David Hackworth: Bring What On?

[Dudley_DUright]

On May 1, George W. Bush landed in a military jet on the deck of the USS Abraham Lincoln with all the pomp and ceremony of Caesar returning to Rome after conquering Gaul. In the background – as our commander in chief proclaimed "major combat operations in Iraq have ended" – was a huge banner reading “MISSION ACCOMPLISHED,” probably conjured up by White House flacks.

There was just one problem: No one told the guerrilla enemy the war was over.

Since the president played Top Gun, hundreds of our troops have been killed or wounded, and dozens of major combat operations have been launched or are ongoing all over that unfortunate country.

A lesson presidents JFK, LBJ and RMN learned the hard way was not to jive the people when they found themselves stuck in the Vietnam quagmire – because all the double talk in the world won't disappear the truth of the casualty lists.

more...

http://www.sftt.org/cgi-bin/csNews/csNews.cgi?database=Hacks%20Target%20Homepage.db&command=viewone&op=t&id=21&rnd=171.6353106233785

[mainer]

1. Thanks for the link

I'd never heard of the "Soldiers for Truth" website. It was a real eye-opener -- an on-the-ground assessment of the war by soldiers currently sitting in the dust and dirt of Iraq. It's going on my favorites list.

http://www.sftt.org/

[The Backlash Cometh]

2. Did anybody NOT expect guerrilla warfare?

What were they thinking? My guess is that they've been so good at manipulating perceptions by creating hollywood magic that they never thought reality would ever bleed into their picture.

"You can't fool all of the people all of the time."

[LWolf]

3. I wonder if my local conservative rag

will print this. Hackworth is a regular columnist on our op/ed page. I'll believe it when I read it; if so, it will generate weeks of hate mail to the editor from the locals.

[FlashHarry]

4. Good piece, but. . .

I worry about anyone who still refers to the "Red Chinese."

[teryang]

5. The footnotes become the story

Syria and Iran are cowed?

Don't believe it. Their governments may publicly kowtow to our regime, but that doesn't hermetically seal the borders of Iraq. This conflict has potential to draw support from throughout the Arab world at a level sizable enough to keep it going indefinitely. What the Islamic countries say publicly and what their leading political and financial families and secret operatives do are two different things. The Islamic world does not have the infrastructure or battlefield organization of our opponents in Vietnam, but they do have access to substantial financial and manpower resources in an asymmetric conflict. Time is on their side. Our side lacks manpower, cultural knowhow, and political will.

Another myth being perpetuated by Army types is that it is possible to "win" the guerilla conflict by increasing troop levels. Where have we heard this before? Battalion level engagements will never occur in Iraq. They don't have to to drive us out. It is about the political will of the American people to adjust and interupt their lives and sustain casualties for a undefined mission, unsupported by the rest of the world. This conflict will continue at a G-1 level indefinitely, "postponing the peace." (Good meme Hack!) This resistance level is already operating at a level above the desperate tactics of suicide bombings which they are apparently willing to resort to if their relatively successful small unit actions, sabotage and assassination actions cannot be maintained.

Is it really possible to install a western friendly, corporately subservient regime in the heart of the Arab world? Does this even come close to demonstrating common sense? Our interests and those of Iraq are irreconcilable. We want their territory, markets and resources for our own exploitation. They don't want us. Arabs understand conquest but that doesn't mean we can prevail.

Hackworth relished the success of the invasion on television. His comments about the possibility of continued guerilla war and suspicions of the disappearance of major Iraqi ground forces were prescient but little more than a footnote in all the bombast of which he was a participant. He seems to be holding out hope here for a complete political win via the Army and it won't happen.