"These people are deliberate, they are methodical, their time table is their own. If you hit them and push them back, they may retreat for a while, but they will be back and they are absolutely lethal."
Let presume that we really are at war with a group of people. (Clearly the "War on Terror" is so named because it can be streteched to mean "copyright terrorists" which presumably was the target of a recent application of the "we'll only use this for terrorists" Patriot act. But let's ignore that for a second). Let's call 'em "al Qaeda," for want of a better term. (No this isn't a why did Bush lie about Iraq...)
What do you do about al Qaeda?
Well, all available knowledge about war suggests: a) you attempt to seize, maintain, defend, expand and exploit, the initiative until the enemy can no longer resist, and b) you remove the cassus belli the other side had- so that nobody can take their place. "The supreme excellence is to get your objective without war," Sun Tzu wrote.
These 2 things taken together are how war would be waged- the objective of war, ultimately, must be about the stoppage of war, or the war a) cannot be won, and b) will eventually have no support on the part of the people.
This is the lesson of Vietnam our Republicans still don't get- perhaps if they had spoken to folks who served they'd have gotten it.
Cheney gave away the game in this quote here: this administration doesn't give a hoot about actually stopping the war on terrorism by annihilating the cause- they don't care about winning altogether- just "pushing back" so they can "come back."
There is no better reason to vote against these people in November- in my opinion, such behavior - if indeed we are at war- is nothing less than the political equivalent of dereliction of duty, and gross incompetence.
If for no other reason, out of respect for those died on 9/11- including someone I knew from high school- we need to get the likes of Bush and Cheney removed from our political structure by the ballot box.
No comments:
Post a Comment