Fighting & Winning The Global War on Terror (WW IV)

[McG]

And with this, you justify the invasion?

You know this is not the only argument.  Failure to comply with UN sections, support for terrorism, acts of genocide, torture of citizens, represion of rights, etc.

Sorry, gentlemen, but the assetion that Iraq MAY be willing to support a group of religious fundamentalists who share none of their goals, and who had previosuly been their worst enemies, while impossible to prove false, is simply not a good enough reason,

Again, it is not the only reason.  However, your assumption (that any terrorist Iraq could have supported in an attack on the US would have previously been Iraq's worst enemy) cannot be supported.  First, attacking the US would have been the shared goal.  Secondly, AQ is not the only terrorist group out there.

 

[48Highlander]

Excellent post a_majoor.  You've very eloquently phrased something that should be self-evident to everyone.  Terrorism as a whole isn't motivated by any clear objective other than the amassing of power by those in control, and those wishing some day to be in control.  The only way to fight it is to destroy those who cannot be reasoned with, while offering the rest a better alternative.

 

[Britney Spears]

Now if you don't understand the point of my little scenario,

I understand your scenario perfectly.  Problem is,  in your rather strained analogy, the EFT works for free, there are no other crimes to contend with, and Mr. Green has no friends and doesn't shoot back, not even with the grenade launchers and whatnot.


In a strictly legal sense, both 5lbs and 100lbs are equally criiminal acts(in essence, I realize there are different categories and whatnot, but the crime is the same) and so there is no difference to the police officer  untill the grenade launchers come out. So the obvious lesson for the police officer is that you can't use this model for countries too!

 

[mdh]

Well I have to give some credit to CivU for trying to remain consistent while living in the same intellectual slum as William Blum. It takes considerable moral gymnastics to equate Reagan, Clinton and Norman Swartzkopf with Japanese war criminals. Miss Molson has so far failed to produce any of her "strictly academic" sources so we can safey assume she has none. Just to round out the entertainment here's a piece by Christopher Hitchens, a re-knowned journalist and polemicist, who broke with his leftist friends after hearing too much of this stuff and supported the war against Islamo-fascism:

Bush's Secularist Triumph
The left apologizes for religious fanatics. The president fights them.
By Christopher Hitchens
Posted Tuesday, Nov. 9, 2004, at 7:34 AM PT


Many are the cheap and easy laughs in which one could indulge at the extraordinary, pitiful hysteria of the defeated Democrats. "Kerry won," according to one e-mail I received from Greg Palast, to whom the Florida vote in 2000 is, and always will be, a combination of Gettysburg and Waterloo. According to Nikki Finke of the LA Weekly, the Fox News channel "called" Ohio for Bush for reasons too sinister to enumerate. Gregory Maniatis, whose last communication to me had predicted an annihilating Democratic landslide, kept quiet for only a day or so before forwarding the details on how to emigrate to Canada. Thus do the liberals build their bridge to the 20th century.      

Who can care about this pathos? Not I. But I do take strong exception to one strain in the general moaning. It seems that anyone fool enough to favor the re-election of the president is by definition a God-bothering, pulpit-pounding Armageddon-artist, enslaved by ancient texts and prophecies and committed to theocratic rule. I was instructed in last week's New York Times that this was the case, and that the Enlightenment had come to an end, by no less an expert than Garry Wills, who makes at least one of his many livings by being an Augustinian Roman Catholic.    

I step lightly over the ancient history of Wills' church (which was the originator of the counter-Enlightenment and then the patron of fascism in Europe) as well as over its more recent and local history (as the patron, protector, and financier of child-rape in the United States, and the sponsor of the cruel "annulment" of Joe Kennedy's and John Kerry's first marriages). As far as I know, all religions and all churches are equally demented in their belief in divine intervention, divine intercession, or even the existence of the divine in the first place.

But all faiths are not always equally demented in the same way, or at the same time. Islam, which was once a civilizing and creative force in many societies, is now undergoing a civil war. One faction in this civil war is explicitly totalitarian and wedded to a cult of death. We have seen it at work on the streets of our own cities, and most recently on the streets of Amsterdam. We know that the obscene butchery of filmmaker Theo van Gogh was only a warning of what is coming in Madrid, London, Rome, and Paris, let alone Baghdad and Basra.      

So here is what I want to say on the absolutely crucial matter of secularism. Only one faction in American politics has found itself able to make excuses for the kind of religious fanaticism that immediately menaces us in the here and now. And that faction, I am sorry and furious to say, is the left. From the first day of the immolation of the World Trade Center, right down to the present moment, a gallery of pseudointellectuals has been willing to represent the worst face of Islam as the voice of the oppressed. How can these people bear to reread their own propaganda? Suicide murderers in Palestineâ ”disowned and denounced by the new leader of the PLOâ ”described as the victims of "despair." The forces of al-Qaida and the Taliban represented as misguided spokespeople for antiglobalization. The blood-maddened thugs in Iraq, who would rather bring down the roof on a suffering people than allow them to vote, pictured prettily as "insurgents" or even, by Michael Moore, as the moral equivalent of our Founding Fathers. If this is liberal secularism, I'll take a modest, God-fearing, deer-hunting Baptist from Kentucky every time, as long as he didn't want to impose his principles on me (which our Constitution forbids him to do).        

