Sie teilt aus wie Michael Moore, nur viel schöner...

[karaya]

Ein Artikel über Ann Coulter, Star der amerikanischen Rechten, aus der FAZ.

FAZ

Ann Coulters Kolumnen

:lol:

Klasse. So was fehlt bei uns.

[Hollowpoint]

Stimmt!

Sie ist viel hübscher als Michael "The Hutt" Moore und hat ein viiiiiel höheres Niveau!

Ein Schandmaul der Extraklasse!!! 8) :mrgreen: :mrgreen: :mrgreen:

GRUß

[Guest MarcDW]

Ich habe die Gute schon ein paar mal im Fernsehn gesehen und da hat Sie einen recht gescheiten Eindruck gemacht.

M. Moron ist doch ein echtes Kotzmittel. Schade das er nicht in Frankreich geblieben ist, nach Canada kann er ja leider mitlerweile nicht mehr.

[Hoss]

Schade das er nicht in Frankreich geblieben ist, nach Canada kann er ja leider mitlerweile nicht mehr.

Persona non grata ?

[Klaus12]

Ann Coulter

Klasse. So was fehlt bei uns.

das meinst du doch nicht etwa im Ernst   ? ? ?

[karaya]

das meinst du doch nicht etwa im Ernst ? ? ?

Doch schon. Wenn bei uns die Sozialisten Menschen mit Heuschrecken vergleichen und zur gefälligen Bedienung für Terroristen schwarze Listen mit Namen zur eventuellen Liquidation veröffentlichen, fehlt offensichtlich jemand, der mit den gleichkalibrigen verbalen Geschütz dagegenhält.

Gut, ich tue das hier, aber ich bin unbedeutend. Ansonsten gibt es aber in Deutschland kaum jemand der dem roten Gesockse mit den entsprechenden Mitteln Paroli bieten kann.

Die Leitartikel der FAZ sind fast immer richtig, aber viel zu vornehm und zu zurückhaltend. So ist man sozialistischen Demagogen a la Münte noch nie beigekommen.

Da braucht es gröbere Mittel. Nett ist ja auch, wie die immer wehleidig losheulen, wenn mit gleicher Münze geantwortet wird. :lol:

[Klaus12]

 

 

na gut, wenn du sowas ernst nimmst dann habe ich mich doch etwas in der Beurteilung deiner Person vertan ...

Ann Coulter weiß, wie es geht, zumindest in den Vereinigten Staaten: ?Ich finde, wir sollten Nordkorea sofort mit Atomwaffen angreifen, um dem Rest der Welt eine Warnung zu verpassen. Bumm!? sagte sie in einem Interview mit dem ?New York Observer? Anfang dieses Jahres.

oder:

Sie tritt gern im schwarzen Minirock auf und gibt Dinge von sich wie: ?Die Behauptung, daß (der Prophet) Mohammed ein von Dämonen besessener Kinderschänder war, ist keine Attacke. Sie ist ein Fakt.?

 

 ? ? ? ? ? ?

 

 

und ob das schöner ist als MM wage ich auch zu bezweifeln, aber eben jedem seine Meinung

[karaya]

Die Behauptung, daß (der Prophet) Mohammed ein von Dämonen besessener Kinderschänder war, ist keine Attacke. Sie ist ein Fakt.?

Ob er von Dämonen besessen war, lassen wir mal dahingestellt sein. Daß er aber ein Kinderficker war, kannst Du im Koran nachlesen. Seine letzte Frau hat er nämlich geheiratet als die 9 Jahre alt war. Tatsache.

Im übrigen würde ich mir an Stelle des amerikanischen

Präsidenten auch sorgfältig überlegen, ob ich nicht einen thermonuklearen Präventivschlag gegen Nordkorea oder den Iran führen würde.

Rein strategisch gesehen ist es doch wohl vollkommener Irrsinn abzuwarten, bis die Gegner die entsprechenden Fähigkeiten auch haben und zuerst losschlagen.

Wenn Du eine geladene Waffe in der Hand hast und jemandem gegenüberstehst, der dich umbringen will, wartest Du dann ruhig ab, wie der sein Magazin aufmunitioniert, die Waffe in Anschlag bringt, durchlädt, entsichert und auf Dich zielt?

Ich würde das eher nicht tun.

[Hollowpoint]

Och, da muß man nicht gleich thermonuklear reinschlagen!

Ein paar hundert "Daisy-Cutters" und "Bunker-Busters" tun's auch! 8)

Die nuklearen Produktionsstätten sind ja bekannt! :mrgreen:

GRUß

[mühleberg]

Die Amis je nachdem können halt sehr direkt in der Meinung sein. Wer schon mal die Jerry Springer Show gesehen hat, wird dies wahrscheinlich verstehen, dass dort teilweise mit ganz anderen"Bandagen" gekämpft wird als bei uns. Auch der politische Still, Kultur usw, dürfte sich zum deutschen politischen Still unterscheiden. Also wenn ich mir denke, dass vor laufenden Kameras in einer Gerichtsshow (Judge Judy) Menschen gerichtlich verurteilt werden können und zwar wirklich richtig nicht gespielt, wie in den Sat 1 Gerichtsshows Richterin Barbara Salesch, Richter Hold, wundert es mich in Amerika über gewisse Gebräuche und Sitten dort, eigentlich wenig.

[karaya]

Nun, vermutlich werden die USA von ihren Optionen keinen Gebrauch machen. Das ist eben ein Zeichen der Humanität, die Demokratien strukturell zu eigen ist.

Ich finde das letztlich auch gut so, obwohl es uns allen den Kopf kosten kann.

Für demokratische Nationen, in denen der Wert des einzelnen Lebens etwas zählt, ist es eben nur die letzte Option ein paar Millionen Nordkoreaner oder Iraner ins Jenseits zu befördern. Umgekehrt würden die das allerdings garantiert anders sehen und das darf man nie vergessen.

[rugerclub]

ich liebe Leute die sagen was sie denken..

Zumal, wenn man sich die islamischen Fundamentalisten bei Ihren Hassparolen und Fahnenverbrennungen anderer Nationen ansieht, jemand mal eindeutig Stellung bezieht.

Bei uns währe das undenkbar, oder könnt ihr euch eine Demonstration unter dem Brandenburger Tor vorstellen, bei der die palästinänsische Flagge verbrannt wird?

Da fand ich die Aktion mit dem Koran und der Toilette doch schon recht "witzig".

[Mitr]

Da fand ich die Aktion mit dem Koran und der Toilette doch schon recht "witzig".

Aber nicht zu Ende gebracht. Sonst hätte man gleich noch einen Mullah hintenach runtergespült.

Mitr

[Guest MarcDW]

...vor laufenden Kameras in einer Gerichtsshow (Judge Judy) Menschen gerichtlich verurteilt werden...

Ist auch nur eine Show!

Von den Gerichtsshows gibt es mitlerweile auch mindestens drei von diesen Bloedshows!

Allerdings sollte man sich wenn man in den USA ist ruhig mal in so ein Gerichtssaal setzen und zuhoeren.

Ist schon ganz lustig!

[Fenris Wolf]

Da fand ich die Aktion mit dem Koran und der Toilette doch schon recht "witzig".

