Iraq: We Are In Occupation Mode
Permanently. . .
Not to be confused with pacification.
Not to be confused with pacification.
posted by Vigilante at 1/14/2008 07:20:00 AM
Monday, January 14, 2008
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7 Moderated Comments:
Spot on Vigil!
Pershing pacification dogma once again.
America's occupation mode and pacification dogma are hinged on a deeply rooted American cultura psyche which Philip Blond writes about in the First Post.
While Blond writes about a touted Europe-US partnership alliance (at least in Europe) to form a common block against China, the underlying US cultural psyche that he writes about, which he believes will make it impossible for such an alliance to work, it also has much to do with why a highly conservative America under Bush is on a Pershing mode in Iraq:
"America, despite its vision and idealism, remains a deeply nationalist and supremacist nation - and such countries do not and cannot form a union of equals."
Britain some 200 years ago...
Sighhhh....We are fighting a war, not occupying a country. We are there, and I agree we should not be, but being there is incidental to the war. It is the War in Iraq, not the Occupation of Iraq. I know we will continue to fight over this Vigil, but I am as committed as you are to occupation as I am to war. Calling it what it is, a war, does not in any way play into the hands of the Neo-Con Nutters occupying the Whack House. It is what it is.
dudn't look too much like a war to me and it certainly dudn't look like pacification, either. We've lost 16 KIA so far this year. I'd have to call in an ineffectual, undermanned, indefinite and resented occupation. That's what I'd have to call it.
What we have here is not war where armies contest against each other to take land. This is a war against Iraqi people. It's called counter-insurgeny (COIN)
The goal of the insurgent is not to defeat the occupying military force; that is almost always an impossible task. Rather, they seek through a constant campaign of sneak attacks to inflict continuous casualties upon their superior enemy forces and thereby over time demoralize the occupying forces and erode political support for the occupation in the homeland of the occupying forces. It is a simple strategy of repeated pin-pricks and bleedings that, though small in proportion to the total force strength, sap the will of the occupier to continue the fight.
So long as the insurgency maintains popular support, it will retain all of its strategic advantages of mobility, invisibility, and legitimacy in its own eyes and the eyes of the people. So long as this is the situation, an insurgency essentially cannot be defeated by regular forces.
A November Pew Charitable Trust poll found that nearly half of Americans agreed that the security situation in Iraq had improved, that finding had no impact on their determination that the U.S. should withdraw from Iraq as soon as possible. Some 75 percent of Democrats wanted troops home with all due speed, while 55 percent of independents felt that way. Even among Republicans, 30 percent want the troops out ASAP.
I like that Messenger. As a matter of fact I am quite comfortable with your on-point analysis. Thanks.
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