In the comments to yesterday’s post on Nibras Kazimi’s New Yor Sun article, Karl excerpts what I think is an important addendum to Kazimi’s op-ed from professor of strategy and policy for the U.S. Naval War College’s Monterey Program, Donald Stoker. In a Foreign Policy web exclusive, “Insurgencies Rarely Win – And Iraq Won’t Be Any Different (Maybe)”, Stoker writes:
The cold, hard truth about the Bush administration’s strategy of “surging†additional U.S. forces into Iraq is that it could work. Insurgencies are rarely as strong or successful as the public has come to believe. Iraq’s various insurgent groups have succeeded in creating a lot of chaos. But they’re likely not strong enough to succeed in the long term. Sending more American troops into Iraq with the aim of pacifying Baghdad could provide a foundation for their ultimate defeat, but only if the United States does not repeat its previous mistakes.
Myths about invincible guerrillas and insurgents are a direct result of America’s collective misunderstanding of its defeat in South Vietnam. This loss is generally credited to the brilliance and military virtues of the pajama-clad Vietcong. The Vietnamese may have been tough and persistent, but they were not brilliant. Rather, they were luckyâ€â€they faced an opponent with leaders unwilling to learn from their failures: the United States. When the Vietcong went toe-to-toe with U.S. forces in the 1968 Tet Offensive, they were decimated. When South Vietnam finally fell in 1975, it did so not to the Vietcong, but to regular units of the invading North Vietnamese Army. The Vietcong insurgency contributed greatly to the erosion of the American public’s will to fight, but so did the way that President Lyndon Johnson and the American military waged the war. It was North Vietnam’s will and American failure, not skillful use of an insurgency, that were the keys to Hanoi’s victory.
Similar misunderstandings persist over the Soviet Union’s defeat in Afghanistan, the other supposed example of guerrilla invincibility. But it was not the mujahidin’s strength that forced the Soviets to leave; it was the Soviet Union’s own economic and political weakness at home. In fact, the regime the Soviets established in Afghanistan was so formidable that it managed to survive for three years after the Red Army left.
Of course, history is not without genuine insurgent successes. Fidel Castro’s victory in Cuba is probably the best known, and there was the IRA’s partial triumph in 1922, as well as Algeria’s defeat of the French between 1954 and 1962. But the list of failed insurgencies is longer: Malayan Communists, Greek Communists, Filipino Huks, Nicaraguan Contras, Communists in El Salvador, Che Guevara in Bolivia, the Boers in South Africa (twice), Savimbi in Angola, and Sindero Luminoso in Peru, to name just a few. If the current U.S. administration maintains its will, establishes security in Baghdad, and succeeds in building a functioning government and army, there is no reason that the Iraqi insurgency cannot be similarly destroyed, or at least reduced to the level of terrorist thugs.
That seems to be another vote for “staying the course”—although with modifications to the strategies for handling security. Interestingly, many in the anti-war contingent have taken to ironizing that phrase, the thought being that by simply smirking at the number of times it has been repeated they have effectively undercut its strategic value.
But the fact is—and has always been—that the only way we can “lose” the war in Iraq to an “insurgency” is if we lose our will. I have criticized the Bushies on a number of occasions for trying to fight a war while keeping up appearances of “fairness” (aimed primarily at assuaging Western liberal sensibilities). Such tactics are, when judged clinically, simply anathema to decisive victory—though I also recognize that, given the tribal and ethnic dynamic of the region, the President and his war planners have had to balance political considerations against military decisions, and on many occasions they have made (in my estimation) the proper call, most recently with respect to allowing the Iraqi government (rather than coalition troops) enough latitude to handle the Shia militia problem, while simultaneously applying political pressure.
And so as both Rumsfeld and Bush promised, we have been engaged in a long hard slog in which, if Kazimi is to be believed, the insurgency is slowly but surely being defeated. “Staying the course,” then, does not mean that we have to keep doing exactly the same things we’ve been doing—that by changing tactics on the ground in response to the fluidity of the battlefield (which includes, in this case, navigating our own domestic political battlefield and an adversarial press that has, by highlighting terrorist bombings and insurgent “successes” provided the guerilla fighters with the propaganda victories they need to survive) we have somehow changed the course. Instead, it means—as I have always taken it to mean—we need to keep our political will to see the fight through.
And it is on that front that we find ourselves perilously close to “losing” Iraq.
Notes Stoker:
Insurgencies generally fail if all they are able to do is fight an irregular war. Successful practitioners of the guerrilla art from Nathanael Greene in the American Revolution to Mao Zedong in the Chinese Civil War have insisted upon having a regular army for which their guerrilla forces served mainly as an adjunct. Insurgencies also have inherent weaknesses and disadvantages vis-à-vis an established state. They lack governmental authority, established training areas, and secure supply lines. The danger is that insurgents can create these things, if given the time to do so. And, once they have them, they are well on their way to establishing themselves as a functioning and powerful alternative to the government. If they reach this point, they can very well succeed.
