Michael Yon appeared on Pundit Review Radio last night and offered a grim assessment of the conditions inside Iraq (particularly Baghdad). You can hear his observations here.
I’d be interested to hear the various viewpoints of veterans and active-duty military in response to Yon’s assessments. My sense (and it is only that; as an infamous chickenhawk, I am “inauthentic” when it comes to offering opinions on anything having to do with the military, even if the discussion turns to language) is that in any undertaking of this sort there will be peaks and valleys, and that a twenty-four hour news cycle that feeds off of sensationalism, when it is coupled with a relentless anti-war propaganda compaign, can create periods of war fatigue that are difficult to get through without a substantial effort to counterbalance the bad news with the good news. And because we are never likely to see that kind of thing again so long as certain elite portions of the US remain enamored with the outlaw / counterculture ideal of anti-establishment “dissent” as a form (the content being secondary), the question I’d like to pose is this: is it possible for the US to win wars on the battlefield that they cannot win from the perspective of framing the narrative?
Discuss. And don’t be afraid to be chickensemioticians, either.
I’m not terribly judgmental that way.
Well Jeff, yes I think the US can and in the future win on the battlefield if and when we restablish the WWII mentality, that we win at any cost. As morbid as that may sound, we need to kill the sixties mind set of fighting the war based on public opinion. Body counts and all, set the objective formulate the battle plan, execute and destroy the enemy, sounds simple right?
I mean it sounded simple, of course I was getting flashbacks from my NCO training. But that was years ago, has it changed?
Depends on what your definition of “wins” is. From some kind of frame, such as a larger historical perspective, it is entirely possible to win a war in the military sense, in all important respects, and lose it otherwise in spheres of discourse, which as you repeat again and again have substantive effects.
In other words, if history is only legitimately written by the victims, we had better get used to the music of what hasn’t yet happened. Or to rephrase Freud, the illusion of a future.
It’s the gear.
Stark, drastic lines. Laced up boots with the pants tucked in. Straight seams with no regard to the beutiful curves that the human form presents.
Your project: Design a uniform that says, “I’m peaceful. I’m here to bring love. My gun shoots chocolatey bullets with creamy caramel centers and my hand grenades are a tiny pineapples exploding with fresh fruity goodness. Don’t fear me. Now please stop the terrorism.”
Jeff,
I listened to the podcast, and I’m still trying to figure out what Yon’s saying.
I have tremendous personal respect for him and his courage, but I really don’t see what’s got him reacting this way. He seems to be yelling that we’re not getting it, but I read CENTCOM’s site, and they seem to have a good grasp of it.
Maybe I’m blind, but just don’t see why he’s so upset. If he’s aming an argument in that interview, I’d really like to know what it is.
“making an argument” that should say.
Dyslexic typing.
Let’s put it this way: If we’re not able to do that, we won’t survive. I do think that we are approaching the famous “tipping point” that Geraghty thought had arrived a while back. It was very encouraging to see the British Parliament tell the islamodopes to fuck off the other day.
I think (hope) that more and more people in the west have had enough with the idiot (and very dangerous) left trying to cripple us in this war. The next step will be to get leaders who don’t give a fuck what the idiots (and more to the point, our enemies) think, and are willing to do whatever needs to be done, and if that includes returning certain arab cities to the desert, so be it.
Mr. Yon has been a fairly consistent pessimistic voice. Not for ideological reasons, mind you. I think he may be getting the bum-out from seeing nothing but the bloody spear point. Just a guess on my part, but he hasn;t exactly been hanging around civil engineering projects – he goes where it is dangerous and hard. But that is all he sees. Kind of reminds me of a hard bitten political reporter or the crime beat guy that end up cynical as all heck about humanity as a whole.
