I believe America should do practically nothing, unless it gets international consensus, which obviously won't happen, because the Chinese, just to begin with, won't allow it.

I want the Americans to stay out of it, because I think that getting into it would have to mean fighting, and in fighting I think the Americans would lose a big, ugly, costly war. The opposition in this case really is unbeatable. It is Arab, it is Muslim, it is Black, it is African, it is the array of states that would be making life as hard as possible for America and in effect for the victims of genocide ... And it is an irresponsible domestic opposition, which I am sure would include people attending that rally. With the first newspaper photographs of dead Black Sudanese and white American soldiers, they would pick up the race card offered and play it against their country, their soldiers, and again in effect against the victims of genocide. The result of that would be sure defeat.

Having assured the defeat of America and the triumph of genocidal, racist tribalism and the jihad mentality, they would say as "good people" that tolerance and the prevention of genocide were still good things, and they were proud to have stood up for them, but:

"Those ideas have both been damaged almost beyond repair by the arrogant, reckless, swaggering stupidity of this administration."

I'm not too much interested in what we have the "right" to do. We are the USA, the only superpower, and we're going to do whatever-the-hell we want and if anybody doesn't like it they can lump it. We don't have to follow the commonly accepted rules of war, we don't have to respect our treaties, we can invade anybody we want to, etc. If we decide to be good guys it's because we want to, not because there's anybody in the world who can make us.

But I get real uncomfortable when we decide we're going to make everybody in the world act like nice guys whether they want to or not. I don't think we're that strong. Trying for goals like that is one effective way to stop being a superpower.

You can't make a whole lot of guys act nice all the time unless you point guns at them all the time. The closest you can get to ending it is to kill them. But if it comes to "They weren't nice guys so we killed them all" that doesn't leave us as the good guys, exactly.

And if we go kill enough of the aggressors in darfur that they get real weak, their victims are likely to start killing them back. Ten years from now do you want to be killing the previous victims to stop them too?

So I figure as a general rule, when people are ethnic cleansing each other, look at what it would take for the victims to defend themselves. If they can't hope to defend themselves then try to help them evacuate and find them new homes. That's worked well for america in the past. When the french kicked out their huguenots they came here and we got the advantage of their special skills and strengths. Similarly for a lot of jews who got pushed out of one place or another.

And when the victims can fight it out given a few resources, we should look at giving them those resources. In Xugoslavia we saw the bad stuff going on and we said nobody should sell them weapons. But it turned out that one side got weapons from the armories and the other sides couldn't buy weapons. That made it worse. If they were fighting on an equal footing maybe they'd have eventually reached a stalemate and settled down. Or maybe one side would win. In either case things are better when people who don't want to live in a war zone have somewhere else to go.

Usually when we move in troops to prevent genocide we have other goals too. When we spend money and lives we want to get something out of it. Same with other countries. When foreign soldiers come in and officially the reason is to protect some people and punish others, there's likely other stuff going on that matters more. I don't know about any other reason we were in somalia, which might explain why we were so understrength.

So anyway, that's my take on it. When we see people getting mistreated, we can offer them a little help. Food, weapons, if those are enough to let them defend themselves. We might mention that if we see them mistreating the other guys too we're likely to stop helping them.

And if they can't defend themselves then we can offer them help finding a new home. I don't like it that sometimes ethnic cleansing works. But then, without it how much of the USA would still belong to the natives? How much of israel? How many greeks would have turkish blood without the mass rapes? England without the normans -- or the saxons? We've never gotten rid of it in the past and I doubt we're strong enough to get rid of it now. What we can do is give the victims whatever sort of aid they can best use.

As for "Never Again", it's getting increasingly clear that effectively the meaning there is "Never Again to Zionists".

We dont have to overthrow the govt in Khartoum to end the genocide in Darfur. We need to press the govt to allow a UN force in. If they dont, there are actions like a no fly zone that would help, much as they did in Iraqi Kurdistan in 1992. We should work with our allies as much as possible. We cant stop every bad thing that happens everywhere. Whats happening in Darfur isnt a garden variety bad thing. several hundred thousand are already, dead, and over 2 million more endangered. A campaign of rape, of village burning, of murder.

Never again indeed. At the DC rally a large part of the crowd WAS Jewish. Most, presumably, Zionist. And we meant never again to ANYONE.

