Our Man in Baghdad

I imagine that Ryan Crocker, who's been tapped to become the next U.S. ambassador in Baghdad, is experiencing some deja vu. Crocker has spent most of his long career in the Middle East, including in Lebanon where I first encountered him in 1983. The parallels between Iraq today and Lebanon then are as striking as they are instructive, a point I have often made and that will not be lost on Crocker as he takes up his post.

In 1982, when Crocker was political officer at the American embassy in Beirut, the Israeli army, with an effective green light from the Reagan administration, invaded Lebanon with a bold plan to remake that country and the surrounding region. Likewise, the Bush administration had a similarly bold plan for Iraq. It entailed a U.S.-led military invasion, destroying Saddam Hussein's regime and installing a pro-Western government at peace with its neighbors.

As everybody, including Crocker, knows, Israel's plan for Lebanon failed miserably. Syria and Iran successfully opposed it, with their Lebanese allies. A suspected Syrian agent assassinated Lebanese president-elect Bashir Gemayel, who collaborated with Israel. An insurgency led by Hizballah, a Shiite Muslim group created by Iran to oppose the invasion, eventually drove out the Israeli army. To its misfortune and shame, the Reagan administration allowed the U.S. to be dragged into the fiasco. The White House sent Marines to oversee the PLO's evacuation and sent them back in to restore order after Christian militiamen massacred Palestinian refugees to avenge Gemayel's murder. Pioneering the use of suicide bombings in the Middle East, suspected Islamic extremists blew up the U.S. embassy and then the Marines' base. Although it amounted to turning America's back on the country, Reagan probably did the sensible thing by cutting America's losses and quickly withdrawing the Marines and leaving the Lebanon mess to the Lebanese.

As we watch history straining to repeat itself in Iraq, it is worth exploring why American actions in the Middle East have so often been disastrous when we have so many fine diplomats experienced in the region like Ryan Crocker. I never asked him, but if I had to bet, I'd say that he advised against Israel's 1982 invasion of Lebanon. We know from Solider, Karen DeYoung's recent biography of former Secretary of State Colin Powell, that he opposed the Bush administration's war in Iraq. In a leaked recommendation known as the "Perfect Storm Memo," he foresaw the sectarian conflict and American quagmire that resulted.

One of the reasons I have a high regard for Crocker is that, like many of his colleagues in the foreign service, his views are informed by decades of often dangerous work on the ground in the Middle East. After postings in Lebanon, Iran, Iraq, Qatar and Egypt, he went on to become ambassador to Lebanon, Kuwait, Syria and most recently Pakistan. He reopened the embassy in Afghanistan after the fall of the Taliban, and served briefly as a political advisor in Baghdad to the Coalition Provisional Authority after the fall of Saddam. He has achieved the rank of Career Ambassador, a rare honor befitting a professional who is seen by State Department colleagues as an emblem of the selfless diplomat who takes on the most difficult, dangerous and often thankless tasks.

Indeed, when he was ambassador in Damascus, the embassy and his official residence were attacked by a mob. When reports came in of the massacre of Palestinians in Beirut in 1982, he didn't send an FSN--foreign service national, or local employee--to check it out. He grabbed a hand-held transmitter and raced to the Sabra and Chatila refugee camps, counting bodies and reporting shocking scenes back to the embassy and on to Washington.

Crocker was in the Beirut embassy when a suicide bomber attacked it on the morning of April 18, 1983. Sixty-three people including 17 Americans (of which eight were CIA officials) were killed when the entire front of the building collapsed into rubble. I saw Crocker there that morning, moving through the rubble with blood all over his face and shirt. He was directing rescue operations but what I didn't learn until later was that he was also looking for his wife, feared dead in the blast. As a colleague later described the scene, they threw their arms around each other.

We can hope that Crocker's appointment is a sign that the Bush administration may be ready to listen to some sense about Iraq. But, will it? And if not, why did Crocker accept the post when he could have happily retired? "He is long past getting any personal rewards out of this," a former colleague told me today. "It's about answering the call of duty, something he feels deeply." Let's not get mushy about bureaucrats, but this is a patriotic American who has spent his life--and risked it--trying to serve the very best of U.S. interests in the Middle East. As was the case with the Lebanon fiasco in 1983, Crocker's mission in Iraq may be largely one of damage control now. But if there's anyone who can best choose the lesser of evils there, it's him.

By Scott MacLeod/Cairo