2006-12-29
Response to americanthinker Article
I would like to respond to this article.
It makes some complaints about the Bush Adminstration's handling of the Iraq situation. Given that I totally support Bush's current strategy, let me defend it.
First of all, it is not America's job to win this war. It is Iraq's
job. This is the best use of America's resources, not just in Iraq, but everywhere else in the world. Any work that can be offloaded onto someone else, should be offloaded. There are many problems in the world that need to be dealt with, so we need to find the most strategic manner in which to use our resources.
We are not (yet) at the point where it is strategic to open a general warfront with all Arabs or all Muslims. We are instead at the point where we specifically don't want to be the ones doing the killing. All we want to do is empower "somewhat friendly forces" so that they can defeat mutual enemies. We want to be able to shift blame for any excess use of force onto democratically-elected locals. We also want them to come to the conclusion on their own that they need to confront and reform their sick, intolerant culture. If they don't figure out what needs to be done by themselves, we can always come back to Iraq and change it ourselves. But first we need to observe what effect freedom of speech will have on them. You can see via the Iraqi blogs that radically different views are being freely expressed by Iraqis.
The democratically-elected government of Iraq does not appear to be a threat to the US either. I don't see any danger. In the meantime, Iraq is a huge scientific experiment. We need to observe Arab Muslim behaviour in a free environment so that we can formulate a strategy to prevent another 9/11. After 9/11 we were unsure how to respond. Do we need a genocide against all Arabs and all Muslims? Just Arabs? Just Muslims? Just Arab Muslims? The answers were in Iraq. I have identified three things that need to be fought from observing the Iraqis:
1. dogma (ie the Quran)
2. non-humanism (including racism and religious bigotry)
3. subjugation
All 3 things need to be fought to conclusion in order to prevent another 9/11. Unfortunately there's a hell of a lot of dogmatic, racists and religious bigots in the Middle East. You have 3 options:
1. genocide to eliminate the threat immediately.
2. get them to change their minds immediately somehow.
3. change the education system so that minds are changed over years/decades, and hope that there is not another 9/11 while waiting for this process to bear fruit.
In addition, the US ideally needs to do this without spooking a nation-state into starting a nuclear war, and without having a hostile coalition formed against it (e.g. being kicked out of NATO and having Russia and China enter NATO).
So, the ideal strategy, in my opinion, is to try to form as broad a coalition as possible, and to use the minimum force required to achieve various effects. Jump-start civil wars between "good" and "bad" locals. Empower the "good", and if the "good" are in a majority, this can be done via democracy. When the "good" are in a minority (e.g. Pakistan), support the existing dictatorship in the short term. In the case of Syria, with a bad dictator and a bad majority, replace the bad dictator with a good one. When an opportunity and the resources are available. Each country needs to be independently analyzed.
I don't know if Bush is following this game plan. Even if he is, it is not strategic for him to spell it out. It is better to be able to take out one country at a time. The ultimate goal is to turn every country in the world into a clone of Australia, or if not Australia (an ally), then at least a neutral, like Switzerland. This plan has been centuries in the making, even if it is not recognized as such, and is instead just recognized as "destroying immediate enemies" by the current governments of the free world.
Now let me respond to some specific points you raise.
"The American loss of will in Vietnam was in a sense justified because our national leadership, political and military, was too cowardly to admit that their concept of "limited" warfare was fatally flawed and as a result they failed to change it even after it had become readily apparent to the man in the street such was the case."
It wasn't fatally flawed. The goal was to convert South Vietnam into the equivalent of South Korea. By 1972 this had actually been achieved. All that needed to be done was to protect South Vietnam from external invasion (whether by North Vietnam or some other superior power). This was not done, and North Vietnam won a conventional military battle in 1975, conquering the South. There was no reason to abandon South Vietnam. South Korea was not abandoned.
"simply adding more troops without destroying the sources of enemy resupply is sending our military on a fool's errand."
It's not a fool's errand. The goal is only to empower the pro-freedom Iraqis. They can win the fight against the insurgents in their own time. If the Iraqis want Syria attacked, let them be the ones to call for it. They need to stop looking at the Syrians as "Arab brothers" and instead as "ideological enemies".
"There is a second latent assumption in your response that has never been tested in the history of war that we know of. This assumption states that it is possible to set up a functioning civil and even democratic government in a country at war even as a significant minority of the country rejects such a government."
