In My Opinion – by Bob Fogarty
It appears that those wondrous folks who brought you the big hole in the side of the USS Cole, the blown-up Bamyan statues in Afghanistan, and the 9-11 attack in New York, are at it again. Now it seems that an Al-Qaeda inspired mob of Syrians are threatening to begin terrorist attacks on Lebanon’s interests in Syria, if the government of Lebanon doesn’t stop attacking the Palestinian terrorists hiding out in a Lebanese refugee camp. In a Web statement, the group “Tawhid and Jihad in Syria” promised its support for Fatah Islam, the militant group holed up in the camp. "We warn the Lebanese government that its vital interests, officials, and sons living in Syria will be moving targets for us if it does not lift its siege of the camp". The unauthenticated statement went further with; "Let the Lebanese government wait for the hell of kidnapping, shooting and chopping of heads if it does not respond to the demand". "Tawhid and Jihad", Arabic for "monotheism and holy war", is a name used by several groups apparently inspired by Al Qaeda, though their actual links to Osama bin Laden are unknown. The most prominent militant group in Syria is known as Jund al-Sham, but it is sometimes called the Jund al-Sham for Jihad and Tawhid. The warning said that the groups current leader, al-Dimashqi allegedly met with Fatah Islam's representative, who "explained the ideology of the group, its aims to support Islam and the establishment of the State of Islam, which is a dream for every Muslim." Tawhid and Jihad promised to support Fatah Islam, saying "Jews, Christians and the malevolent Crusaders in Lebanon and in Europe ... (and) Lebanese officials — France and America's dogs, weaned on the breast of treason — have all rushed to help against the brothers of Fatah Islam." I can understand the extremists being mad at the United States, in the aftermath of 9-11 the US actually has the effrontery to oppose the march of militant Islam! Why that’s nothing less than anti-Moslem Sacrilege!! But now they’re accusing FRANCE of opposing Muslim extremism!?
These folks do have some strange ways of fighting their wars though; An American journalist was in Zarqa, Jordan, was trying to interview two heavily bearded Islamic militants when he asked one too many questions. "He's American?" one of the militants growled. "Let's kidnap and kill him." But before anyone could act on that idea the rules of jihadi etiquette kicked in. Apparently you can't just slaughter a visitor, as the militants are taught by Islamic scholars that you need permission from whoever arranges the meeting. And in this case, the arranger declined to sign off.
During the late unlamented war in Vietnam, the United States had a quite extensive set of orders, the “Rules of Engagement”, telling us when, where, how (or even if), we could shoot back. From talking to some of our local veterans of the Iraq war, I understand they also have rules of engagement, but nothing as extensive, exasperating, and “enemy friendly” and the RoE in Vietnam. Now I find that the Sunni insurgents have their own set of rules.
Jihadi etiquette is unwritten, and apparently varies in interpretation and practice almost as much as the extremist groups vary in their stated goals. But the rules do have some generalized guidelines. Some are rooted in Middle Eastern culture, and some are based on the Koran, which generally prohibits the slaying of children, women, the elderly, and the infirm. However, an Egyptian Islamic scholar, Yusuf al-Qaradawi, has argued it is fine to kill Israeli citizens because Israeli compulsory military service means they are not truly civilians. Apparently you can also kill innocent bystanders without feeling guilt. Fatah Al Islam in Lebanon claims that government officials are proper targets, claiming that "Any person that comes to our region with a military, security, or political aim, then he is a legitimate target." Considering that Kassam rockets aren’t all that accurate, nor very particular about who or how many they kill, I guess it’s a good thing the collateral damage is incidental and acceptable under Islam. ‘Course a “Crusader” bomb or artillery shell is a different story.
The Iraqi war is changing things too. Suicide bombers from radical Muslim groups have long been called martyrs, a word that apparently bypasses the Koran's ban on killing oneself, in favor of the honor it accords death in battle against the infidel. But now you can kill children too, without concern. It seems the extremists in Jordan who embrace Al Qaeda's ideology teach their recruits that children receive special consideration in death. They are not held accountable for any sins until puberty, and if they are killed in a jihad operation, they will go straight to heaven. There, they will instantly age to their late 20s and enjoy the same access to virgins and other occupational benefits of martyrdom.
