Snowflakes in Hell

Marksmanship is generally pretty poor among Iraqi soldiers and insurgents, from what I hear.  Now it seems they can’t even fire into the air correctly.   If you’re going to fire a gun into the air, you should do it straight up.   The terminal velocity of the bullet isn’t high enough to kill.  It’s when you fire at too low an angle that you risk killing or seriously injuring someone.   Clearly they need to take some lessons from folks in Kentucky.

I’m not sure I agree, from a counterinsurgency perspective, that breeding more terrorists than we’re killing is really an important issue. I’m not sure how you really assess such a thing anyway. No one likes having their country invaded and occupied, this much we know, but how many examples in history can we find of exactly this happening? Any military operation against a foe is quite likely to breed more of that foe than you’re currently killing.

Britain’s colonization of any number of places, from South Africa, to India, certainly bred it’s fair share of resentment, but the British Empire was certainly able to bring these people’s under its sphere of control. It was only after the British Empire was weakened through new challenges from Europe, that it would give up these possessions. India would ultimately guilt the British into surrendering it, through a non violent independence movement.

In our own history we can find examples of this. Lincoln’s decision to raise an army to invade the territories that had decided to actively challenge federal authority certainly created more soldiers for the Southern cause than were actively being killed for quite some time, but in the end, the Army or Northern Virginia was to surrender.

In Vietnam, as is the goal of any counterinsurgency, the Viet Cong eventually built up its number to the point where they felt the time for the hit and run operations was at and end, and so executed a general offensive, known as The Tet Offensive. The VC decided to come out of the jungles, and acts as an army does, to seize and control of territory and men. Unfortunately for the Viet Cong, they were effectively destroyed by the US military. From Tet onward, we were fighting the North Vietnamese Army, and the counterinsurgency known as Victor Charlie would cease to be relevant, even though up until that time they were building their power.

Sure, there are plenty of examples of insurgencies rising up and defeating great powers; we owe our own independence to this. The British lost three armies trying to keep North America, and for them, given they faced a real, existential threat from France at the time, was just too much for them to handle, and here we are.

War is more than just a contest of people. It’s more than just a numbers game. It’s a contest of wills. All the military advantages in the world amount to a hill of beans if you lack will. Whether we have the will to see this conflict through to a just conclusion isn’t clear yet. But it’s not a matter of whether we’re breeding more terrorists than we’re currently killing.

I’ve gotten some more comments on my earlier post about Iraq. I saw my friend Jason commented, and started to craft my own, but decided it would work best as a separate post, rather than as a comment.

I think it’s a grave mistake to believe this is a problem that originated with the United States, and that by retreating, we can solve it. When I say that Al-Qaeda felt they could attack us with impunity, I do not mean that they felt that we would just sit back and shrug it off. What I mean is that Al-Qaeda felt that they could attack and defeat America. Whether that involved drawing us into a war in Afghanistan, or Iraq, that would turn into a quagmire, is of little matter. They felt it was time to take us on, and their narrative centers around western weakness and softness, and up until post 9/11, we hadn’t done much in the way to dispel that narrative.

That’s why I think leaving would be dangerous. Radical Islam aims to re-establish the caliphate, and to instigate a world wide Islamic movement. It’s absurd only in the sense that the west has the capability to largely destroy Islam as an ideology of any serious consequence. But we don’t want it to come to that. Iraq is an experiment to determine whether an Arab and Islamic society can be brought into a globalized world, and able to live among us, without having to resort to terrible measures.

I don’t think we really have a choice here. We either fight now, where we have the luxury of a measured response, or we fight later, when we might have to do it with nuclear weapons. Right now the choice is ours, it deosn’t make much sense to wait until we have no choice, except pushing the button.

Whether we like or not, at the end of World War II, Europe basically handed us the keys to their former empire, and said “Well, we’re quite tired of working on the place. We’ve decided to retire to greener pastures. Here are the keys. Hope you don’t mind the mess too much.” We didn’t ask for it, and I wish we didn’t have to do it, but we’re stuck with it. I’d rather do everything we can to win now, when we can keep the body count to a relative minimum, than to fight later, when that could end up meaning total war. I don’t really see any in between ground on this issue.

I’m a little busy today with some other things, but everyone ought to read this article by Michael Yon about the major offensive against Al-Qaeda in Iraq.

It’s always puzzled me that, given we are fighting Al-Qaeda in Iraq, that some people think walking away sounds like a great idea.  Walking away when things got tough is what got us a reputation for cowardice that made Al-Qaeda think they could attack us with impunity.    There is no walking away from Iraq.   We must finish what we have started.

On the ballot currently in today’s Philadelphia city elections:

CHARTER CHANGE QUESTION 7 (Bill No. 060849)

“Shall the Philadelphia Home Rule Charter be amended to state the citizens’ view regarding the mission served by U.S. troops in Iraq and that the citizens of Philadelphia urge the United States to make year 2007 the time to redeploy U.S. troops out of harm’s way in Iraq?”

The ballot measure was passed 72% to 29%, or thereabouts.  Now keep in mind that Republican turnout in this election was way way down.  The shocking thing to me is that close to 30% of people, mostly Democrats, in Philadelphia actually voted no.  I thought this would pass a lot more overwhelmingly.   But still, a fantastic victory for the folks who want the whole Iraq project to be for naught.

Personally, I have a suggestion: Why don’t we have the troops who are actually fighting the war vote on whether or not they want to come home, or complete the mission?

While I’m trying to work out some issues with being able to back up the blog (it runs on my current home server, and the database runs on my MythTV DVR box), I should point to this bit on StrategyPage detailing the Top Ten Myths of the Iraq War. If you don’t subscribe to StrategyPage, I highly recommend it. Glenn’s podcasts with Jim Dunnigan and Austin Bay are always really good as well. Check out Glenn’s podcast archives to find them.