Honesty About Iraq
NCfan
Posts: 945
Honesty About Iraq
How are we doing?
by Victor Davis Hanson
National Review Online
The United States can usually win even postmodern wars abroad if it can play to its strengths — which are marshaling our enormous material, intelligence, and technological advantages to defeat the enemy before he inflicts enough casualties to convince an affluent and comfortable public at home that such losses are simply not worth the envisioned aims.
So how are we doing?
As expected, many of our traditional advantages are being nullified.
How can Americans use air superiority against an enemy that hides among civilians and dares them to destroy infrastructure essential to our friends?
We create sophisticated communications at great cost and investment; the parasitical terrorists simply bore into them and use them at no cost and sometimes with greater effect than do their inventors (e.g., Why are not jihadist websites deemed as dangerous as IEDs, but not attacked in similar fashion?).
Money and know-how can rebuild Iraq along the designs of Western material society — but that only makes it more vulnerable as a single transformer blown up or a pylon brought down can suddenly take away the newly found improved life. It’s not just that a suicide bomber with a $100 vest can destroy $1 million worth of electrical infrastructure, but in the gruesome equation cast the American engineers into the role of the incompetent or sinister by their failure to repair and rebuild faster than an illiterate can destroy.
The globalized media is an American epiphenomenon, but the narrative of the war is still the IED, not the purple finger. We apparently have no way of convincing the world that the primordial enemy commits daily something far worse than the sexual humiliation of the entire Abu Ghraib fiasco. Somehow “thousands have been killed” is never qualified as those mostly butchered and blown up by insurgents — since the loose use of the passive voice lends a general sense that somehow Americans are directly involved in, or responsible for, the killing.
Our soldiers are fighting brilliantly, and history will record they are defeating the enemy while suffering historically low casualties. But if the sacrifice of American youth is not tied — daily, hourly — to larger strategic and humanitarian goals by eloquent statesmen who believe in the mission, then cynicism follows and, with it, despair.
The establishment of consensual government in Iraq, with the concomitant defeat of jihadists, will have positive ripples that will undermine Islamism and help to cleanse the miasma in which al Qaeda thrives. But again, unless explained, most Americans will not see a connection between the ideology of the head-drillers and head-loppers we are fighting in Iraq and those who try to do even worse at Fort Dix and the Kennedy airport. The war to remove Saddam was won and is over; the subsequent and very different war in Iraq that followed is for nothing less than the future of the Middle East — and now involves everything from global terrorism and nuclear proliferation to the world’s oil supply and the future of Islam in the modern world.
We need to confess that the jihadists are not only keen students of insurgency warfare, but good observers of the American psyche. We think their kidnapping, childish infomercials, gruesome tactics, and horrific websites are primordial and counterproductive; but they are more likely horrifically simple in inciting the most basic fears and self-preservation instincts of ordinary people. Precisely because decapitation belongs to a different century makes it more gruesome now, not less. Because the al Qaedists steal many of their talking points from the Western Left does not make them unimaginative as much as eerily familiar. And because we can daily predict the serial barbarity of the jihadists makes it not so much unimaginative as savagely inevitable.
So what to do?
We can quibble and fight about tactics on the ground, manpower numbers, strategic postures toward Iran and Syria, the need to prod the Iraqis, but our problem is more existential. Either stabilizing Iraq now is felt critical to the United States and the West or it isn’t. If the Left is right that it isn’t, then we should flee; if they are wrong, and I think they are, then we must start using our vast cultural and media resources to explain what is at stake — in a strategic and humanitarian sense — and precisely what it is costing America and why it in the long run is worth it, and how we have adjusted to counter our enemies who in the last four years have not won in Iraq or anywhere else either.
By our relative inaction on these critical informational fronts, we are only raising the bar impossibly high for General Petraeus when he reports back to Congress in the autumn. For election-minded Republican senators and representatives (whose defection alone can end the war) the barometer of success unfortunately may be soon not be improvement in six months, but only an impossible demand for absolute victory in 2007.
So more explanation, less assertion; more debate with, rather than dismissal of, critics. And the final irony? The more brutal honesty, the less euphemism and generalities, the more Americans will accept the challenge.
©2007 Victor Davis Hanson
How are we doing?
by Victor Davis Hanson
National Review Online
The United States can usually win even postmodern wars abroad if it can play to its strengths — which are marshaling our enormous material, intelligence, and technological advantages to defeat the enemy before he inflicts enough casualties to convince an affluent and comfortable public at home that such losses are simply not worth the envisioned aims.
So how are we doing?
As expected, many of our traditional advantages are being nullified.
