Posted on 08/26/2006 11:12:41 AM PDT by Steel and Fire and Stone
In Iraq, the world’s only superpower finds itself mired in a conflict that it cannot win. History’s mightiest military has been unable to defeat an enemy force of perhaps 20,000 to 30,000 insurgents equipped with post-World War II vintage assault rifles and anti-tank weapons.
In Gaza and southern Lebanon, the Middle East’s mightiest military also finds itself locked in combat with adversaries that it cannot defeat. Despite weeks of bitter fighting, the IDF’s Merkava tanks, F-16 fighter-bombers, and missile-launching unmanned aerial vehicles failed to suppress, much less eliminate, the armed resistance of Hamas and Hezbollah.
What are we to make of this? How is it that the seemingly weak and primitive are able to frustrate modern armies only recently viewed as all but invincible? What do the parallel tribulations—and embarrassments—of the United States and Israel have to tell us about war and politics in the 21st century? In short, what’s going on here?
The answer to that question is dismayingly simple: the sun has set on the age of unquestioned Western military dominance. Bluntly, the East has solved the riddle of the Western Way of War. In Baghdad and in Anbar Province as at various points on Israel’s troubled perimeter, the message is clear: methods that once could be counted on to deliver swift decision no longer work.
(Excerpt) Read more at amconmag.com ...
The "Islamic Way of War" is to treat women and children like chattel, embed fighters and missiles alongside the beds of someone else's Muslim children, to lie, cheat, and steal to get Western war technology, and to use the West's own moral convictions to defeat the West.
Islam, including both the Arabs and Persians, has not known war. Cities have not been razed with the residents slaughtered when Arabs were defeated. The Islamic terrorist survives to fight another day because the west, and in particular America, denies his existence. This is a "war on terror", not a war on the enemy, whom are all Muslim, and who are supported by nearly all Muslims. To succeed against the enemy, first you must DEFINE THE ENEMY, and the enemy is not some abstract term like "terrorism".
The "Islamic Way of War" is nothing less than the primitive, barbaric way of war that predates the modern age. Kill the enemy to every last man, give no quarter in surrender, kill or rape their women, enslave their women and children, reduce their cities to absolute rubble, salt their fields so no one will live there for a hundred years, and take the spoils home to mama and the kids. This WAS war, prior to American influence in the 20th century.
The American (and Israeli) way of war is to give quarter to the enemy, not only after surrender but during the battle, to REBUILD the enemy during the war, to provide the enemy sustenance while in prison, and even offer parole, and to avoid civilian casualties at all cost, even the cost of the death of your own troops and possible the loss of the battle, and then to undergo thirty years of introspection over your own "war crimes" after the war is ended, NEVER acknowledging the virtue of your armed services in their prosecution of the war, or the nobility of your country's goals in entering the war.
The examples Bacevich cites of Muslim victories over the "Western way of war" is in every case, examples of where the West lacked the will to prosecute the war. He cites examples where the West chose something less than "war" out of mercy for the enemy's civilians. War is an evil thing. War should be avoided whenever possible. However, when your enemy demands war from you, threaten's the safety of your home and hearth, and even your very existence, you must go to war, and war on the enemy until the enemy cannot war anymore. And do not be deceived, in the age of modern technology, these primitive "ragheads" intend to aquire the means to bring war to your very home.
This thing, this "unrestricted warfare", has never been done in the Middle East, the proof of which is that Arab and Persian cities still stand, and their peoples prosper. If Islam demands war from America and Israel, we must either oblige them or surrender. We can not win the war by caring more about their civilians than we do our own, or by caring more about Arab/Persian civilians than the ENEMY cares about THEIR own. If Israel killed both Hezbollah fighters AND their civilians in mass, as she suffered Hezbollah's rockets upon her own homes and civilians, the Arabs and Persians would not run to the streets with arms to help their "comrades" in Lebanon. They would think to themselves "..hey.. these guys are SERIOUS; they could kill ME too...". Iran will not chose annihilation in behalf of Lebanon. Neither would any Arab country.
When the Arab and Persian "street" knows war, they will not continue to wage war upon America or Israel, nor support leaders who do.
By the way, half way into this article, I wondered about this author, i.e. “who the h-ll is this guy?”. He’s an academic, of course, who knows nothing of war or the real world beyond his Ivy covered walls.
