This article was published in the Tallahassee Democrat on September 15, 1996. It also ran in the Miami Herald.

In October 1963, when the United States was no more involved in Vietnam than it is now in Iraq, the American historian Henry Steele Commager, sensing the complications that might arise, wrote to his friend and colleague Allan Nevins. "Are we," he asked Nevins, "being as stupid in Vietnam as it seems?"

It's now time for us to explore similar doubts about our policy in the Middle East. Let's address two questions.

First, does the movement of Saddam's troops to the north of his country present us with the lesson of Munich or Vietnam? At the Munich Conference, in 1938, France and England allowed Hitler to continue his march eastward and gain land for the Nazis in what became the beginning of World War II. By contrast, in Vietnam, in the early 1960s, the U.S. became involved in a civil war that it mistakenly assumed was an expansion of the Soviet bloc. Those American leaders who tried to apply the lesson of Munich to Vietnam learned to regret it.

Are we currently trying to "contain" Saddam, as in 1938 we should have contained Hitler? It seems not. Recently, Saddam's troops didn't ramble beyond Iraq's borders, but instead fought Iraqi Kurds who were supported by Iran. Unlike Saddam's earlier excursion into Kuwait, surrounding countries are not now endangered.

Instead of an episode of containment, our missiling of Iraq looks like another U.S. intervention in a potentially complicated civil war. Will American citizens argue that we have the right to get involved in another country's civil war in order to protect our distant economic interest? If so, where will that doctrine end? Eager Americans should remember that foreign civil wars, in such places as Korea and Vietnam, haven't been pleasant experiences for us.

Some say the U.S. is disciplining Iraq for transgressing the injunctions left from the Gulf War. But these are laws and zones that few countries other than the United States care to enforce anymore. This action is our baby, the United Nations knows less about this action than the guys down at the barbershop, and American leaders seem to feel fine with that arrangement. Recently Senators Dick Lugar and Sam Nunn appeared on television outlining what should happen within Iraq. Apparently no one seemed to think it odd that fellas from Indiana and Georgia were dictating policy in the Middle East with no representatives from Iraq to join in the chat.

The second question we need to confront is whether or not the United States can act unilaterally in this post-Cold War world without stumbling painfully over its own self-confidence. In the past half-century, since the U.S. has moved out onto the world stage into a position of international leadership, it has been, on the whole, a beneficial presence that has pursued some admirable endeavors. Yet also, in that period, the U.S. has been checked, by a balance of power that included the Soviet Union, from proceeding too far in its own self-interest.

The United States, until the recent implosion of the Cold War, was not at liberty to remake the world in its image. With the collapse of the Soviet Union, much more responsibility now rests on Americans to be modest with our international goals.

For many people, the destruction of the Berlin Wall became the symbol of the end of the Cold War. But a different image is a more arresting representation of that shift in power. Actually, the Cold War ended on the day in 1989 that the U.S. kidnapped Panamanian leader Manuel Noriega and brought him to this country to have him tried by our courts for breaking our laws in his country. Only in a post-Cold War world, with no global balance of power, where the U.S. faced no effective opposition to leash the exercise of its moral will, could such an action have occurred.

No, the U.S. shouldn't long for the good old days of the Cold War. It should simply exercise the same international self-discipline as if the Cold War still existed. The midcentury American Protestant theologian Reinhold Niebuhr was no wimp. Niebuhr encouraged the employment of American power and was a recognized supporter of Cold War assumptions. Yet his words should prompt us to examine the legitimacy of our recent actions against Iraq. "We must exercise our power," Niebuhr acknowledged. "But we ought neither to believe that a nation is capable of perfect disinterestedness in its exercise, nor become complacent about particular degrees of interest and passion which corrupt [the] justice" we seek to administer.

In this current historical moment, when we're likely to experience the heady and exhilarating vertigo of towering above our adversaries, Niebuhr's advice is more important than ever. When we become involved in international conflict, he warned, we need "a sense of modesty about the virtue, wisdom, and power available to us for the resolution of its perplexities," and we need "a sense of contrition about the common human frailties and foibles which lie at the foundation of both the enemy's demonry and our vanities."

In a period when America sees few limits, it is our duty to establish our own reasonable boundaries for global action. In the time of our greatest strength we should avoid embracing the weakness of over-assertiveness. Our behavior in these present years of dominance will establish the true measure of our character. Now is the moment for the nation to follow Niebuhr's biblical advice: "let not the wise man glory in his wisdom, let not the mighty man glory in his strength."