Entschuldige bitte, aber solche Aktionen sind totaler Bullshit! :evil:

Sie kosten nämlich Soldaten im Irak und in Afghanistan das Leben. Durch solche Meldungen, die durch die arabischen Medien und in den Moscheen verbreitet werden, schaffen es die Terroristen erst neue Selbstmordattentäter, Leute die IODs deponieren und Unterstützer zu rekrutieren.

Fenris

P.S.

Also wenn ich mir denke, dass vor laufenden Kameras in einer Gerichtsshow (Judge Judy) Menschen gerichtlich verurteilt werden können und zwar wirklich richtig nicht gespielt, wie in den Sat 1 Gerichtsshows Richterin Barbara Salesch, Richter Hold, wundert es mich in Amerika über gewisse Gebräuche und Sitten dort, eigentlich wenig.

Die ersten Folgen von Barbara Salesch waren bei uns auch echt. Dann ist den Sendern (bzw. dem Sender SAT1) klar geworden, dass fiktive Fälle interessanter sind als echte Fälle.

[Fenris Wolf]

Was sollen die USA denn machen? Den ganzen Iran in einen Parkplatz verwandeln?

Ein Angriff gegen die iranischen Atomanlagen, bzw. die iranische Regierung würde zu einem Krieg führen. Der erste Schritt wäre wohl ein Einmarsch des Iran im Süd-Irak (viele Schiiten). Dagegen wäre die jetztige Lage Kinderfasching!

Und dann gleichzeitig gegen Nordkorea? Wenn die dortigen Befehlshaber einen Angriff gegen den Süden starten würden hätten die USA momentan nichts entgegenzusetzten. Es sind schlicht und einfach zu viele Truppen im Irak und Afghanistan gebunden. Von den Auswirkungen auf die Weltwirtschaft ganz zu schweigen (Samsung, etc.).

Fenris (Nuke the Whales Now!)

[promillo]

Im 2. WK war es imho Yamamoto, der nach Pearl sagte, dass Japan mit den USA einen schlafenden Riesen geweckt habe.

Wie das ausging, wissen wir

Die USA haben nach 9/11 gerade einmal geblinzelt und zwei Despotien sind wie Kehricht hinweggefegt worden.

Was kann erst erreicht werden, wenn sie wirklich AUFWACHEN?

Denn gegen die USA sind sowohl Hungerdiktaturen wie Mordkorea als auch islamfaschistische Mittelaltertheokratien wie der Iran (demnaechst wieder Persien) nichts als Zwergmuecken.

Let's roll!

[promillo]

Aber zum eigentlichen Thema kann ich da auch noch ein paar Worte loswerden, bevors ins Bett geht.

Als oller Neo-Con lese ich immer mal gerne Annes Homepage und Artikel.

Herrlich pointiert, manchmal etwas krass, aber die Richtung stimmt schon mal. Ich mag einfach irgendwie ihren Stil (Was die, die mich kennen, vermutlich nicht ueberraschen wird).

[Guest MarcDW]

...hätten die USA momentan nichts entgegenzusetzten...

Personell ist die Lage derzeit zwar nicht besonders gut (dank des Herrn Clinton), aber glaube mir, dieser elkelige Drecksack in Nord Korea wuerde es nicht einmal merken wenn die Cruise Missle durch seine Palasttuer fliegt und Ihn vor den Schoepfer bringt.

Auf laengere Sicht waere das eine kurze Geschichte!

[promillo]

ich liebe Leute die sagen was sie denken..

Zumal, wenn man sich die islamischen Fundamentalisten bei Ihren Hassparolen und Fahnenverbrennungen anderer Nationen ansieht, jemand mal eindeutig Stellung bezieht....

Da fand ich die Aktion mit dem Koran und der Toilette doch schon recht "witzig".

Wobei das ja leider momentan so ausssieht, als wenns ne Ente war.

Schade.

Wobei mich das Geweine der Mullahversteher genervt hat. Was fuer eine kranke Welt, in der man den Gegner im Krieg nicht mal mehr ein wenig foppen darf?!? Ob sich auch jemand aufgeregt haette, wenn GIs sich 1945 mit "Mein Kampf" den A...abgewischt und das "Werk" dann im Klo entsorgt haetten?

Auf der JWR-Seite gibts einen Artikel, der sich mit diesen duemmlichen PC-Ruecksichtnahmen im Krieg gegen den Islamfaschismus kritisch auseinandersetzt. Ist zwar etwas aelter, aber passt gut.

http://jewishworldreview.com/0604/crosby_2004_05_24.php3

[Fenris Wolf]

Beim "schlafenden Riesen" hat du völlig recht. Kein Land auf dieser Erde kann es mit den USA aufnehmen wenn sie auf Kriegswirtschaft umstellen und die Wehrpflicht wieder einführen. Die Auswirkungen auf die amerikanische Wirtschaft (und zwangsläufig auch auf die Weltwirtschaft) wären allerdings verheerend. Und das ist den Leuten in Washington auch sehr wohl bewußt!

Aber:

Irak:

Der Irakischen Regierung und den US Truppen entgleitet mehr und mehr die Kontrolle. Zeitweise waren komplette Städte und Regionen nicht mehr unter ihrer Kontrolle. Wie in Faludscha hetzen "Task Forces" von Brennpunkt zu Brennpunkt. Man reagiert anstatt zu agieren.

Ein Einmarsch der iranischen Armee im Süd-Irak, unterstützt von iranischen Spezialkräften könnte die US Streitkräfte nur wenig entgegensetzen. Natürlich würde die Airforce und Marineflieger den iranischen Panzerdivisionen schwere Verluste zufügen. Aber gegen geschickt agierende Spezialkräfte nutzen Jagdbomber nur sehr wenig, dazu braucht man "Boots on the ground" und daran fehlt es im Moment.

Davon abgesehen, die iranische Jugend steht den Mulas eher ablehend gegenüber. Ein Angriff auf den Iran würde aber alle gegen die Angreifer mobilisieren! Auch die gemäßigten Studenten würden gegen den Agressor in den Krieg ziehen um ihre Heimat zu verteidigen!

Korea:

Um den Handel mit Süd-Korea praktisch zum erliegen zu bringen braucht es nicht einmal einen Einmarsch. Soul liegt in Reichweite der Nord-Koreanischen Artillerie. Ein Despot wie Kim der mit dem Rücken an der Wand steht wird wahrscheinlich keine Skrupel mehr haben.

Fenris

[Fenris Wolf]

Zur Lage im Irak hier mal die Thesen des israelische Militärhistoriker van Creveld in einem Vortrag "Über die Terrorismusbekämpfung" kurz vor Weihnachten auf dem 8. Berliner Kolleg des Instituts für Staatspolitik (IfS) zum Thema Sicherheitspolitik.

