The Choice of Freedom

Only a few prefer liberty-- the majority seek nothing more than fair masters.

Histories
-Sallust

I never had a good feeling about Iraq. While I fully support my President, I didn't think the idea of creating a viable democracy in the Middle East was possible at this point in time. I didn't have any hard facts to back up this feeling. It was just how I felt having worked extensively in that area. According to Prof. Francis Fukuyama, the Bush Administration greatly misinterpreted the neocon doctrine which was very suspicious of social engineering. Social engineering, for the most part, doesn't work and it especially doesn't work until a tight timeline.

History has shown that when a nation conquers and attempts to reshape another, it has to break the target country's spirit. Our most successful ventures in nation building were Germany and Japan. There was unrest in both countries as we attempted to remake them but nothing that could be qualified as an active resistance. Certainly things are different in Iraq. Why? The answer lies in the firebombing of Tokyo and Dresden. Overwhelming violence used to affect the civilian population is the only way to teach them that violence is not the answer. We didn't do that in Iraq so the people who make us the insurgency still believe that they can achieve something through violence. And we prove them right daily by not responding to their actions forcefully enough.

The problem here is that most people who make policy in the United States have never been in a fight-- much less combat. You learn certain things about life when you grow up fighting that you cannot possibly learn any other way. One of the biggest lessons is that some people will not quit because of pain or discomfort. If you want them to stop, you have to make them. You have to damage them to the point where they simply cannot continue because they will otherwise continue to fight. Another lesson is that courtesy of often confused for weakness. And weakness only emboldens certain types of people to behave even more violently.

Everybody knows that our military is the most powerful in the history of man. That's why we look even more like a bunch of skittish schoolgirls when we hesitate to use it. Alexander the Great was able to secure the peaceful surrender of many cities because of this principle. He offered peace. He offered favor. He even offered gold all to avoid war. Many cities took him up on his offer because they knew what he was capable of were they to behave otherwise. With his razing and salting of Thebes, he showed the ancient world the consequence of defying his generosity. People heard of his victories against numerically superior foes (of the most powerful Army of the ancient world) at Granicus, Issus and Gaugamela. Because he was so merciless in battle, his peace was truly received as a gift and not the sign of a weak spine.

We have this arrogant idea that open debate and mindless bickering will somehow show the Islamo-fascists that we are superior and that our very ability to tolerate dissent is the strength of our system. While this may be in fact true, that's just not the way our enemy will see it. They see it as weakness, plain and simple. Nothing will change that.

Was it a mistake to go into Iraq? I don't think so. It had to be done and if something must be done, it's best to get on with it. We could have handled the aftermath much better and our senior commanders could have paid more attention to the men who had spent their time with their boots on th e groud but otherwise, this is going rather as expected. Once again, if you've never been in a fight, it seems like an easy thing. It is not. Your opponent learns and reacts and has an agenda all his own. You can be losing a fight for 11 rounds and win it in the 12th with a knockout. Fighting has nothing to do with spreadsheets.

Regardless of whether or not you think the war is a good idea, it is clear that at this point, we must finish it with a definitive win. We can't use our rhetoric to say that we won. That didn't work with Saddam the first time. Our definition of winning must be our enemy admitting as much. Only when you Iraqi insurgent says, "Yes, we lost. We were defeated" can we say that we have achieved victory. Nothing less.

And what is our choice? I was in NYC during 9/11 and I was shocked at how bloodthirsty the average New Yorker had become. Sure there was love going around but when talk turned to revenge, even your Upper West Side Dakota princess was screaming for blood. That's not surprising. Most people's liberalism and peacefulness is shallow. Scare them a little and it will disappear because as a rule, people want stability more than true freedom. If a nuclear weapon is detonated in any US city, our civil right will evaporate and those who will be screaming the loudest for such a change will be same people who so depise our President and current course of action.

I don't believe that most people are necessarily Good or Bad. There's only Scared and Not. And scared people who haven't spent any time developing their inner resources will invariably make the wrong decision when the time comes.