[lit-ideas] Re: Iraq and news

Had we overpowered them (shock and awe, remember?), the insurgency couldn't 
have happened; infrastructure would have beeen spared;  the Museum woudn't have 
been raided; reconstruction efforts wouldn't have been sabotaged; and on and 
on.  Certainly Fallujah wouldn't have happened.  Far more life would have been 
spared, and we would have done much more to impress the Arabs as to our might 
and ability.  Like giving an antibiotic, you don't dribble it in and when the 
infection becomes runaway in all body parts, start the intravenous.  As it 
turns out, we impressed no one except with our bumbling.

The elections have apparently gone well even if, remembering the euphoria after 
the fall of Baghdad, it is premature to predict much.  If nothing else, they 
secured the country for the first time since the invasion.  Better late than 
never.  It's not extremely surprising the turnout was high given Sistani's 
fatwa that everyone must vote.  Even if a secular government ultimately takes 
over, Iran could have done worse.  Their enemy Iraq and the atheist Baathists 
are now neutralized.  Still, at least for now it could be worse.  It will be 
interesting to watch it unfold.

I'm still wondering about Rationale #3 or 4 or whatever number it is for why we 
invaded; after Iraq is on its feet and running, what happens to the war that we 
took over there to keep us safe?  Where's it going to go?  And how does someone 
with a conscience use that rationale to invade a country?  


Andy Amago





-----Original Message-----
From: JimKandJulieB@xxxxxxx
Sent: Jan 29, 2005 11:47 PM
To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [lit-ideas] Re: Iraq and news

Gee....imagine how many Iraqis we could have killed if Mark had been in  
charge!!  (Please tell me this is *not* the same Mark Helprin as the  novelist 
who 
wrote "A Winter's Tale".)
 
Julie Krueger
========Original  Message========     Subj: [lit-ideas] Re: Iraq and news  
Date: 1/29/05 10:43:40 P.M. Central Standard Time  From: 
_eyost1132@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx (mailto:eyost1132@xxxxxxxxxxxxx)   To: 
_lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx (m
ailto:lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx)   Sent on:    
Here's something to pop everybody's gusset: Mark  Helprin, writing in 
2003, arguing that the proper strategy against Iraq was  to have gotten 
VERY VERY VERY ANGRY instead of just a little bit  annoyed.

The path of excess leads to the palace  of...Saddam?

_____

The unprecedented military and economic  potential of even the United 
States alone, thus far so imperfectly utilized,  is the appropriate 
instrument. Adjusting military spending to the level of  the peacetime 
years of the past half-century would raise outlays from  approximately 
$370 billion to approximately $650 billion.

If the  United States had the will, it could, excessively, field 20 
million men,  build 200 aircraft carriers, or almost instantly turn every 
Arab capital  into molten glass, and the Arabs know this. No matter what 
the advances in  regional power, the position of the Arab Middle East 
relative to that of the  United States is no less disadvantageous than 
was that of the Arab Middle  East to the 19th-century European powers. 
But, given the changes listed in  the previous paragraph, the signal 
strength necessary to convey an effective  message is now far greater.

In the Gulf War, the overwhelming forces  marshaled by the coalition 
might have sufficed as such a signal but for the  fact that they were 
halted prematurely and withdrawn precipitously,  gratuitously leaving 
both Saudi Arabia and Iraq an inexplicable freedom of  action that 
probably left them stunned by their good luck.

Before the  Iraq War, high officials were seriously considering an 
invasion force of 500  backed by air power. The numbers climbed steadily: 
5,000, 10,000, 20,000,  25,000, 40,000, 50,000, 60,000, and so on, with 
the supposedly retrograde  "heavy army" prevailing finally, and 300,000 
troops in the theater. When  offered vehement advice to go into Iraq with 
massive force and many times  overkill, a brilliant and responsible 
senior official responded, almost with  incredulity, "Why would we need 
the force that you recommend, when in the  Gulf War we used only 10 
percent of what we had?" In the Gulf War, we did  not occupy a country of 
23 million.

As of this writing, the army  reportedly has 23 combat brigades, 18 of 
which are deployed in Iraq and  Afghanistan, three of which are in refit, 
one in Kosovo, and two in Korea,  leaving nine brigades, or about 45,000 
men, to pick up the slack anywhere  and everywhere else. Though 
independent echelons and the Marines increase  this figure many fold, 
they do not have sufficient lift and logistics, and  even if they did it 
would not be enough. This is as much the result of the  Bush 
Administration's failure to increase defense spending appreciably and  
rebuild the military before (and even after) September 11, as the lack  
of real shock and awe was the result of the administration's desire to  
go to war according to a sort of just-in-time-inventory  paradigm.

Managers rather than strategists, they did not understand the  essence of 
their task, which was not merely to win in Iraq but to stun the  Arab 
World. Although it is possible, with just enough force, to win, it is  
not possible, with just enough force, to stun. The war in Iraq should  
have been an expedition originating in the secure base of Saudi Arabia,  
from the safety of which the United States could with immense, husbanded  
force easily reach anywhere in the region. The eastern section of the  
country, far from Mecca and Medina, fronting the sea, with high  
infrastructure and large spaces for maneuver, basing, and an air-tight  
defense, is ideal. Had the Saudis not offered this to us, we might have  
taken it, which probably would have been unnecessary, given that our  
expressed determination would likely have elicited an invitation. As it  
was, we were willing to alienate the entire world so as to thrust  
ourselves into a difficult situation in Iraq, but unwilling to achieve a  
commanding position in Saudi Arabia for fear of alienating the House of  
Saud. One might kindly call this, in that it is about as sensible as  
wearing one's clothes backwards, "strategic hip hop."

It was, in any  case, some kind of deliberate minimalism. Sufficiency was 
the watchword. The  secretary of defense wanted to show that his new 
transformational force  could do the job without recourse to mass. The 
president wanted no more than  sufficiency, because he had not advanced 
and had no plans to advance the  military establishment beyond the levels 
established by his predecessor.  With the magic of transformation, he 
would rebuild it at glacial pace and  little cost lest he imperil his own 
and Republican fortunes by embarking on  a Reagan-style restoration after 
an election decided by as many voters as  would fit in a large Starbucks, 
and that he won by leaning, un-Reagan-like,  to the center.

The war in Iraq was a war of sufficiency when what was  needed was a war 
of surplus, for the proper objective should have been not  merely to 
drive to Baghdad but to engage and impress the imagination of the  Arab 
and Islamic worlds on the scale of the thousand-year war that is to  
them, if not to us, still ongoing. Had the United States delivered a  
coup de main soon after September 11 and, on an appropriate scale, had  
the president asked Congress on the 12th for a declaration of war and  
all he needed to wage war, and had this country risen to the occasion as  
it has done so often, the war on terrorism would now be largely  over.

But the country did not rise to the occasion, and our enemies know  that 
we fought them on the cheap. They know that we did not, would not, and  
will not tolerate the disruption of our normal way of life. They know  
that they did not seize our full attention. They know that we have  
hardly stirred. And as long as they have these things to know, they will  
neither stand down nor shrink back, and, for us, the sorrows that will  
come will be greater than the sorrows that have been.

from  http://www.claremont.org/writings/crb/fall2003/helprin.html


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