You cannot put out a gasoline fire with water, because the water rolls off the gasoline, spreading the fire. And if you pour more water on a gasoline fire, you only make things worse.
Likewise with sending more troops into Iraq: The troops we already have in there are a big part of the problem, and adding more of them will only make things worse.
Here is a clue from the common experience of mankind: If you are doing something the wrong way, doing more of it the same way will never fix the problem.
Example: You are trying to loosen a bolt by turning it clockwise instead of counter-clockwise. So instead of loosening the bolt, you are making it tighter. If you apply more force in the same wrong direction, you will never loosen the bolt, and you will probably break off its head. The solution is to recognize the problem and change the direction of your efforts.
In Iraq, we are doing things the wrong way. Our invasion was the original cause of the problem, because there was no way a Christian-majority army from an infidel country supporting Israel could have ever been welcomed as liberators by the Muslim Arabs of Iraq. The whole idea was ignorant and delusional from the beginning.
But we invaded anyway, and now their country is falling apart because of us, and we are stuck in a great big mess of our own creation.
So can any reasonable person truly believe that we will make things better by sending in more troops now? No! We should be doing the very opposite: withdrawing our troops immediately, then trying to clean up the mess in some other way.
Rev. Bill McGinnis is an Internet Christian minister, writer and publisher. He is Director of LoveAllPeople.org, a small private think tank in Alexandria, Virginia, and all of its related websites, including InternetChurchOfChrist.org,CommitteeForTheGoldenRule.org,CivicAmerican.com, and AmericanDemocrat.net. His agenda is to help maximize the happiness and well-being of all people. His blog is located at http://blog.myspace.com/revbillmcginnis
Although I disagree with the war, and your article, I think people need to realize that what we did is not going to get better until we end it as quickly as possible.
Lose Iraq? I think Iraq has been lost since the Ottoman Empire. There has been nothing but brutal regimes after another, all clamoring to the law of revenge.
Saddam was unique in that his brutality created stability in the region for a period of time, and to suggest our entering the picture to liberate infidels I think is not correct, but really the idea that we hope. We hoped they would welcome the downfall of Saddam's dictatorship. But in reality their goals now, that Saddam is out of the way is to pursue their own power quests and I might add in the same way Saddam captured the Iraqis and worlds imagination.
But they have more of a fight on their hands now. If anything the USA now has taken the role of Saddam, since he is no longer in power. We are now the wall between Shiite, Sunni, Kurds, Iran, Syria, Palestine, and Lebanon.
I think we need to respond. When an attack is waged against any ethnic group we must respond with force to the others, and vice a versa. They will get the message, that they need to stop fighting each other, or fight US. The United States needs to giveup this idea they are going to achieve stability in Iraq soon. We must use alot more force, to get the message across. I think more air bombings will be effective. You know we did not achieve stability in Japan or Germany until we dropped a ton of bombs on them, forcing their surrender. Yes..thousands of innocent lives were lost. But today Japan and Germany are thriving democracies, and part of the world community. In fact we lost the idea of this type of warfare during Vietnam.
If we followed those same Presidents Roosevelt, and Truman ideals of War in Vietnam we would not have withdrawn. We can not care about the loss of life of innocent people, because that is the price to end the conflict swiftly.
My thinking has changed somewhat because the longer the fighting goes, I think it creates more evil, than simply doing the job the big job of making the decision to go all out and conquer them. Hell...the insurgents are killing innocent people everyday, so what difference does it make? There are going to be dead innocent civilians anyway or anyhow you look at it. And since they are infidels they don't care, that's why they have suicide bombers. We need to care, and realize we must end this thing swiftly, effectively, and reasurredly to make them understand they must end the violence, by understanding that if we kill innocents it is not intended to end their lives but to end the brutal nightmare these people have lived for more than a century.
Winning and Ending the conflict swiftly is the key to survival in the world, and in setting it straight for future generations. They may call us terrorists and evil but in reality we are not. God created the devil...they are in my opinion from the same tree. But we need to uproot the tree, in order for God to triumph over the disease of evil.
