Iraq: It's Worse Than Vietnam

As hard as it may seem to believe the present war in Iraq maybe a far worse catastrophe for the United States, the Iraqi people and the world than the debacle in Vietnam.
Despite suffering a high number of casualties and lots of political trauma the United States did not sustain any sort of military failure or defeat in Vietnam. The US Army was able to beat the Communist forces in every battle and inflict a defeat of historic proportions on them in the 1968 Tet Offensive and by 1969 much of South Vietnam was actually free of Communist influence The Communists were only able to win the war after the US had withdrawn its forces, and only after taking vast casualties themselves.
In Iraq the reverse seems to be happening despite the presence of over 100,000 American troops the insurgents are on the offensive. The country is getting less secure the longer the Americans stay. Sunni terrorists in Iraq are able to kill dozens sometimes hundreds of people a day in devastating bomb attacks, Shiite and Sunni fanatics are able to kidnap and murder dozens of people and now Shiite killers are able to set people on fire in broad daylight. Not only has the violence gotten worse, The New York Times reports that a secret US government study indicates the Iraqi insurgents are now self sustaining financially through a variety of criminal rackets are able to rake in between $75 and $200 million a year enough to keep their dirty little war going indefinitely.
Compare this to Vietnam, in that conflict the Communist forces were only able to keep fighting because of vast amounts of aid from the Soviet Union and China. More importantly the Communists had a safe haven in North Vietnam they could retreat to rearm and regroup. A safe haven US forces could have easily overrun had Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon the will or perhaps common sense to do so.
In Iraq, the insurgents are living and operating in areas occupied by US Forces and able to carry out attacks right under the noses of American forces. Unlike the Vietnamese guerrillas who had to tunnel and hide in the jungle these people are operating right on the streets of Iraq’s busiest cities. The Vietnamese Communist crawled back to his bowl of rice and his miserable foxhole in the jungle after a day of fighting. The Iraqi insurgent leisurely strolls home for dinner, a couple of hours of television and a good night’s sleep in his own bed after a day of fighting.
The Iraqi insurgents may have inflicted a far greater political and psychological upon the US than the US than the Vietnamese Communists did. They have humiliated us and unraveled our strategy in a way the Vietcong never did with far fewer resources.
And it gets worse, we could at least negotiate with the Vietnamese Communists, they were a traditional political movement with traditional goals the establishment of a state. The gangsters we’re fighting in Iraq have no incentive to negotiate or end the war, religiously they’re Muslims who believe that waging Jihad on unbelievers is their Holy duty and they have no real political loyalty to the Iraqi state. Worse, if The New York Times is to believed the insurgent leaders have no economic incentive to stop the war, they profit from it.
Nor can we simply pull out of Iraq like we did from Vietnam, there is no organized force or group capable of taking over Iraq or willing to if we leave. The result would be civil war and ethnic or religious cleansing on a scale rivaling the Thirty Years’ War. Okay, maybe America and the world could tolerate that if it were confined to Iraq but it won’t be, many of the Iraqi insurgents would see American withdrawal as a signal to attack other nations in the region including Syria, Saudi Arabia, Iran, Kuwait, Jordan, Lebanon and Israel. Some of those governments might retaliate leading to war or worse a spread of the chaos if some of those nations tottering governments collapse.
To this we can add the specter of global terrorism, an American withdrawal from Iraq would free large numbers of experienced, devoted and heavily armed Islamic terrorists to stage attacks elsewhere. Some of these terrorists will undoubtedly attack Europe, others will go after non Islamic nations like China and India and many of them will concentrate their efforts against the United States. During the Vietnam War, the only war we had to worry about on the homefront was in our living rooms and in a few violent protests. In the Iraq War, there’s a very good possibility that the carnage we’ve seen on the streets of Baghdad will be repeated on the streets of American towns and cities.
Then there is the future impact of the Iraq Conflict, the Vietnam War was for all its failings a very effective demonstration of American military power. The images of American firepower, military prowess and technological might demonstrated in Vietnam may have horrified the world but they sent a clear picture of American power to the world’s people as even America haters like Jean Paul Sartre acknowledged. Iraq has been nothing but a display of American timidity, incompetence and American weakness to the world. Would be aggressors watching TV footage of Vietnam saw America as a force to be reckoned with, aggressors watching TV footage of Iraq will conclude that America’s military is a bad joke and a force to be ignored. Our enemies will be emboldened by Iraq whatever restraints they have will disappear.
Finally there is the terrible lesson that Iraq is sending to the world, gangsterism and terrorism work. You can achieve your political ends through bombs and murder and get rich in the process. Is that the message we want the thugs of Africa, Latin America, the former Soviet Union and our inner cities and poor rural areas getting? America’s humiliating withdrawal from Vietnam triggered a wave of violent and destructive Communist insurgencies around the globe that killed millions. A humiliating withdrawal from Iraq could lead to Islamic terror attacks that could kill untold numbers many of them on America’s own streets.
So what can we do? My guess would be to end the mass occupation of Iraq which isn’t working but maintain sufficient military forces at a few select places in Iraq to fight the terrorists and contain their threat to Iraq’s borders. That would be a couple of divisions backed up by some airpower not the vast force we have there now. A status quo that will probably have to be maintained for decades, so Iraq is worse than Vietnam in another way, this war will continue far longer perhaps for decades.

