saw some Brit ran a computer projection of statistics taken during the Battle of Britain (the air battle during the summer of 1940) to test the traditional thesis that the Luftwaffe would have won if they had not shifted in August from bombing airfields to bombing cities.
The analysis showed that assuming the same loss rates, that the brits were in steady state, and Luftwaffe would have been burnt out in about 100 days - that the fatal decision was not the change of strategy, but the initial plan to take on an integrated air defense system for the 1st time in history.
And, GIGO: while German & Brit a/c were fairly matched, German decisions to engage were seriously prejudiced by their fuel consumption, and many German planes had to ditch because they burnt up fuel fighting. IOW, check your assumptions.
Stuff like this is easy because it's objective & mechanical. What is harder is to figure out, "why" did Vietnam come to an unhappy conclusion, and are we at the same risk in Iraq?
Is it Murtha's questions that are causing the problems, or was it Bush's initial decision? What are we likely to gain by hanging around to find out?
What will it take for Americans to suppress insurgency in Iraq? How extensive and critical is the 3rd nation supply line? If the insurgents are going to step on their own dick, will our presence make a difference?
My guess would be that the critical issue is whether the vast majority Iraqis can be terrified into silence, or can be coaxed into ratting out the insurgents. Why? Because that has been the classic pattern of guerrilla wars. Mao said, the army is to the people as the fish are to the sea.
Now, what can we do to convince Mohamed 6-Pak that he should rat out his neighbor or relative? Would you rat out your neighbor to a foreign cop? Maybe - but what are the odds, and what cost are we willing to accept? You can say "any cost is acceptable" if you can pay the bill. When you ask others to pay the bill, you have to consult.
If you find yourself in a kill zone, is it brave and smart to bull it out? Or do you owe it to your people to GET THE HELL OUT, ASAP?
What is going to happen to the Iraqis? What is going to happen to the soldiers?
What is Osama going to benefit by more, (a) Americans abandoning Iraq, (b) Americans abandoning the Bill of Rights, (c) who the hell cares about Osama when American lives and rights are at stake?
These are all issues that any thoughtful person could foresee at the beginning of 2003. The Democrats have once again failed to communicate their point that it is an insult to the patriotism of men like Murtha, that they should not want to risk lives mindlessly.
IMHO, the white house has, by limiting itself to personal attacks on men like Kerry, Murtha, and even McCain - instead of answering the questions we deserve, shown itself to be unworthy of leading Americans, and especially our troops.
Can you please post the source for the analysis re the Battle of Britian/
Thanx.
I assume it was the documentary on the History Channel re the Battle of Britan (I think - one of those cable channels) that aired last night. Very interesting stuff. I didn't see it all, but it took a step-by-step analysis of the Battle of Britan to form its perspective.
I think you're on target when you talk about the attitudes of the Iraqui people, with 2 caveats. One, they are ratting out people who are blowing other neighbors up - a decidedly different act than, say, hobbying. Two, the opinion against terrorism has to expand into the region - a thing that we made much harder by going in essentially alone. Had we had large, global support, gaining the public support would have been much easier.
opinion among grassroots Iraqis, and that what they do is affected by terror.
But as in most guerrilla wars, it is an almost impossible obstacle for a foreign force to come in, and build and maintain enough sympathy to carry out political change effectively.
The average man in the street knows we are not there forever, and he has to live with his neighbors when we leave, even if we are there generations, which builds resentment itself.
Even if he does not care about that, he is reminded of our fundamental differences EVERY TIME he looks at a coalition soldier. Eg, do we think that the word was not getting out of Abu Ghraib that we let our women push naked men around? How do we think that would go over? We have to be stupid to think that reporters were telling the families of these prisoners the news.
It is very easy to kill somebody; it is much harder to change his mind.
Ch1: In Iraq, we should have foreseen - and I'm sure anybody who put 20 minutes thought into it did - that (a) there would be a violent power struggle among the various Iraqi factions, and we would be in the midst of that; and (b) our presence would attract foreign terrorists, and (c) there would be pissed off Iraqis shooting at us because they had a relative killed, or some female PFC wasn't wearing a burqa, etc.