For those who would have us “concentrate on one problem at a time”—catch Osama! worry about Iraq before you start agitating for war with Iran and Syria! etc.—the apparent commonsense of such a suggestion is simply a bit of self-delusion born of an unwillingness to see the bigger picture. Which is not to say that we need to necessarily begin a bombing campaign in Iran or send troops into Syria, but rather to point out that the weapons, funding, and training areas supplied by these states to the insurgents are one ingredient necessary for an insurgency’s potential success. And considering that our press and many anti-war critics are, however inadvertantly, providing them with rhetorical cover—another necessity for the success of an insurgency—it would be dangerously remiss to bracket out Iran and Syria and think we can simply “concentrate” on “the insurgency,” particularly when the insurgency is being helped along by Iran and Syria.
Continues Stoker:
That’s why the real question in Iraq is not whether the insurgency can be defeatedâ€â€it can be. The real question is whether the United States might have already missed its chance to snuff it out. The United States has failed to provide internal security for the Iraqi populace. The result is a climate of fear and insecurity in areas of the country overrun by insurgents, particularly in Baghdad. This undermines confidence in the elected Iraqi government and makes it difficult for it to assert its authority over insurgent-dominated areas. Clearing out the insurgents and reestablishing security will take time and a lot of manpower. Sectarian violence adds a bloody wrinkle. The United States and the Iraqi government have to deal with Sunni and Shia insurgencies, as well as the added complication of al Qaeda guerrillas.
But the strategy of “surging†troops could offer a rare chance for successâ€â€if the Pentagon and the White House learn from their past mistakes. Previously, the U.S. military cleared areas such as Baghdad’s notorious Haifa Street, but then failed to follow up with security. So the insurgents simply returned to create havoc. As for the White House, it has so far failed to convince the Iraqi government to remove elements that undermine its authority, such as the Mahdi Army. Bush’s recent speech on Iraq included admissions of these failures, providing some hope that they might not be repeated.
Combine this with the elevation of General Petraeus (largely a cosmetic move, but given Petraeus’ expertise on counterinsurgency, a politically savvy one), the political pressure being applied to the Maliki government, and the introduction of a troop surge, which will be used to fill the security vaccuum in lieu of Iraqi army training—and the coalition seems to be putting itself into position to quash the remainder of the insurgency.
Concludes Stoker:
[…] Combating an insurgency typically requires 8 to 11 years. But the administration has done such a poor job of managing U.S. public opinion, to say nothing of the war itself, that it has exhausted many of its reservoirs of support. One tragedy of the Iraq war may be that the administration’s new strategy came too late to avert a rare, decisive insurgent victory.
[all emphases mine]
And how could an insurgent victory come about? If our domestic will is finally broken—something that can only happen should we buy into the climate of defeatism that, in the wake of some tactical missteps and some failures of forethought, has been greatly exascerbated by a sensationalistic press and a class of political opportunists who would rather see “neocons” fail than they would a fledgling democracy succeed.
I don’t know if Stoker is a neocon—nor if he is an unreliable pro-war stooge like many on the left (and a few on the right) take Kazimi to be. What I will say, however, is that there is enough of an intersection between their separate analyses to make anyone intellectually honest enough to view the situation in Iraq dispassionately take notice.
For me, nothing in either examination of the situation in Iraq speaks very well for a strategy of “smart redeployment.” Instead, both examinations seem to support what has long been the President’s position. We need to stay the course. Because doing so yields the greatest chance for victory, and provides the greatest hope for Iraq and the broader Middle East.
Whereas moving troops out of the region now will do nothing but convince Iraqis that their best hope of survival is to retreat to tribal and ethnic sanctuaries—precisely the recipe for the kind of civil war that many Democrats, some Republicans, and much of the mainstream media has been, in effect, agitating.
from American Digest Feb ‘05
Oh, here we go again… rough optimism based on historical analysis by those trained to do so.
Clearly, this is just another attempt to save the Bush legacy with the blood of little brown people who only want to live in peace!
PS Saddam was a Bad Dude, yada-yada-yada…
-James Bradley
Flags of Our Fathers
Sounds kinda familiar, don’t it…..
The desire to see the neo-cons, or Bush, fail may be a driving force for some, but I have long believed there is another driving impulse that guides many more of the domestic, and international opposition to the effort.
Vietnam is not merely a template for Iraq, Iraq is seen as historical justification for the American experience that was Vietnam. So many on the left, in the media, and those among the Democrat party who service their agendas not only want ignominy for the US in Iraq they need it. If only to confirm their long held beliefs and continued place at the trough of governing.
