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Hackworth: Will Congress Blink Again?
WorldNetDaily ^ | 09/24/02 | David Hackworth

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"?


TOPICS: Constitution/Conservatism; Editorial; Foreign Affairs; News/Current Events
KEYWORDS: bush; iraq; waronterror
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To: madvlad
Huh? Hackworth would have been a young soldier in the Nam. If he had been pacifist, how would he have made it to Col?

I don't think he made full bird, and he started serving at age 16 (or 17) at the end of WWII in Trieste (with TRUST.)
Received his battlefield commision to Lieutenant in Korea.
I'd post a link to his site (and awards), but his site doesn't seem to be up. Anyway, the site is linked here. It's also in his book, About Face.
His writing is, well maybe pacifist isn't the right word, but he's EXTREMELY cautious about sending troops (as a concerned former leader of them.) I just get wary when you have an ex-leader who may not have all of the intel saying that the guys in charge don't know what they're doing.
They just might. Just because some of these guys (Scowcroft, Schwarzkopf, et al.) server under Bush-41, doesn't mean they know ANYTHING that has happened in the last 8 years.
I also don't think it's Bush-43's job to tell them.
Back to Hack, once he did the interview (basically whistleblowing about the whole Viet Nam effort) his career was finished. Most raw chapter in the entire book.
61 posted on 09/24/2002 1:56:06 PM PDT by dyed_in_the_wool
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To: js1138
What did Hackworth say about Kosovo? is he being consistent?

IIRC, he railed against our entry and the Clinton lies that got us there (as did I). He also predicted a quagmire (which it is not -- we're still there, but not for the reasons Hack predicted). He also described in detail the disaffection of the military for Clinton, and the lamentable state of readiness, equipment, and weapons stocks -- on which he was maybe 50% accurate.

62 posted on 09/24/2002 2:00:29 PM PDT by r9etb
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To: Congressman Billybob
All of the current objections to Saddam's continued existence were known and applicable in 1991, with the possible exception of his funding/support for terrorism.

GHWB most certainly had the perfect opportunity and means to engineer "regime change" both directly and indirectly. Directly would have been an overstepping of legal bounds, but Indirectly was entirely possible, preferable, and expedient.

One would have expected better of a former Head-Spook. He failed us and the world.

The subsequent establishment of bases in Saudi Arabia for the express purpose of containing Saddam, is one of the direct causes of the U.S. becoming the priority target of terrorists.

The restraint shown by the U.S. in not removing Saddam emboldened the terrorists and enabled and inspired Saddam to convert his aggression/revenge from overt to covert.

As with every big government program, the temporary solution leaves posterity with a more expensive problem in the future.

63 posted on 09/24/2002 2:40:03 PM PDT by muleboy
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To: ninenot
More like Hack has been sharing meds with Buchannan.
64 posted on 09/24/2002 2:40:37 PM PDT by PsyOp
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To: vbmoneyspender
Hack is very selective in his use of Sun Tzu. In an earlier article of his he used Sun to back his position a bit more heavily. I took him to task with a few Sun Tzu quotes of my own. If you're interested, here's the link to that thread.

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/753154/posts
65 posted on 09/24/2002 2:48:18 PM PDT by PsyOp
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To: fogarty
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.

It's also interesting to note that "combat experience" is a vastly different realm of knowledge than the "big picture" of world politics.

Knowing how things work on the battlefield is hardly the same as understanding national interests or international diplomacy.

They all seem to be suffering from a "missing the forest for the trees" syndrome. Fighting a war puts you on the ground amid the trees. But the larger battles (the non-military ones, or the supra-military ones) are a different issue altogether.

I've seen too many of these "ground troops" fail to understand that by preparing full-bore for an actual military confrontation, the US is greatly increasing the odds of not having to actually have one.

If Saddam sees that we *will* get down and dirty and destroy his regime militarily if nothing else works, he's likely to take the route of self-preservation and, like Marcos and his shoe-loving wife, "retire" to a cushy location with his ill-gotten billions.

And alternately, if we get to the brink of war and Saddam still hasn't blinked, then we've just proven beyond all doubt that nothing else (inspectors, etc., blah blah blah) would have been enough for the job either. So we grit our teeth and do it the hard way.

