Posted on 04/02/2003 3:30:39 PM PST by traditionalist
Militarily, this war on Iraq continues to go as well as any war in American history. Within the first three days, U.S. Marines and the 3rd Infantry had raced across the Iraqi desert to within 50 miles of Baghdad. The southern oil fields had been captured. Within a week, Umm Qasr, Iraq's window on the Gulf, and Basra, her second city, had been cut off. Special Forces had seized the airfields in the west. Two missiles had hit Kuwait, but with almost no casualties. Half a dozen others had been shot down by Patriots.
In the second week, U.S. airborne troops dropped into the north and secured a vital airfield above Mosul and began to move south with the Kurds toward the oil fields.
At this writing, not one U.S. combat plane – be it a Stealth B-2 bomber, B-1B, B-52, F-117, F-16, F-15, F-14 or A-10 – has been shot down. A few helicopters have been lost. When a drone was downed, basically a big model airplane, Baghdad celebrated.
U.S. dead are, at this writing, about three dozen. In the first battle of the Civil War at Bull Run, "The Confederates ... lost almost 2,000, but the Union army had lost more than 3,000; 387 were dead in gray, 481 in blue" – the rest were wounded or captured. So writes Shelby Foote.
Those armies would fight for four years with 400 men dying every day, either to preserve the Union or to break free of it. Those losses were sustained by a nation with a population one-eighth of what it is today.
Iraqi war dead have also been few, especially when one compares this to what we did to Dresden, Hamburg, Tokyo, Hiroshima and Nagasaki. In those German and Japanese cities, scores of thousands of women and children were bombed and burned to death in minutes.
Yet, on the propaganda and political fronts, America is not winning. Sunday's talk shows were consumed with the question of who underestimated Iraqi resistance and who underestimated the forces that would be needed to break the Republican Guard and take Baghdad.
FDR got less criticism for writing off thousands of soldiers and Marines on Bataan and Corregidor than have President Bush, Secretary Rumsfeld and Gen. Tommy Franks for not having on hand enough troops to take Baghdad in 10 days.
The American people seem more mature than the talking heads about what will be needed to win. And if the United States can win this war in a month or six weeks – still possible given the steady attrition of the Republican Guard and the Baghdad regime under U.S. bombing, and the buildup of men and armor around Baghdad – what is being said now will not matter. Of greater concern is opinion in the Islamic world.
During Desert Storm, the "Arab Street" came out early, wildly denounced the United States and went home. "The Arab Street is a paper tiger" became the conventional wisdom. But demonstrations in Jordan, Egypt, Indonesia and Morocco have lately grown ominous. Anti-Americanism is rampant in the Gulf states. The Saudis have refused us permission to use their airspace for cruise-missile flights.
As the bombing of Baghdad grows more intense, and more bombs and missiles fall far from their targets and land on markets, malls, mosques, schools or hospitals, this is going to get worse. Nightly pictures on Al-Jazeera of Iraqi dead and wounded will even further inflame the Islamic world against the United States.
Can this go on for weeks, or months, without an explosion?
And what of the Bush Doctrine? If we had trouble finding allies when we were demanding that Saddam obey Security Council resolutions, where will we find them as that doctrine is applied to Iran and North Korea, which are under no U.N. resolutions?
If we need most of the U.S. Army and Marine Corps to defeat Iraq, where do we find the troops to invade Iran, which is three times as large and populous? Or North Korea, with its million-man army, hundreds of missiles and 13,000 artillery pieces on the DMZ? If we go marching to Pyongyang, there will be more than three dozen U.S. dead in the first two weeks.
Will Tony Blair be up for another war? Will our own elites and people be willing to go it alone, into one, two or three more wars on behalf of the Bush Doctrine, against the Axis of Evil, when what has been a successful war so far has so many wringing their hands?
Is America prepared to pay the price of empire? This has been the question from the beginning. Judging from the stunned reaction among our political and journalistic elites to the first resistance in a war that is going remarkably well, the answer is, "No."