Success in Iraq would provide a strong historical argument against the left, and help establish that Vietnam was a combined failure of will among Americans and strong success of a domestic fifth column opposed to the very foundations of our society. Since the MSM and Democrat party contain the primary remnants of both groups it is all but assured that they would receive the lions share of blame for what followed after the fall of Saigon should the template be broken by success in Iraq.
So I have no doubt that those groups will continue to double down against the Iraqis and against any administration who supports their bid to be free. because for them, in Iraq lack of failure is not an option.
I think you’ve just answered my question here.
Heh.
I think it really depends on how we define “lose.” Are our forces going to be militarily defeated in the classic sense, i.e. will they be overwhelmed or driven by force from the region? No way. On the other hand, if “losing” is defined as Iraq being in a continuing state that is considered unacceptable (vis-a-vis stability, safety for its law-abiding citizens, being a net positive for our security interests, and making sense from a cost/benefit perspective), then it’s possible (but not certain, fortunately).
Three elements of our society have to be aligned to win a war—government, military, and civilian.
The Dems and MSM have no sway over only one of these—they are the domestic fifth column undermining the other two.
(Aside—Pelozi and crew are taking their Iraqi road trip to find the majority of the military who are against the war—bet they’ll find ‘em!)
When you are arguing over what the definition of “losing” is—you have lost!
That depends on how you define “lost,” Gary.
I kid.
The only tactic left open to the left is to attack the credibility of any source for good news from Iraq.
In fact, one could distill the information war we’re in as a clash of credibilities, as the authenticities and integrities of both pro-war and anti-war “spokespersons’ vye for primacy.
To those, like Steve-xx, that don’t want to believe positive reports like Kazimi’s, I have to ask:
1. Do you believe Paul Krugman when he derides America’s economy from the editorial pages of the NYT?
2. How about Michael Isakoff’s “reports” about Valerie Plame?
3. Or, the LAT’s coverage of a fireman-hazing incident (which the paper smugly painted in rascisct terms).
4. How about Der Spiegel’s “perspective” on Louisianan politics circa Katrina, and America’s “failed” federalism?
5. What about Baghdad Bob’s ruminations on the Marines’ rush to Baghdad?
Are these “spokesmen” credible on their topics of choice? And by what intellectual criteria does one assign their reportage more credibility than that of another reporter like a Micheal Totten, a Mr. Kazimi, or a General Petreaus?
I’m more and more convinced it’s the brand of the organization that a spokesman represents, more than actual facts presented on current events, that delivers believers like Steve. For example, the “NYT” is an urban media brand with extensive political advocacies, and it’s reportage is fashioned to further it’s political goals. The “US military” is our nation’s defense apparatus, and it’s reports further it’s own defense goals.
Yet, despite their evident self-interests, only one of these sources can wear the “mantel of credibility”. And how a person chooses between the two speaks volumes about that person’s opinion of both his country’s credibility, and of the NYT’s “Internationalist” agenda.
QUAGMIRE!!!!
As alphie so helpfully noted last evening on the predecessor to this post, WWII analogies are not valid.
Unless they’re from Catch-22. Or try to make fun of warmongering (aka fighting to defeat the enemy).
I assume the same will be said to anyone bringing up the remarkable similarities between the Democrats and other “anti-“war types nowadays and the Copperheads of the US Civil War.
But alpo has proved himself to be a self-absorbed idiot, totally bereft of any knowledge of history.
Glad you liked the comment, JG.
Nor do I, but the part of the article you quoted has Stoker suggesting that “the administration has done… a poor job of managing U.S. public opinion, to say nothing of the war itself.”
As for Kazimi, his past role with the INC gives fair reason for suspicion. But consider his thesis in context of the following:
Reports that Al Qaeda terrorists are fleeing Baghdad in advance of the troop surge. [If so, they may cause trouble elsewhere, but generally away from the media they largely rely upon to prop up the “myth of the guerilla.”]
The tribal chiefs in Anbar joining forces in September in an attempt to defeat AQ.
The Guardian(!) reporting on Sunni insurgent leaders in Baghdad beginning to doubt the wisdom of their alliance with AQ.
In this context, I would not be surprised if there was something to Kazimi’s claims, though it does not detract from the need to quell the sectarian violence.
Not that there won’t be some in the media seeking to exaggerate the sectarian conflict.
For example, today’s The New York Times ran a story with this lede:
The story later reveals:
…in graph 27!
Even the BBC figured out that the story was the approval of the plan, even noting “it is significant that Mr Sadr’s political bloc supported the plan.”
Neither noted that the plan was apparently approved unanimously.
We will lose Iraq.
A couple of days’ viewing of Rantburg will educate anyone that blowing things up is a characteristic of Muslim countries.
Mostly, they blow up fewer things in the more stable countries, such as Pakistan, Jordan, Indonesia, than they do in Iraq. But to presume that we can’t “win” until Iraq is explosion free for months at a time is nucking futz.
