| 
Recent Stories
March 26, 2003
Bruce Jackson
A Battlefield from Hell
Pablo
Mukherjee
Watch Their Lips
David Krieger
Shock But Not Awe
Linda
Heard
Winning Hearts and Minds Bush-Style
Imad Jadaa
The Beautiful Face of America
Adam
Engel
Buckets of Blood
Patrick Cockburn
Kurds Unimpressed
David
Lindorff
POWs, Torture and Hypocrisy
Robert Fisk
The Coup That Didn't Happen
April
Hurley, MD
A Doctor's Outrage in Baghdad
Gloria Bergen
Chretien's Shame
Reema
Abu Hamdieh
The Smell of Death Surrounds Me
March 25, 2003
Jeffrey St. Clair
Life During Wartime
Gary
Leupp
What Democracy Looks Like: the Streets
of Cairo
Bill and Kathleen
Christison
An Interview with Hanan Ashrawi
Bruce
Jackson
Why Protest? Why Write?
Uri Avnery
Bitter Rice: Thoughts and Warnings on
the War
Jason
Leopold
Blood Indicator: Casualties and the Stock
Market
Ralph Nader
A Pre-emptive War on a Defenseless Country
March 24, 2003
Alexander Cockburn
Ominous Signs
David
Lindorff
Peacekeepers at Ground Zero
Diane Christian
Blood Sacrifice
Kathy
Kelly
The Morning After Shock and Awe
John Stanton
US Bombs Iran
Wayne
Madsen
How to Live with a Rogue Superpower
Anthony Gancarski
Iraq and the Death of the West
David
Vest
Earth vs. Bush
Ahmad Faruqui
The Liberation of Iraq in Perspective
Robert
Fisk
We Bomb, They Suffer
March 22 / 23, 2003
Edward Said
The Other America
Saul Landau
The Threats of Empire
Kathleen and Bill Christison
On the Road in the West Bank
Joanne Mariner
Suing Seymour Hersh
Ann Harrison
The Battle of San Francisco
Robert Fisk
A Cauldron of Fire
Hani Shukrallah
The Gates of Hell
Chris Floyd
Memory Lane
Kathy Kelly
Imagine Chicago Under This Kind of Attack
Ramzi Kysia
Bombing Away a Chance for Joy
Linda Heard
Baghdad Burns While Bush Does Lunch
Bradley Burston
Could the US be at War for Years?
Salvador Peralta
Mass Murder as Liberation?
Tom Gorman
Now That's a Coalition!
Jorge Mariscal
Johnny Mack, When Are You Coming Back?
Cindy Milstein
The Grassroots Go Global
Josh Frank
Blocking Portland's Bridges
Elaine Cassel
The Case of Elizabeth Smart: Kidnapping and Insanity
Gordon Solberg
Drowning in Niceness: the Lessons of Elizabeth Smart
Tom Crumpacker
Getting to Know the Real Havana
Poets' Basement
Dobie, Guthrie, Alam, Wechsler
March 21, 2003
Ben Tripp
Blood for Oil:
the Exchange Rate
Cathy Breens
Report from Baghdad: Mothers, Kids and Crash Kits
Scott Handleman
Fourth
Generation Protesting: Shutting Down San Francisco
Vanessa Jones
Paint Them
Red
Brian J. Foley
Patriotic Protest
for Professors
Zoltan Grossman
After Saddam, a War on Iraqi Rebels?
Philip S. Golub
Inventing Demons
Richard Lichtman
On the Current Experience of Terror
Milan Rai
Blitz-Coup
Pepe Escobar
A Cheap Family Farce
Floyd Rudmin
The Nightmare at the Back Door: Nuclear Plant's as Terror Targets
Chris Floyd
See Rome (poem)
Website of the War
Iraq
Body Count
March 20, 2003
Stephen Banko
I Was a Soldier
Once
Kevin Alexander Gray
How Did We Become
an Outlaw Nation?
Shane Claiborne
Nomadic
Solidarity: Glimpses of Life in Baghdad on the Eve of War
Kathy Kelly
Waiting on the Baghdad Skies to Crack
Anthony Gancarski
Michelle
Makin's "Liberty Shields"
Rahul Mahajan and Robert Jensen
Myths and
Facts About the War on Iraq
Jason Leopold
Cheney's
Lies About Halliburton and Iraq
Ron Jacobs
If War is Business as Usual, There Should be No Business as Usual
Chuck O'Connell
Predictions About the Iraq War
Douglas Herman
US Air Force Veteran on the Coming Air Campaign
Ralph Nader
Come On Democrats,
Stand Up for Peace
William Hughes
War is Theft
Sima Saeedi
Dispatch from
Iran
Hammond Guthrie
John Philip Sousa
Website of the Day
Iraq
Body Count
Hot Stories
Gore Vidal
The Erosion
of the American Dream
Francis Boyle
Impeach Bush:
A Draft Resolution
Click Here for More
Stories.