I lean a bit more toward a longer term, bigger picture view – Austin Bay style, or maybe Wretchardesque
You cannot discount what Yon says, out of hand. He is a sharp guy. But don’t take him as Gospel either. I remember finding a book from 1946 that proclaimed the Germans would be right back at it again someday (“They’ll Try It Again”) by a smart and experienced American reporter…
Disclaimer: I’m not a military dude, nor have I ever been one.
In World War Two, we took our heaviest casualties right before we won. The enemy often fights hardest when he knows his defeat is nigh.
Also, when someone says Iraq is going badly, I ask in comparison to what? Compared to the possibly 1.5 million Algerians who died in their insurgency against the French, or the million Afghans who died in their insurgency against the Soviets?
The French KIA rate was three times ours, and the Soviet was twice.
But even if Iraq doesn’t work out, then at least we’ll know that these people are too primitive and bloodthirsty for us to waste any more time, money, or lives trying to help them.
We’ll just bomb them until they’re compliant, wait another ten, twenty, thirty years, and repeat.
I have great respect for Michael, but fear that he hast lost it. He has been in the trenches in both Iraq and Afghanistan for too long (I know that sounds wrong). But he is unable to see the forest because he keeps beating his head against the trees. Everyone wants things to be solved quickly and there is an immense amount of frustration on the ground, but we need to keep giving the Iraqis enough rope to either make a nice square knot or a noose.
CENTCOM is certainly getting it, but whether the general public gets it is another matter.
I think Yon’s right, and the military is painfully aware of the situation. Saw a troop briefing on TV, they were scheduled to head home but are being kept for another 4 months. The commander repeatedly stressed the importance of why they decided to keep them there longer, saying “We could lose this war if we don’t take back Baghdad.” It’s grim.
Yon also is particularly qualified to recognize civil wars since he was former Army Special Forces. From what I understand training guerrillas is their bread and butter.
We have some problems here. Its not public opinion, per se, that we have to worry about. Its how the media shapes and creates it. The media is not above throwing troops to the wolves as long as it forwards thier political agenda.
I spent a year on Abu Ghraib where we were deathly afraid of doing anything that might land us on CNN. We have Marines deathly afraid of ending up in a Haditha incident. On Abu, we actually gauged discussions based on how likely it was to end up on CNN. Then when we redeployed, we considered oour mission a success for the very fact that we stayed off CNN.
Its just too late to say we are gonna kill the 60’s mindset because we have again let the media control the tempo of the battle. When we have the media beating a guy like Murtha into a froth, you get soldiers and Marines that hesitate on the side of caution; sometimes at great cost.
The war has been going good AND IS WON but our soldiers and Marines need to know that we won’t crucify them for a life and death decision they had 6 seconds to make.
Its almost like good press is more important than keeping troops alive. We often hear about how guys like Murtha are aiding and abetting the enemy…they do more than that. They make our troops fearful of what, other than death, can happen to them.
And to think the discourse is politically motivated…criminal. If anything has gone badly in Iraq, it is that.
Then to worsen matters, in effort to keep the occupation from looking like an occupation we give control to eagerly to the Iraqis. Sometimes they aren’t ready and we lose a news cycle or two before we can go back in and reassert control.
Personally, I think the crux of the whole problem is a lack of choices. We can either stay forever and watch the Shiites kill all the Sunnis, or we can leave and watch the Shiites kill all the Sunnis.
At some point we are just gonna have to admit that genocide is the Muslim way and leave them to it.
It’s true we’re in for hard sledding right now, but that doesn’t mean we’ve lost the war or are even going to lose it.
If we’re going to use the standard that we’ve lost because we need hundreds of thousands of troops just to keep things from spinning out of control, then I’d say things still don’t look very good in Korea even after 50-odd years of US occupation and trillions of US dollars (remember, we’re still technically at war with the PRK).
Hell, by that standard, things don’t look too good in Japan and Germany, either. When, oh when, will we finally be free from Roosevelt’s Folly? When, oh when, will all our boys finally come home?