It wouldn’t be Iraq or Muslim or Arab, it wouldn’t be authentic, without the occasional slaughter of civilians at the hands of terrorists.
. . . and the US won’t be authentic without the occasional drive by shooting.
There is a level of crime and violence in any society. If the media hyperventilated over US urban murders like it did about bombings in Iraq; US citizens would believe they were in a war zone.
Fo. Shizzle.
(sidebar: Is “nizzle” also the N-word?)
Wow, BushHitler’s flying chimps march in lockstep to the tune of the Neocon agenda. You should pull your heads up from Halliburton’s chairman’s laps every once in a while to read the tea leaves: Amerikkka has LOST.
I am going to name my next band Neocon Agenda, just to see if the music can really make flying monkeys march.
Don’t be ridiculous. Why would we march when we can fly?
Heh, well, formation flying then. BushHito’s Golden Showers, elite chairborne commandos. 101st Fighting Keyboardist Squadron, 3rd Army Air Corps of One.
Welcome back, by the way.
I do not know this man.
By the way, what have I missed?
VERC!
Where you been, pal?
Working like a eskimo pickup, a single huskie dragging an igloo
. How’s the new house? What cluebatting championships have I missed? How are your legions of pedigree moonbat/trolls? Feeding them properly?
So we have no idea if we’ll “win” in Iraq and we’re gonna have to ante up another $500 billion to $1 trillion just to find out?
Not a very tempting offer.
Look out, alphie. Verc isn’t quite so gentle as some of the others of us here.
Verc —
New house is great, though now I need a new freakin’ laptop. It doesn’t end.
Somebody needs to link to the Great Balloon Fence thread, I will try to later tonight if I can find time.
eLarson:
As far as this extremely white girl has been able to ascertain, the answer is yes. Context tells:
“Fo shizzle, ma nizzle.”
BTW, if you’d like to translate text or web pages into Snoop talk, you can go here: Gizoogle
Oh, Verc, we’ve all missed you!
“BushHito”. Heh, that’s a good one.
Saudi Arabia is going a’shopping spree for weapons (Eurofighters and more). How much would a regional war in the Gulf cost us? And how much would it cost to fight an Iraqi-scale ‘insurgency’ in Afghanistan?
Remember, the terrorist coffers would be open for any fight anywhere the US operates. Afghanistan isn’t a ‘good war’ in the Arab ‘street’, as the Soviet experience reflects.
Vercingetorix?
A Frenchman?
French? Celt. But actually Welsh, Polish and Ukrainian. Whatever, I like the name.
How’s the miniature Chimperor-in-chief, Jeff? <blows kiss to Meg Q>
Vercingetorix was a Gaul, who did not give up so easily even if front of a certain Julius Caesar.
And when bitching about the cost of winning a military campaign, one should also provide an estimate for the costs of defeat. Just for comparison.
Doing well. Building towers out of strange plastic erector sets is his new fascination. Which beats his previous fascination of drawing on the TV with KY jelly.
Gauls = Celts, more or less. Or if not, don’t care.
Heh. “If you think victory is expensive, try defeat.” –Napoleon, after the Russian debacle (paraphrased)
If we can’t defeat the terrorists in Iraq, where can we defeat them?
If we can defeat the terrorists in Iraq, where shouldn’t we defeat them?
Democrats are less concerned with engineering a defeat for the US than with “redeploying” to the “horizon” – to a place where daily scenes of terrorist carnage are no longer a part of the news. The naked brutal truth we are witnessing of a democratic society in an existential battle against terrorism is something that the Democrats insistently deny. They grasp at memes of “worsening sectarian violence” and “civil war” as a way to recast this struggle as one in which the US role is more appropriately a diplomatic mediator than a stakeholder in the outcome, with tangible security interests. Losing Iraq would be a defeat for the U.S., but the more lasting damage would be to any ideal of universal freedom and democracy. Democrats want nothing more than for Iraq to become a symbol of a failed attempt at establishing democracy, a standing warning that any questioning of the legitimacy of an autocratic state risks unintended consequences that are best avoided.
Didn’t give up easily?
Read Caesar’s account for a different opinion.
Vercingetorix was a French poodle. I think his name means “The first of many surrenders”
As for the cost of failure…what did it cost America after Vietnam?
Nada…if fact, we got a brand new trade partner out of our SE Asian cut ‘n’ run.
Oh, it is game on, alphie.
Guess you missed the news flash ‘bout ole ‘Nam. It wasn’t the Cong that beat anyone; the North Vietnamese army invaded South Vietnam. And so there goes one trade partner there.
And how’s trade with Cambodia these days?
We lost an entire region of the world to backwards commies, who are only 40 years later taking baby steps to trade with the world at large. Then there was the genocides and crackdowns, millions of refugees and more.