In fact when we allow these wars to continue for protracted periods of time.. the abcess gets worse like a cancer. Of course sanctions were necessary in the beginning with Iraq, but when we made the decision to topple Saddam, we were not thinking for real about how this whole thing would pan out. Japan did not have power sects trying to grab control of their country. Neither did Germany. But the picture in Iraq is different. Vietnam caused this drift, and I think we need to shift into that high stream of intellectual spiritual deliberation in weighing what is more evil. Is it prolonging the war with the hope they will change? Proof is this does not work when you look at Israel and Palestine. Or do we do what needs to be done which includes killing innocent people in order to save the life of the Middle East. Its like gangreen. Either lose the leg by amputation even though the toes still wiggle, or lose the life of the person.
Now we have opened the can of worms where sects fight sects, and terror is unbounded in whom controls what. John McCain has it right to do something more...but more troops I think is not the answer. We need to assert our will in the region, by massive bombing, and if need be using the atomic bomb on Iran to wipe out their uranium enrichment.
We need to have them come to level dirt like Japan and Germany, and then afterwards lift them from their fate into functioning and thriving democracies. It is the only way. We do not want to send more troops like Vietnam to have them die for nothing.
We need an air assault like nothing we have seen before, to bring clear victory to the United States, and having those murderers answer to their mistaken actions. After this occurs I think the new world will begin to take shape, just as it did after WWII.
DJermano
an antiwar activist who see's dragging out conflict to stop war is becoming more evil than ending it quickly by surpassing the passive shock and awe tactics in the past.
by
Dom Jermano (20 articles, 0 quicklinks, 40 diaries, 934 comments)
on Sunday, December 17, 2006 at 2:55:21 AM
Sorry, but you totally misunderstood what I was saying about infidels, among other things. And I could not understand very much of what you said, either. Did you really mean to say we could win by using a massive airstrike? Perhaps we are thinking along totally different paths, and the ideas are missing each other . . .
My idea is pretty simple: sending more troops in at this time cannot possibly work. So what was your idea again?
by
Rev. Bill McGinnis (87 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 19 comments)
on Sunday, December 17, 2006 at 2:20:48 PM
I think more air bombings will be effective. You know we did not achieve stability in Japan or Germany until we dropped a ton of bombs on them, forcing their surrender. Yes..thousands of innocent lives were lost.
Let me respectfully suggest that this is a gross misreading of the history of the Second World War and the ensuing occupations. It has little to offer in terms of critiquing our present operation in Iraq.
In the first case, the Axis Powers were defeated by invading their territory and subjugating their armies and their populations. The allied powers mobilized over forty million soldiers, sailors and airmen to accomplish the defeat of the Axis, by the destruction of their armed forces.
It must be clear that the Iraqi armed forces were never subjugated. The vast bulk of them merely deserted and took their weapons with them. They engaged our forces in the second phase of the Iraqi War after Saddam was deposed.
The second point is that air power was not decisive and may not even have been a substantial factor in defeating the Axis. The bulk of the Imperial Japanese Navy was destroyed in open combat and the bulk of the Army was engaged in combat in China. The Emperor recognized the futility of his country's situation and courageously decided to surrender to spare the civilian populace. MacArthur brilliantly exploited the Emperor's prestige and authority during the occupation to build a democracy cooperatively with the Japanese.
In Europe, it can be argued the air campaign made German re-supply efforts more difficult, but captured documents show that they were never seriously disrupted. The de-modernization of the German Armed Forces occurred as a result of the horrendous losses they suffered in combat with the Red Army on the Eastern Front.
As in Japan an incredibly expensive (remember the billions of 1940s dollars we poured into the Marshall Plan) occupation was successful because the Allies established irrefutable ground control in Germany. The mix of military and economic muscle helped German leaders acceptable to the Occupiers gain the prestige and authority needed to reestablish civil authority.
None of these conditions are applicable in Iraq: though we deposed Saddam, we never decisively defeated the Iraqi armed forces. We never established an occupation that secured our authority and provided for the economic and physical security of the occupied populace. We never established relationships with Iraqis who had the political or cultural standing to legitimatize the post war government.
As there are no Iraqis with the political or cultural standing to legitimatize a post-Saddam/post-war government it should have been obvious from the start that this war is a recipe for disaster.
There is no way humanly possible for the US to build an acceptable government in Iraq. Any Iraqi cooperating with us will be irredeemably compromised in the eyes of the Iraqi and will have no authority beyond that provided by American economic and military resources.
