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Politics : Foreign Affairs Discussion Group -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Hawkmoon who wrote (27641)	4/28/2002 10:23:35 PM
From: Hawkmoon	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 281500

If y'all hurry, you can catch a fascinating show on how MacArthur transformed Imperial Japan to democracy... On History Channel.. (History Undercover) It will probably be reshown later this evening... What is most striking was the deal that he struck with Hirohito demanding he enthusiastically support the US reforms (versus facing war crimes procedings)... Hawk

To: Hawkmoon who wrote (27641)	4/29/2002 12:53:29 AM
From: Bilow	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 281500

Hi Hawkmoon; Re: "Sure.. every member of the military has a connection to a "non-combatant" family.. How else were we able to justify area bombing of German, Japanese cities during WWII as well as N. Vietnamese cities during Vietnam. But you know something... The Vietnamese were dying "literally" to flee that nation for the US, even after we killed their sons and daughters, both on the battlefield and in our bombing raids. And the US, Germany, and Japan, have very friendly relations (despite our intermittent "spats")." I never ever ever argued that bombing the crap out of Iraq would make them hate us forever. In fact, I just linked in an article indicating that their students still don't hate Americans personally, just our government for bombing their country. But as far as your using the Vietnamese as an example of why a bombing campaign against Iraq would succeed in toppling the government, I am unaware of any such change in government. With Germany, we marched into the country without an invitation, and at great losses to all. Japan surrendered peacefully, but only after we nuked it twice, and agreed to leave their emperor in a sort of figurehead power. Neither Germany nor Japan is an indication that it is possible to make a country roll over and surrender by even surgical bombing. As I've repeated ad nauseam on this thread, in order to make a nation roll over you have to kill a substantial percentage of their citizens. With Germany and Japan the figures were around 10 and 5%, if I recall correctly. This is not an option with Iraq. If we start precision bombing in Iraq the soldiers will quickly do stuff that will make it impossible for us to spot them. To take them out will require troops on the ground. If it were a matter of national survival, we could provide those troops. It isn't so we have to rely on a significant ally. But we have none. This is in sharp contrast to the situation in Gulf War 1. Our slaughter of the Iraqi military was due to their attempt to retreat across open desert in the face of our air superiority. Their forces were stretched out a long distance away from their source of supply. We interdicted the supply lines in classic military fashion. In a siege of Baghdad, none of these advantages would accrue to us. That's what a "military thinker, considered one of the Pentagon's best brains" said: "The risk of going through with this scares the crap out of me. That's why a lot of us are rooting for Colin Powell to settle this somehow." suntimes.com It's not a matter of the military and the diplomatic corps in Bush's administration being at odds over this. The diplomatic corps is united against it, until we can stack up the allies, and the military is divided. From the same article: The secretary of state's preference for negotiated settlements instead of war upsets the Bush administration's hard-liners, but he has a following of Pentagon officials looking for an antidote to Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz. None of these worried warriors is soft on Saddam. They see a war against Iraq as a very complicated military operation for American forces acting on their own, without benefit of allies. Most alarming is a possible chain reaction, a fear shared by thoughtful members of Congress. The worst-case scenario would trigger a Middle East war, with the Arab world aligned against a nuclear-armed Israel. ... Just as the Vietnam syndrome supposed bloody defeat for any U.S. intervention, the Kosovo syndrome assumes continuing bloodless victories. The latter is not the prevailing view at the Pentagon. Re: "A regime change in Iraq will send a powerful message to Saudi Arabia that the US will not be held hostage to the oil weapon, nor to their support of radical Islamists." I am not debating whether or not a regime change in Baghdad would be a good thing for the United States. Any reasonable person would think that almost any regime change there would be an improvement for us. What I'm saying is that we are not going to change the Baghdad regime through military force any time soon. The basic problem is that the Palestinian / Israeli problem has to be solved 6 or 12 months before we can deal with Iraq. Since the Palestinian / Israeli problem cannot be solved, that means that we will have the green light to invade Iraq 6 to 12 months after never. By that I mean that we are not going to invade Iraq in the foreseeable future (i.e. next 5 years). The article indicates further: "One European military expert who recently visited Washington could not envision a solution until he was told by U.S. sources that airborne troops would seize the Iraqi oil fields, with the resulting loss of revenue triggering a popular revolt. But any scenario requires the solution of political puzzles, bringing in the Kurds and neighboring Turkey." The problem with this theory is that there are zero historical examples of economic difficulties causing a popular revolt against a dictatorship. (By contrast, there are plenty of historical examples of economic difficulties causing revolt against or electoral loss to a ruling party in a Democracy.) By the end of WW2, the Japanese were starving and the Germans were eating newspaper, but no revolt. While it it true that at the end of WW1, the Germans were starving, and were approaching revolt, there was no actual revolt. In the Civil War, the Confederacy was in total economic chaos but not the slightest hint of a revolt. During WW1 and WW2, the British and Russians were brought to economic ruin, no revolt. During the Franco Prussian war, the French were brought to economic collapse, but they only had hints of a revolt, and that only in Paris. During the Napoleonic Wars, the British pound was destroyed and the French economy destroyed, but no revolts. During the War of 1812, the US economy was destroyed and the "Presidential Palace" was burned (later painted white), but no revolt. The US colonies during the revolution were economically destroyed, no revolt. Jesus wept! I could sit here and type in hundreds or thousands of examples of economic devastation that did not result in a revolt against the government during war time. I can think of almost no examples of this tactic succeeding. Why the Hell would anyone hope that it was going to work in this instance? The undeniable fact is that dictators use war, which always has economic privations, as an excuse to strengthen the public's allegiance to their regimes. It is human nature to love dictatorships during wartime. Why in Hell would anyone think differently? Please explain. Or at least dredge up some counterexamples. Economic war does not unseat dictators and never has. They have to be crushed militarily in detail. Some of the military in the Bush administration recognize that this means house to house fighting in Baghdad. (And even then, who knows? Losing Moscow didn't exactly stop the Russians against Napoleon.) -- Carl