In dollars, we’ve lost tens of billions, amortized over 34 years, into astronomical numbers. And that’s over RUBBER, not oil.
Verc,
Don’t bother posting facts, alf only gets confused by them.
Not that alpo would know anything about rubbers.
This was one of the funniest. It will also clue you in to any balloon fence jokes.
Vercingetorix,
It was your fellow Frenchmen who “lost” Vietnam.
America just pitched a few innings of ineffectual relief.
Verc!!!! it’s so nice to see you again!
French? When did France begin to exist as a concept much less a bona fide nation-state? What was the native language of the Celts? What type of language is French? Where did it come from?
Vercingetorix was a Celt from a region of Europe the Romans called Gaul. Might as well say he was English, or Spanish, or a Luxemburger. Because the Celts occupied all of those ethnic regions at one time or another.
Good God but you are ignorant.
Eh, that would be North Vietnam that they lost. Itty Bitty difference, Mr Subtle. Did I mention my derivation? Or that I am American? Hmmm.
B Moe, that was some sublime moonbattery.
Maggie, good to see you too.
That’s why there’s statues of Vercingetorix all over France, Thomas?
Are the French ignorant, too?
Maybe the neocons should put out a history book?
I think it would make for some humorous reading.
alphie,
are you seriously continuing to push this Vercingetorix stuff around? Good grief…
Heh. Leading with that chin will get you cuffed good, sister.
Verc – welcome to alphie. He’ll make you long for actus before you can say, “second-rate law student”.
I guess it went too far, Fabio,
A meer footnote in the right-wing “history” book:
How to Interpret Anything that Ever Happened in History as a Sign We Should Stay in Iraq Forever!
yeah, Meg, I already want that 45 seconds of my life back I took to respond to his guff…
How about addressing a issue, alphie? Or do you want to pontificate on Mexican ritual sacrifice? Or was that Aztec? Eh, same diff’…
And there is a statue of Ponce DeLeon in St. Augustine, Florida. Does that make him an American?
lololll111ol!
if Verc is back, can Nishi stay away?
and no, Jeff, let the Sauds, Jordanians, et all confront Iran. That is the Shia/Sunni Proxy war. We should just keep grinding on Iraq. taking out Saddam did destabalize the ME, left a sort of power vacumn. The Sauds wont step up if we do it for them.
There was another one in which monkyboy detailed a Chinese invasion of the US using nothing but cargo ships and shipping containers that was hilarious, but I can’t friggin find it.
Hey Verc,
Hella glad you’re back.
The MSM is capable of taking anyone or any thing and lionizing or demonizing it.
In December, “more troops” was the remedy for Bushs incompetence.
In January a “troop surge” is an unneccessary escsalation illustrating Bushs incompetence.
Clintons rant on Fox, finger pointing and projection, was charactorized as a brave and couragous stand.
Cheney tells an interviewer his daughters baby is off-limits, and he’s an unstable, offensive prick.
Luckily the MSM is unbiased, otherwise, the effort in Iraq could be in jeoprady.
You mean aside from the costs associated with the fall to Communism of Laos, Cambodia, Angola, Ethiopia, Mozambique, Afghanistan, Benin, Guinea-Bissau, Madagascar, Cape Verde, Nicaragua, and Grenada? Aside from the costs resulting from the USSR’s overt support of Saddam in Iraq, Yasser Arafat, the senior Assad in Syria, and covert support of Khomeni? Aside from the costs associated with US retreats in Vietnam and Somalia emboldening OBL and Ayman al-Zawahri—both of whom also invoke Vietnam in their propaganda?
Aside from those costs?
Karl,
You forgot the most devastating cost to the American public, the election of Jimmy Carter. I still feel chills of horrible running down my back-bone. It could have been worse, President Dukakis (sp?) or Mondale scare me almost as much as President Gore still does. I think I need a shower now & maybe a hug.
By following the exact same tactics and course that you recommend in Iraq.
Hell, by following the same tactics they are following in the streets of Paris today
Hmmm, the French in Dien Bien Phu did not exactly surrender preemptively. In fact at some point the Vietminh found themselves in a rather tight spot.
But this is not the issue. The real issue is that I still have to read a serious estimate of the effects of an American defeat in Iraq – at the global scale and medium-term
Contrary to what he writes in his 3:05 and 4:30 comments, ‘alphie’ has clearly never read Book VII of Caesar’s De Bello Gallico in Latin or any other language, or even read the Wikipedia article on Vercingetorix. If he had read the former, he would know how close Vercingetorix came to defeating Caesar on a couple of occasions. If he had read the latter, he would know that there are at least two monumental statues of him in France (pictures on Wikipedia), that the meaning of his name is “over-king of the infantry”, and that he is still considered a hero by the French.
Weev, we have already learned that alphia cannot e educated. His comic book understanding of military history is not seared … I saw seared … into his brain.
