The war in Iraq has now lasted more than five years. "Tell me how this ends," General Petraeus said famously early on in the conflict. In her five-part series Jeb Sharp is looking at how wars end. They don't end quite the way we imagine they do. And sometimes they don't end at all.
I am a high school history teacher "showing" this series to my 10th grade modern world history class. Programs like this really help US to help our students focus on the BIG PICTURE topics in history, as well as concepts like change over time or continuity vs. change. THANK YOU!!!!!
Congratulations to Jeb Sharp on creating a really great series on a tough subject. And to the World for airing it right now. This work is thoughtful and thought-provoking. The online extras are especially good.
Catherine Stifter, independent radio producer
This has been a wonderful and enlightening series. I'm glad they mined their subjects, the various ways wars were thought to have ended versus how they actually concluded, for new insight and more accurate information on what happened. With regards to the first Iraq war, Bush I spoke to the underlying motivations for the war, that we were trying to put the memories of Viet Nam to rest; indeed, for conservative Americans, the need to show VietNam could have been won seems to be worth fighting in Iraq to the complete negligence of the real problem arising in Afghanistan. The ticker tape parade for returning Gulf War vets was a fraud, with no where near the enthusiasm or the crowds for other events.
Tonight's program on the ending of the Persian Gulf War was a real disappointment, in that it almost totally disregarded the role that international law played.
Iraq's aggression against Kuwait was perhaps the clearest violation of international law and the terms of the Charter of the UN since the organization was founded. Defense of the principle that wars of aggression are illegal is the reason the US had so many allies in this conflict. They were ready to fight to demonstrate that naked aggression was unacceptable in the post-WWII world.
The Persian Gulf War--from a global perspective--was not about overthrowing Saddam, nor freeing the Kurds, nor encouraging a revolution in Iraq, nor even saving oil fields. From a global perspective, it was the world demonstrating its support for the principle that wars of aggression (where one country simply takes over another country that poses no significant threat to its security) have been illegal since 1945.
The legitimate response was to push the aggressor out, period. It was not to solve Iraq's internal problems.
In 2003, we seemed to reverse course on this basic principle of international law, by starting our own (illegal) war of aggression against Iraq. Although the rest of the world community has not attempted to fight together to stop our aggression, they generally have refused to support it.
For a program that calls itself "The World" I am surprised that it has taken such a national perspective it this edition of "How Wars End".
This series was extremely informative, bringing the current conflict in Iraq (and how it might "end") into historical context. Jeb Sharp and PRI's The World should definitely get an award!
Thank you for your thoughtful series "How Wars End" that can help us all think beyond soundbites into the real struggles facing us in conflict areas around the globe. I hope that your last series will focus on the genocide in the Great Lakes region of Africa and the work of the Africa Great Lakes Initiative of Friends Peace Teams (http://www.aglionline.org/) to help people reconcile and heal from that trauma. This organization has done incredible work bringing perpetrators and victims of the genocide together, show them their commonalities and make real the struggles of the "other". It has led to incredible personal and community transformations. Their work, if successful, will never make the news headlines because it will prevent the next war from happening there. Although they have done excellent evaluations of their work to show how many they have trained and to collect stories of transformation, the real testament to their work is that the prevention of real violence in those communities. This organization has quietly continued to focus on an area of the world forgotten by the mass media because it is not the "current" crisis. Day after day, they put resources to use in rebuilding communities, rebuilding shattered lives, healing from trauma, and forgiving each other. I believe that more focus on such work will help us to prevent violence in the future.
I really appreciate the insight that this provided. Regretfully, as Americans we tend to be focused on "We won! We won! and never think about what comes next, or even what the realities were at the time. it will take a lot of political fortitude to come to grips with this, and even greater effort for the American people to turn around and see the whole picture in any circumstnace of war in order to deal with matters in a realistic manner. I read a lot of history, particularly with regard to WW II and I am very shaken about what really happened to everyone involved.
Just like other wars ended, PACK UP AND GET OUT WHILE YOU STILL CAN SAVE LIVES ON BOTH SIDES. It applies only to wars that the future is dim and chances are extremely slim to win, this way there is a chance to preserve a 0.001% respect you have left.
I found today's report very interesting and informative. If I understood one of the historians correctly it was said that there was no army of occupation in Germany following the Armistice of 1918. My father who served in the 42nd (Rainbow) Division, 150th Field Artillery of the AEF served many months in Germany in the Army of Occuaption.
Patricia Cockrell Wood
PCWrevphd@aol.com
...I was planning for a fun afternoon at the pool when I by coincindence tuned my walkman on the channel airing this series - and I ended up having one my most interesting times, I was really fascinated by the content and the way it was presented, linking the different periods together and giving an unique insight and understanding - amazing! It just makes me wonder how it comes that so little of the incredible knowledge and expertise these historians and reporters have is flowing into today's real decision taking before wars are started...! LOVED IT, THANK YOU!
Reconstruction ended because the North allowed it to end. Don't you think it possible that the victors didn't really care about black people? A re-united nation went on to seize the continent and extend its empire. The South pushed the blacks back into semi-slavery. A win-win result, except for black people.
In the peace settlement after World War One it was the Arabs who got betrayed. The Allies promised them freedom after the Ottomans were defeated. Instead the Allies carved up the Middle East and began the death of Palestine. An oversight? I think not. Maybe the Allies didn't plan on such atrocities as the bombing of Gaza, but they chose every step along the way.
I found your comparison between Iraq and the Civil War ridiculous.The Civil War was civil-it involved an unlawful rebellion against the duly constituted authority of the US-and subsequent post-war attempts to redeem the promise of the war.Iraq was the unlawful invasion of another country,most probably for economis aggrandizement.There the rebellion was against an occupying foreign power.The US is one country where for years the rebellion relied upon sympathizers in the North to perpetute inequality.You cleverly disguise Iraq as involving the same principles,It does not,
Here's me being a news consumer. I read several blurbs about this program and the fourteen comments. I also, in getting there, saw that Secretary Rice in 2006 compared Iraq to the US Civil War (that thought still boggles my mind).
The two critical comments here included evidence along with their thesis sentences. None of the praise included any evidence, such as "The scene at Appomattox was so similar to that when Saddam's statue came down that the parallels jump out at you". I suspect this is because there is no evidence. I say that having listened to "The World" before. It is permissible to hypothesize that an organization that promulgates distortions under the label of news analysis once will do so again.
In such cases, the news is that our news organizations not only have agendas, but that these agendas parallel government agendas. The brief description of the five segments of Sharp's program don't mention her discussing how the various invasions of Afghanistan by Europeans ended. Nor did she discuss, apparently, how England's post-WWI occupation of Iraq eventually brought us to Saddam's regime, a result that TE Lawrence might have predicted: nationalism denied in an era of nationalism is going to elicit hyper-nationalism. That is the sort of lesson one can draw from history.
10/08/2008 5:39:24 AM
