They pronounce it with a wicked smile. They seem to like the feel of it on their loose lips.
"We're losing in Iraq." It sure riles up the wingnut contingent when you say it, eh? The right people. Let's say it again, as often as possible. Let's find evidence of it in every news story.
They positively squeal with glee when someone "respectable" like Republican Senator Chuck Hagel says, "The reality is that we're losing in Iraq." By "respectable" they mean someone they lampooned mercilessly as one of Chimpy's minions right up to the moment he said something they agree with.
Christopher Hitchens spoke for a lot of people, as usual, when he marveled at the canaries who worry more about the miner's picks than the coal mine gas:
How can so many people watch this as if they were spectators, handicapping and rating the successes and failures from some imagined position of neutrality? Do they suppose that a defeat in Iraq would be a defeat only for the Bush administration? The United States is awash in human rights groups, feminist organizations, ecological foundations, and committees for the rights of minorities. How come there is not a huge voluntary effort to help and to publicize the efforts to find the hundreds of thousands of "missing" Iraqis, to support Iraqi women's battle against fundamentalists, to assist in the recuperation of the marsh Arab wetlands, and to underwrite the struggle of the Kurds, the largest stateless people in the Middle East? Is Abu Ghraib really the only subject that interests our humanitarians?On the other side of the political canyon -- my side -- the bomb-word is "treason." Whispered or shouted, hinted or insinuated. The Founders set the "treason" barrier mighty high, but we forget that and slap it on everyone from Cindy Sheehan's simple-minded myrmidions to the New York Times.
Losing in Iraq. Treason in America. The irony, of course, is that the same people who insist America is losing in Iraq also insist that the nation tie its own hands even more tightly to prevent America from doing anything that might alter that spiral into failure. They're the ones who demand we fight ruthless terrorists under the most restrictive interpretations of Geneva conventions and domestic laws. They want us to bring a chessboard to a knife fight. You'd think those Americans who see an imminent American defeat, if they appreciate the consequences of that, would be the first to call for the gloves to come off.
The contradiction on the other side is as easy to appreciate. You can't burn your national values on the barricades while you fight a war in the name of those values. Someone needs to keep an eye on the domestic evolution of power while this long war is underway. The loyal opposition has a duty to live up to both words in that phrase.
People who support the entire Iraq project reject the notion of losing. That's defeatism. That's the curse. How could the world's sole superpower "lose" to a gang of religious retards?
Here's how. And it relates directly to what the right mis-calls the "treason" of the domestic left. Don't be fooled by our military record (updated somewhat since Bill Murray's "We're 10 and 1!" cry in "Stripes"). America has a terrible performance history in defeating an insurgency in a populous nation under the watchful eye of a hostile media.
[The media always is hostile to American authority, since about 1950, when the newscasters and journalists wrested control of the media from the publishers and corporate owners. This is a fact of life we can't deny or change. The media distrusts all presidents -- Republican ones it actively loathes. The only leaders it likes are the ones it creates, like Jack Kennedy.]
This article, "Why the Strong Lose," by Jeffrey Record, turned up in the Winter edition of "Parameters" [Hat tip, Zenpundit][A]ll major failed US uses of force since 1945 — in Vietnam, Lebanon, and Somalia — have been against materially weaker enemies. In wars both hot and cold, the United States has fared consistently well against such powerful enemies as Nazi Germany, Imperial Japan, and the Soviet Union, but the record against lesser foes is decidedly mixed. ... In each case the American Goliath was militarily stalemated or politically defeated by the local David. The phenomenon of the weak defeating the strong, though exceptional, is as old as war itself. Sparta finally beat Athens; Frederick the Great always punched well above his weight; American rebels overturned British rule in the Thirteen Colonies; the Spanish guerrilla bled Napoleon white; Jewish terrorists forced the British out of Palestine; Vietnamese communists drove France and then the United States out of Indochina; and mujahideen handed the Soviet Union its own “Vietnam” in Afghanistan. Relative military power is hardly a reliable predictor of war outcomes.I'd disagree with his inclusion of the Peloponesian War here. Sparta only was weaker than Athens at sea. But as Victor Davis Hanson has written recently, Athens had a flaw Sparta never showed -- the volatility of democratic institutions -- and it cracked open in a protracted war of attrition. There is something to be made of the parallel with the situation of America today.
Our current perplexity in Iraq also reminds me a bit of a different classical story. Sparta in its might under King Cleomenes I defeated the army of its rival, Argos, and utterly routed it. The men who survived the battle fled into a grove, which the Spartans set fire to, burning the refugees to death.
Argos now lay open to them, a city defenseless, full of women and slaves. But a poetess named Telesilla rallied the Argive women. She gathered up the young boys and old men left in the city and had them man the walls. Then she gathered up all the weapons she could find and armed the women, and marched them out to fight the Spartan hoplites.
The mighty Spartans, the greatest warriors on land in Greece found themselves face to face with a pack of women in arms. They halted and hesitated. The Spartans thought it over. If they fought the women and won, there would be no honor in it, only shame. If they fought women and somehow lost, how much worse the shame would be! In the end they gave up and went home.
Where I see a parallel is the dilemma of the Spartans (not the bravery of the Argive women). All their might and advantage availed them nothing. The need to fight with dignity and honor as a warrior can lead you into fights you can't win. On the other side, the weaker side, the will to fight at whatever cost, and the awareness of the consequences of defeat, are potent weapons. Stendhal, who had ridden into battle with Napoleon, understood this:"The lover thinks more often of reaching his mistress than the husband of guarding his wife; the prisoner thinks more often of escaping than the gaoler of shutting his door; and so, whatever the obstacles may be, the lover and the prisoner ought to succeed."Jeffrey Record's piece gives several examples, some of which ought to be familiar to Americans. Vietnam is one. Our own Revolution is another:
Post-1945 successful rebellions against European colonial rule as well as the Vietnamese struggle against the United States all had one thing in common: the materially weaker insurgent was more politically determined to win because it had much more riding on the outcome of war than did the stronger external power, for whom the stakes were lower. ... Because the outcome of the war can never be as important to the outside power as it is to those who have staked their very existence on victory, the weaker side fights harder, displaying a willingness to incur blood losses that would be unacceptable to the stronger side. The signers of the Declaration of Independence risked their lives, fortunes, and sacred honor in what became a contest with an imperial giant for which North America was (after 1778) a secondary theater of operations in a much larger war. For the American rebel leadership, defeat meant the hangman’s noose. For British commanders in North America, it meant a return to the comforts and pleasures of London society and perhaps eventual reassignment.He summarizes observations that others have made -- tentatively, perhaps because they are so disturbing to us. Democracies are particularly vulnerable to losing "protracted conflicts against irregular foes." He cites Gil Merom's observation that "democracies fail in small wars because they find it extremely difficult to escalate the level of violence and brutality to that which can secure victory.”
