Hi epsteinbd; Re: "Dear Billow: if you want me to admit that the USUK is losing the war in Irak, please explain how come your people hold about as many Iraki generals prisoners as they hold your soldiers."
I don't want you to admit anything.
Re: "Re Occupation after war: you claim that the US isn't good at it. Look at Germany, Italy, Japan."
We killed substantial percentages of the population in Germany and Japan. Italy actually fought on our side late in the war, and was a traditional ally of the US (in WW1). The problem is that we can't kill substantial percentages of the population in Iraq any more than we were able to kill substantial percentages of the population in Vietnam.
Re: "The Japanese loved their emporor 100 times more than the Irakis love Saddam."
This is fascinating. I've never seen any studies that gave a numerical ratio for this. Do tell more.
Re: "They sacrificed their lives for victory in a way and numbers (crash landing included) that Iraki won't even nightmare on."
The Iraqis are maybe about as mean as the Palestinians. The Israelis haven't pacified the Palestinians in 50 years. We won't pacify the Iraqis in 100 years.
Hey, if you sent my father's generation over to Iraq they might be able to pacify the place, but again, only by killing 5% of the population.
Our inability to kill large percentages of enemy populations is due to the advances in weapons design. Back when the state of the art was night fire bombing of residential districts, it was possible to kill large numbers. We can't do it now. All we can do is destroy obvious targets, which are therefore empty.
Back in WW1, it was possible to kill large numbers of soldiers by grinding them up at a stationary war front. But the Iraqis do not have a sufficiently strong military to create a front that would last the years required.
Instead, we'll be in Baghdad in days, if not weeks. And faced with a sullen, unbeaten, unbowed population that will shoot the shit out of us, just like Vietnam.
I'm sorry to have to use the Vietnam metaphor repeatedly, but in this venue I am debating with people who are illiterate. Their understanding of history does not include stuff like the Franco-prussian war. But the facts of military occupations are 5000 years old. To make an occupation peaceful, you have to kill a lot of people, either in the war before the occupation starts, or during the occupation. It is sometimes possible for an occupation by a completely superior enemy to be peaceful, (i.e. Germany on top of Denmark), but even that only works out if the occupying power treats the locals kindly. And it never is peaceful if the locals begin it by putting up "civilian" resistance.
Look, I've been hoping that this would not come to this. But the news is clear, the Iraqis are voting with their guns.
-- Carl |