Yes, I agree that this is being tested. You say "what evidence exists suggests strongly you are dead wrong". I totally disagree. There has been a massive turnout to the democratic elections, the Iraqis even formed a national unity government, there is an unending line of recruits to the security forces. They have freedom of speech and human rights protected by the constitution. Every indication is that it has been a complete and utter success. The insurgents have no chance at all of toppling the government. They have some limited ability to lower the population a bit. A high murder rate, much like South Africa. So long as the US protects Iraq from external invasion, the Iraqis are on track to defeat the insurgency on their own. They vastly outnumber and outgun the opposition. Even if some areas need to be surrendered to the opposition in the short term, the government will win in the long term. It's a mathematical certainty.
"Hopes and dreams are wonderful things for arm-chair pundits with little real understanding of the historical, political, military and geo-strategic facts on the ground but that is no way to fight a war and win it."
The facts on the ground show that this war was won the moment Iraqis started forming long queues to join the new security forces. The rest is a straightforward, minor technical task for the US military to do. So far it has been done with the loss of one month's worth of US road toll victims. This is not a serious war. This is a minor police action - a simple scientific experiment/data gathering exercise in fact. A serious war was 20 million dead Russians in WWII. We need to find out just how little force we need to use to change governments, so that we can reform the US military to fight such wars of liberation instead of wars of conquest. All indications are that Bush hasn't just done a good job, he's done a PERFECT job.
Is it so hard to see? Do you REALLY think the entire Bush administration are dunderheads? Don't you think it's worth spending some time trying to figure out what they're up to? Do you really think that 5 years after 9/11, no-one in the Bush administration has bothered to read the Qur'an, which is why they still supposedly think that Islam is a "religion of peace"? The war to eradicate Islam from the face of the planet hasn't even started yet. And may never actually start, depending on the feedback we get from liberated countries. Even if the US plans "immediate" genocide, it has not taken any action to jeapordize this. The genocide is being done in a strategic manner, using conventional weapons, and making use of surprising sources of firepower. It's totally brilliant, although we have no way of knowing whether it is by design or by coincidence.
|
It makes some complaints about the Bush Adminstration's handling of the Iraq situation. Given that I totally support Bush's current strategy, let me defend it.
First of all, it is not America's job to win this war. It is Iraq's
job. This is the best use of America's resources, not just in Iraq, but everywhere else in the world. Any work that can be offloaded onto someone else, should be offloaded. There are many problems in the world that need to be dealt with, so we need to find the most strategic manner in which to use our resources.
We are not (yet) at the point where it is strategic to open a general warfront with all Arabs or all Muslims. We are instead at the point where we specifically don't want to be the ones doing the killing. All we want to do is empower "somewhat friendly forces" so that they can defeat mutual enemies. We want to be able to shift blame for any excess use of force onto democratically-elected locals. We also want them to come to the conclusion on their own that they need to confront and reform their sick, intolerant culture. If they don't figure out what needs to be done by themselves, we can always come back to Iraq and change it ourselves. But first we need to observe what effect freedom of speech will have on them. You can see via the Iraqi blogs that radically different views are being freely expressed by Iraqis.
The democratically-elected government of Iraq does not appear to be a threat to the US either. I don't see any danger. In the meantime, Iraq is a huge scientific experiment. We need to observe Arab Muslim behaviour in a free environment so that we can formulate a strategy to prevent another 9/11. After 9/11 we were unsure how to respond. Do we need a genocide against all Arabs and all Muslims? Just Arabs? Just Muslims? Just Arab Muslims? The answers were in Iraq. I have identified three things that need to be fought from observing the Iraqis:
1. dogma (ie the Quran)
2. non-humanism (including racism and religious bigotry)
3. subjugation
All 3 things need to be fought to conclusion in order to prevent another 9/11. Unfortunately there's a hell of a lot of dogmatic, racists and religious bigots in the Middle East. You have 3 options:
1. genocide to eliminate the threat immediately.
2. get them to change their minds immediately somehow.
3. change the education system so that minds are changed over years/decades, and hope that there is not another 9/11 while waiting for this process to bear fruit.
In addition, the US ideally needs to do this without spooking a nation-state into starting a nuclear war, and without having a hostile coalition formed against it (e.g. being kicked out of NATO and having Russia and China enter NATO).