One probably should not rest too much on the similarity between Bin Laden's last video and the newly available DVD of Fahrenheit 9/11. I would only say that, if Bin Laden had issued a tape that with equal fealty followed the playbook of Karl Rove (and do please by all means cross yourself at the mention of this unholy name), it might have garnered some more attention. The Bearded One moved pedantically through Moore's bill of indictment, checking off the Florida vote-count in 2000, the "Pet Goat" episode on the day of heck, the violent intrusion into hitherto peaceful and Muslim Iraq, and the division between Bush and the much nicer Europeans. (For some reason, unknown to me at any rate, he did not attack the President for allowing the Bin Laden family to fly out of American airspace.)        

George Bush may subjectively be a Christian, but heâ ”and the U.S. armed forcesâ ”have objectively done more for secularism than the whole of the American agnostic community combined and doubled. The demolition of the Taliban, the huge damage inflicted on the al-Qaida network, and the confrontation with theocratic saboteurs in Iraq represent huge advances for the non-fundamentalist forces in many countries. The "antiwar" faction even recognizes this achievement, if only indirectly, by complaining about the way in which it has infuriated the Islamic religious extremists around the world. But does it accept the apparent corollaryâ ”that we should have been pursuing a policy to which the fanatics had no objection?        

Secularism is not just a smug attitude. It is a possible way of democratic and pluralistic life that only became thinkable after several wars and revolutions had ruthlessly smashed the hold of the clergy on the state. We are now in the middle of another such war and revolution, and the liberals have gone AWOL. I dare say that there will be a few domestic confrontations down the road, over everything from the Pledge of Allegiance to the display of Mosaic tablets in courtrooms and schools. I have spent all my life on the atheist side of this argument, and will brace for more of the same, but I somehow can't hear Robert Ingersoll* or Clarence Darrow being soft and cowardly and evasive if it came to a vicious theocratic challenge that daily threatens us from within and without.

 

[Infanteer]

"Son, we live in a world that has walls, and those walls have to be guarded by men with guns. Whose gonna do it? You? You, Lt. Weinburg? I have more responsibility here than you could possibly fathom. You weep for Santiago, and you curse the Marines. You have that luxury. You have the luxury of not knowing what I know. That Santiago's death, while tragic, probably saved lives. And that my existence, while grotesque and incomprehensible to you, saves lives. I know deep down in places you dont talk about at parties, you don't want me on that wall, you need me on that wall. We use words like honor, code, loyalty. We use these words as the backbone of a life spent defending something. You use them as a punchline. I have neither the time nor the inclination to explain myself to a man who rises and sleeps under the blanket of the very freedom I provide, then question the manner in which I provide it. I prefer you said thank you, and went on your way, Otherwise, I suggest you pick up a weapon, and stand to post. Either way, I don't give a damn what you think you are entitled to!"

 

[MissMolsonIndy]

Miss Molson has so far failed to produce any of her "strictly academic" sources so we can safey assume she has none.

Monash University outlines the criteria for academic literature:

Literature that meets these criteria is often academic:

the publication is peer reviewed
the publication is published/edited by a university or scholarly society
the author of the article is from a university or scholarly society
the publication reports research
the publication contains a bibliography and references other works
the publication is written by more than one author
the paper was presented at a conference, particularly an international conference, and definitely if the papers were peer reviewed

The following is a working bibiliography:

Alexander, Yonah & Dean C. Alexander. Terrorism and Business: the Impact of September 11, 2001. New    York: Transnational Publishers Inc., 2002.

CBS News. What We Saw: the Events of September 11, 2001--In Words, Pictures, and Video. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2002.

Chomsky, Noam. 9-11: An Open Media Book. New York: Seven Stories Press, 2001.

Ed. Coady, Tony & Michael O'Keefe. Terrorism and Justice: Moral Argument in a Threatened World. Melbourne: Melbourne University Press, 2002.

Ed. Feffer, John. Power Trip: U.S. Imperialism and Global Strategy after September 11. New York: Seven Stories Press, 2003.

Ed. Hershberg, Eric & Kevin W. Moore. Critical Views of September 11: Analyses from Around the World. New York: New York Press, 2002.

Ed. McGuckin, Frank. Terrorism in the United States. New York: the H.W. Wilson Company, 1997.

Nye, Jr., Joseph S. Soft Power: the Means to Success in World Politics. New York: Public Affairs, 2004.

Parenti, Michael. Terrorism Trap: September 11 and Beyond. San Francisco: City Lights Books, 2002.

Public Affairs Section Canada. Mission of the United States of America. Vancouver: US Embassy in Canada, 2004.

Satloff, Robert B. War on Terror: the Middle East Dimension. Washington: the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, 2002.

Simon, Jeffrey D. The Terrorist Trap: America's Experience with Terrorism. Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 1994.

Smith, Dennis. Report from Ground Zero: the Story of the Rescue Efforts at the World Trade Center. New     York: the Penguin Group, 2002.

Snow, Captain Robert L. The Militia Threat: Terrorists Among Us. New York: Plenum Trade, 1999.

Stern, Jessica. The Ultimate Terrorists. Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1999.

Zulaika, Joseba & William A. Douglass. Terror and Taboo: the Follies, Fables, and Faces of Terrorism. New York: Routledge, 1996.

[Select pamphlets from the United Stated Department of State]:

"Political Violence Against Americans 2000."

"Iraq: A Population Silenced."

"Iraq: From Fear to Freedom."

[Select pamphlets from the United States Agency for International Development]:

"Iraq's Legacy of Terror: Mass Graves."