Sometimes you can single out civilians for killing; bankers are an example. In Islamic theory noncombatants cannot be the target of a militant operation, but the list of exceptions is long and rapidly growing. A Briton of Cypriot descent awaiting trial in England on terrorism charges claims "It would be legitimate to attack banks because they charge interest, and this is in violation of Islamic law." And then he came up with this additional tidbit; "We have a voting system here in Britain, so anyone who is voting for Tony Blair is not a civilian and therefore would be a legitimate target." With this, perhaps Homeland Security will cancel our next presidential election, in order to “protect” us from a perceived terrorist threat?
You’re not supposed to kill in the country where you reside unless you were born there. Militants who go to Iraq apparently get a free pass on this as they’re “expeditionary warriors”. And the 9-11 attack did not violate this rule either, since the hijackers originally came from outside the United States. Huh… and all this time I thought they’d been living here for quite some time. Then to, you can lie or hide your religion if you do this for jihad. Muslims are instructed by the Koran to be true to their religion, but lying about it is allowed when it is deemed a necessity - for example, when deception serves a good purpose, such as posing as a passenger on an airliner perhaps?
Militant Islamists interpret the Koran and the separate teachings of Muhammad that are known as the “Sunna” as laying out five criteria to be met by people wanting to be jihadis. They must be Muslim, at least 15 years of age and mature, of sound mind and debt-free, and they must have parental permission. The parental rule is currently waived inside Iraq, where Islamists say it is every Muslim's duty to fight the Americans. The rule is optional for residents of nearby countries like Jordan.
Rules of Engagement in the sandbox, based on inescapable Islamic religious logic… I think I kinda prefer “Bob’s one rule of engagement”, something that dates back to what seemed like a lifetime spent in a gawd forsaken jungle… “Shoot at ME you dumba- - , and you’d better not miss!”
Saturday, June 23, 2007
Monday, June 18, 2007
Immigration
16 June 2007
Apparently I’ll have to take the position on immigration reform that we must deport all 12 million illegal aliens immediately, as this is claimed to be the only alternative to immediate amnesty. The fact that we "can't deport them all" is supposed to lead to the conclusion that we must grant amnesty to all illegal aliens. Well, we can’t catch all the murderers either, so I guess we need a "comprehensive murder reform bill” as well. It's not "amnesty" I guess, if we ask them to pay a small fine. But if it's "impossible" to find and deport illegal aliens, how come we know so much about them? I keep hearing they are Catholic, pro-life, hardworking, just dying to become American citizens, and will take jobs other Americans won't. How do we even know there are 12 or so million of them? Why not only 1 million, or perhaps 25 million? Since Ted Kennedy's 1965 Immigration Act, more than half of all legal immigrants have been unskilled and non-English-speaking Mexicans. America takes in roughly 1 million legal immigrants each year, and only about 30,000 of them have Ph.D.s. Why would any rational immigration policy discriminate against immigrants with Ph.D.s in favor of unskilled, non-English-speaking people? Notably, the biggest proponents of the government's policy of importing a huge underclass of unskilled workers are not themselves unskilled workers. The great bounty of cheap labor by unskilled immigrants isn't going to Americans who hang drywall or clean hotel rooms… and who are having trouble getting jobs now that they're forced to compete with the vast influx of unskilled workers who don't pay taxes. The people who make arguments about "jobs Americans won't do" never seem to be in a line of work where unskilled immigrants can compete with them.
Perhaps the immigration debate would be different if we were importing millions of politicians. At present, it’s a case of “you lose your job, while I keep my Senate seat, and I get a low cost maid as well!” If immigrants were to threatened Senate seats… The only beneficiaries of these famed hardworking immigrants -- unlike the rest of us lazy Americans, are the wealthy, who want the cheap labor while making the rest of us pay for the immigrants' schooling and health care. These great lovers of the downtrodden (the downtrodden trimming their hedge that is), pretend to believe that their gardeners' children will be graduating from Harvard and curing cancer someday, but 1) they don't believe that; and 2) if it happened, they'd lose their gardeners.
According to "Alien Nation" author Peter Brimelow, "There is recent evidence that, even after four generations, fewer than 10% of Mexican-Americans have post-high school degrees, as opposed to nearly half of non-Mexican Americans." So this means you'll always have the gardener and maid I guess. As New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg recently said, our golf fairways would suffer without illegal immigrants: "…who takes care of the greens and the fairways on your golf course?" Another job that Americans won’t take perhaps? Well, mowing a lawn that size wouldn’t rate real high on my “things I’d like to do” list, but I’ve done worse.In Samuel P. Huntington's book "Who Are We? The Challenges to America's National Identity," he asks: "Would America be the America it is today if in the 17th and 18th centuries it had been settled not by British Protestants but by French, Spanish or Portuguese Catholics? The answer is no it would not be America; it would be Quebec, Mexico or Brazil", and I don't particularly want to live in Quebec, Mexico, or Brazil either. But now I guess I have no choice, since our open border immigration policy means they’re coming here instead.