Time For A Statewide FasTracks?

There is one thing the Democrats can do to make Colorado a better place to live now that they control the state legislature and the Governor’s mansion: launch a major effort to build a statewide passenger rail and bus network.
It’s obvious that Coloradoans need transportation alternatives to our congested and in many cases crumbling roads and highways and it’s also obvious that our current highway network isn’t meeting the state’s present transportation needs, let alone the throngs we can expect in the future. It’s also obvious that the public supports the idea of rail transport as the success of the poorly designed and deeply flawed FasTracks initiative at the polls in the Denver area in 2004 and the huge crowds checking out RTD’s new Southeast Rail Line prove.
So why not take advantage of this and craft a statewide FasTracks initiative that would create a state wide sales tax to finance the construction of a state passenger rail and bus system? The legislature could easily draw up such a plan, new governor Ritter would sign it and it would be placed before voters.
Such a plan could be vital to Colorado’s future, Coloradoans are living farther and farther from their work and gas prices will probably go up as freeways get more crowded. If nothing is done, many Coloradoans will simply no longer be able to afford single family homes and the Colorado lifestyle because of transportation. Then there is the tourist industry how do we get the huge crowds both of out of state visitors and residents who want to reach recreation in the mountains there? Not to mention all the commuters who now live in those areas. How do we get workers to the ski and mountain communities, which face both a labor shortage and a lack of affordable housing?
What would such a plan entail well here’s my idea, the lynchpin would be a Front Range Commuter rail line. This would run along the Burlington Northern Santa Fe and Union Pacific freight railroad tracks between Pueblo and Greeley or perhaps Cheyenne. New Mexico already has a portion of such a service called the Rail Runner up and running. Using these tracks and some new ones, electric or diesel electric commuter trains would connect the major cities of the Front Range and the airports. For example trains could connect the cities of the Front Range with DIA and Denver with Colorado Springs Airport. The tracks could be built so that RTD’s light rail trains could run on them as well giving Denver a boast. A major part of this would be the construction of a freight rail bypass on the Plains so freight trains wouldn’t have to go through Denver and Colorado Springs and the relocation of the freight rail yards from Denver opening up a lot of land for development in the process. The Rocky Mountain Rail Authority has an excellent plan for this posted on its website. www.rangerexpress.com
There would be bus service to outlying areas both the mountain communities and the eastern plains. Private bus companies no longer serve these areas and people there have no alternative to the car. This can be real hard on poor people in rural areas who have to depend on junky old cars for transportation. Not to mention people who want a rural lifestyle but have to give it up because they have no way of reaching jobs in the city. In the mountains RTD’s bus service could be extended to Park, Clear Creek, Gilpin and perhaps Summit Counties, and Colorado Springs’ bus service could be extended to Teller, Park and Freemont Counties.
The final component would be rail service of some sort into the mountains, either taking advantage of the existing Moffat Tunnel and Arkansas Valley rail lines (which is currently unused) or the construction of a new rail line along the I-70 corridor. Such a rail line could be vital to the ski industry and the mountain communities’ future because of the congestion on I-70, US 24 and US 285. Major expansion of I-70 in particular is probably out of the question because of lack of space. One suggestion a new high speed electric rail line running along the I-70 corridor from Denver to Grand Junction, not the fantasy monorail we were presented with a few years ago but something real using real technology available now.
The Democrats now have a tremendous opportunity to improve Colorado’s quality of life and ensure our state’s economic future. The question is will they take it and working with far sighted Republicans make it a reality or will they squander it and leave a transportation catastrophe for future generations to deal with?