Can someone please link like crazy to Amanda Marcotte’s tampon-bin of a blog and the Sadly-Retarded Monteban’s A-list of morons so we can get an old fashioned blog war going. Alphie’s concern over the invasion of Sumeria and the fate of the Silk Road is touching and all and monkeyboy’s ultra-engineering aside, the species of troglodytes appear to have declined of note lately.
Hell, someone post something about how women should stay barefoot and pregnant in the kitchen, mention the koranimals with four-letter words as subject noun, adverbs, verbs, adjectives, and prepositions, copy and paste some of Jeff’s semiotic analysis, link to every article on Pandagon and Sadly, No! and any other sewer you can find, like 15 times, and say evolution sucks, Darwin was a pedophile, leg humping Mohammed–but who hasn’t, really?–and Marx was the pivot man of some hot, steamy German bath house fun, superstring theory is moronic, say good things about Michelle Malkin, and let’s kick this party off!!!
<winking to lee and Nishi>
I think Dr. Seuss mentions Vercingetorix as well.
Welcome back, Verc. We’ve missed you. Nobody can pastiche the moonbats quite that well, although there are several close finishers.
Well, here’s one: New York City will become for all practical purposes uninhabitable. Mechanism? Bombs, dirty bombs, and poison/disease of various sorts. Now, I don’t hate NYC; I do despise it—there is an unsubtle difference between the two. But as things stand it’s necessary, and extremely valuable. What will its loss cost us?
Pooh, you say, and various less complimentary terms. Another winger with delusions. Pooh, yourself.
“Victory has many fathers; defeat is an orphan.” If we lose visibly in Iraq, it will serve as inspiration for the jihadists. Everybody wants to be on the winning side; look how many former Bush supporters have abandoned him now that he looks bad. If the jihadists are seen to win, they will get recruits, money, and state support, and swell to even larger proportions—and I’m not in any great danger.
I live in a rural area of a red state. Not only is the population density too low to get good TV footage out of a bomb, I and my neighbors are People of the Book and thereby misguided rather than specifically evil. We’re eligible to convert to Islam, acknowledge the One True Faith, and join the jihadists in their fun and games. Urban Americans, especially in the Northeast, are not so privileged. They are infidels, pure and simple, homosexuals, perverts, and naked women, and deserve only to be exterminated. In addition NYC, much more than any other city, is the emblem and sigil of the U.S. in most places. That’s where the targets will be, not out here where I live.
In addition, what do you reckon the cost will be of a 25-50% (minimum) increase in the cost of trade? We already buy and sell a lot less in South America because of mere Communists and drug dealers kidnapping people, leading to an increase in business costs and consequent abandonment of the market. What happens when no American jetliner can routinely expect to land safely in three quarters of the world? When a ship even rumored to contain American goods, or have American ownership, is the specific target of bomb boats in most ports? What happens when an American tourist, business person, or Government agent cannot move freely on the streets of Paris and Amsterdam? How much will that cost? What happens when Americans have to pay a premium for goods, because the seller can’t routinely predict they’ll be around to pay when the bill comes due? What will that cost?
Note the emphasis. How does it feel to be a bigot? Because that’s what that question is. What it cost was forty or so million Thais, Cambodians, and Vietnamese dead dead dead at the hands of the Noble Victors and their allies. (The fact that Ho’s successors later fell out with Pol Pot is irrelevant—at the time, they were Fraternal Socialist Brothers.) If you are unwilling to count that as a cost, if dead people mean nothing to you unless Americans are involved and the only meaning of “peace” is that Americans aren’t fighting, you are a bigoted, ethnocentric America Firster isolationist to make Teddy Roosevelt too embarrassed to stand, and calling yourself a “liberal” is a damned, bald-faced lie.
Regards,
Ric
It’s hard to get my head around loving America and despising New York City. Los Angeles I can see.
So, does that mean America is responsible for the deaths our pal and ally Stalin caused, ric?
Or our pal Osama, for that matter?
*** I can’t be bothered with history. I just want to know why and how you keenly understand the mind of a murderous jihadist. That merits scrutiny. ***
After the stark scenario Ric painted, you want to play That game alphie?
Good Lord…
Funny how a vast majority of New Yorkers voted for Kerry, lee.
Do they lack ric’s “vision?”
Or maybe they’re not quite as paranoid…
There’s Vercinctorix, whose efforts were legendary
consequently, Caesar’s victory over him, was as well. (THat lasted about 7 years as I recall. He
was preceded by Mithridates of Pontus; a kingdom
in Asia Minor; what we now call Turkey. He held
out against two generations of Roman warriors, from Marius, and Sulla; around 100 BC his deputy and rival, to Pompey, around 70 BC. A struggle over the chain of command in that 1st round, led
to the Social War; an immigration-related border
conflict, and to Sulla’s dictatorship. Before this, there was the long drawn out Jugurthan
war against the Numidians, which also took up seven years, several commanders from a Scipio
to Marius, which gave him the right to pursue
the consulship
Yes.
