An Enemy and War Born from Ignorance
by James Carroll
Boston Globe
I was a senior in high school, attending the American school in Wiesbaden, West Germany, where the US Air Force had its headquarters and where my father was stationed.
It was 1959, and the Cold War tension was focused on Berlin. Because that divided city was well inside the Soviet sector of East Germany, and because it served as an escape hatch for citizens behind the Iron Curtain, Nikita Khrushchev was pressing the French, British, and American forces to get out.
President Eisenhower was holding firm, insisting on a strict reading of the four-party treaty that had divided the city. The Soviets were looking for an excuse to call off the treaty, and that's where I came in.
My friends and I were fans of the Formula 1 automobile racing circuit, and a Grand Prix that year was to take place in Berlin. The flashpoint city was effectively off-limits to the like of us, but we went anyway.
A US Army train crossed through the Communist zone every day, carrying GIs and their dependents through East Germany to the island city. The Soviets hated this incursion, but the treaty allowed it. The treaty also underwrote strict regulations for the train, however, and American passengers were instructed in the rules by the military policemen who served as conductors.
When the train approached the East-West border, the military police went through the compartments, closing the window shades and explaining that lifting the shades was strictly forbidden. They gave absolute emphasis to the prohibition of any photography at the border. I have recounted this memory elsewhere, but it comes to mind in the context of recent news.
When the train hissed to a stop, we boy-adventurers in our darkened compartment could hear the barked orders outside, the familiar cadence of German, but also the odd sounds of another language we took to be Russian. It was like hearing the dialogue of a movie without being able to see the screen, and we simply couldn't resist. Up went the window shade, but only by an inch.
``Tanks!" my buddy whispered. ``Red stars!"
Soviet troops were lined up to face-off with GIs, all with weapons ready. I was the one to put the lens of my camera at the small opening. I pushed the button. Before I knew it, the door behind us slammed open.
I was roughly jerked away from the window, and in a flash the back of the camera was open, the film unspooled and strewn around the compartment. It was the American MP, and his rough reaction was deliberate, a firm enforcement of border regulations to impress the Soviet and East German officers who were right behind him. They wanted at us, but the MP held them off.
After the East German and Soviet officers backed out of the compartment, the MP checked our identification and wrote us up. He was calmer now, but I sensed his contempt. As he handed my ID back , he looked at me hard and snarled, ``Some damn fool like you is going to start World War III."
That rebuke lives in my memory as a measure of my own immaturity -- a drastic failure to match my action to its potential consequence. I hear the MP's words now, however, as a judgment on contemporary American leadership.
World War III never came in the contest with Moscow, and though the image is sometimes evoked today to describe the war on terrorism, this is not World War III either. But the callow impulsiveness that risks catastrophe out of ignorance and self-centeredness does apply. That MP on the train was pronouncing a prophecy that has come true.
The National Intelligence Estimate that was partially declassified last week shows the government's own assessment of what has followed from President Bush's decision to go to war in Iraq -- a decision he made in stark defiance of warnings of history.
``Anti-US and anti globalization sentiment is on the rise and fueling other radical ideologies," the estimate said. ``This could prompt some leftist, nationalist, or separatist groups to adopt terrorist methods to attack US interests. The radicalization process is occurring more quickly, more anonymously in the Internet age."
The estimate itself thus points to a conclusion:
Bush created a cohesive enemy where it did not really exist before. So-called jihadists have been rallied, strengthened, and made lethal by Iraq. They will haunt the world for years, in a global war unlike anything ever seen before. All of it unnecessary. Foolishness worthy of a stupid child.
That summarizes the big picture quite well.
James Carroll's column appears regularly in the Globe.