Yes, this country has absorbed huge migrations of illiterate peasants in the past, most notably the wave of Irish immigrants (my great-grand-parents included) during and after the Great Famine, then the influx of German (more of my great-grand-parents) and Italian immigrants at the turn of the last century. But they came here legally, and worked hard at becoming Americans. Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis, immigrant and first Jewish member of the Supreme Court, said that Americanization required that the immigrant adopt "the clothes, the manners and the customs generally prevailing here" and that he adopt "the English language as the common medium of speech." Brandeis also said "We properly demand of the immigrant even more than this -- he must be brought into complete harmony with our ideals and aspirations and cooperate with us for their attainment. Only when this has been done will he possess the national consciousness of an American." Or, in view of the politically correct “cultural diversity” beloved by so many liberals, is this merely "empty rhetoric" and "racist" speech?Until our culture is again capable of Americanizing immigrants, it's ridiculous to talk about a massive influx of Hispanic immigrants accomplishing anything other than turning America into yet another Latin American banana republic. And it is a fact that no one is trying to turn these immigrants into Americans, witness the expanding barrios and ghettos in so many of our larger cities. To the contrary, Democrats are trying to turn new immigrants into wards of the state (apparently with considerable success), so that they will become permanent Democratic voters, while Republicans in Washington are seemingly trying to turn immigrants into a permanent servant class. In the meantime, as politics rage on, Central Americans migrate to the United States in great numbers, bringing with them an assortment of criminal drug organizations, along with some of the world's most brutal gangs -- including the notorious and rapidly growing MS-13's (Mara Salvatrucha), an extremely violent group with close to 10,000 members in thirty-three states.I can well understand why so many people would like to immigrate to this country. As stated above, my own ancestors came to the new world to escape any number of cultural and economic difficulties. (A dedicated Feinian, and having a slight difference of opinion with the British occupation forces, great grandpa Fogarty [as the story goes] left Ireland one step ahead of the hangman.) However, he came to this country, legally. He became an American citizen, legally. He worked and paid taxes, legally. He became a comparatively wealthy man, legally. And he stayed out of trouble (except with his Priest probably) while doing all this. Is it asking to much of today’s immigrants to do things legally as well? We’re supposed to be a nation of law abiding people, and breaking our laws in getting here is a poor way to start on the road to citizenship. Most people immigrate to the United States to gain the standard of living they would like to have as Americans… Well, OK, if they want to come to this country and be Americans, perhaps they should start behaving like Americans, beginning with obeying our immigration laws.
With my deadline rapidly approaching, I’ve just learned that Teddy Kennedy’s compromise immigration bill (S.2611) failed a Senate test vote by a 45-50 margin, somewhat short of the 60 votes needed, and has now been withdrawn. But never fear, it’ll soon be back, in an only slightly modified form I’m sure.
Apparently I’ll have to take the position on immigration reform that we must deport all 12 million illegal aliens immediately, as this is claimed to be the only alternative to immediate amnesty. The fact that we "can't deport them all" is supposed to lead to the conclusion that we must grant amnesty to all illegal aliens. Well, we can’t catch all the murderers either, so I guess we need a "comprehensive murder reform bill” as well. It's not "amnesty" I guess, if we ask them to pay a small fine. But if it's "impossible" to find and deport illegal aliens, how come we know so much about them? I keep hearing they are Catholic, pro-life, hardworking, just dying to become American citizens, and will take jobs other Americans won't. How do we even know there are 12 or so million of them? Why not only 1 million, or perhaps 25 million? Since Ted Kennedy's 1965 Immigration Act, more than half of all legal immigrants have been unskilled and non-English-speaking Mexicans. America takes in roughly 1 million legal immigrants each year, and only about 30,000 of them have Ph.D.s. Why would any rational immigration policy discriminate against immigrants with Ph.D.s in favor of unskilled, non-English-speaking people? Notably, the biggest proponents of the government's policy of importing a huge underclass of unskilled workers are not themselves unskilled workers. The great bounty of cheap labor by unskilled immigrants isn't going to Americans who hang drywall or clean hotel rooms… and who are having trouble getting jobs now that they're forced to compete with the vast influx of unskilled workers who don't pay taxes. The people who make arguments about "jobs Americans won't do" never seem to be in a line of work where unskilled immigrants can compete with them.
