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Edited on Mon Dec-12-05 12:56 PM by dusmcj
Whether intentionally or by sheer dumb luck, he has to some extent at least drawn the interest of those with existing inclinations for terrorism towards Iraq, and provided a motivator in the form of our presence there.
If his (the administration's tactical) intention was to create a 'kill zone' out of the nation of Iraq (another one of those business "win-win" solutions - we get rid of Saddam, makes us look good, we don't have to maintain those darn no-fly zones ($$$), we park ourselves smack-dab in the Middle East, in the 2nd-largest proven oil reserves by nation, and we tell the "rags" to come get some) then there would seem to be a few observations incumbent on anyone with active cells between the ears:
- "kill zones" would seem to posit a superior force waiting in ambush for an enemy to walk into a trap. Lessee, we're in a FOB with unfriendly nations on several sides, a population that has a marginal opinion of our presence there at best, and bitchin lines of supply. American lift capacity will get us through ? Hmmmm. Not to mention the willingness of the American public to fund and populate a force large enough to make the "fuck you, we're here, come out and die" message stick. A tenuous tactical proposition to my chairborne civilian brain - physically, we're the ones that are surrounded there, not the other guy.
- "kill zones" remind me of Vietnam, wars of attrition, static strategies, traditional nation state war against a very irregular, non-nation-state enemy. We know what happened in 1975. Has the ghost of Wastemoreland still not been exorcised from the Pentagon and the war planners' circles ? Are we still the ugly, and stupid, Americans of the 1960's, who thought that setting up air-conditioned bases from which 'fire missions' were launched against an enemy who rose from the ground and faded back into the local population are the way to go ? When do we start carpet bombing ? Say it ain't so.
- the last, most immediate, and most disturbing consideration is this: if US strategy is to use Iraq as a "kill box" into which the terroristically inclined will pour, to be vaporized by American firepower, have we measured the enemy's resource strength ? We already have the assessment that the insurgency in Iraq is a "classic insurgency" per the CIA, i.e. arising from the mass public itself, despite the Dooboids' slightly sniffy blather about "rejectionists" (those nasty people just don't like us, how mean) and other marginals, and Rumjob's senile attempts at semantic obfuscation. I.e., this isn't just a tiny minority of psychopathic extremists and jaded Baathists who crawled out from under a rock to be stepped on by a big American boot. This is a population of close to a billion sourcing a grassroots aggression against US interests. With linkages to the other major global currents of our day, namely the response to US sloptrough "globalization" - the objections raised are similar - US cultural imperialism feeds US economic imperialism. (And sniffers/watchers, we can waste each others' time if you conclude that I'm voicing support for this viewpoint. I'm just the messenger, and you have people who know way more about it and who get Federal salaries who say the same thing.)
Are we, because our government (at least Republican ones) habitually supports the interests of an overconsumptive rich minority, again backed into a corner on the world stage, battling against global justice with the best defence products American tax money can buy, along with the usual pathetic standard of intellectual output that American conservatives emit ? What a waste.
<* hi Sabra ;) >
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