True. And an honorable military tradition in a free people, even when they face defeat, also recoils from such brutality. The Confederate generals in the Civil War, West Pointers, deliberately rejected the option of guerrilla warfare, though many saw it as their best chance for independence. Forrest, a private man with no military education, proved how effective insurgency could be against the Yankees in Mississippi in 1862. But Lee did not follow his path. After the war, Forrest proved it again by founding the Klan. Americans today routinely list him among the nation's 10 greatest villains.
But the cruel truth is, barbarism works -- if by "works" you means defeats the insurgents at a horrific cost in innocent human lives. The French learned that in Algeria, and they also learned the consequence; a free and democratic state with an civilized population simply cannot sustain such a war.
By 1955, the revolutionary FLN was pursuing a policy of open genocide in Algeria: Kill all the French. Civilians of all ages and conditions were hacked to pieces, infants ripped from the womb and dashed to pieces in front of dying mothers, all the depths of depravity of terrorism. If it managed to kill a French official, it then tried to bomb his funeral, too.
The violence spiraled in 1956. The French got tough. In January 1957, Gen. Jacques Massu and his 4,600 men got carte blanche to clean the insurgents out of Algiers. Torture, which had been banned to French soldiers since the Revolution, crept back into use.The argument was that successful interrogation saved lives, chiefly of Arabs; that Arabs who gave information would be tortured to death, without restraint, by the FLN, and it was vital for the French to make themselves feared more. It was the Arab belief that Massu operated without restraint, as much as the torture itself, which caused prisoners to talk. [Johnson, "Modern Times"]Torture was not the end of it. According to one French official in a position to know, some 3,000 prisoners "disappeared" during the Algiers battle. It was the one battle in the insurgency that the French clearly won. Fighting the FLN near its own level, with matching weapons of terror, Massu won the fight for Algiers. But civilized France all but tore itself to pieces in the process.
On the one hand, by freeing army units from political control and stressing the personalities of commanders, it encouraged private armies: colonels increasingly regarded themselves as proprietors of their regiments, as under the monarchy, and began to manipulate their generals into disobedience. In the moral confusion, officers began to see their primary obligation as towards their own men rather than the state. At the same time, news leaking out of what the army had done in Algiers began to turn French liberal and centre opinion against the war. From 1957 onward, many Frenchmen came to regard Algerian independence, however distasteful, as preferable to the total corruption of the French public conscience. Thus the demand for the restoration of political control of the war -- including negotiations with the FLN -- intensified just as the French army was, as it believed, winning by asserting its independence.This irreconcilable conflict produced the explosion of May 1958 which collapsed the Fourth Republic and returned de Gaulle to power. Record adds:
For democracies, the strategy of “barbarism” against the weaker side’s noncombatant social and political support base is neither morally acceptable nor, over time, politically sustainable. Since 1945, wars against colonial or ex-colonial peoples have become increasingly unacceptable to most democratic states’ political and moral sensibilities. Merom says that “what fails democracies in small wars is the interaction of sensitivity to casualties, repugnance to brutal military behavior, and commitment to democratic life.” Democracies fail in small wars because, more specifically, they are unable to resolve three related dilemmas: “how to reconcile the humanitarian values of a portion of the educated class with the brutal requirements of counterinsurgency warfare, ... how to find a domestically acceptable trade-off between brutality and sacrifice, [and] how to preserve support for the war without undermining the democratic order.”Dictatorships, of course, have no such constraint. And insurgents seem instinctively to grasp this weakness in their democratic foes. Record introduces Robert Pape's landmark study of suicide terrorism from 1980 through 2003, which speculated that suicide terrorism, like guerrilla warfare, is “a strategy of coercion, a means to compel a target government to change policy.” It is felt to be especially effective against democracies, Record notes, for three reasons:
First, democracies “are thought to be especially vulnerable to coercive punishment.” Their threshold of intolerable pain is lower than that of dictatorships. Second, democracies are believed to be more restrained than authoritarian regimes in their use of force, especially against noncombatants. “Democracies are widely perceived as less likely to harm civilians, and no democratic regime has committed genocide in the twentieth century.” Third, “suicide attacks may also be harder to organize or publicize in authoritarian police states.”This dispassionate but deeply disturbing set of observations opens up an important discussion we as a nation ought to be having, but which can't seem to advance past the salvos of "Chickenhawk!" and "Defeatist!"
If, for all our ability to beat up anyone's nation-state armed forces, we're a musclebound weakling when it comes to insurgencies, we have a problem. All of us, the smug left included, because as Michael Moore pointed out in his perverse way, the 9-11 hijackers didn't take an account of who loved Bush and who hated him in those skyscrapers or on those luckless jets.
["If someone did this to get back at Bush, then they did so by killing thousands of people who did not vote for him! Boston, New York, DC, and the planes' destination of California -- these were places that voted against Bush!" The quote originally was posted as a "Mike's Message" on Moore's website on Sept. 12, but was removed not long after.]
And every time the Americans make a military display, then pull back rather than bringing down the hammer, as they did in Fallujah in April 2004, the jihadis surge. They make sure the message gets through: We defeated the infidel Marines. We are strong, they are weak. And when they do so they draw power, they suck in thousands of young men with their mirage of victory. And more blood and carnage follows.
