Today's
Stories
April 20, 2006
Justin E.H. Smith
Doctors and Lethal Injection
April 19, 2006
P. Sainath
More Kids? Pay More for Your Water
Norman
Solomon
When Diplomacy Means War: Bait-and-Switch
on Iran
Anthony Papa
When Justice Isn't Blind: Double Standards
for the Rich and Poor in New York
Mike
Ferner
Movement Blues
Stanley Heller
The Massacre at Qana, 10 Years Later:
Still No Justice
Rifundazione
"We Defeated Berlusconi"
Christopher
Reed
Secrets of the Garden of Bliss
Alexander
Cockburn
The Pulitzer Farce
Website of
the Day
Bunker
Busters: the Movie
April 18, 2006
Paul Craig Roberts
How Safe is Your Job?
Eric
Wingerter
Washington Post vs. Venezuela
Juan Santos
What Immigrants Need to Learn from
the Black Civil Rights Movement
Greg
Weiher
The Zarqawi Gambit Revisited
Sam Bahour
Is Hamas Being Forced to Collapse?
Behzad
Yaghmaian
In the Gaze of New Orleans
Website of
the Day
The
FBI and the Jack Anderson Files
April 17, 2006
Kevin Zeese
An Interview with the First Arab-American
Senator: Jim Abourezk on Bush's Lies and the Dems' Complicity
Uri Avnery
Olmert the Fox
Norman Solomon
Why Won't Moveon.Org Oppose the Bombing
of Iran?
John Ross
A Real Day Without Mexicans?
Laila al-Haddad
The Earth is Closing in on Us: Dispatch
from Gaza
Jeffrey Blankfort
A Tale of Two Members of Congress
and the Capitol Hill Police
Website of the Day
Dixie
Chicks: Not Ready to Back Down
April
15 / 16, 2006
Jeffrey
St. Clair
How Star Wars Came to the Arctic
Ralph
Nader
Remembering Rev. William Sloan Coffin
Thaddeus
Hoffmeister
The Ghost of Shinseki: the General Who Was Sent Out to Pasture for
Being Right
Kevin Prosen
/ Dave Zirin
Privilege Meets Protest at Duke
Thomas
P. Healy
Taking Care of What We've Been Given: a Conversation with Wendell
Berry
Kristoffer
Larsson
Are 40 Percent of All Swedes Anti-Semitic?: Anatomy of a Statistical
Flim-Flam
Fred
Gardner
Continuing Medical (Marijuana) Education
Edwin Krales
New York's Katrina: the Hidden Toll of AIDS Among Blacks and the
Poor
Brian
Cloughley
Don't Blitz Iran: Risking the Ultimate Blowback
John Holt
Walking Off Vietnam with Edward Abbey's Surrogate Son
Seth
Sandronsky
What Billionaires Mean By Education Reform: Oprah, Bill Gates and
the Privatization of Public Schools
Rafael Renteria
Making It Plain About New Orleans
Michael
Ortiz Hill
In the Ashes of Lament: an Easter Meditation
William A.
Cook
An Israel Accountability Act
Gideon
Levy
Shooting Nasarin: a Story About a Little Girl
Andrew Wimmer
Stopping the Bush Juggernaut: a New Citizens Campaign
Madis
Senner
Talking Points for Easter Weekend: Jesus Didn't Lie, Mr. Bush
Michael Kuehl
The Sex Police State: Women as "Rapists" and "Pedophiles"?
Mark
Scaramella
When Even God Can't Follow His Own Commandments: the Timeless Scarcasm
of Mark Twain
Nate Mezmer
187 Proof: Living and Dying Hip-Hop
Jesse
Walker
Playlist
Poets' Basement
Engel, Laymon and Subiet
Website
of the Weekend
Pink Serenades Bush
April
14, 2006
Col.
Dan Smith
Candor or Career?: Why Few Top Military Officials
Resign on Principle
Saul Landau
Ho Chi Minh City Moves On Without Regrets
Stan
Cox
The Real Death Tax
Kevin Zeese
Hersh vs. Bush on Iran: Who Would You Believe?
