If we just would have killed more Iraqis faster we could have won this war

[NNN0LHI]

http://www.alternet.org/waroniraq/36032/

Groundhog Day in Iraq

By Joshua Holland, AlterNet. Posted May 15, 2006.


America's foreign policy elite seems incapable of understanding the limited uses of hard power. Until they do, we'll continue to get into wars like Iraq -- over and over again.

As the architects of the Iraq war cast about for someone to blame for their debacle, they've turned their sights inward -- to the U.S. public. A lack of fortitude among the American people is to blame; only the folks back home can defeat our awe-inspiring military.

Others, despairing of the Bush administration's "soft approach" to the Iraq insurgency -- and casting hungry eyes toward Tehran -- have adopted a feverish, almost genocidal view of the war. If only we had the stomach to bring more firepower to bear on the Iraqi people, they say, "victory" would be assured.

In both formulations, the media is ultimately at fault for poisoning Americans' view of the war and sapping our national strength. But the war's advocates have no one to blame but themselves; we are in Iraq because of their delusion that raw military power can solve even the most complex transnational issues. They're incapable of grasping the importance of real moral legitimacy in modern warfare. Without that legitimacy, even the most powerful military in the world is likely to get dragged into a quagmire and, when it does, the public's weariness is entirely predictable. File it away as another error in post-war planning.

Many military thinkers -- people like Colin Powell and Anthony Zinni -- learned the hard way, in Vietnam, how important it is to be right as well as strong. They appreciate hard power but also understand that wars of choice or ideological preference won't cut it unless they're over very quickly. Recent history is full of grim examples of the most powerful states launching wars with thin justification, only to find themselves bogged down by militarily weak resistance groups.



That is what the idiots said about Vietnam too. After killing a couple of million Vietnamese.

[sweetheart]

1. The brutality of the peace

Its seen as a cost worth paying when history has shown worse costs paid
when evil nutters are not checked. Buy that context, within a country,
the ability of its poeple to check genocidal elites.

In the school of total war, there is no analog sense of proportionality.
Had bush 1 fired a nuke west of bagdhad as a warning shot in jan 91, to saddam of
any consequences but a total withdrawl, i doubt he would have called
the bluff, and a total war strategy has merit. It could have, with
indeed minimized loss of life, averted what has turned out to be much worse
loss of life.

A war of mammon and its machines against the living creatures of the earth,
once you unleash a cold warrior nuclear strategist from the bunker, there
are no limits to the use of force. It is part of the armed forces mission
to win, not necessarily to "fight". They sacked bagdhad, the fastest invasion
of a capital city, ever in history by an armed force... making new marks in
blitzkrieg... but nukes would have been faster even. 6 liftings of a guillotine
blade if precise the strike could really have been had they used justice.