GWOT: A remarkable weakness is seen in America's goodness in a very bad world!

I've linked here to a current favorite site on the web ... it is not for sissies or intellectually challenged people. I only barely follow what is written there (it's a team opinion site; conservative and libertarian).

With regard to the GWOT, and the vision I have for our improbable victory, I have been troubled by a blurry section where I get the distinct feeling something is not right with my picture ... something is missing.

A large part of the blur was refocused for me by a piece by George Handlery (TBJ). He points out what we've all recognized many times, our enemies and our critics don't play by the same rule book.

It is folly to assume that acting unselfishly brings rewards. By acting regardless of her interests the US is difficult to predict. Rather bad for a country with an interest in a stable, therefore predictable world. Ignoring the bare-bones national interest, self-imposed obligations emerge that are, originating from shaky premises, hard to fulfill.

Take the Iraq case: the Iraqi were alleged to crave liberty. Actually a divided country's hostile fractions only wanted a dictator acting in their behalf by harming others.

This really came home to me because I've been rewatching Ken Burn's awesome documentary The CIVIL WAR for the umpteenth time. Here is why: until Faragut, Sherman, Sheridan, and Grant took over the war effort for Lincoln the Union and Lincoln's second term were doomed. Why?

Simply put, up to that time Lincoln's war effort was run out of the war department (predecessor to the DOD) and resulted in military commanders of a type unknown to the rebel South ... men who talked (McClelland, Burnside, et al) but did not fight. Farragut, Sherman, Sheridan, and Grant understood war, Lee, Davis, and the will of the South.

Just before his march to Savannah, Sherman said something to the effect of "I'm going to push 'em, and kick 'em, and push 'em and kick 'em some more; war is an awful thing and I'm going to give them treasonous rebels war until they're sick to death of it and bring this war to an end if I have to kill 'em all."

That's what is missing in Bush's "war room" GWOT, the same pentagon war room mentality that wreck our efforts in Korea and Viet Nam. One gave us the nutcase Kim Il Jung and the other gave us what is a ruthless totalitarian Carbuncle on the backside of South East Asia.

At the end of our Civil War Lincoln finally found the men he needed to kick some "b_tt" in the armies of Lee, Forrest, and Hood. Up till that point Lincoln's military surrogates and anti-war critics wanted to talk the enemy into submission or give up half the nation in appeasement.

Handlery's article is extremely well written and drives the proverbial spike up to its proverbial flathead!

The US' doctrinal objectives became fictional in the light of evidence that emerged early on. Indications of what the indigenous really wanted were not sufficient to bring about a revision of the engagement's purpose.

The mutual hatred of the local communities soon made it clear that Iraq is just another artificial construct of the disastrous post-WWI "Paris peace treaties." Since the "nations" making up the country thrown at them did not seek a framework for co-operation but for domination, a democratic and united Iraq is not makeable. [See Paul Belien's article on nations at TBJ]

The war in Iraq is not the GWOT, but rather an extremely unpleasant and minor skirmish in a larger war. A war which is unwinnable at this juncture without contemporary leaders cut from the cloth of Farragut, Sherman, Sheridan, and Grant.

If the rule of a flexible ad hoc majority is presupposed by democracy then only a Shiite, Sunny and Kurdish state replacing Iraq can be democratic.

In today's Iraq the Shiite majority will, regardless of the merits of the issue, vote as a block to nullify the desires of other groups. Thereby these ethnic/religious minorities are condemned to be a permanent minority.

Functioning democracy presupposes a constant shifting of voters resulting in new - case-related - majorities. Therefore, conflicts inherent in the terms of "unity" and "majority rule" were a bad omen to realize the American goal of a stable democracy in an independent state.

I'm not suggesting we can't change the future by our efforts, but until we beat the "h_ll" out of our enemies and force them into submission or "kill 'em all," civilization will have more of the same for centuries or until the Lord returns.

... the US expects its adversaries to behave like it would and not the way they are. Accordingly, America fights by rules and under assumptions that get shipwrecked on the boulders of the cultural barrier. [...]

Letting [ordering your troops to NOT defend themselves from civilian fire] instead of opening fire on those engaged in an hostile act is not going to convince anyone of US generosity toward unarmed(?) civilian bystanders(?). Such inaction suggests the kind of weakness that calls for a repeat performance. From the pictures it is obvious that bombs aimed at Americans were often planted with those housed close bye witnessing it.

Personally I'm sick to death of all the killing, but the killers aren't going to stop until they're forced into submission ... the current effort is not after that lofty goal, but rather it is attempting to force them into accommodation.

Assume now that in Haditha there was a conscious attempt to kill civilians who tacitly contributed to a marine's death. In this case the corpsmen only did what most armies would have, namely to annihilate the source of an assault.

Earlier signals telling that civilians who let themselves be used as a camouflage for irregulars are in danger, would have had consequences. One is less connivance with sneak attacks. The other is respect for a force that retaliates decisively by pounding the source from which it takes blows.

The Geneva Convention protects soldiers as POWs and civilian non combatants - but not civilians that act as military auxiliaries. Regardless of the treaty's paragraphs, rules that ask soldiers to serve as targets for whoever does not care to play by them, will cause the abused to snap and trash the origin of their peril.

If that type of thinking determines the outcome of the GWOT, we lose and our enemies know it, as do our critics ... who are manifold!

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TAGS: America, Bush, Brussels Journal, Civil War,
Democracy, DOD, Geneva Covention, Geneva Treaty,
George Handlery, GWOT, Haditha, Insurgency,
Iraq, Neocons, Rumsfeld, War