The image of America pulling back from a fight is what inspired bin Laden in the first place:"After leaving Afghanistan, the Muslim fighters headed for Somalia and prepared for a long battle, thinking that the Americans were like the Russians. The youth were surprised at the low morale of the American soldiers and realized more than before that the American soldier was a paper tiger and after a few blows ran in defeat. And America forgot all the hoopla and media propaganda ... about being the world leader and the leader of the New World Order, and after a few blows they forgot about this title and left, dragging their corpses and their shameful defeat."And ... well, I'll let the interviewer tell the rest of the story:
The Somalia operation, in some ways, made bin Laden. During the Afghan war, the CIA had been very aware of him (although the agency now insists it never "controlled" him), but in Somalia, bin Laden had taken a swing at the biggest kid in the school yard and given him a black eye.This is no secret. CNN's Jeff Greenfield, for example, has connect the same three dots:
It began as a peacekeeping mission in March, 1983. U.S. Marines were sent to Lebanon to try to stop a bloody civil war. Seven months later, 20 years ago today, a massive truck bomb blew up the Marine barracks in Beirut, killing 241 U.S. servicemen -- the worst single-day loss of life for the American military since Korea.And it may be about to happen again, in Iraq. According to one article, American troops in Mosul suddenly, ominously, found they were being ignored once the talk of a U.S. drawdown began to pick up. Insurgents are ignoring the Americans, and working hard to intimidate civilian leaders, so that the jihadis will have the authority when the Americans go.Grim as the news was, it was, in part, overshadowed by the U.S. invasion of Grenada two days later, to overthrow a hard-left pro-Cuban government.
And when President Reagan ordered the Marines to leave Lebanon in January, 1984, not many Americans paid attention.
But by some accounts, others did pay attention. That terrorist act of 20 years ago may have helped to convince some of America's adversaries that the United States, for all of its might, was vulnerable, that heavy losses could be inflicted upon it at a relatively low price.
After all, the reasoning went, the U.S. had lost a war in Vietnam, not because it was militarily weak, but because it did not have the political will to bear the costs. And over the years, these adversaries seemed to take heart from what they saw as American weakness, from what the U.S. did not do when it left Saddam Hussein in power after the first Gulf War, when it pulled troops out of Somalia in 1993 after 18 Americans were killed -- the Black Hawk down incident -- when it failed to strike hard after the 1996 Khobar Towers bombing or the 1998 embassy bombings in Africa that killed 19 Americans, or the attack in 2000 on the USS Cole that left 17 dead.
That history may have been what Osama bin Laden had in mind when he said, three months after 9/11: "When people see a strong horse and a weak horse, by nature they will like the strong horse." Indeed, one of the principle arguments made for American military action in Afghanistan and in Iraq was that the U.S. had to prove by direct action that America was not a weak horse, that al Qaeda and its allies were misreading America's resolve. If that's true, that Beirut bombing of 20 years ago may have been where that miscalculation began.
"They've realized we're not going to be here forever," [Capt. Pat] Flynn said. "It's a waiting game, and they can wait us out."It happened once before in Iraq, in April 2004, as the Marines were poised to clear the terrorists from the rat-warren of Fallujah. No military force in history has taken greater care to pick out the bad guys who embed themselves in a civilian population. It is chiefly what sets apart the 21st century military from the 20th century version, embodied still by the Russian army. Visit the ruins of Grozny, if you doubt it.
Al Arabiya and Al Jazeera television networks, reaching hundreds of millions of Arabs and more trusted in Iraq than the U.S.-funded Al Iraqiya, had learned to steer a careful berth around criticism of autocratic Arab regimes. But both were fierce about Israel and America. They had a working relationship with the insurgents; getting tips about attacks on convoys and showing up in time to film the dead Americans.
In the first week of April 2004, insurgents invited Al Jazeera reporter Ahmed Mansour and his crew into Fallujah, and scenes from the Fallujah hospital flooded Arab households for hour after hour for days on end: dead, bleeding, maimed bodies. Wails, sobs, screams. "Most poignant were the pictures Jazeera ran of babies, one after another, all calm, frail, and pitiful in the repose of death," Bing West wrote in his account of the Fallujah battles, "No True Glory" [p.91]. "Where, how, or when they died was not attributed. The viewer assumed all the infants were killed by the Marines in Fallujah. The baby pictures would bring tears from a rock."
The public outcry that ensued in Iraq was a spark that threatened to send months of pent up frustration up in flames. Even British allies complained about "heavy-handed" American tactics.
Western journalists couldn't get into the city without approval from the insurgents. Those embedded with the embattled Marines did not report anything that could jibe with the lurid tales of widespread carnage in the city. But the world wasn't listening to them. It was watching Al Jazeera's images on TV. Massive civilian casualties became the accepted topos of Fallujah. The figure arrived at, by some murky calculation based on quotes in the Arab press from doctors, was more than 600 dead and 1,000 wounded. The actual figure, it turns out, likely was less than half that. But the White House, the Pentagon, the Coalition Provisional Authority let the lies pass. The Marines had the capability to drive the insurgents out of Fallujah, as they eventually did in November, but in April, as Marine Lt. Gen. Conway put it, "Al Jazeera kicked our butts."
The consequences, if we repeat this on a nationwide scale in Iraq, would be disaster beyond measure.
When President Bush asks "all Americans to hold their elected leaders to account and demand a debate that brings credit to our democracy, not comfort to our adversaries," the Democrats scream bloody murder. That's a mistake. Whatever his political motives, or his own party's defects, the words here are sound:"There is a difference between responsible and irresponsible debate and it's even more important to conduct this debate responsibly when American troops are risking their lives overseas."Sure, it's still a free country, and you can say anything. But just because you can say anything doesn't mean you ought to. Especially if you aspire to be treated as a serious political leader in wartime by the American people.
Record cites Marine Corps small-war expert Thomas X. Hammes: Though war against an unconventional enemy “is the only kind of war America has ever lost,” the Defense Department “has largely ignored unconventional warfare. As the only Goliath in the world, we should be worried that the world’s Davids have found a sling and stone that work. Yet the internal DOD debate has largely ignored this striking difference between the outcomes of conventional and unconventional warfare.”