What We can Learn From the Iraq War

There are many lessons that we can learn from the debacle known as the Iraq War unfortunately none of these lessons seem to be seeping through to our leaders in Washington or the self appointed watchdogs in the media.
The first lesson from the Iraq War is that our military with its massive bureaucratic infrastructure, large formations and reliance on high tech firepower may not be capable of fighting the kind of war we are faced with. Our military forces can invade foreign countries and pound their cities to rubble but this doesn’t seem to be very good at battling insurgents, guerrillas and terrorists.
This is basically because our military is set up for what modern military thinkers call Third Generational Warfare that war between nations or rather their governments and we’re faced with Fourth Generational Warfare. Fourth Generation War is war waged by entities other than the state such as terrorist groups, criminal cartels, armed gangs and so on. Our military is very good at Third Generational Warfare that is dismantling enemy governments but not very good at Fourth Generational Warfare fighting armed forces other than states.
Our military’s unpreparedness wasn’t because we weren’t warned about Fourth Generational Warfare, no experts like Col. Bill Lind have been warning us about it for years. Our generals in the Pentagon simply ignored them and kept planning and training for last century’s war.
It’s obvious that we need a different kind of military, a smaller, leaner, meaner fighting force created to wage the dirty little wars. This new generation of soldiers would be armed with a new generation of weaponry designed for the new generation of warfare. This new military would be potent enough to destroy our enemies but small and subtle enough not to enrage local populations with massive armies of occupation.
The second lesson we should learn from the Iraq War is that our leaders seem to be completely ignorant of Islam and the Islamic World. For example, in Iraq the only actually fighting for the Iraqi nation are American troops. That is because the Iraqi nation is an artificial state created by British Imperialists in the 1920s so they could control that region of the Middle East. Before Winston Churchill dreamed it up in 1920, there was no Iraq, old Winston simply drew some lines on a map and gave his new state the name of a Medieval Arab province that hadn’t existed in centuries. The Iraqi people don’t consider themselves Iraqis, they consider themselves Christians, Sunni Muslims, Shiite Muslims or Kurds.
This means there can’t be such a thing as Iraqi democracy because democracy requires popular support and the idea of Iraq has no popular support. Like Communism and colonialism the Iraqi nation is an artificial construct imposed on people who don’t want it. If they vote, they’ll vote against the Iraqi nation and if the Iraqis fight they will fight Americans who try to force an Iraqi state on them.
Our leaders should have been aware of this after all the nature of Iraq’s creation is a well documented historical fact. As is the hostility that a great many Muslims have for the concepts of democracy and nationalism, but they weren’t. Sadly, none of our leaders either on the neoconservative right or the supposedly culturally sensitive politically correct left seems to know much about our enemy in this war, or the region he operates in. If neocons are blinded by grand dreams of Arab democracy the leftists are befuddled by the delusion that Islam is a religion of peace and tolerance, something disproved by the shallowest reading of history.
So will we learn any of these important lessons: that war has changed and our military needs to change with it and that we need to learn the history and culture of Islam anytime is soon. My guess is no we won’t learn until many more Americans come home in body bags and many innocent Americans die in incredibly fierce and destructive terrorist attacks on the US.

