I think they're using bombs. Call me crazy.
From the beginning, I think we've been losing the war because the Bush Administration, The Republican Party, Conservatives, the Religious Right, and people who hang Thomas Kinkade paintings in their homes, have lacked the courage of their convictions.
Instead of fighting the actual war in Iraq, or even the larger war on terror, they've used the fact of troops on the ground to fight the only war they actually care about: the war on the Democratic party, liberals, universities, hollywood, artists, minorities, and anyone else with the ability to challenge their grip on the federal government as an agent for protecting the wealthy and the powerful.
The real war has always been an excuse to fight a propaganda war. A war of rhetoric and words. "Fight 'em there, so we don't have to fight 'em here", "you're either with us or against us", "axis of evil", etc. And in a rhetorical war, words matter more than actions. Why else would internal criticism of administration actions be likened to appeasement, aid and comfort, or treason.
So far as I know, no one in the Democratic party has offered terms of surrender to the insurgents. No one has written up a peace treaty that offers the insurgents a complete withdrawal and Guam. No one in Hollywood is organizing pro-insurgent fund-raisers. No one is gun running or selling Apache helicopters on the black market. Y'know, things that would be actual appeasement, aid and comfort, and treason.
No, the right wing only attacks virtual enemies. What we like to call straw men. Easy to punch, decorative in the Fall, and they keep the crows out of the corn. But they don't win wars.
So what is my plan G. I call it my Right-wing Put-Up-Or-Shut-Up To Win The War Once And For All plan. Here's how it works:
- Announce under no uncertain terms that we invaded Iraq in order to reassert our absolute and infallible hegemony in the middle east as the world's only super power.
- Assert our right to establish a permanent military base in Iraq to guarantee access to cheap middle east oil until the supply is exhausted.
- Reinstate the Draft (it's put up or shut up time for Young Republicans as well. Also, research the correlation between gun violence and the draft - these things didn't happen when angry young men were routinely shipped to Germany, Korea, and Vietnam).
- Put 500,000 troops in Iraq to lock it down once and for all. Do what's necessary but don't be evil.
- Establish a permanent civilian government in Iraq only after the ability to mount an insurgency has been destroyed. Constitutions and elections, as Rove has taught us, are for suckers.
- Forget "we'll stand down, when they stand up". We didn't build new armies after World War II. Give them baseball, pop music, cars, and blue jeans. Look what it did for Germany and Japan. Wars are not fought by countries with civilian populations that have jobs to go to in the morning and TVs at home (unless you count this one).
- Don't get hung up on cultural or religious differences. Have you seen Dubai? Wealth and consumerism is the universal language of peace.
- Remind Iran that we are never planning to leave. Never, never, never.
- Use our leverage to force Pakistan to help us destroy Al-Qaeda's hideouts along the border it shares with Afghanistan.
- Quit patronizing the troops! These are professional and highly trained individuals. Not dough boys. This isn't easy company with its heartwarming cross-section of American stereotypes. These are career-level people with spouses and mortgages. This is their job. They don't need our yellow ribbons, they need the tools and the freedom to get on with the task at hand.
- Remember that our soldiers are most successful when they go on the offensive. From what I've learned on TV, victory always goes to the side that wants to destroy stuff, not the side that wants to protect stuff. The trick is to be the guys who destroy stuff last (see for example Pearl Harbor vs. Nagasaki, Germany's invasion of France vs. the Allied invasion at Normandy). We won early on because our guys were on the offensive and Saddam's forces were running for the hills. Things have turned because now it's the insurgents who play offense while our guys are standing flat-footed on street corners and in the so-called green zone waiting for the next explosion.
So that's my plan: maximum troop levels and permanent military presence. If my plan sounds crazy, ill-informed, stupid, wildly reckless, politically impractical, or logistically implausible to you, then you must not have wanted to win this war in the first place. Traitor.