Perhaps Iraq was a tragic wrong turn for America in the war on Islamist terrorism. I don't believe so at all -- though the idea was better than the execution -- but it's a debate we can and should have. But in this moment, that inquiry isn't the most dire problem we ought to be working to solve. Some people act as though it's the only issue.
If the current Republican leadership is devoid of creative thinking and the will-power to lead America seriously through a long war, and the Democrats refuse to acknowledge the problem entirely, where do we turn?
Start by looking for someone who can say, "We might lose in Iraq," and who says it with a frown, not a smile.
[Edited by author, 01/14/05 to indicate a chunk of quoted material inadvertently unattributed in the original post.]
"The Spartans thought it over. If they fought the women and won, there would be no honor in it, only shame. If they fought women and somehow lost, how much worse the shame would be! In the end they gave up and went home."
This is the crux of the problem, and you can see it everywhere even today, from Chechnya to the West Bank to South America. This was a great post but we need to stop a minute and seperate the practice of war from what victory means. War is a means to an end, not an end in itself. In many respects, it is a spectator sport, and much civic and individual pride is wrapped up in it. That is why professional militaries grind themselves down on insurgencies like a saw on a piece of granite. All the things that make a successful military machine mighty in a conventional war- discipline, espirit de corps, honor- are either betrayed or worn away by fighting the 'weak'. Witness the suicide rates in the Nazi concentration camps, by the time the camps were liberated the guards were drunken, sadistic, broken, suicidal or all of the above. Anything but true soldiers.
So that brings us to Iraq. It is true, if our Interest depends on 'defeating' this insurgency militarilly- ie forcing our will upon them until they cry for surrender and pardon, we are probably doomed. But that paradigm is strong in our national consciousness. If no-one is signing treaties on a battleship deck and there are no parades at the end of the day, something has gone horribly wrong. Right?
Not necessarilly. It is critical that we step back and put down our martial pride for a moment. What does victory really mean to us? What is our Interest? There are counterexamples of less successful insurgencies. The British anti-communist campaign in Malaya during the 50s is the text book. The Brits fought with the Malayans with the promise that when the commies were broken they would leave. They kept their word. The flags were lowered, the Brits left, and it was called victory. Which it was. Now that obviously doesnt mean dropping the spear in the middle of the battle, but it does mean victory doesnt look like Appomattox in these situations.
Let the insurgents wait us out. Thats fine. The question is what comes next? A democratic Iraq with a well trained, experienced, and equipped central army is an entirely different animal, particularly if we are actively supporting them in different ways. It wasnt the man in the black pajamas that took Saigon in the end. It was Soviet built NVA armored divisions rolling over SV units out of supplies (cut off by the United States Congress) that took South Vietnam in the end. We must learn from that lesson. The right must conceed that we cant kill this insurgency and its not going to go away. The left mustnt be allowed to undermine our support for the democratic alternative.
Agree with Mark Buehner, and remember there is another dimension.
Bin Laden (and others) argue (and cite Democrats defeatism) that attacking the US domestically to cause mass casualties undermines the legitimacy of the state (it cannot protect people domestically) and causes collapse and the advent of the Caliphate.
Ahmadinejad has said essentially the same thing, as Khomeni before him.
The danger is that Islamic states and terrorist organizations see success against very weak, failed Western States such as France (defeated essentially in WWI, defeated massively in WWII, Vietnam) or Post-Soviet Russia, and pencil in that weakness to the US. Or other nations.
If the Algerians had say, flown airliners into the Eiffel Tower, Louvre, and National Assembly and so on, with the stated intention of "destroying" France as it existed as a nation, absent US Superpower leashes the French would have allowed the Army to do whatever it wished to destroy the FLN, even if it meant killing most or all of the Algerians. Only by allowing the French a way out did the FLN make the game not worth the candle.
Unfortunately we are fighting in Iraq the same people who pulled off 9/11 and continue to plan greater scale attacks. Should they succeed with another Tet type offensive, by co-ordinating the murder of masses of Americans with military action in Iraq, two things would happen.
One, the US military would slaughter the terrorists in Iraq since the firepower advantage is many orders of magnitude disparate. Two, the arugments that the defeatists and those arguing that "we should just go home" falls away and the only issue is how serious we can get about killing people on a massive, Tokyo, Dresden, and Hiroshima scale.
"Winning" against an enemy by betting you can manipulate him into not using all his strength against you is a dangerous game. Forrest might have gotten lots more Union soldiers killed, but the only outcome at that point would have been mass reprisals or simply concentration camps for White Southerners. Something Lee and the others understood quite well. The Republicans were radicalized at that point, as well as most of the North, and the Dems had lost clout with Copperhead sentiments attached to the loser.
The greatest Danger Democrats encourage is another 9/11 "plus" that can be done in any number of ways without recourse to nuclear weapons. The plot in Italy broken up by wiretapping (Algerians connected to Al Qaeda) planned a co-ordinated wave of terror aimed at killing more than 3,000 Americans. Domestically if we suffer another attack the temptation to simply start the killing on an industrial scale and put the fear of the US Military into our enemies will be overwhelming.
Yes the Media and Hollywood are hostile to fundamental values of decency, country, the average man. Seen in the Rolling Stone article about Larry Wachowski (the man behind the Matrix movies and total freak-show). However politically, when average Americans start dying again the intense pressure will not to be to surrender, but to kill on a greater scale no enemy can match.
It is my view this dynamic makes the journey from a conflict like the Moro Insurgency to WWII style bombings a matter of weeks if our enemies gamble too much on Democrat Defeatism.
#2 Jim,
""Winning" against an enemy by betting you can manipulate him into not using all his strength against you is a dangerous game."
That is the opposite of the game being played. Suckering the US into massive retaliation would surely isolate the US from the rest of the world, especialy Europe.
Russia hasn't been able to control Chechniya, China and India are surely going to sit out a war between muslims and the West. North and South Korea are geographically separated by China.