The only way to settle this is to find some way to assure the territorial integrity of Iraq, keep the oil flowing so they have the resources to re-build and leave the Iraqis to sort matters out for themselves.
We need to let go and leave Iraq for the Iraqis.
Robert Chapman
Lansing, NY
by
Robert Chapman (28 articles, 0 quicklinks, 2 diaries, 557 comments)
on Sunday, December 17, 2006 at 8:54:23 PM
In fact when we allow these wars to continue for protracted periods of time.. the abcess gets worse like a cancer.
Again with respect, the metaphor is confusing rather than clarifying.
The Arab States are in ferment, the conflicts are roiling below the surface because the internal security forces are efficiently suppressing the worst manifestations.
It is unlikely to point of impossibility that the US military can do anything that other than substitute for the ugly and repressive regimes that are torturing the Arabs.
Our security and humanity demand that we be engaged with the Arabs, and probably with the Iranians to help them evolve toward democratic, transparent and responsive governments.
This is not a process that will be accomplished in the period of time that one conceives in planning a war or an occupation.
The democratization of the Arab countries will be a multi-generational struggle, just as it was in Europe.
Thinking of the violence and disorder in those places as a form of cancer makes us think that these societies enjoy the same level of domestic solidarity and governmental responsiveness that we do. This is a false analysis.
One might be clearer in thinking of the violence in the Arab countries as seismic eruptions shifting the land forms and building mountains and moving great bodies of water.
We probably can't control or predict the outbreaks of violence any better than we can tornados or earthquakes. But we need to start thinking of constructing governmental institutions that will resist the stress of these events and that are capable of rebuilding after the destruction.
Robert Chapman
Lansing, NY
by
Robert Chapman (28 articles, 0 quicklinks, 2 diaries, 557 comments)
on Sunday, December 17, 2006 at 9:05:38 PM
When Nixon faced a mid-term loss in 1970, he responded by invading Cambodia.
In later years Henry Kissinger told a reporter that Nixon's "display of ferocity" was required to demonstrate to the North Vietnamese that he was still capable politically of prosecuting the war.
I suspect that similar considerations are behind Bush's recent indications that a surge in American forces in Iraq is necessary.
Bush thinks he needs to demonstrate that he still has the political clout to dictate military policy in Iraq.
The problem is that outside the US no one is listening. The military planners overseas know what our capibilities are and what our posture is concering their military assets.
They will be impressed by these assessments rather than by Bush's political posturing.
It is beyond credibility that an Administration that refused to send enough troops to secure the occupation and thereby lost the advantages gained through combat has the political will to send the number of troops needed to prevail in Iraq now.
Bush is calling for more troops merely to bolster the perception of his political and has not taken any measure of the military situation into account in this calculation.
Robert Chapman
by
Robert Chapman (28 articles, 0 quicklinks, 2 diaries, 557 comments)
on Sunday, December 17, 2006 at 8:29:33 PM
I don't buy the idea that airpower was not the stabilizing factor in WWII. If the wars were won on the land and seas, why the use of the Atomic Bomb twice on Japan. That is what ended the war in the Pacific.
As far as D-Day is concerned, I think that was a major mistake with a loss of life that could have been avoided. Ever ask yourself why the Atomic Bomb was not used on Germany? In fact it was not the Americans who took control of Berlin but it was the Russians. Later I believe the Chief of Staffs realized the mistake of the ground assault and the heavy losses and is why they opted to bomb the hell out of Dresden. And probably the reason they didn't use the bomb in Germany is because it would have made the holocaust look like a sideshow in comparison, while we are blamed for the death of thousands of Jews.
All the bombings that occur via in Europe and the Pacific molded the halt of the Wars. It stopped Russia from taking all of Germany, and Japan realized it had no other choice but to surrender.
Nixon and his Cambodian assault was not just bombings it included chemical agent orange arsenals to open up jungles for an eventual troop increase to go into Cambodia. They were still planning victory, but those air assaults were not even comparable to what was leveled on Dresden or Tokyo.
There was no second guessing about what needed to be done. And when Nixon was polazized it began a backtracking process that really hurt America's political creditability.Also remember that Vietnam and Cambodia were never declared Wars, but conflicts. So real War arsenals were never really used.
