[extropy-chat] Re: Iraq and legality again

[J. Andrew Rogers]

Avantguardian wrote:
> I agree with you that Iraq has the pontential to
> become our Afghanistan or another Vietnam.


As a technical nit, this is a non sequitur. :-)

Afghanistan for the Russians was a clear cut victory, right up until the
point where the US started sending very advanced weapon systems to the
Afghans that were, quite frankly, better than anything the Russians even
had at the time.  The Aghan battlefield was terrible for heavy
mechanized units (what the Russians specialized in), but excellent for
close air support which the Russians figured out very quickly.  When the
US anti-aircraft technology took away that advantage, the war was over.

Viet Nam was a decisive military victory for the US even in the absence
of political will.  Even the communist government of Viet Nam agrees on
this matter in their version of history.  The US snatched defeat from
the jaws of victory, though to some extent one can see the political
rationalization in the US that led to that.  Whether or not we should
have been there in the first place is a matter independent of military
outcomes.

The argument for Iraq is complex.  My basic libertarian philosophy says
we should not have been there in the first place.  However, as someone
who loves history and studies geopolitics, the plan and implementation
was actually quite good from the points of view that you might get from
the whatever brains are behind the current administration.  If you
accept their basic assumptions, the plan was extremely well conceived. 
Everyone is caught up in the short-term week-to-week going ons of the
middle east, but the long-term strategy will very likely achieve the
goals of the architects of this mess.

Which is an important point.  It is one thing to measure outcomes based
on, say, my assumptions and goals and quite another to measure the
effectiveness of implementation based on the goals of the people
actually doing it.  The Bush administration has been extremely effective
in a lot of ways geopolitically, but I fear that many people lack the
historical perspective and geopolitical context to see the extent to
which it is true.  In another decade there will be some hindsight, but
right now we are too close to it.  These things are never pretty under a
microscope; they only look nice through the big picture telescope of
history.

I'd hardly be considered a raving fan of Bush by any measure, but I do
recognize that their implementation is neither stupid nor short-sighted
-- I am not so foolish as to invest emotion in my analysis.  I may not
agree with what they are doing on some levels, but I recognize the
efficacy of their methods even if it is like watching sausage being made
in the short term.


> An enlightened strategy would consist of a concise
> set of military objectives that ended the conflict
> quickly and decisively without a minimal amount of
> lives lost on either side and minimal collateral
> damage.


Easily said, but difficult to implement.  This has been by far the
cleanest war of its kind to date.  The US war colleges have a superior
reputation, but there are limits to what a military can do given
practical logistical, technological, and political parameters. 
Generally speaking, I doubt that anyone could do much better on the
ground given the same operational parameters that the US military has
been given.


> Samantha, your idea of occupation is one that is
> no longer valid when it applies to American troops.
> American soldiers are, for the most part, good kind
> people. They are not vikings. They do not rape and
> pillage the conquered. Every country that America has
> occupied short of France has loved us for it. Our
> troops bring rule of law and spend lots of money in
> the local businesses.


Yes, and it is sadly amusing that many countries dislike American
soldiers right up until the point that the American soldiers agree to leave.

Not all circumstances are the same, of course.  It is probably
educational to look at all the countries we have soldiers in, our
relationships with those countries, and how we came to be in those
countries in the first place.


> We picked the easiest country that we could
> to put a huge military presence in the region. Would
> you suggest, we withdraw from Iraq and attack Syria or
> Iran? Would you rather we occupied Jerusalem? These
> options would cost us far more dearly than staying the
> course in Iraq. But the benefit would remain the same.


Ah, so I see that there are others that can do the geopolitical
calculus.  That part of the world needed to be smacked down *hard*. 
Iraq was the blindingly obvious target of opportunity in that region,
whether one agrees with the war or not.  It is like the nitwits that
wonder why we did not go into North Korea (it is a Chinese client state)
or Iran (it is externally manipulable in many ways).  Iraq was a very
effective target with negligible geopolitical consequences.  The only
countries that are annoyed are western countries that can no longer sell
arms to them.


> We bait the terrorists into attacking our troops
> rather than our civilians and we kill them one by one.
> The effect will not be immediate but sooner or later
> our backyard will be relatively free of bugs. I would
> rather fight this battle in Iraq than on the streets
> of New York.


The unspoken obvious.  Very few of the people the US soldiers in Iraq
are fighting are actually Iraqis.  This is the world we live in.  It was
not Disneyland before, and it is not Disneyland now.  If the people in
that part of the world can be convinced to police themselves, that will
be a huge improvement for all of us.


cheers,

j. andrew rogers