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Yassir Arafat's Double Would Never Donate. Will You?

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This is a good article. Starrts kinda shaky, but pulls it out and ends well.

The author forgets alot of history between Alexander and modern wars. The Arabs and Turks (Seljuk/Ottoman) did pretty well against the infidel West from the 8th century AD through around 1699, conquering Spain and, were it not for Charles Martel, France as well. And later, absorbing Constantinople (mid-15th century), through the Balkans, and laying seige to Vienna at least twice; the last time broken largely by legions of heavy Polish cavalry.

It was only after 1699 when the Ottoman Empire fell behind technologically, socially, and economically, becoming ultimately the "sick man of Europe" and dismembered in the 1920s.

The Arabs world was not always so grabastic and ineffective. My 2 cents.

"Meanwhile, everyone seems either to have criticized or belatedly praised “the plan”; but so far no one seems to quite know how 250,000 brave American, British, and Australian young men and women in the field are actually pulling it off.

That part of the equation is something only a soldier that has been there and done that understands. It has always been typical of American soldiers. The "Plan" is a painful and scary thing during its development. The anxiety of execution is even more emotional.

The inovation, intelligence, excellent training, strength of character, and courage of the American soldier is what endures.

The ability to know, understand, and faithfully execute the commander's intent at the lowest level of command and control is what separates the American forces from the rest. Armies that are used to enforce tyranny can never give the soldier this kind of flexibility and responsibility. It only exists within Armies that defend Freedom and Liberty.

DE OPPRESSO LIBER

"Targeting a quarter-million killers from a population of 26 million — while trying to avoid damage to innocents and enemy sanctuaries in mosques, schools, hotels, and hospitals — sounds nearly impossible. . . "

IMHO one of the keys to success is the strategic goal this time: regime change, not unilateral surrender/defeat of the nation. In addition, a LOT of planning and organization and intelligence preparation of the battlefield has gone on in the past few years; these elements would not have been in place at the end of Gulf War I.

Take the Battle of Berlin. The natives were not fighting for Hitler (who was already dead in his bunker) or the Nazi regime. They were fighting for their survival. The arriving Russians would and did rape, pillage and murder. In other words, if our strategy and leaders had been like the Russians in 1945, there would certainly have been more death and destruction in Baghdad, military and civilian.

G. W. Bush is an enlightened leader. He did not make the mistake of Roosevelt and Churchill, who demanded unconditional surrender and refused to work with resistance elements trying to implement a regime change in Germany -- the result was the type of modern, ultimate war the peacenicks thought Bush was bringing to Iraq. But they underestimated Bush, and they underestimated our military capabilities (because they are totally ignorant of the military arts and sciences). Because the underestimated both of these, they underestimated the will to victory, which is a crucial difference from the VN experience. IMHO.

The Marines just rolled by the battlefield of Cunaxa, where in 401 B.C. 10,000 Greek mercenaries suffered one wounded in their collision with the imperial troops of Artaxerxes. On the northern front Americans passed near Gaugamela where Alexander the Great’s shock troops destroyed the enormous army of Darius III at a loss of a hundred or so dead before descending on Babylon.

Something I've noticed recently, the number of casualties We suffer has been dropping precipitously since wwII. 50,000+ in 3 years of Korea, 53,000 in 10 years of Viet-Nam, now we are looking at 100 or less. I'm not sure what it means but I approve!

The military itself suffers from another inescapable paradox. Its very success allows the engine of freedom and capitalism to create an enormously affluent and sometimes smug class that forgets how and why its comfort is maintained in the present and ensured for the future.

Brilliant as always, the one and only V.D. Hanson.