I agree with David Blue on this. Whatever is done must be done by forces that don't include the U. S. There are other countries in the world that need to be stepping up to ensure security, particularly those with permanent seats on the UNSC. Putatively, that's what they're there for.

Declaring the airspace a no-fly zone would be a start. There should be rules of engagement that allow whatever force is there to disperse janjaweed militia camps. Or destroy them. And there need to be medical and civil defense volunteers sent into the area and forces to protect them.

But the U. S. (and Anglosphere generally) can't be the only adults on the planet.

Most especially there should be no mercenary forces sent in. I've seen some of that idiocy floating around the blogosphere (and even in the mainstream press) and in my view the cure would be worse than the disease.

I'm tired might as well start a flame fest. :)

1st. Blah Blah Blah That is all I ever hear from the remnants of the left. "Bullet to the head"? Yeah right ... then Join the US Military. The right out serves you at about 6 to 1. At one time there were armed liberals who would fight for the USA. Where are you now? And no crap about not believing in the War on Terror. Military service can be for a lifetime you know.

The latest poprep I could find online has some interesting reading. Useful for hitting people on the head when they start talking about the "stupid and confused and lied to and black and poor" that join the military.

2nd. Those ideas have both been damaged almost beyond repair by the arrogant, reckless, swaggering stupidity of this administration.

Yeah ... we get it ... you hate Bush. So damn what. What is really stupid is that people in this country really believe that propaganda. And probably can't name this war's Medal of Honor winner and what he did.

It is just pathetic that all people hear are the left's cries of I want to die! I want to die! rather then the stories of honor. People are seriously arguing if a movie about stopping terrorists is somehow WRONG.

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Actually, Yugoslavia isn't a bad example. People talk about the NATO intervention re: Kosovo, but forget there had also been a war with Croatia before that. How did that stop?

Among other things, the Germans came in and trained Croat forces, while the US and others saw to it that they were armed. Serb attacks, which had once been wildly one-sided affairs, began to bog down and even suffer reversals. Result: a peace treaty in time, and one that was largely self-enforcing.

"In Xugoslavia we saw the bad stuff going on and we said nobody should sell them weapons. But it turned out that one side got weapons from the armories and the other sides couldn't buy weapons. That made it worse. If they were fighting on an equal footing maybe they'd have eventually reached a stalemate and settled down."

A no-fly zone would be a decent idea, esp. if based in Chad. The Euros have the forces to handle that easily. If things need to be beefed up further, hire the mercenaries on behalf of Chad, which is now suffering incursions by Sudanese-backed forces.

#2 from J Thomas: "I get real uncomfortable when we decide we're going to make everybody in the world act like nice guys whether they want to or not. I don't think we're that strong."

Yup.

I would be for war if I thought we could win. African blood is as red as Australian blood, Black blood runs as read as white blood. But it is a question of strength.

#3 from liberalhawk: "We dont have to overthrow the govt in Khartoum to end the genocide in Darfur."

I'm sorry, but I think we would need to do a lot more than that. This is jihad genocide and tribal war, no mere matter of some Western-style state doing some bloody evil think that it thinks is in its interest. Just to intimidate some people in the capital or even to decapitate the state is barely even a good start.

#3 from liberalhawk: "Whats happening in Darfur isnt a garden variety bad thing. several hundred thousand are already, dead, and over 2 million more endangered. A campaign of rape, of village burning, of murder."

Yes.

It's total evil, absolute foulness. The victims are dying in large numbers, and more will die. The Janjaweed are, literally, the worst of men. Killing them and protecting their victims would be, to my way of thinking, not only virtuous but holy.

Too bad it's beyond our power. Somebody other than America and it's club of mostly English-speaking close friends would have to do this.

#3 from liberalhawk: "Never again indeed. At the DC rally a large part of the crowd WAS Jewish. Most, presumably, Zionist. And we meant never again to ANYONE."

I don't believe you.

My friends, Jewish and no-Jewish, went without any pause from lecturing me on gay rights, feminism and so on to participating in public protests to protect first the Taliban and then Saddam Hussein from American-led invasions. They would do the same to protect Iran, where gays are hanged just for being gay. Guaranteed.

The same kind of people would be at the Darfur rally. They will try to get America into a losing, hopeless war, and then they will betray the victims of the genocidal sadists like they have before, like they consistently do.

