Just a little math about the Iraq war

While I’m sure that the Iraq war is the most important thing we could possibly spend our money on…. yeah right.

The Huffington Post recently posted that congress has arrived at an Iraq war funding bill totaling more than 163 Billion dollars.

A few things that could be done with that money.

• Give 2 million college students an 81,500$ scholarship.
• Give 4 million college students a 40K scholarship.

Yes, thats right, we could actually pay a full ride of about 15K at a state public institution for approximately 9 million students.  9 MILLION!!!!  Talk about a jumpstart to our economy, how much of a kick would 9 million more college degrees produce?

In case you weren’t angry enough, this Iraq war funding bill equates to 543.33 per person.  Thats right, you just increased your tax burden by 543$, or more likely, your childrens tax burden, or grandchildrens.

If you aren’t angry, you should be.

Thats right you don’t know, because you weren’t there man!

OK, so the other day, I was in a bar with a few friends and we ended up two steps away from a nice round of waltzing Matilda with this guy who basically claimed that we had no authority to speak on the Vietnam War because we weren’t there……man.

 The aspect of knowing war aside, sure, I will freely admit that there is no way that I can know exactly without a doubt every aspect of a war without seeing every aspect of that war firsthand.  However, I have some serious issues with this argument that empirical knowledge trumps reasoning in all cases.

First, by using only empirical knowledge (knowledge taken from experience), any given event will have a very detailed accounting.  However, this accounting is not neccessarily accurate.  Suppose that the person is scared, drunk, angry, horny, happy, or just plain stupid.  All of these emotions can easily cloud a persons judgement into distorting his or her account of an event.

Secondly, who is right?  Suppose I have three different accounts of an event which all differ equally?  Which one is right?  The one which merely agrees with whatever theory I am trying to support.  I guess that could work, seems to have worked for the Bush Administration.

Thirdly, my account represents a microhistory.  One small tiny piece of the entire story.  I can tell you about my personal experiences in Iraq, or Afghanistan, and they would be true stories, however, they would not reflect the same story as any other Marine, even those in my own unit.  And it is very likely that my account and personal history would be very different from the story an entire army or country would tell regarding the war.  Although, my account would be true, and so would theirs.

Take this simple test to determine whether you believe that a empirical evidence trumps reasoning: Take a fork, and stick it into your eye……Done?  Good, now post a comment and tell me how it feels, and then I will have an idea of how it feels, although I would not know with certainty until I stick the fork into my own eye.  Now, don’t use a knife, it might feel different, I’ll let a spork slide, since it does incorporate some aspects of a fork, spoon and knife.

What?  You didn’t do it?  Well then, that clearly means that you believe that reason is more important than experience.  You didn’t stick the fork into your eye because you know that harming your own body will cause pain, and that pain isn’t a good thing, and therefore, you shouldn’t do things which are likely to cause pain, i.e. sticking a fork into your own eye.

Of course, in retrospect, maybe I should have asked you to stick the fork  into your heart, or brain.  This would also be an effective solution to convince the population that reason is better than experience.  Even better, I should ask everyone to cut out their own tounges.

Now why would this have any impact upon the rest of the world?  Well, yeah, i’m an Iraq and Afghanistan vet.  OK, guess what, I can tell you first-hand that getting shot at sucks.  Its better than the alternative, of getting shot. or at least, so I would reason, I can’t tell you for sure, and I don’t really want to find out.  But did I really need to tell you that?

Just what I wanted for my Birthday

Well, I finally got what I wanted for my Birthday, Saddam’s head on a plate.  Sure, it may be a little simple, but I like simple, and I figure that a world leader is only entitled to kill 100,000 people before he deserves the death penalty.  I’m glad they gave him a traitors death instead of a heros’ death.  Hanging him for the killing of his own countrymen is retribution.

 Now the interesting part, this means that people should be held accountable for the deaths which they cause.  So what about other world leaders who cause the deaths of their own countrymen?  Sure, maybe not directly, but what if they act in a negligent or reckless manner and cause people to die? (yeah, i’m talking about the pre-war planning for Iraq).

But here are my predictions, the North and South of Iraq will experience a small peace dividend as a result.  There will be some small amount of peace in these regions.  The middle of Iraq, the Sunni part, will experience an increase in violence for a short period following the holiday of Eid Al-Adha, presumably because of Saddam, but in reality because there is no other good reason to fight.

Of course, this doesn’t change what we need to do in Iraq, get out of the cities, do what armies are designed to do, fight in the open, leave the urban fighting to the police.  Set up border security and kill anything except bedouins trying to cross the border and therefore provide a secure environment for the Iraqis to form an Iraqi government.

A conversation between two vets.

 This is an ongoing conversation between myself and another veteran.  He was first, and my comments are in between the dashes. -A As far as this “war”, I think it’s severely misguided.

The premise of it is good (however fighting a ‘war’ on terrorism is like fighting a war on racism or sexism) Somewhere along the way the cause was misdirected.

Sure Saddam was an evil person, but he wasn’t really doing anything to us. We had him pretty well contained. I feel like out of the “Axis of Terror” we decided to pick on the weaker one of the three. Now we’ve just stirred up the hornet’s nest. We’re fighting this ‘war’ halfassed. We can’t go after these people/groups only part of the time. We need to commit to it or just stop all together. Too many politians are playing the political game and are riding the fence. But I can’t blame them. This is a nasty fight that will last a long time.

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I think that we got rid of the enemy we knew and could anticipate, and traded it for the enemy we don’t know and can’t predict. Honestly, I think that our best course of action would (and I’m not just using hindsight, I’ve been saying this for years) be to have asked Saddam for the head of bin Laden on a plate in exchange for reduced or removed sanctions. Let the two of them fight it out, and then deal with the results. Better to have them fight each other anyway. Hes been our proxy before, why not again?