Perhaps the immigration debate would be different if we were importing millions of politicians. At present, it’s a case of “you lose your job, while I keep my Senate seat, and I get a low cost maid as well!” If immigrants were to threatened Senate seats… The only beneficiaries of these famed hardworking immigrants -- unlike the rest of us lazy Americans, are the wealthy, who want the cheap labor while making the rest of us pay for the immigrants' schooling and health care. These great lovers of the downtrodden (the downtrodden trimming their hedge that is), pretend to believe that their gardeners' children will be graduating from Harvard and curing cancer someday, but 1) they don't believe that; and 2) if it happened, they'd lose their gardeners.
According to "Alien Nation" author Peter Brimelow, "There is recent evidence that, even after four generations, fewer than 10% of Mexican-Americans have post-high school degrees, as opposed to nearly half of non-Mexican Americans." So this means you'll always have the gardener and maid I guess. As New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg recently said, our golf fairways would suffer without illegal immigrants: "…who takes care of the greens and the fairways on your golf course?" Another job that Americans won’t take perhaps? Well, mowing a lawn that size wouldn’t rate real high on my “things I’d like to do” list, but I’ve done worse.In Samuel P. Huntington's book "Who Are We? The Challenges to America's National Identity," he asks: "Would America be the America it is today if in the 17th and 18th centuries it had been settled not by British Protestants but by French, Spanish or Portuguese Catholics? The answer is no it would not be America; it would be Quebec, Mexico or Brazil", and I don't particularly want to live in Quebec, Mexico, or Brazil either. But now I guess I have no choice, since our open border immigration policy means they’re coming here instead.
Yes, this country has absorbed huge migrations of illiterate peasants in the past, most notably the wave of Irish immigrants (my great-grand-parents included) during and after the Great Famine, then the influx of German (more of my great-grand-parents) and Italian immigrants at the turn of the last century. But they came here legally, and worked hard at becoming Americans. Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis, immigrant and first Jewish member of the Supreme Court, said that Americanization required that the immigrant adopt "the clothes, the manners and the customs generally prevailing here" and that he adopt "the English language as the common medium of speech." Brandeis also said "We properly demand of the immigrant even more than this -- he must be brought into complete harmony with our ideals and aspirations and cooperate with us for their attainment. Only when this has been done will he possess the national consciousness of an American." Or, in view of the politically correct “cultural diversity” beloved by so many liberals, is this merely "empty rhetoric" and "racist" speech?Until our culture is again capable of Americanizing immigrants, it's ridiculous to talk about a massive influx of Hispanic immigrants accomplishing anything other than turning America into yet another Latin American banana republic. And it is a fact that no one is trying to turn these immigrants into Americans, witness the expanding barrios and ghettos in so many of our larger cities. To the contrary, Democrats are trying to turn new immigrants into wards of the state (apparently with considerable success), so that they will become permanent Democratic voters, while Republicans in Washington are seemingly trying to turn immigrants into a permanent servant class. In the meantime, as politics rage on, Central Americans migrate to the United States in great numbers, bringing with them an assortment of criminal drug organizations, along with some of the world's most brutal gangs -- including the notorious and rapidly growing MS-13's (Mara Salvatrucha), an extremely violent group with close to 10,000 members in thirty-three states.I can well understand why so many people would like to immigrate to this country. As stated above, my own ancestors came to the new world to escape any number of cultural and economic difficulties. (A dedicated Feinian, and having a slight difference of opinion with the British occupation forces, great grandpa Fogarty [as the story goes] left Ireland one step ahead of the hangman.) However, he came to this country, legally. He became an American citizen, legally. He worked and paid taxes, legally. He became a comparatively wealthy man, legally. And he stayed out of trouble (except with his Priest probably) while doing all this. Is it asking to much of today’s immigrants to do things legally as well? We’re supposed to be a nation of law abiding people, and breaking our laws in getting here is a poor way to start on the road to citizenship. Most people immigrate to the United States to gain the standard of living they would like to have as Americans… Well, OK, if they want to come to this country and be Americans, perhaps they should start behaving like Americans, beginning with obeying our immigration laws.