Bin Ladin Doesn't Matter Any More

Capturing or killing Osama or Usama Bin Laden the leader of Al Qaeda, architect of the Sept. 11 attacks and would be Caliph of Islam would have little or no impact upon the War on Terror.
Whatever military threat Bin Laden once posed has long since dissipated, Osama has only around a thousand followers and maybe $200,000 according to media reports. Bin Laden’s base in Afghanistan has been destroyed and his army has been dispersed. Nor is Bin Laden very effective as a leader or inspiration, hordes of Islamic men haven’t rallied to his banner, there have been no Islamic revolutions and no major terrorist attacks on the USA since Sept. 11.
The only value Bin Laden has is as a sort of symbol of and spokesman for militant Islam. There are many others who can fulfill that role and some of them maybe more effective than Bin Laden himself. All Bin Laden can do these days is to send tapes to Al Jazeera to promote the cause, there are lots of terrorists who can do that.
The main reason Bin Laden doesn’t matter any more is the nature of the enemy we fight. The enemy we are facing in the War on Terror is a mass movement of Islamic men dedicated to inflicting a popular interpretation of traditional Islam on the world. The Islamic extremists we call terrorists believe that the only legitimate government is one that enforces their interpretation of Islamic law and under their belief system such a government has a holy duty to try and impose that brand of Islamic law on as much of the world as possible as the great Islamic Empires of history did.
These men believe that God has given them a Holy mandate to conquer the world and destroy all they see as unholy in the process. This is not some bigoted nightmare it is what a minority of Moslems, actually believe. The vast majority of Moslems reject this nonsense, as the lack of response to Bin Laden’s idiotic preaching proves, but hundreds of thousands do believe it.
So what is the enemy we are facing in this war? It is a mass movement, a movement that combines modern communications technology such as the internet with an ancient faith that is still potent in our modern world. This is a new kind of mass movement with no leaders, simply messages posted through the media, the fanatic gets an e-mail saying that the boys need help in Iraq and goes.
In the past one needed vast resources to mobilize a mass movement, printing presses, radio stations, TV stations, etc. Today all you need is a computer and an e-mail account or a website. It took Hitler years to build up a mass Nazi movement with traditional organization, today all a fanatic needs to do is attract a little media attention to mobilize hundreds of thousands of fanatics all over the world. Hitler and Stalin needed radio stations to spread their message, all Bin Laden has to do is Fedex or email his latest message to Al Jazeera and CNN. If Bin Laden gets killed, a new fanatic steps up and takes his place. It’s a little thing called Fourth Generation Warfare
If Bin Laden is killed by the US military or captured and executed by Americans he becomes a martyr for the cause. If Bin Laden remains alive and issuing proclamations from his cave, he is nothing but a cowardly loudmouth, a rich old man claiming to fight Jihad from his couch. If he dies of natural causes, Bin Laden is proven as a fraud and nobody will care about him. If Bin Laden dies or gets captured well, every fanatic out there will have free market to claim to speak in his name.
So next time you hear somebody ranting and raving about how we need to capture Bin Laden and hang him at ground zero. Remember this, that will be a meaningless act, the day after Bin Laden dies we’ll have a new terrorist boss to go after, our soldiers will still be dying on the battlefield and we’ll still be in danger of terrorist attack here at home.

