Posted on 11/17/2003 8:48:10 PM PST by Eb Wilson
I find it very interesting when, every once in a while, I am reminded by the Truth and learn that people in Jordan, Iraq, Turkey, Afghanistan, Sudan, Egypt, etc. hate us. They don't just dislike us --they hate us. They compare us to unclean animals, demons and unsavory traffickers of foul goods. Some of this may be true for a few of us, as it is for them. However, when it comes to their finally doing something about their hatred and acting on their words, we get all pissied and call in the cops to come and search everyone once the perpetrators have left.
You remember the photos and video bytes of those people gathered in far off places celebrating in the streets after the news of 9/11 got to them. Celebrating. They enjoyed the news of thousands of American civilians dying in just one moment of time. They reveled in it. They taught their children to draw pictures of the burning towers to show the triumph of Islam over the infidels (for those of you wondering who the infidels are; that's us... or U.S.).
They regard themselves to be in a war. Civilians and soldiers alike. To the civilian (in the Arab-Muslim context), a soldier is only a more powerful and deadly civilian who has been taught to march and to safely hold a rifle, a man in a uniform marching to victory with the tools of open war --not a person who is held to a high standard of conduct, virtuously dispensing peace and prosperity, but a visible reference to power and authority, meting out summary judgment, and deserving of all the respect that brute force commands. Nothing more.
I'll mention the U.S. Army captain who fired a shot next to a captive enemy combatant in Iraq to gain valuable and timely intelligence that saved American Soldiers' lives. He was court-martialed for his "cruel and extreme" treatment of his captive. I don't get it...I've never seen someone wearing loafers to a track meet, and I hope that the premier fighting force in the world won't decide that the comfort of a captive enemy is more important than American lives (especially those out there keeping the fight in Iraq).
I'll agree that we should require our soldiers to conduct themselves with restraint, but we should also allow them to adjust to their environment and speak the languages of the savages wherever they find them. War is not a police action, and is not bound by the rules of evidence and governed by stateside juris-precedence found through many years of conducting police actions in the U.S. War is a mechanism designed for conquest, driven by specific goals usually involving the pummeling and outright smiting of the will of the enemy, and his country, as he knows it. Then the war is over. When the war is over, we occupy, and with restraint, mete out justice with fairness and discipline appropriate for a ruined society. War is the ruin of society.
I think what we've done here is conducted a partial coup, and forgot to complete the war with the sound defeat of the will of the enemy. An enemy without the will to continue in his old ways will be easier to teach in new ways. There was not enough blood... not enough cost of innocent life and way of life to the Iraqis to convince them all that they understand the true payment that tempting a war will require. Through the years, the Iraqi people have sat back, doing nothing to stop the growth of the vile dictatorship under which they lived.
I fear that we've once again postponed the completion of their cycle towards true improvement. Like washing a car and forgetting to rinse off the soap.
It's all PR. We're the good guys.
It sure worked when we bombed Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Regretable as those actions were.
I think what we've done here is conducted a partial coup, and forgot to complete the war with the sound defeat of the will of the enemy. An enemy without the will to continue in his old ways will be easier to teach in new ways. There was not enough blood... not enough cost of innocent life and way of life to the Iraqis to convince them all that they understand the true payment that tempting a war will require. Through the years, the Iraqi people have sat back, doing nothing to stop the growth of the vile dictatorship under which they lived.
on Sept. 1 Sherman occupied Atlanta. Intending to burn only buildings used for military purposes, his army set fires that raged out of control and destroyed much of the city. Sherman then launched his March to the Sea, with 60,000 of his most seasoned soldiers foraging off the land and cutting a swath of destruction through the heart of Georgia. On December 23, Sherman's forces occupied Savannah. After giving his army a rest, Sherman then proceeded on a path of destruction through South and North Carolina. Three weeks after Lee's surrender at Appomattox, Gen. Joseph Johnston -- who was in command of all Confederate forces in the Carolinas, Georgia, and Florida -- gave his formal surrender to Sherman at Durham Station, N.C. on April 26, 1865.
One thing I remember from my History books is William T. Sherman. Sherman showed us how modern warfare is fought. Regrettably, you have to take the war to the civilain's, and cut off shelter and supplies to the insurgent's, but more impotantly, and unforutnately, it's the civilains that need to suffer in order to break the resistance. This proved to be true in both Germany and Japan.
When the Iraqi's people are tired of fighting is when the fighting will stop.
They're foreigners to Iraq, and like al Qaeda's membership, many have palestinian roots. They come in from surrounding countries and from elsewhere. The few Iraqis involved are secularized Sunnis who have long used palestinian refugees as their gophers since unemployed, testosterone-pumped young men with palestinian backgrounds are a dime a dozen in the ME and willing to do vile things even to their fellow Arabs.
I see you've already demoted the man. He is a Lieutenant Colonel.
This is a difficult war because of the diffuse nature of the enemy. I applaude our recent effort to isolate a section of the hostile terretory and then go house to house. It might be time to do psych-ops over Tikrit: day and night gunships with loudspeakers playing Wagner and Arab language messages such as "Repent and come out of her" for about 24 hours, with any fire being returned with massive supression. After 24 hours, if fire continues, MOAB. Then send in the ground troops to sift the ashes. Then switch this tactic to the next hotest center of resistance. I wonder how long hostilities would continue faced with this. I'm not talking all of Iraq, just the Sunii triangle.
At the same time, it would be refreshing for a Patton-like leader to walk into the HQ where the benighted decision was made to court marshall an officer who was actually fighting the war and protecting his men, and dispatch one or two of these treasonous REMFs with a pearl-handled, chrome-plated revolver. The word needs to percolate down that the military exists to kill people and break things, not to act as social workers to dole out welfare from America to terrorists.
Vanities are supposed to say "Vanity" in the title.
Regardless of what the Muslims say, I refuse to believe that Muslims worship the living God. The actions of Muslim speak louder than their words.
Maybe they do. Still, they are world-class heretics.
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