Thursday, April 15, 2004
[posted by jaed at 1:53 PM]Something to remember
An Italian hostage was murdered today. This is an aspect I haven't seen emphasized in the news, but at Roger Simon, commenter TmjUtah points out:
That the Italian's last words were in defiance ("Now I'll show you how an Italian dies!" while trying to rip off the hood covering his face -http://ap.tbo.com/ap/breaking/MGAWP2B43TD.html ) violates the terror style book; they look for abject fear and hopelessness in their victims. Remember his name: Fabrizio Quattrocchi.
Monday, April 12, 2004
[posted by jaed at 10:50 AM]The difference
Someone asked me the other day, "You compared building democracy in Iraq to the US experience with Germany and Japan after WWII. How come it's not going like that?"
People have come up with a lot of reasons - both before and since the fall of Saddam - why Iraq would not be like Germany or Japan: level of previous exposure to democracy, degree of international legitimacy for the effort, presumed cultural incompatibility of Arabs with democratic polities. Some are more plausible than others, of course, but most of them are quite subtle.
But there's one reason no one talks about, that's about as subtle as a neon sign: the war isn't over.
Imagine if, during WWII, we had tried to occupy and reconstruct France before defeating Germany. Imagine Vichy collaboraters being funded by German money and smuggled German weapons. Imagine German special ops units coming across the border periodically and blowing people up. Imagine the press telling us that all this proves the French didn't want us or our "liberation" in the first place and we should give up and go home.
Now imagine ignoring all this and doggedly proceeding with rebuilding French infrastructure, hoping all the problems will Just Go Away. Folly, yes?
In Iraq, we've got Iran funding an uprising and, most likely, sending in commandos under cover of the pilgrimage. In Fallujah, we've got a lot of old-line Saddam collaborators, and possibly Syria funding and providing military fighters, via Hamas. We've had Saudi-funded terrorists coming across the borders all this time. (Ask the Iraqis - they know Arab from Arab, and they know the people coming in to blow up Iraqis aren't Iraqi.) And we wonder why there are problems in Iraq?
There are problems because the war is still going on; winning one campaign does not conclude a war, and (media and politician nitwits insisting on locutions like "the Iraq War" notwithstanding) we ought to know better than to think it does. To whatever extent we succeed in Iraq, it becomes an ally in this war - and to whatever extent it becomes an ally, it becomes a target for the enemy.
Wednesday, April 07, 2004
[posted by jaed at 12:29 PM]A thought about proxy war
At Roger Simon's site, commenter Peony makes the following point:
Ted Kennedy is correct to the extent that Vietnam was a proxy war between China and the US and later the Soviet Union and the US. Iraq is very much a proxy war between states (Syria, Iran, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia) masked behind an ideological movement and the US.This wasn't the case a year ago, of course, but it seems largely true of the current stage of conflict. The Saddam Fedayeen seem to have quieted down after Saddam's capture; he might or might not have been directing them, but I suspect he was paying them. But the "spectaculars" aimed at Iraqi civilians have continued at about the same level, and those are Saudi tactics; and the Iraqis themselves say these are due to foreign Arabs. Now, with Sadr, the Iranians have made their move. The current situation, yes, can be analyzed largely in terms of a veiled war with Iran on the one hand and Saudi Arabia with the other.
Which raises some immediate questions. One reason proxy wars are fought is because it's too dangerous to fight the actual enemy. (See: Cold War. Direct war between two nuclear-armed powers being a bad idea, the Cold War, when hot, was fought out in other countries. See also: Vietnam, where no one thought war with China was a good idea.)
This factor can also make a proxy war impossible to win. ("Winning" the Vietnam war would necessarily have involved reuniting the country, but going right up to China's border was too dangerous again. So the Vietnam war was a holding action, continued until we decided to cut our losses. Our problem in Vietnam was not the lack of an exit strategy, but the lack of a victory strategy.)
It's dangerous to fight Iran and Saudi Arabia, and there are good strategic reasons for waiting (in the case of Iran, for the possibility of an internal Velvet Revolution; in the case of Saudi Arabia, until Iraq can take up the slack for disruption in Europe and Japan's oil supply). But is it more dangerous than what's happening now?