With my deadline rapidly approaching, I’ve just learned that Teddy Kennedy’s compromise immigration bill (S.2611) failed a Senate test vote by a 45-50 margin, somewhat short of the 60 votes needed, and has now been withdrawn. But never fear, it’ll soon be back, in an only slightly modified form I’m sure.
Sunday, June 10, 2007
Who Lost Iraq
8 June, ‘07
A question being batted about by the media today is “Who Lost Iraq”? Strangely enough, I wasn’t aware that it had been lost… if they’ll look on a world map, it’s still right there, jammed in between Saudi Arabia and Turkey, with Iran to the northeast. Irregardless, the rabid and bloodthirsty liberal search for a scapegoat to blame for a somewhat raggedy war continues in the media, in Congress, and in the minds of the American people. There seems to be no shortage of culprits either.
The Defense Department is blaming the State Department, and State is blaming Defense, as usual. The Generals are quoted as saying "there is no military solution to this conflict" (meaning "don't blame us if we fail"). Diplomats, for their part, argue that they’ve seen to the drafting of a constitution, organized elections, and have installed a new Iraqi government. They complain that the military has failed to establish a secure environment in which these institutions can function. Defense apparently fails to remember that historically one guerrilla usually ties down eight to ten regular troops. Thus General Sherman, when asked how many men he would need to control Georgia (during the Civil War), responded that he’d need about 200,000 Union soldiers. Typically, the resulting press hysteria nearly cost him his job. To control South Vietnam, General Westmorland would have needed well over a million soldiers! State, for their part, seems to forget that all the laws, Constitutions, and elections in the world mean absolutely nothing if the combatants are ignoring them.
In Congress the Democrats are blaming the Republicans, the Republicans are running for cover, and the media is having a field day slinging mud at everyone involved. In Europe, the current thing to do is blame everything on the United States, as they usually do whenever we fail to handle a situation in whatever way they think best. In Iraq the Shia blame the Sunni, the Sunni are returning the favor in spades, and the Kurds are seemingly getting shot at by everyone. Meanwhile the Iraqi civil war goes on, and Iraqi civilians that didn’t get killed or crippled by the last car bomb continue to live in the US media’s favorite shooting gallery.
Actually there’s more than enough blame to go around. Congress authorized the war by an overwhelming majority, something that hasn’t occurred since WW II. A good many Democratic political leaders also thought intervention was a good idea. The press was uncritical, and the American people were generally supportive. So now we have a rather messy war going on, with apparently no way out. Although responsibility for this war is widely shared, the temptation to blame the Iraqis may become irresistible to everybody involved. We gave the Iraqis a chance, so the argument goes, and if they failed to build a peaceful state, whose fault is that? Yet if the Iraqis failed to live up to American expectations, do we blame their reality, or our own illusions?
Among the Democrats, antiwar activists criticize those who voted for the war, as well as those who continue to resist legislating an end to it all. Among Republicans, the neoconservatives blame the conservatives, in particular former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, but also President George W. Bush, for not committing adequate manpower and money to the task. Well, they didn’t, actually. What’s needed I’d think, is about four more US divisions, preferably divisions of well trained and combat experienced military police.
What most people completely fail to realize is that the “War” was won (with minimal American casualties) when the statues of Saddam started to topple. What followed, and continues today, isn’t a war, but a policing action carried out by an army of occupation. Granted that to the troops on the ground, or to the families of the casualties, there’s little difference between the two terms.