Brian
McKinlay
Bad Times for Bush's Buddies
Howard Meyers
Dwarves, Knives and Freedom: Bush, Jr. is No LBJ
Ishmael
Reed
The Colored Mind Doubles: How the Media Uses Blacks
to Chastize Blacks
Website of
the Day
Asshole: a Film Strip
April
13, 2006
CounterPunch
News Service
Powell's "Bitch"?
Norman
Solomon
The Lobby and the Bulldozer
Stanley Heller
Time to Shake Up the Peace Movement
Jeff
Birkenstein
Bush and Freedom of Speech
Evelyn J.
Pringle
Not So Fast, Mr. Powell
Michael
Donnelly
The Week the Bush Administration Fell Apart
Kamran Matin
Synergism of the Neo-Cons: What's Going On In Iran?
Website
of the Day
"Don't Be Afraid of the Neo-Cons"
April
12, 2006
Vijay Prashad
Resisting Fences
Alan
Maass
The Suicide of Anthony Soltero
Dave Lindorff
Bush's Insane First Strike Policy: If You Don't Want to Get Whacked,
You'd Better Get Your Nation a Nuke ... Fast
Ron
Jacobs
Resistance: the Remedy for Fear
Ramzy Baroud
The Imminent Decline of the American Empire?
Randall
Dodd
How a Wal-Mart Bank will Harm Consumers
Missy Comley
Beattie
The Boy President Who Cried "Wolf!"
P. Sainath
The Corporate Hijack of India's Water
Website of
the Day
"The System is Irretrievably Corrupt"
April
11, 2006
Al
Krebs
Corporate Agriculture's Dirty Little Secret: Immigration
and a History of Greed
Lawrence
R. Velvel
The Gang That Couldn't Leak Straight
Sonia Nettinin
Palestinian Health Care Conditions Under Israeli Occupation
Willliam
S. Lind
The Fourth Plague Hits the Pentagon: Generals as Private Contractors
Robert Ovetz
Endangered Species in a Can: the Disappearance of Big Fish
Pratyush
Chandra
Nepalis Say, "Ya Basta!"
Grant F.
Smith
The Bush Administration's Final Surprise?
Laray
Polk
Loud, Soft, Hard, Quiet: Marching Through Dallas for Immigrant Rights
Francis Boyle
O'Reilly and the Law of the Jungle: How to Beat a Bully on His Home
Turf
José
Pertierra
A Glimpse into the Mindset of Terrorists: Posada Carriles, Orlando
Bosch and the Downing of Cubana Flight 455
Website of
the Day
The Dead Emcee Scrolls
April
10, 2006
Ralph
Nader
Tinhorn Caesar and the Spineless Democrats
Heather Gray
Atlanta and the Assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr.
Uri
Avnery
The Big Wink
Joshua Frank
Big Greens and Beltway Politics: Betting on Losers
Seth
Sandronsky
Immigration and Occupations
Michael Leonardi
The Italian Elections: "Reality is No Longer Important"
Evelyn
Pringle
Did Bush Pull a Fast One on Fitzgerald?
Tom Kerr
FoxNews Does Ward Churchill
Lucinda
Marshall
The Lynching of Cynthia McKinney
Website of
the Day
Brown Berets
April
7 -9, 2006
Alexander
Cockburn
If Only They'd Hissed Barack Obama
Jeffrey
St. Clair
The Saga of Magnequench: Outsourcing US Missile
Technology to China
Patrick
Cockburn
The War Gets Grimmer Every Day
David Vest
The Rebuking and Scorning of Cynthia McKinney
Dave
Lindorff
The Impeachment Clock Just Clicked Forward
Gary Leupp
"Ideologies of Hatred:" What Did Condi Mean?
Elaine
Cassel
The Moussaoui Trial: What Kind of Justice is This?
Saul Landau
Vietnam Diary: Hue Without Rules
James
Ridgeway
"This is Betty Ong Calling": a Short Film
Ron Jacobs
Why Iran was Right to Refuse US Money
John
Walsh
Kerry Advocates Iraqization: Too Little, Too Late
Ramzy Baroud
The US Attitude Toward Hamas: Disturbing Parallels with Nicaragua
Christopher
Brauchli
Bush Finds Democracy Has Its Limits
Todd Chretien
What the Pentagon Budget Could Buy for America
Jonathan
Scott
Javelins at the Head of the Monolith
John Bomar
What They're Saying About Bush in Arkansas
Michele
Brand
Iran, the US and the EU
Ronan Sheehan
Remember When the Irish First Met the Chinese?