Our involvement in Iraq today is just as essential as our involvement in post-war Europe and Asia was 60 years ago. Instead of keeping the Soviets contained, we’re keeping the Iranians honest. And even President Hillary (with her marble mammaries) won’t take us out of Iraq. We’re in this for the long haul.
We can easily win on the battlefield- if we revamp our current Rules Of Engagement.
That means find the enemy and kill him in large numbers in fast brutal fashion. Dictate the surrender terms to any survivors.
But we don’t fight wars like that anymore. Looks bad in the papers and can hurt poll numbers.
And it’s going to get thousands, millions maybe, of Americans killed in the future.
Win in Iraq? We did that years ago. It took a little more than a week or so and was one of the best campaigns in military history. Read Tommy Franks’ book American Soldier.
What we’re doing now is something altogether different…we’re policing a new, unstable country. Are we any good at that? Not bad really, depending on what your expectations are. Certainly we can’t expect Iraq to be as non-violent as the U.S. Yet the U.S. has quite a few homocides every year, despite the best efforts of our police forces which number in the millions. Are we expecting Iraq to be like Vermont?
As for our losses, they number around 2600 since the start of the war according to this anti-war site. During Vietnam we had 58,239 KIA and 14,000 MIA. In WWII, the one war everyone agrees we should have fought (at least now, if not then) the U.S. lost 274,000 men. 62 million people died overall. (all numbers from Wikipedia)
All told, based on any rational expectation, we’ve done quite well in Iraq. The media and others on the left don’t really care about rational expectations. Every dead American is a chance to recruit voters. Every dead Iraqi is a chance to recruit voters. Every good story is a chance to point out some bad story. Bad stories, now those are what liberals live for.
Imagine the Broncos beating the Colts 42-3 then seeing the following headlines: “Broncos fumble again! Two players lost to injury! Defense gives it up again!”. Two guys get hurt, they gave up a FG and they lost a fumble, but it was otherwise a complete victory. That’s Iraq in the view of our liberal media and politicians. The score? Winning the game? Irrelevant.
So to your point I would now say it is impossible for the US to win wars from the perspective of framing the narrative. Period. The results on the Battlefield, no matter what they are, will be dissected like the immaginary Broncos game above, and reported as such.
Fortunately the MSM are’t the only ones who are ‘framing the narritive’. I think if we ONLY had MSM to rely on we would be in trouble, ala Vietnam.
No shit. That is truly a scary thought. Imagine another where we win all the battles but lose the war.
What I find most disheartening and troublesome isn’t the MSM propaganda per se so much as the fact that so many people who can, should, and do know better buy into it.
There are way too many conservatives and Republicans, who know and have often said that you can’t believe the New York Times, eventually turning around and parroting the NYT’s counterfactual worldview and embracing defeatism. I don’t really understand it – about the only explanation I can come up with is that they won’t get invited to the right dinner parties unless they accede to the MSM/Democrat worldview.
What it’s really done for me is hammer home the fact that we can’t afford to mess around with a Presidential choice in 2008 who’s anything less than 100% rock-solid on the need to win the war. And there are a hell of a lot fewer of those than there should be.
I think that when Yon says that “they don’t get it,” he’s talking about politicians. And I fear he might not just be talking about cut-n-runners, either.
I keep getting the feeling that if Iran had not entered the picture, this situation would have been more easily managable. But Iran is ratcheting it up in Iraq and in Lebanon, and who knows where else they’ll stir things up.
The fact that they’ve got the backing of the Russians and the Chinese isn’t good news, either. Could you see the US, Australia, and Britain take on China, Russia, Iran, Hizballah, Al Qaeda and every other jihadist group in the Ummah?
Now that would scare the hell out of me.
Yon says that McCaffery says that Afghanistan is a 15-20 year project. Can you see successive administrations being tenacious enough to carry this off? Can you see us electing and re-electing hawks time after time? The last two elections were too close for comfort.