There is definitly something lacking in anyone that would vote for someone with Kerrys history, as commander in chief of Americas military.
It is something much bigger than vision, encompassing it, as well as seriousness, intelligence, and a smorgassboard of other virtues.
What is your theory as to why vast numbers of New Yorkers voted for Kerry.
Sympathy for cowardice?
happyfeet, that’s probably because you live there or nearby. New York makes its living off of skimming the cream from trade, and those of us left with the bluejohn aren’t all that fond of it. Most of us realize it’s necessary; but lots of things that aren’t pleasant are necessary.
oooooh, good one, alphie! Yeah, partly, but the lion’s share of that blame goes to you and your predecessors, who were assuring us that the Soviet Union was the Undefeatable Wave Of The Future That Must Be Accommodated right up until 1989. And, if you’ll notice, Americans didn’t just drop everything and leave in that case, either. As for Osama, as usual you’ve taken a frickin’ lie as truth and based your “opinion” on that. He had nothing whatever to do with the resistance to the Soviets in Afghanistan; he’s a jonny-come-lately who took credit—and had the real architects assassinated as fast as he could.
As for paranoia—::shrug:: I’m a devout pessimist. You can tell real pessimists by the fact that they’re always cheerful, because all the surprises they get are nice ones. Since you and your allies are absolutely wedded to a completely wrong interpretation of Osama&Co.’s motives, you will never figure out what they’re going to do; I’m simply trying to gently hint that your reasoning may be sound but your premises are wildly off-base, so your confidence is (ahem!) a bit misplaced. There’s a couple holes in the ground, if you’ll recall, and they aren’t in Dallas or Houston for some strange reason. Michael Moore even remarked on the oddity a couple of times.
Regards,
Ric
… And why are all these historical analogies so quintessential to the present situation in Iraq? They are very instructive for their own sake, and Lord knows, as dense as I am, I am learning a great deal. But just reread some of the characterizations of this current and ongoing struggle, in terms of past events. I see an attempt to define, shoehorn, predict, and dissect the outcome of an event that has not fully transpired—in terms of conflicts whose resonance have long been debated.
It’s not over, people! Some phases haven’t begun! Why can’t this unfolding Iraqi situation be fully unprecedented, and therefore not subject to facile and unyielding analogies with past struggles? It is a different world in a different time, and previous models just might not apply. Plus, I can’t compete in the Great History Throwdown.
New Yorkers voted against Bush, not for Kerry. New Yorkers aren’t paranoid, they’re fatalistic. Therefore, they are much more apt to put their faith in someone who does not communicate a vision. Trains running on time and all that, they like that sort of thing. Bush has attempted big things – from social security reform to Middle East democracy to nuclear energy to tort reform – things that add up to an assertion that tomorrow could be very very different than today. New Yorkers find this unsettling – where others see creative destruction, New Yorkers see the logic of Jenga. God love ‘em.
Seriously, you think that Bush thought all that stuff up on his own? Could be. Noble ideas at conception; partial birth abortions in practice.
Because it has been shaped and driven by those struggles, it is unprecedented, but not totally unpredictable.
B Moe—then why the contrarian argument about the disposition of this “war?” Can’t educated observers agree on “those struggles” that are relevant? They don’t, from what I read and see. I am talking about ALL points on the spectrum.
cynn – I think that’s goddamn brilliant, and very well put. I think it’s ok to be dismissive of all the let’s-look-at-this-through-a-historical-lens stuff. Call me shallow, but I’m not feeling any need at all to look at Iraq “in perspective.” Not yet anyway.
Let’s talk about facile and unyielding analogies with past struggles.
Stoker is pointing out that many Americans are in fact relying on facile and unyielding analogies with two, and only two past struggles—the Vietnam War and the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan. He could have noted that the MSM was worried about a quagmire four days into Operation Enduring Freedom in Afghanistan.
I don’t think it is facile to point out that—looking at a broader sweep of history—insurgencies tend to fail.
Moreover, as the person who brought the Stoker piece to Jeff’s attention, I would note that I also posted here about David Kilcullen, who does think that the current conflict cannot be directly compared with past insurgencies. But the primary differences he sees (and which he can see precisely because he does know his history) involve the extent to which terror groups employ information warfare and propaganda. I would suggest that those who believe the current state of Iraq gives a propaganda victory to terrorists and helps them recruit and raise money should consider that leaving Iraq would magnify those effects.
Which is not to say that I don’t appreciate a nice historical analysis that justifies, explains, and validates our mission in Iraq.
happyfeet, why do you bother to be literate?