How can Americans use air superiority against an enemy that hides among civilians and dares them to destroy infrastructure essential to our friends?
We create sophisticated communications at great cost and investment; the parasitical terrorists simply bore into them and use them at no cost and sometimes with greater effect than do their inventors (e.g., Why are not jihadist websites deemed as dangerous as IEDs, but not attacked in similar fashion?).
Money and know-how can rebuild Iraq along the designs of Western material society — but that only makes it more vulnerable as a single transformer blown up or a pylon brought down can suddenly take away the newly found improved life. It’s not just that a suicide bomber with a $100 vest can destroy $1 million worth of electrical infrastructure, but in the gruesome equation cast the American engineers into the role of the incompetent or sinister by their failure to repair and rebuild faster than an illiterate can destroy.
The globalized media is an American epiphenomenon, but the narrative of the war is still the IED, not the purple finger. We apparently have no way of convincing the world that the primordial enemy commits daily something far worse than the sexual humiliation of the entire Abu Ghraib fiasco. Somehow “thousands have been killed” is never qualified as those mostly butchered and blown up by insurgents — since the loose use of the passive voice lends a general sense that somehow Americans are directly involved in, or responsible for, the killing.
Our soldiers are fighting brilliantly, and history will record they are defeating the enemy while suffering historically low casualties. But if the sacrifice of American youth is not tied — daily, hourly — to larger strategic and humanitarian goals by eloquent statesmen who believe in the mission, then cynicism follows and, with it, despair.
The establishment of consensual government in Iraq, with the concomitant defeat of jihadists, will have positive ripples that will undermine Islamism and help to cleanse the miasma in which al Qaeda thrives. But again, unless explained, most Americans will not see a connection between the ideology of the head-drillers and head-loppers we are fighting in Iraq and those who try to do even worse at Fort Dix and the Kennedy airport. The war to remove Saddam was won and is over; the subsequent and very different war in Iraq that followed is for nothing less than the future of the Middle East — and now involves everything from global terrorism and nuclear proliferation to the world’s oil supply and the future of Islam in the modern world.
We need to confess that the jihadists are not only keen students of insurgency warfare, but good observers of the American psyche. We think their kidnapping, childish infomercials, gruesome tactics, and horrific websites are primordial and counterproductive; but they are more likely horrifically simple in inciting the most basic fears and self-preservation instincts of ordinary people. Precisely because decapitation belongs to a different century makes it more gruesome now, not less. Because the al Qaedists steal many of their talking points from the Western Left does not make them unimaginative as much as eerily familiar. And because we can daily predict the serial barbarity of the jihadists makes it not so much unimaginative as savagely inevitable.
So what to do?
We can quibble and fight about tactics on the ground, manpower numbers, strategic postures toward Iran and Syria, the need to prod the Iraqis, but our problem is more existential. Either stabilizing Iraq now is felt critical to the United States and the West or it isn’t. If the Left is right that it isn’t, then we should flee; if they are wrong, and I think they are, then we must start using our vast cultural and media resources to explain what is at stake — in a strategic and humanitarian sense — and precisely what it is costing America and why it in the long run is worth it, and how we have adjusted to counter our enemies who in the last four years have not won in Iraq or anywhere else either.
By our relative inaction on these critical informational fronts, we are only raising the bar impossibly high for General Petraeus when he reports back to Congress in the autumn. For election-minded Republican senators and representatives (whose defection alone can end the war) the barometer of success unfortunately may be soon not be improvement in six months, but only an impossible demand for absolute victory in 2007.
So more explanation, less assertion; more debate with, rather than dismissal of, critics. And the final irony? The more brutal honesty, the less euphemism and generalities, the more Americans will accept the challenge.
©2007 Victor Davis Hanson
Post edited by Unknown User on
0
Comments
-
NCfan wrote:The more brutal honesty, the less euphemism and generalities, the more Americans will accept the challenge.
©2007 Victor Davis Hanson
Your boys in power should have thought of this first instead of the dinky cars and moving long range lego parts that they tried to sell the country and world on. When all else fails, use the ruthless dictator page who the country convieniently forgets who propped up and supported with weapons.
Maybe toss in the pic of Rummy shaking the bad guy's hand to rally the ole troops up.