Syria,Eygpt,Turkey,Iran and Pakistan all have larger Armies than any European Country. (Like the French,English and Germans would ever actually come to each others aid).
Isolate the US from Europe and "moderate" Middle Eastern Leaders. The only country with a chance of stopping AlQueda from rolling thru the Middle East and Europe would be Pakistan. Pakistan is struggling with AlQueda, despite having the worlds 7th Largest Army.
The only Democrat Defeatists I see around are those who refuse to speak in the face of an administration given to grandstand tactics which ask troops to "stay the course" while there is no legal reason for US involvement in the invasion of a foreign land. Terrorism will only increase while we fail to root out the problems in our own back yard among those who keep exploiting others and take a narrow religious view of world problems. Sparta is hardly a good precedent for understanding modern warfare or international relations. Testosterone does't win wars, commitment and understanding, combined with radical respect for one's adversaries does. This*KILLING ON ANY SCALE WHATSOEVER IS WRONG.*This Haven't we had enough experience with Concentration camps? The Civil War had both Andersonville and Hellmira. We herded Native Americans onto reservations and wonder why they have problems in "White" society. No reparations will ever rectify our history of slavery. Our jails and prisons house more of our population than any other nation in the world, not to mention our record of sanctioned murder called capital punishment. We'd go a long way in winning a war if some of our leaders were actually held legally accountable and removed from public office.
Well Albert. Slavery is still popular among some groups of muslims. They say it is Koranically justified.
Any ideas on what to do about it? Other than killing of course. Perhaps sufficiently vigorous hand wringing?
Sudan?
I don't see a whole lot of thread-substantive content here, Albert Jungers. But some people I know have started a betting pool on whether or not you can actually utter that talking-point-laden spiel in one breath.
This is what some call a "drive-by", ladies and gentlemen, and though I don't have any official standing here at WoC I hope Albert's post can serve as a shining example of same, at least in our memories if not in this thread.
Way to go, Mr. Jungers. Stand tall.
Albert can say that because the war he wants them to fight is against the American Republicans, not al-Qaeda. And the rest of his screed tracks with that perfectly - and makes his loathing of America crystal clear.
Hitchens is wrong. In this war, the broad core of the left is not neutral. America is the only enemy it knows, or can see. Well, maybe the Jews now and then... and really, isn't it the same thing anyway with all those Zionists running the US government?
The Euroleft takes up collections for Islamist paramilitary death squads in Iraq. Cindy Sheehan openly supports the terrorists who killed her son, while cynically trading on his death as her source of moral credibility and widespread lionization by the liberal left - and refers to "occupied New Orleans" in the wake of Katrina.
"America out of America" is, in fact, what the credo boils down to. Albert catches it perfectly: America is illegitimate, therefore nothing done in its defense is justified.
The logical endpoint of such a policy is liquidation.
"But we love America." Yes, just as every abusive parent "loves" their child. Exposing this, consistently, and punishing those that shelter and comfort it, consistently, so that they pay a high political price, consistently - that is the only thing that will force this carefully cultivated hate to recede into the obscurity it deserves.
"Testosterone does't win wars, commitment and understanding, combined with radical respect for one's adversaries does."
That this is an utterly empty slogan designed solely as a method of inducing American defeat as part of Albert's own War on America is easily demonstrated. Does the speaker practice this notion when it comes to, say, Republicans, evangelical Christians, et. al.?
And of course, Albert - like 99% of his fellows - does not. As the saying goes:
"They're not anti-war, just on the other side."
There is very little "loyal" in this opposition. Welcome to the Copperhead Democrats, version 2.0 - and recall that the institution v1.0 went on to enable was, in fact, the Ku Klux Klan. Same M.O. this time, different Klan.
N.M., reading through the whole Albertine rant was worth it for the sake of M.Simon's gob-stopping 20-words-or-less retort.
Ask Chief Joseph if this is generally true of Americans.
There should be another real big caveat here:
When the objective of the weaker party is destruction of the stronger party, the one who is destroyed is rarely the stronger party.
Lee Harris said on this point:
Americans are NOT Europeans.
"Nuke them all from orbit - it's the only way to be sure." The worst case for Americans is the moral consequences to us of having to reduce much of the rest of the world to subsidence level agriculture to remain secure at home. America has the power to do that to as much, up to all, of the rest of the world if necessary. The rest of the world, following the USSR's collapse, cannot do that to America. The worst of the rest of the world is what will happen to them if we decide this is necessary. The objective of American policy should be to maintain our security at home with less drastic means and, if that fails, to prepare the American people for the moral consequences of genocide.
We'll learn this is not idle speculation if President Bush lets Iran's mullahs openly possess nuclear weapons.
Europe's population is shrinking rapidly. Outside of muslim immigrants, there will be precious few genuine europeans left in a few generations. The same is true for Russia. A vanishing population is not a group whose sensibilities should be seriously considered here.
China is too weak to conquer Taiwan, much less India, Japan, South Korea, or Siberia. China's economy rests on quicksand, and it has its hands full with a restive population.
So the only groups worth considering here are first, the good guys--us--and the bad guys, the alliance of leftists with the relgious terrorists. Since the bad guys are most assuredly bad, their point of view is irrelevant. Therefore, we--the good guys--must do what is necessary to de-menace the parts of the world we care about.
We have not yet conquered, or entered with significant ground forces, any country against the will of most of its people.
Which means lefty fantasies about us losing are mere fantasies.
At some point we'll go into what had been Saudi Arabia to secure the oil fields and oil extraction/transportation infrastructure. That area seems to have a majority Shiite population.
But at the same time the Persian Gulf oil shiekdoms and kingdoms will be overrun by Sunni refugees fleeing the graveyard that had been the Wahabbi-controlled areas of Saudi Arabia. Maintaining order in the Persian Gulf coastal areas, and protecting those from Wahabbi fanatic raids from inland areas, will be a significant challenge to American ground forces.
Syria will be interesting too.
At that point our ground force levels will be busting the budget fantasies of the Bush and successor administrations. And the American people will for real grow impatient.