They don't care about the victims. They don't love their neighbours. They are playing a lying game. The reality of what happens to people because of their game doesn't interest them. They are not serious. These bitter years have proved it.

We cannot go to war without giving then an opportunity to play their game and beat us at the trivial - to them - cost of supporting sadistic, genocidal evil.

As soon as we actually lift a finger to save any victims, they will start politicking on racism, colonialism, hubris, warmongering, faulty intelligence, going to war on the basis of lies, and so on. In some cases they will already have switched from being for regime change in Iraq to being against it once someone was actually doing it, so turning coat again will not embarrass them. It's like a familiar dance step.

"Never again!" is just a step in this dance.

That's an important reason why so many have to be raped and plundered and tortured and mutilated and starved and killed. For the lying games of our friends.

We can't afford to lose to militant Islam, because its moral essence is the Janjaweed. We have to win. I'm sorry, but that's the bottom line.

Arrasmith:

I don't mind being flamed, but it would be nice if the flaming was connected in some way to what I wrote.

For the record, my dad was a 20 year army man, two tours in Vietnam, bronze star, and I didn't join the military in part because following his second tour, in 1969, he suggested quite seriously that I might want to think about moving to Canada to avoid what he knew was a wasted effort. My lottery number came out in the 300's, so I wasn't drafted and, at that point in history, didn't think volunteering sounded like a very good idea.

Also, you kind of missed the point: I don't hate Mr. Bush because he started a war, I hate him for losing it. May I assume that you support him in his losing efforts and thus wish for an American defeat?

Patriotism does not demand that we toady the chief executive regardless of how badly he mangles a situation. Patriotism demands, rather, that we push for victory or something at least in the neighborhood of victory, and that we punish politicians who fail us. By your logic of unquestioning support for failed leaders, I can only assume you're a big fan of presidents Johnson and Nixon, who handed us defeat in Vietnam, and of president Carter who presided over our beating at the hands of the Iranians. Me, I don't like politicians who make promises and then fail.

Reynolds: _ it would be nice if the flaming was connected in some way to what I wrote_

But, that wouldn't start a flame war. :(

I know that all of these things (what we write and what we read) are intellectual exercises that are mainly about spreading the infections of our minds. They accomplish little outside of sharpening our thoughts.

Sort of on topic ...

I remember sitting up talking to my Dad as a kid about what he went through in Vietnam as well. There is nothing like being in gradeschool and talking to your father about friend's body parts hitting him in the head.

Michael: _ I hate him for losing it_

Where our country is losing The Long War ( I like Bin Laden's name for this war ) isn't in Iraq, the front lines of Iran, or Sudan. It isn't our military that is losing. It is the civilians. We really are paper tigers.

I don't hate Bush on how he has handled The Long War militarily. I am disgusted with ourselves.

As a nation we are seriously losing the propaganda side of this conflict. If we as a people can not give a reason for our existence ... what is the point?

We are in a fight because the other side flat out says we should be killed or submit to their authority. Fine. That is their message.

What is ours?

Can you give me your reason why we should WIN this fight?

Can you give me your reason why we should not just submit to losing?

I know my reasons. But, I would like to hear something that would get the left up off their collective asses and fight FOR America. Something other then they just plain hate Bush. And I don't mean the following crap ...

"We would kill OBL!"

"Dissent is patriotism!"

"Getting rid of Bush is fighting for America!"

I do mean what would it take to get the left on the front lines of The Long War spilling their blood for Freedom. As soldiers, reporters, and journeymen of Freedom.

I think it is right for the Govt. to stay out of propaganda as much as possible. I believe the job of motivation and encouragement are mainly in the hands of the citizens who speak to us and for us. That is where Bush has done horribly. That is where the left is kicking the rights ass all over the world.

If I wanted to boil this all down ...

Can we ever get to the place where at some rally of the left the name of Sergeant First Class Paul R. Smith could be brought up. Could be mentioned with honor and respect and knowledge. That they would know what he did and why. And some of the young men in the crowd would say "Damn, I want to be like him."

This isn't about being "toady to the chief". Bush will be around for 2 more years. This war will be around for my grandchildren. This is about raising a nation with the mind and heart to fight for years.

And right now I would say most of our nation is AWOL.

