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"?
I got that far before I decided the rest of the article wasn't worth reading, that Hack's still gone pussy on us.
The parallels between the makeup, background, motivations, and rhetoric of the Kennedy and Bush administrations are eerily disturbing. Both seem to have something to prove and insufficiently prepared for "unintended consequences".
Human wisdom does not change with technological advances. Sun Tzu and Machiavelli are more relevant now than ever before.
What Hackworth is NOT forgetting is the abysmal record of U.S. political/foreign/military policy during his lifetime. Even the one time when most everything went according to plan, during Desert Storm, our political leadership managed to fail us.
Perhaps Sun Tzu had something in mind more akin to the following strategy:
Psychological Operation within the US military should be busy piecing together an audio and/or visual broadcast to blanket the airwaves of Iraq (to be unleashed just after the carpet-bombing ... but before the ground force invasion commences) in which their fearless leader commands that all members of his military lay down their arms and allow the "UN Weapons Inspectors" (a.k.a., 2nd Marine Division) to complete their job of "inspecting for Weapons of Mass Destruction" so that the nation of Iraq can prove once and for all to the Infidel Satanic Americans that Iraq is a peace loving nation.We've gotta have reels and reels of audio on the guy. How tough could it be? If you thought the mass surrenders to jounalists were amusing in 1991, just envision what this disinformation could yield.
In my estimation the best policies are, in descending order:
1. Covert destabilization including assassination by U.S. forces if opportunity presents itself.
2. Marshalling a broad coalition of multi-national forces around Iraq, inspiring some ambitious and enterprising Iraqi to execute "regime change" for us.
3. Surrounding Iraq with U.S. forces, without broad multi-national assistance, and offering Saddam a Somoza-like out, or engineering and assisting aforesaid ambitious Iraqi.
It is at the moment the U.S. attacks Iraq, without a comprehensive multi-national coalition's diplomatic, financial, and/or military support, that the historic legal/moral precedent will be established that would dramatically escalate the prospects of military actions by nations with similar claims to "preemption".
China with Taiwan, Russia with Chechnya, perhaps even Ukraine and Georgia, India and Pakistan over Kashmir, and the most contentious and complicating of theatres, Israel and it's enemies.
These examples are where the law of unintended consequences arising from a lack of adequate forethought, begin.
Where would it end? I doubt anyone would learn in my lifetime.
Read any thread here in which a military man questions Rummy, and you will see such a condemnation without basis it will shock you.
But 9/11 was not provoked. And it DID happen. We all got to watch it live on TV. The proper analogy -- and as a literate military man Hackworth should know this -- is the War against the Barbary Pirates. That really happened, and in 1802 Congress gave President Jefferson the approval to go wherever and do whatever with the American military to shut down the pirates who were operating across several international borders.
The Muslim pirates then were actually not as bad as the Muslim terrorists today. Those Muslims seized our ships, crews and passangers while trying NOT to kill anyone -- because their goal was economic. The Barbary Pirates were at one point extracting one-fifth of the US federal budget in ransom payments to get our own ships and crews back.
Today's Muslims, on the other hand, are perfectly willing to kill as many Americans as they can. And they will keep at it until they are dead and their sources of money, support and weapons -- including but not limited to Iraq -- have been dispensed with.
It is a shame that Hackworth wrote, and World Net Daily published, such an historically dishonest piece.
Congressman Billybob
Click for "Til Death Do Us Part."
My concerns are the subsequent occupation/nation-building replicating our experiences in Vietnam and the Soviet's in Afghanistan. Our own experiences in occupying Afghanistan this year validate these concerns.
It is the political/military precedents we may set being used by other nations that constitute my objections to current stated administration policy.
Then he served in Korean War. 25th ID
Then VN. 2 or even 3(?) tours. Became disgruntled with war and moved to Autralia. Returned stateside circa 1989.
I do not always agree with him, but then I do not always agree with the voices inside my own head. However, Hackworth speaks with the voice of EXPERIENCE. Something the uninitiated will never understand...
Worked just fine in both those nations. It'll work just fine in Iraq. I expect the initial stages of "what next" will be a military government by Iraqi generals who have decided that it's better to have Saddam dead and them alive, than the other way around. That's a fairly reasonable conclusion, don't you think?
Congressman Billybob
That President Bush obeyed the law and the Constitution by not going to Baghdad. This President Bush will also obey the law and the Constitution, but he WILL go to Baghdad. If you read the respective declarations of war you will understand the difference. They are both quoted, along with five others, in "Are we at war?" an article I wrote for United Press International, and posted on FR after UPI ran it on the wire.
Congressman Billybob
Click for "Til Death Do Us Part."
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