COLLECTIVE MADNESS
“Soft despotism is a term coined by Alexis de Tocqueville describing the state into which a country overrun by "a network of small complicated rules" might degrade. Soft despotism is different from despotism (also called 'hard despotism') in the sense that it is not obvious to the people."
That picture will not endear the President with the fundamentalist crowd that calls Russia "Gog & Magog" and sees Satanic witchcraft under every internationalist conference table.
ReplyDeleteThe dominos are alreafy falling, but this fellow, he thinks he can turn back the hands of time.
ReplyDeleteArthur Herman, a new contributor, has taught history at George Mason University and Georgetown University. He is the author of, among other books, The Idea of Decline in Western History, How the Scots Invented the Modern World, and, most recently, To Rule the Waves: How the British Navy Shaped the Modern World (2004), nominated in 2005 for the Mountbatten Prize in naval history. Mr. Herman thanks Chet Nagle and J.R. Dunn for help and advice in the writing of this essay.
He calls for, basicly, destroying the gasoline refinery capacity in Iran. Takes a lot of words to say it. but he argues for action, now, as oppossed to the later of the "Master Plan".
"... In 1936, the French army could have halted Hitler’s reoccupation of the Rhineland with a single division of troops, but chose to do nothing. In 1938, Britain and France could have joined forces with the well-armed and highly motivated Czech army to administer a crushing defeat to the German Wehrmacht and probably topple Hitler in the bargain. Instead they handed him the Sudetenland, setting in motion the process that in 1939 led to the most destructive war in world history. Do we intend to dither until suicide bombers blow up a supertanker off the Omani coast, or a mushroom cloud appears over Tel Aviv, before we decide it is finally time to get serious about Iran?
Now, I think that is exactly what we will do, regardless of other Options available.
Getting Serious About Iran:
A Military Option
Mr Bush is conflicted, now.
ReplyDeleteSince he no longer is "Staying the Course" he goes abroad and waffles about US Resolve in Public Statements.
His style of Leadership is out of this world.
Maybe more, maybe less, Mr Bush will decide.
LATER
Duncan Hunter says use the Iraqi Army, put it into the fight.
ReplyDeleteSaid so on FOX News.
Wow! It takes real insight to say "Stand up" the Iraqi. Mr Hunter is the only politico to say so.
Mr McCain, he says "Send more US troops", which we can do, just by extending the tours of those troops already in Iraq, surging as their replacements arrive, on schedule.
Give Mr Maliki offical command of the ISF and stand back, let the Iraqi stand up and get out of US shadow.
Fully empower those Islam-fascist that were elected and let them stabilize their own Country.
Allow the US to "Go Small and Long". As we read, wrote and reccommended years ago.
DR you wore your burka like a hair shirt. You may want to loan it to some of your detractors to hide under.
ReplyDeleteEven Wretchard noticed this Summitt, as I posted in the previous thread.
ReplyDeleteHe thought it worthy of a thread of its own.
I see a siesmic shift, Wretchard, he said:
The Victor
Ahmadinejad Invites Iraqi, Syrian Presidents to Tehran Summit -- breaking on Fox News. ...
...
But the Iranians can hardly contain their glee. They know what last elections meant; and so do Iraq and Syria. There may be no need to wait for the Baker report. It is being overtaken by events.
But that is a more pessimistic view then even I project.
Have some become depressed by the results of the Course Stayed?
It is entirely true that Hitler had given orders to occcupy the Rhineland. embedded in that order was the overarching order to fall back if ANY resistence was received from the French. None was forthcoming and he marched into the Rhineland and the world accelerated toward global war.
ReplyDeleteNow our chiefs ponder the most practible way to stop an implacable foe from achieving a nuclear bomb, with it's avowed use on Israel and all other non believers has been voice dozens of times and dictated by their ideology.
Mr. Herman outlines his plan. A reasoned plan for victory. Other contingency plans fill the filing cabinets of the world ,as he said.
There are those who have characterized and criticized the President for; not doing something and then doing something; for being intransigent and staying the course, and then continue carping once a change is made.
Of course the critics are not in the arena but in their warm and complacent Weltansicht, covered by the shadetree of liberty. Life dear and peace sweet. Themselves unable to harmonize a comprehensive plan , but fully capable of squeezing the last dram of hypocracy out of the gravest of situations.
