I remember saying once, a long time ago, that once American troops finish attacking and become an occupation force, they will be very vulnerable to terrorist attacks. I also remember saying that the attackers don't have to drive the Americans out. They have to do two things: keep the security situation bad enough to prevent reconstruction work, which needs extensive involvement from civilian contractors, from proceeding, and force the US troops into aggressive and generic responses. Right now, I'd say they are succeeding. Reconstruction is clearly lagging. One TV picture of a bunch of huge American soldiers slamming one Iraqi to the ground does us more harm than a hundred RPG rounds, and the sweep-searches are just what the terrorists want us to do. I see pictures of Americans apparently firing at crowds on Brit TV; I know they aren't the whole story, but a lot of the people watching won't make that distinction. If we let ourselves get forced into that kind of thing, we are going to lose this. I wish we could get some presence from some other nationality in there to divert some of the heat, but we've burned a lot of those bridges.
If things continue as they are, I see popular support for the US in Iraq, which I think is still pretty high, eroding. That's not good; it means that all the enemy has to do is keep doing what he's doing. We are the ones that need to adapt, and if we don't we could lose control of this.
We haven't, yet. But we could.
The scenario that scares me is the possibility of a kid getting killed, or something like that, then you get 10,000 pissed off people at the funeral, contact with US troops, then something gets provoked and a bunch of people get killed. Our enemies will try to make this happen; it's a tactic they know well, and they will be more than happy to sacrifice their own people, if they can get us to shoot them in public. Our people have to resist provocation in any public situation, at all costs, and that is damned hard to do when your opponent has the initiative and wants to provoke. If we let ourselves get baited into behaving like the Israelis, we are in deep shit.
We'll see. |
