CHARLIE DANIELS, would-be arbiter of Patriotic Correctness for country performers and fans, has a book out called Ain't No Rag, published by the rightwing Regnery Press. One of the essays is called "Veterans," which recycles a blowhard "lesson" of the Vietnam War, one that anyone who grew up in America has heard a few dozen times. And to let us know where this fits in the culture wars, he writes:
When I think about brave men and women being spit on by dirty, stoned-out, jobless, pseudo-intellectual hippies whose only contribution to this nation had been to burn their draft cards, it makes my collar get about two sizes too small.
Now, Chuckie's not too big on citing sources. But presumably he knows about some incident in which a couple of intoxicated unemployed guys with poor personal hygiene who read Hermann Hesse novels and had burned their draft cards spit on some veterans. Or maybe they were just drunk and threw up on them.
However that may be, Chuckie knows about fightin' wars:
We could have won that war [Vietnam], if it would have been fought on the battlefield instead of the halls of Congress and the Oval Office.
Now, I'm not quite sure how it is that the US could fight a war without the President and Congress being involved. But anyway, Chuckie says:
In my book, when you go to war you shoot at the enemy every time you see him and you keep on shooting until he either surrenders or doesn't exist any more. You throw everything you've got at him every hour of every day until you grind him into the dust. Bomb him; shoot him; overrun his positions; cut his supply lines, and do it consistently until you pound him into submission.
Now, this sounds to me more like a description of an antebellum Southern slave patrol going after some planter's human property who had absconded from the plantation than like guerrilla warfare.
But here in the real world where American troops are involved in guerrilla wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, that's not very useful advice. One of the particular challenges of counterinsurgency warfare is to find ways of protecting your troops while targeting guerrillas, avoiding civilian casualties and proceeding with normal government and development, all at the same time.
(Cont. in Part 2)
No comments:
Post a Comment