It's Time To Critcize the Military

One of the most frustrating aspects of the War on Terror is the refusal of Americans to criticize their military and hold its commanders accountable for their failures.
Our military has displayed all sorts of shortcomings in the present war, many of our commanders especially our top generals are too timid and lack imagination, our forces have done a terrible job of securing Iraq and Afghanistan, untold billions have been spent on high tech warships and planes that will never fire a shot in anger while our infantrymen lack basic equipment such as battle armor, and the Pentagon relies heavily on National Guard and Reserve troops for jobs that should be done by the regular military. Perhaps most damning of all is the fact is that our military had no plans for fighting a ground war against Islamic terrorists in the Middle East even though that was the war we were most likely to fight.
Despite the obvious deficiencies our military is displaying almost no American especially an American politician dares to criticize the Pentagon. No one is trying to hold the generals accountable for their failures and they have failed miserably in Iraq. Our generals should have foreseen the need for body armor and armored vehicles to protect the troops, not to mention new tactics to deal with the insurgents they didn’t. One would think that our massive regular army would be able to fight a second rate colonial war which is what the fight in Iraq is without calling up the reserves or the National Guard but it can’t. One would think our crack army could deal with the situation in Iraq without several hundred thousand soldiers but it can’t.
I haven’t heard a single politician raise these issues and demand the stars of the generals responsible. I haven’t seen a single major journalist or news outlet do an expose of the military’s shortcomings. Only a few professional soldiers and gadflies have pointed out the sorry situation and they have been ignored. The only politician who has even raised the possibility that our military needs serious reform is Donald Rumsfeld and he has been vilified and run out of office for it. Sadly enough, Rumsfeld was crucified for trying to fix the problem others created. The last politician I can remember publicly calling for military reform was Gary Hart and he hasn’t been a real force in twenty years.
It wasn’t always this way, once upon a time, Americans were capable of holding their military and its leaders accountable for their failures. On the eve of World War II, in 1939, President Franklin D. Roosevelt shook up the military, he passed over many experienced older generals and promoted capable aggressive younger leaders like George C. Marshall and Dwight D. Eisenhower to lead the military. FDR knew that the military needed new leadership in the new war it was facing and provided that leadership. After the attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941, the two commanders on the scene, Admiral Kimmel and General Short, were fired and saw their careers ended, Kimmel was even put on trial for his actions. During the Korean War, one of America’s top generals, Douglas McArthur, behaved in an abominable fashion criticizing national policy and the president and deliberately tried to sabotage peace talks to end an senseless war. President Harry Truman disgusted by McArthur’s antics, relieved the old soldier of his command that is he fired him.
Could anybody imagine a president today cleaning house at the Pentagon in the way that FDR did back in 1939, fire commanders seen as incompetent as happened after Pearl Harbor or giving a troublesome general the boot the way Truman did to McArthur? The answer is no, no American President today could make such moves against the military unless we were facing imminent defeat and maybe not then. So what changed? Why are we Americans unable to exercise our right of free speech and criticize one of our society’s basic institutions?
Part of the answer is World War II which led to the “Greatest Generation” mythology and mindless glorification of the military and its members. Another part is the Vietnam War and the guilt it produced. America’s upper classes and a large portion of the middle class avoided service in that conflict and still feel guilty for it. To this we can add the nagging guilt of many peace activists and Vietnam War opponents, the aging leftists who now loose sleep because they spat on returning soldiers. The anti war activists who wonder if they were on the right side in their youth and so on. Since then the guilt has been compounded by nearly two generations of Americans for whom military service has been a choice. In particular on the part of the upper classes who have almost completely opted out of military service and the media types who spent thirty years filling books, television, movies and even comic books with ugly stereotypes of the military.
The military brass is able to use this guilt to deflect all criticism legitimate or not. Most reporters and politicians are afraid to criticize the military because they never wore the uniform. This means the military can do basically whatever it wants and on some level shirk it’s duty. Instead of preparing for the wars they might really fight, (i.e.. the dirty little battles in Third World countries against vicious thugs) the military armed and trained for a replay of World War II (something that is unthinkable in a world of nuclear weapons), the war they dreamed of. Nobody held the generals accountable and now our troops are suffering the consequences on the battlefield, they have lots of high tech weapons that are useless.
This state of affairs is ludicrous it’s comparable to the mayor of a modern city where the police and fire departments are plagued by corruption and incompetence who refuses to reform those organizations because he never served as a cop or a fire fighter. Such a man who undoubtedly loose the next election, but Presidents, Senators and Congressmen who do the same get reelected. In our modern world fighting wars like fighting crime and fires is best left to the professionals and the professionals should be held accountable for their failures. Remember FDR, he never served in the military and even avoided service in World War I, when many men of his class opted to serve in the trenches, yet he was able to fire generals.
So we have to ask ourselves when we will wake up and start holding our generals accountable for their failures? My guess is when we suffer a really humiliating defeat or see a terrorist outrage far greater than September 11. Then maybe we’ll start holding our generals accountable for their shortcomings.
Or maybe we’ll be like the French who put mindless faith in their military and its ability to defend them, until the day that the Nazis marched into Paris. The day after the French government and its incompetent generals had fled the city.