The most disturbing part is that we have to do the “hearts and minds” thing. Change their philosophy. Convince them that martyring themselves isn’t going to send them to heaven. But why should they believe us? We’re infidel; we know nothing about Allah’s will.
TW: spirit
It is all in the timing. I think that the fair assesment of the situation is that we have broken the back of the sunni insurgency, but that has made the Iranian sponsored shia militia of Muqtada Sadr the number one problem. This is actually progress. In the meantime, the Iraq army is beginning to stand up, but the strength of an army is its NCOs. The USArmy figures it takes 12—15 years to make a good NCO. So we probably have a decade or two of working with the Iraqi Army before it can be alone on the battlefield against Iran. At this rate we will be out of Iraq before we have removed our troops from Korea and Germany.
Ok, I’m overly simplistic but what the hell.
In WW2, we called our enemies names, slandered thier race and stove to destroy their armies and thier support. Every war since then we’ve sought to destroy their weapons, especially since the cold war.
We still value our soldiers as the most highly valued battlefield asset and try to train and protect me as such. We’ll win when we regain the will to eliminate the enemy’s most valued asset, his people and support, instead of trying to defang him.
It’s like the NRA argument, “guns don’t kill people, people kill people.”
It’s not so much about getting invited to the right dinner parties, as far as I can see. Rather, an increasing number of conservatives and classical liberals are becoming disillusioned by the prospects of achieving any meaningful reform in the Islamic world. That Pew poll, for instance, tends to buttress the arguments of people like Robert Spencer of Jihad Watch, who maintain that violent jihad is integral to Muslim theology, and renders Islam unreformable by our standards. If that’s true (so the reasoning goes), why continue to sacrifice Americans on a fool’s errand?
If in fact “violent jihad is integral to Muslim theology” then how is it a fool’s errand? If that is a fact, then our policy must be to rid the earth of those who would rid it of us. Iraq is as good a place to start as any. Peaceful coexistence would be impossible, and those who practice Islam would be treated no differently than the Nazis were in WWII.
But there are Muslims who do not participate in Jihad against the west, so we cannot take that course. Our Judeo/Christian morality forbids it. The peaceful Muslims thus provide cover for the Jihadists, and make the task in Iraq and elsewhere, more difficult. At some point however, as with Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the innocent may need to be sacrificed to show the guilty how far we are willing to go. Do we have that kind of resolve anymore?
I should say that I don’t think it necessarily follows that the occupation of Iraq is a fool’s errand even if the jihad argument is true; it may be worthwhile nonetheless to provide a buttress against Iran and make the Syrians nervous, among other things. However, it is very tempting–after witnessing countless acts of barbarism, large and small, by Muslims, and after observing the wider Muslim community’s clockwork apologias for such behaviour–to throw up your hands and say to hell with them. And I think it’s this–rather than fear of social stigmatization–that’s causing many conservatives and classical liberals to go wobbly on Iraq.
mgl, I think you’re right that this is driving many to “go wobbly”, or worse. I just find it counter-intuitive. Either we’re helping bring western democratic ideals to Arab lands, and weakening the hold of radical Islam over the majority or the whole place is dead set on killing westerners and erradicating us from the globe. In either case, Iraq is the place to be.
The biggest folly of the left is that if we somehow left them alone in their lands, and perhaps removed Israel, the Jihadists would leave us alone in our lands. Every leftist would make that deal in a NY minute. It’s what guys like John Kerry and Ned Lamont are preaching. Nothing in Muslim history suggests that there’s any possibility of it happening. They want the Iberian penninsula back. They want the world. Hitler didn’t just want parts of Czecholslovakia, and the radical Muslims don’t just want the west bank.
I keep getting the feeling that if Iran had not entered the picture, this situation would have been more easily managable.
Armchair philosopher here. I tend to agree. It seems we’ve been undermined by Iran all along, which has been sending a constant stream of ‘insurgents’ in to fight us.
