PATIENCE IS NEEDED IN PURSUIT OF PEACE IN THE MIDDLE EAST

The generals may win the war, but the statesmen can bungle the peace.

In World War I, Germany, France and Britain fought to a bloody stalemate. The late entry of fresh American troops under General John Pershing's command tipped the balance in the Allies' favor. President Woodrow Wilson assumed heroic status and unparalleled popularity in European capitals. Wilson "le Juste," tens of thousands shouted as he entered Paris. He was the hope of humanity.

He had a magnanimous plan for peace his Fourteen Points which would create "a better world." There would be "open covenants," "no secret" deals, freedom of the seas, free trade, reduction of armaments, impartial adjustment of colonial claims, independence for new nations, and a League of Nations. Trouble was that Britain and France didn't believe in any of Wilson's piety, and the American people got bored with it too. The United States wanted to disentangle itself from the evil clutches of European political manipulators and bring the boys back home. Wilson won the war, but lost the peace.

Even before we entered the Second World War, Franklin Roosevelt and Winston Churchill issued their Atlantic Charter describing our postwar objectives. The Charter had the ring of Wilsonian idealism, not surprisingly since Roosevelt was a Wilsonian at heart. Nations would seek no gains, territorial or otherwise. Nations would be free to select their own governments. The seas would be open and the world would abound in peaceful commerce. Churchill could rise to a moral occasion if compelled, and his nation's near terminal state so compelled. Even Joseph Stalin seemed to be an accommodating sort of fellow as his nation pleaded for military equipment and the opening of a second front. By 1943, there was consensus amongst the major powers that there would be another international peace-keeping organization and this one would, of course, be effective. Roosevelt envisioned his own new world order, "a world founded on four essential human freedoms." It didn't work out. The hot war was won, but peace soon translated into a cold war.

George Bush was the justifiably acclaimed commander-in-chief of the Persian Gulf War. His decisiveness in organizing and directing the battlefield victory was matched by his uncertainty in organizing the peace. He wanted to extricate U.S. forces with much more than deliberate speed. As in their previous wars, once they are won, Americans want their boys back home as soon as victory is declared.

Saddam Hussein, so Saudi intelligence services assured us, would fall. He could not survive successive horrors like the wars with Iran and the United States. There would be a coup and a new military junta would hold the nation together. That too didn't work out. Saddam held on. The Kurds, always ready to revel at the slightest encouragement, got more than slight encouragement both from the President and the CIA. America won the war, but as of now cannot claim to have won the peace.

The pursuit of war requires a steadfastness of purpose in pursuing a precisely defined goal "unconditional surrender," for example. The pursuit of peace requires a patience to work through thickets of foreseen and unforeseen contingencies. We are better at the former than the latter. Patience is a virtue, but not one of ours.