Archive From Elsewhere: 5/22/2002
(12:08pm)...It's American conditioning to presume automatically that The US has the ability to order the world about to fit our standards, and the moral authority to do so, as the fairest and most freedom-loving nation in the world. "The indispensable nation", like Madelaine Albright said...
This is axiomatic. It was one of the given assumptions of all my high school history course, most of which were taught by "liberals".
It's folly to believe that, however. It's a cover story.
Occupying a country is approximately 1000 times more difficult than defeating a conventional army in battle. Especially a country of experienced "unconventional warriors" defending their homeland against foreigners...they'll fight you on the beaches, they'll fight fight in the cities, they'll fight you in the hills, they will never surrender. That's patriots anywhere, not just the British.
As ageneral rule, people won't respect a puppet leader put in place by military conquest, no matter whether he has management ability, a college education, proper manners, and, for that matter, ideals and personal leadership qualities. The evidence of foreign interference is a bit too obvious, in that case.
(12:21pm)...ask the Russians about it. Ask the British.
They had a nickname for Afghanistan- the "graveyard of empires". The place isn't even a country, it's one big frontier. Ever visit the Rockies?
I'll bet half of the people over there hate us- that's some millions of people. Most of the other half only like us because we do things like drop $100 bills out of cargo planes.
You'll never force the human spirit to submit, all you can do is eradicate, like the Nazis attempted to do to the Chetniks in the Balkans. Total war. If that prospect doesn''t bother you, you've placed yourself in extremely unsavory company, historically speaking.
I wish that more people were encouraged to self-sacrificing patriotic heroism before they were conquered by hostile regimes, rather than after. Once they have nothing left to lose, folks seem to develop a fierce appreciation of what they used to have...
(12:33pm) ...Carpet bombing has never forced any nation I know of into a state of "submission".
The mountain fortresses of central Asia are even more resistant to such tactics than most geographic terrain.
...
The terminally single-minded sociopath bent on "dominance" might view tactical nuclear bombs as guaranteeing "submission". I'm not convinced, though....many of the survivors of having their homelands dusted with fallout and losing their relatives to radiation sickness would be doubtless encouraged to re-think a previous retience to resort to suicide tactics.
Some folks are just obstinate.
A sharpened pencil can become a deadly weapon in the hands of someone who's sufficiently motivated. It comes down to a contest of wills, and soldiers of a foreign occupation are rarely able to summon that much resolve.
(1:02pm) I'm not saying it [carpet bombing] has never been tried.
It hasn't worked to guarantee "submission" yet, though, and I don't expect it to.
To address another point, it's one thing to train, equip, and pay a palace guard, and another thing to guarantee it's loyalty. As US trainers are finding out at this very moment, I have little doubt.
It's expecially tough when you can't understand any of the several native languages well enough to realize when a mutiny is being plotted.
I don't expect that right away, the inhabitants of Afghanistan are patient people, like most of the societies of the East, with a long legacy of empire, conquest, oppression, treachery, and revolt.
(1:45pm) I think that not overthowing Saddam [ edit: in 1991] was one of the necessary preconditions for pulling an international coalition together.
Most of the "Monday-morning quarterbacking" I've heard with regard to criticism of the reluctance to overthrow Saddam has had to do with the failure to aid a Kurdish revolt in the north of the country.
The US would have needed staging areas and collaboration from the Turkish regime, though, and they weren't about to provide that. Iran, the only other possibility as an ally on the ground, was even more out of the question. The Shi'ite regime helping the Kurds in the north, you'd have to give them the rest of Iraq in return.
If you think war is expensive, try maintaining garrisons in hostile conquered nations. Occupying Western Europe has been expensive enough, and we share so much culturally that it might as well be America, in comparison to the mosaic of indigenous cultures and societies over there. An occupying US force would probably be the thing that would most tend to unify them, albeit not in the way that "pro-Western" idealists imagine.
This is axiomatic. It was one of the given assumptions of all my high school history course, most of which were taught by "liberals".
It's folly to believe that, however. It's a cover story.
Occupying a country is approximately 1000 times more difficult than defeating a conventional army in battle. Especially a country of experienced "unconventional warriors" defending their homeland against foreigners...they'll fight you on the beaches, they'll fight fight in the cities, they'll fight you in the hills, they will never surrender. That's patriots anywhere, not just the British.
As ageneral rule, people won't respect a puppet leader put in place by military conquest, no matter whether he has management ability, a college education, proper manners, and, for that matter, ideals and personal leadership qualities. The evidence of foreign interference is a bit too obvious, in that case.
(12:21pm)...ask the Russians about it. Ask the British.
They had a nickname for Afghanistan- the "graveyard of empires". The place isn't even a country, it's one big frontier. Ever visit the Rockies?
I'll bet half of the people over there hate us- that's some millions of people. Most of the other half only like us because we do things like drop $100 bills out of cargo planes.
You'll never force the human spirit to submit, all you can do is eradicate, like the Nazis attempted to do to the Chetniks in the Balkans. Total war. If that prospect doesn''t bother you, you've placed yourself in extremely unsavory company, historically speaking.
I wish that more people were encouraged to self-sacrificing patriotic heroism before they were conquered by hostile regimes, rather than after. Once they have nothing left to lose, folks seem to develop a fierce appreciation of what they used to have...
(12:33pm) ...Carpet bombing has never forced any nation I know of into a state of "submission".
The mountain fortresses of central Asia are even more resistant to such tactics than most geographic terrain.
...
The terminally single-minded sociopath bent on "dominance" might view tactical nuclear bombs as guaranteeing "submission". I'm not convinced, though....many of the survivors of having their homelands dusted with fallout and losing their relatives to radiation sickness would be doubtless encouraged to re-think a previous retience to resort to suicide tactics.
Some folks are just obstinate.
A sharpened pencil can become a deadly weapon in the hands of someone who's sufficiently motivated. It comes down to a contest of wills, and soldiers of a foreign occupation are rarely able to summon that much resolve.
(1:02pm) I'm not saying it [carpet bombing] has never been tried.
It hasn't worked to guarantee "submission" yet, though, and I don't expect it to.
To address another point, it's one thing to train, equip, and pay a palace guard, and another thing to guarantee it's loyalty. As US trainers are finding out at this very moment, I have little doubt.
It's expecially tough when you can't understand any of the several native languages well enough to realize when a mutiny is being plotted.
I don't expect that right away, the inhabitants of Afghanistan are patient people, like most of the societies of the East, with a long legacy of empire, conquest, oppression, treachery, and revolt.
(1:45pm) I think that not overthowing Saddam [ edit: in 1991] was one of the necessary preconditions for pulling an international coalition together.
Most of the "Monday-morning quarterbacking" I've heard with regard to criticism of the reluctance to overthrow Saddam has had to do with the failure to aid a Kurdish revolt in the north of the country.
The US would have needed staging areas and collaboration from the Turkish regime, though, and they weren't about to provide that. Iran, the only other possibility as an ally on the ground, was even more out of the question. The Shi'ite regime helping the Kurds in the north, you'd have to give them the rest of Iraq in return.
If you think war is expensive, try maintaining garrisons in hostile conquered nations. Occupying Western Europe has been expensive enough, and we share so much culturally that it might as well be America, in comparison to the mosaic of indigenous cultures and societies over there. An occupying US force would probably be the thing that would most tend to unify them, albeit not in the way that "pro-Western" idealists imagine.
posted by cabdriver at 2:00 AM
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