The question from the beginning should have been, will our profit be greater than our loss, when the dust settles? The answer to that could not be clear, at best. People who think otherwise slept thru their history classes. As far as this is analogous to Vietnam or any number of other guerrilla wars over the last 2 centuries, the resolution depends on the locals.
So what do we do when we are the big dog, and the situation is unclear? We proceed carefully to develop the situation. You NEVER put your head in first; you start with a finger, then a hand. You never lead with your main body, but with scouts.
We didn't do that here. Why not? The immediate hypothesis would be the realization that Iraq is a sideshow, it is not important. What is important is control over the USA, and what is really going on is a struggle for political and social control of the US government.
-- Modified on 11/23/2005 8:38:51 AM
"What is important is control over the USA, and what is really going on is a struggle for political and social control of the US government."
That's a really frightening hypothesis. I can't draw the same conclusion. It just means an evil kind of intention I can't imagine being the case.
I guess I think that there is a stong, strategic faction in the Repubican party that a) wants to reduce the size of gov't by getting it so broke that it has to cut major programs, and b) wants to reshape the Middle East by force, for several reasons, but partially because it can't see more effective ways to do it. One can only see solutions that he or she can imagine because ultimately solutions are based on assumptions about human motivation, etc. And one thing I believe about Bush is he believes in his gut instinct, the gut instinct of a man who is only average in any measure of developmental maturity/intellect.
The thought I had after '04 was that Bush/ Republicans were doomed to fail. Not that the Dems do much for me. But does this administration spell the bottom of a pendulum stroke? The one miscalculation of their situation is there is a lot of intellectual and mortal horsepower in American thorougly appalled. In spite of Fox and Rush and ... this voice is beginning to have greater clarity and power. IF people begin to smell a wrongness about Irag - that it was done for immoral reasons as you suggest - then a whole set of interrelated things will shift. Maybe the result is we will focus on things like a long-term energy policy that can drive focus for 20+ years.
I hope.
Ok, I am rambling and it's Thanksgiving eve. Time to start cooking. My house will smell of cinnamon and mint in a few hours. Mmmmm.
intent shades from blueprints to simply accepting results and learning from them.
I don't think Dubya sits down and thinks, "how can we screw Americans over today?" But it's quite clear that the Republican idea of how to deal with different people is, well different from many other people. And since they control the govt, they are the subject (yes, I think there are Democrats with just as little respect for people's freedoms.)
But they can get to the same result with simple recklessness in their calculations. Do you think, for example, that no Republican strategist realizes that yellow ribbons and flags means votes for the GOP? Of course they realize that the public confusion over Saddam's role in 9/11 is to their benefit. Do you think that they don't realize that their margin of victory at the ballot box is almost certainly tied to their ability to keep the public in a war fever?
Ask Dubya, is/was Kerry a malingerer or a war hero? Of course he'll tell you he was a war hero. But did he or the RNC tell the Swift Boat vets to STFU? No way. He knew where his bread was buttered. What about McCain? Did he draw the line at smearing a party member? Nope.
The bottom line here is that there are a couple of critical forces in the RNC. One is the religious right. They are clearly the single largest block of Republican votes. They are predictable and disciplined, and they are many times the size of the GOP margin of victory.
The other is money. It's business money. Business is what drives America, and balances government power, and is generally freaking wonderful. But there are plenty of businessmen who don't think beyond the next quarter, or are deathly afraid of unions, etc, and that's where we get Enron type accounting, and insider trading, etc all the abusive practices that undermine capitalism. And those are the people who need the Bushes and Cheneys to stay in power, because their life would be much harder if a more conscientious politician were in the White House.
The one and only thing these 2 SIGs have in common is the belief that the end justifies the means. So the RNC has cozied up with, and become dependent on, people who have no scruples.
the insurgents kill locals. I know that goes on in every civil war to some degree, to enforce discipline. Hell, it goes on in Colombia and Israel/Palestine as we speak.
