|
[Previous entry: "The ongoing Rachel Corrie incident"] [Main Index] [Next entry: "A brief foray into Coulterism"] 03 July 2003: "Donald Rumsfeld - America's #1 enemy"
Over at "Harry Hatchet & friends," Gene is "Not reassured by Rummy" regarding post-war Iraq. I'm inclined to say that's putting it mildly. Iraq certainly is no Vietnam, but going by this WaPo article which Gene links to, Rumsfeld seems to be doing an uncanny impersonation of General Westmoreland.
Rumsfeld said the five groups opposing U.S. forces -- which he identified as looters, criminals, remnants of Saddam Hussein's government, foreign terrorists and Iranian-backed Shiites -- "are all slightly different in why they are there and what they are doing."There a couple of things worth noting in this regard. The first is that there is no shortage of historical examples of multiple groups with divergent, incompatible—even antithetical—agendas sharing a common objective of forcing an occupying force out of their country. A good example is Nazi-occupied Yugoslavia, where the royalist Chetniks and communist Partizans fought each other, while both opposed the Nazis. In Poland, the royalist Polish Home Army stood by idly while the Nazis crushed the Jewish resistance in 1943; in 1944, the communists stood by while the Germans crushed the Polish Home Army, who would have been the communists' main rival in the post-war power struggle. In Western Europe, the rivalry and calculated non-involvement was never quite that blatant, but nevertheless most groups rarely communicated, consulted or coordinated with those of differing ideologies until very late in the war (specifically, when the arrival of the Allied armies became imminent). Secondly, there is thin line indeed between what constitutes a "terrorist" and what constitutes a "guerilla," especially an "urban guerilla." It's kind of disturbing that the US Secretary of Defense doesn't seem to even have a passing knowledge of the writings of Mao and Che Guevara (Whatever happened to "know thine enemy"?). Insurgents—guerillas and terrorists alike—practice what Barrie Paskins & Michael Dockrill have termed "evasive warfare," that is, avoiding military confrontation when this is not to one's advantage, particularly by pretending to be a non-combatant. Arguably, all terrorists are guerillas, but not all guerillas are terrorists; for the distinguishing feature of the terrorist is that he wages warfare indiscriminately. He does not try to avoid inflicting non-combatant casualties, and often strives to cause them deliberately. Rumsfeld seems to be practicing the art of strategic ambiguity, which seems to be a hallmark of this administration. His assertion that the occupying powers in Iraq are not facing a guerilla war may arguably be true, but they are undeniably facing what most people would consider some form of—to use a term once in vogue at the Pentagon—"low-intensity conflict," a fact which Rumsfeld is evidently loth to concede, as evinced by this passage from the WaPo article: One reporter quoted the Pentagon's own definition of guerrilla war -- "military and paramilitary operations conducted in enemy-held or hostile territory by irregular ground indigenous forces" -- and told Rumsfeld, "Seems to fit a lot of what's going on in Iraq."General William C. Westmoreland was the commander of Military Assistance Command Vietnam (COMUSMACV) from 1964 to 1968. My earlier comment that Rumsfeld's performance is reminiscent of Westmoreland is based on the fact that Westmoreland spent much of his time as COMUSMACV claiming (and I'm paraphrasing only slightly) that "the enemy is no longer capable of mounting, let alone sustaining, any kind of meaningful offensive." The communist offensives of 1968 (to wit the Tet, May aka "Mini-Tet," and August offensives) proved him embarrassingly wrong and led to his removal (though, perhaps unsurprisingly, by being "kicked upstairs") as of 01-Jul-1968. MACV claimed after the 1968 offensives that the communists had taken such losses that, this time, they were really "no longer capable etc." As it turned out, that claim was entirely correct; the Viet Cong (or to give them their proper name, the People's Liberation Armed Forces) had been wiped out as fighting force in the Tet Offensive, and the May and August Offensives had drained North Vietnam of physically capable young men. (At least, young men who weren't sons of high-ranking party officials; Dan Quayle and George W. Bush certainly had their Vietnamese counterparts.) The NVA (or more correctly, People's Army of Viet Nam—PAVN or "Pavin" for short) could not manage another offensive until 1972, and in 1970 they came very close to throwing in the towel. What stopped them from doing so was the evident fact that public support for the war in America (which hinged upon belief that the war could be won) had been fatally undermined by the revelation that Westmoreland's assessments had been, to put it charitably, consistently over-optimistic. Nevertheless, there is no valid comparison to be made between the present American involvement in Iraq and America's involvement in Vietnam. There is no Ho Chi Minh nursing resentment at the Americans' betrayal (by supporting the French!), there is no Ngo Dinh Diem relying upon the Americans to stay in power. If you want an example of the US invading a country to topple a dictator who was useful during the Cold War but became a liability afterwards, we need look no further than the invasion of Panama in 1989. Say, have you read how much worse it is in Panama than in the rest of Latin America lately? No, neither have I. Moreover, those elements of the anti-war crowd who predicted "Vietnam" did so during the second week of the "high-intensity war," i.e. late March, during the supposed "stalling" of the Coalition offensive; Baghdad fell ten days or so later. None of those "predictions" at the time predicted "the Iraqi régime will fall in short order, but there will be multiple insurgencies afterwards." The simple fact of the matter is that anytime a war critic says, or even implies, "I told you so," he's lying through his teeth. Nobody predicted the problems the occupying forces are now facing. The war critics predicted massive civilian casualties and a major humanitarian crisis, neither of which materialised, but they didn't predict the actual problems the occupying forces are now facing. Unfortunately, and more problematically, the governments of the United States and the United Kingdom don't seem to have anticipated these problems either. My personal opinion is that any mistakes made in the carrying out of the plan do not invalidate the entire plan; however, Donald Rumsfeld evidently does feel this way, which is why he feels compelled to deny problems exist. The effect he gives is that he is either lying or being complacent, when he's not offending foreign governments. To be brutally frank, Donald Rumsfeld is a severe liability to the Bush administration on the public relations front, both at home and abroad. |
Navigation: home archives backgrounder Blogs:
au currant Miscellanea:
Care to contribute |