Countless "inside" accounts of the first Gulf War have shown that Saddam didn't pull out of Kuwait because he believed that the US/UN was just saber-rattling and didn't actually have the guts to kick his ass out. So he stayed, and war *was* necessary.

Hackworth, et al, are unwittingly sending Saddam the very same signals, and are thus actually making war *more* necessary. They may have been brave or brilliant in battle on the ground, but they're idiots on the topic of the chess game of world affairs and statesmanship.

Sit down and shut up, Hack.

66 posted on 09/24/2002 3:12:32 PM PDT by Dan Day
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To: PsyOp
It was good to see a vom Krieg fan on that thread.
67 posted on 09/24/2002 3:14:50 PM PDT by vbmoneyspender
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To: vbmoneyspender
Sun Tzu is fine, but obtuse and easily mis-interpreted. Clauswitz and Machiavelli are the ones to read for this conflict.
68 posted on 09/24/2002 3:17:06 PM PDT by PsyOp
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To: dyed_in_the_wool
His writing is, well maybe pacifist isn't the right word, but he's EXTREMELY cautious about sending troops (as a concerned former leader of them.)

I can respect that feeling, but I can also see how it can easily lead to an overappreciation of the sacrifices of the men on the field, and an underappreciation of the necessity for those sacrifices.

In other words, they can become too concerned for soldiers' safety to remember that their job is to protect the safety of civilians or the country at large.

Yeah, war is an ugly thing. So is a country losing far more because it's too timid to go to war when necessary.

Some policemen come to think that the welfare of their fellow officers is more important than the welfare of the community they were hired to serve. So do some soldiers.

69 posted on 09/24/2002 3:22:39 PM PDT by Dan Day
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To: fogarty
Oh come on! You're full of it! No one that I know of, thinks that these people are on the terrorist sympathizers and Cowards list! And you and some other Bush-bashers just sit there, waiting for something ripe that you can trash the President, and many of us with. If you can't find something, you'll make it up. I'ts really getting old.

Some of you little scolds who come out on here with your teeth showing, just waiting to pounce. This person wasn't saying any such thing. I and the above poster just can't understand why Hackworth and some others feel the way they do. Otherwise we can agree with him, and overall admire him. Besides, a lot of the people above never opposed the President on this war.

The ones who had their doubts about it, now support it more. Really, I'm quite capable of distinguishing between supporting and not, as well as the rest of us. We're also smart enough to know that a lot of it is media created and driven. So just settle down, will ya?
70 posted on 09/24/2002 3:33:24 PM PDT by dsutah
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To: Dan Day; PsyOp
I just discovered that another Freeper (PsyOp) has located a quote which puts it far more succinctly than I:
"The fact that slaughter is a horrifying spectacle must make us take war more seriously, but not provide an excuse for gradually blunting our swords in the name of humanity. Sooner or later someone will come along with a sharp sword and hack off our arms." - Karl von Clauswitz, On War, 1832.
And Freeper "moneyrunner" made the same point I made in my other post, but in a single sentence: "A brave soldier is not necessarily a good strategist."
71 posted on 09/24/2002 3:35:27 PM PDT by Dan Day
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To: Dan Day
Without a doubt my favorite Clauswitz quote. More to the real point of war, I think, than the one he is famous for.
72 posted on 09/24/2002 3:42:19 PM PDT by PsyOp
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To: Dan Day
They may have been brave or brilliant in battle on the ground, but they're idiots on the topic of the chess game of world affairs and statesmanship.

...and to prove my point, here's an incredibly idiotic statement from Hackworth:

Even though many experts say it isn't so, let's buy into Cheney's pitch and agree that Iraq has a few small nuclear warheads. The question then becomes: "Can he land them in New York City or Los Angeles?" The answer is: "No." Saddam just doesn't have the fleets of ICBMs that we and 43's new best friend, Russian President Vladimir Putin, do. All he can muster at most are a few-dozen wheezing Scud missiles, onto which he could try to screw his alleged nuke warheads. On a good day, these throwbacks to the Vietnam era would have a range of 100 miles and be about as accurate as a blind man firing a shotgun at the sound of a bat in a forest.
The utter, blinding stupidity of this just stuns me. Has Hackworth never heard of SHIPS, for god's sake? Arriving ships, and their cargos, are not inspected until they have already *arrived* in port. By then, it's too late. *boom*

If this is a sample of Hackworth's "strategic thinking", he's clearly unfit for the task.

