This in no way means that I agree with Roger's approach, however.
Although
he makes many good points, he offers no alternatives to fighting other
than
"just getting along" with these poor, down-trodden people.



Good Lawd Jay, I'm not advocating just getting along. I actually advocate
far, far, more action, military as well as covert. It has to be undertaken
intelligently and with the understanding that it is not the solution itself
but only something that allows you the maneuvering room and freedom to bring
the real solutions to bear.

This is an extension of the kind of lessons that have been learned in recent
decades about the limits of air power. For a while, we thought that we could
"bomb them into the stone age" and win wars from 25,000 feet without
endangering any of our guys. We learned the hard way that air power is just
a tool to get boots on the ground and, until there are GI footprints in the
dust, we haven't won anything.

Military action as a whole, including GI boots on the ground, is just a tool
for getting a lot of other kinds of feet on the ground and doing a lot of
other things. Military power is like surgery, it's counterproductive in the
short term if the goal is health. Sometimes though, it's your only option to
bring more productive forces to bear.

The scale of force, military, developmental, economic, and moral that is
required to win this struggle is so great that even a nation like ours can't
do it alone unless we are willing to go on a WWII like footing of sacrifice.
(No more flying) Even that probably wouldn't be enough. Our military is
already showing the strain and we are borrowing against the future. Iraq
should have been flooded with troops that gradually withdrew leaving behind
an infrastructure that works. We talked the talk but the scale of what we
did was pathetic.

If we had been on military stand down with a 50,000 man army when this
happened, everyone would have understood that we had to build the army and
resources first. Simple head counting and economics made what needed to be
done in Iraq an effort that could only be undertaken by a large and willing
group of nations. The political dynamics absolutely required this as well.

I'm not saying that we've done too much but that we've done far too little.

If Bush had gone in with only a 50,000 army to do this, everyone would have
understood that he was a fool. By buying into the lone cowboy image of the
US, we're blinded to the fact that the effort was equally inadequate and
doomed.

Another point to ponder. Iraq could have waited. It's clear now from what we
are learning about the intelligence that our leaders knew damn well(or were
incompetent if they didn't) that it could have waited. Think what the money
and manpower expended in Iraq could have done for our security if spread
around the world and our borders, especially in the inspection of things
like inbound containers.

It's easy to look tough. It's hard to be tough, smart, and patient at the
same time. We've looked tough but we've actually only undertaken the easy
things. We haven't been the least bit smart and we are up against people
orders of magnitude more patient than we are.

Say, rent the movie about Mohammed Ali and pay attention to the fight at the
end against George Foreman. That's a good example of what toughness
sometimes is.

--
Roger Long