Before we give up and run for home, perhaps we should have some sort of idea just who we’re fighting. Approximately 90% of the insurgents are Iraqis, Sunnis who are embittered at the toppling of the Sunni Arab government of Saddam Hussein, and are often members of Saddam’s old security services. Former Iraqi military personnel are providing the technical know-how for all those roadside bombs. Former Iraqi military ammunition dumps are providing the explosives and detonators. The AK-47s and RPGs used to terrorize or kill other Iraqis are also formerly the property of the Iraqi armed forces. Certainly there are a few out-of-town recruits arriving every day, but who are they? They’re even more Sunni Arabs, youth for the most part with no combat experience, supercharged with Islamic fundamentalism and looking for a chance to die for Islam. (The Arabic version of the wartime Japanese Kamikaze pilot I presume.) So far, the Iraqi government and the US military have been helping quite a few of them find their way to paradise. The Iraqi terrorists are killing Iraqis with the expectation that this will get Sunni Arabs back in control of Iraq once more. They are encouraged by European support, noting that most Europeans were against the American invasion that removed Saddam Hussein, and Sunni Arabs, from power. The current squabble in the US Congress (and press) is encouraging to them as well. What isn’t reported in the worlds press (it doesn’t make good headlines), is that the majority of Iraq is comparatively quiet. The “war” is going on in those few predominately Sunni areas where the population is either pro-terrorist, or terrorized into silence. Islamic terrorists who tried to do it “Iraqi style” in Kuwait and Saudi Arabia, found that fewer sympathizers, and more police, made it impossible for them to do much. In both countries, terrorist cells were unable to do much damage before being hunted down and arrested or killed. Currently most terrorist cells are being caught before they can carry out any attacks at all. Those that escaped have apparently been too busy staying escaped to create more mayhem. But if you still think the Iraqi insurgency is a bloodbath now, just wait until our Democratic Congress forces an American withdrawal, and the whole place blows up!
The Bush administration, like the American public, now recognizes that the occupation of Iraq was mismanaged, and they’ve learned that nation building cannot be done on the cheap. The surge of troops into Baghdad is a belated admission that rebuilding a failed state takes an enormous commitment of manpower, money and time. Unfortunately this realization probably comes too late to rescue the American venture in Iraq.
No, Iraq and the rest of the mid-east isn’t lost yet, but, like the war in Vietnam, it’s rapidly being lost in our Congress, and in the US media.
A question being batted about by the media today is “Who Lost Iraq”? Strangely enough, I wasn’t aware that it had been lost… if they’ll look on a world map, it’s still right there, jammed in between Saudi Arabia and Turkey, with Iran to the northeast. Irregardless, the rabid and bloodthirsty liberal search for a scapegoat to blame for a somewhat raggedy war continues in the media, in Congress, and in the minds of the American people. There seems to be no shortage of culprits either.
The Defense Department is blaming the State Department, and State is blaming Defense, as usual. The Generals are quoted as saying "there is no military solution to this conflict" (meaning "don't blame us if we fail"). Diplomats, for their part, argue that they’ve seen to the drafting of a constitution, organized elections, and have installed a new Iraqi government. They complain that the military has failed to establish a secure environment in which these institutions can function. Defense apparently fails to remember that historically one guerrilla usually ties down eight to ten regular troops. Thus General Sherman, when asked how many men he would need to control Georgia (during the Civil War), responded that he’d need about 200,000 Union soldiers. Typically, the resulting press hysteria nearly cost him his job. To control South Vietnam, General Westmorland would have needed well over a million soldiers! State, for their part, seems to forget that all the laws, Constitutions, and elections in the world mean absolutely nothing if the combatants are ignoring them.
In Congress the Democrats are blaming the Republicans, the Republicans are running for cover, and the media is having a field day slinging mud at everyone involved. In Europe, the current thing to do is blame everything on the United States, as they usually do whenever we fail to handle a situation in whatever way they think best. In Iraq the Shia blame the Sunni, the Sunni are returning the favor in spades, and the Kurds are seemingly getting shot at by everyone. Meanwhile the Iraqi civil war goes on, and Iraqi civilians that didn’t get killed or crippled by the last car bomb continue to live in the US media’s favorite shooting gallery.
Actually there’s more than enough blame to go around. Congress authorized the war by an overwhelming majority, something that hasn’t occurred since WW II. A good many Democratic political leaders also thought intervention was a good idea. The press was uncritical, and the American people were generally supportive. So now we have a rather messy war going on, with apparently no way out. Although responsibility for this war is widely shared, the temptation to blame the Iraqis may become irresistible to everybody involved. We gave the Iraqis a chance, so the argument goes, and if they failed to build a peaceful state, whose fault is that? Yet if the Iraqis failed to live up to American expectations, do we blame their reality, or our own illusions?
Among the Democrats, antiwar activists criticize those who voted for the war, as well as those who continue to resist legislating an end to it all. Among Republicans, the neoconservatives blame the conservatives, in particular former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, but also President George W. Bush, for not committing adequate manpower and money to the task. Well, they didn’t, actually. What’s needed I’d think, is about four more US divisions, preferably divisions of well trained and combat experienced military police.
What most people completely fail to realize is that the “War” was won (with minimal American casualties) when the statues of Saddam started to topple. What followed, and continues today, isn’t a war, but a policing action carried out by an army of occupation. Granted that to the troops on the ground, or to the families of the casualties, there’s little difference between the two terms.
