Dr. Sanity has an alarming post up at Dr. Sanity: A MOST DISINGENUOUS PARADOX that looks at some of the paradoxes of we encounter in trying to figure out what’s going on with this war against terrorists. She refers to a Townhall article by Victor Davis Hansen that compares Dec. 7th, 1941, and the war that arose then with Sept. 11th, 2001, and the war we are now in. He asks many thought-provoking questions and gives some of his views as answers:
Are we in over our heads fighting in both Afghanistan and Iraq?
Hardly. Within days after Pearl Harbor, the U.S. found
itself in a three-front war against Germany, Italy and Japan — an Axis
that had won a series of recent battles against the British, Chinese
and Russians.
But there are significant differences between the
“global war on terror” and World War II that do explain why victory is
taking so much longer this time.
The most obvious is that, against Japan and Germany, we
faced easily identifiable nation states with conventional militaries.
Today’s terrorists blend in with civilians, and it’s hard to tie them
to their patron governments or enablers in Iran, Saudi Arabia, Syria
and Pakistan, who all deny any culpability. We also tread carefully in
an age of ubiquitous frightening weapons, when any war at any time
might without much warning bring in a nuclear, non-democratic
belligerent.
Dr. Sanity, then moves on to
a post by T.F. Boggs about the Iraq Study Group’s report. He hasn’t much use for the ISG’s report or their credentials:
What the group desperately needed was at least one their members to
have been in the military and had recent experience in Iraq. The
problem with having an entire panel with no one under the age of 67 is
that none of them could possibly know what the situation is actually
like on the ground in Iraq.
Dr. Sanity, after reading both of these posts, adds her comments on the whole ISG affair:
So, now we come to the betrayal part. The abandonment of Iraq, and the reported secret negotiations with terror groups.
Can complete capitulation in the global war on terror be far behind? About half the population of this country has already pretty much given up–and many of those were outraged at the idea that a war needed to be fought in the first place.
I’m equally frustrated by the ISG’s work and findings.
One question that immediately popped into my mind was, “had anyone asked the Iraqi government what they wanted from the US?” This nonsense about negotiating with Iran and Syria made it sound like we had this hunk of meat laying between us and the Syrians and Iranians and we were going to figure out what to do with it. If I were Maliki or one of the other senior politicians in Iraq, I’d feel like piping up with a comment about not being dead yet. Shouldn’t they be asked if they want to have discussions with their neighbors?
A second frustration is one I heard echoed by a local radio talk show host - this is a plan to manage a withdrawal. Where’s the plan to achieve victory in the stated goal of helping Iraq establish itself as a self-supporting, self-defending, independent, non-terrorist supporting country? Gen. Abizaid described what victory would look like in just those terms in a recent interview. Why not plan for that?
And what’s with all this hurry? We still have troops in Germany and Japan. Those reconstruction efforts took much longer than we’ve given ourselves for this effort. And that was with an enemy that was clearly defeated. The enemy this time won’t play by those rules, so we can’t have that clear cut, as-of-this-date victory over the enemy. So, let’s get over that and help the Iraqi’s!
T.F. Boggs makes an interesting observation:
I thought old people were supposed to be more patient than a 24 year
old but apparently I have more patience for our victory to unfold in
Iraq than 99.9 percent of Americans. Iraq isn’t fast food-you can’t
have what you want and have it now. To completely change a country for
the first time in it’s entire history takes time, and when I say time I
don’t mean 4 years.
Maybe that’s the main deficiency of the ISG - too many old farts that want this all to go away so they can go back to writing their books and enjoying retirement. They sounded like a group of futzy old coots who’d fallen asleep in their oatmeal and were now trying to answer the question that woke them up quickly so they could go back to sleep. They shoulda stood in bed.
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