(AFP/Pool/File/Eugene Hoshiko) |
I've been thinking about this for sometime. The Pentagon, I think, is attempting to do the same thing in Iraq and around the world with the troops that it has always done in dealing with the current terrorist problem. In other words, it does things that don't work and continues to do them with the same results.
Secretary of Defense, Donald Rumsfeld, surrounds himself with an entire legion of "yes" men and noncreative drones. By any measuring stick I know, his policies are a big gigantic capital "F," a failure.
Rumsfeld loves to talk about transforming the American military. I think not. I don't hear anything that makes me think that we are not heading in the wrong direction as far as our military is concerned.
In a TV Frontline special, the Secretary of Defense, is portrayed as someone who is determined to put his stamp of approval and change on the Pentagon. From any objective point of view, thus far, his policies have absolutely been a bust. Examples are legion with Iraq as exhibit number one. We went in with an inadequate number of troops and are now mired down in a Vietnam type quagmire.
With sufficient troops we could have secured the country and closed the borders. The people would have felt safe and we could have left Iraq. As it is, we have provided a training ground for true terrorists and are bogged down in a war that we can not win with conventional soldiers. What is required is nonconventional thinking and that appears to be in short supply at least at the Pentagon.
Methods That Worked In The Past
Do Not Work Now.The concept is what the military calls, the cordon and talk. The basic premise is to become friends with the locals; they will tell you where the bad guys are. It only works on the TV show, Over There. Soldiers surround a town, get out of their armored vehicles, point their M-16 to the ground, hand out a few toys, and play soccer with Iraqi children. They do all this, if they don't get blown up first.
The cordon and talk, in my opinion, is useless. The insurgents leave or just melt into the populace.The people aren't going to talk; They are either too scared or benignly complicit with the enemy. Our soldiers leave and back come the insurgents. We had entire programs in Vietnam to pacify the Vietnamese. The thinking: we go into a ville, make their lives better; then, they'll join us or at least not support the VC. Forget it. In Iraq, we're doing the same thing with the same outcome.
Top To Bottom Studies
We do these studies and they are built on the idea of the same old stuff: deploy heavy brigades, costing an enormous amount of money( in the billions) that still can't eliminate the untrained and less than sophisticated insurgents. We can't kill them fast enough, even if we could. New insurgents constantly take the place of those killed or arrested. The bad guys fight with a different set of rules. They kill innocent civilians, and will cut anyone's head off and then put them on public display or on a video to be played on TV. Their pool of recruits is seemingly endless; Young men willing to kill Americans are everywhere. Often, they get $150 for firing a mortar and as much as $20,000 can go to their families for blowing themselves up. Who are these people? Where is
Jack Bauer(from TV Show: 24) when we need him?
This Is All New Territory
We Better Get Use To It. It is the Future.
We have never dealt with what we are facing in Iraq or any Muslim country. I have no doubt that the vast majority of Muslims, relatively speaking, condemn terrorism. And, by most accounts, 1 percent of Muslims worldwide may fit in the fanatics category. Great! Unless of course, you are sitting beside one on the subway. There's an estimated 3000 muggings in New York City a week -not many some might say, unless you are one of the 3000-and that in a city of 9 to 11 million. I read in the Washington Times that of the 1.2 billion Muslims worldwide, 1 percent means 12 million; so, to me it looks like alot of Muslims want to kill Americans. This all sounds pretty esoteric unless you are a GI in Iraq. We can't discount that the GI's are the most effected
at this time by terrorism- a problem which is neverending.
There are those in our country who are idealists and we need them and they don't all reside in Berzerkerly. (Berkeley,California). And, I understand, we need the help of those vast majority of Muslims who not only condemn, but take action to rid the hate filled rhetoric from mosques and honestly try to be more tolerant of us infidels. But, as long as Muslims allow open hatred of those who are not Muslims, we have a problem, Houston.
Since I am not an idealist, I've always believed, since 9-11, we have to protect ourselves as best we can and then go on living. And, part of this protecting ourselves is making sure that we change our philosophy on how to fight and our tactics in doing so.
Our present Army is configured around the cold war and nuclear deterrence. In fact, if you listen to the present Secretary of Defense, one thinks he wants a smaller and more high tech army, which he does, but the tactics remain the same and that is the problem. Terrorism has created an environment which is vastly different from the era of the cold war. We can no longer operate with conventional tactics as we are getting our behinds consistently plastered. Presently, we can not stop the terrorists.
Our present military is reactive. We go out with conventional soldiers, on patrol-the old Vietnam, search and destroy missions-and it is like pissing in the wind. The insurgents fade back into the woodwork, not unlike the "VC" in Vietnam. The vast difference in Iraq and Vietnam, however, is that the present insurgency will kill their own people with no reservation. The VC would not have done that in Vietnam. We are dealing with a vicious enemy in Iraq that we are no match for in terms of psyche.
We have to have a force that can meet the insurgents on their own terms. And, from what I see, we have no plans for this sort of warfare. We are facing fanatics and they are not going to sit down and reason. They blow themselves up and their own people; They see themselves as martyrs who are going to some elusive paradise with virgins galore. How do you combat such fanaticism? Well, we have to be innovative and creative, that is how we do it.
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