Burn Your Sweatshop Clothes!
Buy Union Made Apparel!
|
March
27, 2003
Into the Quicksand
No Exit
By WILLIAM S. LIND
In
June of 1944, when Field Marshal von Rundstedt, the German commander
in France, was told that the Allies were landing in Normandy, he knew
exactly what to do. He went out into the garden and pruned his roses.
Von Rundstedt knew that in war, early reports, regardless of whether
the news is good or bad, are usually misleading. Reacting to them with
"instant analysis" merely makes the problem worse. That is
as true for the war in Iraq as for any other war. For now, we need to
wait. Only time can offer clarity.
What we can do now
is discuss possibilities. I see three broad, possible outcomes to this
war. None of them is good.
The first and worst
is that our current advance on Baghdad proves to be a trap. We get there,
our 350-mile single supply line is cut, and the 3rd Infantry Division,
which is the spearhead, is forced into a desperate retreat or even surrender.
Could it happen? Yes. As the Iraqi leadership seems to understand, a
modern defense does not try to keep the enemy out.
Rather, it seeks
to suck him in, then cut him off. This type of defense was first developed
by the German army during World War I (early critics called it the "let
them walk right in defense"), and it was the standard German defense
during World War II. The key element, the counterattack by armored forces,
will probably be impossible for the Iraqis because of air power.
But there are other
ways to cut a supply line.
This outcome is
disastrous in both the short and long terms. Short-term, we lose an
army. Long-term, the Islamic world gets what it might see as its biggest
victory since the Turks took Constantinople in 1453. It would be an
enormous shot in the arm for every Islamic jihadi, and would lead to
a collapse of America's position throughout the Islamic world, and perhaps
elsewhere as well.
The second broad
possibility is that we take Baghdad, replace Saddam with an American-approved
pro-consul, then watch Iraq turn into a vast West Bank as non-state
elements take effective control outside the capital city. This is what
has happened in Afghanistan, and in Iraq too we would quickly find that
our state armed forces do not know how to fight non-state opponents
in Fourth Generation war. This outcome is good short-term but -- as
Israel can attest -- a bloody mess in the long-term.
The third possibility
is what the adventurers who now run American foreign and defense policy
seek: we take Baghdad, liberate Iraq and turn it into a modern, peaceful
democracy. The probability of this happening makes a snowball's chances
in Hell look pretty good, but even if it does, it too is a long-term
disaster.
Why?
First, because democracy
in the Islamic world probably means the election of people like Bin
Laden, whose campaign slogan would be, "Death to the Christian
and Jewish dogs!" Second, because what the American Establishment
means by "freedom and democracy" is Brave New World. And third,
because the adventurers, emboldened by success, might then go on to
wage war against Iran, Syria, Libya, and possibly North Korea. If their
goal is American world hegemony, that goal is certain to drive everyone
else into a coalition against us, state and non-state elements alike.
In short, so long
as American policy remains what it is today, the war in Iraq offers
us no exit. If the adventurers were replaced by sober men, could we
find a way out? Perhaps. It just might work if we took Baghdad, overthrew
Saddam, and then immediately turned Iraq over to the Arab League or
the U.N. to run, while making it very clear to the rest of the world
that America's quest for world hegemony is over, finished and done.
A good way to put it might be, "a republic, not an empire."
Meanwhile, let us
all pray that possibility number one does not come to pass, and that
our friends over there doing the fighting -- and I have many come home
to us whole, safe, victorious and soon.
William
S. Lind is Director of the Center for Cultural Conservatism
at the Free Congress Foundation.
Yesterday's Features
Pablo
Mukherjee
Watch Their Lips
David Krieger
Shock But Not Awe
Linda
Heard
Winning Hearts and Minds Bush-Style
Imad Jadaa
The Beautiful Face of America
Adam
Engel
Buckets of Blood
Patrick Cockburn
Kurds Unimpressed
David
Lindorff
POWs, Torture and Hypocrisy
Robert Fisk
The Coup That Didn't Happen
April
Hurley, MD
A Doctor's Outrage in Baghdad
Gloria Bergen
Chretien's Shame
Reema
Abu Hamdieh
The Smell of Death Surrounds Me
Website of the War
Iraq
Body Count
Keep CounterPunch Alive:
Make
a Tax-Deductible Donation Today Online!
home / subscribe
/ about us / books
/ archives / search
/ links / |