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Arrasmith:

I don't think the problem is with the civilians and more than it was in Vietnam. The civilians stayed with Vietnam for almost ten years. It was the leadership that lost the war. It was the leadership that decided to fight a war it had no real intention of winning, and you cannot ask the American people to sign on with an indefinite commitment to a war the government is unwilling to win.

The American people were about 99% behind Afghanistan, and are still close to that now. That was the war on Bin Laden. I have heard scarcely a word raised in opposition to Afghanistan. Find me a Democrat spokesman or politician of any weight who has criticized the move into Afghanistan.

The criticism is about Iraq. Many who opposed the Iraq war from the start had as their major beef that Iraq took focus OFF Bin Laden and indirectly strengthened the terrorists. I supported the Iraq war, but the ineptitude and lack of committment of this administration to winning in Iraq has led to a situation where we have, in fact, strengthened Iran rather than weakening it, and have made Iraq a recruiting station for terrorists.

The American people will back a war againt Osama Bin Laden and against terrorists. Too bad that's not the war we're fighting.

As for why we should fight and win, I would offer the obvious reasons: I love my freedom, I love my constitution, and I love my country. Too bad my president is busily attacking the first two and weakening the third.

lol, MR. I got you flamed! What a Laurel and Hardy act. Every time you mention me, the Chomskyite trolls roll the stones away from the mouth of their caves and come marching. Now I mention you, and you get chickenhawked.

Michael -

Could you cite what specifically you believe that the administration has done wrong and what would you have done differently?

I am asking this in all sincerity. I really would like to hear your reasoning for your statements. Disclaimer - I am just asking for clarification not a flame war

Michael: You are so mixed up. You make me despair.

I'm confident that we are winning the war in Iraq.

I'm afraid we are losing the war in Afghanistan.

And what's more, the second has nothing to do with the first. The second has more to do with the fact that no one at this time seems to have a creditable plan for what to do with Pakistan. If you want to seeth about something, seeth about that, but please do so after you've shown me you've a plan for what to do that's any different than what we are doing. I know I don't have one.

The situation in Afghanistan reminds me so much of Vietnam that its frightening. Like Vietnam, its a small and almost universally popular war. Like Vietnam, we've basically only committed small elite units and we are relying on local forces for military mass. And like Vietnam, its proving to be virtually unwinnable for reasons that have nothing to do with our military capabilities. Each year is worse than the last because we are forced by political concerns to maintain a purely defensive posture. You don't win wars by being solely reactive. The enemy each year builds its strength further in safe havens across political borders that we dare not cross, and each year things go worse for us. At some point this is going to become difficult to sustain. If we don't turn a corner soon, I shudder to think of the missteps future administrations might make and the consequences that they might have.

I for one am pretty confident that the Iraq war has been disasterous for international terrorists. I don't know what your evidence is for anything else, but I feel confident in claiming that its not quantitative.

I'm no great fan of this President (mostly for domestic reasons), but I'm getting sick and tired of charges of ineptitude and incompetancy from people who don't have a basis for making that statement. I get sick and tired of making rebuttles to arguments that have no substance. If you think you had or have a better plan, lay it out so that we can see what a non-inept plan looks like in your opinion. If you think that are operations in Iraq are inept compared to similar historical operations, please lay out your evidence. Otherwise, you are just making ad hominem attacks. And the claim of "lack of committment of this administration to winning in Iraq" just boggles my mind. I've got plenty of complaints about how this war was run, but a "lack of committment to winning" is not one of them.

As far as Iran goes, if the goal of the Iraq war was to weaken Iran, we could have done a much better job by arming Saddam Hussein. One thing at a time. One good thing about this administration is that they don't seem to have a round hole into which they want to hammer every problem.

Reynolds:

Afghanistan, Iraq, Sudan, Saudi Arabia, USA, etc. These are all just battle fronts of the same war.

We may like the idea of Bin Laden, but in all honesty he isn't the problem. And you know that. He isn't a woman in Sudan singing songs of praise to her men as they rape, murder, and destroy all who aren't Allah's children. He isn't the one reading the Wahhabi tracts in the Mosque down your street. Why do you think this really should be called The Long War?

It would be nice to get his head on a spike in front of the White House. Will that event end this war? Will Zarq's head on a spike end it?

