The Iraq War

The Iraq War
Someone once said, “War is the last act of diplomacy” and that just might be true but to me it sounds like something the intelligentsia would cook-up to prove how really advanced and intelligent they are. From a practical standpoint, such esoteric uttering would matter little to a Grunt stuck in a mud hole getting his butt shot off and all because previous diplomatic efforts to effectively communicate with a potential enemy had failed and produced a real enemy instead. Moreover this diplomacy thing begs the question, is diplomacy only conducted by commissioned Diplomats and as such are they, therefore, the only ones responsible for the peace failure? I think not. Perhaps diplomacy is conducted by a great number of responsible people, maybe even a President, regardless if he realizes it or not. For example, I recalled I literally cringed when President GWB announced with a halting voice that sounded like a chain going around a broken sprocket with a few teeth missing, “Your are either with us, or you’re against us.” Who really knows how much diplomatic damage this pronouncement made but I’ll wager my last Krugerrand that it was extensive. Well, regardless if war is diplomacy laced with bullets instead of words, war was addressed in 1936 by FDR who said to a very apprehensive nation, “I have seen war, and I hate war” and yet we ended up in the biggest war to date. Even though all of the worlds best and brightest Diplomats and world leaders tried with all of their might to prevent war, Hitler, Mussolini and Togo were not dissuaded from their Imperial designs by mere words but finally by bullets. Even though I hate to give any quarter to the Intelligentsia, they indeed are probably correct about this “War is the last act of diplomacy” thing because does anyone really think they could talk and reason with today’s Osama bin Laden to stop doing his dastardly deeds and maybe even convert to Christianity and become, for instance, a Southern Baptist. That would be as likely as Nancy Pelosi marrying Newt Gringrich and forming the new Jeffersonian Political Party. So we will have war until we can find a better way and regardless if it be a containment, preemptive, defensive, unnecessary or whatever kind of war, it, like today’s war in Iraq, is not necessarily a failure of diplomacy or any other kind of non-violent persuasion but rather simply a problem that can only be resolved by acquiescence or force. With this in mind, here is what I think might be as good as any explanation of why we are in the current Iraq war. Lacking a viable diplomatic strategy to deal with a wide spread enemy that does not stand up a uniformed army, lacks a central command structure and hides within the general civilian population, I believe it was decided upon a military strategy that is as old as the teachings of Sun Tzu's, The Art of War. As part of a larger war on radical Islam that is heating up again after 1,500 years of on again/ off again battles and now enabled by petroleum, the anecdotal evidence suggests that the decision was made to use Iraq as a killing field. I believe you send out a patrol to find out where the enemy is and then present a target to draw him to your position of strength, which looks exactly like what we are doing in Iraq. We cannot go into every country where the bad guys are hiding and kill them, so you present such an irresistible target that they must respond or lose credibility and I believe the US (the Great Satan) right smack dab in the middle of Islam country is that irresistible target and is drawing the bad guys to our killing field. If true, this would only be a workable military strategy in lieu of a viable diplomatic or strategic strategy and one can but say, what a miserable situation for the long-suffering Iraq people.