They call feckless those whose reponsibility extends beyond their hearth. Their plan is retreat, submission, dhimmitude.
Perhaps it is beyond their capacity to formulate the perfect plan, but to offer up only the veneer of support for any idea is flaccid doublespeak easily unmasked by their cynacism and sarcasm.
It is not the stuff of the men who won The Revolution,the Civil War,WWI and WWII. It is the treachery that gave us Korea and Vietnam. It is the vainglorious appeasement of those who lack the will to win.
For the morally poor and cowardly invidious, here's some Victor David Hansen if you can manage to get it down.
ReplyDelete"So we are at a crossroads of all places in Iraq. The war there has metamorphosized from a successful effort to remove a mass-murdering dictator into the frontlines of the entire struggle between Islamic radicalism and Western liberality. If we withdraw before the elected government stabilizes, the consequences won't just be the loss of the perceptions of power, but perhaps the loss of real power. What follows won't be the impression that we are weak, but the fact that we are--as we convince ourselves we cannot win against such horrific enemies, and so should never again try.
That stumble will send a shudder throughout the so-called West that will be felt worldwide. It will insidiously show that the premodern world proved the master of the postmodern, as al Qaeda's Alfred Rosenberg, the pudgy Dr. Zawahiri, boasted all along--whose followers will not be happy with a successful defense when they think they can go back on an even more successful offense"
Full Article
Well this is a MITT team.
ReplyDeleteEach 11 to 15-man team brings a mix of combat and support specialties, including operations, intelligence, logistics, communications, engineering and security. Team members work one-on-one with their Iraqi counterparts, showing them the ropes of each specialty and offering advice on streamlining operations.
“Second, we bring the effects - coalition effects - to the Iraqi army that they don’t have for themselves,” said Carroll.
Wikipedia says : "As of February 2006, there were more than 200 MiTTs in Iraq "
200 x 15 = 3500 men'
The Iraqi Army 175,000 men
Iraqi Police= 75,000
Total= 250,000.
KATUSA deployment within US Army, in theater, 19.3% of the Force.
To reach that level of training efficency with the Iraqi Army = 33,775 US troops need to be embedded into the Iraqi Army.
The Iraqi Police would need 14,475 US troops.
Total is just shy of 50,000 committed embedded trainers.
The need for numbers has beenconstant from the beginning, could have slid by with around 30,000 MITT type troops, over all. About a nine or ten fold increase from present levels.
The Army understands the challenge and has committed resources at Fort Riley, KS to the training of foreign troops. The deatails are at Westhawk, for those that care to see.
So the Army, just 40 some months behind the learning curve. Not bad for such an Organization, I guess. They have at least acknowledged the need, whether they can fill it, in a timely enough fashion to make a difference, we'll see.
ReplyDeleteI've always suggested going Native, habu, your ideas are always nuclear. Guess we'll try the nonnuclear, first. Not to hard to foretell.
trish asks, With who should we go native?, well either Mr Allawi & Talabani, from the get go or a suitable replacement found enroute. Today we're stuck with Mr Maliki, unless that Islamo-fascist Government crashes to ashes, internally divided.
Regardless, the US Military needs to get a "Win" to buck up public morale, it has for a while.
Pick a town, any town.
Question for all:
ReplyDeleteI'm starting a weblog that will track the theme of the "next attack" in events around the world. I was hoping people could weigh in on possible domain names:
nextattackcomes.net
nextattackcome.us
nexttimewerehit.us
hitagain.net
hitagain.us
afterthenextattack.net
I want to draw the URL from the colloquial references to this impending doom that is all too frequently referenced. Nothing fancy, just to the point. It's about our impending doom, a saga written so long as I survive.
How do those names sound? Lame? Attention getting?
For instance, Bobalharb references it right here:
ReplyDelete"when we get hit again"
I've heard it referenced all the time - its the most pervasive theme of post 9/11 writing, at least that which is clued to any reality.
That which isn't so clued will be interesting to historians but is not useful to us now, however valuable some may think it is.
bobalharb actually wrote:
ReplyDeleteIt's a grim thought, but I kinda hope when we get hit again, it's in some place that might do some good, like say, San Francisco.
