First: with regard to the Soviet army -- US armed forces are specifically designed to fight a land war against a fast moving opponent that makes heavy use of mechanized infantry and artillery while downplaying the roll of tactical aircraft and ground support aircraft. This is the "red" force we train against. It's the Soviet Army. US weapons design has been slanted to favor the expenditure of material over the expenditure of men. That's why we put our troops in multi-million dollar tanks and humvees that cost 10 times what their Soviet equivalents did. This is not to say that a uranium round intended for a Soviet tank rolling across the fields of Germany won't rip a jeep full of RPG toting insurgents to shreds -- it will. But the tactics we use and the training our men have been provided are decapitation tactics -- tactics that teach them to strike at the head of an organization to cripple it. Those tactics are largely ineffective against a non-hierarchical structure, such as the Iraqi resistance. This is a problem, the sooner we admit this problem the sooner we will be able to make some progress in Iraq and get our troops home. I think we can all agree that this is a desirable outcome.
Second: with regard to winning the hearts and minds -- the GOVERNMENT of Iraq wants us there, but it's the government elected by those that were frankly interested in Democracy in the first place. Polls show Iraqis divided on the presence of US troops. More importantly, most of the insurgency ISN'T Iraqi. Our total inability to close Iraq's boarders brings in more militants every day. Our heavy handed reprisals against those militants as well as our continued presence in a Muslim country continues to create more fanatical resistance to the United States, both within Iraq and internationally.
What I mean by winning hearts and minds is that we need to do things like NOT invade countries that haven't done anything meaningful to piss us off in the last 10 years. The war in Iraq was a sham. It's common knowledge. There were no WMDs, there was no compelling reason for the US to go in. Plead humanitarian causes all you like, but when Bush stood up in front of the Congress, the UN, and the World it wasn't to plead humanitarianism -- it was to frighten us with threats of Mushroom Clouds over NYC. It was a lie.
We would be safer today if, instead of spending time, money, men, and materials invading a sovereign nation that hadn't done anything to us, we had spend those hundreds of billions of dollars providing childhood immunizations to every kid on the planet. For the cost of the Iraq war, we could do that for 59 years.
We could have helped fight the world wide AIDS epidemic and saved lives that way. Imagine the international good will we'd have generated if we'd funded AIDS prevention, containment, and treatment. We could have done that for 17 years with what we've spent in Iraq thus far.
The United States is the Rome of the Modern World. In the time of Augustus, a Roman could walk across the known world protected by nothing more than his Tunic and the power and majesty of the Roman empire. No one would dare attack him because they feared the legion, but more importantly - they feared the withdrawal of the benefits Rome had brought to them. Running water, roads, trade -- the benefits of friendship with Rome were staggering.
Today the United States exploits its so called "friends" we run rip-shod over the countries foolish enough to fall into our sphere of influence, selling their national resources to the highest corporate bidder for export and sale at your local Walmart. We crush cultures beneath the heavy boot of McDonalds and Mickey Mouse. Yell "Free Trade" and "Capitalism" all you like, but it's government subsidies to the advertising budgets of McDonalds and Disney that arouse the most ire.
America has become the imperialist of the new millennium. We are doing to the world today what Britain did in the 19th and 20th Centuries. Just as it cost Britain dearly, it is starting to cost us as well. Unless we seek to be reduced to irrelevancy we should start to look to history to inform our actions.
Finally: with regard to a decentralized insurgency. Al-Queda and terrorist resistance as a whole has metastasized. It is no longer the networked cells we saw before 9-11. In response to highly visible US action, Al-Queda has transformed from a organization into a movement. There is no longer a Hydra, but a Swarm to kill. We have made the problem worse, not better through the use of conventional military force. As the analysts recommended in Sept 12, 2001 -- this was a job for US special forces. This needed to happen under the radar, quietly, covertly.
Instead President Bush decided to make a political dog and pony show out of it. We'll be paying for that decision for the rest of our lives.
We do not care about the International communities opinions in this. If we did we never would of invaded, because you told us not too. If the international community doesn't want to see a problem that is staring in the face that's fine. We won't ignore it however.
And that is why we will fail. Terrorism isn't a country we can defeat, it's a tactic. Invading Iraq won't stop terrorism - and for every Iraqi solider killed, every insurgent blown apart by artillery fire, we leave behind widows, sons, daughters, father, mothers, brothers, and sisters that grieve the loss of their loved ones. Hearts and minds. What the world thinks matters.
Its quite obvious,but it needs to be said.Was quite hilarious, reading those bits...
burn... burn!