A strategic blunder? (Can you say "barf"?)

Townhall.com | April 3, 2003 | Paul Craig Roberts

[JimRed]

Despite stiff and unexpected Iraqi resistance, the U.S. invasion of Iraq is likely to succeed in toppling Saddam Hussein -- and British Prime Minister Tony Blair, President Bush, the Republican Party and American neoconservatives.

Wars have unintended consequences as well as unexpected developments. The White House, the Pentagon, our troops and the public were surprised that Saddam Hussein did not "collapse after the first whiff of gunpowder," as Richard Perle, the principle architect of the war, had optimistically predicted. The promised "cakewalk" quickly bogged down into a stalemate, and other major setbacks have occurred.

The Pentagon has been sobered by the halting of our vaunted invasion force by lightly armed Iraqi irregular troops and tribesmen. U.S. reinforcements have been ordered that will double our fighting capability. In the meantime, there will be 40 days and nights of bombing to soften the as-yet-unfaced soldiers of the Republican Guard.

The casualties, both civilian and military, that are now expected to await us in Baghdad were not anticipated when our soldiers embarked on the liberation of Iraq. As serious as this miscalculation is, other miscalculations may prove to be even more deadly.

The American invasion has made a Muslim hero out of Saddam Hussein, a secular dictator who has spent his political life suppressing Islamic political parties. Even worse, the invasion has achieved the "Palestinization" of the Muslim world and has united Muslims against us.

Muslims see the invasion of Iraq not as liberation but as conquest and re-colonization. Samir Ragab, the staid chairman of the hitherto moderate Egyptian Gazette, editorialized on March 27: "The U.S. and Israel are one and the same thing. Their common objective is to enfeeble Arabs and tear their nation to pieces."

"It is genocide to me," says Cairo Times reporter Summer Said. Even Christian Arabs have turned against us: George Elnaber, a 36-year-old owner of an Amman, Jordan, supermarket says: "Bush is an occupier and terrorist. We hate Americans more than we hate Saddam now."

Similar sentiments are being expressed millionsfold throughout the Middle East and Muslim Asia. They reflect the overnight radicalization of the Muslim world, which will affect politics. On March 31, Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak said: "When it is over, if it is over, this war will have horrible consequences. Instead of having one bin Laden, we will have 100 bin Ladens."

Secular Middle Eastern rulers, who have suppressed Islamic political parties, are isolated from the populations that they govern. Islamic political movements were making headway, most notably in Pakistan and Turkey, prior to the U.S. invasion of Iraq. The invasion has energized Islamic politicians. Leaders of the Mutahida Majlas-e-Aamal (MMA), a ruling religious party alliance in Northwest Pakistan, responded by demanding that Pakistan's "coward leaders" be pushed aside so that Pakistan's nuclear arms can be used "for the protection of the Muslim world." Not even our NATO ally Turkey would permit us to move troops across its territory.

Deluded, perhaps, by the pro-war propaganda gushing from the U.S. news media and neoconservative magazines, Secretary of State Colin Powell and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld have foolishly further inflamed Muslim opinion by issuing "warnings" to Syria and Iran. Such warnings are regarded as threats. In an interview with the Beirut daily newspaper A-Safir, Syrian President Bashar Assad responded to the threats, "We will not wait until we become the next target."

Clearly, U.S. policymakers lack understanding of the volatile region of the world in which they are exercising a heavy hand. With amazing hubris, U.S. policymakers have stirred up thousands of Islamic terrorists whose future victims could dwarf in number the deaths of Sept. 11 and the Iraq war combined.

The same policymakers have exacerbated distrust of the United States throughout the world. The Russian government publicly announced that it expects the Americans to plant weapons of mass destruction in Iraq in order to justify the excuse used to invade Iraq. The Russians said that they will believe no such American claim without independent international inspection. What kind of cooperation can a country so distrusted expect?

The U.S. invasion of Iraq is a strategic blunder, the costs of which will mount over the next half century. If there is to be a silver lining to this military adventure, perhaps it will be the realization among the American public that the neoconservative agenda of conquest of the Muslim Middle East is beyond our available strength, thus diverting America from a disastrous course, which would consume our blood and treasure.

©2003 Creators Syndicate, Inc.

[AgThorn]

This garbage is NOT a piece that you would usually find on Townhall, which is predominantly a conservative well-thought out collection of authors.