If we ran into Pakistan saying "Hold off guys, sorry about your border, we have a fugitive to kill" ... caught and killed OBL ... would this war be over? NO. Not even close and you know that. It wouldn't even change the face of it.

Knowing that, knowing that within one generation I'm sure that a single man in the name of Islam or 'The Earth' or Socialism will kill hundreds of thousands in one strike. That is where technology is going. Period. My children will have to face that hell.

You want to know what a distraction is? "To bad we aren't fighting OBL" That is a distraction. And your answer ...

"As for why we should fight and win, I would offer the obvious reasons: I love my freedom, I love my constitution, and I love my country. Too bad my president is busily attacking the first two and weakening the third."

... to my question is in the way I specifically asked you not to. My paraphrase of your answer "Freedom, constitution, country ... to bad Bush is the real enemy by attacking those things."

Bullcrap.

I just can not reach the minds of people who sit in a chair and literally shake with rage when they talk about Bush. And when we talk about the people who have promised to kill them. Nothing.

That is what my question was about. The left hates Bush. I understand that. That is all
they talk about. I really don't care.

Onto the topic at hand ... how to convince them to help?

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Arras:
You can debate me, or you can debate the phantom in your mind. You've chosen him over me, so you two go have a nice talk together.

Smoke and Ashes:
I don't have anything brilliantly original on this, just points others -- McCain, Hagel, the retired generals, Colin Powell, etc... have made before me, or at least concurrent with me. Here in no particular order:

1) One war at a time, when you can. Finish Afghanistan -- and that fight isn't over -- and then think about moving on to another target.

2) If you're going to fight two wars at once, increase the size of the military. The GOP screamed for 8 years that Clinton had left the military undermanned. They come in and add . . . not a single soldier. On our plates right now we have Afghanistan and Iraq, with Iran and, God help us, North Korea in the wings. And an ascendant China. And yet we're supposed to handle it all with Bill Clinton's army?

3) War is not the retail business. This isn't Wal-Mart. There are no points awarded for keeping inventory down. It's not about profit margin. When you go to war you don't go with the troops you think you need, you go with more. Things go wrong when people are shooting at each other, so go in heavy, go in expecting that something unpleasant will hit the fan. Bring extra men. Lots of them. As a rule wars end up taking longer, and requiring more men than you thought going in. (Not always, but then we don't seem to have a Winfield Scott this time around).

4) Don't go to war with ideologues in charge. No wishful thinking. No bending reality to fit ideology. Liberation my ass, this was never France in 1944. The French are the French: civilized, hedonistic, democratic (in heir own odd way) and they'd already had practice surrendering. The Iraqis, by contrast, are nuts

5) Occupation For Dummies, Chapter One: Place boot firmly on neck. I never would have supported this war if I'd thought Rumsfeld et al didn't know this. We occupied Japan under the shadow of the mushroom cloud. We occupied Germany under the threat of Joe Stalin. We occupied Iraq and couldn't shoot a few looters? Excuse me? If we're going to be occupying people, how about we occupy them? It's not a game of patty cake. It's not like we haven't done this before, just ask the American Indians.

6) The rebuilding effort was vital, we turned it over to political cronies and nitwits. Oil production still isn't back up to the level it was at under our sanctions regime. Oil is all Iraq has for money. They don't build Toyotas. They don't write software. Oil is it, and if oil doesn't cover the bills, and our allies aren't playing, guess who covers the difference?

7) Let's see, arrest the dictator, shoot the heirs apparent, disband the army, eject everyone who has ever held a position of authority or responsibility and who exactly runs what's left? A handful of GI's? Very well thought out. It's a dictatorship, a police state, it's not Vermont. It's not even Utah.

8) Don't b.s. the American people. You can b.s. us if you win real fast. If you're going to wander into a swamp it's not a good thing having the people think you lied to them. We were not told we were on a mission to remake the middle east, we were told we were fighting "them" there, so we wouldn't have to fight "them" here. Who, exactly? The Republican Guard? Were they on their way to North Carolina?

9) For God's sake, write them a constitution, stick it in their hands, put a gun barrel in their ear, and say "here it is, like it?" That's what we did in Japan. You know, Japan, world's second largest economy, staunch allies, freedom-loving democracy, peaceful, disarmed, still just a little scared, Japan? They're still basically using the constitution we gave them. It never occurred to me we were going to turn the job of designing a government over to a bunch of people whose last successful experience with a legal system was under Hammurabi.

