President Barack Obama can start de novo in Iraq but this time it should be done with soft strike or nation building methods instead of, or in addition to, hard strike tactics.
I predicted years ago that the American intervention in Iraq would end as a failure because there was no funding for nation-building in the war budget. By nation-building I do not mean mortar and bricks, but rather infusing a sense of a shared patrimony that must be strengthened and enriched by each Iraqi citizen.
Like a prophet who is heard but not followed, my pushing for Ernest Renan as the model for policy direction has found no followers in American foreign policy initiatives. Paul Bremer, the first American proconsul in Iraq after the intervention, with his cowboy boots and his cowboy hat, was given a free hand to disband the Iraqi army. It has been a debacle since then until the last American soldier left on December 15, 2011, leaving a price tag of $4 trillion for the American taxpayer and the American locomotive that led the world economy.
The 300 new soldiers sent by President Barack Obama will not produce results that will reverse the situation unless they are there to protect the soft strike team that must be sent to transform the Iraqi ethos into a leaven for nation-state building where Shiite and Sunnis will no longer engage in a continuous dog and cat fight.
Iraq, the old Mesopotamia, is considered the cradle of civilization and the birthplace of the skill of writing that we are benefiting from today; it is also to there that the ark of Noah can be traced. The Iraq nation, in full decomposition today, was refined and civilized before Greece, Rome and Egypt.
The epic story of Gilgamesh (2,500 BC) is still a staple of serious literature for the young classicists of today. It is the birthplace of Abraham, the linear founding father of the three greatest world religions - Christianity, Judaism and Islam. The Garden of Eden, where Eve induced Adam to taste the forbidden fruit, has been traced to Iraq. Making Iraq become whole is in the interest of the collective human patrimony.
American policymakers might have to go back as far as King Hammurabi, who ruled Iraq from 1,792 to 1,750 BC, to instill in Iraqi citizens some love for a majestic leader who inspired his people to act under the principles that God would dictate to Abraham many years later. Making the Sunnis, the Kurds and the Shiites believe that the home built by Hammurabi is theirs to love, cherish, protect and consolidate is the first step in creating the nation-state of Iraq, free of sectarian conflicts.
The Americans would do well in Iraq if they could inspire the Iraqis to look after another founding father, Nebuchadnezzar II (602-564 BC), who brought Iraq, AKA Mesopotamia, to its former glory after centuries of invasion and war. Nebuchadnezzar II was the environmentalist ruler who first developed the hanging gardens, albeit to honor his wife.
Iraq was later controlled by the Ottoman Empire, and when the disintegration of that Muslim power center took place in 1921, the British Empire was there to pick up the pieces. In 1932, Iraq became an independent country.
Saddam Hussein was one of a group of insurgents trying to topple the Abdul Karim Kassem government in 1959. His group, led by the Ba'ath Party, was successful in 1963.
The Sunni Muslims who came to power expelled some 40,000 Shiite Muslims. The seeds of sectarian conflict were planted, and Shiite and Sunni have been fighting each other, tearing apart the Iraqi soul, ever since.
The Americans can do well this time if they use the soft strike of advisers schooled in social work to force the present rulers to see each Iraqi citizen - whether Shiite, Kurd or Sunni - as a jewel to be polished for his or her own self-realization and for the glory of the state.
The Hammurabi Code, part of the Iraqi patrimony, is an excellent precursor of the Renan Doctrine. It called for the legal protection of those in the lower class as well as for minorities. Social justice should be the glue that links one sector of society to another.
In the 1970s, when the black citizens of the United States were moving from Alabama and Georgia to New York City, the mayor, John Lindsay, stood at a crossroads to treat them as aliens seeking the benefits of New York citizens. He was forced through the advocacy of George Bragger and Frances Piven of Columbia University School of Social Work to act otherwise and treat the newcomers with the sentiment of belongers. Lindsay was receptive to the concept; and New York City has prospered and remains the most hospitable city of the United States, if not the world.
Renan, after the disintegration of the Prussian and the Ottoman Empires, proposed that the founding fathers of the new nations take steps to ensure that no citizen shall become a nomad in his own country. Excellent institutions and adequate infrastructure should be available to all wherever they are in the country and whatever their ethnic background might be.
He proposed also that a consensus should be built around the entire population, which states that those who are left behind should be shouldered by everybody and helped to catch up with the rest. Those simple principles are akin to God's demand to man: honor thy God and love thy neighbor - the totality of what is needed to build a prosperous and peaceful country.
Iraq today, Afghanistan tomorrow, will remain failed and fragile nations subject to sectarian struggles unless the American intervention changes course and looks into the history of these nations to find the structural fibers that can offer citizens the brotherhood and collegiality they need to realize they are brethren who together can enhance the house bequeathed by the founding fathers.
o Jean H. Charles, LLB MSW, JD, is a syndicated columnist with Caribbean News Now. He can be reached at: jeancharles@aol.com and followed at Caribbeannewsnow/Haiti. Published with the permission of Caribbean News Now.

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