Boot and Hanson, Round One: Grim and Grimmer
- 01.29.2007 - 3:55 PMDear Victor,
Remember that inspired 1994 flick Dumb and Dumber? If I were to make a movie about the Middle East today it would have to be called Grim and Grimmer—and it would be a tragedy, not a farce.
There hasn’t been a whole lot to cheer since the Cedar Revolution in Lebanon and the elections in Iraq in 2005. In fact both achievements have been undermined in the past year by relentless violence on the part of anti-democratic militias—Hizballah in Lebanon and various Sunni and Shiite factions in Iraq. Lebanon is on the verge of a civil war (as is the Palestinian Authority) and Iraq is already in the early stages of its own civil war.
I am especially crestfallen to see how the situation in Iraq has deteriorated over the past few years. According to the UN, over 34,000 Iraqi civilians died violently last year, more than 36,000 were injured, and more than 470,000 were displaced from their homes. It is scant comfort to say that the violence is confined to four or five provinces out of eighteen. Even if that were true (and recent fighting in Karbala and Najaf undermines the claim), it would be like saying of 9/11, “What’s the big deal? Only two American cities were struck. Hundreds of others remained safe.”
I really, truly hope that Bush’s plan to send reinforcements and to place them under General David Petraeus—one of our most capable officers—can reverse the slide. U.S. troops should be able to increase security in those areas of Baghdad where they establish outposts and do active patrolling. In fact there are already reports that Moqtada Sadr’s Mahdist army is going to ground to avoid a clash with U.S. soldiers. The real challenge will be to make any decrease in violence sustainable in the long term—especially if we don’t have the political will to keep tens of thousands of U.S. troops in Baghdad for decades to come. Our only chance is to commit more resources to building up the Iraqi army (the police are a hopeless cause at the moment). But the likelihood is that the Iraqi Security Forces will come apart if we start to draw down our troops—as a majority of Congress seems to be pining for.
Things aren’t going much better in the rest of the region. From Afghanistan to Iran to Egypt to the Palestinian Authority, the forces of freedom seem to be in serious jeopardy. Everywhere despots are ascendant.
I realize that there are setbacks in any long-term struggle and that the war on Islamist terrorism will not proceed any more smoothly than World War II or the cold war. Still, it’s hard not to be a bit depressed at the moment.
To keep some perspective, I’ve been reading Field Marshal William Slim’s classic World War II memoir, Defeat Into Victory. It’s reassuring to read of the terrible setbacks suffered by the Allied forces in Burma in 1942—far, far worse than anything that has happened in Iraq and Afghanistan—while knowing that just a few hundred pages later all will be redeemed by the attainment of total victory.
Cordially,
Max
Boot I • Hanson I • Boot II • Hanson II • Boot III • Hanson III • Boot IV • Hanson IV
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January 30th, 2007 at 7:59 AM
I think the Iraq surge is about reversing the expectations game in Tehran, which was eagerly anticpating that Bush would have no choice but to admit defeat and cede regional hegemony to Iran. Everyone knows that the surge will not be sufficient to win the war outright. But that, combined with Bush’s attempts to increase the size of the military, effectively states that “No matter what the US press is saying, we can stay here as long as we want.”
Ahmadinejad is racing against time himself too. Iran’s massive overinvestment in foreign wars, combined with a collapse in the price of oil, is a major threat to Iran’s income, and its ability to sustain the tempo of operations.
Furthermore, Ahmadinejad lost his own elections shortly after Bush lost his. Ahmadinejad’s archenemy Rafsajani won control of the Council of Experts, Iran’s main non-presidential authority.
The massive numbers of Mehdi Army arrests in recent days are encouraging. But those people need to be shot, not released in a month when the tempo dies down.
As far as the medium/longer-term counterinsurgency goes, it is not “winnable” for us as long as the war is broadcast in our living rooms. An effective counterinsurgency requires a widely-cast net that catches innocents as well as “the bad guys.” The moment a news agency broadcasts a weeping woman with her kid “who died from an American bullet,” support for the war drops …. innocence needs to be discarded before victory can be attained
Best regards, fellow neocons,
Alex Forshaw
January 30th, 2007 at 12:00 PM
It’s hard to take seriously a commentator who considered Dumb and Dumber “inspired”.
