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Many people seem surprised that Operation Iraqi Freedom is still underway. After all, more than a fortnight has passed, and yet no American satrap has been installed in Baghdad. Further, there is considerable resistance along the invasion route, even though some Bushites predicted that coalition soldiers would be welcomed and hailed as liberators.
Thus continues an American tradition; as nearly as I can tell, it began with in 1807 with Capt. Zebulon Montgomery Pike. The preceding summer, Pike had marched west from St. Louis with a small expeditionary force. His official orders were to ascend the Arkansas River to its headwaters, then proceed south to the headwaters of the Red River (which now forms part of the boundary between Oklahoma and Texas), and follow it back to its junction with the Mississippi River.
In the process, a confused Pike ended up in our San Luis Valley, which was then part of the Empire of Spain. He and his men, suspected of being spies rather than explorers, were taken into custody by Spanish soldiers and escorted to Chihuahua before they were returned to the United States.
While traveling through northern Mexico, Pike observed that the population was oppressed by the government. He was sure that they would rebel if the United States would send a small force to serve as a nucleus. The American forces arrived 40 years later -- and the population, despite Pike's beliefs, did not rebel and join the American cause.
Pike, by then a general, died in the War of 1812 of a head wound received in the siege of York (today's Toronto) in 1813. There were American politicians then who believed that the oppressed Canadians would welcome liberation as soon as Yankee troops arrived. But it didn't happen.
In our Civil War, the Confederate strategy was
essentially defensive. But every so often, the graybacks
would march north, with the hope of attracting recruits as
they liberated
a state from its Yankee
oppressors.
For instance, when Gen. Robert E. Lee invaded Maryland
in the fall of 1862, he proclaimed to the civilian
population that his army was there to aid you in
throwing off this foreign yoke, to enable you again to
enjoy the inalienable rights of freemen.
Marylanders,
however, did not rise in rebellion against the foreign
yoke
in Washington.
Earlier that year, Confederate Gen. Braxton Bragg had
led a force into Kentucky, where he expected a warm
welcome; he told residents that I have entered your
state ... to restore to you the liberties of which you have
been deprived by a cruel and relentless foe,
and he
asked Kentuckians to lend your willing hands
to the
Confederate cause. There were few, if any, willing
hands,
and Bragg had to retreat.
Move to more recent times, and we find the same myth at work in 1961, when the United States sponsored an invasion of Cuba at the Bay of Pigs. Planners believed that the Cuban population would support the guerrillas and rise in rebellion against Fidel Castro. That was 42 years ago, and Castro is still in power.
It doesn't always happen that way; invading armies sometimes pick up allies along the way. That's how the Inca Empire, with its huge army, fell to a force of only 180 Spanish soldiers led by Francisco Pizarro in 1530. In building their empire, the Incas had conquered many other tribes and treated them cruelly -- so cruelly that the conquered tribes joined the Spanish to fight the Incas. They figured the Spanish had to be an improvement on Inca rule.
Then there's our Civil War. As Union armies penetrated the South, they were welcomed as liberators -- by African-American slaves who flocked to Union lines. This was not something that the Union had planned on, and early in the war, the Union had no idea how to accommodate them.
But the federal government eventually figured it out,
and by the end of the war, there were more than 130,000
black soldiers and soldiers in blue uniforms, fighting
alongside the Yankee invaders.
And in World War II, of course, Allied forces were often welcomed in Europe as liberators.
So the American mythology is based on some historical
events. There have been oppressed populations who were
willing to rebel and support invading armies. But there
have also been many oppressed peoples
-- in Mexico,
Canada, Cuba, Maryland, Kentucky, etc. -- who did not rebel
against their government and join forces with the
invaders.
Thus it shouldn't have been any surprise that Iraqis have not been flocking to the coalition forces. The fortunes of war do not lend themselves to easy predictions -- after all, when our four-year Civil War started, both sides expected it to last less than 90 days.
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