There has been a lot of talk and its seems to be growing, about the term Islamo-fascism. If we are truly dealing with a fascistic mentality in Iraq, or even throughout the Middle-East, we are faced with a sobering reality.
We got in too soon.
Put this into historical perspective. Had England or America invaded Germany, Italy, or Japan too soon, it would have been politically unpalitable for them to conquer those countries all together. We would have been left rebuilding a resentful country. Unrepentant because after all, they would have done nothing wrong.
Of the three groups just named the mentality to the Jihadist Islamics most closely resembles the Japanese. And when we finally removed the Japanese from Iwo Jima and Okinawa we had to literally destroy the entire defending army. Of the 22,000 original Japanese combatants on Iwo Jima only 216 were taken prisoner. On Okinawa, 66,000 Japanese soldiers died or were missing with 140,000 civilians killed.
Why were the japanese so willing to fight to the death for their political agenda?
Beliefs and homeland.
For most Japanese, the emperor was decended from the Gods. They fought for the Gods. Then, as the invaders came closer to the homeland, they fought mainly to make them pay a higher price to stop the invaders from ever invading the mainland.
Applying this to what we face in Iraq is not a straight comparison. There are many middle eastern countries. There are even multiple religions in the middle east. It is simply the concept of the radicalized middle east that is the most sobering. Iraq hadn't committed enough attrocities for us to step in and catagorically convince the world and most importantantly the Iraqis and Iraq's neighbors, that the attrocities had to be stopped.
But at the base the comparison is stark. We are attacking their beliefs and we are in their homeland.
What has the reaction become? We are the perceived oppressors. The perceived enemy. This is a battle that must be won philosophically and there are no weapons I know of that can be used philosophically right now. (I can just see a whole fleet of Jehovah's Witnesses sent over to convert Iraq.)
We need to get out but if we leave now, when it implodes, it will be our fault.
If we stay we remain the focal point.
I think we should turn it over to a Middle Easter coalition of countries with Iraq trying to stick to the constitution we gave them. I realize this is a cut and run stategy; but, put into historical perspective, we're gonna get killed no matter what we do. And unlike Germany or Japan, when we went in this time we didn't level the country after years of prolonged war. The people don't need us to rebuild. They need us to get out and turn it over to them. I think that a middle eastern coalition might soften the blow somewhat.
No easy answer here.
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11 comments:
Wow, you really are fishing for comments from a wider range of people here, aren't you?
Here is a summary of what I think you are trying to say, War should only be fought with a mentality of all or nothing. Compromise and War, has not, can not, and will never work well together! As Mr. Miaggi put it in Karate Kid "in middle, poiqt, squash like grape". Your point is that until a nation is truly ready to swing to the all side, it should stay firmly on the nothing side. This was the fallacy of both Korea and Vietnam. You cannot tell me for an instant that the US cannot win this war if there was the political stomach to go all the way. The other sad reality however is that Satan is winning the hearts of humanity by increasing their tolerance for evil and ever raising the bar as to what people can "live with" in terms of evil in our day.
You claim we got in too soon? Pearl Harbor, roughly 3000 military killed, the country then lost roughly 300,000 soldiers in battle before completion of WWII. 9/11, roughly 3000 civilians killed, currently about 3300 US soldiers killed. Too soon to get in? What more did you want? Why was it enough then but an attack on civilians not enough now? You can argue about location or that we should have responded with more force, but should have waited longer??? The ones that make me the most sick are those that claimed to have the stomach for it then but now don't have the guts to see it through!
Per,
Let's face it the 9/11 response was in Afghanistan. We would have had much more success staying there to rebuild. Instead, we broadened it to a people that, while generally repressed were not ready to support a revolutionary war.
We should have stopped where the will to rebuild and succeed was with us.
We should focus all of our peace keeping efforts on Iraq now. And focus all of our rebuilding efforts on Afghanistan where there is still a chance for a complete recovery.
Phew....where do you start.
Problem is...this is a whole different ball 'o wax. We are not at war with a "country" (like Germany, Japan, Vietnam) we are at war with an *ideology* that is spread over the far reaches of the world. If it was just in the Middle-East it wouldn't be as problematic, but the fact that Islam is radicalizing not only in that region but in every country in the world (some more obvious than others)that makes it extremely difficult to deal with.
I agree with Perry, we could win the war in Iraq (and could have won the war in Vietnam), but the American people (and hence our Government)don't have the resolve to stay the course, as I wrote in my post.
And had Chamberlain not stupidly believed Hitler's promises, things might not have escalated as far as they did, according to Churchill. I think if you wait too long, then it becomes out of control and even more difficult to prevail. And possibly becomes an unwinnable situation. It's like a cancer, nip it in the bud and you have a much greater chance of survival, wait too long and it metastasizes and you die.