"A Year in Iraq: Restoring Services, Reopening Schools, Building Democracy and Vaccinating Children."

 

[Infanteer]

If you want, I can list a stack of books too....

 

[MissMolsonIndy]

If you want, I can list a stack of books too....

Forgive me if I'm reading into this wrong, but cut the sarcasm, you asked me to present my sources, and that is exactly what I have done.

 

[Infanteer]

Well, what do you expect me to say.  You rip a list of books from somewhere and expect this to suddenly validate your arguments?  When you were asked to show your sources, I would expect that you would use the sources to provide objective substance to claims that have been repeatedly been shot to dust on this thread (among others).  Am I suddenly to say "Ooohhh...look at the citations, she must be right...."

 

[MissMolsonIndy]

Well, what do you expect me to say.  You rip a list of books from somewhere and expect this to suddenly validate your arguments?  When you were asked to show your sources, I would expect that you would use the sources to provide objective substance to claims that have been repeatedly been shot to dust on this thread (among others).

 
Which is the purpose of my report. Objective substance to my arguments will be provided within the context of an academic report. I have been repeatedly asked to "list off" the academic sources that I have drawn from, which is exactly what I have done, and I am still getting dirt kicked in my face. My intentions in listing off my sources were not to "validate my arguments," but instead to show that I have been consulting academic sources in the course of my research, which I have been accused of not doing, several times over.

Furthermore, I thoroughly enjoy how standards specifically apply to myself, and not to others. What about the claims that you have made, and others have made that have been repeatedly shot to dust on this thread and others? Also, why has nobody else been asked to provide concrete sources to back their claims?

Don't single me out, when the same consistencies should apply to everyone on this forum.

Am I suddenly to say "Ooohhh...look at the citations, she must be right...."

I don't expect you or anyone else to suddenly agree with anything that I have to say. I am not here to have my own values and beliefs confirmed. However, on the grounds of debate, I expect that you and all others will remain consistent in the manner in which you approach the issues under debate, and treat the opinions brought to the table by all memebers of this forum, in a free and fair manner. On a further note, I ask that snide comments and rude remarks be left outside of the debating arena.

 

[CivU]

Infanteer,

I guess we can agree that A Few Good Men is a good film?

If I live, "in the same intellectual slum" then it is a well populated and fairly expensive slum.  Interesting how I didn't refer to your viewpoints as being consistent with the dregs of society; however you seem content with associating anything that doesn't connect with your opinion as worthless.  Is this how you feel about everyone who isn't exactly like you?

If you actually read my posts I didn't "equate Reagan, Clinton and Norman Swartzkopf" but in fact associated a few persons on that list I felt stood out, and provided one reason why a specific action by Swartzkopf, the use of depleted uranium ammunition, should be seen as horrific. I did not state he was a war criminal...

As far as your article MDH, people switch sides all the time, but with the energy for argument on this forum I don't see any epiphanies approaching anytime soon...

 

[Michael Dorosh]

Lyndsay - in light of the fact that I went out of my way to assist you by answering your questionnaire, and your promise to discuss my answers in full, I find it hard to fathom why you would be here exchanging barbs with Infanteer if you are really doing anything more than trolling for a reaction.

Presenting laundry lists of books is one thing; if you are asked to present your sources, that generally implies using one or two good quotes from those sources and explaining how they led you to a conclusion.  You can't just list the authors and titles and expect it to have any meaning, since we are unlikely to have either read them, or even if we have, cannot read your mind and extract the reasoning behind your conclusions from 200 or 300 pages of text.

I'd suggest taking a deep breath and presenting more of an x-to-y analysis.  Dumb it down, if that is a better way for me to put it.  It's easy to get so wrapped up in the material you assume everyone else will relate to it the same way you did.  Not so.  Stand away from it, and talk us through your analysis.

 

[Infanteer]

As well, quit whining about getting picked on here.

This is an Army site, and the soldiers gathered here back their argument with action when they throw their boots on in the morning and stand on the wall.   As such, they aren't exactly thrilled to listen to the ranting of a 20-year old college student who comes out to tell them that their mission and their sacrifice has been for nothing but a morally bankrupt cause that serves some ulterior motives.

The onus is on you to prove that the actions of the US and Allied nations (that's us) in the War on Terror are wrong because as far as we are concerned, our actions validate our viewpoints everyday.   Like it or not, Canada is an active participant in the War on Terror - we have been since the beginning and the effort of our services on the land, the sea, and the air hasn't slacked since then.   Just as disagreements between execution of campaigns in the Pacific and in Europe arose in WWII and yet never diminished the combined assault on Fascism, disagreements over prosecution of the Iraq War will not alter our unified efforts to defeat those that deign to undermine our way of life by attacking us in our homes and our places of work.

You speak of the United States promoting terrorism and aggrandizement abroad - have you ever BEEN on a military operation?   Do you know the level of accountability and professionalism that drives the actions of our military forces?   Why don't you look at what guys like Mark C and Devil39 have to say about that - after all, they were the ones who chased terrorist fighters through the mountains of Southern Afghanistan.   Or why don't you listen to PBI, who right now works alongside our American brothers to support the War on Terror.   Ask them about their "terrorist war" in the Middle East?

You say Iraq is an attempt to grab oil - do you know the intricacies of the US military presence in Iraq?   Why don't you look at what Matt Fisher has to say, since he is a Marine who performed his duty honourably there.   Do you think he occupied oil wells and pumping stations there?   No - he chased around people who behead aidworkers and would like nothing better then to kill you too.   Ask him about his "real motives" for "illegally subverting" the Iraqi people.