So, the ideal strategy, in my opinion, is to try to form as broad a coalition as possible, and to use the minimum force required to achieve various effects. Jump-start civil wars between "good" and "bad" locals. Empower the "good", and if the "good" are in a majority, this can be done via democracy. When the "good" are in a minority (e.g. Pakistan), support the existing dictatorship in the short term. In the case of Syria, with a bad dictator and a bad majority, replace the bad dictator with a good one. When an opportunity and the resources are available. Each country needs to be independently analyzed.
I don't know if Bush is following this game plan. Even if he is, it is not strategic for him to spell it out. It is better to be able to take out one country at a time. The ultimate goal is to turn every country in the world into a clone of Australia, or if not Australia (an ally), then at least a neutral, like Switzerland. This plan has been centuries in the making, even if it is not recognized as such, and is instead just recognized as "destroying immediate enemies" by the current governments of the free world.
Now let me respond to some specific points you raise.
"The American loss of will in Vietnam was in a sense justified because our national leadership, political and military, was too cowardly to admit that their concept of "limited" warfare was fatally flawed and as a result they failed to change it even after it had become readily apparent to the man in the street such was the case."
It wasn't fatally flawed. The goal was to convert South Vietnam into the equivalent of South Korea. By 1972 this had actually been achieved. All that needed to be done was to protect South Vietnam from external invasion (whether by North Vietnam or some other superior power). This was not done, and North Vietnam won a conventional military battle in 1975, conquering the South. There was no reason to abandon South Vietnam. South Korea was not abandoned.
"simply adding more troops without destroying the sources of enemy resupply is sending our military on a fool's errand."
It's not a fool's errand. The goal is only to empower the pro-freedom Iraqis. They can win the fight against the insurgents in their own time. If the Iraqis want Syria attacked, let them be the ones to call for it. They need to stop looking at the Syrians as "Arab brothers" and instead as "ideological enemies".
"There is a second latent assumption in your response that has never been tested in the history of war that we know of. This assumption states that it is possible to set up a functioning civil and even democratic government in a country at war even as a significant minority of the country rejects such a government."
Yes, I agree that this is being tested. You say "what evidence exists suggests strongly you are dead wrong". I totally disagree. There has been a massive turnout to the democratic elections, the Iraqis even formed a national unity government, there is an unending line of recruits to the security forces. They have freedom of speech and human rights protected by the constitution. Every indication is that it has been a complete and utter success. The insurgents have no chance at all of toppling the government. They have some limited ability to lower the population a bit. A high murder rate, much like South Africa. So long as the US protects Iraq from external invasion, the Iraqis are on track to defeat the insurgency on their own. They vastly outnumber and outgun the opposition. Even if some areas need to be surrendered to the opposition in the short term, the government will win in the long term. It's a mathematical certainty.
"Hopes and dreams are wonderful things for arm-chair pundits with little real understanding of the historical, political, military and geo-strategic facts on the ground but that is no way to fight a war and win it."
The facts on the ground show that this war was won the moment Iraqis started forming long queues to join the new security forces. The rest is a straightforward, minor technical task for the US military to do. So far it has been done with the loss of one month's worth of US road toll victims. This is not a serious war. This is a minor police action - a simple scientific experiment/data gathering exercise in fact. A serious war was 20 million dead Russians in WWII. We need to find out just how little force we need to use to change governments, so that we can reform the US military to fight such wars of liberation instead of wars of conquest. All indications are that Bush hasn't just done a good job, he's done a PERFECT job.
Is it so hard to see? Do you REALLY think the entire Bush administration are dunderheads? Don't you think it's worth spending some time trying to figure out what they're up to? Do you really think that 5 years after 9/11, no-one in the Bush administration has bothered to read the Qur'an, which is why they still supposedly think that Islam is a "religion of peace"? The war to eradicate Islam from the face of the planet hasn't even started yet. And may never actually start, depending on the feedback we get from liberated countries. Even if the US plans "immediate" genocide, it has not taken any action to jeapordize this. The genocide is being done in a strategic manner, using conventional weapons, and making use of surprising sources of firepower. It's totally brilliant, although we have no way of knowing whether it is by design or by coincidence.
# posted by Paul Edwards @ 19:49 