EU Hypocrisy on Death Penalty

The European Union once again proved its hypocrisy again when the EU Presidency held I am ashamed to say by Finland the country of my ancestry, the country my great grand parents came from and a nation I greatly admire condemened the US backed Iraqi High Tribunal for condemning Saddam an evil and vicious thug to the fate he so richly deserves to hang to death.
"The EU opposes capital punishment in all cases and under all circumstances, and it should not be carried out in this case either," the EU Presidency held by Finald told the international press.
Ignorant American intellectuals might think this arrogant and self righteous statement represents European opionion. It doesn't. Public opinion in most European country indicates that most Europeans have no problem with the death penalty and a great many of them support the concept. The only group in Europe that opposes capital punishment is a small intellectual elite that unfortunately controls the EU's institutions. In nations such as Poland, polls indicate that most citizens support capital punishment.
Instead of accepting such insults from Europe's intellectuals the US should simply demand one thing of the European Union: a Europe wide referendum on the death penalty. Not a survey of newspaper editorials but a real vote. The intellectual bureaucrats who run the EU would oppose this because they know what the result be.
The average people of Europe would vote in support of the death penalty they would see nothing wrong with it and vote for it. The street car driver in Dresden, the factory worker in the English Midlands, the dealer at Monte Carlo, they'd all say gee why should our tax money be wasted to keep murderers and terrorists alive. The rebuke to Europe's self proclaimed leaders would be tremendous average people don't believe in the Euro elite's values.
The Euro elite would rather stick by it's values than trust in democracy, they'd rather condemn America and its allies than trust in the good judgement of average Europeans. These fools would rather go down with the ship than try to understand its crew. They'll be screaming about European values while the average citizen is voting for some Moslem Iman who says elect me and my party and the day after we get elected you'll see a hundred criminals hanging from the scaffold outside the parliament building. If we see the Islamic Law party elected in Germany or the Netherlands on the hang the gang members ticket it'll be voted in by elderly Germans or Dutch who are sick and tired of being mugged outside their apartment buildings.
The European Union then doesn't represent Europe it represents a small class of intellectuals. Americans should ignore this structure of hypocrisy and pray it goes down in flames and gets replaced by somethign that represents Europe's people rather than the arrogant fools who populate the cafes of Brussels of Paris. We should also pray that some generation of young Americans doesn't find itself drafted into a war to defend the Euro elite from the lynch mobs of angry citizens determined to put an end to their leaders' hypocrisy.
America's leaders should call Europe on its hypocrisy, we should demand that every policy of the European Union should be put the popular vote in everu European country. Nothing would kill United Europe and its poisonous influence in our world fast enough.