So much so that the title of this semester’s first Great Decisions program at Monmouth College shifted from the relatively clear "Iraq End-Game" to the more vague and wide-ranging "Strategies for Dealing with Uncertainty in Iraq."

That nugget of information was provided by MC political science professor Ira Smolensky, who not only led the discussion at the first regular Wednesday night meeting, but has also been the driving force behind the series, which is in its 28th year on campus.

"(Former MC government professor) Cecil Brett started this at Monmouth in 1981, and when he left, he made me promise to stick with it," Smolensky explained to the group, which included several interested faculty members and townspeople and about 30 college students who are attending the series for college credit.

Nearly all of the Great Decisions programs are based on chapters of an accompanying text that participants are asked to read in advance. An exception will occur on Jan. 30, when MC’s Farhat Haq and Mohsin Masood will discuss recent events in their native Pakistan. The program will be in the normal 7:30 to 9 p.m. time slot, but the location will shift to the Whiteman-McMillan Highlander Room in the Stockdale Center to accommodate the large number of students who are taking the class this year.

"I am delighted that so many people have taken an interest in this class," said assistant professor of history Amy de Farias, the program’s other campus coordinator.

Smolensky said he entered the first reading with a "wishy-washy" mindset on what the U.S. should do with its troops and personnel in Iraq, but the article "convinced me that we have to withdraw."

"There was no question in 2003 about what the outcome of a U.S. vs. Iraq army war would be," said Smolensky. "You could have gotten infinite odds in Vegas if you had wanted to bet on the Iraq army. The war wasn’t the question. It was, ‘What was the peace going to be like?’ We expected very few casualties, we expected it to be cheap and we expected it to be over. Those three issues are largely seen as a failure. We can mitigate this failure by having Iraq end up right."

Smolensky outlined a three-phase "end-game," with the first phase being to "get out of there." The next phase involved extending generosities to the people in Iraq who helped the U.S. cause, going as far as offering them homes here or in other countries. Finally, he said, the third phase would provide "cash incentives for (Iraq) to do the right thing."

Smolensky defended his stance by noting that the initial military movement to Iraq was called Operation Infinite Justice. "I don’t want it to turn into ‘Operation Infinite Commitment,’" he quipped. "I don’t think that staying there is going to lead to an end. It’s much easier to disturb the peace than it is to create it."

During the question-and-answer portion of the evening, Smolensky likened Iraq to Vietnam. He said that the United States should have learned from its mistakes 40 years ago but didn’t do so, in part because "we didn’t come to a consensus about why we made the mistakes we did in Vietnam … we’re too happy to be self-reflective."

Besides Vietnam, another recurring issue that surfaced during the Q&A session was oil. Participants debated whether the U.S. or any country should invade another over the steady supply of fairly-priced oil. Some said it was wrong to do so, while others contended that no one could remain president if they didn’t do something militarily that would prevent gasoline costing $10 a gallon or more.

"I don’t know how to stop (the discussions) in the big-business board rooms, but the public should have been less complicit in all of this," Smolensky said.

The oil debate also led to questions about the U.S. government, with Smolensky admitting that he is critical of our democracy, but "I’m glad I live here." He added, "Democracies around the world are sick, and the three major blemishes I see with ours are that we weren’t supposed to have a class system, but we clearly have ‘have-nots’; there are still problems with race; and our foreign policy."

More discussion followed, but the group dismissed when the 9 p.m. hour arrived.

The public is invited to participate in the free eight-week Great Decisions series, which is sponsored by the Foreign Policy Association, a non-partisan, non-governmental association that works to increase Americans’ understanding of significant foreign policy issues. For more information about the program at Monmouth, contact Smolensky at 309-457-2102 or de Farias at 309-457-2243.