You say that the presence of the US and its Coalition allies does nothing but spread misery and oppression wherever it goes - do you have any idea what the day-to-day operations of our Forces are like?   Why don't you listen to guys like Bossi or Recceguy, both who served as CIMIC officers and put their lives on the line everyday to go out among the shattered ruins of Afghan society and "build bridges."   Ask them about their "operations to oppress" the citizens of the countries we've went into.

Now, I hope you can see why no one here cares to take your act seriously anymore - infact, your act is getting rather stale.   I am sure you can go find where the recently departed "Disillusioned" hangs out and the two of you can harangue on America and its Allies and reveal their duplicitous actions to an awe-struck crowd of fellow college students and Starbucks employees.   Don't worry about us, we'll continue to get up in the morning and climb the wall so that you can do so.

I am sure you can point to the latest book or explain to us what your college professor revealed to you that points out the inadequacies of our current war, but those soldiers on the wall have neither the time nor the inclination to answer to the bleating of the sheep because they stand on a line which means death to us and those we protect if we should falter in our convictions.  

If you want to stay here, why don't you just suck back, observe, and listen to why soldiers have taken the time to explain to you why they support the general effort to defeat the terrorist on the terrain of our choice - that is why we have this Bulletin Board.   The soldiers here have earned their right to their outlook because they've backed it with blood, sweat, and tears.   Until then, look this one up:

"It is not the critic who counts, not the man who points out how the strong man stumbled, or where the doer of deeds could have done better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena; whose face is marred by the dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs and comes short again and again; who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions and spends himself in a worthy course; who at the best, knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who, at worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly; so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who know neither victory or defeat."
Theodore Roosevelt

 

[Slim]

Good advice from someone who's been there and knows the score...

For those of you who need to do some learning...Time to take the cotton out of your ears and put it in your mouth!

Slim

 

[McG]

You speak of the United States promoting terrorism and aggrandizement abroad - have you ever BEEN on a military operation?

To be fair, I don't think MMI has made any comments on the technical side of the military operations at the tactical level and I think she has been staying in her lane of politics.  That being said, if all you are trying to tell her is that the critical piece of understanding she is missing can only be gained through being in the $hit, there are still other avenues.  I'd even be so bold as to say there are more than a few members of the ICRC that has spent more time in the $hit than many of the soldiers we've sent operations.  Maybe a tour with Medecins sans Frontieres?

 

[Jarnhamar]

My personal opinion is that it's easy to for example judge the americans in iraq and a accuse them of any number of things simply going off what you see on the news.   Their commiting attrocities. They are promoting terrorisim. They are doing whatever.   I'd agree people don't have to be in the shit to know what is going on. I'd even go so far as to say sometimes the guys on the ground can be as situationally unaware as someone back home.   That said I still feel someone gets a much more accurate representation of whats going on when they are either directly involved (Military operation) or on the same continent or in the same country.

The media isn't a concrete platform to base opinions on. While I'm not saying anyone here does specifically, a lot of people do that i've seen. They see it on cnn or the news and it's straight fromt he bible.  
The media doesn't always check their facts and their not too quick to publicize when they screw up. A good example is of that american soldier who made up a bullshit story about being the youngest special forces sniper complete with classified rank and picture of him holding a hunting rifle. A journalist (or whatever) from a military town completly bought this story that i'm sure even army cadets would call BS on. The reporter didn't have any reason to disbelieve the story so he didn't bother checking the facts. The news paper and soldiers CO/CSM and guys family got probbaly hundreds of calls and emails.

In any case, I don't think someone can paint a fair picture of whats going on "abroad" unless they themselves go abroad as a soldier, back packer, aid worker, student etc..

In regards to people playing nice and others seemingly getting upset over comments.   Sometimes the world isn't a very nice place and if someone can't take a few heated words in an argument about politics, on a military web page, maybe they would be happier arguing on some kind of politically centered forum.   No one likes to be called names or be the target of sarcasim. Big deal. If an adult can't take a little sarcasim or stick up for themselves then I'm personally going to think that much less of their opinion when it comes to the real world and terrorisim.

 

[Infanteer]

To be fair, I don't think MMI has made any comments on the technical side of the military operations at the tactical level and I think she has been staying in her lane of politics.   That being said, if all you are trying to tell her is that the critical piece of understanding she is missing can only be gained through being in the $hit, there are still other avenues.   I'd even be so bold as to say there are more than a few members of the ICRC that has spent more time in the $hit than many of the soldiers we've sent operations.   Maybe a tour with Medecins sans Frontieres?

You are right with regards to claims on tactical operations.   However, my challenge is against the general notion of equating US and Coalition actions with terrorist actions that has pervaded this entire thread.   Since the military is the tip of the Foreign Policy spear, the underlying conclusion is that the armed forces have a share part-and-parcel in the accusations of terrorist activities.   As I've alluded to, there are plenty of people on these forums who've been on the tip of the Foreign Policy spear (both in the US and Canada) and have yet to admit to criminal acts of terrorism.

And you're right about the NGO's.   Often, while military forces barricade themselves off in large bases for Force Protection measures, these guys live out in the middle of things.   They have their "boots to the ground" just as much as a soldier would.   I'd love to hear the perspectives of doctors, aid workers, and other NGO's if they came to this site.   Despite the fact that their overall perceptions may be limited compared to the wide-reaching capabilities of a military force, their journey to the coal-face gives them a valid (and sometimes different) perspective on things.

