The Agony of Defeat

The way I see it, Sala, is in terms of logistics and strategy. Guerrila war doesn't work if you have no hiding spots and no secure base to get logistics from. Israel and Iraq can combine to pincer off Syria, away from Iranian support. However, if Israel falls, then Syria can regroup their logistics and form a team with Iran to pincer off Iraq. Iraq will now be surrounded, and with two secure bases it doesn't matter how tactically brilliant the US Marines are, they cannot win when there are endless supplies and bodies for the enemy.

We'd have to do what MacArthur wanted, invade the source of logistics, to end the war permanently. You would have no choice once Israel falls and the entire West of Iraq is uncontested enemy territory. Trying to fight wars when you have no choice, is not a good idea.

I think a lot of people forget that Pakistan ain't an Arab country. They don't have 25 million or even 50 million, Pakistan has 120 million people. A third of the US population, and a tenth of India's yet with like 90% of the radical Muslims.

It's like a string of pearls. You can pincer Pakistan with Afghanistan and India. You can pincer Iran with Iraq and Afghanistan, but it all depends upon who moves to the offensive first.

Like a game of Go, if you can capture the enemy pieces, they can do the same to you.

Don and J at Bookworm wants partition, 3 states in a state. I argued that splitting the country up would create an unsolvable situation in which endless clan warfare would result. On a historical social level, unity erases chaos. Splitting people into factions is not going to erase chaos. The US fought a civil war to maintain Union, and that erased a lot of chaos. There would have been a lot more than ONE civil war had the US split into two pieces.

Rick offered two options - the only ones from the start. His instinct is the same as mine - win. Do what you have to do to win. There is no other option. No one should read what they want into this post, as many did at Rick's place with his - don't even think about it.

It's a good instinct, Sala. It almost doesn't matter what the current situation is, if you can forge ahead and create additional options. The point to winning is to get out of traps, not to sit around waiting for fate to bring you out of there. You got to make your own luck. If you're not doing anything or getting ready, then when opportunities arise, you won't take it.

Somalia is going the wrong way. From neutral/bad to bad for an example.

I know two guys from Somalia or thereabouts that work in the engineering sector in the US. For some reason, they make a lot of jokes about the para-militaries on the BBC website. How they would shoot at anything in the sky, rip off entire magazines, go on trucks with machine guns on the back. It was a weird, but educational experience for me.

To see how other people from Africa viewed things. One of them also said that Somalians on the street disliked how America would nose around their business. Contrasted with China, who they favor because the Chinesecome in, do business, get the money,and then leave. A sign of the future Chinese mercantilist Empire perhaps. (the idiots think Haliburton is an example of a mercantile empire, just wait I say)

If you have forgotten that, and hold our government at fault for not having perfect foresight – then shame on you.

My problem with Bush wasn't about his foresight, it's about what he can do now that he isn't doing. There are several sabotage and or military operations Bush can conduct on Syria and Iran, but for some reason Bush trusts in the UN. That seems... less than optimal.

Part Two

One of th ebiggest problems I had with the war was the thought that you can make someone become democratic.

I'll say the same thing I said to Don at Bookworm. Moderate Muslims exist, but so long as they face execution for being moderate and rewards for being part of the jihad, they will side with the enemy. The only way to get them on our side is to protect them from terroists and thugs, but to do that we have to be PHYSICALLY there to do so. They're not going to trust in UN bureacracies, state dep officials, or UN peacekeeper helmets. The onlypeople we can trust to protect the downtrodden are the US military, they are the only people capable and willing to do the job, without exploiting the locals for slave labor and sexual favors.

It doesn't matter what Bush's thoughts were or weren't. What matters is that Bush gave the job to the Marine Corps and the Spec Ops (to liberate the oppressed). That's all that matters. The military will do the job Bush gave them, and since Bush is a delegator not a micromanager, it doesn't matter at all what Bush thinks because Bush is not going to interfere. That's bad at a strategic level, but on a tactical level it is great for the soldiers. On balance anyways.

A lot of people don't know this, but President Grant had to send federal troops to the South because the Southerners were lynching blacks and intimidating them to vote Democrat, vote the slavers back into power after the Civil War. The federal troops crushed the growing KKK movement, and Republican leaders were elected. Then the next President recalled the soldiers, the KKK regrew, and Democrats took back the offices in the South. Do not think just because democracy is based upon the people, that the people are not vulnerable to intimidation and terror tactics. It is a false theory of human nature and human behavior to believe that the threat of death "does not work" on the constituents of a democracy.

I did not like the Iraq War, I just thought that it was historically the wrong place as there were too many ethnicities and religious groups to make it work.

It's one of the best places to start. Not only was there a history between Saddam and the US that allowed for a pretext to invasion. But the Kurds had a burgeoning secure state, a place of logistical resupply, should we need them. Bush didn't make use of the Kurds to conduct a guerrila war against Saddam, but that's his mistake, not the Kurds.

Not only the logistical and political situation favored Iraq, but also the cultural position as well. The sunnis were well educated and far apart from Islamic Jihad on a personal level. This wasn't Palestine or Iran where there were grassroots Hizbollah operations and what not providing healthcare to the peeps. It was a power vacuum, one that Saddam filled. Remove Saddam and we could move in. Bush trusted in the French and the UN too much, he trusted in the State Dep and CIA too much, and he got burned, and now we face the consequences.

A lot of the Sunni vs Shia vs Kurd phenomenon could have been prevented with some wise preventive management. Meaning, if we had operated in Iraq the same way the Spec Ops did in Afghanistan, we would have ended up with a revolutionary leader that agreed with us and also had the support to unite the country, if only because he blazed a trail of dead bodies into Baghdad with US support. It is no coincidence that Karzai lead indigenous Afghani forces aided by Spec Ops teams, and took Taliban occupied cities. It is no coincidence that at the end, Karzai became President. He did not become leader because we appointed him thus, he became leader because his people trusted him. When Karzai said he would take this city, he proved his word golden. There was this interview with the Spec Ops team with Karzai, that I have on my blog, was pretty interesting.

The invasion of Iraq reminded me of something called the "Short and Victorious War".

Communication is important, I agree. But communication is only that important if you screw up in the first place. If you do everything right, then you don't need to justify anything, people will automatically go to your banner.

Bush has two choices. Either he can focus on rhetoric, oration, and communication. Or he can focus on discombobulating Iran and Syria. I favor the latter.