Iraq Is Just Test Of Will For America (Mark Steyn Slams Baker Study Group "Realism" Alert)

Chicago Sun Times ^ | 12/03/2006 | Mark Steyn

[livius]

Until it is demonstrated beyond doubt that all Islam is the enemy...

I think we've already had ample demonstration of that! About 1300 years of it, in fact, during which Islam has shown itself to be aggressive when it feels strong, and unconcerned about dying because it really doesn't care about life and has a power-driven, distant god that does not care about it, either.

I'm not advocating "confronting" Islam, but simply not involving ourselves in its internal affairs, which are really outside of our control and just confuse matters. Unfortunately, though, Islam can be relied upon to confront us; and when it does, we have to fight back aggressively and without quarter. And when we are in a situation of power, we have to drive it back: for example, the Iraqi constitution would have been much better and much more of an instrument of peace among the Muslims themselves if it had not enshrined Islam. We had our opportunity to neutralize the Islamists in terms of the civil state, but I'm afraid we missed our chance. I think that our desire to tinker with Islam in the hopes that its "peaceful true nature" would be revealed has provided abundant evidence of the weakness of that idea.

I hope we learn from this, and when the next confrontation comes around (which it will), we respond simply on the basis of what is the best defense for us, and not out of some well-meaning notion that we are meant to be the saviors of the Islamic world.

[nathanbedford]

Iraq was never 'the' problem.

Agreed, I've said as much many times elsewhere.

It was a part of the problem but 'the' problem is in Saudi Arabia and Iran.

Again, agreed. And I have so said.

Why do you no longer want to strike outwards towards the more dangerous countries in the Middle East?

I do, but largely because of Iraq we no longer have the power, as I said: "Our efforts in Iraq have so attenuated our military force that we probably cannot mount an invasion and air power alone probably cannot interdict Iran's nuclear program. This is well known to the whole world and especially to Iran so our ability to intimidate the Iranians into good behavior has bled into the sands of Iraq along with the Bush Doctrine."

[Prodigal Son]

so our ability to intimidate the Iranians into good behavior has bled into the sands of Iraq along with the Bush Doctrine."

I disagree. You mass troops on the Iranian border and I guarantee you can make them blink or blunder into the mistake of doing something overtly hostile. This would allow us to attack them in a very convincing manner. And I think we could do quite a bit of damage to Iran with air power alone. Flattening Tehran would be a good start.

[nathanbedford]

Clive conquered India with 800. We have to check 1.4 billion! If we cannot do it by sending the Marines into Fallujah, how do you propose to do it against 1.4B unless you adopt the strategy of:

1. Clive

2. USS Alaska (Dr. Strangelove)

[Steel Wolf]

With two years left, Gates is coming in already a lame duck and will not have a chance to make any omelettes much less break a few eggs.

Gates will be a caretaker, nothing more. The revolution in military affairs will probably not take place until after we redeploy from Iraq and take a breather. It was the same after WWII, with the creation of the United States Air Force, and there are already forces behind the scenes that intend on elevating SOCOM to a higher status. Hoping for it to happen under Gates' term may be a little too ambitious. It's a hard thing to, as they say, change horses in mid stream, so expect the topic to come up once the dust settles from Iraq.

As I said before, the U.S. Army is peerless as a regime killer. Like a great white shark, it does what it does at an unmatched level. Still, it may be too specialized at warfighting to be good at anything else. A U.S. occupation of Iraq under the Department of Special Operations would have looked a lot different then under the Department of the Army. It's too late to do anything about it now, but next time, hopefully we won't make the same mistake.

[nathanbedford]

Mass what troops on the Iranian border? General Abazaid said that we could not sustain an accretion to the force in Baghdad of only 20,000 troops. The weight of the authority that I have heard is that we simply do not have the horses. I heard retired General on Meet the Press state that the idea of interdicting Iran's nuclear program with air power alone was, "insane."

I do not set myself up as a military expert and I would be delighted to be shown to be wrong here if you could only tell me where we can get the forces and the machines and equipment to mount a credible threat of invasion.

[Steel Wolf]

You mass troops on the Iranian border and I guarantee you can make them blink or blunder into the mistake of doing something overtly hostile.

Are we talking about intimidating Iran, or annexing Texas?

This tactic simply won't work. For one thing, we occasionally might skirmish now and then with the Iranians. It barely makes the news, much less as an act of war. Second, we don't have a credible force to project into Iran, due to our drained national will, so they have no reason to fear an invasion. Especially on the flimsy grounds your proposing.

[Steel Wolf]

You mass troops on the Iranian border and I guarantee you can make them blink or blunder into the mistake of doing something overtly hostile.

Are we talking about intimidating Iran, or annexing Texas?