Als Beispiel für den ersten der beiden von ihm für möglich gehaltenen Wege führte er den Antiterrorkampf in Nordirland an. Nach Beginn der Terroristenoffensive im Jahre 1969 kam es dort zur Eskalation, gipfelnd 1972 - dem Jahr des "Bloody Sunday" - mit rund tausend Anschlägen. Danach dachten die Briten um. Der Kampf wurde von nun an strikt innerhalb des Gesetzes geführt. Man beschränkte sich auf den Schutz der Bevölkerung, verzichtete auf Repressalien und den Einsatz schwerer Waffen. Letztlich war diese Strategie von Erfolg gekrönt, auch wenn der Preis hoch war. Während sonst im Terrorkampf weit mehr Terroristen getötet werden als Angehörige der regulären Kräfte, war es in diesem Fall genau umgekehrt. Die Verluste der Briten waren mit mehr als tausend Mann höher als die der Terroristen, von denen fast vierhundert getötet wurden. Es gelang mit der Deeskalationsstrategie, den Terrorismus auszutrocknen, dem allmählich der Nachwuchs fehlte. Wie van Creveld schilderte, ließ sich die britische Armee nicht zu Verbrechen provozieren. Diese Strategie erfordere allerdings eine zu eiserner Disziplin fähige Truppe.

Den zweiten - offenkundig skrupellosen - Weg der effektiven Terrorbekämpfung veranschaulichte van Creveld am Beispiel des Vorgehens des syrischen Diktators Assad gegen einen Aufstand der radikal-islamischen Muslimbruderschaft im Jahre 1982. Ohne vorzügliche Truppen und funktionierende Nachrichtendienste ausgestattet, ließ er die Stadt Hama als Zentrum des Aufstands von einer Division umstellen und angreifen, wobei bis zu 30.000 Menschen niedergemetzelt wurden. Bei dieser Strategie gelte es so hart zuzuschlagen, daß nicht ein zweites Mal zugeschlagen werden müsse. Entschuldigungen seien fehl am Platz, vielmehr müsse die Notwendigkeit der getroffenen Maßnahmen gerechtfertigt werden. Die Ausführung sollte anderen zu überlassen werden, da dies im Falle des Scheiterns noch die Möglichkeit zur Distanzierung offenlasse. Assads Ansehen habe durch sein Vorgehen nicht gelitten - so van Creveld.

Der Referent zog das Fazit, daß ein Scheitern im Kampf gegen den Terror immer die Folge mangelnden Mutes sei, die eine oder die andere dieser beiden Strategien konsequent "durchzuziehen". Dies zeige sich aktuell wieder im Irak, wo er den Amerikanern Unentschiedenheit vorwarf.

Und hier der komplette Vortrag in Englisch:

On Counterinsurgency

By

Martin van Creveld

This paper falls into four parts. The first, "How We Got to Where We are", is a brief history of insurgency since 1941 and of the repeated failures in dealing with it. The second, "Two Methods", focuses on President Asad's suppression of the uprising at Hama in 1983 on the one hand and on British operations in Northern Ireland on the other, presenting them as extreme case studies in dealing with counterinsurgency. The third, "On Power and Compromises", craws the lessons from the methods just presented and goes on to explain how, by vacillating between them, most counterinsurgent have guaranteed their own failure. Finally, part four of the paper presents my conclusions.

1. How We Got to Where We Are.

At a time when much of the world is either engaging in counter-insurgency, preparing to do so, or writing about it, something is rotten in the kingdom of Denmark. Just when the rot began is not entirely clear, but a good starting point is provided by the 6th of April 1941. On that day the German Wehrmacht, assisted by Italian, Hungarian and Bulgarian formations, launched its offensive against Yugoslavia. Opening with a ferocious bombardment of Belgrade that left much of the city in ruins, the attack developed very rapidly, indeed more rapidly even than the 2003 American campaign in Iraq. The Yugoslav Army was 800,000 strong. During World War I it had given an excellent account of itself and made itself famous for its bravery. However, it hardly possessed any heavy modern weapons and was still dependent on oxcarts for transportation. As a result, it was scarcely able to mobilize and, coming under attack from several directions at once, was easily cut to pieces. Two weeks later Hitler was able to proclaim victory. At the cost, to the Wehrmacht, of no more than four hundred dead.

As was later to happen in other occupied countries as well, however, the end of major combat operations in Yugoslavia did not mean that the war was over. Resistance—whether one calls it guerrilla, or terrorism, or banditry (as the Germans did)—got under way in a matter of weeks; as early as May 1941, Belgrade had to witness the first partisans being executed. Repeatedly, Wehrmacht soldiers on patrol, escorting supply convoys, and similar detached forces were attacked, stabbed, shot, or blown up. At peak, no fewer than twenty-nine Axis divisions were deployed in the country and engaged in harsh reprisals. Far from those reprisals serving to quell the uprising, though, resistance grew and grew until it developed into the mother of all ulcers.

Over the next three and a half years the Wehrmacht, ably assisted by such kind hearted organizations as the Waffen S.S, the Gestapo, and other exotic Nazi formations, did what it could. It used every weapon at its disposal, tanks, heavy artillery and dive-bombers not excluded. It tortured tens of thousands, laid waste to entire districts, and lashed about with such ferocity that an estimated eight hundred thousand Yugoslavs died—many of them in internecine warfare between Croats, Serbs, Chetniks, Communists, and other resistance groups. Yet in the end Yugoslavia became the only Nazi-occupied country to rid itself of its conquerors before it could be overrun by one of the major allied belligerents, a fact whose significance for the post-war world was very great. So much, then, for suppressing terrorism by the most brutal means.

While the Yugoslavs were exceptionally quick off the mark, to a greater or lesser extent the same experience was repeated throughout occupied Europe. The Poles, the Russians, the Greeks, the Italians, the French, even the civilized Danes and Dutch, all found themselves engaging in armed resistance. Some of the resistance movements took less time to get organized, some more. Some were more effective, others less. None succeeded in emulating the Yugoslavs by liberating their countries before outside help was able to reach them. On the other hand, by the time outside help did reach them none was even close to being suppressed. Most were becoming more and more effective; Greece, Italy, and France being particularly good examples of this.

By way of an intellectual exercise, suppose the Germans had “won” the war in some sense. To do this they would first have to break the USSR as a functioning polity, a task that, towards the end of 1941, did not seem out of reach. Next, building up their navy and air force, they would have had to fight Britain and the USA to a standstill, a task which, given that they would have had the entire resources of Europe at their command, may not have been out of reach either. Even so, no country, not even Nazi Germany, can permanently keep ten percent of its population in uniform—the more so because those ten percent invariably comprise the healthiest, economically most productive, part of the available manpower. Had the Germans “won” the war, then presumably about eighty percent of their armed forces would have been demobilized and sent home. Even assuming twice as many men would have been kept on active duty as were available in the pre-1939 peacetime Wehrmacht, their number would only have stood at 1.5 million. Their task would have been to hold down an entire continent; an area which, reaching from Brest to the Ural Mountains and from Narvik at least as far as the Brenner Pass and the Peloponnese, had a population of approximately two hundred million. Let others calculate the resulting ratio of German troops to occupied people and square kilometers of land. In all probability it could not have been done. Given ten or twenty years, most of the subject-peoples would almost certainly have risen, engaged in extensive terrorism and guerrilla warfare, and made the continent so ungovernable as to virtually liberate themselves. Albeit at the cost of millions of civilian lives lost; and albeit at the cost of physical destruction as great, or greater than, that which actually took place.