However, most of the criticism seems to be coming from neither area.   All I'm asking is for people to get their boots muddy before telling us that ours are covered in shit.

 

[a_majoor]

After reading this, you should be asking yourself why "the War on Terror" is in quotes

Most everyone on the blogosphere has probably followed the Glenn Reynolds link to a Mosul chaplain's blog. More than 20 people, including US military and civilian personnel, were killed in a mortar attack on a base mess tent in Mosul. Chaplain Lewis was at the site. His narrative of the followup attack on the wounded and the medical personnel who responded stood out.

    Regardless of what some may say, these are not stupid people. Any attack with casualties will naturally mean that eventually a very large number of care givers will be concentrated in one location. They took full advantage of that. In the middle of the mayhem the first mortar round hit about 100 to 200 meters away. Everyone started shouting to get the wounded into the hospital which is solid concrete and much safer than being in the open. Soon, the next mortar hit quite a bit closer than the first as they "walked" their rounds toward their intended target...us. Everyone began to rush toward the building. I stood at the door shoving as many people inside as I could. Just before heading in myself, the last one hit directly on top of the hospital. I was standing next to the building so was shielded from any flying shrapnel. In fact, the building, being built as a bunker took the hit with little effect. However, I couldn't have been more than 10 to 15 meters from the point of impact and brother did I feel the shock. That'll wake you up! I rushed inside to find doctors and nurses draped over patients, others on the floor or under something. I ducked low and quickly moved as far inside as I could. After a few tense moments people began to move around again and the business of patching bodies and healing minds continued in earnest.

This suggests that the target was under observation so either the first firing team, or a second enemy mortar team tasked with a followup attack could adjust their fire until they hit the hospital. It will be interesting to see whether the enemy fire originated from a populated area, preventing counterbattery. Many American bases are routinely patrolled by RPVs that run a circuit around possible firing positions. Mortar or rocket positions in the open would be easily detected. But there is no data and it would be useless to speculate on what actually happened. However, it is safe to say that the attack demonstrates assymetrical warfare in action. The enemy chose the weakest point he could find to attack; exploited the known limitations of the American response; and understood that he was to all intents and purposes exempted from the condemnation attendant to attacking the wounded and medical personnel. The chaplain and the medical personnel knew this and did not mill around expecting the Geneva Convention to protect them from those who have never heard of it, except as it applies to their own convenience. They knew the true face of the enemy; a face which bore no resemblance to the heroic countenance often presented by the media to the world.

Of the first three factors, the advantage of choosing the weakest point of attack has been a combatant's right from time immemorial. That is a purely military condition. But the enemy ability to exploit the limits of American response and attack medical personnel with public relations impunity are examples of military advantages that arise from political restraints. To the extent the blogosphere can dispel the propaganda cover willingly provided by the Left, people on the home front can help the soldiers in the field. It is necessary to link the war criminal behavior of the enemy with the studied blindness of 'sophisticates' towards their most heinous crimes. They are twinned; with the former made possible by the latter. The Daily Telegraph describes how some European agencies actually refuse to look at mass grave sites to avoid being party to the punishment of war criminals.

    Lack of European experts has held up the excavation of mass graves in Iraq, according to an American human rights lawyer working on the investigation. Greg Kehoe said the experts were not joining in because evidence might be used to sentence Saddam Hussein to death. ...

    Capital punishment is not permitted within the European Union which discourages its use elsewhere. EU countries also routinely refuse to extradite people to the United States and other countries unless they receive guarantees that detainees will not be executed. The Iraqi Special Tribunal has identified a further nine mass graves to be examined for evidence of the former Saddam regime's crimes against humanity. Human rights groups estimate that 300,000 people were killed. Mr Kehoe, who spent five years investigating mass graves in Bosnia for the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia, said he wanted to have collected far more evidence by now, and cited the delay as one reason why the IST has yet to issue formal charges against Saddam and 11 other former regime leaders.

Enemy mortar teams lying in wait to attack doctors are one aspect of a coin which features the blind eye of some media and 'progressive' institutions on the other. Mark Glaser observed that:

    For way too long, it has been the mainstream media (MSM) that's played God with the American public, telling everyone what's news and what's not, what to play up and what to downplay. But 2004 was the year the power started shifting, that the Little People, if you will, started to tell the gods of media what the public really wanted.

They can start by looking at the mass casualty station in Mosul and then glancing down at their hands.

 

[a_majoor]

Leave Rumsfeld Be
He is not to blame for our difficulties.

The Washington Post recently warned that doctors are urging interested parties of all types to get their flu shots before the "scarce" vaccine is thrown out. But how is such a surfeit possible when our national media scared us to death just a few months ago with the specter of a national flu epidemic, corporate malfeasance, and Bush laxity? That perfect storm of incompetence and skullduggery purportedly combined to leave us vulnerable to mass viral attack. So how can the Post now characterize something as "scarce" that is soon to be discarded for a want of takers? Was there too much or too little vaccine?

The answer, of course, is the usual media-inspired flight from reason that overwhelms this country at various times â ” hype playing on our fears and groupthink to create a sudden story when there really is none. And now with the renewed attack on Donald Rumsfeld we are back to more of the flu-shot hysteria that has been so common in this war. Remember the pseudo-crises of the past four years â ” the quagmire in week three in Afghanistan or the sandstorm bog-down in Iraq?

