[GCFL-discuss] Putting Things into perspective

[gcfl-discuss at gcfl.net]

That letter to the editor from the Durham NC paper has some facts wrong:

(Durham is a nice town, I've stopped there by Greyhound several times to
visit friends, also Raleigh and Greensboro).

The conclusion is of course correct. Our military is great. Those who
serve in it are brave and dedicated, also highly skilled. Certainly the
Republican Guard was no match for them. Those who serve are serving for
all of us -- our nation must have an army, so someone has to fill the
ranks, and we are all in debt to those who do.

But those who decide how the armed forces will be employed are way off
base:

President Bush didn't start the war with al Qaeda. They attacked us
first. But Bush decided to DIVERT our brave service men and women FROM
the war with al Qaeda to fulfill his own fixation on invading Iraq.
Saddam Hussein is a brutal egomaniac, and its always a good idea to get
rid of his type, but he was not an ally of bin-Laden. They hate and
despise each other. Al Qaeda was not allowed in Iraq, for the simple
reason that any power center other than Hussein's was a threat to
Hussein. He ran a tightly secular state, where high school students
disappeared for bringing a Quran to school. Bin-Laden called Hussein's
government apostates. We could find a way to get Hussein later. One war
at a time, as Abraham Lincoln said.

Also, Bush was so determined to be a cowboy and go it alone, he didn't
look at how we would deal with Iraq once we took it. We have the capacity
to crush the whole nation and all its people, if that is what we want and
what we stand for. But the truth is, it is made up of several factions
that despise each other and, while happy to see us knock off Hussein,
then wanted us out so they could get on with their own agendas. And what
did WE offer as their "new leader"? Ahmed Chalabi, an international
fugitive from justice, convicted in Jordan of bank scams that sound a lot
like Enron.

Now in a few other historical details:

Germany did not attack us, but they had a treaty of alliance with Japan,
and they declared war on us as soon as we declared war on Japan. Their
U-boats were already sinking our merchant shipping before a formal
declaration of war.

Casualties in WW II were huge compared to any recent war. Just about
every American had at least a cousin or neighbor, if not an immediate
family member, who was a casualty. But every American knew what the
stakes were, and they were huge. We were not fighting to liberate the
German people from their despotic government; we were fighting to crush
Germany, militarily, economically, taking out as many civilians as got in
the way, and leaving a good part of the rest homeless. We bombed their
cities into rubble and occupied their cities with military governments.

We could do that to Iraq. It would cost us, and the stakes are not worth
it, nor is it what our national administration told us we were going to
do. Also, while the world rallied to support us against the Axis powers,
the world would turn against us for doing that to Iraq today.

Kennedy did not start the Vietnam War in 1962. Richard M. Nixon started
the Vietnam War, as vice-president, when he persuaded Eisenhower to throw
the support of the U.S. behind a petty despot in the same mold as Saddam
Hussein, Ngo Dinh Diem, and cancel the elections that would have unified
Vietnam in 1956. Kennedy just inherited the mess, and he was thinking of
getting us out when he was assassinated.

True, Vietnam never attacked us, and we never should have gone in. Ho Chi
Minh asked US to support his declaration of independence from the French
in 1945. Think how much better off the world would be today if we HAD.
Vietnam would have been OUR ally, and that war would never have been
fought. Do we really care that France would have been upset?

Success in Afghanistan was a no-brainer, and no credit to Bush. Probably
nobody could have gone in without a reason as powerful as 3000 lives lost
in a ruthless attack on a major American city. But how lucky can we get,
that those we need to retaliate against and destroy have isolated
themselves in a barren landlocked country, which has on its northern
borders an army of veterans hardened by 30 years of warfare, just waiting
for a nice superpower to give them ammunition and tactical air support.
The fighting was mostly done by the Northern Alliance, and they knew the
ground, they knew all the tribal chiefs to negotiate with. If we went in
cold to take the situation on our own, we'd be deeper into it than we are
in Iraq, but, we would have HAD to persist, because there we WERE going
after an enemy that just DID attack us whom we HAD to root out
immediately.

Those Americans who did serve in Afghanistan served honorably, and those
who died deserve to be remembered and honored for it. But it was not
brilliant strategy on the part of our leaders that we won a rapid
success.

And incidentally, we haven't liberated Iraq, all we have accomplished is
to create a free fire zone. Nor did we liberate Afghanistan. We assisted
a shaky coalition of warlords in taking power from another shaky
coalition of warlords. Those in control right now allow us to do what we
need to do, and are happy to accept our aid as long as it runs through
them. Its workable, but its not liberation.

Does anyone remember how the whole world reached out to the United States
in September 2001? What kind of foolishness has it been that could throw
most of that away in less than three years?

Siarlys


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