Far from being exceptional, the German experience only acted as a prelude for countless similar defeats to come. In Palestine, the British with 100,000 men tried to hold down a population of 600,000 Jews—of whom no more than a few hundred were active terrorists—and failed; yet this was as nothing compared to what was to follow. Partly because the British considered the Jews a “semi-European” race, partly because they had to operate in full view of world opinion, which, then a now, took a special interest in the Holy Land, their operations there were relatively civilized. No such limits applied to subsequent counterinsurgency operations in Malaysia and Kenya where the exchange rate was a hundred blacks killed to every white farmer slain; the attempts to keep Cyprus and Aden also failed. Other counterinsurgents were no more successful. The French in Indo-China and Algeria used hundreds of thousands of troops to kill hundreds of thousands of Vietnamese and Arab "natives", but to no avail. The Dutch, the Belgians, and the Portuguese all lost their Empires. By the time the latter finally gave up in 1975, additional hundreds of thousands had been killed.

Then it was the Americans’ turn. For some ten years on end over two million G.Is saw service in South East Asia, the peak being reached in 1968-69 when there were over half a million of them. They used every available technological means, from heavy bombers to people sniffers and from remotely piloted vehicles to napalm. And yet, after six million tons of bombs had been dropped—more than twice as many as were used against Germany and Japan combined during all of World War II—1,500 helicopters lost, over 55,000 troops killed, and $ 125 billion spent they too were forced to concede failure. In 1975 the world was treated to the spectacle of the last Americans hanging on to their helicopters’ skids as they fled from the roof of their embassy in Saigon.

As long as it was “Western” powers that went down to defeat, people attributed their failures at least in part to the moral scruples under which those powers had labored; although, in truth, such scruples were not much in evidence either in Algeria or in Vietnam. But no scruples could be, or were, attributed to the Red Army operating in Afghanistan. The Soviet invasion of Afghanistan started in late 1980 when eight mechanized divisions, perfectly armed with everything that the largest military-industrial complex in history until then could provide, drove south by way of the Khyber Pass towards Kabul. Next, having set up a puppet government, they spent eight years trying to “pacify” the country against various groups of mujahedin, or holy warriors. Doing so they killed perhaps a million Afghans and sent perhaps another five million fleeing across the border into neighboring Pakistan. Hardly a weapon in the Soviet arsenal that was not deployed; from time to time there were even reports of chemical and biological warfare (“yellow rain”), though these were never substantiated. However great the Kremlin’s efforts, in the end it too was forced to concede failure. Having suffered 13,000 casualties in dead alone, and abandoned much of their equipment, finally its divisions reeled back the way they had come. As they did so, they were jeered by the mujahedin who did not even bother to open fire at them

To list all the other countries that, starting in 1941, have tried but failed to put down guerrilla and terrorism would be tedious. Even a short list would have to include the Vietnamese (in Cambodia); the Indians (in Sri Lanka and Kashmir); the South Africans (in Namibia); the Indonesians (in East Timor); the Philippines (in the south); and the Russians (in Chechenya). Some of these would-be counterinsurgents were as ruthless as ruthless can be, the Indonesians in East Timor killing perhaps half a million people. Others, such as the Israelis in Lebanon and the Occupied Territories, deployed some of the world’s best troops and the most modern available technologies to no visible gain. Having spent thirty-two years fighting in Lebanon, during which they even occupied Beirut, the Israelis were unable to cope with Hizbollah and finally found themselves back at their starting positions. After sixteen years during which Israel did what it could to put down the first and second Palestinian uprisings Ariel Sharon, a hard-liner if ever one there was, reached the point where he felt he had no choice but to pull out of the Gaza Strip. Yet only a few years had passed since a former deputy chief of staff, General (ret.) Mathan Vilnai, had referred to the terrorists Israel was facing in Gaza as “bird-brained”; one does not know whether to laugh or cry.

As these lines are being written in the summer of 2004, the uprising against the Americans in Iraq is also spreading. Having taken just three weeks to break Saddam’s Army—the same which, back in 1991, had been advertised as the fourth largest in the world—and occupied Baghdad, the Americans hoped to be welcomed as liberators. Instead, right from the beginning, they met with resistance. As in Vietnam, the Americans are totally at loss amidst a foreign culture where it is virtually impossible to tell friend from foe and where every translator may be a spy. Much more than in Vietnam, where the opponent was first the Viet Cong and then the North Vietnamese Army, they are unable to discover who is behind the uprising. Be it former members of a mysterious Iraqi intelligence organization known as M-14; or Al Qaeda; or the Sunnis; or the Shi’ites. In both cases their intelligence was or is limited to what they can photograph, intercept, or learn from low-level prisoners. With the exception of Saddam Hussein, so far no senior terrorist leader has been captured.

As a result, they thrash about wildly. They do what they used to do in Vietnam: publishing statistics, some of which are probably bogus, on how well the “war for hearts and minds” is going; calling for additional troops in order to defend hopelessly overextended supply lines; and, when meeting resistance, showing little restraint in using their immensely superior firepower in places such as Faluja and Najaf. So far the ratio of Iraqi insurgents killed to dead American troops is said to be approximately ten to one. Even though, and again with Vietnam, Afghanistan, and similar non-trinitarian” conflicts in mind, there is very good reason to suspect that most of the Iraqi dead are actually civilians who happened to be around when the fight broke out.

As the German and American experiences prove, many of those who tried their hands at the counterinsurgency game during the period in question were, for their time, the most modern, most powerful, most heavily armed, best trained, and most experienced on earth. Quite a few were also utterly ruthless, to the point that they did not hesitate to kill millions of people and turn entire districts into deserts; in the case of the Americans in Vietnam, the method by which this was done by spraying defoliant gases over the jungle. Yet in case after case the forces in question went down to defeat. Very often those defeats were inflicted by small, if highly determined, groups of men and women who, certainly at the beginning and often even at the end of the campaign, did not even have one percent of the military power their opponents did. In many places in Asia and Africa a large percentage of the insurgents could barely read. On other occasions they wore sandals with bottoms cut out of old tires or else went barefoot. Often they were without a strong organization, untrained, inexperienced, and lacked any but the most rudimentary medical care. What they did do was to prove themselves prepared to fight and die; in the end, that was what mattered.

Each time a counter-insurgent army went down to defeat, legions of military and civilian experts engaged on a post-mortem analysis to find out what had gone wrong. To focus on Vietnam, perhaps the most-analyzed counter-insurgency of all, the following are some of the reasons adduced. The political leadership did not provide adequate direction, never telling the armed forces what their mission was but instead tying their hands—as when imposing limits on the targets that could be bombed—and trying micro-manage the war from the White House. The public, misled by those nefarious characters who had taken over the media, did not understand the importance of the war and, unwilling to make sacrifices, withdrew its support. The number of agencies that tried to fight the war was too large, coordination among them deficient or nonexistent. Not enough men, money and machines were allocated to finish the job. The strategy adopted (“attrition”) was wrong. The tactics adopted (“search and destroy”) were also wrong. The war was not waged ruthlessly enough or else, to the contrary, it was waged in such a ruthless manner as to be counterproductive. The war for hearts and minds was not given as much priority as it deserved. Concerned with their own promotion and failing to provide leadership, the commanders were to blame. Unwilling to fight, unfamiliar with the country, and increasingly coming under the influence of drugs, the rank and file were to blame. The South Vietnamese were to blame, given that they mostly stood aside, allowing the Americans do their work for them while at the same time enriching themselves as much as they could. The demonstrators who burnt their country’s flag and wished departing troops that they would come to an early grave were to blame. The draft resisters were to blame. Everybody was to blame. Nobody was to blame.

