March 04, 2004
Quote of the Day
Yes, we managed to conquer the whole of Mesopotamia with relative ease. But successfully occupying it and getting the populace to be our bitch when a sigificant percentage views us as unwelcome interlopers is a whole different ballgame.
We are not fighting a monolithic enemy in the form of another state's military. We are being drawn into a war of attrition against a myriad of Fourth Generation Forces (read: nonstate) with different motives and objectives and most likely operating wholly independent of one another.
These forces realize that they do not have either the mass or the firepower to openly engage us in anything resembling a pitched battle so they will utilize superior intelligence, concealment, and deception to deliver strikes from seemingly out of the unknown.
Yes, our casualties have been light. So far (of course, if we stick around long enough and the insurgents might just find an opening or get lucky and give us a replay of Beirut). But they need not inflict heavy casualties to win. They only have to CONTINUE inflicting casualties - and survive - in order to win.
We, on the other hand, cannot even dream of declaring victory with any kind of credibility until the entire nation of Iraq is pacified and all the Sunnis and Shiites and Arabs and Kurds and Turkmens are holding hands in the spirit of tolerance and diversity - enforced at the point of our bayonets - while being ruled over by the junta of our choosing.
Don't hold your breath waiting for that to happen.
Mark Quon
Posted by Russell Whitaker at March 4, 2004 07:39 AM | TrackBackI was amazed by the "support our troops" stuff that came up in Gulf War '91. As if, once put into harms way, we're supposed to forget everything else and simply gush until "we" have won. Whatever that "winning" might be.
I've since read about some combat psychology that has been done, trying to discover "why we fight" not as a country, but as individuals. It turns out that hints from such interesting places as the movie "A Few Good Men" were right on target.
Remember the scene when Tom Cruze first meets and talks to the two accused Marines? "The Code, sir. 'Squad, Corps, God, Country." Their fellows come first, no matter what.
Put into harms way, they fight and kill not for anything nebulous or political, but merely to survive and keep their fellows alive.
Training and dicipline are to overcome the hesitation and forward thinking that would prevent an individual from walking into harms way in the first place.
This, I think, is a really great argument for the citizen militia, purely voluntary. Defensively, it works exactly the same, since "in harms way" would be decided not by the defenders, but by the attackers. "A mother cat defending her kittens" comes to mind.
Yet to attack, to actually go out to somewhere and kill people and deliberately be in harms way, would have to be for such a good reason that it all by itself overcomes hesitation and the self-preservation instinct. Exactly the way that test pilots and astronauts and pregnant women have no need to be ordered to do what they do.
To say something revelent to Mark's quote, no one can win a war against individuals without killing them all. The defenders can decide not to fight, but that's not the same thing. A government can surrender, which has certainly happened in both Iraq and Afganistan.
Bringing "democracy" to the Middle East is illusionary. It also white(house)-washes the fact that Iran tried to do that 50 years ago and the US instead put the Shaw into power. Look at how good the meddling has worked in the past, ne?
Curt-
Posted by: Curt Howland on March 5, 2004 07:47 AM