Isn’t He Adorable?
From the Oregonian Letters to the Editor Page:
It is time to end the war. With the liberal left assaulting our troops verbally rather than supporting them, it is time to put an end to this conflict, through the only means that wins a war: total resolve.
Our 21st century politically correct tactics are failing against an enemy that uses the oldest weapon in the book — guerrilla warfare. They know the land and use it to their advantage.
In 1864, in an effort to break the Confederates’ resolve in the Civil War, Gen. William T. Sherman began the March to the Sea, destroying a swath of land about a mile wide from Atlanta to Savannah, Ga. It worked. Atlanta fell to the Union army.
So why are we trying to tiptoe around this? It’s time to take the march and clean out the terrorist insurgency in Iraq. By taking a 21st century “March to the Sea” through Iraq, and wiping out anything and everything that stands to support the insurgents, we would end this conflict in one-quarter of the time that we would need by fighting the war we are now.
We outnumber the insurgents, so if we commit to total warfare, even though our losses would be higher than they are currently, their losses would be higher still and even more critical, and we would break their backs.
The war would be over in a year, and Iraq would be able to safely establish a full working government that would not be challenged by men with guns.
RYAN BERGER Molalla
I suppose the future of warfare is just to annhilate every person and burn every piece of land within the nation you’re fighting with, for, to, against, (what is the proper preposition in this instance).
To a large degree, I personally don’t have the foggiest how one proceeds in the Great War We Shouldn’t Have Entered, but which I for don’t want to face the consequences of the Worst Possible Outcome Within. Except for one thing, which apparently pops up in an editorial once a year (David Ignatius at the Washington Post wrote it last year; The American Prospect has it — at least in blog-form– this year). I guess I could hammer it home by mentioning it at every opportunity I end up on this discussion…
The Iraqis… don’t have reliable power. They don’t have reliable light. They don’t have air conditioning. This is for the third straight summer. It’s hot over there in the summer, I hear. It also gets dark at night.
Every so often on Raed in the Middle’s Blog’o’ Schaudenfruedia, you’ll get a picture of … say… a college student at one of the triumphantly (re)opened Iraqi colleges (by way of the happy “We’re making great progress despite what the liberal media is telling us” mass-emails) trying to study by candlelight.
It’s … maybe a bigger deal and a bigger grievance than the abstractions of democracy and freedom (even psuedo-puppet democracy and freedom by gunpoint.)
Something which always annoyed me: Iraq. Not Afghanistan. Did not have a third world economy until the 1990s.
The US Occupational Authority should have been able to figure out how to give them reliable electricity sometime, budgeted somewhere in the frequent $87 Billion supplementals we’re sending for the ongoing effort… oh I don’t know… before last summer.
But perhaps I’m talking up my ass, like the letter writer to the editor is.