There is a guy suing in NYC for a plane that went off course and went through his apartment. I wonder if all the people who die from misguided, precision bombs were to sue if the American public would foot the bill?You've changed your place in this world!0 -
Hasent it died more Americans in Iraq than in 9/11? If its so, souldent you hunt Bush then?-95, Stockholm (MirrorBall Tour)
-00, Stockholm
-07, Copenhagen
-09, Berlin
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-11, East Troy 1+2
-12, Stockholm, Oslo, Copenhagen, EV London 2
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-18, Amsterdam 1+2, London 1+(2), Barcelona, London 2
-19, EV Brussels0 -
WhynotSweden wrote:Hasent it died more soldiers in Iraq than in 9/11? If its so, souldent you hunt Bush then?
no soldiers died on 9/110 -
good ol' V. D. Hanson...
let's see, Americans don't have the stomach to keep this war going...the terrorists are using the Left's talking points...the beheadings make us scared inside....Congressmen will be making an impossible request for Victory....
and suddenly it's time to be honest....
great piece...
of garbage...
and Jlew, I think our Swedish friend meant to say : Haven't more soldiers died in Iraq than the number of people who sadly died on 9/11....0 -
yes I know. and i'm saying there is a difference between 3000 innocent people dying and brave soldiers dying on the battlefield. which is in response to his silly "hunt bush" commentinmytree wrote:and Jlew, I think our Swedish friend meant to say : Haven't more soldiers died in Iraq than the number of people who sadly died on 9/11....0 -
The Road to stability in Iraq has always been based upon ONE facet... SECURITY.
This should have been the one factor that the Bush/Cheney/Rumsfeld crew focused on... not diversion from the serverity of the situation. 300,000 to 400,000 QUALITY boots on the ground to cover the square mileage and population of Iraq. The only way Iraq would have been able to stabilize was if security was established first.
...
So... where do we go from here? The same place... 300,000 to 400,000 QUALITY (trainned and trustworthy) boots on the ground to overwhelm the insurgency, not just stop them in Fallujah, only to have them pop up in Mosul. Hammer Fallujah AND Mosul and quit playing Whack A Mole with them.
Where do we get 160,000 to 260,000 additonal troops? I would say either NATO, a REAL Coalition (not one we coerce or bribe) or fire up the good ol' Selective Service Lottery Drum. It all depends upon how serious we are, as a nation, about Iraq.Allen Fieldhouse, home of the 2008 NCAA men's Basketball Champions! Go Jayhawks!
Hail, Hail!!!0 -
jlew24asu wrote:yes I know. and i'm saying there is a difference between 3000 innocent people dying and brave soldiers dying on the battlefield. which is in response to his silly "hunt bush" comment
I don't know, I think your boy, bushy, is as bad as any war criminal...
I know we disagree on that...but history will prove one of us right...sadly, we won't know the real answer for years to come...if ever...0 -
inmytree wrote:good ol' V. D. Hanson...
let's see, Americans don't have the stomach to keep this war going...the terrorists are using the Left's talking points...the beheadings make us scared inside....Congressmen will be making an impossible request for Victory....
and suddenly it's time to be honest....
great piece...
of garbage...
and Jlew, I think our Swedish friend meant to say : Haven't more soldiers died in Iraq than the number of people who sadly died on 9/11....
The American people, like you, cannot stomach a war. The loss of soldiers' lives in Iraq (while each is important) does not even come close to prior wars. Fighting terrorists is important, because you are not going to be able to talk to these Muslim fanatics. They are in Iraq now, and we need to keep fighting them there and elsewhere. But, Americans like you do not have the stomach for it, and the insurgents and Al Qaeda are using you like puppets. There are areas in Iraq that are improving, and terrorist attacks are down 90%, but you will NEVER hear that in the news, and the terrorists know this.0 -
inmytree wrote:I don't know, I think your boy, bushy, is as bad as any war criminal...
I know we disagree on that...but history will prove one of us right...sadly, we won't know the real answer for years to come...if ever...
And if people like were in power we would be walked over, so either way people are going to die.0 -
bootlegger10 wrote:And if people like were in power we would be walked over, so either way people are going to die.
Yeah because we see people walking all over other countries in Europe and elsewhere. Mostly, when countries are getting walked over...it's us doing the walking.If you want to tell people the truth, make them laugh, otherwise they'll kill you.
Man is least himself when he talks in his own person. Give him a mask, and he will tell you the truth.
-Oscar Wilde0 -
jlew24asu wrote:no soldiers died on 9/11
Some died in the Pentagon, no?My whole life
was like a picture
of a sunny day
“We can complain because rose bushes have thorns, or rejoice because thorn bushes have roses.”
― Abraham Lincoln0 -
bootlegger10 wrote:The American people, like you, cannot stomach a war. The loss of soldiers' lives in Iraq (while each is important) does not even come close to prior wars. Fighting terrorists is important, because you are not going to be able to talk to these Muslim fanatics. They are in Iraq now, and we need to keep fighting them there and elsewhere. But, Americans like you do not have the stomach for it, and the insurgents and Al Qaeda are using you like puppets. There are areas in Iraq that are improving, and terrorist attacks are down 90%, but you will NEVER hear that in the news, and the terrorists know this.
