Larry Johnson:On the Road to Strategic Defeat in Iraq

[cal04]

Hey, let's buy Tony Snow a copy of Carl von Clausewitz's classic, ON WAR, and help him understand the difference between "strategy" and "tactics". Tony's tap dancing today during the White House press briefing revealed a shallow political hack swimming in deep waters. When asked, "are we winning", poor Tony could not come up with a definition of victory. In fact, he responded rhetorically, "what is victory". According to Clausewitz:

tactics teaches the use of armed forces in the engagement; strategy, the use of engagements for the object of the war

What is our objective in Iraq? Eliminating weapons of mass destruction? Promoting democracy? "Fighting them (the terrorists) there so we don't have to fight them here?" These are not mutually compatible objectives. It is the lack of a clear answer that accounts for our nation's inability to define victory in Iraq. Bush, Cheney, and Rummy need to figure out what in the hell we are trying to do. Once that is clearly defined then we will be in a position to devise tactics that will complement the strategic objective.


All of this comes against the backdrop of the latest sign that the U.S. backed government is feckless and feeble.

(snip)
At this point, the U.S. objectives should be to re-establish our image as "liberators (rather than occupiers) and avoid inflicting anymore pain, death, and humiliation on the Iraqi people. If we continue to be perceived as the agent of death in Iraq, we are sowing seeds for a generation of terrorism and revenge that will haunt our grandchildren. That is a strategy that will guarantee defeat.

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http://www.tpmcafe.com/blog/coffeehouse/2006/oct/20/on_the_road_to_strategic_defeat_in_iraq

[Gabi Hayes]

1. He needs WH Press credentials

fricking pansy WH Press CorpsE won't EVER challenge Bush and his snowjobber

KR

[Tom Joad]

2. US military defeat in Iraq would be a win for the future of the planet.

as it would inhibit future US military aggression.

The US should leave Iraq. Now.

[Gabi Hayes]

3. we should, but WHENEVER we do, all hell will break loose.

tomorrow, ten years from now, twenty years from now, thirty years from now.

we are so FFFFFed!

what's going to happen when troops are removed from the Balkans?

Pandora's box looks like that box o choclits from that movie with Tom Hanks

[Tom Joad]

5. hell broke loose when the US invaded, and has increased

every day since the beginning of the illegal occupation.

[DoYouEverWonder]

4. The objective is to control Iraqi oil

no matter what.

It doesn't matter to them how many lives are lost in the process. Heck they killed almost 3000 Americans on 9-11 and they hardly blinked.

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

6. "..our image as liberators". That image disappeared in 1945.

Since then about the only thing we've "liberated" is the resources of the 3rd world. Alas, the occupants are past weary of supporting us and are resisting more bloody "liberation".

[Tom Joad]

7. Listen to mark twain, this problem goes way back, ....

From Mark Twain:
I left these shores, at Vancouver, a red-hot imperialist. I wanted the American eagle to go screaming into the Pacific. It seemed tiresome and tame for it to content itself with the Rockies. Why not spread its wings over the Philippines, I asked myself? And I thought it would be a real good thing to do.

I said to myself, here are a people who have suffered for three centuries. We can make them as free as ourselves, give them a government and country of their own, put a miniature of the American constitution afloat in the Pacific, start a brand new republic to take its place among the free nations of the world. It seemed to me a great task to which we had addressed ourselves.

But I have thought some more, since then, and I have read carefully the treaty of Paris, and I have seen that we do not intend to free, but to subjugate the people of the Philippines. We have gone there to conquer, not to redeem.

Later Mark Twain signed a statement that read in part:

" steps be taken at once to stop … the killing of prisoners, the
shooting without trial of suspected persons, the use of torture, … the
wanton destruction of private property, and everywhere the barbarous
methods of waging war, which this nation from its infancy has ever
condemned.”