If we are then attacked with WMD at home, our response would likely be masssively lethal and escalate rapidly. Lefty fantasies might then be realized, though they won't appreciate what happens to them at home.
Junger your beyond help.
I do disagree with this artcle thou. I dont believe Democracy is weak and doesnt have the stomach to do what has to be done. After all the reason why the US didnt nuke Tokyo in WW2 is not out of compassion its that Tokyo was fire bombed killing more civilians in one night than I think the US has killed in all the wars since then and the US population didnt even flinch. The current problem with democracy is not democracy it is that democracy is not one dictators will its the will of millions that is democracy's strength and weakness. By that I mean in WW2 the media was on the US side and they explained and drove home the point to the millions that we must win making the will strong of the millions making things like Dresdon or Tokyo acceptable becuase we must win. In WW2 thier wasnt complaints about the US troops executing German SOF in the battle of the buldge, or the carpet bombing of french cities in normandy were german forces were in defence. The problem since then has been that the LLL's who control the media no longer do thier part they consider themselves world citizens (they refused after 9-11 to wear US lapels would damage their impartiality WTF) the technology has changed and the gov and military has not adapted instead just allowed the media to run free. No I am not saying we should gov control the media just that the gov and military should realize todays world the media no longer chooses sides they are nuetral at best against at worst so it is up to the gov leaders and the military to adapt and fight on the media front. The leaders should force coverage the military should limit the information they give out and force the media to present it through thier people on the media. The military should have reps not retired generals on every station debating the war not politics the war the politics are for polititians. 4th gen warfare has a media front if you dont show up to the front you will be flanked adapt and fight. Democracy and the american people have the will its just up to the polititians and the military to get out on the media front counter our enemies and rally the will then keep it rallied. I have been noticing some of this from the military even thou our LLL's are screaming propoganda it must continue and spread in scope and amount. The common american has common sence talk to him level with him give him the damm score straight up and the heart will be thier.
Also I believe one of the strongest advantages the insurgents have is impression's they form in the media like the impression that the terrorist fight to the death even thou their leaders are more often than not captured alive. The impression they will never end that it will just always continue we cant kill them all. The impression that somehow Iraqi insurgents are invulneralbe super soldgiers while Iraqi US supporters are hopeless bumbling idiots and cowards WTF that is a oxymoron and no one calls the "experts" on this. Impressions are changable and I think we should use that to our advantage we should force the impression on our enemy that we will not ever lose that our power is unlimited and our will to win is unlimited that no matter how much the terrorist turn up the heat the more power we exert always winning. In short the impression needs to be made that no matter how much they attack US it only results in more horrible counter attack the more they turn up the heat the more we turn it up always staying above thier temp. Falluja was a huge mistake it gave the terrorist the impression we didnt have the will to do whatever to win they saw our limit, if Bush had gotten on TV and simple said "we have them trapped in Falluja they are hiding behind civilians it is going to be a horrible battle but we will not lose we cannot lose at any cost we must win I regret to say that in the next few days the civilians being held around the terrorist will probably be killed in the attack enmass but we cannot lose we must win" then proceded to level the city and force victory. Yes Aljizz would have screamed yes the LLL's would have but the terrorist and thier supporters would have walked away with the knowledge that the US will not lose at any cost and that cost will always be a magnitude higher on thier people. The world is a dirty place war is horrible and brutal sometimes things must be done. Just as the enemy shows us their is no limit to thier will to win we should show them the same the only difference is our power can totaly eliminate them in full and all who are near them while they can never even hope for such against US this should be openly spoken. Our leaders should be openly debateing how if we are hit with WMD we wont crumble but unleash a retribution that is un-imaginable wether we mean it or not it needs to be said loud from the top so the enemy understand war with the Big Satan is nothing more than suicide not just for them but all of thier people. Impression it is a sad fact that I believe the impression that we torture, the impression that we nearly bombed Falluja into the ground in part 2 the impression that America is the Big Satan does more good than bad for our war effort. I think we should be playing on the colonial idea as well we should be trying to make a Iraqi gov while at the same time pumping the oil out and taking the spoils letting the enemy know that we can and will afford to be in Iraq forever if nessecary (go to aljizz they have done article's openly declaring that Iraq is destroying our economy and we cant keep the battle rolling). I dont really mean that we should go out and be blood thirsty but Impression is everything in the media world of today and we should play to the impression of US being the Big Satan and give the enemy the impression that we are maybe evil but we have enough power and evil will to win every battle every war and just make our enemy pay a hopeless price.
We could turn Aljizz's propoganda to our favor, Fear is powerfull we dont need our enemy to love US or even like US we just need them to fear US enough to not want to try US. Aljizz has gone to great lengths to demonize US use it.
In short it's not Democracy's fault its our leadership's fault for not seeing the 4th gen battlefield of the Media and adapting to fight on that front. The media has not been a US ally since WW2. The media front is just mearly a battlefield that so far we have made no attempt to fight on while our enemy foreign and domestic control the field at will.
And about the LLL's while some things are just words thats fine but we do have sedition laws and during war they should be upheld like when guys like Belaphonte go to Venezuala and at a freekin "new socialist revolution" rally get up and stand side by side with a self proclaimed enemy of the US attacking the US gov yeah that should at the minimum get him a pernamently revoked US citizenship. I dont mind these wako's self hating LLL's who want to bring this nation down hating US I just want their citizenship revoked and thier ability to ever set foot in the US turf banned pernamently. Let them go to the other side were the grass is so green and get some and leave us little Capitlaist Democratic God Country Family freaks alone. The leakers are Treasonist straight up and the Deans's and Kerry's and Murtha's should be attacked as cowards and shamed the leadership should be calling them out as that no war is hopeless and that we can win if we dont turn coward we may have to turn up the heat but we can win, this the people would understand and it should be pouned in the public square the loose coments of the LLL's are not criminal but they should be treated as insane cowards who are just unfit for leadership that if they cant see how america can defeat some guys with ak 47's and a death wish who wish to kill all of US here and there how can they lead our nation in a world of powerfull nations. Shame is another powerfull tool albiet not nice but in war the nice should be checked at the door before you even enter the game.