Let us not forget either all the Orwellian logic: Clinton's past deleterious military slashes that nevertheless explained the present win in Afghanistan, or his former appeasement of bin Laden that now accounts for the successful doctrine of fighting terror. Or recall the harebrained schemes we should have adopted â ” the uninvited automatic airlifting of an entire division into the high peaks of Islamic, nuclear Pakistan to cut off the tribal fugitives from Tora Bora? Or have we put out of our memories the brilliant trial balloons of a Taliban coalition government and the all Islamic post-Taliban occupation forces?

So it is with the latest feeding-frenzy over Donald Rumsfeld. His recent spur-of-the-moment â ” but historically plausible â ” remarks to the effect that one goes to war with the army one has rather than the army one wishes for angered even conservatives. The demands for his head are to be laughed off from an unserious Maureen Dowd â ” ranting on spec about the shadowy neocon triad of Wolfowitz, Feith, and Perle â ” but taken seriously from a livid Bill Kristol or Trent Lott. Rumsfeld is, of course, a blunt and proud man, and thus can say things off the cuff that in studied retrospect seem strikingly callous rather than forthright. No doubt he has chewed out officers who deserved better. And perhaps his quip to the scripted, not-so-impromptu question was not his best moment. But his resignation would be a grave mistake for this country at war, for a variety of reasons.

First, according to reports, the unit in question had 784 of its 804 vehicles up-armored. Humvees are transportation and support assets that traditionally have never been so protected. That the fluid lines in Iraq are different not just from those in World War II or Korea, but even Vietnam, Gulf War I, Mogadishu, and Afghanistan became clear only over months. Yet it also in fact explains why we are seeing 80 to 90 percent of these neo-Jeeps already retrofitted. In an army replete with Bradleys and Abramses, no one could have known before Iraq that Hummers would need to become armored vehicles as well. Nevertheless all of them will be in a fleet of many thousands in less than 18 months. Would that World War II Sherman tanks after three years in the field had enough armor to stop a single Panzerfaust: At war's end German teenagers with cheap proto-RPGs were still incinerating Americans in their "Ronson Lighters."

Second, being unprepared in war is, tragically, nothing new. It now seems near criminal that Americans fought in North Africa with medium Stuart tanks, whose 37-millimeter cannons ("pea-shooters" or "squirrel guns") and thin skins ensured the deaths of hundreds of GIs. Climbing into Devastator torpedo bombers was tantamount to a death sentence in 1942; when fully armed and flown into a headwind, these airborne relics were lucky to make 100 knots â ” not quite as bad as sending fabric Brewster Buffaloes up against Zeros. Yet FDR and George Marshall, both responsible for U.S. military preparedness, had plenty of time to see what Japan and Germany were doing in the late 1930s. Under the present logic of retrospective perfection, both had years to ensure our boys adequate planes and tanks â ” and thus should have resigned when the death toll of tankers and pilots soared.

Even by 1945 both the Germans and the Russians still had better armor than the Americans. In the first months of Korea, our early squadrons of F-80s were no match for superior Mig-15s. Early-model M-16 rifles jammed with tragic frequency in Vietnam. The point is not to excuse the military naiveté and ill-preparedness that unnecessarily take lives, but to accept that the onslaught of war is sometimes unforeseen and its unfolding course persistently unpredictable. Ask the Israelis about the opening days of the Yom Kippur War, when their armor was devastated by hand-held Soviet-made anti-tank guns and their vaunted American-supplied air force almost neutralized by SAMs â ” laxity on the part of then perhaps the world's best military a mere six years after a previous run-in with Soviet-armed Arab enemies.

Third, the demand for Rumsfeld's scalp is also predicated on supposedly too few troops in the theater. But here too the picture is far more complicated. Vietnam was no more secure with 530,000 American soldiers in 1968 than it was with 24,000 in 1972. How troops are used, rather than their sheer numbers, is the key to the proper force deployment â ” explaining why Alexander the Great could take a Persian empire of 2 million square miles with an army less than 50,000, while earlier Xerxes with 500,000 on land and sea could not subdue tiny Greece, one-fortieth of Persia's size.

Offensive action, not troop numbers alone, creates deterrence; mere patrolling and garrison duty will always create an insatiable demand for ever more men and an enormously visible American military bureaucracy â ” and a perennial Iraqi dependency on someone else to protect the nascent democracy. Thus if the argument can be made that Rumsfeld was responsible for either disbanding the Iraqi army or the April stand-down from Fallujah â ” the latter being the worst American military decision since Mogadishu â ” then he deserves our blame. But so far, from what we know, the near-fatal decision to pull-back from Fallujah was made from either above Rumsfeld (e.g., the election-eve White House) or below him (Paul Bremmer and the Iraqi provisional government).

In truth, the real troop problem transcends Iraq. Our shortages are caused by a military that was slashed after the Cold War and still hasn't properly recouped to meet the global demands of the war against Islamic fascism â ” resulting in rotation nightmares, National Guard emergencies, and stop-order controversies. The amazing victories in Afghanistan and Iraq not only set up unrealistic expectations about the ease of implementing post-bellum democracy among tribal Islamic societies, but also allowed the public, the Congress, and the president not to mobilize to confront the strategic challenges facing the United States that now pose a more serious threat than did the 1980s Soviet Union.