By the time the War in Vietnam reached its inglorious end each of these explanations was quite old. At the time it started each of them was already quite old; see, for example, the excuses offered by the commanders of the British Army concerning the reasons behind their failure to hold on Palestine in 1944-48. As an American defeat in Iraq appears all but certain, no doubt we shall hear more such explanations in the future, and already now some pundits are sharpening their pens. Yet as the repetitive character of the explanations and the continuing failures prove, little is to be gained from continued work along these lines. Instead I propose to break new ground by focusing on two modern counter-insurgency campaigns that succeeded; to wit, the one conducted by late President Hafez Asad in Hama, 1982, and the British one in Northern Ireland.

2. Two Methods.

In early 1982, President Hafez Asad’s (In Arabic, Asad means “Lion”) regime in Syria was twelve years old and was meeting growing opposition that did not make its future appear rosy. Part of the opposition came from the members of various ethnic groups who took issue with the fact that Asad, like his most important collaborators, was an Alawite. Now the Alawites are one of the less important Islamic sects, traditionally poor and discriminated against. Many in the Islamic world do not even regard them as true Moslems and claim that, instead of Allah, they worship the moon and the stars; it as if Germany had been ruled by a Sorbic Mafia or Italy by a Greek one.

Even more dangerous was the Islamic priesthood, or Ulama. During the early years after seizing power Asad had made some concessions to them, promoting priests, increasing their salaries and even giving them limited freedom of speech. They, however, saw the secular Ba’atist state as opposed to everything they themselves believed in and were determined to wage holy war against it. To make things worse for Asad, for a number of years a large part of his Army had been involved in Lebanon. Originally its mission was to put an end to a vicious civil war that had broken out in 1976. That proved hard to do and the Syrians found themselves trying to run the country; which, early in 1982, was also being threatened by a possible Israeli invasion.

As the Muslim Brothers, a religious terrorist organization with branches in practically every Arab country, mounted a well-organized and effective terrorist campaign against him, Asad’s response was similar to, though perhaps more brutal than, that of countless others before and since. His first move was to abolish what limited civil liberties existed—compared to its predecessors, originally his regime had been relatively liberal. Next he used his Army and secret police to persecute, arrest, and torture thousands, going so far as to order the inmates of entire prisons stood against the wall and shot. Nothing worked and the bombings, in which hundreds lost their lives, went on.

With his regime disintegrating and his own life increasingly threatened, the Syrian leader resorted to desperate measures. Though clashes between terrorists and the security forces took place all over the country the center of the rebellion was known to be the city of Hama, called “the head of the snake”. Even as the repression campaign continued in full swing twelve thousand soldiers, commanded by Asad’s brother Rifat, surrounded Hama. The way the Syrian newspapers told the story later on, they started combing the city house by house, making arrests. As they did so, about five hundred mujahidun, or holy warriors, launched a counterattack. Perhaps they were deliberately provoked by Rifat’s forces. Perhaps they were hoping that the Army’s Suni troops would desert from their units and, possibly, join their uprising. Either way, they emerged from hiding, took up their weapons, and engaged in open warfare, reportedly killing some two hundred and fifty civil servants, policemen, and the like.

Whether or not it had been planned that way, the uprising provided Rifat and Hafez with the excuse they had been waiting for. Relying mainly on their most powerful weapon, heavy artillery, the Syrian troops surrounding Hama opened fire. Anywhere between 10,000 and 30,000 people, many of them women and children, were indiscriminately killed. What followed was even more important than the killing itself. Far from apologizing for his action, Rifat, asked how many people his men had killed, deliberately exaggerated their number. As his reward, he was promoted to vice-president for national security; several of his fellow butchers were also promoted or decorated. Later, survivors told horrifying tales of buildings that had collapsed on their inhabitants and trenches filled with corpses. They also described how, in an attempt to get at jewelry, Syrian troops did not hesitate to cut off people’s fingers and ears.

Hama’s great mosque, one of the best known in all of Syria, was razed to the ground and later became a parking lot. Years afterwards a journalist, Scot Peterson of the Christian Science Monitor, who had visited the city, told me that when people passed the place they still looked away and shuddered. Some of them were so terrified that they did not even dare pronounce the word “Alawite”; instead, pointing at the hills, they spoke of “those people there”. In the words of Asad’s Israeli biographer, Prof. Moshe Maoz, “the terrible crushing of the Hama revolt not only broke the military backbone of the Muslim Brothers but also served as a vivid warning to them, as well as to other opposition groups, against further acts of disobedience. And although in recent years small groups of Muslim Brothers have occasionally conducted guerrilla attacks on army units, the mujahidun ceased for the time being to be a threat to Assad.” Having fallen out with his brother, Rifat had to flee abroad. Not so Hafez who went on ruling Syria with an iron fist. His son, Bashir, continues to so today.

The other successful counter-insurgency campaign worth examining in some detail in the present paper is, as already said, the British one in Northern Ireland. The “troubles” in Ireland have a long history. They go back all the way to the Irish struggle for independence (1916-1921), King William III, Oliver Cromwell, and even King Henry II (reigned 1154-89) who was the first English monarch to campaign in the island. In January 1969 they broke out again and quickly escalated as bombs demolished parts of the infrastructure—electricity-pylons and water pumps—and as opposing demonstrators fought street-battles with each other. The Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC, a locally recruited riot police consisting largely of Protestants), was unable to contain the violence and so the British Army became heavily involved from the summer on.

From this point, the situation went from bad to worse. In a single night’s “battle” (Belfast, 14-15 August 1969) four policemen and ten civilians were killed whereas a hundred forty five civilians were wounded. Property damage was also extensive, amounting to no fewer than one hundred and fifty houses destroyed by fire. The violence, the like of which had not been seen in the region for almost fifty years, seems to have dampened the enthusiasm of both sides. However, memories proved short and there was another outbreak of even greater violence in August of the next year. From this time on things deteriorated as the British troops, whose number now exceeded ten thousand, vainly sought to prevent mobs of Protestant and Catholic demonstrators from clashing with each other and destroying as much property as they could. Behind their backs terrorism also escalated as 37 explosions rocked the district in March 1971, 47 in April, and 50 in June. From January to August of that year the total number of bombings was 311, causing over 100 injuries. In 1972 the number rose to well over one thousand; the IRA also extended its operations from Ireland into the United Kingdom proper. A temporary peak was reached on 30 January 1972 when Street fighting in Londonderry led to thirteen people dying at the hand of British troops trying to quell yet another riot. An event which is remembered as “Bloody Sunday”.