I think it’s clear that the power of the media to erect the edifice of Marxist history on the fly makes it damned near impossible to win a war in the traditional way: you can’t move with tempo; you can’t move in secret; you have to second-guess yourself; you have to endure constant villification; it’s an exercise in futility.
The current leftist propaganda machine represents a burden that may very well be insupportable to a democratic society. I say ‘may’ only because a new factor has entered the picture, the internet. Unchallenged, the machine is virtually impossible to beat.
I still think we will pull it out in the Middle East–I don’t say Iraq specifically because of the growing effect of Iran–but it’s going to require as much fighting domestically as it does on the field of battle and it will cost more lives and take many more years. I’m afraid these stupid leftists will damn near get us all killed before we manage to prevail. It’s going to get very ugly, indeed, because this is rapidly revealing itself as a matter of life and death. And I think that suggests that this wobbliness is only temporary.
The up side, is that such a battle will do a great deal to rid us of postmodern cant once and for all.
”…to throw up your hands and say to hell with them.”
But the problem with that is the classic “You may not be very interested in war, but war is very interested in you.”
It strikes me that one of the blatantly obvious lessons of 9/11 is that we can’t allow safe havens for terrorism anywhere in the world. Which essentially means we either need to help the Muslim world change itself… or do something even *more* intrusive, and rule it.
But just saying “to hell with them” guarantees we start losing cities eventually. (And the “rubble’s no trouble/bomb them into the stone age” theory is unpersuasive. Afghanistan was already more of a mess than any bombing could make worse, and it was an ideal base for al Qaeda.)
To get back to your original question, Jeff:
Yes, but damned difficult to do so. Two things mitigate the problems we face; the “hipster-dissenter opposition” is not in a very good position to change course on the fight (in fact, they have not really said what they would do other than flee) and “war fatigue” is a lot easier to bear when unemployment is 4.6%, the economy is growing fairly well, taxes are not rising, our cities are not getting blown up, etc. (Rep. Charles Wrangel in his own evil and cynical way recognized this – hence his shifty little ‘bring back the draft’ move).
I think as long as things are well enough at home, and those of us in the Armed Forces (15 straight months OVER recruiting goals for the Army, thanks very much) can keep hitting the mark – we’ll manage.
That’s the strategy. It might last a lifetime, if they are as old as me. It’s nothing I could live with, having children and hope for their future.
My only worry is our education system. Too many people have no idea why what we have in this country is so special and worth preserving. The naive belief that it can’t happen here is everywhere. I wonder what the French thought in 1937? Did they think Hitler didn’t mean what he said? Well, millions paid with their lives because they refused to believe.
For what it’s worth, one might consider the Gulf War in which the narrative structure being pushed at the time was not too far different from what we’re seeing now – “No Blood For Oil”, “Battle-Hardened Iraqi Veterans”, etc.
I suppose that all this goes back to the old, tired Clauswitizian dictum connecting war and politics, and in that context information warfare is simply warfighting by other means. In other words, it is a means to attack an opponents will to fight, much as any one of a number of other warfighting measures. The question then becomes if one party is using information warfare and information warfare alone, and the other party is using solely “conventional” warfighting means, can we be assured that one party will axiomatically lose.
Well, if the both parties fight an unrestricted war, then the info warfighter can’t win. However, in real media-saturated world, one is not generally allowed to fight unrestricted. I think it is much easier for the infowar guy to go full tilt than it is for the conventional warfighter. Moreover, the infowar guy fights his opponent’s ability to bring his full weight of force to bear.
So, I guess in reference to the originnal question, of course they can win on the battlefield, but the question is whether or not such a victory is sufficient to win the broader political contest acted out in the conflict. Based on the contrasting experiences of Vietnam and the Gulf War, it would tend to suggest that, most of the time, conventional warfighting is played out over shorter time scales than information warfare. Thus, the ability of a conventional warfighter who does lacks infowar superiority to prevail ultimately decreases over time.
