The Way of the Commandos (MUST READ: inside details on Iraqi counter-insurgency special forces)

NY Times Magazine ^ | 5/1/05 | PETER MAASS

[nw_arizona_granny]

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[em2vn]

Post the bugmenot password and user id.

[CGVet58]

just read it - which considering my extreme disregard for the birdcage liner that is the times, is a big step for me (but one which upon recommendation fm fellow freeper as yourself was worth the effort).

Inasmuch as the writer doesn't go too far off the reservation (by plugging in the "Salvador=RtWing Death Squad" association-as-meme that the left is fond of commencing their rants about...) he does paint a fairly accurate picture of the difficulties in Iraq. Too often, the left exhibits a complete lack of understanding about the world as it really works - I guess the constant weaning on the teat of utopian solutions (that universally and conveniently disregard the unintended consequences of their ideas...) has bred out anything that promotes real thinking on their part.

The writer could have explored the "dirty war" theme in more detail, like further explaining why it is a dirty war. First, life has been very cheap in Iraq for over a generation; most of the population there have no friggin' idea that a place where life is respected can even exist. Second, it follows that a transition from worthless human value (that can be fed into plastic shredders) to a pluralistic society based on rule of law, respect for life and property will not take place overnight, 12 months or 5 years. Libs most vocal arguments against our efforts focus on this disparity and scream failure-in-the-NOW because the changes haven't taken effect yet.

The third point - the transition - is writing truthfully about the brutal reality that is dealing with murderous vermin from the previous regime/worldview, and how it is necessary to be capable of brutality towards those enemies. The writer, at least in the above piece, doesn't automatically equate the commandos with the SS. In fact, just reading material from a leftist organ which doesn't slip into rote response on something like this - an omission of accusation-as-the-normal charge, if you will - is in itself a glaring change from the norm for that paper.

[Cruz]

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[em2vn]

It's a NYT hatchet job, all ten pages.

[Dilbert56]

The writer compares the Iraq counter-insurgency to El Salvador. He then quotes Amnesty International as attributing most of the deaths in that campaign to government death squads. At the NYT this is called bolstering your argument. Anywhere else, it would be called destroying your own credibility. The vast majority of deaths in this war are atrocities committed by the insurgents. So the El Salvador analogy is bogus.

Then he pretends Biden knew what he was talking about when he challenged Codi. Biden was quoting a number that referred to Mosul and asserting it represented the entire country, which was 10X larger. This writer tries to make the difference look like well-trained troops vs. total troops. Biden was speaking out his anus, not discerning troop readiness levels. I skipped the last few pages as the writer lost all credibility in my eyes.

[Travis McGee]

Thanks.

[Travis McGee]

Yeah, no bias here. Obviously, the NYTs only likes wars where the USA loses."The template for Iraq today is not Vietnam, to which it has often been compared, but El Salvador, where a right-wing government backed by the United States fought a leftist insurgency in a 12-year war beginning in 1980. The cost was high -- more than 70,000 people were killed, most of them civilians, in a country with a population of just six million. Most of the killing and torturing was done by the army and the right-wing death squads affiliated with it. According to an Amnesty International report in 2001, violations committed by the army and its associated paramilitaries included ''extrajudicial executions, other unlawful killings, 'disappearances' and torture. . . . Whole villages were targeted by the armed forces and their inhabitants massacred.'' As part of President Reagan's policy of supporting anti-Communist forces, hundreds of millions of dollars in United States aid was funneled to the Salvadoran Army, and a team of 55 Special Forces advisers, led for several years by Jim Steele, trained front-line battalions that were accused of significant human rights abuses.

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[Travis McGee]

Yeah, no bias here. Obviously, the NYTs only likes wars where the USA loses."The template for Iraq today is not Vietnam, to which it has often been compared, but El Salvador, where a right-wing government backed by the United States fought a leftist insurgency in a 12-year war beginning in 1980. The cost was high -- more than 70,000 people were killed, most of them civilians, in a country with a population of just six million. Most of the killing and torturing was done by the army and the right-wing death squads affiliated with it. According to an Amnesty International report in 2001, violations committed by the army and its associated paramilitaries included ''extrajudicial executions, other unlawful killings, 'disappearances' and torture. . . . Whole villages were targeted by the armed forces and their inhabitants massacred.'' As part of President Reagan's policy of supporting anti-Communist forces, hundreds of millions of dollars in United States aid was funneled to the Salvadoran Army, and a team of 55 Special Forces advisers, led for several years by Jim Steele, trained front-line battalions that were accused of significant human rights abuses.

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[Travis McGee]

Good points, well said.

[Travis McGee]

The commandos cultivate a vaguely menacing look. They wear camouflage uniforms, but also irregular clothing, like black leather gloves and balaclavas -- not to hide their identities but to inspire fear among the enemy. It is a look I saw among the Serbian paramilitaries who terrorized Croatia and Bosnia during the Balkan wars in the 90's, and it is the look of the paramilitaries that operated in Latin America a decade earlier.

Oh no! They dress scary! They're just like Serb and Latin American paramilitaries! How AWFUL!

[Joe 6-pack]

"They wear camouflage uniforms, but also irregular clothing, like black leather gloves and balaclavas -- not to hide their identities but to inspire fear among the enemy."

Typically I'll just slide a salami in my jeans....

[CGVet58]

Thank you, sir.

took the opportunity to re-visit your weblink - just reading the quotes from our Founding Fathers makes the blood stir and spirit sour! Especially William Pitt's quotation... how tremendously Powerful, Succinct and True his words ring!!! It bears repeating here:

"Necessity is the plea of every infringement of human freedom. It is the argument of tyrants, it is the creed of slaves."
~William Pitt, 1783

There was a time in my life - perhaps as there is in the lives of all Men - when I did not know what I now do. There was a time when I, too - as a former "product" of our current education system - took the utopian ideas fed to me and - if not embrace them to my heart as was the goal (have always been marching to the sound of my own drummer...) then at least accepted them as the de-facto way of the world.

Now, my mind and spirit grow at faster rates than I remember as a youth. This is no small comment; I've always been a voracious reader, hungry for knowledge, and believe that this thirst is probably the most important factor in making me who am today - a Patriotic and Conservative American. As I contemplate our heroes, the sacrifices they underwent, what they with the humble asked-for blessings from on High were able to create... I am at a loss for words adequate enough to communicate my most intimate thanks to God that such souls are yours, mine and our spiritual ancestors. It is a gratitude that cannot be repaid in these words written here... rather it is a torch that has been handed through the generations, until now resting in our hands. We best Honor their miracle by ensuring that torch is passed to those who follow.

We must remember these Giants; and if we doubt our strength in answering the challenge of our time, we've only to look back, see them gazing at We, the children of their Great Experiment... and it all becomes clear. Their pledge to each other of their "... Lives, Fortune and Sacred Honor..." still lives, for it was sworn to us, as well. When a Patriot understands that; how can he not find the strength to face his enemies?

God Bless our Founding Fathers always... que Dios siempre los Bendiga, y siempre los mantenga en la Palma de su Mano Derecha. And may we be worthy of their hopes and trust.

Veritas Vos Liberabit

CGVet58

[Travis McGee]

I'm honored by your reply. We are on the same wavelength. My next novel digs deeply into the selling of our heritage by political prostitutes, and the battle of patriots to preserve it for the next generation.