I’m quite serious. Literacy is work, and if you have no use for it, why bother?
We cannot see the future. Physicists are starting to say we could go to the future—faster than one day per day, that is—but couldn’t come back to tell anybody about it. That being the case, our only hope for figuring things out is to study the past and search for analogies to guide us, and that is the primary function of literacy. Literacy allows people who have solved problems (or not) to write down the conditions and their tactics, so we latecomers can study them and try to apply the lessons to our lives. Art is one Hell of a useful byproduct, but it isn’t what literacy is for.
cynn is both right and wrong. Yes, the situation is in some respects new and unprecedented, but the players are the same old human beings whose ancestors were chucking rocks at one another thirty millenia ago, and the setting has been pretty much the same for almost that long. Despite innovations like technology there are and will be analogies from the past, and those analogies can and will guide what we do today in hope of tomorrow. It’s the only way it can work. The repertoire of the human race may be large, but it isn’t infinite, and by now much of that envelope has been explored.
If you don’t think the past can and should be studied for analogies that will guide our actions, you are using literacy—probably the most powerful tool a race of tool-users ever invented—for nothing more than nonsensical pleasure-seeking. You could equally well get your jollies from singing, or telling stories, or something else that doesn’t involve the written word. Why did you bother to learn to read and write?
Regards,
Ric
I don’t exactly disagree with you, but I don’t think this sort of thing applies to Iraq, since I already have it all figured out. I’m for it. I realize other people are having trouble with it, and if historical analogies help them get a handle on it, I’m for that too. But sheesh – some things are just simple. Where America should stand is easy to figure out and doesn’t, or shouldn’t, require a lot of nuance, historical or otherwise, to explain. Just me personally, but laborious historical or philosophical appeals to this or that as a way of understanding Iraq cedes way too much ground to those who want to take “a close look” at the “controversial decisions” Bush has made. This one’s easy. I think I posted earlier to the effect that, “If we can’t defeat the terrorists in Iraq…” Well, I think you have already made the “game over” argument pretty well.
Buck up, happy.
Just because America can’t invade another country and impose its will on it doesn’t mean we’re doomed.
Britain lost an entire empire the same way and they are just fine.
No, alphie. That’s how Britain won its empire. Britain lost its empire because it chose to give independence to its constituent parts.
Was the American Rervolution just political theater, furris?
You can call it that if you like, allie, but America wasn’t part of the British Empire. It was just an early colony.
Do some background reading on Canada, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, India, Nigeria, Ghana, and how they achieved independence, and get back to me. And when you do, be ready to explain to me how ‘invading another country and imposing its will’ was how Britain ‘lost’ its empire.
You really can be quite stupid sometimes, you know.
Are you saying Britain could have held onto India, furris?
Like a flea holds onto a dog, maybe.
I did ask you to do the background reading first, alli.
Have a care for the poor old warming globe with your profligate use of electricity.
Here’s a serious look by Victor Davis Hanson at some consequences of surrendering in Iraq. His purpose is to educate those readers whose minds are still somewhat open. My mind was made up a long time ago by a few simple facts of overriding importance that have not changed. The anti Iraq war arguments are mainly emotional, not rational. I have not seen any arguments by the anti-war crowd that have not been fully answered to my satisfaction, including the emotional ones.
Which brings me to cynn. Cynn, you say you hate George Bush. I was taught that underneath hate is fear. So my question to you is what is it that you fear George Bush will do to you? I hope you will tell me. I would like to learn.
When did Britain invade America, alphie? My history book says that the America we know today was created by Brits, and that we later decided to secede from the British empire.
He’s almost as stupid as timmy, Pablo. Not quite, that wouldn’t be possible, not in a finite universe anyway.
I am waiting for timmy to point me at the comment he says I posted accusing your legislators of treason, and for alfalfa to understand that it was by being nice, not by imposing its will, that Britain lost its empire.
But one of them is a poltroon and the other, I think, is drunk, so I’m not holding my breath.
What do these people imagine, on a serious note, is going to happen to the world if America walks away from Iraq?
This is one of those occasions where failure is simply not an option.
“failure is simply not an option” is a line Bush used in his 2001 State of the Union speech.
In a different context though.
He said when public schools fail, people should be given another choice.
I suppose when wars fail, no other choice should be considered?
[…] would be against taking such measurements. This complete aversion is at least partially rooted in myths about invincible guerrillas and insurgents — myths that US Naval War College Professor Donald Stoker argues are a direct result of […]
[…] would be against taking such measurements. This complete aversion is at least partially rooted in myths about invincible guerrillas and insurgents  myths that US Naval War College Professor Donald Stoker argues are a direct result of […]
[…] would be against taking such measurements. This complete aversion is at least partially rooted in myths about invincible guerrillas and insurgents  myths that US Naval War College Professor Donald Stoker argues are a direct result of […]