In the year 9 A.D., Publius Quinctilius Varus, Roman governor of Germany, crossed the Rhine with three legions and penetrated deep into north Germany in an attempt to “pacify” (Romanize) the barbaric Germanic tribes and introduce them to the civilized delights of the Roman way. You know, eat, drink, be merry, build aqueducts and arenas, throw Christians to the lions, and all that good stuff.
Lured by a turncoat legionary general, Arminius, himself a Romanized German, into the wilds of the Teutoburg Forest, Varus and his legions were massacred to the last man.
The Varian experience has a valuable lesson for the United States, about to embark on an adventure in Iraq and, ultimately, the surrounding area. The lesson: Varus was involved in what we call today “nation building,” and his fate, and that of his legions, was a direct result of that policy.
In 9 A.D., Germany was not a nation. It was inhabited by a large number of Germanic tribes more apt to go at each others’ throats hammer and tong than to think about getting together and forming a nation, especially one ruled from distant Rome.
Arminius managed to get the tribes to join in a quick strike at the Romans, but they later killed Arminius, went their separate ways and didn’t get back together until the 19th century, just in time to produce Kaiser Wilhelm and Adolf Hitler.
It has been said that the massacre of the legions, which ended Rome’s attempts to fold Germany into the Empire, created the divided Europe that for centuries has engaged in internecine warfare. Had Rome prevailed, historians speculate, there would have been a European Union 2,000 years ago. The continent would have been at peace because there would have been no nations to go to war with each other, and Germany and all the rest of Europe would be eating pasta, drinking, being merry and speaking Latin today.
Now the U.S. is about to pacify Iraq and introduce the Iraqis to the civilized delights of the American Way.
As Sen. Joe Biden (that rarest of all creatures, a cultured and intelligent Democrat who has long periods of sanity punctuated by unfortunate forays into his party’s inherent demagogic mode) has pointed out, Iraq is not a nation. Like its neighbor Afghanistan, it is a hodge-podge of disparate tribes, none of which like each other very much and all of which would shatter their country into a few dozen pieces and go their own ways at the first opportunity.
Any attempts to meld them into a single democratic nation not only would fail, but because the attempts would inevitably require the nation builders to resort to force in order to build a nation, they would sooner or later lead to the creation of a modern-day bin Arminius.
It is said that the Emperor Augustus was so haunted for the rest of his life by the disaster in the Teutoburg Forest that he went about mumbling, “Quinctilius Varus, give me back my legions.”
If President Bush doesn’t want to end his days muttering “Donald Rumsfeld, give me back my armies,” he’d be well advised to whack Iraq, forget about nation building, get out and, as the Brits would say, “let the buggers sort it out for themselves.”
After we guarantee the uninterrupted flow of our oil supply, of course.