This morning (before my server went down for about an hour – come on midPhase get with the program here!) I moderated my comments and came across this one regarding a post I did awhile back:
Bashiir wrote:
The war in Iraq obviously has degenerated to intra Iraq sectarian violence of the worst kind. Killings of children, bombing of schools, torture with drills to the face, the brain, the body are commonplace. Anarchy could easily be the result with the strongest and most violent the most successful. In the middle ages, this was a pattern as well. George W. Bush has created perhaps the most profound political mistake in history.
Instead of responding as part of a comments section of a post that’s now sort of buried, I’m going to answer this one right up front and center (at least for a few days.)
The background on the post in question stretches all the way back to a note I got in my e-mail box from Senator Cardin about the Iraqi situation back in early January. Issac Smith of The Old Line was offended and off we went.
But to address Bashiir’s comments, I’m going to ask a simple question: With the coverage of the Abu Ghraib prison scandal that was broken by and amplified daily through the partisan media, how can you honestly think that the torture and mayhem you describe would not be known about if it were being done by our forces? I have yet to see or hear about anything of the sort being blasted over the airwaves.
However, if I’m misreading your comment and you’re inferring that the killing, bombing, and torture is part of the sectarian violence you speak of, you’re right. War does tend to feature tactics that aren’t conducive to survival amongst the unfortunates who are in its path, generally innocent bystanders. This was true in the Middle Ages and true today.
But I’m not of the opinion that President Bush is to blame. Tactics that won World Wars One and Two do not work when a) the enemy is not a nation-state or group of nations as the Axis powers were in WWI and Germany and Japan were in WWII; and b) the fighting is of an asymmetrical nature. In Iraq, we’re using the standard issue warfighting equipment against an enemy brazen enough to take advantage of our rules of engagement and use nonstandard weapons such as IED’s and truck bombs. They also have no qualms about taking innocent people with them, such as yesterday’s incident where a homicide truck bomber leveled a Baghdad market. However, the strategy is to eventually have the Iraqis police themselves, with most likely a small American force remaining there as backup. This strategy already works in much of Iraq.
I’ve stated this before: the enemy has learned well from our missteps in fighting the Viet Nam War. When the enemy, both then and now, went toe-to-toe with our forces in conventional warfare, they’re usually wiped out by our superior firepower. Both the Viet Cong and the Islamic zealots we’re engaged with now have won their battles in the field of public opinion here in America.
The one difference between our era and the Middle Ages was that now there is one country that was founded on the belief that mankind yearns for freedom, not submission or simple survival to see another day.
History will judge in the years and decades to come whether GWB had a solid strategy against al-Qaeda and other nonnational Islamist enemies. But I don’t question the need to fight back in some manner, as attacks on U.S. interests here and abroad culminated in the terror of 9/11. Nor do I question the need to persevere and win the battle. While it may be a fatalistic view of the consequences of pulling out, I think Kevin McCullough’s column today on townhall.com is more plausible if we leave Iraq before the task is completed than if we don’t.
And another thing: (hate it when I think of stuff after I turn the computer off!)
I’d like to know if Bashiir, who remarked about staying involved in a sectarian civil war in Iraq, also felt the same way about our involvement in Kosovo (which was essentially a sectarian civil war where we took the side of the Muslims) and thinks we should get into the pet intervention cause of many Democrats, the sectarian civil war in Darfur.
