June 02, 2004
'Shoot first, ask questions last'
It's been said before, our ridiculous want for good press and approval from our 'allies' is hurting us in Iraq. But few can say it quite like Victor Davis Hanson:
A year ago, we waged a brilliant three-week campaign, then mysteriously forgot the source of our success. Military audacity, lethality, unpredictability, imperviousness to cheap criticism, and iron resolve, coupled with the message of freedom, convinced neutrals to join us and enemies not yet conquered to remain in the shadows. But our failure to shoot looters, to arrest early insurrectionists like Sadr, and to subdue cities like Tikrit or Falluja only earned us contempt--and not just from those who would kill us, but from others who would have joined us as well.The misplaced restraint of the past year is not true morality, but a sort of weird immorality that seeks to avoid ethical censure in the short term--the ever-present, 24-hour pulpit of global television that inflates a half-dozen inadvertent civilian casualties into Dresden and Hiroshima. But, in the long term, such complacency has left more moderate Iraqis to be targeted by ever more emboldened murderers. For their part, American troops have discovered that they are safer on the assault when they can fire first and kill killers, rather than simply patrol and react, hoping their newly armored Humvees and fortified flak vests will deflect projectiles.
Read the whole thing.
Posted by Karol at June 2, 2004 11:47 AM | TrackBackTechnorati Tags:
...that's how most of these so-called gangstas pass.
Posted by: Yaron at June 2, 2004 12:19 PMHahahaha. I was wondering if anyone would catch that.
Posted by: Karol at June 2, 2004 12:26 PMVDH seems the ultimate arm chair qb on this one. Yes retreating from Fallujah and other areas was a bad move. Yes, the American people were not told by this administration that this would be a long struggle (mission accomplished !). Yes we have made some bad moves. But VDH is doing the same thing that the people on the left calling for immediate and unconditional withdrawal are doing. They are not looking at the situation on the ground. After a year in Iraq, can we really expect our undermanned troops, not to mention reservists who are not as trained as the regulars, to all of a sudden change 180 degrees to what they had been doing. As for the more American troops, the less Iraqis will do, VDH has a point but we are already committed and have been forced to pull forces out of other areas, including Korea. We're in this for the long hall and we need boots on the ground. Perhaps VDH would be served by reading the works of William Manchester who just passed away. Manchester chronicled the start of the American military presense in Japan in his brilliant biogrpahy of Douglas MacArthur, "American Caesar." 59 years after MacArthur accepted the Japanese surrender on the Missouri, we still have troops in Japan. If we still have troops in Japan and Germany, even when there is no Soviet threat, why shouldn't we have troops in Iraq ? Iraqis will do as much for their own defense as Germans and Japanese do which is to say nothing. We are going to be there a while. Why else do you think the Army is expanding its "stop-loss" program ? Let's look at the AP article that came over the wire today:
The announcement, an expansion of an Army program called "stop-loss," means that thousands of soldiers who had expected to retire or otherwise leave the military will have to stay on for the duration of their deployment to those combat zones (Iraq and Afganistan).
Sorry VDH. The decision has already been made. Now we have to deal with it as best we can.
Posted by: Von Bek at June 2, 2004 01:09 PMVDH is a pretty well respected military historian. I think he has some idea of what he's talking about.
Posted by: Karol at June 2, 2004 01:20 PMYes he is. He wrote some excellent works on the military history of ancient Greece as well as the splendid Mexifornia and some notes on Agrarian conservatism. He has also written some fun "what if" books on military history. His efforts at modern military history like "Carnage and Culture" were nowhere near as good as his works the ancient Greeks. Is he the heir to Ambrose and Freeman and Manchester ? By no means.
Posted by: Von Bek at June 2, 2004 01:29 PM