10) Summarizing much of the above: it's a war followed by an occupation, for God's sake, don't be nice, don't be minimalist, don't save money, don't show off your pet theories, don't worry about making people mad. The job was to kill the enemy soldiers, cow the populace, impose order from above, seduce them with prosperity, ram a political system down their throats and shoot anyone who didn't like it. Then sit on them for 20 years and make sure it took. This isn't breaking news. We've done this before.

Michael: So that's your plan?

Well, your plan would work. It's grounded in military reality. It's ideologically coherent.

If you do mind though, if I could offer a few criticisms:

1) WWII caused about 70 million deaths. Given the growth in world population since then, I figure we could pull off your plan for the bargain basement price of 140 million dead. You want to stomp around in your big boots, fine, but understand that when you put that "boot firmly on the neck" that you better have a throughly beaten population.
2) One the interesting things about WWII is that we got into it abit late, long after a few totalitarian powers had already initiated the war and involved basically all the developed world except us. Now, under your plan, you want us to be the initiators in a similar conflict. Based on your writings, I don't think that would bother you but I got to tell you that it might bother a few other nations out there especially as the bodies started piling up. Consider how unhappy they are with us as it is.
3) Another interesting consequence of that was when we started spending like 80% of our GDP on military related construction, and we drafted like 10% of our population into the military, it didn't really effect our economic development relative to the rest of the developed world, because our cities and factories weren't blowing up on a regular basis. Heck, real wealth actually increased because we had like 20% unemployment going into the war, and we managed to moved alot of underemployed people (like women) into industrial jobs. Thing is, today not only is the developed world larger but its not embroiled in the midst of a world war. Not only that but we've got like 4.8% unemployment and no big untapped sources of labor. Now, you may think that war isn't about the profit margin, but that leads me to think you've not read Claustwitz and in any event I guess you didn't learn much of a lesson from the Cold War.
4) I'm not sure how well you'd be able to sell the American people on a war of liberation that involved killing say 10% of the population and putting a gun barrel to thier ear. It just sound suspiciously unlike an actual war of liberation. For all its faults, this war strikes me as alot more like a real war of liberation than your plan does.

In any event, I'm glad to know what your definition of competance is.

Hmmm. Let's think out loud a bit, and follow some of the reasoning, and offer some things to bounce off of. And tie some of it back to Darfur.

1) Afghanistan. Not a war, a front. And learning the lessons of the Soviets says keep the presence small, international, and very careful about how intrusive it is and whom it antagonizes. Play tribal politics as necessary, as the British did when they were successful there. Otherwise you repeat the Soviets' mistakes, and Afghanistan is not a critical front because it will influence no-one. Our goal is to make sure al-Qaeda and the Taliban can't run it again, and if the government can build itself into a credible force and expand its authority that would be nice.

All of which means that waiting to 'finish' Afghanistan, while the clock ticks on Iran's nukes et. al., is dumb, dumb, dumb and has no justification - not military, not strategic. It will just get you a whole mess of Arab-Islamic nuclear nutbars - and then you WILL have one big war to finish. Or just pick up the charred pieces after, with the oil you depend on underneath the radiation.

(2) Agree. Because you have to have the reserves in place to handle the next things that comes along too. Whether its Darfur, Iran, or something else. Not to mention having a reasonable troop rotation.

(3) Have extra men on hand. Agree. Whether to take them or not in any situation depends on crcumstances. Extra men did not help the Soviets in Afghanistan. It did not help the Russians in Chechnya. Sometimes, it just creates more logistics burden and more targets. Sometimes it helps. What's the difference?

Question: which kind of situation would Sudan be? Why?

(4) People are always influenced by ideology. This rule would completely disqualify the Democrats, for instance. Who's going to run this thing, then, Ronald McDonald? I think what you mean is "try to see things clearly, and learn fast." The American political class has been an end-to-end failure in this respect.

If we're in Darfur, note, ideology will have played a big role, i.e. "no genocide, and we'll fight for that, and we believe we can save a victimized populace." Evidence for which is mixed, by the way.