I think we should be doing more air campaigns and less ground work. Let the Iraqis do the ground work. But the US doing what needs to be done in clearing out the future Saddam wannabes.
by
Dom Jermano (20 articles, 0 quicklinks, 40 diaries, 934 comments)
on Sunday, December 17, 2006 at 11:18:04 PM
Why didn't we use the A-bomb on Germany? We didn't have it !
As soon as we had a workinjg version of the Atomic bomb, we used it on the only remaining enemy -- Japan. Germany had already surrendered months earlier.
by
Rev. Bill McGinnis (87 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 19 comments)
on Monday, December 18, 2006 at 2:43:45 PM
Where are you getting your bad information? How can you possibly say Japan surrended before we used the A-bomb?
This is from Britannica: Do you disagree?
"News of Hiroshima's destruction was only slowly nderstood in Tokyo. Many members of the Japanese government did not appreciate the power of the new Allied weapon until after the Nagasaki attack. Meanwhile, on August 8, the U.S.S.R. had declared war against Japan. The combination of these developments tipped the scales within the government in favour of a group that had, since the spring, been advocating a negotiated peace. On August 10 the Japanese government issued a statement agreeing to accept the surrender terms of the Potsdam Declaration on the understanding that the emperor's position as a sovereign ruler would not be prejudiced. In their reply the Allies granted Japan's request that the emperor's sovereign status be maintained, subject only to their supreme commander's directives. Japan accepted this proviso on August 14, and the emperor Hirohito urged his people to accept the decision to surrender."
From the Smithsonian at the above link they quote:
"When General Marshall dispatched Truman's order to drop the atomic bomb, Marshall already believed that Japan had lost the war. Shortly before he died, Marshall told an interviewer that the atomic bomb had precipitated the surrender only "by months."
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Dom Jermano (20 articles, 0 quicklinks, 40 diaries, 934 comments)
on Tuesday, December 19, 2006 at 5:43:52 AM
Certainly Japan was losing the war, but they hadn't lost it yet. Their position was much like that of the Confederacy after Gettysburg in the U.S. Civil War: they were losing, but they kept on fighting anyway. Some of the nastiest battles took place after the South could not possibly defeat the North, but they kept on trying nevertheless. A huge U.S. invasion of the Japanese mainland was planned -- with estimated casualties of 2 million or more. This would have happened if we had not forced their immediate and unconditional surrender by using the two A-bombs.
by
Rev. Bill McGinnis (87 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 19 comments)
on Tuesday, December 19, 2006 at 8:05:07 AM
Here is an abbreviated version of a quote from Mahatma Gandhi: "Violence will prevail over violence, only when someone can prove to me that darkness can be dispelled by darkness." Food for thought when we wonder why our Iraqi adventure has become a fiasco.
by
Mac McKinney (40 articles, 53 quicklinks, 126 diaries, 878 comments)
on Monday, December 18, 2006 at 12:15:04 AM
Thanks Ghandi for Stopping Hitler, must have been all those Jews who passively died at the hands of Hitler that made him stop his assault on the world.
by
Dom Jermano (20 articles, 0 quicklinks, 40 diaries, 934 comments)
on Monday, December 18, 2006 at 9:29:55 AM
I would like to remind you, folks that you all claim to be progressives and as such are anti-war not, pro- victory. I would like to remind you all that we, the USA had attacked the sovereign nation of Iraq qwithout provocation and on the basis of lies. I would like to remind to you all that a decent human being does not 'consider' bombing, maiming or 'destroying with bringing up afterwards' other nations NO MATTER WHAT and especially when it is OUR NATION WHICH IS GUILTY! I would like to remind to all of you that we have no business in Iraq or elsewhere as it matters, that the one and only way for the US is to leave immediately and send our plead for forgiveness. I would like to remind to you all that most of us know nothing about what is happening there, that we base our conclusions on 99% lies, that we never listened to the sources from another side. Having a priviliege of reading the Russian sources I testify that it is ONLY the US occupation that leads to the horrible violence there and it is ONLY the US govt which is responsible. I want to remind to all of you that those 'troops' of ours are our children, that they so far had been used for private purpose by the groop of goons and as such using them even more is a crime. For goodness sake, people, you discuss airstrikes as some kind of morning coffee! Where have you been all those years? Have you even read those articles here, on our site, those comments, those testimonies? Or you are waiting for those bombs to fall on your heads?
