The battle of Iraq is about big ideas.
By Mark Kilmer Posted in War — Comments (10) / Email this page » / Leave a comment »
To borrow a phrase, the battle of Iraq is about big ideas, and it is about the future more than it is about the immediate gratification of newsmen creating and giddily reporting at the latest poll numbers. These ideas are such as: How much real control should emanate from the United Nations, and how much can we rely and this stepson of Woodrow Wilson in a world which might have outgrown even the concept? A corollary, what is the role of a super power in a post-Soviet age? To what end comes leveling the geopolitical playing field if that mediocrity is on paper only, enforced by little men charged with running big bureaucracies fashioned by bigger men?
Ultimately, though, the war in Iraq is one of civilization vs. terror. The terror would eliminate civilization, so the civilization must act to stop the terror.
This debate does not belong framed in the terms and phrases of a political trivia contest: "No WMD, maaaaan"; "Shaping intelligence, maaaaan"; stay the course; cut and run; for before against. You know them: the media drills them into our heads daily as the try to dumb this debate down to their own capacities for grasping it.
Saddam Hussein is a man, one of many, who seeks/sought the destruction of the west and the formation of the medieval Caliphate. That is a very real phenomenon. He wanted to run that Caliphate, of course, like a Saladin meets Hitler, and he once had and very easily could have again had the means to begin its formation. That he evidently did not possess them at the time of our invasion is a product of frighteningly bad intelligence but is essentially immaterial. The danger to civilization was very much there and very much real.
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Liberalism, in the classical sense, is being challenged by a force represented, in part, by Saddam Hussein. How are we to react to this attack? Do we hunt down Saddam Hussein Osama bin Laden, kill him, and return to the soap opera? It will be back, and it could have returned with Saddam's weapons.
There's that. We were right to go; we had to go. If Nancy and Jack want to pretend to cheapen big ideas with political drivel, that is how they will be recorded by history. We really have to work around them as best we can, if they won't work with us.
But the public and almost everyone sees this conflict in the media's base terms. The insurgency is growing, withdraw the troops, make them fend for themselves, etc. What do we do when the media has us talking tactics but forgetting the strategy? We're left like Ludendorff on the Western Front in 1918, going completely tactical in hopes that the strategy works itself out from that mess. It did not for Ludendorff, and it will not for us. Iraq is a battle, not a grand war, and it must be won in the context of the grand war. This means that we must leave Iraq as a stable example of a Middle Eastern pluralistic society, Democratic and progressive in the sense the word had before it was hijacked by the American left.
Perhaps the White House can explain what they're trying to do in the greater context, what is to be accomplished. It's almost impossible to convince people to think big and in this media age, it is not fair to expect them to let others think big for them. It will, I think and am slightly afraid, require a new President to explain this. President Bush, fairly and unfairly, has too much baggage around him at this point.
So of Iraq? We'll see what emerges from all this supposed chatter about the situation among policy groups and think tanks, and amongst our military officers. We can hope the President tosses the dross and is not afraid to adopt what will work. And we need to kill a few terrorists. Our President should not be forced to turn the national cheek, redeploying to Okinawa or Iceland, or wherever.
Something must break, folks. A lot is at stake, and some big ideas await resolution.
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The battle of Iraq is about big ideas. 10 Comments (0 topical, 10 editorial, 0 hidden) Post a comment »
"The road to freedom is seldom traveled by the multitude"Madhouse Thought
The Saddam = Hitler equation will not survive the scrutiny of military history.
The Wehrmacht in the late 1930's was the most technologically advanced fighting force in the world. The same is true of the Luftwaffe. Going into WW2, the Germany economy was comperable to ours in size and complexity and they were spending a 50% of their GDP on widening the gap of their military superiority.
To claim that Saddam's forces, particularly after their degradation in the 1st Gulf War, consituted any kind of civilizational threat to the United States is insulting.
GWB, and his supporters, will go down in history as having launched one of the worst strategic mistakes in our military history.
Any discussion on the future of our engagement in Iraq predicated on the notion that "The danger to civilization was very much there" will be as unsuccessful as the decision to go there in the first place.
This contention is buttressed by your concluding sentence: "Something must break, folks. A lot is at stake, and some big ideas await resolution." ??? That's all you've got in the tank? Good lord.
What credibility do you really have to be making recomendations a this point?
militarily. You did, and the distraction is pointless. I can argue that neither was Saddam Belgian King Albert in 1914. What's the point?
The danger that was in Iraq when we invaded is in the process of being finally removed. It was larger than just one man, though he was its initial leader in that country.
My final paragraph, taken in the context of those previous, was a determination that Iraq would not exist as it is now: it will break either for liberalism or for terrorism.
What credibility do you really have responding at this point?
Going into WW2, the Germany economy was comperable to ours in size and complexity
Actually, not true. Betweem 1938 and 1940 US GDP was larger than the GDP of Germany, Japan, Austria, and Italy combined.
they were spending a 50% of their GDP on widening the gap of their military superiority.
Bzzzzzzzt! More like 15%
> Iraq is a battle, not a grand war, and it must be won in the context of the grand war.
Much of the debate reminds me of the saying "Generals always fight the last war [instead of today's war]." The global war on terror was supposed to be a counter insurgency and special forces war. Yet, because we went into Iraq initially with conventional forces, there are endless examples comparing Iraq to world war I, II, vietnam, etc.
But it isn't. This isn't world war II with the Marshall Plan. Iraq never declared war on us and never was our enemy. This is not a conventional war. We have no legal or moral right to decimate the Iraqi people because they never did anything to us. Our own laws, the authorization of force, said that we went in just to remove the threat from Iraq to us, and to enforce the UN resolutions.
So everyone has the right to their own plan for Iraq, and they'll probably all be better than anything I could think of. But I can't buy the idea that we are "losing" or "cut and running" just because we don't fight this battle like world war I or world war II or Viet Nam.
Afghanistan was a successful counter insurgency campaign which was fought mostly with special forces working with local surrogate forces instead of US conventional troops. So I don't see why it would be surrender to fight the next round in Iraq that way.
Moving to the global war on terror, it seems closest to the long cold war against communism, which was won of the biggest wins in US history. Conventional warfare was only a small part of the overall campaign, including Viet Nam and Korea. We were in a constant public relations battle with the Soviets. We definitely tuned our actions, including tamping down military action, so that we didn't turn other countries against us, which could have let us win the battle but lose the overall war, the cold war.
Likewise the GWOT will involve conventional warfare, unconventional, and the use of aide and propaganda. That is another reason why we would consider tools like letting the Iraqis fight each other instead of doing it ourselves, because we don't want to turn people against us in the overall GWOT.
that Saddam sought a revival of the Caliphate? Despite some lip service he wasn't notably religious. Any his babylon obsession harked back to an earlier, pre-Islamic empire of which I think he saw himself as a worthy successor.
Saddam's Baath party was socialist and separated from religion for most of its history. Near the end of Saddam's regime he somewhat wrapped himself in religion, like by supposedly writing a Koran in his own blood, but that was just a stunt to gain popularity. He never allowed Sharia law or anything besides what his Baath party wanted.
That Saddam didn't want territory?
I assume he viewed the "Caliphate" with the old Ottoman Empire as a start. It is said that only Islamic scholars understand the Caliphate accurately under any other definition.
Ahmadinejad=Hitler on steroids w/ nukes
CommonCents
"It often shows a fine command of the English language to say nothing at all."
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and with AE's post for context on W & Rummy's predicament.
John E.