73 posted on 09/24/2002 3:47:19 PM PDT by Dan Day
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To: vbmoneyspender
I'm sorry, I am not really up on my Chinese history but did Sun Tzu have any experience with weapons of mass destruction when he wrote his how-to several thousand years ago?

No. Back then, war progressed and campaigns were fought at glacial speed and a 20 foot stone wall surrounding a city provided impregnable protection.

Hackworth might have been a good infantryman in his time but he is no strategist.

As I recall, during Desert Shield, he was predicting World War One style catastrophy in the coming Gulf War I.

I think I may still have one of his gloom and doom articles in an old Newsweek from that Gulf War period. I'll try to dig it up.

74 posted on 09/24/2002 3:51:05 PM PDT by Polybius
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To: muleboy
But can you explain why (I actually read this somewhere last year)Hackworth praised the first Bush administration in one of his columns? He referred to Powell, Cheney, and Baker(I think)as the "The Three Musketeers", for how they won the Gulf War. His comments suggested that he admired how they planned for and accomplished that.
75 posted on 09/24/2002 4:01:04 PM PDT by dsutah
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To: ninenot





76 posted on 09/24/2002 4:02:19 PM PDT by Poohbah
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To: ninenot
But please don't try to lionize McCain.

Far be it from me to lionize McCain. I'm no fan of his. I was just making the point that the argument that all the people with military (or combat) experience are against attacking Iraq and those with no experience are for it is untrue. It's also a specious argument. It's like saying that only cops have a valid opinion on the criminal justice system.

77 posted on 09/24/2002 4:14:37 PM PDT by Hugin
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To: Congressman Billybob
I'm not so sure if they were not as bad. Some of them were worse! Although I've read about, and agree with all else you're saying. In the new VFW magazine, this last month's issue, they had a whole section on terrorism to Americans by Muslim terrorists since late 18th century. They described the situation you wrote above, and went up to the present time.

The Barbary pirates were really horrible at least at first. Some of the tortures they did on those American sailors made me sick to read about (but I do a weak stomach sometimes, ouch!). It was eerily like the stories about the "Bataan Death March", in the Phillipines.

They even had an instance similar to a sort of "Stockholm Syndrome". Some were given the opportunity to convert to Islam, so they would get better treatment. Well about 5 did. When Jefferson sent in Marines to ransom them, their captors said they could leave and renounce their religion. One stayed, but 4 tried to do just that. The terrorist leader got mad, put them back in captivity. The Americans watching did nothing to stop them, of course! But one of them described the look of fear and misery on their faces as they were led away!
78 posted on 09/24/2002 4:17:51 PM PDT by dsutah
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To: dsutah
I think I can explain why.

If Hackworth wrote such a column it would be accurate whether it was written in 1991 or this year, in it's limited context.

The military/diplomatic/financial efforts of Bush 1's administration were exemplary.

If the column were written before 1993 it would be easy to understand how a semi-civilian would miss the larger policy failure.

But for a President with a long history of intelligence experience, Arab relations, and an incredible opportunity, to fail to follow through on what should have been, to him, an obvious geopolitical necessity, is downright inexcusable.

In it's best light, Bush 1's actions in 1991 seem to be a common case of a commander winning a surprising and relatively bloodless victory and then refraining from risking turning it into a defeat, or at least a more costly achievement, of a larger goal.

A "stitch in time", so to speak. It now seems that GW is intent upon finishing the job left undone, in a rather expensive and ham-handed manner.

79 posted on 09/24/2002 4:38:08 PM PDT by muleboy
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To: ninenot
I'm no military expert, which might be a good thing here, but the way I see it Hack, they (the terrorists) drew first blood. I'll take my chances with Dubya and hope I won't have to worry about getting nuked in a few months.

There's a big difference between the insanity of Viet Nam and self preservation.

80 posted on 09/24/2002 5:00:55 PM PDT by RJayneJ
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