There cannot be any 'respectful discussion on the options on how to pacify Iraq'. We have to pacify us. Our troops must be out of there. We have to go. Eat your shoe. I am fully supportive of the position of Rev. McGinnis and I hope we all come to our senses and understand that we here can be bombed by our own bombs if we do not stop now.
by
Mark Sashine (42 articles, 19 quicklinks, 226 diaries, 3211 comments)
on Monday, December 18, 2006 at 7:59:45 AM
You are the crime to humanity Panurg. We leave and you know what happens! The blood bath continues as it has in the past. Iraq has known nothing but blood and wars since a century ago. That has no meaning or bearing on your mind?
And people will accuse the USA of giving weapons to Saddam, yeah we armed him hoping his army would create stability..but he did some bad things. We needed to stop him. Just like a bad cop, we had to fire him, and take his gun away.
We can not leave Iraq until the violence stops. Until the sectarian violence ends! Leaving Iraq will not do this. The Shiites and Sunnis and Kurds will be in a power war.
What is so hard to see about this fact? Of course I follow the ideals of Ghandi, and Jesus, and I see this suffering that is going on...a suffering that goes on and on, and on. Pretty soon it will be 50 years like the Israeli Palestinian Struggle. Is this what we call Peace?
I call it evil because we do not have the real mental strength to do what must be done. Do we call God a terrorist when tornado's rip through neighborhoods, or creates disasters like Katrina? Conveniently no...we blame George Bush.
We are really pathetic Americans. Might as well stick marbles up our ass to claim we didn't lose them.
by
Dom Jermano (20 articles, 0 quicklinks, 40 diaries, 934 comments)
on Monday, December 18, 2006 at 9:25:10 AM
I do not know what happened to you but if you continue your rant calling other people names like you called me I will ask the editor to flag your comments. You better look into the mirror, whether you live in China or not. Or better ask the Chinese about wars, they know. And I am sick of your referring to Holocaust as an excuse for the pro- war rants. It is the worst of things a man can do to use the martyrs to fortify his own unfortunate tendencies.
by
Mark Sashine (42 articles, 19 quicklinks, 226 diaries, 3211 comments)
on Monday, December 18, 2006 at 9:43:14 AM
Ikster wrote: "Thanks Gandhi for Stopping Hitler, must have been all those Jews who passively died at the hands of Hitler that made him stop his assault on the world."
Ikster is making a less than subtle gibe at Gandhi's non-violent teachings, but I don't think he realizes that Gandhi's non-violence philosophy was anything but passive. Gandhi was one of the most confrontational fellows that ever existed. He never shied away from a fight unless it was not in his strategic or tactical interests to fight, and he took on one of the biggest SOBs on the planet, the British Empire, in both South Africa and India. Gandhi believed in confronting power and authority while maintaining the moral high ground, for he realized that when you sacrifice morality and ethics to achieve your ends, you are perverting your ends. In contrast, when you are able to maintain the highest possible spiritual position in a confrontation, you are opening yourself up to Divine assistance. Gandhi was not an atheist.
Ikster is confusing pacifism in its derogatory sense with Gandhian methods, but this is a totally false comparison. Since Gandhi obviously never confronted Hitler, we will never know what the outcome would have been, but we do know that one of the few times that organized, non-violent resistance was employed in Nazi Germany, in the famous Rosenstrasse Protest in 1943 in Berlin, several thousand German women who had Jewish spouses, whom Goebbels and company had suddenly arrested, braved German authorities and their threats, including potential death, daily in front of the building where their Jewish husbands had been incarcerated until the Nazis finally caved in and released them, an amazing victory in the belly of the beast.
Here is what Gandhi himself said when asked if non-violence and civil disobedience would work against Hitler:
"Non-violence does not mean making peace. On the other hand, it means fighting bravely and sincerely for truth and doing what is just. Like all fights, there will be a terrible loss and pain. But a satyagrahi (soldier of civil disobedience) must go on.
"My success with civil disobedience in South Africa and in India has not come easy. A large number of people sacrificed a great deal, including their lives while fighting for truth and justice.
