No Replacement For Displacement

Now that Chris Matthews is over malaria, it seems he is now back to his normal condition, which is a permanent and prolonged case of the feminine vapors over Iraq. In his unique, Chicken Little way, Matthews breathlessly screams that noone wants war, that the polls don't support war, and that Saddam will blow everything up, arab street, yada yada yada.

Anyway, time to take out the fiskomatic, remove the trigger lock, and load in a fresh clip:

The American people are not committed to a U.S. invasion of Iraq.

Cheney's staff is. Rumsfeld's deputies are. The White House speech-writing office is. The guys they're working under are.

No, the American people are committed. That is why Fox got a 69% in favor of military action, the Washington Post/ABC got the same number, with majorities in both cases in favor of war involving ground troops, and in the case of Fox, 52% in favor even if it involves thousands of casualties.

But what about the families of those who will do the fighting? What about the country that will have to suffer the casualties that are the wreckage of every war?

You mean like the wreckage in Lower Manhattan? The wreckage strown across a field in Pennsylvania? The wreckage at the Pentagon? That kind of wreckage? I don't think it takes much of a genius to understand that the soldiers who are going would rather put their own lives at risk rather than see that sort of wreckage, don't you think Chris?

A Washington Post/ABC poll found 57 percent of us back a ground attack on Baghdad but that's if there are no significant casualties. Faced with that prospect, 51 percent oppose it.
Is this a strong base from which to launch a pre-emptive attack on a country on the other side of the world? To send several hundred thousand U.S. service people on a mission to take over a country, remove its political leadership from power and install one of our choosing?

Clinton had less support to send troops to Haiti, and it didn't stop him then, did it Chris? And, let's not forget that we didn't have a single national interest in Haiti.

It's time to recall the Powell doctrine of the 1980s and recall the names that gave it resonance: Vietnam and Beirut.
With memories of those misconceived missions fresh and painful, then- Secretary of Defense Caspar Weinberger and his chief military assistant, Gen. Colin Powell, drafted new criteria for overseas military involvement.
War should be a last resort, undertaken only with precise political and military goals and clear support from the American public and the Congress. There must be a clear exit strategy, and a will to deploy overwhelming force.

OK, Chris. What is our exit strategy for Afghanistan? How about the Balkans? It appears the Weinberger doctrine(Colin Powell got the credit--the architect was Weinberger doesn't seem to invoked too often these days, does it? And it seems Caspar himself doesn't seem to have much problem with that. Unlike Brent "Fight the Last War, and Make the Same Mistakes" Scowcroft, Weinberger doesn't seem to be that locked into old policy.

So we drop tens of thousands of airborne troops into Baghdad. We look for Saddam Hussein. We wear gas masks to protect us from whatever chemical and biological weapons the Iraqi leader has stockpiled for just this occasion. A threatened Israel mobilizes for war.
All this against the backdrop of an Arab and Islamic world in riot. In Cairo, President Hosni Mubarak must tighten his grip, igniting even more opposition. Jordan's King Abdullah joins his country's Palestinian majority in condemning the attack. The Saudi Arabian royals are silent. The Muslims and anti-war elements of Europe take to the boulevards

Reading these two paragraphs, it is patently obvious that in addition to malaria, Chris has had a case of amnesia dating back to 1990. Maybe he didn't notice, but the only time the "Arab Street" makes a peep is when they think they are winning. All those posters of Osama and Bert were all over the place when they thought they had found their new Saladin. Once the Taliban had been blasted to Talibits, and people started spotting Osama and Elvis together, those posters were in about as much demand as tofu at a Texas barbecue. The great "Arab Street" is a myth, Chris. It was a myth during the Gulf War, it was a myth in Afganistan, and it will be a myth again in Iraq.

Then comes the messy part.
Our troops in Baghdad morph into a nervous constabulary force. Their mission: guard streets, shoot snipers, arrest the suspicious, keep order, find the Hussein loyalists, round up the members of his ruling party, root out plots, battle the terrorists.

We won't have to find the Hussein loyalists. Iraqis will do that for us. There are millions of Iraqis who would like nothing more than payback for the 20+ years of suffering they have been forced to endure. The executions, the murders, etc. When American troops enter Baghdad, proudly being a Ba'athist will be akin to being a Klansman in Harlem. And without a government to protect them, the terrorist will have a new task in their job description: survival.

For how long?
How long were we in Beirut before that "peacekeeping" mission ended with a barracks being blown sky-high by a suicide bomber? How long were we in Saigon?

Ah, the strawman of wars past. Like Beirut, where we didn't engage in force protection, or in Vietnam, where your golden boys, JFK and LBJ sent American troops to a quagmire, and patently refused to take action that might have won the war. How come you don't mention the Gulf War, Chris? Because we won? Because had we finished the job in the Gulf War, we wouldn't be forced to fight this one?

This invasion of Iraq, if it goes off, will join the Bay of Pigs, Vietnam, Desert One, Beirut and Somalia in the history of military catastrophe.

Yes, this invasion will be a disaster. Just like last time, the vaunted Republican Guard will bludgeon our poor boys on the fields of Manassas. Their rifles will mow down our troops by the dozen. Oops, sorry, wrong war. Let me start again. Yes, this invasion will be a disaster. Our tired, wear troops will be put in a sector to rest and recover, when the vaunted Republican Guard will come crashing through the Ardennes, the infamous tanks built by the industrial might of Iraq will blast apart our poor GIs in their Shermans. Dang, wrong war again.

How about this? The Iraqi Army folds like a cheap suit as thousands of Iraqis decide they would rather surrender than fight for Saddam. The Republican guard tanks, for all Saddam's bluster, becomes little more than targets in a live fire exercise for our troops. Highways all over the combat zone are littered with wrecked Iraqi vehicles, and, unlike 1991, the status Quo crowd does not stop the Army from continuing on to Iraq, virtually unopposed. By the time the first soldiers show up in Iraq, Saddam has already been hanging from a lamppost for the better part of a day.

A mission to attack one isolated enemy will end up isolating us. A mission justified by the fight with terrorism will give birth to millions of terrorist- supporting haters. In every cafe from Manila to Casablanca, just whom do you think they will be rooting for? Just whom will their kids be killing themselves for?

First of all, there is very little we can do to stop them from hating us, except by not being Americans anymore. Secondly, why do you think Arabs would want to live under Saddam any more than you would?

Posted by John Bono at August 26, 2002 08:48 PM | TrackBack