[Grovenet] This just makes me ill

[Ron D'Eau Claire]

Yes, where the analogy to WWII breaks down is that we are not interested,
much less committed, to winning this war militarily. And it's probably good
that we aren't. Alone, we'd end up at war with a huge chunk of the world. 

To win militarily we have to do what we did in Japan and Germany: ruthlessly
crush any resistance, no matter how slight, no matter how many innocents
die. Only when all resistance subsides for sheer lack of resources and
manpower can the survivors be molded into a new society. That's exactly what
we did in both Japan and Germany. 

It's how Saddam managed Iraq until we invaded. Of course he had allies among
his selected people in Iraq. That's why armies of occupation have to be so
huge - often in the millions. There's no one they can trust for many years
after the invasion. 

Eventually the occupied begin to look at the occupiers as part of the
"landscape" and the occupiers, with experience, start to look more like
locals. It's been that way with occupations at least since Alexander the
Great encouraged his armies of occupation to marry into the local families. 

But we were not committed to any such action in Iraq. We never took on the
posture of a victor.

I won't even try to guess what the President was thinking. 

Whatever it was, it was crazy.

Ron D'Eau Claire 



-----Original Message-----
From: grovenet-bounces at rdrop.com [mailto:grovenet-bounces at rdrop.com] On
Behalf Of David Morelli
Sent: Monday, September 10, 2007 9:31 PM
To: Forest Grove local interests list
Subject: Re: [Grovenet] This just makes me ill



On Sep 9, 2007, at 8:21 PM, Ron D'Eau Claire wrote:

>  But is it the disagreement among "experts" or the fact you don't
> trust the President to make the choices that are best for the USA  
> in the long term that makes you ill?

The President is charged with the security of the United States in  
his role as Commander in Chief.

Your posting of the BBC poll of Iraq residents had many interesting  
points.

100% of all Iraqi residents questioned agreed that attacks on Iraqi  
civilians is not acceptable, and  97% find recruitment of foreign  
fighters to come to Iraq is not acceptable.  That is not surprising.

In 2004 17% of the people interviewed thought that attacks on  
Coalition forces was acceptable.
Now, 57% find it acceptable, and that increases to 92% of the Sunni  
arabs questioned who believe that al Qaeda attacks on U.S. and  
coalition forces are acceptable.

So, what does that say about the improvement of American security in  
the region?  What does that say about the effect of American  
intervention in Iraq?

David
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