As to what to do now, GET OUT OF THE CITIES! We have no business being there other than to get shot at. They can’t beat us in the open desert, and the only thing we need to do to create a stable Iraq is train the Iraqi forces and then set up security to prevent forigners from entering and causing a mess. The Iraqi’s will create a democracy, we don’t need to do it at the point of a gun. Plus we can’t.

How to win, or lose a war

This isn’t anything new, but somehow people seem to always forget it.

A war is not just raw untamed violence, it is the enforcement of a political decision by force.  And like any political decision, it is a multifaceted engagement between no less than two powers.

And when you’re considering a political decision such as invading another country, you must consider the goals involved.  The stated goals of the current war in Iraq are to remove Saddam Hussein and the Baath regime, and establish a free and democratic Iraq.

The ability to actually complete this goal in concept (ie establishing democracy at the end of a gun) can be debated elsewhere.  What I take issue with is the single faceted approach to warfare that the current administration has taken.

In any war, and in fact any interaction between at least two powers, there are four methods that one power can exert influence upon another power.  They’re very simple, and there is even an acronym for it: DIME.

1.  Diplomatic – This is basic dialogue and give and take.

2.  Information – The use of information to influence another power, for example, the democratizing power of the Internet gives everyone a voice in the world (me included).  Or propaganda, like what Osama Bin Laden does so well.

3.  Military – Fairly self explanatory, do what I say, or I’ll kill you and bomb your country into a parking lot and send in Marines to paint the lines.

4. Economic – Because sanctions work so well, and they actually do.

All four of these methods can be used in any interaction with other powers.  And they are used all the time even when there is no declared ‘war’.

The issue currently revolves around the inability of the United States to utilize all four aspects of influence to win the war in Iraq.  Its plain enough to see that in a stand up military fight, the US can destroy any other military power in the world, maybe even two of them.  The anti-US forces, in their many forms, have wisely chosen to forgo direct military action and utilize both asymmetric warfare in the form of roadside bombings, and more importantly to use information warfare against us.

If the US is intent on winning the war in Iraq, (which is debatable) then we need to establish programs and actions that ‘wage war’ on all fronts, including economic assistance, information warfare (which in our case, should be nothing more than telling the truth), and diplomatic measures designed to garner support both within Iraq and outside Iraq.

C. Rice (no I can’t spell her first name) wasted a perfectly good chance to establish some inkling of a relationship with Syria.  Although tragic, the bombings at the US Embassy provided an opportunity to praise the actions of the Syrian security who prevented a tragic loss of American life and establish a relationship with Syria which could lead to more stability in both Iraq and Lebanon.  There would have been no harm in acknowledging the assistance that Syria offered.

A

The War in Lebanon – It’s not between nations

The current conflict in Lebanon has been touted by the news media as a conflict between Israel and Lebanon, or Hezbollah, or sometimes even between Islam and Judaism and Christianity. Although on the surface, these seem like viable arguments to some degree or another, I think the answer lies deeper.

First, a quick look at the history of the conflict in the Mideast as it pertains to Israel. The key players are Yasser Arafat (since deceased, but nonetheless important) leader of the Palestine Liberation Organization, Ariel Sharon, the Prime Minister of Israel, and Sheikh Ahmed Ismail Yassin, the spiritual leader of Hamas, an organization dedicated to the destruction of Israel.

Ask yourself, what was the occupation of each of these people prior to their rise in their respective political parties and movements? Some might guess that Ariel Sharon was a military officer, few would know that Yasser Arafat was an Engineer. Sheikh Ahmed Yassin has been a religious leader and involved in Hamas most of his life, since his options were severely limited due to an injury at age 12. What is important, is that all of these people were relative nobody’s in the world. Their sense of importance and self-worth was tied to conflict between Israel and the Arab world.

So what do these three people have in common? They come from different backgrounds, with seemingly opposing goals; however, their goal is unified and simple. They want war.

Without a war to fight, their purpose in life would be void, and they would be relegated to the relative anonymity of a retired wartime leader, or even worse, a return to their pre-war obscure occupations. Of course, the victorious would be revered and respected, but they would have only a small fraction of their previous power. Because these three are wartime leaders, or ‘Hawks’, they have the ability to consolidate their power as a result of war.

Now that the war has turned into a ceasefire, leaders in the US have attempted to analyze who was the winner and who was the loser. The simple answer is that Israel is the loser, but so is Lebanon.

Terrorism is not a rich mans conflict. Aside from a notable Saudi, a vast majority of ‘terrorists’ are poor, with nothing to lose. With Israel’s destruction of Lebanon’s safety, security, and infrastructure, they have ensured that the next 40 years will bring a new generation of attacks from more 20 year old kids with nothing to lose.

Israel also lost the peace. On the nightly news, many of the Arabs interviewed clearly state that Hezbollah, or Hamas, or any of the other radical organizations are providing money and support in the form of food and shelter. To the Arab involved in the conflict, it shows who the ‘good guys’ are. The ‘good guys’ are the ones who will look out for their families and their welfare, which currently these organizations are doing, and Israel is not.

The simple fact, is that Israelis were kidnapped, and the Israeli hawk leadership decided that a special operations mission to retrieve them would not achieve the political goal of keeping the hawk leaders in power. The radical leaders in Lebanon, Syria, and Iran, obviously understood that a war with Israel would allow them to consolidate power in the region and ensure that it would stay that way for many years to come. They understood that it would only take a token offense to spark a war, and that would benefit them, providing they survive the conflict.

To make things abundantly clear, the enemy is not Lebanon, nor is it Israel, nor even Hezbollah or Iran, but the leadership of all parties who would ensure their stay in power by walking over the dead bodies of their countrymen.