Had things been allowed to continue in the same way, no doubt the British attempt to hold on to Northern Ireland would have ended as so many others since 1941 had, i.e. in complete defeat followed by elaborate analyses as to why it took place. If, for a change, this did not happen and the outcome did not correspond to the usual pattern, then perhaps there are some things to be learnt from the effort. This article is hardly the place to detail all the many different things the Army did during its thirty-year involvement, let alone follow the immensely complicated political process with all its twists and turns. Instead, all I can do is provide a short list of the things that the British Army, having used “Bloody Sunday” to reconsider its actions, did not do.

First, never again did the British open indiscriminate fire into marching or rioting crowds; in the future, however violent the riots and demonstrations with which they faced, they preferred to employ less violent means that led to a far smaller number of casualties. Second, and in marked contrast to most other counter- insurgents from the Germans in Yugoslavia to the Israelis in the Occupied Territories, not once in the entire struggle did they bring in heavy weapons such as tanks, armored personnel carriers, artillery, or aircraft to repulse attacks and inflict retaliation. Third, never once did they inflict collective punishments such as imposing curfews, blowing up houses, destroying entire neighborhoods to open up fields of fire, and the like; by posing as the protectors of the population, not its tormentors, they were able to prevent the uprising from spreading. Fourth and most important, by and large the Army stayed within the law. Partly because they restrained themselves, partly because there were other, less conspicuous organizations to do some of the dirty work for them, they were able to refrain from arbitrary imprisonment, torture, and illegal killings.

From time to time, this rule was infringed upon. Even without breaking the law, interrogation-techniques could be intimidating enough. Here and there were clear violations of civil liberties as torture as well as false accusations were used in order to elicit information and obtain convictions. A few known IRA leaders, identified and tracked in foreign countries, were shot, execution-style, in what has since become known as “targeted killings”. On the whole, however, the British played by the rules. This remained true even after terrorists had blown up the 79 year-old Earl of Mountbatten, the Queen’s uncle, in his yacht. Even after they had planted a bomb that demolished part of a Brighton Hotel where Ms. Thatcher was due to speak; and even after they had used a van to fire mortar rounds at a Cabinet meeting at 10 Downing Street.

Passing over the details, which would suffice to fill many volumes, the real secret behind the British success seems to have been extreme self-control—whatever else might happen, they did not allow themselves to be provoked. I myself began to get an inkling of that fact during my numerous visits to the Army Staff College at Camberley. Each time I went there I discussed the situation in Northern Ireland with as many officers as I could; people whose names I cannot remember but to all of whom I am grateful. What I still consider the most important insight, however, was given to me not at Camberley but over dinner in Geneva some time in the early 1990s. My interlocutor was a British lieutenant colonel who had done several tours of duty in Northern Ireland but whose name, alas, I cannot remember either. What he told me can be summed up as follows. Look at almost any one of the hundred or so major counter-insurgency campaigns that took place all over the world since 1945 (or, if you wish, 1941). However great the differences between them, they have one thing in common. In every known instance the “forces of order” killed far more people than they lost. Often by an order of magnitude, as is the case in Iraq where the Americans always emphasize how many more Iraqis died; and often in such an indiscriminate manner (in counter-insurgency, whenever heavy weapons are used, the results are bound to be indiscriminate) as to make the result approximate genocide. By contrast, up to that date the struggle in Northern Ireland had cost the United Kingdom 3,000 casualties in dead alone. Of the 3,000 about 1,700 were civilians, most of them innocent bystanders who had been killed as bombed exploded at the time and place they happened to be. Of the remaining 1,300, 1,000 were British soldiers and no more than 300 were terrorists, a ratio of three to one. And that, he ended his exposition, is why we are still there.

3. On Power and Compromises.

According to the well-known proverb, success has many fathers whereas failure is an orphan. However true this may be in respect to every other aspect of life, in the case of counter-insurgency clearly it does not apply. As noted, entire libraries have been written on counter-insurgency campaigns that failed. Often the authors were the very people who had participated in, or were responsible for, the failures in question. For example, the term “low intensity war” itself was invented by the British General Frank Kitson; having taken part in a whole series of them, he was finally made commandant of the Staff College so he could teach others how it should be done. Very great efforts have been made to analyze the reasons and suggest ways to avoid a repetition. Judging by the way the Americans are conducting themselves in Iraq, to no avail.

By comparison, very little has been written about counterinsurgency campaigns that succeeded. One reason for this is because, since 1941, the number of such successes has been so limited that nine out of ten people cannot even remember them. Another is because the methods used may be so unsavory as to make it difficult for soi-disant civilized persons to write about them or, which is probably even worse, attract research money for them. Here again I may call on my own experience as a military scholar. Years ago I spent months trying to interest people in and around the Pentagon in the way Asad pere had operated, first in Hama and then in putting an end to the Lebanese civil war and bringing that country under his control. Had such a study been available today, it might actually have done some good; however, nobody cared.

Thus, whoever will look to the modern literature on the subject will do so almost entirely in vain. Nevertheless, for those who, instead of feeble excuses, want real answers an excellent short analysis of how it should be, and has been, done is readily available. In chapters viii and xvii of The Prince the sixteenth-century writer, Niccolo Machiavelli, explains the way a ruler should use cruelty when necessary. To prevent misunderstanding, let it be said that there are such circumstances; and that no one who does not recognize this should ever aspire to rule any country except Disneyland.

This much having been conceded, what Machiavelli, using examples from the ancient world as well as his own time, has to say boils down to four points. First, should you feel you have no choice left but to resort to cruelty, then the blow should be sudden. The more like a thunderbolt out of a clear sky it comes, the greater the effect; therefore, continue to talk softly while secretly completing your preparations. Second, having made up your mind to strike, you cannot strike hard enough. Better to kill too many people than too few. Strike so hard as to make sure you do not have to strike again; or else, the very fact that you have to do so will weaken the impact of your original blow. Besides, you must consider the effect a repetition will have on your troops. However well trained and hard bitten they may be, if they are made to commit one atrocity after another (and very likely resort to alcohol or drugs in order to muster the necessary will), it will only be a matter of time before they become demoralized.

Facing an organization most of whose operations are covert, it is an illusion to think that you can ever “get” all or even most of them at once—something not even Saddam Hussein, using gas against the Kurds, succeeded in doing. Even if you do, chances are that, like the mythological hydra, the organization in question will re- constitute itself. Witness the French interception and arrest of the entire FLN leadership back in 1956; just six years later, the same people were sitting across their captors at Evian and negotiating the independence of their country. To prevent this from happening, while aiming to kill as many insurgents and their leaders as possible your true target should be the spirit of the population from whom they draw their support and without whom they cannot exist. To put Mao on his head: you must refuse to admit a distinction between “active” fish and the “passive” sea in which they swim.

In other words, the true objective of your strike is less to kill people than to display your ruthlessness and your willingness to go to any lengths to achieve your objective—a war on hearts and minds, only in reverse. Clausewitz once wrote that war is a moral and physical contest by means of the latter. The same is even more true of the massacre that accompanies a war; if you do it right, it may even prevent a war. Careful consideration should therefore be given to the means. Forget about infantry, it is too slow. Riding in APCs, it cannot see anything. Riding in soft vehicles, it is too vulnerable (currently the War in Iraq is causing a whole literature to develop about this subject). Its weapons are small and will only kill people one by one. Besides, if the enemy has similar weapons and fights back, then the process is going to be very expensive. Early in April 2004, five days’ fighting cost the U.S Marine Brigade at Fallujah ten percent of its troops in casualties (killed and wounded). Yet when the operation ended the Brigade had only re-taken ten percent of the city; had the Marines continued in this way, it might have become a second Stalingrad.

