'You may be right about quags.' - i've never thought nor typed that a quagmire in Iraq is inevitable ... it's just that i find it easy to imagine the psychology of resistance to foreign occupation, the way the situation will stimulate a nationalism that gets focussed on the occupier, to the degree that it can trump any other factor involved ... there are many examples of this, VN is one, Nicaragua is another ... i had a certain amount of contact with refugees from the latter, most did not and had never supported Ortega Saavedra, in fact they were quite opposed to his policies, yet they took his side against Reagan and his thugs, not only because the latter were the ones making war on them, but because they represented outsiders who had no business interfering
To win a war you must capture hearts and minds .... you cannot do this today using the time honoured method of catching them by the balls, a/k/a killing ten per cent or more of the population and ruling the rest with an iron fist, using secret police with a network of local collaborators, firing squads for dissidents, etc ..... simply not acceptable any more, eventually even the US public would rise against it
So you are left with sweet talk as a tool with which to impose your form of 'logic' on the folks .... largely anyway, of course you can always paint some degree of police state rule as crime-fighting, by calling the resistance Evil Supporters Of The Evil Saddam yada yada, as we see happening now ..... but you won't get away with it for long, if/when it becomes apparent that patriots are fighting both you and saddamism, in a struggle to free their country from both evils ..... sweet talk and her shady sister propaganda, that's pretty much what you're left with
Sweet talk would be a lot more effective coming from two dozens democracies, than from one megapower from across the sea ..... especially if that coalition had a comprehensive working plan for reconstruction of the country, following invasion .... if an invasion of that US tank-rolling shoot-em-up style had been necessary, which i think it might well not have been with a genuine coalition .... but anyway, here and now you have neither - you have no coalition, you have no adequate plan for rebuilding .... so it is going to be an uphill battle for those hearts and minds
One of the ways Iraq is unlike Viet Nam, is it's not an ancient country that has been fairly unified in fighting off invaders for two millennia .... it was just patched together a few years ago, using arbitrary lines that ignored ethnicity, and there are three sizable groups, the kurds sunnis and shi'ites .... so there is perhaps the opportunity to divide and conquer, of capturing hearts and minds of one or even possibly two factions, then having them wipe out the third .... guaranteed this gets noticed eventually by the wide world, though
But no, i don't believe a quagmire is absolutely inevitable, it's just the most likely scenario .... i imagine my own reaction, were my country to be invaded ... and no matter what Fine Words Of Liberty the occupiers used in their sweet talk, it wouldn't matter, they are invaders, punto ..... imagine your own reaction, were the roles reversed here, and it was the iraquis with tanks parked on your streets, pointing guns at your neighbours |
