Silicon Investor (SI) -- The First Internet Community

STOCKTALK

We've detected that you're using an ad content blocking browser plug-in or feature. Ads provide a critical source of revenue to the continued operation of Silicon Investor. We ask that you disable ad blocking while on Silicon Investor in the best interests of our community. If you are not using an ad blocker but are still receiving this message, make sure your browser's tracking protection is set to the 'standard' level.

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

To: Nadine Carroll who wrote (44088)	9/15/2002 4:18:54 AM
From: Bilow	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 281500

Hi Nadine Carroll; Re: "Yes, the army would melt away, but why would it become a guerilla force? What would these guerillas be fighting for? An end to American occupation? Why, when our stated goal is to establish a more democratic government and then leave? Who thinks we want to occupy Iraq permanently? You think they're going to piss our vastly powerful army off to get something they can get by waiting? Talk about human nature, when a vastly superior force rolls in, it's human nature to lay very low and try to get a measure of what that force really wants and intends to do, because if you can live with it, why commit suicide uselessly?" Your analysis is brilliant, except that it is fully from our own point of view. As I've noted before, failing to see things from the other side's point of view, along with selective perception, is the cause of failures in prediction. The current crop of US military leaders (i.e. Colin Powell) were in Vietnam. While they were there, they pissed their pants and had to clean their buddy's guts off of their uniforms. You think that's bad, you should have seen what happened to the other side's guys. The enemies shooting at them were civilians who should have loved America, according to your analysis, or at least laid low. Of course the US soldiers in Vietnam knew that the civilians hated them, and sometimes this led to violations of the Geneva Convention. The whole experience was painful and traumatic for them, and they don't want to go through it again with Iraq. It was the school of very, very, very hard knocks that forced the US military to give up simplistic analysis of civilian behavior. -- Carl

To: Nadine Carroll who wrote (44088)	9/15/2002 10:31:33 AM
From: Elsewhere	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 281500

[Iraqis'] instincts will be to obey. Like the East Germans did. The East Germans didn't obey, they were subjugated, facing hundreds of thousands of Russian soldiers and tens of thousands of tanks. Remember Tiananmen? Could have easily happened in East Germany, see 1953 (Berlin), 1956 (Budapest), 1968 (Prague). But in 1989 the East Germans did a kind of Jericho in Berlin - the Wall came tumbling down, without a single shot fired.

To: Nadine Carroll who wrote (44088)	9/15/2002 8:45:06 PM
From: Dayuhan	Respond to of 281500

their instincts will be to obey. Like the East Germans did. Until we leave. Then the instinct is to compete for power. Do you really expect the competition to take place solely at the ballot box?

To: Nadine Carroll who wrote (44088)	4/1/2004 7:08:05 PM
From: Bilow	Respond to of 281500

Hi Nadine Carroll; From back before the war you wrote: Nadine Carroll, September 2002 The Iraqis have been trained to passivity by forty years of a police state. Unless we leave a power vacuum somewhere, their instincts will be to obey. Like the East Germans did.#reply-17992229 It's pretty clear now that the Iraqis aren't as passive as you expected. Do you have an explanation for the error? Do you now say that we left a "power vacuum"? Do you suppose that there's a chance that the Iraqis are obeying, but just not obeying us, LOL? -- Carl