Mickey
Z.
Let Us Now Praise OIL
Don Monkerud
March of the Bunglers
Michael
Dickinson
The Rich Young Man: a Miracle Play
Website
of the Weekend
The Case Against Israel and Munich: Compare and Contrast
| April
20, 2006
The Real Problem Wasn't the Execution
of the War, But the Enterprise Itself
Sweeping Up
By WILLIAM S. LIND
As
recognition of the defeat in Iraq spreads, so also does the process
of sweeping up the debris. Both civilian observers and a few voices
inside the military have begun the “lessons learned”
business, trying to figure out what led to our defeat so that we
do not repeat the same mistakes. That is the homage we owe to this
war’s dead and wounded. To the degree we do learn important
lessons, they will not have suffered in vain, even though we lost
the war.
Most
of the analyses to date are of the “if only” variety.
“If only” we had not sent the Iraqi army home, or overdone
“de-Baathification,” or installed an American satrap,
or, or, or, we would have won. The best study I have thus far seen
does not agree. “Revisions in Need of Revising: What Went
Wrong in the Iraq War,” by David C. Hendrickson and Robert
W. Tucker, puts it plainly:
Though
the critics have made a number of telling points against the conduct
of the war and the occupation, the basic problems faced by the
United States flowed from the enterprise itself, and not primarily
from mistakes in execution along the way. The most serious problems
facing Iraq and its American occupiers – “endemic
violence, a shattered state, a nonfunctioning economy, and a decimated
society” – were virtually inevitable consequences
that flowed from the breakage of the Iraqi state.
It
is of interest, and a hopeful sign, that this blunt assessment was
published by the U.S. Army War College’s Strategic Studies
Institute.
One
target the study hits squarely is the American assumption, still
regnant in the Pentagon, that superior technology guarantees our
Second Generation forces victory over technologically primitive
Fourth Generation enemies. Hendrickson and Tucker write,
It
is now clear that the insurgency enjoys advantages on its own
terrain that are just as formidable as the precision-guided weaponry
deployed with devastating effect by the United States. Because
U.S. forces can destroy everything they can see, they had no difficulty
in marching into Baghdad and forcing the resistance underground.
Once underground, however, the resistance acquired a set of advantages
that have proved just as effective as America’s formidable
firepower. Iraq’s military forces had no answer to smart
bombs, but the United States has no answer – at least no
good answer – to car bombs.
Recognition
that war is not dominated by technology but by human factors is
an important counter to what will inevitably be claims by the U.S.
military that it performed brilliantly; it was the politicians who
lost the war (the Vietnam War claim repeated). As the authors note,
this reflects an overly narrow definition of war:
Other
lessons are that the military services must digest again that “war
is an instrument of policy.” The profound neglect given to
re-establishing order in the military’s prewar planning and
the facile assumption that operations critical to the overall success
of the campaign were “somebody else’s business”
reflect a shallow view of warfare. Military planners should consider
the evidence that occupation duties were carried out in a fashion
– with the imperatives of “force protection” overriding
concern for Iraqi civilian casualties – that risked sacrificing
the broader strategic mission of U.S. forces.
Nor could the Iraq war have been won if we had sent more troops.
More troops would not have helped us deal with the problems of bad
intelligence, lack of cultural awareness, and the insistence on
using tactics that alienated the population. As the authors state,
“The assumption that the United States would have won the
hearts and minds of the population had it maintained occupying forces
of 300,000 instead of 140,000 must seem dubious in the extreme.”
The
most important point in this excellent study is precisely the one
that Washington will be most reluctant to learn: “Rather that
‘do it better next time,’ a better lesson is ‘don’t
do it at all.’” What we require is a “national
security strategy (I would say grand strategy) in which there is
no imperative to fight the kind of war that the United States has
fought in Iraq.”
For
most of America’s history, we followed that kind of grand
strategy, namely a defensive grand strategy. If the fallout from
the defeat in Iraq includes our return to a defensive grand strategy,
then we will indeed be able to say that we have learned this war’s
most important lesson.
William S. Lind, expressing his own personal opinion,
is Director for the Center for Cultural Conservatism for the Free
Congress Foundation.
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