The openess of a Democracy will mean that a democracy will always be at a disadvantage when fighting any war.
The media has always been a major player in how war is viewed (I recall reading negative reports about the civil war.) The only diffeerence now is the speed the news can be spread and the variety of sources.
The media will be the death of us because on the whole we are losing the media war.
Mark: You miss the most important aspect of the Brits fighting the Malayan Insurgency. Most of the communist insurgents were of Chinese extraction.
There is a difference in appearance between Malays, Indians, and the Chinese. The Brits could attack a minority within Malaya, one that had little support from the majority.
That there were cultural differances as well didn't help the cause.
I would also suggest that the Malays had been promised independence before the height of the emergency. The communists wanted to have a place at the table.
It is my understanding that the Brits Malay techniques were tried in Viet-Nam with little success. The reason, the Vietnamese, unlike the Malays, Chinese and Indians in Malaya, come from the same Asian background.
C-Low,
Please learn to use punctuation or STOP POSTING.
Your ideas seem to be good, but your POSTS are ALWAYS unreadable, run-together garbage
C-Low,
Let me moderate that last statement. You have good ideas and SOME punctuation. The problem is that you DO NOT USE paragraphs.
You just use UNTREADABLE "BLOBS" of whatever. Who can tell what it is? It could even be quite intelligent, but NOT if it cannot be read.
Thank you!
I don't think terrorism or militant Islam are anywhere near the threat to America that you seem to think it is.*
"Terrorist acts" doesn't even make it onto a list of the top 20+ causes of death for people around the world.
More people died as a result of Katrina than 9/11.
This is not the sole measure of impact on society, of course, but I think you get my point.
In my view, elevating the importance or danger of terrorism is itself a threat to our ability to go on living our lives in peace, free from constant (and wildy displaced) fear of death or destruction.
----
*You'll notice I did not say that "terrorism is NOT a threat" to Americans.
Andy,
I grow more thankful daily that you are not making our security policy.
Charles Im working on it English has always been my weak spot I barley and I mean barley got by in school I just couldnt get into it.
I think Andy and Junger have spoken with more sense and depth than the tough realists who mock them.
Iraqis say my brother and I against my cousin, my cousin and I against the member of another clan, etc....
The tough realists are just a step removed. My fellow rich American and I against anyone who would ask why do you deserve so much of the world's resources?
The real question is when will we treat our fellow humans with decency. When will we care about them?
Bruehner, Rockford, and Mr President, winning your gang war is consuming your thoughts, efforts, and souls.
You admire Rommel more than you do Gandhi, or King.
Wake up from your nightmare.
C-Low,
Try limiting your paragraphs to only two or three sentences. That alone would make them much more readable.
Andy,
It is not the threat posed today that is worrysome.
After all was a certain Austrian corporal a threat to world peace in 1935? The idea was laughable. The dreams enunciated were those of a mad man.
We hear echos of those dreams in 2006 and Americans, knowing their history, are concerned.
A more bellicose spirit on the part of the Euros in 1936 might have saved millions of lives lost by 1946.
So tell me Andy how do I learn to be unafraid of the oncoming train?
The Israelis did a great service to the world bombing Saddam's French supplied nuclear reactor. Is that the way to deal with Iran? Or should we wait until Iran actually starts lobbing nuclear weapons?
Davod,
Read Giap and learn your Vietnam history. After Tet the insurgency was a spent force. By 1972 the South was on its own.
The South fell to NVA divisions in 1975. Not the 'Cong insurgency. And why did it fall? Our Democrat Congress of the time refused to aid the South (as promised) when the North attacked.
It ain't what we know that hurts us. It is what we know that ain't so.
to prepare the American people for the moral consequences of genocide.
Mr. Holsinger is rather apocalyptic as usual, but it's a pertinent post.
Two points however - Given the magnitude of the power imbalance, do you really think there's any possibility of the population being persuaded of the necessity of genocide in order to preserve the nation? I suspect that Israel is under much greater stress than the USA ever will be, and it certainly hasn't driven the Palestinians into the sea, although the ability has always been there.
Secondly, given that the willingness to accept a genocide scenario might well require the liquidation of a significant section of the American population who don't see the necessity of a "permanent solution", do you think there'd be any possibility of America remaining a democracy?
It would seem to me that only a dictatorship would manage the draconian action necessary.
#21
"So tell me Andy how do I learn to be unafraid of the oncoming train?"
I will excersise the better part of Valor and avoid responding to this in the snarky manner that it begs. I will, however, suggest you try to balance a rational prediction of the risk (likelihood+harm) of terrrorism agains many, many other issues that also can harm us and that the President can ACTUALLY do something to "protect" us from.
Note that you are more likely to die of cancer or influenza than terrorism. Environmental carcinogens (e.g., methylmercury emissions from coal-fueled power plants) are a known cause of cancer in humans. Why not close all such plants or mandate zero-emmissions? Economic implact must be taken into account, so generally people agree that a balance must be struck between "acceptable" admission levels and the economic burden imposed by adhering to them.
To fight terrrorism, Bush is arguing that civil liberties must be restricted, and his presidential powers expanded. In order for people to believe this equation is balanced, they must judge terrorism to be a very grave threat indeed, because the sacrifices that he is claiming we need to make are very great.
This doesn't wash in my view. I do not think the end justifies the means by a long stretch.
Furthermore, to prove me wrong about this, the damage and destructiveness of terrorist acts would need to increase substantially, which is clearly something I do not wish for. So you can see how this line of thinking can easily put people like you and Robin Roberts and other's who are already convinced of the severity of the threat into the position of supporting another terrorist attack, to "prove your case". Because current metrics simply to not support your view, and I doubt even that you can find a rational forecast of terrorist activity that predicts it ever will.
Tom West,
If we get there (which IMO will happen if President Bush lets Iran's mullah regime openly possess nuclear weapons), the objective of genocide will not be preserving the nation. The U.S. is just too bloody big.