"The doctrine of Satyagraha works on the principle that you make the so called enemy see and realize the injustice he is engaged in. It can work only when you believe in God and the goodness of the people to see that they are wrong. As a satyagrahi, I do believe that non-violence is a potent weapon against all evils. I warn you however, that the victory will not come easy- just like it will not come easy with violent methods such as fighting with weaponry."
by
Mac McKinney (40 articles, 53 quicklinks, 126 diaries, 878 comments)
on Monday, December 18, 2006 at 3:10:15 PM
Ikster is confusing pacifism in its derogatory sense with Gandhian methods, but this is a totally false comparison. Since Gandhi obviously never confronted Hitler, we will never know what the outcome would have been, but we do know that one of the few times that organized, non-violent resistance was employed in Nazi Germany, in the famous Rosenstrasse Protest in 1943 in Berlin, several thousand German women who had Jewish spouses, whom Goebbels and company had suddenly arrested, braved German authorities and their threats, including potential death, daily in front of the building where their Jewish husbands had been incarcerated until the Nazis finally caved in and released them, an amazing victory in the belly of the beast.
..Of course we can discuss the meanings to pacifism, and its qualities which hold parameters in the framework of non-violence. I think pacifism also has fighting qualities that many shrug off as nonpacific. I don't go along with the Rosenstrasse Protest as being a Ghandian Priniciple in practice and won. The wives who were protesting were not Jews. In fact the many issues in Nazism stemed toward purification which they wanted people who were non-Jewish to divorce Jew spouses. How would squashing non Jews accomplish anything, in the Hitler German minds? Just before this happened Germany had already surrendered in Stalingrad, and by clamping down on non-Jew spouses would have been a worthless exercise, especially when they were working to gain more support, and plotting more important battles that would be coming to Berlin. This is a false comparison I think to Ghandi's practice, because actually the wives who were Aryan were considered more to be German and not enemies to Hitlers State. Ghandi was actually up against another race and culture...England. I fail to see Ghandi using non-violence against fellow Indians in India, moreover fellow Hindu's who disagree.
by
Dom Jermano (20 articles, 0 quicklinks, 40 diaries, 934 comments)
on Monday, December 18, 2006 at 7:51:46 PM
The bottom line about the Rosenstrasse Protest was that it was a non-violent protest of the first order that confronted and embarrassed the State into making a change. That is what Gandhian Principles are all about, using social levers to promote change peacefully instead of violently. Whether or not we want to call it a classic Gandhian protest is immaterial.
Moreover, these women took a very big risk because they were already marked as "unclean whores of the Jews" in Nazi propaganda diatribes and apparently did come close to being gunned down en masse. And we must remember that the Nazis did kill lots of "Aryan" Germans who thought or acted the wrong way.
But the overriding reality was that Hitler and the Nazis were always nervous about public opinion, always trying to manipulate the public and likely sensed that machine-gunning scores of German frauleins was going to backfire bigtime no matter how they tried to smear them. And this type of risk-taking is part and parcel of Gandhian or Martin Luther King's thinking, a willingness to put it all on the line sometimes while you stare hatred in the face and wait for it to either attack you or, hopefully, pause and reflect.
Because the Nazis' buttons could be pushed to get them to back down when the political winds were not favorable, it is truly a shame that German churches did so little to protest Hitler's evils.
by
Mac McKinney (40 articles, 53 quicklinks, 126 diaries, 878 comments)
on Tuesday, December 19, 2006 at 12:37:38 AM
Yes I agree about the Church statement. And I also think that because Germany was seen to be losing the War, what did the German Gals have to lose? Except of course their husbands, but in effect making it clear that tampering with the marriage union by the German State should be a hands off policy. I think many German soldiers also had Jewish wives, and it became evident that they really did not support Hitlers purification process. It would be interesting to note that perhaps Hitler fell because of this moral deliberation, and that the Russians taking Berlin was a secondary result. When you lose the moral battle I think it is only time before the war battle takes its grip.
I still do not think Ghandism had a role in this....perhaps really it is the Lord himself.
by
Dom Jermano (20 articles, 0 quicklinks, 40 diaries, 934 comments)
on Tuesday, December 19, 2006 at 5:07:33 AM