SFS
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1595230211/ref=pd_ecc_rvi_1/102-2828400-0104139?%5Fencoding=UTF8
A synopsis of the book also appears in the September issue of "American Legion" magazine: http://www.legion.org/?section=publications&subsection=pubs_mag_index&content=pub_mag_history
AMEN.
Good rant. And, right, of course.
Andrew J. Bacevich has just committed himself to Dhimmitude...
Intellectually, his argument is obtuse.
If George Washington had been listening to somebody like Bacevich, we'd still be remitting our taxes to London.
Well this is a warrantless conclusion.
8 years of Clinton convinces the rest of the world that we're an easy push over.
Absolutely right on GW: the more I read about him, the more I discovered he and Bush have MANY of the same characteristics. (No, Bush is not GW, but . . .) Both, for example, absolutely refused to say anything nasty in public about their enemies. Washington was being stabbed in the back by Lee and some of the other generals, who were mental and strategic midgets compared to him, and he still treated them with respect and honor due them.
Well, the methods we are using now were PRECISELY the methods we used to defeat an Islamic enemy in the Philippines from 1900-1910. What is fascinating is that the % of land forces we deployed then, and today, as a share of total U.S. ground forces was . . . almost identical. Then, and now, the enemy's goal was to win a political victory at home by provoking overreaction that would turn the entire population against the U.S. forces. It didn't work then, and it ain't working now.
Yours are excellent observations to which I would offer - the Islamists are the proxies for the Communists, the ones playing pretend Capitalists in Russia and China. They have so penetrated our society over the last 80+ years that they now have a strong influence on our policies, foreign and domestic.
It is their carping and political correctness that makes us try to fight a ruthless enemy without hurting anyone while allowing them to commit the most heinous atrocities.
The real war is here in the political and cultural trenches. We need to stop feeling guilty about being freedom loving, moralistic people and get on with the rat killing.
While it's unclear if he actually did it, Pershing TOLD the Muslims in the Filipino Insurrection that he had coated his bullets in pig fat.
Typical moonbat academia and Dem left approach to deterring maniacs in this world who want to see us dead.
Carter's politics with Iran and Clinton's politics with North Korea are two huge examples that refute Bacevich's premise.
If/When the west decides it REALLY wants to destroy their backass foes, it WILL be done, quickly and EASILY. It will be horrific, and the west will spend decades hating itself for it, but it can be done. What the west lacks isn't the proper tools of war, its the stomach to completely vanquish its enemies, and all her people.
This guy has a funny definition of winning a war. Apparently it includes having your home and territory occupied for as long as the invader wants it. Your government elected on his terms and the majority of your own countrymen opposed to your actions which leads to your over reliance on foreign terrorists, which leads to more animosity from your neighbors.
Basically, you are powerless to do anything besides plant bombs that kill a small number of the enemy and huge numbers of your fellow citizens.
How can you lose?
I recently read a GW biography, and I was surprised to see some similarities as well. Not just that, but the poisonous tone of the political rhetoric. "King George" and all that, the claims that his political enemies made about him, you can hear the same shrill voices today..
Or if Howe (I think it was Howe) doesn't sit on his butt in Philadelphia for a month, but instead pursues Washington's army, which was falling apart? We'd be at the mercy of Chuck and Bow Wow Boles.
It is their carping and political correctness that makes us try to fight a ruthless enemy without hurting anyone while allowing them to commit the most heinous atrocities.
============================================================================
I used to make the mistake of attributing much more to the Soviets, Chinese, and Cuban communists than was warrented. Our own American leftists are simply our own American nuts.
Immoral people have difficulties figuring out "right" from "wrong". The cultural "left" in this country are simply blinded to certain inconvenient facts. They simply cannot appreciate that Islam is a greater threat to American than Bushism, or say, conservative Christians. The left loves to turn the english language on it's head. It developed the term "fundamentalist" for traditional, Bible-believing Christians, so that they can demogog their political enemies by associating them with other "fundamentalists", like Islamic terrorists.
The American left aren't doing the "commie's" bidding; they're just a corrupt people, and their corrupt ideas threaten the security of America indirectly, by giving aid and comfort to our very real enemies.
SFS
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.