Small Wars Journal

How To or How Not To End the War

Mon, 03/31/2008 - 11:42am
The Smart Way Out of a Foolish War by Zbigniew Brzezinski, Washington Post, 30 March 2008.

... The case for U.S. disengagement from combat is compelling in its own right. But it must be matched by a comprehensive political and diplomatic effort to mitigate the destabilizing regional consequences of a war that the outgoing Bush administration started deliberately, justified demagogically and waged badly. (I write, of course, as a Democrat; while I prefer Sen. Barack Obama, I speak here for myself.)

The contrast between the Democratic argument for ending the war and the Republican argument for continuing is sharp and dramatic. The case for terminating the war is based on its prohibitive and tangible costs, while the case for "staying the course" draws heavily on shadowy fears of the unknown and relies on worst-case scenarios. President Bush's and Sen. John McCain's forecasts of regional catastrophe are quite reminiscent of the predictions of "falling dominoes" that were used to justify continued U.S. involvement in Vietnam. Neither has provided any real evidence that ending the war would mean disaster, but their fear-mongering makes prolonging it easier...

How Not to End the War by Max Boot, Washington Post, 31 March 2008.

Why am I not reassured by Zbigniew Brzezinski's breezy assurance in Sunday's Outlook section that "forecasts of regional catastrophe" after an American pullout from Iraq are as overblown as similar predictions made prior to our pullout from South Vietnam? Perhaps because the fall of Saigon in 1975 really was a catastrophe. Another domino fell at virtually the same time -- Cambodia.

Estimates vary, but a safe bet is that some two million people died in the killing fields of Cambodia. In South Vietnam, the death toll was lower, but hundreds of thousands were consigned to harsh "reeducation" camps where many perished, and hundreds of thousands more risked their lives to flee as "boat people."

The consequences of the U.S. defeat rippled outward, emboldening communist aggression from Angola to Afghanistan. Iran's willingness to hold our embassy personnel hostage -- something that Brzezinski should recall -- was probably at least in part a reaction to America's post-Vietnam malaise. Certainly the inability of the U.S. armed services to rescue those hostages was emblematic of the "hollow," post-Vietnam military. It took us more than a decade to recover from the worst military defeat in our history...

Comments

Bill Keller (not verified)

Mon, 03/31/2008 - 10:40pm

We have transformed a civil society into chaos.

While neither alternative is attractive, Iraq will have to recreate a society probably after a period of internal blood letting.

It is just the reality of it. Zbig and Max can lecture all they want, it is very soothing, but we have used the best lessons of the Indian Wars from over 100 years ago to create a reservation in the Persian Gulf that looks surprisingly like the West Bank, Gaza or Somalia. (Zbig and Max are in the Diplomatic American Idol competition initial round.)

Since we don't want to spend a fraction of the Wall Street or Upper Manhattan takeouts to place a triple surge there to restore it properly, it really is not worth the Main or South Street blood either.

Brzezinski is a goddamn hypocrite; he is the genius and inspiration behind 9/11 and the GWOT. Lets all blame the neocons so everyone can vote for Obama, right? You idiot, they are two sides of the same coin! His fellow CFR authors of the PNAC document are mere scapegoats for a <a href="http://www.villagevoice.com/news/0137,ridgeway,28294,1.html">globalist agenda</a>. Don't believe me? Read <a href="http://sandiego.indymedia.org/media/2006/10/119973.pdf">The Grand Chessboard: American Primacy and Its Geostrategic Imperatives</a> and cue in on page 911....er ah 211. You are being fooled! Brzezinski was the mastermind behind the formation of Al Qaeda during the Carter Administration (<a href="http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&ie=ISO-8859-1&q=brzezinski+Le+Nouvel… admited this publicly</a>) and is the mastermind behind fabricating terror to drive the masses into accepting preemptive war, something he calls "imperial mobilization".

This is nothing new to him. <a href="http://www.geocities.com/RepresentativePress/binLaden-Brzezinski.gif">B…; covertly supported the islamic revolution to create an "arch of crisis" throughout Africa, the Middle East, and Central Asia to push the soviet "athiests" out and protect oil rich territority. Had the mullahs been suppressed and US embassy not fallen during his watch, the Soviet army would not have been forced to interven in Afghanistan to restore the puppet government. "That secret operation was an excellent idea. It had the effect of drawing the Russians into the Afghan trap and you want me to regret it?", he said. Maybe this explains "the inability of the U.S. armed services to rescue those hostages".

<a href="http://www.wearechange.org/2008/03/we-are-change-confronts-zbigniew.htm… need to wake up!
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Elvis Elvisberg (not verified)

Mon, 03/31/2008 - 2:12pm

Capitalist theorist Adam Smith:<blockquote>In great empires the people who live in the capital, and in the provinces remote from the scene of action, feel, many of them, scarce any inconveniency from the war; but enjoy, at their ease, the amusement of reading in the newspapers the exploits of their own fleets and armies. To them this amusement compensates the small difference between the taxes which they pay on account of the war, and those which they had been accustomed to pay in time of peace. They are commonly dissatisfied with the return of peace, which puts an end to their amusement, and to a thousand visionary hopes of conquest and national glory from a longer continuance of the war.</blockquote>

Does Max Boot really believe that spending another 50,000 lives or more in pacifying a Vietnam that didn't want us there would have been a better outcome for the US? That we'd have averted the Iran hostage crisis? (Which, terrifying as it was, was a strategic setback only because our client dictator in an oil-rich country was overthrown by a hostile government).

What is the strategic rationale for claiming that it took a decade for the US to recover from Vietnam, and that continuing the war would have made things better? (And recall, the Khmer Rouge was <i>overthrown</i> by Vietnam after we left. "Another domino"?!?).

Boot watches international relations the way a Yankees fan watches baseball or a six-year-old watches <i>GI Joe</i>. He cheers from afar for his side to beat their side.

The only way that it took a decade to recover from Vietnam-- presumably with the invasion of Grenada- was that Max Boot's feelings were hurt.

To avoid further mental trauma, he urges that <strike>George Steinbrenner spend another $50 million a year to improve the Yankees' pitching</strike> the US spend an infinite amount of time and resources in Iraq.

After all, what is it to him?

There is no ideal outcome in Iraq. Hopefully, in 30 years, it will look like Vietnam does today. Boot's refusal to grapple with reality on the ground and his ahistorical analogizing are consequences of his living in a video-game version of reality.