BRD
Which is exactly what happened to the Israelis over the past month. By dithering for so long about how to proceed, they allowed the information warriors in Hezbollah, the UN, the media, and the left to construct a dominant narrative in which Israel was the guilty party. The same thing has happened to the US in Iraq. Perhaps this means the future of warfare will be far swifter and more brutal than we’ve become accustomed to.
TW: plan
I have to go with Major John—Michael Yon has a point, but he has spent a lot of time watching people die. This can affect your perspective.
It’s not that I don’t think he’s wrong on some points. Personally, I expected a civil war of some sort soon after we took Baghdad. There has been too many years of repression, outrages, and barbarism to think that many Iraqis would simply lay down their weapons and pick up tools. Check out al Sadr…..he could have been a major voice in reconstruction, but he prefers destruction.
Where Michael Yon gets it wrong is that there are people who get it…it’s just there are enough people who don’t get it to makes things look bad.
And let me add…..that includes people in the new Iraqi government who don’t get it.
But there are many people who do get it, and work hard in that direction. The task, though, is similar to herd cats. Still, there’s a lot of work in that direction.
Although, I must confess, that I am disturbed to hear that poppy farming remains a major part of the Afghanistan economy.
Certainly. But it takes a hard nose sonuvabitch to do it. The trick is to tell the MSM to eff off, and do what needs to be done. This happens, but not often enough.
Yes, but in Iraq (and most dictatorships) knowledge is power. There is no such thing as a strong NCO in Iraq. Enlisted people are scum to Iraqis, subject to the whims of officers.
The same philosophy that took us to Iraq and Afghanistan needs to take us Iran. Ok, so leaving Iraq will spell the end for the Sunnis…so what? Right now a primary reason for not cutting and running is the fear that Iran will install a Shiite theocracy in Iraq. So… leave Iraq to the Shia and go kick Iran’s ass. No Iran=No Iranian influence. My point in the previous and other posts is that Muslims are shitty neighbors…everywhere there are Muslims, there is genocide or the threat thereof. Really, we have had to resume control of parts of Baghdad simply because of the Shia death squads. I say, leave them to it. It will happen now or later…its Islam, its inevitable.
Right now, Iran is little different than Afghanistan. We need to bite the head of that snake right now.
The first part of the question is easy. Yes, we can lose a war politically after prevailing on the battlefield. I don’t like even using Vietnam in the same sentence as Iraq, but the former is a case in point. The real worry is that the national will to prevail may extinguish.
I have no military background, other than my interest in such. But, this gentleman does
http://www.blackfive.net/main/2006/08/where_are_we_go.html#more
My own take on Yon is that he is overstating the relevance of civil war in what was never a nation but by fiat. It is a collection if religious and tribal rivalries.
I’m too depressed to contribute to the conversation, but I admire the thought and effort that went into Jeff’s post and all the subsequent comments.
It’s just that I don’t think we’re going to really need discussions along these lines much longer – discussions on what weight we should assign to narrative, or whose perceptions of any given aspect of the conflict are closest to reality at any given time.
The time is fast approaching when the lines demarcating friendly and enemy are going to be drawn for us – drawn right down to the bone. It won’t be subtle and it won’t involve debate.
We have thousands of khaffeyeh – clad and masked Islamists protesting in cities across the nation right now. We are an open society, shoe inspections and grandmas frisks at the airport not withstanding, and the enemy always uses our own freedoms to his maximum advantage. Our minority political party is poised to disengage from the conflict faster than Joe Kennedy could get scotch to Berlin.
I stood behind the Bush Doctrine from the outset… but by the time Afghanistan was having its first election I thought surely that Iran should have been the obvious agenda item to follow Iraq in the win column.
We have dithered. We have taken heed of European cautions when it is blindlingly obvious that without momentous internal change Europe probably won’t be democratic by the first half of this century. Islamist invasion by birthrate is competing with encroaching socialist dictatorships, take your pick.