(5) Sometimes ruthlessness works. I think there's an argument that the war in Iraq has gone the way it has partly because the Sunnis of Iraq were not beaten in battle on their turf, and Tikrit didn't eat about 5-10 Daisy Cutters in the early days of the war, and Fallujah didn't eat about 4 more after they strung up those contractors. Lots of history says that works. (Of course, we were trying to PsyOp Saddam's guys into not fighting, and flattening Tikrit would have wrecked that plan - so the idea is a trade and must be seen as such).

For instance, if you head into Sudan and you're serious, the Janjaweed and the places they come from should suffer. They should return home to destroyed villages, and those who house them should expect death from above. This creates a "buffer zone" of clans whose fear makes them hostile to the Janjaweed. And since you'd be trying to potect Darfur and don't particularly give a rat's ass about Northern Sudan, so be it.

Having said all that, there's also the Marines' Small Wars Manual, derived from a lot of experience, that focuses on not being the kind of folks you present once the serious hammering is done and examples made, if you intend to be in an area. In Sudan, contested areas would be places to deloy this face. In Iraq, it's needed more broadly.

You have a point, in other words, but if you try to make it the only rule you'll be in serious trouble, fast.

(6) Oil pipelines are vulnerable, and there's no fixing that. And you work with what you have in terms of people, both your own and - even more important - the natives. You're asking for something that no-one with experience of the Arab World believes is realistic, and no-one who has contemplated pipeline security thinks is realistic either. The rule is actually more like "Understand that pipelines are almost impossible to protect, and that even relatively clean Islamic countries will be corrupt - and you'll need to succeed anyway."

That would also be very true if we tried to do anything with Sudan's southern Christian areas or Darfur's Muslims longer-term.

(7) "Let's see, arrest the dictator, shoot the heirs apparent, disband the army, eject everyone who has ever held a position of authority or responsibility and who exactly runs what's left? A handful of GI's? Very well thought out. It's a dictatorship, a police state, it's not Vermont. It's not even Utah."

It was never supposed to be Vermont or Utah. What technicolor fantasy makes you think it should be? What's left, by the way, is 80% of Iraq's population who really wanted you to do this (and may be right or wrong, but this is what they want), can contemplate trusting the Iraqi Army if rebuilt, and won't create the same problems the Sunnis did with a much larger population and more strategic positions along your supply lines. Whatever happened to "fight one war"? - which may not be smart advice with Afghanistan as the one, but is brilliant advice in Iraq. Fight one war, dude.

(8) "Don't b.s. the American people." True. McCain and Biden have been trenchant and on point with this point for a while. The stuff that follows is not persuasive, however, and not what they've been talking about.

Speaking on no b.s., um yes we were told that we were going to remake the Middle East's patterns. Several times. Because otherwise, we have to blow large numbers of them up.

If we ever went into Sudan, no BS. that means desribe the who, what, and why, note that America was in Kosovo for over a decade, and either explain how you exect to get around that or get them on side with being there for a while. Explain what winning looks like, and be very clear about what's ahead and what you expect from both the enemy and the pople you're there to help (hopefully). Then tell them that if home renovations are every American's nightmare, something like this is going to be the same kind of thing. Lots of things we won't expect, stuff we'll learn after the fact (whaddaya mean, mold in my walls?), and there may be setbacks. But we need to do it, and in the end you have to succeed anyway, and if we stick together we will.

(9) I'd say you have a point. The time to do it, too, was within the first 2 weeks after Saddam fell. Should have been written in advance.

(10) "Summarizing much of the above: it's a war followed by an occupation, for God's sake, don't be nice,"

Don't be TOO nice. But, vid. Small Wars Manual, being nice does pay. The British could be ruthless, but being fundamentally decent helped them a lot. Ditto the ancient Persian emperors, and the Romans, etc. See a pattern?

"don't be minimalist, don't save money,"

True.

"don't show off your pet theories,"

In an uncertain situation, and this war is such, all everyone has is their pet theories. We need to figure out which ones have validity, and when. but we also need to understand the timeless lessons of history. Unfortunately, there has been so much damage in this area over the past 30 years that re-learning those lessons is going to be an aspect of The Long War, and it will require something that extreme to accomplish. (My pet theory on that subject, anyway.)

"don't worry about making people mad."

Know whom you care about making mad, and whom you don't. Pick the right people in both categories, then absolutely, go do what you have to do and if they're not on your (very short) don't make mad list, oh well.

See the "buffer zone" example above.

