Losing Hearts and Minds
(Or, how not to win friends and influence people in the
Islamic world.)
So far, there's over 1600 U.S. KIAs thanks to the war in Iraq. There's
over 11,000 US wounded. Billions of dollars have been spent
and continue to be spent maintaining the deployment of
over 140,000 US troops in that country. Yet despite all
that and despite the expenditure of thousands of tons of
military ordnance, the US is no closer to any kind of “victory”
in Iraq (or for that matter in Afghanistan) now, than it was
just after 9/11.
Anybody who doubts this ought to check out John F. Burns and
Eric Schmitt’s piece in the New York Times dated
May 19, 2005. The Times reports that trends in Iraq, are,
to put it mildly, not good. (Which should come as no surprise to
anyone who’s paid any attention at all to the endless street
violence now taking place throughout the Middle East.)
The article quotes an American military officer who feels that current
US military force levels are going to be deployed in
Iraq for an indefinite period of time. One officer, reports the
Times, suggested that US military involvement
in Iraq could last for “many years.”
Translation: the US isn’t
leaving Iraq anytime soon.
And there's more. According to US military sources, the Iraqi
police and military units the US is supposed to be training to
take over security duties are proving ineffective in fighting
the insurgents.
No surprise there; everyone knows that Iraqi policemen and
government officials are the main targets of the
insurgency.
The reasons for this state of affairs are not hard to
understand. There’s a lack of military leadership among the
Iraqi forces and there's a lack of a coherent government
in Iraq that can claim the allegiance of all parts of the
country.
Also, the insurgents are smart. They learn from their
mistakes. Their weapon of choice is the car-bomb,
which is proving extremely difficult to defend against. That,
and that other old Middle Eastern standby, the political
assassination. Mix in the local street gangs and professional
extortionists and you get a terrible brew. But it's one
the insurgents not only thrive on, but grow in numbers on.
One thing’s clear; the average Iraqi is paying dearly for the US
intervention in that country. Not surprisingly the current
puppet Iraqi government, installed after a sham election,
is proving totally ineffective in delivering any semblance of
public services or
law and order.
The whole enterprise of invading Iraq for the purpose of
foisting democracy on Middle Eastern societies with no tradition
of liberal democracy is failing. It is proving to be
what most people thought it was at before the Iraq War, a Neocon
pipe-dream.
And it’s all been made worse, by a total lack of understanding
(not to mention contempt) for Middle Eastern customs and ways of
doing things.
The result being, that the success or failure of the US effort
in Iraq and the rest of the Islamic world is all coming down to
what some low-level grunt or noncom in a Iraqi military prison,
did or not do, in an attempt to make his or her job more
interesting. And, whether these efforts were photographed and
put out over the Internet.
Success or failure also appears to depend on what some
high-powered reporter at Newsweek Magazine or some
similar rag, said or didn’t say about the supposed desecration
of the Koran in the US POW facility at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
Or, whether or not degrading pictures of Saddam Hussein
(who is supposed to be in a serious lock-down mode and heavily
guarded by well-qualified US soldiers) were sold for the purpose
of publication in one of Rupert Murdoch’s papers.
Forget the self-serving statements of White House flacks and
Neocon intellectuals; forget also the pronouncements of ex-US
military leaders, Fox News blowhards and CNN terrorism
“experts”. The war in Iraq (and Afghanistan) is being lost in
the Iraqi street. And the Iraqi street is where you’ll find the
hearts and minds of those the US wishes to influence.
What little influence the US has or had in the Middle East
is slowly slipping away. It is slipping away in large part due
to the arrogance, incompetence and ignorance of low-level
American soldiers and their supervisors in the military prisons
containing Moslem POWs. It is due also to high level
incompetence of reporters like Michael Isikoff who make use of
questionable sources, make explosive accusations, deeply
offensive to most of the Islamic world, only to have their
articles retracted long after the damage the has been done.
Christ, what a mess.
Let's simply declare victory and get the hell out
of this quagmire.
Punditwalla--