Before we give up and run for home, perhaps we should have some sort of idea just who we’re fighting. Approximately 90% of the insurgents are Iraqis, Sunnis who are embittered at the toppling of the Sunni Arab government of Saddam Hussein, and are often members of Saddam’s old security services. Former Iraqi military personnel are providing the technical know-how for all those roadside bombs. Former Iraqi military ammunition dumps are providing the explosives and detonators. The AK-47s and RPGs used to terrorize or kill other Iraqis are also formerly the property of the Iraqi armed forces. Certainly there are a few out-of-town recruits arriving every day, but who are they? They’re even more Sunni Arabs, youth for the most part with no combat experience, supercharged with Islamic fundamentalism and looking for a chance to die for Islam. (The Arabic version of the wartime Japanese Kamikaze pilot I presume.) So far, the Iraqi government and the US military have been helping quite a few of them find their way to paradise. The Iraqi terrorists are killing Iraqis with the expectation that this will get Sunni Arabs back in control of Iraq once more. They are encouraged by European support, noting that most Europeans were against the American invasion that removed Saddam Hussein, and Sunni Arabs, from power. The current squabble in the US Congress (and press) is encouraging to them as well. What isn’t reported in the worlds press (it doesn’t make good headlines), is that the majority of Iraq is comparatively quiet. The “war” is going on in those few predominately Sunni areas where the population is either pro-terrorist, or terrorized into silence. Islamic terrorists who tried to do it “Iraqi style” in Kuwait and Saudi Arabia, found that fewer sympathizers, and more police, made it impossible for them to do much. In both countries, terrorist cells were unable to do much damage before being hunted down and arrested or killed. Currently most terrorist cells are being caught before they can carry out any attacks at all. Those that escaped have apparently been too busy staying escaped to create more mayhem. But if you still think the Iraqi insurgency is a bloodbath now, just wait until our Democratic Congress forces an American withdrawal, and the whole place blows up!
The Bush administration, like the American public, now recognizes that the occupation of Iraq was mismanaged, and they’ve learned that nation building cannot be done on the cheap. The surge of troops into Baghdad is a belated admission that rebuilding a failed state takes an enormous commitment of manpower, money and time. Unfortunately this realization probably comes too late to rescue the American venture in Iraq.
No, Iraq and the rest of the mid-east isn’t lost yet, but, like the war in Vietnam, it’s rapidly being lost in our Congress, and in the US media.
Saturday, June 2, 2007
Another Vietnam
In My Opinion – by Bob Fogarty
We made a great mistake in the beginning of our struggle, and I fear, in spite of all we can do, it will prove to be a fatal mistake. We appointed all our worst generals to command our armies, and all our best generals to edit the newspapers.
We made a great mistake in the beginning of our struggle, and I fear, in spite of all we can do, it will prove to be a fatal mistake. We appointed all our worst generals to command our armies, and all our best generals to edit the newspapers.
Robert E. Lee
For people of a certain age or political views, the Vietnam War is something like Elvis, it’s everywhere. One of the many consequences of the American political defeat in Vietnam has been the uncontrolled proliferation of “Vietnams” in the political mind ever since. Nicaragua threatened to become another Vietnam, Lebanon nearly became another Vietnam. Had Grenada been only slightly larger than a manhole cover and lasted a bit longer, it would have been another Vietnam I suppose. The invasion of Panama was rapidly degenerating into another Vietnam, right up until we won. Likewise, the First Gulf War was certainly becoming another Vietnam, but then sadly, it ended quickly, with victory and few casualties. No country today is more prepared to fight a long unconventional war against a few grubby little terrorists in a far away sandbox than America, who learned how to lose in Vietnam. Thus, it is with considerable joy that those who are ready to teach us the lesson of Vietnam find that they finally have another war that has lasted longer than John Kerry’s campaign. “Obviously” they say, “the best course of action is to withdraw from Iraq immediately, and allow the country to become an oil-producing Al-Qaeda super-state”. Oh yes, and begin the political posturing to win the 2008 election on an “I KNEW IT WAS VIETNAM RIGHT AWAY!” platform. And that would probably be the smart thing, because the lesson apparently learned by the Looney Left is, “It’s best to lose quickly, so as to avoid a quagmire”. For example, it’s said that during a long wait at a Chinese Buffet in Georgetown in 1987, Ted Kennedy reportedly yelled “QUAGMIRE!” and thinking quickly, attempted to surrender to a Spanish-speaking busboy. Unfortunately, other than peacenik rallies and the American media preparing to report an Iraqi “Tet offensive,” the similarities to Vietnam are pretty sparse. It could be reasonably argued that the real lesson of Vietnam is that it seriously damages a country’s reputation, and character, to lose at all.