Airpower and missiles are much better, but still problematic because they are deployed from a distance so that the victims, being unable to see who is massacring them, will not be properly impressed by your determination. Modern airpower also has two other disadvantages. First, it is too fast. Fighter-bombers appear out of nowhere. They discharge their weapons and disappear; just as a colony of ants that is stirred with a stick will quickly recover, so their disappearance permits the opponent to recover their breath. Second, most of the “precision-guided” weapons it uses carry relatively small warheads and can only do limited damage to selected targets. For example, following three months’ continuous bombardment by a thousand NATO aircraft ninety-five percent of Belgrade were still standing. To inflict real damage, old-fashioned, heavy, “dumb” iron bombs are much superior. The problem is that only one country, i.e. the U.S, still retains the kind of bomber force that can carry them in any numbers; and even in its case that force is down to one sixth of what it used to be.

Everything considered, and recalling Asad at Hama, the weapon of choice should probably be artillery. Heavy guns are sufficiently accurate to be aimed at individual targets, especially, as is desirable, if they can be made to fire point blank. At the same time they are sufficiently powerful to do just the kind of spectacular damage you want; to see the results, search the Internet for pictures of Hama. Unlike aircraft, they can fire non-stop for hours, even days. Still their greatest advantage is that they can be deployed in such a way that, before being blown to hell, the victims can look straight into the muzzles of the guns that are trained at them. When Napoleon famously spoke of a whiff of grapeshot, he knew what was he was talking about.

Third, do what you have to do openly. At any cost, prevent the media from messing with your operations while they are going on. Once you are done, though, you should not try to hide them or explain them away; indeed you should do exactly the opposite. There should be no apologies, no kwetching about collateral damage caused by mistake, innocent lives regrettably lost, “excesses” that will be investigated and brought to trial, and similar signs of weakness. Instead, make sure that as many people as possible can see, hear, smell, and touch the results; if they can also taste them, e.g. by inhaling the smoke from a burning city, then so much the better. Invite journalists to admire the headless corpses rolling in the streets, film them, and write about them. Do, however, make sure they do not talk to any of the survivors so as not to arouse sympathy.

Fourth and last, do not command the strike yourself but have somebody else do it for you—if at all possible, without ever giving him written orders. This method has the advantage that, if your designated commander succeeds, you can take the credit. Presenting yourself to the world, you will offer no regrets and shed no tears. Instead you will explain why it absolutely had to be done and make sure everybody understands that you are ready to do it again at a moment’s notice. But what if, for one reason or another, your deputy fails and resistance, instead of being broken, increases? In that case, you can always disown him and try another course such as negotiation.

Whether Asad read Machiavelli is doubtful. Be that as it may, by his operations in Hama he gave clear proof that he knew what he was doing. Of course his actions deserve to be called horrible, barbaric, cruel, inhuman, and what not. Yet not only did he die peacefully in his bed, but he probably saved Syria from a civil war in which far more people might have died; over twenty years later the results continued to speak for themselves. Events at Hama have not been forgotten and continue to be denounced when and where opportune. Still, as far as Asad’s international standing goes they did him little damage. If he was perceived as a brutal dictator, at any rate the greatest crime he committed was in the past; there was no need for an endless series of small crimes, as with those who take a more gradual approach. He emerged as an effective ruler with effective forces at his command with whom it was possible to do business. Provided you have what it takes to do what is necessary, the Asad method promises better, and certainly faster, results than any other.

If, on the other hand, one reason or another prevents you from emulating him, then the other approach is the British one in Northern Ireland. However, doing so is very hard and the method may not be practical for the troops of certain nations who simply do not possess the necessary mind-set. For example, the Americans combine aggressiveness with impatience. Putting blind faith in technology and using far more firepower than is needed, they regularly end up by alienating whomever they face—as happened in Vietnam, Somalia, and now in Iraq. Or take the Israelis. As anyone who has been to Israel knows, they are the least disciplined people on earth. As long as they fought Blitzkrieg campaigns against external enemies this factor worked in their favor, given that individual soldiers often displayed high courage, initiative, and resourcefulness. However, faced with a struggle where self-restraint is everything they are apt to make a mess of it. A long legacy of persecution, culminating in the Holocaust, also causes Israelis to combine self-pity with the shedding of crocodile tears. As Ms. Meir supposedly said, “we are angry with the Palestinians for forcing us to shoot them”. Whoever feels like this will hardly win a counter-insurgency campaign.

The first indispensable condition for adopting the British method is to have truly excellent troops and even better officers to command them and keep them in line. Next come professionalism, strict discipline, and endless patience. Yet none of these will be of any avail if there is not also present a certain mixture of phlegmatism and pride. Only pride will prevent one from hitting innocent people who are far weaker than you, thus making new enemies faster than you can kill the old ones and creating a situation where, sooner or later, you are no longer able to look at yourself in the mirror. Only phlegmatism can make a unit take casualties and keep going, if necessary for years. Until the other side, realizing he will never be able to provoke you or to cause you to disintegrate, will finally be ready to sit down with you and talk about peace.

On the surface of things the two approaches, the Asad one and the British one in Northern Ireland, are so different as to constitute direct opposites. This is true, but it is also true that, at a deeper level, they have something very important in common. As the demoralization and progressive disintegration of so many counter-insurgent forces—from the French in Algeria through the Americans in Iraq —shows, the greatest problem they face is time. In an asymmetric struggle the insurgent, so long as he does not lose, wins; his very presence acts as the best possible proof that the counter-insurgent does not have thing well in hand. The situation of the counter- insurgent is just the opposite. As long as he does not win, he loses; as sure as night follows day, the result will be demoralization. Which, of course, is the prelude to defeat.

Each in its own way, both the Asad approach and the one the British, after much trial and error, adopted in Northern Ireland represents a way of dealing with this problem. The former forestalls demoralization by reducing the campaign to a sharp, powerful blow after which most of the troops will hopefully be able to wash their hands and go back to their barracks. The latter inculcates them with such strict self- control as to prevent them from losing their pride, thus enabling them to sustain their morale for a long time, perhaps forever. Both approaches, the second perhaps even more than the first, require enormous courage and strength if they are to be consistently applied. Such being the case, it is no wonder that the vast majority of counter-insurgents tried to apply now one policy, one another, until they fell between two stools.

Take, as a perfect case in point, the Americans in Vietnam. Right from the beginning President John Kennedy announced his determination to bear any burden in the cause of liberty. However, the approach that he, and after him Lyndon Johnson, took belied their words. With domestic considerations in mind, neither President was prepared to go to the point where the domestic economy would be affected. Johnson's slogan, indeed, was "guns and butter"; engaging in Vietnam, he was trying to win the war on poverty as well. Partly for this reason, partly because they feared Chinese intervention as had happened in Korea, both he and Kennedy adopted an approach that was reactive and incremental. Being reactive and incremental, to all the world it signified hesitancy, weakness, and a lack of will; and how could it be otherwise, given that most Americans had never even heard of Vietnam? At times, the American desire to treat war as an instrument of politics looked as if they were begging their opponents to negotiate. Meeting a stony silence on Hanoi’s part, now they tried to bomb North Vietnam into surrender, now they called a unilateral halt to bombing. Now they fought all out, now they declared a holiday and agreed to a truce. Now they took over from the South Vietnamese, now they “Vietnamized” the war. While this was going on they were constantly defending their record, trying to conceal the extent of the devastation they were inflicting—which, of course, came out nevertheless—and inventing excuses to explain why their troops were killing as many civilians as they did.