We are left with an unhinged nuclear dictatorship in North Korea threatening an increasingly appeasing and pacifistic South. Taiwan could be swallowed up in days or destroyed in hours by a bullying, resource-hungry China staking out a new co-prosperity sphere in the Pacific, one every bit as ambitious as imperial Japan's. Iran's nukes will soon be able to hit a triangulating Europe, and Islamists seek our destruction at home while we implement liberal governments in Iraq and Afghanistan.

All this peril came on us suddenly and without warning â ” at a time of recession and following the vast arms cuts of the 1990s, a trillion in lost commerce and outright damage from 9/11, oil spikes, huge trade deficits, increased entitlements, and tax cuts. If Mr. Rumsfeld is responsible for all that, perhaps then we can ask him to step aside as culpable for our present absence of enough soldiers in the U.S. military.

In reality, he has carefully allotted troops in Iraq because he has few to spare elsewhere â ” and all for reasons beyond his control. If Senator Lott or kindred pundits first show us exactly where the money is to come from to enlarge the military (tax hikes, cuts in new Medicare entitlements, or budgetary freezes?), and, second, that Mr. Rumsfeld opposes expanding our defense budget â ” "No, President Bush, I don't need any more money, since the Clinton formula was about right for our present responsibilities" â ” then he should be held responsible. So far that has not happened.

Fourth, we hear of purportedly misplaced allocations of resources. Thus inadequate Humvees are now the focus of our slurs â ” our boys die while we are wasting money on pie-in-the-sky ABMs. But next month the writs may be about our current obsession with tactical minutiae â ” if Iran shoots off a test missile with a simultaneous announcement of nuclear acquisition. So then expect, "Why did Rumsfeld rush to spend billions on Humvee armor, when millions of Americans were left vulnerable to Iran's nukes without a viable ABM system come to full completion?"

Fifth, have we forgotten what Mr. Rumsfeld did right? Not just plenty, but plenty of things that almost anyone else would not have done. Does anyone think the now-defunct Crusader artillery platform would have saved lives in Iraq or helped to lower our profile in the streets of Baghdad? How did it happen that our forces in Iraq are the first army in our history to wear practicable body armor? And why are over 95 percent of our wounded suddenly surviving â ” at miraculous rates that far exceeded even those in the first Gulf War? If the secretary of Defense is to be blamed for renegade roguery at Abu Ghraib or delays in up-arming Humvees, is he to be praised for the system of getting a mangled Marine to Walter Reed in 36 hours?

And who pushed to re-deploy thousands of troops out of Europe, and to re-station others in Korea? Or were we to keep ossified bases in perpetuity in the logic of the Cold War while triangulating allies grew ever-more appeasing to our enemies and more gnarly to us, their complacent protectors?

The blame with this war falls not with Donald Rumsfeld. We are more often the problem â ” our mercurial mood swings and demands for instant perfection devoid of historical perspective about the tragic nature of god-awful war. Our military has waged two brilliant campaigns in Afghanistan and Iraq. There has been an even more inspired postwar success in Afghanistan where elections were held in a country deemed a hopeless Dark-Age relic. A thousand brave Americans gave their lives in combat to ensure that the most wicked nation in the Middle East might soon be the best, and the odds are that those remarkable dead, not the columnists in New York, will be proven right â ” no thanks to post-facto harping from thousands of American academics and insiders in chorus with that continent of appeasement Europe.

Out of the ashes of September 11, a workable war exegesis emerged because of students of war like Don Rumsfeld: Terrorists do not operate alone, but only through the aid of rogue states; Islamicists hate us for who we are, not the alleged grievances outlined in successive and always-metamorphosing loony fatwas; the temper of bin Laden's infomercials hinges only on how bad he is doing; and multilateralism is not necessarily moral, but often an amoral excuse either to do nothing or to do bad â ” ask the U.N. that watched Rwanda and the Balkans die or the dozens of profiteering nations who in concert robbed Iraq and enriched Saddam.

Donald Rumsfeld is no Les Aspin or William Cohen, but a rare sort of secretary of the caliber of George Marshall. I wish he were more media-savvy and could ape Bill Clinton's lip-biting and furrowed brow. He should, but, alas, cannot. Nevertheless, we will regret it immediately if we drive this proud and honest-speaking visionary out of office, even as his hard work and insight are bringing us ever closer to victory.

â ” Victor Davis Hanson is a military historian and a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University. His website is victorhanson.com.

 

[a_majoor]

Opening of wider fronts?

Values and Interests
The â Å“insurgencyâ ? and the future of the Middle East.

The notion that we are fighting an "insurgency" largely organized and staffed by former elements of Saddam Hussein's Baathist regime is now fully enshrined as an integral piece of the conventional wisdom. Like earlier bits of the learned consensus â ” to which it is closely linked â ” it is factually wrong and strategically dangerous.

That it is factually wrong is easily demonstrated, for the man invariably branded the most powerful leader of the terrorist assault against Iraq â ” Abu Musab al Zarqawi â ” is not a Baathist, and indeed is not even an Iraqi. He is a Palestinian Arab from Jordan who was based in Iran for several years, and who â ” when the West Europeans found he was creating a terror network in their countries (primarily Germany and Italy) and protested to the Iranians â ” moved into Iraqi Kurdistan with Iranian protection and support, as the moving force in Ansar al Islam.