I really think the "We should have only gone into Afganistan" arguement is extremely short sighted. When you are fighting a war, you fight it to the end, you don't say, OK, I'm in this but I am only going to fight this group of enimies! To that reasoning we should have only faught the Japanese and never gone to Europe. What did the Germans do to us? And in fact that was exactly our plan, let them duke it out, until Japan interviened and poof, we fight both fronts. Once in, you must fight it to win. Once we decided to take on Islamo-fascism we should have taken it on wherever we found it or it will always come back. That's why almost everyone backed this war initially. (Don't for a minute tell me that the only reason the Dems backed this this is because they were "duped" on the WMD's!) Some people still remember that lesson from our past but far too many politicians have forgotten it. Call me a Hawk, bully, war monger, I don't care, but the one thing I do care about is loosing. It costs too much. And if you loose here, you are kidding yourself if you think this cancer won't metasticize and come back even stronger.
The problem is that we have surged and it is not enough. If we are going to subdue Iraq we need such an overwhelming force on the ground that no one dares attack. Then, that force needs to stay on the ground for more than a month, more than six months.
All the while, we are winning in Iraq and focalizing the radical Islam throughout the rest of the world.
When we won over Germany and Japan, we bombed them into the dark ages. Then, we moved in, reeducated, and rebuilt. With no oppressive reparations required.
So, do we carpet bomb the whole of the middle east?
The Islamic world as a whole has not warrented such treatment. There is no way to win this conflict and remain credible throughout the rest of the world.
Radical Islam is the strongest in Saudi Arabia, Syria, and Iran. Are we headed there?
We would never have joined the war in Germany unless we were attacked at Pearl Harbor, but there was more to it than that. Both Japan and Germany had stated imperial designs AND were acting on it. The only place that radical Islam had really been carrying out their radical designs was in Afghanistan. We cleaned them out in no time. We should have just stayed there.
Too soon? No, but half-heartedly yes with only a marginal plan of action once the Taliban and Saddam were toppled. Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Syria ,all would in an ideal scenario, have been knocked off as well. The Jihaddists have too many allies. Our peace movements or rather Quisling 5th columnists, a petulant media and with few exceptions a largely anti-american Europe are issues that were not encountered to any great degree in the fight against Japan & Germany. What this situation most parallels is the 30's and the league of Nations which couldn't even stand up to Mussolini. For many in the west the battle has already been lost. The western canon, our cultures very foundation, is regarded as not worth defending. We have lost the will to fight because so few of us believe in anything. This is the result of secularization and its attendant moral relativism.
"Israel’s failure in Lebanon and the Soviet Union’s in Afghanistan, the two cases of successful defensive jihad after centuries of Muslim impotence have the same cause: the unwillingness of the stronger power to wage normal war, which let defenders hide among the civilians and strike at leisure. The only way to fight a war is brutally. The choice is not between humaneness and cruelty but between waging war and surrender. Starting a war without being prepared to fight it is a recipe for failure, emboldening jihadi."
Interesting eh? Check out The Last Amazon's blog it is from a post onn her site.
I am politically stupid. It's just not one of the bright areas of my brain. I struggle with concepts like these. But one thing that I can pick out of what you are saying (I think). And it's because it's something that I've considered a bit.
And that's that it doesn't really help anyone to come in and fight their battles for them. Revolution needs to start from within. THe people themselves need to be so fed up, so sick and tired, so desperate that they are willing to sacrifice whatever it takes to make the change. Whenever you have someone else who is stronger come in and "help" it will alwasy undoubtedly backfire because if the people had been ready for a change, they would have done it themselves. If they needed the help, they probably weren't ready.
I agree 100% that you cannot conduct a revolution for someone else and to a degree that has become some of the motivation (providing a democracy in the middle east) of the war but I think that was one of the biggest mistakes of this administration. That was not a stated goal going in, if it was, there would have been far less support then, as there is now. Instead, we went into this war with a stated goal of increasing safety here at home by removing a force that was openly threatening both us and many of our alies around the world and that EVERYONE (and if they say otherwise they are lying) thought had the weapons to back it up. When the weapon's were not found (whole other debate there) I don't think that should have translated into an immediate move out. We had created a vacuum and we need to see this process through to the end or the threat will grow. The blunder that I think worsened the national sentiment is that the administration allowed the "reasoning" behind the war to be altered from security to instilling freedom and democracy. And you are right, you can't make someone want freedom. Just like the Nephites, there are times when a people aren't ready for anything but a king for some reason. That doesn't mean we should push a new dictator on them now though...
How do you fight a revolution from within if you have no access to weapons and have been oppressed for so long that you have no will or ability to fight. Fear is crippling. How do you create a revolution (say in a communist country, like Cuba) where you can't trust your family, let alone your neighbours. Same thing happened in Bosnia, brother turned on brother.
And what about the Nazi problem? Had we gone in sooner, many people would have been saved, same in Bosnia. Still major problems in Darfur.
BCF - I hate to agree, but we should be more brutal. Obviously we should take every reasonable effor to make certain that the brutallity is focused on the insurgent forces, but we do need to be treating this as a war on the ground, not as a police action.
BCF & Incognito - the only way that we would gain moral acceptance to our actions there would have been to allow Saddam to carry out attrocities so grotesque that the world at large would have agreed that action was required.
Perry - I hate to say it but the administration's attempt to add moral legitamacy to the war would have been a smarter move if more people in this country truly valued freedom and democracy. I think they miscalculated just how much we truly value these ideals. Of course their own actions with the patriot act, removing the beloved freedoms we are trying to protect, undermine their own efforts. Not a good combo during war time.
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