January 31st, 2007 at 12:08 PM
I think the Cold War is a much better analogy than World War II for our war. In WW2 there was a realization that the only acceptable exit strategy from Europe and the Far East was victory. Nowadays, with the general public much less interested in a conflict that Democrats can plausibly imply is a war of choice (if it weren’t a war of choice, then withdrawal would not be an option until victory was achieved), the over-riding imperative to achieve victory gets lost behind clouds of public opinion and anti-war comment. We can’t win this sort of war under these sorts of circumstances. I think the setbacks and failures will be much more severe than they were during World War II before the U.S. finally establishes a consensus on the need, above all else, to be victorious in the global war on terror as a whole, of which Iraq is a front. Sadly, such a consensus is not likely to come before U.S. troops leave Baghdad.
Regards from a British reader,
Andy
May 16th, 2007 at 12:15 AM
These are all words from vdh and mb that in the end will have no impact or meaning in the actions that will resolve the issues. They imply that the final resolution will allow America and the American Military to simply go home and “mow the grass”. A Nancy Pelosi moment. A Harry Reid, brain with a vacuum in it.
These words and “arguments” simply represent Aunt Kat’s knitting while sitting on the couch. It is what she does and it is what vdh and mb do, talk and write, and it has nothing to do with the outside world that will be driven by events. Events that will be driven by the fossilized remains of the communist subversion of America at play within the Dems and the American Left wing political activists.
It is now called PC, and It is alive and well on university campuses and among the indoctrinated academics, undergraduates and graduates that populate the MSM. It is a mainlining of ideas, words and rationals that would insure that an attitude of American defeatism and a literal Anti Americanism would become the majority. Without even a war– in a democracy the majority wins. We are yet still a Republic. Communism itself fell before the outcome was determined. Events overtook communism— its rot is apparent to any one living in the real world, especially those actually living under communism before it fell. Events for Muslims will also overtake them.
Events that will allow the Muslims to go to far. 9/11 should have been the trigger but it wasn’t. Our leadership was not strong and it was washed down by political posturing due to over confidence and not understanding the deadly human stupidity and pettiness that we are dealing with. A Muslim irrationality that assumes that all humans will allow themselves to be killed like sheep, “if Allah wills it”. This irrationality is being fed and underwritten by an irrational political correctness in America that implies a homogeneity of American thought and belief as presented in the American MSM and the Democratic Party that does not exist and never has in the Americans that will do what needs to be done.
This soft psychological communism parading as Political Correctness does not exist in the Americans that will do the fighting and killing to insure survival of America. The slaughter of Muslims will be entirely dependent on how far they are allowed to go on “killing innocents” in events that to some extent are created by our own media and political party speaking the language of the defeated and allowing Muslims to actually think they are winning–”all they have to do is kill a few more Americans”. “They, the Americans, will leave Iraq. Its resources will become our staging area.” “Then when we are really strong we will kill them all”
Our own politicians give them their irrational Anti American talking points.
This Muslim irrationality will insure a blood bath. Those Americans involved in these events will need to “remember” who and what America stands for and what it will cost to preserve it. I can assure you we remember. The Americans who stand up do not come from the likes of a John Kerry or even a G.W Bush. Their history has already been written—the mettle of their character was set long ago in another war in another time.
Events that will require every American to chose his “poison”. He will have to fight and kill to preserve his way of life or he will simply become another Muslim idiot to be killed or sent out.
Bets are already placed. The Muslims will lose, have already lost. The knife is very sharp and they do not know they have already been cut, the seeds of their destruction was sown at 9/11. They have yet to deal with Americans, only the PC responders, the dogs of a real war have not been let lose— yet. It is the very actions of the PC that will require them to be let lose. The Muslims will actually think they have won until it will be to late and their fate will be sealed. They will have gone past the center fulcrum.
It they, Muslims, are allowed to reside again in America they will do as Americans have done in the past. Become Americans. They will learn what “God” is really about. Fear will undue their stupidity. They will have to dump their “rituals” and become real Americans. If they believe in a God it will be a real God, and not one conjured up by a 7th century thug to rationalize his primitive brutishness, and common thievery.
For those who think these thoughts may be to “dark” and “hardcore”. Wait.—eventually you may have to act. A Fort Dix moment could happen anywhere.