We may not be interested in war, but war is interested in us. And the enemy is certifiable on a scale that would turn Pol Pot green with envy.
They aren’t going to wait. They aren’t wired that way.
We could crush Iran’s ability to export jihad in a long weekend. Maybe less, if we could get our media to line up some juicy mullah interviews and drop us a line on the locations.
But we won’t do it.
When the line is finally drawn it will divide this country in a manner unseen since 1861. The bleeding is going to be widespread and copious, and quite a bit is going to be right here at home.
Moderate Muslims living in America: Find your Martin Luther. Do it now. You are about out of time.
The day the line is drawn, anybody wearing a Hezbollah headscarf or a khaffeyeh in this country is going to pay for it.
The best work always starts at home.
And it didn’t have to be this way.
TW=”hit”. Hammer on anvil time.
Don’t worry, fellas—the Fuhrer’s miracle weapons will turn the tide any day now!
Jeff et al., what I’m interested in understanding is what the fact that there are now two well-visited news “camps” out there does to the situation.
There’s the Fox axis-talk-radio-plus-dextrosphere, and there’s the traditional media-plus-sinistrosphere. Blog readership continues to grow, and (I infer) those who read blogs tend in large part to stick almost exclusively to one side or the other, or visit the other side only for ammo about how delusional the other side is. So if we get to the point where we have two major frames operating, but relatively few people actually experiencing both, how do we know we’ve won, if (as I’m sure is the case with al Qaeda and similar organizations) the enemy’s unconditional surrender is not the gauge?
TW: Ground truth may not be unequivocal.
tmjUtah
Well, you’ve finally said it out loud. I agree 100%, but as in my days in AA, I knew that the minute I voiced anything, it became real.
I have thought like this for some time, but have been hesitant to mention it. I think over the next few weeks to a year, many more of us will come out of the closet. The insanity that is called “world leadership” is almost beyond my ability to bear.
To think. A few days ago we were all conv inced that Bush and Olmert had something up their sleeves. Come to find out it was worse than we could have imagined. I blame Olmert more than Bush, but what I see there is more than a catastrophe. How could anyone who is an Israeli (and hasn’t been drunk for years) compromise the very existence of his country by being a wuss in front of these apemen?
I’m not much on war, but just how stupid do you have to be to not believe that these creatures do not mean exactly what they say?
It’s un-fucking believable!!!! I still can’t wrap my mind around what has just happened in the Mid-East and how casually the MSM and our leaders are taking it. If the Dems win, we are truly screwed. Olmert is a hawk compared to the Dem leadership.
Well, as far as strategy at the grownups’ table goes, I’m at a loss.
But remember a few things about this ceasefire:
1. Hezbollah is supposed to be disarmed as a condition of the agreement.
2. Israel has “spun up” a minor but sizeable fraction of its reserves. They have realized experience and intelligence that no training exercise or covert surveillance can equal.
3. The western world is still running on lotus eating- inertia, and it’s going to take tens of thousands more dead, not the paltry thousands murdered on 9/11 compounded with the daily dozen since, to get the real effort off the ground.
We have tens of thousands of troops, a robust logistical tail, and enough ships and air in the region to do a tall job when the time comes.
Israel had to stop the missiles, and now they are stopped. They are locked and cocked for the next step. I think they are in an operational pause.
Hezbollah. Disarm. Right.
I fear the barbarians are on the same step on their own plan, too.
Resolution looms.
TW: “ waiting “. Just freakin’ scary, Mr. Goldstein. Scary.
Postscript:
I exepcted something along lines.
The beginning of the end, maybe.
I really think that the best we may be able to do is a credible spoiling attack. But we are still going to get hurt.
TW=”post”. This is probably a post to a dead thread…
I would reframe the question. The United States of America can beat anybody, with one exception.
Can the United States of America beat its Left?
If not, we’ll fail over and over again.