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| Iraq |
| War Has No "Elegant Solutions" |
| 2006-11-25 |
| hat tip FrontPage magazine.com By Amir Taheri Americans have long made fun of the French love of finding solutions before knowing what the problem is. Yet the U.S. political and media elite has itself taken up the habit - with a quest for "elegant solutions" in Iraq. The sense that unhappiness on Iraq led to losses by President Bush's Republicans has opened the floodgates for all sorts of ideas, some fanciful, others derelict. Two such ideas appear to be the talk of the town in Washington. The first is to "cut and run" - or, more palatably, "whistle and walk away." Supporters of this idea don't care what might happen to Iraq or the Middle East as a whole. For most, the toppling of Saddam Hussein was a secular version of original sin, which nothing short of the political destruction of Bush (and Britain's Tony Blair) can expiate. The trouble is, "cut and run" is easier said than done: It is always easier to send an army in than bring it out. |
| Posted by:FOTSGreg |
| #10 Heh, Badman knows. |
| Posted by: Shipman 2006-11-25 17:24 |
| #9 Who gives a f*ck about whether a military solution is elegant? I wannt to put one in the W column. Do ya mind? |
| Posted by: badanov 2006-11-25 15:43 |
| #8 But it has some decisive ones e.g. Carthage. |
| Posted by: gromgoru 2006-11-25 09:04 |
| #7 One option I've seen little discussion of is a US pullback mostly to Kurdish Iraq, Cutting off the supply lines. |
| Posted by: Rob Crawford 2006-11-25 08:51 |
| #6 One option I've seen little discussion of is a US pullback mostly to Kurdish Iraq, which currently has very few US forces there (they're not needed). The Kurds (compared to the remainder of Iraq) have been working together relatively peaceably since before 2003, and their existence in a disintegrated Iraq would be threatened by Turkey and Iran. Media and government ruminations about "solving" the Iraq mess continue to ignore the existence of a peaceful and orderly portion of Iraq that might be serve as a place of refuge for civilization and a germ of regrowth. There is a fair amount of oil to financially support an semi-independent "Kurdistan" and quite a bit more in the formerly Kurdish areas near Mosul and Kirkuk. US forces there would be well-positioned to keep Iran away from the remainder of Iraq, or to take over after the Sunnis and Shiites depopulate and wreck the rest of the country, an outcome (given the amount of munitions, political corruption/incompetence in the new government, ill-will and general Islamic truculence) that seems more and more likely as the months go by. An inelegant and impractical "boots on the ground" solution (maybe the only thing that would work in the sense of having the fewest number of innocent and unjust deaths) would be an army of a million or more ground troops to enforce order under martial law, seal the borders, confiscate weapons, search & destroy terrorists, military tribunals followed by death by firing squad and the noose, and generally knock blockheads together until a new generation of Iraqis have a chance to grow up knowing what a peaceful existence under rule of law feels like. I know there isn't enough military force available to the US for this, and certainly insufficient domestic and international political support for this. This is also anathema to the political traditions of the USA, although the Roman Empire would have understood this solution. Many potential Iraqi allies/collaborators (with respect to the US) have been killed, discouraged or rendered insane by the sustained terror campaign since 2003. Something similar is necessary to protect the helpless in Darfur, but even people who would like something productive done there don't have the stomach for the amount of violence and abrogation of locally-revered "sovereignties" that would entail. Nothing productive will be done for the Darfur situation until one side is annihilated. There are too many sides to Iraq for even that kind of "victory". |
| Posted by: Anguper Hupomosing9418 2006-11-25 05:14 |
| #5 It is always easier to send an army in than bring it out. Not if you're a cut-and-run kinda guy. |
| Posted by: gorb 2006-11-25 03:31 |
| #4 I'd nominate atomic weapons and neutron bombs in particular as exceptionally "elegant solutions". With minimal exposure to danger for your own troops, your foe can be subjected to tremendous fatalities with incredible damage to infrastructure, if so desired. All at economical cost, easyly delivered and conveyed in a manner that is very difficult to thwart. Japan's surrender was obtained with minimal loss of life on both sides. This, in contrast to potential millions of lives lost via conventional warfare and land invasion. Our use of atomic weapons was indeed an elegant solution. If Islam persists in its commission of escalating atrocities, nuclear incineration of the MME (Muslim Middle East) will again represent another elegant solution to an equally intractable problem. It is up to Islam to avoid making this necessary. |
| Posted by: Zenster 2006-11-25 02:36 |
| #3 Ima start to think more like Francis Marion with dough and B-2s. |
| Posted by: Shipman 2006-11-25 01:06 |
| #2 or Lt. Gen. Nathan Bedford Forrest. |
| Posted by: borgboy 2006-11-25 00:38 |
| #1 Refer to General Sherman for proper attitude adjustment. |
| Posted by: borgboy 2006-11-25 00:37 |