Made a hero out of Saddam? A guy that hangs women for waving? puts women and children in bus's to get killed? Makes a guy pretend to be a suicide bomber under threat of killing his family (Muslim Shi'ite Cleric attestment), cut's the tongues of people that oppose him and leaves them to bleed? gas's his own people? bomb's a market with the hope of blaming the coalition (but quickly gathers the shrapnel that proves it was one of his own missles). etc etc etc etc

I think that when this war is over and the war crimes are tabled, and I am including crimes against humanity over the last 30 years that will come forth as well, we will not have an "image" problem as this so called "writer" is fearful of.

[Catspaw]

Paleomoron....snicker.....

I'll have to read the piece again. Did he say "quagmire?" If he didn't, it's implied.

[Sender]

I didn't read 'quagmire' but he did make use of 'stalemate', 'setback', 'unexpected resistance', 'civilian casualties', 'genocide', 'occupier' and 'terrorist'. I give him a B+ on the DUmmy scale.

[Catspaw]

LOL! Buy this guy a clue: we've taken Baghdad International Airport and we're knock knock knockin' on Saddam's door.

And there are more than a few Islamic nations--like Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Qatar--who want to see Saddam and his regime go.

[hchutch]

Will do.

[Nick Danger]

In addition to the Benedict Arnold award, I think Roberts also deserves the Bad Timing Award. Apparently he didn't get the memo about the "stalled, setbacks, unexpected resistance, 40 days and 40 nights of pause" rhetoric. That is no longer operative.

The bodies of the formerly elite Republican Guard are stacked like cordwood, their tanks are smoking wrecks, we own the Baghdad airport 8 miles from town, and this clown issues another Quagmire Alert.

I don't think the press liberals understand how thoroughly they are discrediting themselves in the eyes of the American people. Here's "film at 11" of U.S. infantrymen strolling through the now-empty Saddam International Airport, and here comes Mr. Network News Anchor to tell us it's been another day of failure and setbacks. It's hard to tell the difference between them and Peter Arnett.

[Landru]

"...they've gotten to the point where fewer of them are pretending to be any different than the America haters of the anarchic left."

An optomist, huh?? {g}

Of course you're correct.
I've taken quite a bit of flak from some mighty damned good, well meaning people (here) due to my refusing to differentiate between the average, pedestraian-grade "America hater," the "anarchic left," or their uselful idiots pulling the left handle.

Any compassion my heart ever held has long since been turned into stone.
My days of rationalizing the behavior(s) of the Left, as a whole, are over.
These people must be held responsible for their behavior(s).

On the morning of 911 as I watched the horrifing images transmitted from downtown NYC, I sensed -- in my bones -- precisely where all of it would ultimately lead.

I also felt a strange foreboding -- knowing our mediots as I like to think I do -- that in spite of common sense, good taste, or the logic that'd -- not just dictate -- but would demand our POTUS strike at the very heart of these truly evil peoples I just knew the Liberal-Socialist's would cleverly devise many & varied ways in which to turn the whole damned thing around on us.

I just knew it'd happen because such a response on our part would demand we acquire a national resolve, that we embrace a strong belief in who we are as a society, a culture, a peoples.
Every single thing the Liberal-Socialists have been attempting to destroy -- in earnest -- for the past god-only-knows how many decades would be at stake.
As such the Liberal-Socialists c/would have NONE of it, regardless the cause, just because.

When Iraq's over?
We all have buesiness to tend to -- a "war" if you like -- right here at home to deal with; whether, we want to admit it, or not.

The present ilk of Liberal-Socialist are not going to go away; not, unless they're forcefully expelled.
So, IF there's really going to be a "WWIII," as the Liberal-Socialist mediots have been screaming??
Then they're predicting precisely where they ultimately intend on taking this while they fan the flames using their pitiful rags & nets.

As I see it?
The Liberal-Socialist will become the Axis power we'll be fighting.

...& not the Islamafanatic. /rant

[Brett66]

Oops, another idiot predicting "quagmire" that should've waited a couple of days before we rolled into the outskirts of Baghdad.

[JimRed]

I think Roberts also deserves the Bad Timing Award.

Sounds like he wrote the piece in advance and forgot to hit the "delete" button when it bacame irrelevant on day two.

[JimRed]

...bacame...

That's BECAME...100 times...I promise to proof my stuff better next time....

[Happygal]

Great post! :-)

[scholar]

The Liberal-Socialist will become the Axis power we'll be fighting.

You nailed it again. I fear the "enemy within" far more than I do Iraq, Iran or North Korea. The Liberal/Socialist agenda in our country is doing more to chip away at the foundation of our great nation than any despotic regime could ever accomplish.