Leaving people behind.

• Author: Bresler, Robert J.
• Position: STATE OF THE NATION - Legacy of American reconstruction intervention

IN AUGUST, WHEN IRAQI Vice Pres. Adel Abdul Mahdi visited Washington, he was asked what his country needed most. He replied, "Time--that is it. A nation like Iraq needs time. The elections for a permanent government happened eight months ago. We have been in office a few weeks. The people who we have in office have never governed. These people come from oppression and a bad political system.... Our options as Iraqis are that we don't have an exit strategy or any withdrawal timetable. We simply go on.... It is a process and, brick by brick, we are working on it."

Clearly, Mahdi is counting on the U.S., and one would like to think that America will keep its promise to Mahdi and so many other Iraqis. In most cases, when the U.S. pledges to help a weak and threatened ally or a beleaguered people, it does precisely that. During the Cold War, the U.S. had mutual security obligations with more than 40 nations. In Article V of the NATO pact, the language is unambiguous: "An attack on one [is] an attack on all." This did not mean that Luxemburg would come to the rescue of the U.S. in the event of an attack; rather, that Luxemburg's security, along with all the other NATO allies, depended upon the solemn pledge of America to defend it in the event of a Soviet attack. Such action never was needed, though, largely because of our pledge and the military force to back it up.

During the four-plus decades of the Cold War, democracy and peace came to Western Europe. The same was true of Japan, South Korea, Thailand, and the Philippines. Had these nations doubted the sincerity of America's pledge, their policies and history could have been quite different--and not for the better. Neutralism would have been the watchword of their foreign policies and, eventually, their communist parties (certainly in France and Italy) would have grown in influence and power. Moreover, the militarism and fascism that had bored deeply in to the politics and culture of Germany, Japan, and Italy were eradicated.

The U.S., however, has not always had a record of steadfastness and determination to stay the course with those who have counted on its pledge. In 1877, for instance, the country, led by the Republican Party, ended Reconstruction and turned its back on the American Negro. The anti-slavery Republicans of Abraham Lincoln, William Seward, and Edwin Stanton, with their idealism and fervor, had become corrupt and besotted with power. They no longer really cared about the...