Start killing people or get out
More of the same is going to get more of the same result.
The problem with the whole plan was that it involved a "kind" war, a war without killing very many people. A war with the loser liking us. Like Japan in WWII.
What we forget is what it took to win that war: the death of millions of Japanese, and the threat to kill all of them if they didn't surrender.
We remember the peace, but we forget what got us there.
The Iraqi stratgey was doomed from the moment someone said "we can't just shoot looters". Totally doomed. It had nothing to do with troop count. It had to do with killing people.
We can still win the war in Iraq...if we want to. What would work is to exterminate every force working against our authority. By killing a hundred "innocents" as a side effect of killing each real bad guys. Once we started doing that, the bad guys would straighten up in a hurry, and the good guys would start cooperating, not wanting to be one of the side effects. If we really care about the ordinary Iraqis who just want a job in peace, this is exactly what we should do.
But we don't want to do that. Not our style of war. We'd rather lose than win, if that's what it takes to win.
So we should leave. Who cares what happens? Who cares if they kill each other? Not me. I care a bit that those ordinary Iraqi citizens will die because we disrupted the macabre stability which existed in Saddam's era, but five more years of the same followed by that result is even worse.
The problem with the whole plan was that it involved a "kind" war, a war without killing very many people. A war with the loser liking us. Like Japan in WWII.
What we forget is what it took to win that war: the death of millions of Japanese, and the threat to kill all of them if they didn't surrender.
We remember the peace, but we forget what got us there.
The Iraqi stratgey was doomed from the moment someone said "we can't just shoot looters". Totally doomed. It had nothing to do with troop count. It had to do with killing people.
We can still win the war in Iraq...if we want to. What would work is to exterminate every force working against our authority. By killing a hundred "innocents" as a side effect of killing each real bad guys. Once we started doing that, the bad guys would straighten up in a hurry, and the good guys would start cooperating, not wanting to be one of the side effects. If we really care about the ordinary Iraqis who just want a job in peace, this is exactly what we should do.
But we don't want to do that. Not our style of war. We'd rather lose than win, if that's what it takes to win.
So we should leave. Who cares what happens? Who cares if they kill each other? Not me. I care a bit that those ordinary Iraqi citizens will die because we disrupted the macabre stability which existed in Saddam's era, but five more years of the same followed by that result is even worse.
posted by dwshelf at 8:31 AM
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