Waging War: Confused aims upi.com
[ This would count as a bloviating punditry, which I don't much hold with, but this particular pundit has interesting associations:
William S. Lind is Director of the Center for Cultural Conservatism at the Free Congress Foundation.
Free Congrees Foundation ( see freecongress.org ) is apparently Paul Weyrich's operation, and is also heavily into "cultural conservatism", as one might gather from the Weyrich association and Lind's title. According to article, Lind is apparently not nearly as convinced as the local self-proclaimed "moral majority" by W's war marketing plan. Excerpts: ]
But how does the coming war with Iraq look at the moral level? Here, the United States seems to be leading with its chin. Why? Because the Bush administration has yet to come up with a convincing rationale for why the United States should attack Iraq. . . .
Most importantly, the real threat the United States and the American people now face is non-state players such as al Qaida, Hamas, Hezbollah and the like who have been grimly effective pioneers of non-state and extra-state forms of conflict that I and other military analysts have termed Fourth Generation warfare. They can only benefit from a U.S. war waged against Iraq -- regardless of how it turns out.
If we win, the institution of the state is further discredited in the Islamic world, and more young men will give their allegiance to non-state forces that the U.S. military with its current configuration and extremely weak human intelligence assets will find exceptionally hard to defend against. And if Saddam wins, their own governments will look even less legitimate, because they failed to stand with him against the hated American neo-Crusaders. A recent cartoon showed Osama bin Laden, dressed as Uncle Sam, saying, "I want you to invade Iraq!" Undoubtedly, he does.
So what is the real reason for this war? Oil? Revenge for Saddam surviving the first Gulf War? Israel? The ordinary Americans I know are wondering, because the reasons stated by the administration just don't add up.
Military theory says that, in a democracy, a government cannot successfully wage war unless the war has popular support. In turn, a war cannot obtain popular support if the people do no understand why it is being fought. Today, the people, at home as well as overseas, do not understand why America wants to go to war with Iraq. That is an ominous though so-far disregarded omen for President George W, Bush and his senior advisers. It means they are losing this war before the first bomb is dropped. |