This tactic simply won't work. For one thing, we occasionally might skirmish now and then with the Iranians. It barely makes the news, much less as an act of war. Second, we don't have a credible force to project into Iran, due to our drained national will, so they have no reason to fear an invasion. Especially on the flimsy grounds your proposing.

[nathanbedford]

I forgot to make explicit my agreement with your point that it is no business of the United States to be constructing Athenian democracies with medieval Neanderthals.

[finnigan2]

From The Article: "Aussie and Malaysian forces sent troops on low-key, lethally effective raids into Indonesia, keeping the enemy on the defensive and winning the war with barely a word making the papers."

- And what makes Mark think that Special Forces and SAS units have not been carrying out clandestine operations along the Syrian/Iranian borders to intercept men and materiel into Iraq and with, in his words, "barely a word making the papers"?

[Steel Wolf]

And what makes Mark think that Special Forces and SAS units have not been carrying out clandestine operations along the Syrian/Iranian borders to intercept men and materiel into Iraq and with, in his words, "barely a word making the papers"?

If there were U.S. troops in either nation, someone with access to that information invariably would be of a political persuasion to leak the info for political gain. The 'so secret no one knows about it' mission is the stuff of paperback fiction. In the real world, every operation is known by at least a few members of each party.

The headline would run something like this: "President Bush Expands Ground War to Iran, Syria". I don't see the gains worth the PR damage.

[Austin Willard Wright]

Mark Steyn is a genius, and as usual his analysis is spot-on,

He wasn't "spot on" when he failed to anticipate the insurgency and sectarian violence, when he predicted the Iraqis would greet us as liberators, and when he failed to predict the rise of a pro-Iran Shi'ite regime in Baghdad. At least as a prophet, Steyn is about as "spot on" as Dick Morris.

[SunTzuWu]

Ping!

[hinckley buzzard]

Until it is demonstrated beyond doubt that all Islam is the enemy

This question is misguided. The vast majority of islam is waiting and watching, and tacitly aiding and abetting the jihadis all the while. The issue which we once had a chance of addressing, was rather, How to insure that we keep "all Islam" from becoming the enemy?

The answer, which we up until recently were in a position to deliver, was by decisive and determined action, leading to unambiguous disaster for the jihadi wing of islam. But the James Baker/Colin Powell types got it wrong, and thought we could "win the hearts and minds" by being tentative, pulling our punches, and letting dirtbags like Sadr organize his forces, instead of arresting and /or killing him outright. If we had done Iraq in convincing fashion, by crushing domestic insurgents, sealing Iraq's borders and annihilating any foreigners attempting to cross, we would have a much more agreeable Syria on our hands, and a much more cautious Iran. We had the option of being 'the strong horse' but chose foolishly to be 'the weak horse' instead, and we are paying for this now.

The chance will come again, unfortunately, and the stakes and cost will be even higher the next time; so god help us if we fumble the ball away again on the next possession. It may be our last.

[hinckley buzzard]

Until it is demonstrated beyond doubt that all Islam is the enemy

This question is misguided. The vast majority of islam is waiting and watching, and tacitly aiding and abetting the jihadis all the while. The issue which we once had a chance of addressing, was rather, How to insure that we keep "all Islam" from becoming the enemy?

The answer, which we up until recently were in a position to deliver, was by decisive and determined action, leading to unambiguous disaster for the jihadi wing of islam. But the James Baker/Colin Powell types got it wrong, and thought we could "win the hearts and minds" by being tentative, pulling our punches, and letting dirtbags like Sadr organize his forces, instead of arresting and /or killing him outright. If we had done Iraq in convincing fashion, by crushing domestic insurgents, sealing Iraq's borders and annihilating any foreigners attempting to cross, we would have a much more agreeable Syria on our hands, and a much more cautious Iran. We had the option of being 'the strong horse' but chose foolishly to be 'the weak horse' instead, and we are paying for this now.

The chance will come again, unfortunately, and the stakes and cost will be even higher the next time; so god help us if we fumble the ball away again on the next possession. It may be our last.

[hinckley buzzard]

Until it is demonstrated beyond doubt that all Islam is the enemy

This question is misguided. The vast majority of islam is waiting and watching, and tacitly aiding and abetting the jihadis all the while. The issue which we once had a chance of addressing, was rather, How to insure that we keep "all Islam" from becoming the enemy?