It will be to minimize the fatalities at home. At that point the only choice will be who dies. The U.S. will use all its power to make it them rather than us. And to hell with innocent lives.
I would much rather we not get there.
We will absolutely, positively, know which it will be within twelve months. Then it will just be a question of waiting for nuclear escalation to begin. How it will start, beyond Iran openly having nuclear weapons, is unknown.
But I know how it will end.
One of the prices will be our freedom at home. Necessary domestic security measures will ensure that.
Andy,
The claim that statistical analysis establishes the level of threat in the future is not difficult to debunk.
Your mentality seems to be that, as an example, since Aum Shinriko cult managed to only kill a dozen and a half people with their nerve gas attack, then the statistics prove that they never will be able to kill more than that and one can accept that level of threat. Since the nerve gas attack only managed to kill a score of people, there is no point is adopting policies to deal with the threat of terrorist deployed WMD that only might kill thousands, tens of thousands if not hundreds of thousands.
The logical disconnect ought to be obvious even to you. It is to M.Simon, Tom Holsinger, myself and many many others.
RR;
What is obvious is that you have purposefully mis-read my comments in an effort to dismiss them as illogical. I know it is easier to attempt to reduce opposing viewpoints to a simpler form in order to argue against them, but I would suggest that in the future you at least make a reasonable effort to understand what it is you are arguing about.
"The claim that statistical analysis establishes the level of threat in the future is not difficult to debunk."
If you are arguing that it is difficult to predict the future, you are right. If you are saying it is not possible to apply analytical tools to reduce the number of possible outcomes, however, you are wrong. Economists and governments routinely apply these in an effort to do just that for many aspects of human behavior. They are especially necessary when making decisions about how to allocate a finite amount of resources to any particular problem...exactly our current situation.
Statistical analysis is just one of the tools available, and as I said in #16 and #24 above, you’ll see that I pointed out that one metric alone is not sufficient for judging risk.
The flaw in your argument is in claiming that I believe a purely statistical (numerical) measure of terrorism's impact is sufficient, but even still you're example of Aum Shunrikyo is flawed because no credible analysis would be based on a single event. In addition, I'm quite sure a credible calculation can be made for this event that varies a number of parameters (chance and otherwise) that existed on that day that would result in much higher (hypothetical) casualty figures.
So my follow up question to you is that if you are skeptical of analytical approaches, which metric do you think we should rely on in predicting the harm that terrorist might cause us in the future? Because for Bush's policies to be defended, as you are doing, you must demonstrate that it is reasonable to believe that the threat is high enough to justify the expenditures, which in this case I would define as monetary, human, and political.
Please feel free to attempt to do so.
Point of information:
Those who assume it will take Iran's mullah regime years to make and test their own weapons-grade fissonables assume that those will be cooked from scratch.
They won't be. Iran has purchased pre-enriched, but not yet weapons-grade, fissionables from a variety of sources - North Korea, Pakistan, China, and Russia. Those will drastically shorten the period for the mullahs to produce their own nukes.
IMO the mullahs have also purchased ready-to-use fissionable triggers from North Korea. The mullahs might have already fashioned those into working nuclear weapons (IMO that has happened). They have purchased unuseable ex-Soviet nuclear weapons, whose triggers have decayed into inability to produce a nuclear detonation, from nations of the former USSR, possibly including Russia.
The latter cannot be effectively re-packed with new weapons-grade fissionable triggers for technical reasons I've mentioned earlier in other threads, but the non-functional ex-Soviet nukes can and have dramatically shortened the learning curve for Iranian technicians.
IMO Iran has a few working nuclear weapons now, from North Korea, and will have the first of its locally produced nuclear weapons ready this year, whose weapons-grade fissionable triggers had been quickly cooked from pre-enriched fissionables purchased abroad.
There will also be a steady production line for Iranian nukes, with the weapons-grade fissionable "pipeline" filled initially with those pre-enriched fissionables, and eventually by locally made fissionables.
The press & media stories you are hearing about it taking the mullahs years to make their own nukes are based entirely on the known time to cook their own fissionables from scratch, i.e., those are true as far as they go. But they ignore the pre-enriched purchases and the effects of those.
In support of Tom Holsinger's assertions above, this information is open source. See NTI (Nuclear Threat Initiative) paying particular attention to 1999 to the present.
The question is not whether they have the ability to produce a nuclear weapon sooner: they do. The only remaining question is whether they have the intent to do so and the explanations that the Iranians have given for their actions are so nonsensical that IMO the only prudent conclusion is that they do.
ElBaradei has just said that Iran may be months from a homegrown nuclear weapon.
Dave,
That was conditional upon Iran having the locally produced weapons-grade fissionables.
Andy,
I think the problem I am having with your analysis is that you equate all deaths as equal: they are not. There is a substantial difference between my dying at 80 from cancer caused by a distant coal plant, and my dying at 37 from a terrorist aircraft rammed into a building. There is a substantial difference between my dying from an illness and my dying from a gunshot wound inflicted by someone robbing my house. And in both cases the difference is the same: destabilization.
Societally destabilizing deaths mean that my children will be worse off because the fabric of their society is weaker. The attacks of 9/11 were bad not just because they cost 3000 deaths and a large number of billions of dollars in economic losses, but because if we refused to stop the source of the attacks, more would certainly come. And the government, if unable or unwilling to defend, would be incapable of governing. (I'm a fan of the US; I want to see it succeed.)
The same kind of dynamic happens when gangs overrun and control an inner city: life gets worse for the future residents, because the government becomes incapable of defending, leaving the residents to try to survive in an anarchy or, worse yet, a criminal state.
So, yes, the government should work on long-term exposure to carcinogens, but that is hardly the threat that terrorism or crime are, even if more people die from the former than the latter.
Losing in Iraq.
From whom.
The fundamentalist Shiites.
They are our so called allies. You could kill every Sunni and you would still loose because you're not loosing against the Sunni's but against the findamentalist Shiites. It is in fact better that the Sunni's rebel because that give the US a change to give them more power for the near future when the US will leave Iraq.