On Dec 11, 2004, at 10:33 PM, Dan Minette wrote:
From: "Warren Ockrassa" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Let's see. For starters, don't let old hawks like Rummy and Cheney grab
the reins. Um, don't assume that US forces will be welcomed by the
natives. Never assume you've got a situation in hand before you've
completely controlled a territory. Don't EVER assume the entire world
wants to be just like the US. Never try to mix conquest with parsimony.
That's a start, I think. I find it surprising you've overlooked the
above; to me it's glaringly obvious.
But, the question is why it is glaringly obvious to you and not the professionals who are working in the fields of political science and history.
Wow, when you remove the arrogance, belligerence, fatuousness and pomposity, the question suddenly becomes reasonable.
I honestly don't know why the lessons of history manage to go unlearned, Dan. I only know that they do.
Given that I don't know any of Gautam's academic background, I'm not sure what degree he might hold nor what significance it carries in this discussion.
And going through your points, I'm not sure how many of them could possibly
be lessons from Viet Nam. For example, how could one call Robert McNamara
an old war dog?
I didn't, and wasn't referring to him anyway. I referred specifically to Rummy and Cheney.
I wasn't comparing McNamara to them; rather, I was indicating that their hawkish tendencies and failures in previous administrations should dang well have been warnings not to employ them any more. But it seems that, in every level of government employment, nothing succeeds like failure.
He was 44 when he took the job of secretary of Defense,
having spent his working life as a professional manager. The context of
Viet Nam must be the proxy war with the Soviet Union, and the view that
they were trying to win through the sponsorship of "wars of national
liberation." So, I cannot see why you seem to assume that it was about
conquest.
Both Nam and Iraq are about nothing but conquest. 30 years ago it was about overthrowing Communism; now it's about a "war on terror"; but the subtests of BOTH conflicts were "liberating the people" of those nations, whether they wanted to be liberated or not.
The terminology has changed but the focus hasn't, and unfortunately the techniques haven't changed either. So why anyone would be surprised that we ran into the same problems after applying the same tactics to at least partially similar situations is something I just don't understand.
I also don't see why you assume that the US thought everyone would love us automatically.
In which conflict? Iraq, when we were told -- by Rummy -- that our soldiers would be met with open arms and flowers? Or Nam, when if it weren't for those stubborn VC holdouts, we might have "liberated" the entire country ever so much sooner?
In both cases the US was the occupying force, in both cases the US met much heavier resistance than anticipated, and in both cases the US was caught off guard. I don't know why holders of advanced degrees can't see the parallels. They seem pretty plain to me.
The tendency to believe that one has found simple, easy solutions to
problems that very intelligent people in the field all miss is one that I
have difficulty with.
But Dan, for every expert you can mention who was caught flatfooted by Iraq, I'm pretty sure I can find another in the same field who was predicting disaster from the beginning. For instance, we had US armed forces commanders predicting *precisely* the series of events we're seeing now, and these men were ostensibly students of military history to a depth at least as great as anyone you can cite.
It's not that I always believe the consensus is
right. There are times when I've gone another way, and then had people
following me a few years later. But, as a scientist about 30 years older
than me told me "the people who came before you weren't stupid." If you
solution assumes they are idiots, you, not they, are probably missing
something.
I don't assume anyone's an idiot without some evidence to support the determination. I'm aware that others who came before me were not stupid. That's why it's utterly baffling to me that we are getting some serious national deja vu out of Iraq now.
I've found that to be pretty valid over the years. Obviously, history and
political science are not physics, but I think that real scholarship is
possible. So, when Gautam indicates that there is a wide group of scholars
who agree that the "lessons from Viet Nam" are not trivial to determine,
then one should come up with strong arguments for why the generally agreed
upon facts really aren't as they seem.
I don't know why I have to perennially cite evidence for OPINION in the Court of Gautam the Almighty. But if he's incapable of looking at nightly news reports and drawing conclusions based on them, particularly if he's got a background in history, it seems that his view, not mine, is the indefensible one.
Now if Gautam wishes to address this issue further he's welcome to do so, but I won't carry on a discussion by proxy.
-- Warren Ockrassa, Publisher/Editor, nightwares Books http://books.nightwares.com/ Current work in progress "The Seven-Year Mirror" http://www.nightwares.com/books/ockrassa/Flat_Out.pdf
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