[nathanbedford]

BINGO!

On another thread you mentioned that you are reading IMPERIAL GRUNTS by Robert D. Kaplan. I too found his book to be instructive and, in keeping with what you have said above, I invite your attention to his remarks on page 368-369:

the lesson was clear: the more subtle and cautious its application of power, the greater would be America's sustaining impact. The United States could hold sway over the world only quietly, off camera, so to speak.

To be sure, the decision to invest Al-Fallujah and then pull out just as victory was within reach demonstrated both the fecklessness and the incoherence of the Bush administration. While a case can be made for either launching a full-scale Marine assault or continuing the previous policy of individual surgical strikes, a case cannot be made for launching a full-scale assault only to reverse it because of political pressures that were easily foreseeable in the first place. But in larger historical terms the Al Falluja drama also demonstrated the weakness of nation-states against the thundering new forces of a global media. Take Al Jazeera, the Independent, Qatar-based network whose characterizations of the fighting added to the political pressure on the White House to end the offensive. Al-Jazeera was itself an example of the very political freedom that the US sought to encourage in the Arab world. The more we succeeded in our quest for open societies, the more those open societies would seek to restrain us and consequently the more quiet and devious or military behavior would have to be

The American Empire of the early 21st century depended upon the tissue of intangibles that was threatened, rather than invigorated, by the naked exercise of power. Or as Army Colonel Tom Wilhelm had told me in Mongolia, an empire of behind the-the-scenes relationships was all that was possible anymore.

All of this about the fiasco at Al-Falluja is eerily predictive of this Israeli fiasco in Lebanon, which I predicted several days ago. The Israelis did not know whether to stop or start, whether to fight on the ground or from the air, and while they dithered the world rose not in support of Israel but in universal condemnation of it. This is precisely the way not to fight a war on terror.

I would suggest you take a look at Ricks', FIASCO, which I've been recommending to you for some time, it is just reached the number one position in the New York Times nonfiction list and it gives a theoretical framework for the same conclusions that Kaplan has reached anecdotally in IMPERIAL GRUNTS.

We must find an alternative to our failed strategy of big army, big footprint counterinsurgency operations.

[ClaireSolt]

I have not finished Imperian Grunts. Although I find it very interesting, it is not a page-turner (or maybe it is dense with new information.)

I think it is very wrong and mostly self-aggrandizing on the part of the press to keep arguing that perception is reality. Furthermore, usually, the "world opionion" that I see cited is usually a creation of the BBC.

Journalists sometimes say that they are the first draft of history. I saw a historian on c-span once who said that if you go to the WWII musueums at Normandy and look at the newspaper coverage, you will see that the reports were all wrong. This comes from having a narrow. today, focus that does not lend itself to analysis. Journalists is spend too much time pretending that they can predict the future. Only when the story is over can objective analysts go back and sort how the end result came about.

World opinion, such as it is, has about as much impact on what will now happen on the ground in S. Lebanon as it has on whether the volcano will explode in the Phillippines. That is none, and that is as it should be.

All my life, 65% of the American p0opulation has not been able to say on any given day who the veep is, as Jay Leno frequently demonstrates.

Citations of world opinion are fatuous propaganda, imho. Most of the people in the world are not only not engaged, but they are limited both by their access to information but also by the inability to think logically and critically

Surely, the aura of quick invincibility of the IDF has been damaged by the seeming indecisiveness. However, right now there is no way Hamas escapes alive, save by mercy of Israel. We will see. Casey yesterday said war is action, reaction,counteraction meaning that those who think some magic plan is needed don't understand the adaptability of enemies fighting for their lives and for hearth and home. Those who think that pictures of children in newspapers in other countries are important forget that Israeli fathers are fighting for their own families and homes, not just watching something on TV.

Finally, I think all this high level international posturing at the UN and international media coverage may actually do a lot of harm by tieing the hands of a country's leaders. imho we have helped emasulate Europe with our security umbrella and may have done the same to Israel.

I am not attracted by the title of Fiasco, though I will look at it when I get a chance. I did notice that it is #1, but I also saw that Freakonomics is #3. While part of the later was interesting, most of it was just partisan junk.