Fighting terrorist is somewhat important... but arming and fighting both sides of a civil war is idiotic.My whole life
was like a picture
of a sunny day
“We can complain because rose bushes have thorns, or rejoice because thorn bushes have roses.”
― Abraham Lincoln0 -
Bullshit. This American knew exactly what would happen after the invasion of Iraq - and what's going on now mirrors what I knew to a tee. This war was cast as some sort of video-game-like operation complete with an ending cinamatic of pixelated roses and cake parties; and now you say we have "no stomach for it"? Well, of course. This war you wanted was sold to the population under false pretenses, and those who originally supported it under that guise are now just supposed to suck it up and say "oh, well - golly gee" or what-the-fuck-ever? This war you wanted and you created is failing because you wanted it so bad, and created it so haphazardly, so incompetently, so fucking stupidly that it blinded you and your ilk to the harsh realities of what is necessary. In fact, for all the complaints about losing this war to P.C. madness, it is that P.C. madness that was used to sell it. Those on "your side" that are defecting from the war-supporter position are doing so because they never would have agreed to the shit we're in now. It was your side that was too P.C. about it - but then, we wouldn't be there now if the truth of the destruction and death necessary was laid out in the beginning. And we couldn't have that, could we? Fucking last resort, my ass.bootlegger10 wrote:The American people, like you, cannot stomach a war. The loss of soldiers' lives in Iraq (while each is important) does not even come close to prior wars. Fighting terrorists is important, because you are not going to be able to talk to these Muslim fanatics. They are in Iraq now, and we need to keep fighting them there and elsewhere. But, Americans like you do not have the stomach for it, and the insurgents and Al Qaeda are using you like puppets. There are areas in Iraq that are improving, and terrorist attacks are down 90%, but you will NEVER hear that in the news, and the terrorists know this.
Ninety percent down, but soldier and civilian deaths are up? Got it. How could I have ever been so blind?0 -
blackredyellow wrote:Fighting terrorist is somewhat important.
What is more important?0 -
bushy is not my boy. that was cute though. and only history will show if he is looked at as a war criminal.inmytree wrote:I don't know, I think your boy, bushy, is as bad as any war criminal...
I know we disagree on that...but history will prove one of us right...sadly, we won't know the real answer for years to come...if ever...0 -
true. I stand corrected.blackredyellow wrote:Some died in the Pentagon, no?0 -
BUSH-lager wrote:What is more important?
The health care and education of our citizens.My whole life
was like a picture
of a sunny day
“We can complain because rose bushes have thorns, or rejoice because thorn bushes have roses.”
― Abraham Lincoln0 -
blackredyellow wrote:The health care and education of our citizens.
Fighting terrorism is essential in preserving the health and care of our citizens.0 -
BUSH-lager wrote:Fighting terrorism is essential in preserving the health and care of our citizens.
but we will never defeat terrorism militarily... it can't be done.
I would much rather focus our energy and money on our on citizens and as far as foreign policy goes, directing that energy and money to help combat the roots of terrorism, not invade countries and create more terrorist.
We will never be able to stop a dozen madmen from carrying out a terrorist attack... All we are doing now is creating countless more people who have the desire to carry out a terrorist attack against us.
The only good thing that is going on by creating more terrorists and terrorist groups so quickly, is that we have an opening to get some intelligence operatives to infiltrate these groups, but I have a suspicion that we aren't even accomplishing that.My whole life
was like a picture
of a sunny day
“We can complain because rose bushes have thorns, or rejoice because thorn bushes have roses.”
― Abraham Lincoln0 -
bootlegger10 wrote:The American people, like you, cannot stomach a war. The loss of soldiers' lives in Iraq (while each is important) does not even come close to prior wars. Fighting terrorists is important, because you are not going to be able to talk to these Muslim fanatics. They are in Iraq now, and we need to keep fighting them there and elsewhere. But, Americans like you do not have the stomach for it, and the insurgents and Al Qaeda are using you like puppets. There are areas in Iraq that are improving, and terrorist attacks are down 90%, but you will NEVER hear that in the news, and the terrorists know this.
oooooooo...tough talk from a little lady...that sounds right...
anyway, It's nice that you're willing to play chess with the lives of others...but that's not the important, at least to people like you...
fact of business is this: People like you are the ones who are scared and don't have the stomach to live without fear of others...people like you are little babies, afraid the big bad tar-or-ist is going to blow your trailer down...
so, I would be so quick to call others puppets, ok, miss piggy..?0
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