You cannot have it both ways. If Zarqawi is indeed the deus ex machina of the Iraqi terror war, it cannot be right to say that the "insurgency" is primarily composed of Saddam's followers. Zarqawi forces us to think in regional terms rather than focusing our attention on Iraq alone. Unless you think that Iraqi Defense Minister Shaalan is a drooling idiot, you must take seriously his primal screams against Iran and Syria ("terrorism in Iraq is orchestrated by Iranian intelligence, Syrian intelligence, and Saddam loyalists"). Indeed, there has been a flood of reports linking Syria to the terror war, including the recent news that the shattered remnants from Fallujah have found haven and succor across the Syrian border. Finally, the Wahabbist component carries the unmistakable fingerprints of the quavering royal family across the border in Saudi Arabia.

The terror war in Iraq was not improvised, but carefully planned by the four great terror masters (Iran, Iraq, Syria, and Saudi Arabia) during the infuriatingly long run-up to the liberation. They made no secret of it; you have only to go back to the public statements of the Iranian mullahs and the Syrian Baathists to see it, for top Iranian officials and Bashir Assad publicly announced it (the mullahs in their mosques, Bashir in a published interview). They had a simple and dramatic word for the strategy: Lebanon. Assad and the mullahs prepared to turn Iraq into a replay of the terror war they had jointly waged against us in Lebanon in the 1980s: suicide bombings, hostage-taking, and religious/political uprisings. It could not have been more explicit.

Some of our brighter journalists have recently written about Iraqi documents that show how Saddam instructed his cohorts to melt away when Coalition forces entered Iraq, and then wage the sort of guerilla campaign we now see. But neither they nor our buffoonish intelligence "community" have looked at the documents in the context of the combined planning among the four key regimes. Anyone who goes back to the pre-OIF period can see the remarkable tempo of airplanes flying back and forth between Damascus, Baghdad, Tehran, and even Pyongyang (remember the Axis of Evil?), as military and intelligence officials worked out their strategies. Some of those flights, as for example those between Saddam's Baghdad and the mullahs' Tehran, were a kind of man-bites-dog story, since in the past such flights carried armaments to be dropped on the destination, whereas in 2002 and early 2003 they carried government officials planning the terror war against us in Iraq.

The myth of the Baathist insurgency is actually just the latest version of the old error according to which Sunnis and Shiites can't work together. This myth dominated our "intelligence" on the Middle East for decades, even though it was known that the Iranian (Shiite) Revolutionary Guards were trained in (Syrian-dominated, hence secular Baathist) Lebanon by Arafat's (Sunni) Fatah, starting as early as 1972. The terror masters worked together for a long time, not just after the destruction of the Taliban. But we refused to see it, just as today we refuse to see that the assault against us is regional, not just Iraqi.

Many of the statements emerging from official (that is, both governmental and media) Washington nowadays reflect yet another error, a corollary of the axiom that sees the region hopelessly divided between Shiites and Sunnis. The corollary has it that the impending electoral victory of the Iraqi Shiites will greatly increase Iranian leverage in Iraq. The truth, as Reuel Gerecht so eloquently demonstrated in the Wall Street Journal last week, is precisely the opposite, because the Shiite leaders in Iraq are fundamentally opposed to the Iranian doctrine that places a theocratic dictator atop civil society. The Iraqis adhere to the traditional Shiite view that people in turbans should work in mosques, leaving civil society to secular leaders, and therefore their victory in Iraq will threaten the sway of the mullahs across the border. We should not view all Shiites as a coherent community, and we should welcome a traditional Shiite society in Iraq, and recognize that it is a valuable weapon in the war against the terror masters in Tehran.

The mullahs know this well. They dread the success of traditional Shiites in Baghdad, and they are desperately trying to foment a Sunni/Shiite clash of civilizations. That is the explanation of the resumption of suicide-bombing attacks in the holy Shiite cities of Najaf and Karbala, which the mullahs' intelligence agents had terminated when previous bombings intensified anti-Iranian (rather than the hoped-for anti-Sunni) passions. As many Iraqi leaders have observed, the recent attacks in the holy places demonstrate desperation, not growing "insurgent" strength.

The clear strategic conclusion remains what it should have been long before Coalition troops entered Saddam's evil domain: No matter how strongly we wish it to be otherwise, we are engaged in a regional war, of which Iraq is but a single battlefield. The war cannot be won in Iraq alone, because the enemy is based throughout the region and his bases and headquarters are located beyond our current reach. His power is directly proportional to our unwillingness to see the true nature of the war, and our decision to limit the scope of our campaign.

The true nature of the war exposes yet another current myth: that we are at greater risk because we failed to send sufficient troops into Iraq. More troops would simply mean more targets for the terrorists, since we are not prepared â ” nor should we be â ” to establish a full-scale military occupation and to "seal off" the borders with Iran, Syria, and Saudi Arabia. Hell, we can't even seal off the Mexican border with the United States, an area we know well. How can we expect to build a wall around Iraq?

No, we can only win in Iraq if we fully engage in the terror war, which means using our most lethal weapon â ” freedom â ” against the terror masters, all of them. The peoples of Syria, Iran, and Saudi Arabia are restive, they look to us for political support. Why have we not endorsed the call for political referenda in Syria and Iran? Why are we so (rightly and honorably) supportive of free elections in the Ukraine, while remaining silent about â ” or, in the disgraceful case of outgoing Secretary of State Colin Powell, openly hostile to â ” free elections in Iran and Syria? Why are we not advancing both our values and our interests in the war against the terror masters?

Faster, please.

â ” Michael Ledeen, an NRO contributing editor, is most recently the author of The War Against the Terror Masters. He is resident scholar in the Freedom Chair at the American Enterprise Institute.