on the job,
and President
Asad has been
there for a couple
of years now. I
used to say we
ought to give him
time to develop. I
think he has had
enough time. I think that the Syrian view is
that we are all stick and no carrot. And in
truth, although Syria did not help us with
Hamas or Hezbollah, they certainly helped
us originally with al-Qaeda, helped us
enormously. They were slow off the mark,
I believe, to realize what was happening in
Iraq – that they are a vanishing breed, the
last Baath party. But I think if we’re going
to engage them meaningfully, we have to
give President Asad some degree of – I
wouldn’t say optimism – some degree of
faith that we can and do want to engage,
and we prefer to engage him positively.
But right now, I think, from their point of
view all they see is us engaging negatively.
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