The differences in the two conflicts are obvious, but that’s no reason to interrupt a good “IT’S ANOTHER VIETNAM!” flashback from the political left. Unless of course you want America to win in Iraq, rather than lose “another Vietnam” all over again. For the minority of the population that do think we should win, I’ll mention a few minor differences between Iraq and Vietnam, ranging from the material to philosophical.
First off, the Iraqi insurgency has no universal philosophy to attract Iraq’s population. The Viet Cong were communists I believe, and Communism was a worldwide political movement with a following on every Continent. The Iraqi insurgency however is primarily a religious affair among the Arabs. Shiites and Sunnis are not converting one another, and haven’t for the last few hundred years. In Iraq, the Sunni are fighting to continue dominating the local Kurds and Shiites, leaving this a cause that the Shiites and Kurds are highly unlikely to join, as it’s difficult to recruit from a Shiite and Kurdish majority while preaching Sunni religious supremacy. Even with no other difference, this alone would completely eliminate any comparison of the two situations.
The Iraqi insurgency has no country in which to organize the population. North Vietnam had a border that we could not cross for assorted political reasons. Inside that border the Communists could train, rest, and work at an assortment of warlike pursuits. They controlled the media broadcasts, recruiting centers, schools, the police, the courts, the roads, and ports full of supply ships. Every week they sent more troops down the Ho Chi Minh trail to invade South Vietnam. And every week we sat outside the border and played left tackle against those troops and supplies. The Sunni insurgents have no such refuge, as we’re already in their towns, fields, roads, and skies. They have no country anymore; we already took it away from them. They have holes in the ground to hide in, and a few basement bomb factories. The North Vietnamese fielded a modern military with tanks, artillery, and jet aircraft. The Sunni insurgents carry rifles, while strapping bombs to donkey carts and worn out taxicabs. They cannot openly recruit or train, because “their” country is full of assorted Shiites, Kurds and other Sunni Arabs that arrest them, shoot at them, and bomb them, quite regularly. The insurgency has no Soviet or Chinese material support either. A few truckloads of ordinance from Syria and Iran can in no way compare to the massive material support that the Vietnamese Communists received from the USSR and Red China.
Additionally, there were no free elections in Hanoi during the war. The effect of the Iraqi elections changed the nature of the war completely. Now, the issue is no longer Sunni rebels fighting an infidel occupier. It’s now an Iraqi majority vs. an Iraqi minority, with the US Army assisting the majority to get their feet on the ground. The Communists had never ruled South Vietnam either. By contrast, the Sunni Baathists have ruled Iraq. The Iraqi people know who they are, and how they will really rule. Saddam Hussein had been recruiting allies for us for the last twenty years, with his mass graves, prisons and rape rooms. No one really believes the Sunni are fighting for a worker’s paradise. Besides, who is Iraq’s Ho Chi Minh? This war is strictly a local religious and tribal affair remember. The closest thing to a grand leader is Shiite Grand Ayatollah Ali Al-Sistani, and he’s on Democracy’s side. Nor was Ho Chi Minh at any point during the Vietnam War, sitting in a cell awaiting trial and execution by his vengeful former victims.
But despite all that, “Iraq is just Vietnam all over again”, according to the media, and brought to us in glorious living color on the six-o’clock news. The only similarities I see to the Vietnam War are in the minds of our liberal media, a few left wing politicians, and a wobbly population.
Now, consider one more reason why the two wars are not alike. A loss in Vietnam was not going to bring hordes of freshly inspired Viet Cong into New York or San Francisco with truck-bombs or an Iranian supplied suitcase nuke to finish us off. A loss in Iraq, regardless of why the war was begun, or how badly we want to go home, will greatly strengthen our enemies, as only a victory on the world stage can do. You’ll just love what a surrender, as espoused by Kennedy, Reid, Pelosi, and their followers, will do for us.
If we surrender in Iraq, it just might be a good idea to refurbish Grandpa’s old cold war bomb shelter…
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