"The job was to kill the enemy soldiers, cow the populace, impose order from above, seduce them with prosperity, ram a political system down their throats and shoot anyone who didn't like it. Then sit on them for 20 years and make sure it took. This isn't breaking news. We've done this before."

We have. There's a bit more to it, but in general this is the gist. We're having a bit of a chat re: how to conduct that is all.

One war at a time is possible. Two may be possible, though we are pushing it.

Afghanistan - still going
Iraq - still going
Sudan - grab that tar-baby!

?

No, we can't do this.

And to be fair, I don't think we could do it even if old friends who say "Never again!" meant it.

I agree there are big problems with Afghanistan just as celebrim said in post #13:

"Each year is worse than the last because we are forced by political concerns to maintain a purely defensive posture. You don't win wars by being solely reactive. The enemy each year builds its strength further in safe havens across political borders that we dare not cross, and each year things go worse for us. At some point this is going to become difficult to sustain."

Won't political concerns cripple us in Sudan too? We know that they will! The diplomatic situation is already about as bad as possible. Only America calls what is happening "genocide" and it's not going to get better from here.

Then won't we be compelled to focus on short-term protection in a way that leaves basic problems unsolved? Of course we will - we'll be forced not to fight aggressively to destroy the killers and impose a stable government of our liking - and by the way, how?!? - but to guard refugees, to round them up so we can watch then (because we can't patrol and fight encounter battles with the Janjaweed, oh no) and to herd them into ... what? "Safe areas" for Srebrenice II? No! We can't stop this genocide, but we don't have to assist in it.

The enemy will build strength across African borders that we won't be able to cross. Fuelled by jihad preaching, racism against us, and Arab money, the build-up will continue ... till when? Till we lose. We can't "crack the whip" on Black Africans to make them stop allowing that to happen in their countries, and I use that expression to underline how impossible our position would be.

This is not sustainable.

We would lose badly and big, with huge consequences. And we would never have a chance to win.

Re: Joe's comments in post #16:

OK, Afghanistan is a front in the long war, not a distinct war. I agree with that. We are fighting Hydra, not a lot of different snakey monsters.

But still, we need to set priorities.

Iraq, Afghanistan, and
* Go to Sudan, and as I think, lose and then stop? Or
* Keep our powder dry, because we may not have a choice about Iran?

To me this seems like a no-brainer.

Iran is maing itself a nuclerar threat. We can't let ourselves be nuked, or paralysed by the threat of jihadis with nukes.

We dare not lose. If America crumbles, we are all hosed. Since America is seriously challenged, it has to be made to win. Its friends would have to drag it over the finish line if it came to that, and if it was possible. (Though America is so big that if it fails, who could be strong enough to rescue it?) That has been the basic situation since 11 September 2001.

One of our key weaknesses is willpower. Big consequences follow our failures of will. Willpower does not thrive on defeat.

Willpower can thrive on doing good - if there is agreement on what is good and that we are doing it for that reason, and if you get credit for it, if people are serious and stick to what they say. But we know in this case that's not true.

(It's possible to "forget" the bad faith and betrayals of our liberal friends a lot of the time, but when we have to estimate coldly the likely results of actions, we are painfully forced, yet again, to make it one basis of our recommendations.)

And anyway, this is one of those times where the brutal reality of winning and losing matters more.

:)

OK.

Michael: You can debate me, or you can debate the phantom in your mind. You've chosen him over me, so you two go have a nice talk together.

Good one. Actually I wasn't debating you. Up to this point you were not giving debatable points. You were just making a passionate argument about Sudan versus Iraq and Afghanistan. And put out the typical comments about not liking Bush.

Myself, I was actually talking at you. Not debating. But it does seem to have gotten you to open up. I'll let others go over your list.

BUT ... "Summarizing much of the above: it's a war followed by an occupation, for God's sake, don't be nice, don't be minimalist, don't save money, don't show off your pet theories, don't worry about making people mad. The job was to kill the enemy soldiers, cow the populace, impose order from above, seduce them with prosperity, ram a political system down their throats and shoot anyone who didn't like it. Then sit on them for 20 years and make sure it took. This isn't breaking news. We've done this before."

Are you serious? Do you really believe that Americans today would accept that statement?

They may have been the reality years ago it isn't true today. It can't work today.

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