How quickly liberators turn into oppressors

'Ireally do believe that we will be greeted as liberators." That was Dick Cheney on NBC's "Meet the Press" on Sunday, speaking of the forthcoming U.S. occupation of Iraq. And when host Tim Russert looked at him skeptically, the vice president said it again.

Others differ. Wesley Clark, a retired four-star general, former supreme commander of NATO, says, "The occupation is going to be very challenging." Clark, of course, remembers Vietnam; he was there for two tours of duty. American GIs were well-enough received in 1965, but just a decade later, the last Americans had to be evacuated via helicopter from the roof of the U.S. embassy in Saigon.

And that's the lesson: in the game of "liberating" and "peacekeeping," the last chapter is often different from the first chapter.

As an Arab-world example, consider the fate of the Israeli and American expedition into Lebanon just two decades ago. On June 6, 1982, Israeli forces rolled into southern Lebanon. The mission of "Operation Peace for the Galilee" was to destroy Palestinian foes who had been raining down deadly rockets on northern Israel.

But to some, it was much more than a military operation; it was the beginning of a transformation. Just five days into the mission, New York Times columnist William Safire wrote, "Liberation, not invasion, is what is taking place in Lebanon today." Safire went on to predict that Syria, as well as the Palestine Liberation Organization, would be driven out of Lebanon, ushering a new era for that civil-war-torn country.

At first, the mission went well. Ze'ev Bak, an Israeli who served in the Israeli Defense Force as it entered Lebanon, recalls, "We received perfumed rice as we went by." But then, Bak remembers, the situation deteriorated. The petty grievances of military occupation - notably, checkpoints - took their toll. The Lebanese might have been happy enough to be liberated from the PLO, but they wanted out from under the Israelis as well.

Then Murphy's Law kicked in, tragically. On Sept. 16-17, 1982, Christian militiamen invaded two Palestinian refugee camps, killing hundreds. The Israelis, including then-Defense Minister Ariel Sharon, were accused of deliberately looking the other way. Amid international uproar, the U.S. decided to send troops to "stabilize" the situation, and Marines landed in Beirut 11 days later. As President Ronald Reagan said, the Americans would stay only as long as they were needed, adding, "At such time as Lebanon says that they have the situation well in hand, why, we'll depart."

Just two days later, a Marine was killed by a bomb in Beirut. Over the next 18 months, another 250 Americans would die, by suicide bomber and sniper (including 241 from a single truck bomb). The last Marines left on Feb. 26, 1984. Meanwhile, the Israelis were in a quagmire of their own. In 1985, they withdrew, having lost 654 of their soldiers. Some 17,000 Lebanese and Palestinians had died. The result of the three years of occupying and fighting was the complete elimination of Christian Lebanese influence in the country. Today, power in Lebanon is shared by Syria and the Iranian-backed Hezbollah terrorist organization - determined, as ever, to strike at Israel.

The lesson seems to be that Arabs and Muslims don't like foreign overlords, no matter what their reason for being there. Who does? Americans may have liberated Afghanistan, but it's not clear that the Afghans view us as liberators. On Tuesday, unknown Afghans fired three rockets in the general direction of Americans in Gardez. Even more ominous is this report, straight from the Pentagon's own press service: "In another incident, an Afghan boy tried to stab a U.S. soldier with a syringe containing an unknown liquid. The soldier was not injured, and the young attacker escaped."

Those who remember Vietnam will recognize this sort of situation: The American, being good-hearted, does not want to shoot a child. But in Vietnam, the child, or the woman, every so often is carrying a grenade, and tragedy ensues. At which point, the vicious downward cycle begins.
Soon enough, the foreign military power either leaves or commits itself to a protracted and bloody operation. Cheney says it won't happen that way in Iraq. Clark says it will. Over the next coming days - but also decades - we'll know for sure.