Killing People and Breaking Things

You know, I am really sick and tired of the media and the left’s bitching about events in Iraq. No matter what happens, no matter what we do, there is always someone with a TV camera or a pen and paper willing to produce some shrill complaint and some hysterical analysis. Hannibal and Napoleon would be reduced to mere footnotes in history if they had been forced to prosecute their military campaigns under today’s rules.

Unfortunately, President Bush and our military leaders have allowed outside opinions to dictate the way the war is fought—all half-assed and touchy-feely. In the end, in many respects, the results should have been predicted. Can you say impotent and ineffective?

What kills me is that after screwing around with the process, these same forces and individuals (see Kennedy, Ted) have the audacity to sit back and complain about the results and not accept any responsibility for the outcome.

I think that it has been well proven that we cannot fight and win a war based on how the strategy and intimate details of the battles are PERCEIVED by civilians and the idiot media/politicians back home. What the hell do civilians and politicians know about war? Maybe it is genetic or a contagious disease, but even war hero/POW John McCain has let thirty odd years of politics dull his judgment when it comes to addressing military action.

Because of political correctness, they hardly teach civilians anything about past wars in history class any more. Most high school seniors can’t tell you whether General Cornwallis fought in the Revolutionary War or marched with Sherman through Atlanta in 1864.

Right or wrong, we chose to go to war in Iraq. Fifty years ago, before the days of CNN and the involvement of legions of “imbedded” reporters, before the two terms of the Bill Clinton Presidency and the resulting 40% reduction in active duty troop levels, we would have fought this war quite differently.

The war would have been prosecuted via a massive ground invasion, supported by an equally massive level of air support. Thousands of Americans would have probably been killed in the first week. Hundreds of thousands of civilians would have been displaced and tens of thousands of innocents would have been killed and wounded in the process. Remember the scenes from Paris in 1942 and 1943?

The Coalition forces would have ground their way through all of Iraq. They would have cut off the borders and relentlessly pursued the Iraqi Army and Saddam’s vaulted elite Republican Guard and security forces and we would have not stopped shooting until they were all dead or captured.

Next would have been Iran and Syria. They would have surrendered or faced the same fate.

But Nooooooo, not in 2003-2004. Can’t do it like that. We started out correctly, allowing our high tech Air Force to eliminate the Iraqi command and communications infrastructure. After “softening up” the battle field, everything else was done wrong.

We should have never allowed the Iraqi military to toss off their uniforms and meld into the civilian population. We should have made it extremely expensive for the civilian population to hide the military and later the so-called “insurgents.”

By controlling the borders, we should have made it impossible for the non-Iraqi “insurgents” to enter the country in the first place. But we didn’t.

So now we have to “dance with the one what brought us.” There is an election scheduled for tomorrow. The Iraqis seem to want to vote.

Ted Kennedy, his beloved Democratic Party, and the main stream media are apparently afraid that they will.

For that reason alone, I believe the election is a good idea.

Good Luck Iraq.