Well this is a bleak read and as the "only non-US author" being read by the Army, it's getting a lot of attention.
Nowhere to run
After what has been described as the most foolish war in over 2,000 years, is there a way out of Iraq for President Bush, asks Brian Whitaker
Tuesday November 29, 2005
There is a remarkable article in the latest issue of the American Jewish weekly, Forward. It calls for President Bush to be impeached and put on trial "for misleading the American people, and launching the most foolish war since Emperor Augustus in 9 BC sent his legions into Germany and lost them".
To describe Iraq as the most foolish war of the last 2,014 years is a sweeping statement, but the writer is well qualified to know.
He is Martin van Creveld, a professor at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem and one of the world's foremost military historians. Several of his books have influenced modern military theory and he is the only non-American author on the US Army's list of required reading for officers.
The whole question of why we went to Iraq continues to mystify me but it's particularly odd to hear Israeli's criticizing us. Here we have professor of military history in Israel calling our invasion the biggest mistake in 2000 years. On the other hand, it was my understanding that one of the main (unspoken) reasons we went to war was Neocon (Cheney, Libby, Wolfowitz, etc) support of Israel. Did we invade to help Israel and are they now complaining about it? To quote Vinnie Bobberino, "I'm so confused!!"
There continues to be a lot of fuss about whether or not we should have gone to war but the real question of course is what we should do moving forward.
Democrats are finally showing signs of backbone by criticizing the war and Bush's retort that criticism is unpatriotic and cowardly is working less and less. This is a good thing (for me) but it isn't leading to much direction moving forward.
It may even be valid to say that the current US regime just isn't capable of moving forward because of all their screw-ups this far. One friend opined that the best thing to do now is simply keep troops on the ground until we can elect a new President in 2008. Surely our next Great Leader will be able to actually lead something besides vacation. A painful idea but he might be correct.
The rebellion against Bush is growing bold enough to openly propose an immediate pull out, such as we saw with Senator Murtha. The problem is that it's not clear at all that things would be better if we pulled out or even if we left a skeleton force, as we have done in Afghanistan. (Does anyone even remember our first invasion, Afghanistan? It rarely gets mentioned.)
Another possibility mentioned by this article and others is that the country may still implode in civil war. This possibility is something else to watch, particularly due to the Kurd's understandable desire for the creation of their own country. After all, Jews got Israel so why shouldn't Kurds get Kurdistan?
One thing for sure is that this issue wont be going away anytime soon. Here are some notable tidbits from the article:
Kurdish aspirations have been awakened too - which has implications for Turkey, Syria and Iran, especially if Iraq is eventually dismembered.With or without American troops, the war in Iraq has acquired a momentum of its own and threatens to spill over into other parts of the region.
There are four major issues: terrorism, Sunni-Shia rivalries, Kurdish aspirations, and the question of Iraq's territorial integrity - all of which pose dangers internationally.
...
As with the Afghan war in the 1980s that spawned al-Qaida, there is every reason to suppose that the Iraq war will create a new generation of terrorists with expertise that can be used to plague other parts of the world for decades to come. The recent hotel bombings in Jordan are one indication of the way it's heading.
...
With a fragile central government in Baghdad constantly undermined by the activities of militants and weakened by the conflicting demands of Sunnis, Shias and Kurds, the demise of Iraq as a nation-state sometime during the next few years has become a distinct possibility.
The effect of that on the regional power balance is difficult to predict, but at the very least it would bring a period of increased instability.
No one can claim that any of this was unexpected. The dangers had been foreseen by numerous analysts and commentators long before the war started but they were ignored in Washington, mainly for ideological reasons.
There were, of course, some in the neoconservative lobby who foresaw it too and thought it would be a good thing - shaking up the entire Middle East in a wave of "creative destruction".