And then the established army responds: look at how much trouble the Israelis and ARVNs have had preventing collateral damage - how can we expect to be more precise? Just in the last week, I see an incident of Iraqi civilians killed because their car (with kids) was suspected of being a suicide bomber. Nervous troops acknowledge their mistake, but it's very easy for them to think, "that's war".
Well, for the locals, it ain't war. It's their life. When they lose a relative to mistake, do they think, "oh, it's OK, because the Americans are trying hard"? Hell no. You and everybody else reacts the same way, with incredible bitterness and desire for revenge. Russian vets of Afghanistan describe the same thing. And the Americans are strangers, people who don't speak the same language, and don't have the same values. Think for a minute about the reception we give Mexicans who come here to cut our grass and pick our lettuce. What do you think Iraqi family elders think of eg our women in uniform? Maybe something like, "fucking infidels"?
So the locals tend to think it's a wash, people are getting killed by both sides, and the foreigner loses a tie, BECAUSE he's an outsider. That would happen in your own neighborhood. Hell, Americans bitch about Federal agents, and Mexicans have a saying, "be a patriot, kill a Chilango" (ie native of the DF).
This is so predictable that attempting to provoke troops into overreaction is a STANDARD guerrilla tactic.
How can you prevent collateral damage? What's the CEP on your ordnance? You have to go right up to your target, put a pistol to his head, and blow him away. And your intelligence better be 99% correct, because I guarantee you that you will see the exact same thing you do in south central LA, that his mother and preacher will be in the streets proclaiming his innocence, and if you are a foreigner who doesn't speak the language, and your justification is body armor and an M16A1, guess what, you are already convicted in the local court of public opinion.
Yes, there will be people who love us. In Vietnam, they called them "boat people". There are plenty of Iraqis in the US who would like to go back home, and plenty of Iraqis who believe in US style democracy, and there will be some who say that and turn out to be insurgents, or whatever.
The question is, what are (and were) the chances of overcoming the odds? Every day we cannot produce a glib solution is a day that we remind the Iraqis that we are a foreign occupier, and in the short run, we can overcome that by showering them with aid (which of course comes out of US projects). But in the long run? And how long is the long run?
When did we, or will we, reach the point of diminishing returns? Was it when we found Saddam? When we confirmed there were no WMDs? Or was it before we landed?
The Iraqis are mostly swell people in a tough situation, and so are the Americans, and every other nation. Wanting to save the world, being willing to die for an issue, does not constitute a useful plan, let alone a rational order of priorities. I'm thrilled that we have people willing to, eg, give up pro football careers to fight terrorists. Now they only need the political leadership smart enough not to waste that sort of dedication.
IMHO, Iraq is not the issue. The issue is the way the war on terror is managed, and whether it's being manipulated to distort American politics, either by premeditation or default.
If there is a surrender involved, it's in chucking the Bill of Rights as soon as the WTC was hit.
No comment to the content - I just enjoy reading a thoughtful guy.
Nah, I might as well type something....
I will grant you this - Bush got a woodie 9/11 - it made him a "war president." Simple, easy to grasp, built in emotional ties. I also think the religious right and business are keys to the Republican strength - and you've got to factor in the enormous power of talk radio/Fox. You've got to admire the coherence of their strategy.
Democracy is vulneable to the same kinds of marketing dynamics as are consumers. Simple, emotional messages repeated over and over, especially those that are fear-based, are proven winners.
Here's what scares me. I started to write a statement that started, "Here's what I believe in," and was going to extol the "silent leadership," sort of the diametrical opposite of Agnew's "silent majority." (Spiro Agnew, Nixon's VP, another moral and intellectual giant). I look at my son's generation, kids in their early 20's who KNOW their generation is up to its ass in alligators as they look out 20, 30 years. They see the context changing, and they are squirming like a bug under the lens.
But take big money, & use fear-based, long-term, effective marketing - and the American public and its press have shown that they can be insanity's bitch, all wrapped up in the flag & the Bible. Do reason and moral logic work well-enough to win the day? Or are we going to form governments around issues like abortion and gay marriage and ignore things like long-term energy strategy?
I knew should have just stopped after the 1st paragraph.