Posted on 09/24/2002 8:16:01 AM PDT by ninenot
History has repeatedly shown that the military solution is the least-desirable way to resolve conflict. Smart leaders know that "supreme excellence consists in breaking the enemy's resistance without fighting" – as Sun Tzu wrote years ago – and exhaust all other options before they unleash the dogs of war.
Instead, our president seems single-mindedly obsessed with attacking Iraq. For months, the Bush war team has been talking up taking out Saddam and sneaking so many war toys into places like Qatar and Kuwait that it's a wonder our desert launching pads haven't already sunk from the weight of our pre-positioned gear and ammo.
So far, the emir of Kuwait has been picking up the tab for the American muscle deployed outside of his palace that lets him sleep at night without worrying about Iraqi tanks roaring through his front gate, as they did in 1990. But probably a key reason President Bush is so keen on pressing Congress to sanction his unrelenting march to battle is because thousands more armored vehicles and tens of thousands of warriors are already on the move. Since it will soon be impossible to hide the buildup or cost, Bush clearly needs congressional consensus before the boys, bombs and bullets become the lead story on prime-time television.
Now it looks as though Congress is about to give Bush the green light for his shootout with Saddam rather than standing tall and insisting that U.N. weapons inspectors get another go at defanging the monster.
Almost 40 years ago, Congress kowtowed to another president from Texas and approved the 1964 Gulf of Tonkin Resolution – based on the repeated lies of Defense Secretary Robert McNamara that Red patrol boats had attacked U.S. warships on a supposedly routine mission off North Vietnam, which the senior admiral in the Pacific had predicted months before would provoke exactly this type of response and result in an escalation of the Vietnam War. Only Sens. Wayne Morse of Oregon and Ernest Gruening of Alaska stood tall and voted "nay." When Morse chillingly predicted we'd lose the war and LBJ would go down in flames, most members of Congress responded that they were patriotically backing the president in a time of crisis.
Before Congress blinks again, rubber-stamping one of the few wars in our country's history in which we've fired the first shot, the members should visit the Vietnam Memorial and read every name aloud on that black wall before blindly accepting their party machines' go-along-to-get-along directives. They should ask themselves: Do I want to be remembered as a William Fulbright – who pushed LBJ's bad resolution through the Senate, knowing all the while that he was repeating McNamara's spin – or as a Morse or Gruening?
They should also match what the ordinary folks who elected them are saying against the national polls' war chantey, "Let's Push With Bush Into Baghdad." Last week, I visited four states, and all of the hundreds of average Joes and Janes I spoke with were for U.N. inspectors returning and our tightening the choke leash on Iraq enough that nothing gets in or out without going through a U.S.-manned checkpoint.
A Vietnam combat Marine told me: "Certainly Saddam is a tyrant and a threat to his neighbors. But so are the leaders of Syria, Iran, North Korea and, for that matter, Pakistan. All of our comrades who died in Vietnam and those of us who vowed 'never again' will now again watch another generation march off to war without the approval of the American people."
"Who'll pay for it?" asks another citizen. "We all know it'll be our kids. They're the ones who will pay, as it has been since the Revolutionary War. Those who reap the rewards are of a different category."
Congressmen and congresswomen, which category are you? Will you vote for your own political future or the future of our country and its current generation of defenders? Will you challenge the rush to war along with Rep. Jim McGovern, D-Mass., who said last week that giving Bush the same broad, unchecked authority Congress gave LBJ is tantamount to allowing him to start a war and saying, "Don't bother me, I'll read about it in the newspapers"?
Anyone know if this is so? Any visitors to Hanoi?
Funny how watching hundreds of comrades die or become mutilated gets to you, ain'a?
It is also interesting to note every single one of them has combat experience - almost all of them have DECADES of experience in the combat profession.
Arguably, Sun Tzu is probably right. What we needed was a strong CIA, the ability to hire 'criminal' foreigners, and the mandate to assassinate foreign leaders that threaten the US. Lacking those things, the only thing left in our quiver is war.
OK, so now that your implication that people who support the war have no military or combat experience, and those who have military experience don't support the war is disproved, you have switched the subject to your judgement of how sincere they are in their positions. So how sincere are the Democrats who agree with you that attacking Iraq is a bad idea?
You probably did. That was before Bush got to talking seriously about Saddam.
You gotta realize: Hackworth caters to the niche market of adminstration-haters. (Any administration, it would seem.) He makes his living by nay-saying the people in the arena.
Whatever the WH says is wrong. So if the WH is silent on Saddam, the WH is wrong. If the WH talks about Saddam, the WH is wrong.
Hackworth is a hack.
While GW seems intent on emulating McKinley and T.Roosevelt, he should be replicating the capabilities of Eisenhower/Dulles and Golda Meir. But then there is not so much profit in such covert operations.
Hackworth has consistently highlighted questions concerning the effectiveness of U.S. forces and tactics going back to Tora Bora.
He seems genuinely and perhaps justifiably concerned that the Bush Administration will try to execute it's "regime change" policy on the cheap, ignoring the "overwhelming force" maxim, and find itself in an expensive and destructive quagmire should anything go wrong.
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