Buchanan is one of those people.
Never mind how I got *my* tagline.
;-)
We will be willing to make war against a crazed nuclear North Korea without allies.
Explain how we can win Europe over to face down the ayatollahs with us.
Who says we need to?
Pat, on certain issues you're right on.
And he has hit the bullseye on this as well.
Pat couldn't connect with this issue if it was a golf ball sitting on his nose, and he was holding a golf club.
Don't forget, PJB maintains that "The Amen Corner" intends to bring about regime change in nations other than Iraq.
I must be in the Amen Corner, since I agree with Israel most of the time. I must have misplaced my memo on Iraq. Please forward a copy.
(Whose War?)
Was it Israel's trade center that got knocked out of the sky? Was it Israel's center of military management that was attacked? Please explain to me why this was Israel's war and not ours. While you're at it perhaps you can explain away the al Qaeda camps north of Baghdad.
As it now stands, unless some of those nations attempt to intervene in a last ditch effort to save Saddam, Dubya will have his Iraqi victory, but not the justification for
expansion into Iran, Syria, or whereever.
And who said President Bush was intent on taking on Iran or Syria next? As a matter of fact Iran has an internal problem that will see it's leadership changed pretty soon on it's own. Iranians aren't any happier with their leadership than Iraqis were. As for Syria, with Turkey on the North, a new western Iraq on the East, Israel and Jordan on the South, it's going to have some major problems. I wouldn't be surprised to see it moderate on it's own, squealing all the way.
Even Kim Jong-Il gets a pass if he stops his sabre-rattling.
Kim Jong-Il is not going to get a free pass. China has already cut off oil to them. The US already has moved one aircraft carrier into the area, and long range bombers are already in range.
32 posted on 04/02/2003 4:20 PM PST by Willie Green (Go Pat Go!!!)
Look Willie, I have no dogs in this fight other than my nation. I didn't vote for Bush and did vote for Pat. On this issue he's dead wrong.
What's going to be more interesting, imo will be how much influence radical islam has in a post war Iraq?
People living in a democracy eventually wind up with either the government they want, or the government they deserve.
Dude, it's Pat Buchanan. He's ALWAYS mad about something!
Let't get something straight up front, Ron.
I do NOT, and never have, claimed that this was "Israel's war".
Saddam is a malicious tyrant that needs to be taken out. Period.
IMHO, it should have been done a dozen years ago.
Nevertheless, I won't let that blind me to the complicating influence of the Israeli lobby in our foreign affairs. And I will not be browbeat into compliance by hordes of slanderous Holocaust pimps who smear anybody who dares disagree with them with the "antisemite" label. If anything, those political tactics have fully obliterated and alienated any support for Israel that I may have once had. IMHO, those who practice such tactics have adopted the spirit of Hitler and are a despicable stench on the memories of the actual Holocaust victims.
My position on the Arab/Israeli conflict is simple and straightforward: absolute strict neutrality. I don't want anything to do with an ethno-religious tribal feud that dates back for millenia. And I deeply resent anybody who attempts to draw me into it on one side or the other.
Furthermore, I am also resentful of an incompetent federal government that has for the last 30 years been totally derelict in its duty to peacefully develop our own Energy resources. IMHO, politicians on both sides of the aisle have myopicly jeopardized our National Security by maintaining our dependence on Mid-East oil, and thus continued entanglement with the Arab/Israeli feud.
No, it might be time for these rogue states to seriously consider laying low for awhile.
Your #7 is particularly good.
With the kind of awesome firepower the United States, Britain and Australia have shown, and with the commitment they've shown, these cretins ought to get the message.
And China gets the message too, which is why it will keep Kim in line.
I don't think he will have allot to say about it.
Eventually, we will leave and their own democratic form of government will take over.
If this goes bad, I think it's going to be because of the influence of radical islam. Religious influence is the only part of this that we can't control.
I hope they will be beholden to us for their freedom and will be grateful. But that still remains to be seen.
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