The answer, which we up until recently were in a position to deliver, was by decisive and determined action, leading to unambiguous disaster for the jihadi wing of islam. But the James Baker/Colin Powell types got it wrong, and thought we could "win the hearts and minds" by being tentative, pulling our punches, and letting dirtbags like Sadr organize his forces, instead of arresting and /or killing him outright. If we had done Iraq in convincing fashion, by crushing domestic insurgents, sealing Iraq's borders and annihilating any foreigners attempting to cross, we would have a much more agreeable Syria on our hands, and a much more cautious Iran. We had the option of being 'the strong horse' but chose foolishly to be 'the weak horse' instead, and we are paying for this now.

The chance will come again, unfortunately, and the stakes and cost will be even higher the next time; so god help us if we fumble the ball away again on the next possession. It may be our last.

[hinckley buzzard]

Sorry about the multi-post. mea culpa.

[OregonRancher]

"I think we need to send them a few cases of 50,000# sun block and then give them a reason to try it."

Wonderful idea! I like the way you think!!!

[nathanbedford]

I posted this some time ago and I hope you will indulge as seems to be relevent:

Islam has yet to taste of the Scottish Enlightenment. No Enlightenment means no tolerance, no notion that tolerance is essential to civilization.

What are we to do with this insight? If you are a rabid Muslim hater (there are such people after all) you are inclined to say, "see, I told you so, there is no dealing with these people, negotiation means appeasement and appeasement means only defeat, Islam must be defeated which means that Islam must be annihilated." If you are a liberal, you react in horror to such a stance, you call it the equivalent of racism, and proclaim that the root causes of Muslim intolerance must be dealt with. If you are a conservative, you reject the first as morally wrong and physically impossible (there are after all 1.4 billion Muslims in the world), and the second as impractical (we are in a war in which crazed Islamo- fundamentalists would cheerfully blow up or cities and murder us by the millions and there is not that much time or money or even patience in the enlightened world to get the job done).

So what is the conservative solution? The problem is that the world of Islam is so intolerant that it is dangerous and mortally dangerous at that to our civilization, our democracy, and our children's very lives. But the Muslim does not see himself as unenlightened. He is sure he is possessed of all of the Enlightenment there is to have and it is divine enlightenment. He denies that he is intolerant and insists that he is righteous. There is no scientific method, no idea of the marketplace of ideas, no receptivity. Just as the medicine of oncology cannot kill the cancerous cell if it cannot gain entry, so the intolerant Muslim cannot hear if he will not listen.

The honest truth is that there is no conservative solution to this dilemma. If the problem were an incorrigible criminal, conservatives would know what to do: lock him up, quarantine him. But we are dealing with a fifth of the planet here. There is an entity which showed itself quite capable of dealing with huge portions of the world's population who were ignorant, violent, and in many cases, Muslim and that entity was the British Empire operating in all the glory of its enlightened imperialist age. How did the thin red line manage the uncivilized world so successfully for so long until the royal Navy passed the baton to the American Navy?

Well, they did not do it the French way, the Brits did not go native. For the most part, they maintained their standards, they provided an efficient bureaucracy, a rule of law, and an essentially honest administration. In short, they operated within the lights of their own enlightenment. The caricature of the British colonialist of the Victorian age is of an Englishman so insular and so arrogant that he was incapable of understanding or adapting to local conditions and cultures even to the extent that he would go out into the midday sun. This is wholly unfair and a misreading of history. In fact the Brits were quite observant and really good listeners. Clive did not conquer India with only 800 men by overwhelming millions, he achieved this stupendous victory by setting his enemies against each other. He read each faction carefully and manipulated them.

I have posted time and again on these threads my belief that ultimately this intergenerational, world war against 1.4 billion Muslims for the very survival of our civilization and our democracy and our children's lives must be lost if it is not won by Muslims themselves. We must become as wily as the British and mobilize what is sane in the Muslim world to save us because they must save themselves.

But in the long haul it is only Muslims who have the keys to their brothers. If the medicine is to kill the cancerous cells in the body Islam, the medicine must somehow find the portal into the cell. We cannot enlighten the Arab street by exhorting them to be enlightened. He is deaf and blind to these Western ideas. He does not feel himself any bit enlightened but rather threatened. He is, however, likely to be receptive to ideas which are couched in the language and the idiom of Islam. Like Clive, we had better learn the idiom.

[FairOpinion]

"The central issue is America's credibility and will to prevail.''

An ''exit strategy'' on those terms is the path out not just from Iraq but from a lot of other places, too -- including Iran, North Korea, Sudan, Venezuela, Russia, China, the South Sandwich Islands. For America would be revealed to the world as a fraud: a hyperpower that's all hype and no power -- or, at any rate, no will. According to the New York Sun, ''An expert adviser to the Baker-Hamilton commission expects the 10-person panel to recommend that the Bush administration pressure Israel to make concessions in a gambit to entice Syria and Iran to a regional conference . . .''


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Mark Steyn gets it. Thanks for posting it.