(Cont. from Part 1.) Yeah, it'd be grand if them there "Baathist diehards" and "Taliban remnants" would come out and fight like a regular army so we could kill 'em quick. But they just don't seem to be cooperating in that plan.
And just identifying the enemy is also a big factor in counterinsurgency. If you go blasting away indiscriminately at small bands of guerrillas ("shoot at the enemy every time you see him and you keep on shooting"), especially in urban settings, the troops are likely to kill civilians or friendly police. Which has already been happening in Iraq way too much as it is. And large-scale guerrilla warfare requires lots more than quick-and-easy battles that make exciting stories on Fox News. It requires police, paramilitaries and a regular army from the country where the insurgency is going on.
But Chuckie thinks they all need to be quick and easy:
And then, after he is thoroughly beaten and you can deal from a position of absolute authority, sit down at the peace table with him, work out something sensible, and get our troops the heck out of there.
If we're not willing to go all out to define and attain victory, we should never, ever get into another war.
"Absolute authority" - there's that Old South touch again. But isn't that what Bush and Rummy have already done in Afghanistan and Iraq? In both cases, the enemy government collapsed so completely there was no one to sit down with at the peace table. But our troops haven't been pulled "the heck out of there." Bush and Rummy also still seem to be working on that defining and attaining victory part. Does anyone know how to tell when we've won in either Iraq or Afghanistan?
Yet Chuckie's still cheering for both wars. And I can't help thinking that reconstructing Iraq to be a model democracy for the Middle East - which Chuckie's hero Bush still says we're going to do - may be a little more complicated than "working out something sensible."
In other words, Chuckie's macho formula for winning wars is just a bunch of bluster and hot air.
Tags: charlie daniels, charlie daniels soapbox, chuckie, chuckie watch, iraq war
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