Against such a background it is scant wonder that the entire world, the Viet Cong and North Vietnamese leadership presumably not excluded, soon understood that the U.S had no idea as to what it wanted to accomplish. Not having an idea, it allowed its course of action to be determined by the means at its disposal, putting the cart before the horse. As to the rest of the story and all the glorious deeds the Americans committed before pulling out, lo they are written on the Vietnam Memorial in the Mall in Washington D.C.

4. Conclusions.

In conclusion, and as the countless defeats suffered by would-be counter-insurgents since 1941 prove without a shadow of doubt, something has gone very, very wrong indeed. This applies both to Western nations and, as the Soviet defeat in Afghanistan showed, former Communist ones. Both to developed nations and to many undeveloped ones; both to those who, like the Germans in Yugoslavia, were utterly ruthless, and to those who, like the Israelis in the Occupied Territories, only killed four or five enemies for every casualty they suffered. Each time a failure occurred rivers of ink were spilt trying to explain the reasons, to no avail. One might almost apply Hegel’s words: the only thing one can learn from history is that people do not learn from it.

A spoon, plunged into salt water, will rust. To prevent this from happening, it is possible to do either of two things. One is to scoop out all the water and withdraw the spoon, wipe it clean, and return it to the cupboard where it belongs. The other is to stir the water very carefully and, by so doing, prevent it from becoming even saltier than it already is. Assuming the two methods are equally effective in principle, seen from a humanitarian point of view the British one is undoubtedly superior. There may, however, be circumstances when it cannot be applied: either because the uprising has already gone too far, or else because the character of the nation and the instruments of power at its disposal do not permit it. Under such circumstances Bismarck’s dictum that politics is the art of choosing between the bad and worse applies. Unless you are prepared to recognize this fact and draw the consequences, perhaps the best course is to stay out of the counter-insurgency game in the first place.

As the German and American experiences prove, many of those who tried their hands at the counterinsurgency game during the period in question were, for their time, the most modern, most powerful, most heavily armed, best trained, and most experienced on earth.

Nenn mir doch bitte mal deine Strategie für die Befriedung der Golfregion nach einem Angriff auf den Iran. Dann können wir weiter diskutieren.

Fenris

[promillo]

Mordkorea duerfte bei geschickter Planung das kleinere Problem sein, trotz rudimentaer vorhandener Vorstufen zu A-Waffen.

Und der Iran...naja, wir haben die Probleme in Afghanistan und dem Irak auch schon oft ueberschaetzt.

Der Irak ist zur Zeit etwas wild, aber, auch wenns zynisch klingt, die Verbrecher, die sich nun auf irakischen Strassen hochjagen, koennen das NICHT MEHR in Jerusalem, NYC, London, Madrid oder Berlin machen. Also lass sie sich doch dort hochjagen.

Allerdings sollte man offene Zusammenrottungen von Islamfaschisten wie in Falludjah in Zukunft etwas entschlossener "aufloesen". Die Tatsache, dass der Massenmoerder al Sadr noch lebt, ist traurig.

Aber abseits dieser kleinen Probleme wird der Irak aufgebaut. Warum laufen die Islamfaschisten denn grade dort Amok? Weil sie den Erfolg der Befreiung und dessen Signalwirkung auf die islamische Welt fuerchten.

Im "Iran" wuerde es noch weniger Probleme machen, denn auch Islamfaschisten koennen nicht an so vielen Fronten gleichzeitig kaempfen.

Je frueher Persien befreit wird, desto besser fuer alle.

Zu van Creveld:

In einem hat er auf jeden Fall recht: Das schlimmste, was passieren kann, ist, dass wir unentschlossen und halbherzig vorgehen.

Ob es nun die britische (halte ich angesichts des Gegners, mit dem wir es zu tun haben fuer undurchfuehrbar), die syrische (halte ich nur fuer die ultima Ratio im Notfall) oder eine dritte, "amerikanische" (Befreiung moeglichst vieler Despotien in moeglichst kurzer Zeit, damit diese anschliessend mit sich selber und nicht mit uns beschaeftigt sind)Loesung des Problems gibt, oder eine ganz andere, ist egal. Hauptsache, wir fangen an, das Problem zu loesen und tun ueberhaupt etwas, das ueber Bankettreden in der UNO hinausgeht.

Ach, zur syrischen Loesungsmethode: Warum wohl baut man im Irak wohl so schnell eine neue Armee auf, eine Polizei, Nationalgarde etc und warum sind ausgerechnet diese das aktuell beliebteste Ziel der Islamfaschisten und Saddamisten? Nachtigall ick hoer Dir trapsen... :engel2:

[Hollowpoint]

Ein sehr bemerkenswerter Artikel!

Wobei ich meine, daß die "Britische Methode" nur bei halbwegs zivilisierten Völkern Sinn macht.

Israel sollte gelegentlich mal die "Syrische Methode" ausprobieren. Viel schlimmer als es dort bereits zugeht, kann es dann auch nicht mehr werden.

GRUß

[rugerclub]

Diese Meldung ist nicht von den arabischen Medien in Umlauf gebracht worden , sondern von "NEWSWEK"

Pikanterweise leidet der ranghohe Beamte derzeit an Gedächtnisschwund - wen wundert es:

Der Bericht des US-Magazins "Newsweek" über angebliche Koran-Schändungen im US-Gefangenenlager Guantánamo, der zu gewaltsamen Protesten in mehreren islamischen Ländern geführt hatte, ist möglicherweise falsch. Der hohe US-Beamte, der der Zeitschrift als Quelle gedient hatte, sei sich in der Sache nicht mehr sicher.

Wir erinnern uns am Mrs. English? Da werden Soldaten für den Krieg ausgebildet und dann erwartet man das sie sich Angesichts der vielen Opfer von Minen und Selbstmordattentate zurück halten können?

Dagegen habe der Anwalt Mark Falkoff berichtet, der Selbstmordversuch von 23 Guantánamo-Häftlingen im August 2003 sei auf das Verhalten von US-Soldaten zurückzuführen. Diese hätten ein Exemplar des Koran auf den Boden geworfen und darauf herumgetrampelt. Whitaker betonte, sein Magazin wolle ebenso wie die US-Regierung den Vorwürfen von Koran-Schändungen weiter nachgehen.

Unter Berufung auf den US-Beamten hatte "Newsweek" am 9. Mai berichtet, Verhörspezialisten im Lager Guantánamo auf Kuba hätten ein Exemplar des Koran in die in die Toilette geworfen. Dies stehe in einem Bericht des US-Militärs, der demnächst erscheinen werde. Der Artikel hatte heftige Proteste in mehreren islamischen Ländern ausgelöst.