For the record, an attack on any US territory, any US ally, and any US interests is always bad. There are no red states nor blue states, there are no liberal states nor conservative states, there are only American states. Those aren't "our" planes when "our" party is in power and "their" planes when "their" party is in power. Lordy, what is going on here?
Who the hell would want the job of being an imbed with the Iraqi army? A few days ago 80 Iraqi police dressed in brand new can't be copied uniforms took over a government building and captured 150 people. Am I spelling "frag" correctly?
ReplyDeleteppab said...
ReplyDeleteFor instance, Bobalharb references it right here:
"when we get hit again"
There's two kinds of Americans, those who hope we never get hit again because every attack on any part of America diminishes all of America, and those who almost look forward to getting hit again because it will "change their rhetoric" and "concentrate their minds a little".
woman catholic:
ReplyDeleteI'd take issue with both of those models of Americans - then again, you may just be performing
I dont want to get hit again cuz it might mean i or my loved ones or the obscure betters who are my fellow citizens will die. I will gladly pay more taxes if it means we all have more security and more sustainable security at that. But that is not an option.
But I understand the intractable dilemma of our "inertia" - we will remain faithful to our false idols of human rights and cultural understanding, fearful of even knowing what is war, hoping we can keep it at a comfortable viewing distance, memorialized in WW2 movies, ancient and quaint in their barbarity, their dilemmas lost to the fading minds that calculated them.
We now have our own dilemmas, our own calculations and may God help us all.
<3'd your dot coms btw. as grim as things may be getting, laughter may remain pretty essential, just not to the extent that the Daily Show crowd thinks it is.
ReplyDeleteThe challenges with going native are so different in this arena than any other we've ever encountered because of one thing. Religious zealotry by the natives.
ReplyDeleteOne of two things can happen. One must happen for it to be a success.
The Islamists must abandon their religious tenets or we must abandon our freedom.
The immiscible nature of our system and the Islamic system leave no room for dipomacy or MiTT.
We have well over a thousand years of Islamic agggression to examine to support the point. It cannot be denied.
Our society is not disposed toward anything requiring hardship or investment of time past the thirty minute mark. But we like winning. We like victory.
Given those predicates bombing appears to be the only avenue left to reduce our foe to the point where he will back off of the offensive and allow civilization to move forward. The two civilizations are, as I stated,immiscible.
You may well be correct, habu.
ReplyDeletebut it won't be happenin' soon.
There will have to a "new" Mohammedan provocation, a large one, to merit an adequate response.
Perhaps the President will go for an all out 60 day preemptive aerial cmpaign against Iraninan infrastructure, bomb 'em into the 7th Century. But it would be out of charecter for him and his Generals.
No we wait, as Mr Herman said, for that mushroom cloud over Tel Aviv. Truth be known.
I'd still bet Haifa, not Tel Aviv.
ReplyDeleteBut who can to say, fer sure.
Four to six months of smackdown, that's what the General said could happen.
ReplyDeleteHope it starts soon.
Battle of the Bulge, not the most apt analogy, to my thinking, but what the hey.
The 2,200 Marines got up to where ever they were going in Anbar, last week.
It's not the Main Event but it's a start
TWAT SMACKDOWN!
Just saw Whore-Hay on Fox in his so called Vietnamese garb. Where were the black pajamas?
ReplyDeleteUnless the Iranians do something incredibly stupid, this administration has thrown in the towel. We will have to have the debate about Iran after the '08 elections. How long is that?
ReplyDeleteThe only time I saw Vietnamese in such get-ups was in Hue. This was the dress perferred by the Vietnamese-French girls there. Does that say something? Those Vietnamese are such kidders.
ReplyDeleteWhy do they do it and wear these things? I don't get it.
ReplyDeleteI had to duck in over here. My post asking about whether Bush should resign was not accepted to wide acclaim.
ReplyDeleteDeuce,
ReplyDeleteGive it some time. Within the next two years, only the insane will accept less than his impeachment.
Great question!
If inquiring minds want to know, you have probably learned something of the paucity of inquiry.
Be very careful here, tell me a promise Mr. Bush has kept.
ReplyDeleteDeuce,
ReplyDeleteSorry, that last was in error, but a good thought nonetheless.