Thursday, November 04, 2004

 
"Apocalypse!" Too Late

"It was complete chaos. It was looting like L.A. during the Rodney King riots."(Officer commenting on the looting of Al Qaaqa)

Polls(yes, they give important information even if they're not actual votes)indicated that Bush was re-elected in spite of a majority or at least a plurality of opinion that the war in Iraq was a "mistake" or going badly. Duh. One could grant that the raid on Dieppe, or "Operation Market Garden"(a wimpy name if there ever wuz), or even the invasion of Italy were mistakes, without, however tossing out Churchill and electing say, some "Lord Haw-Haw"(even if the latter had tried to camouflage himself as a nuanced and patriotic "Chamberlain") I wrote earlier that "It took quite a sophisticated operation to sneak this material away." "Sophisticated," indeed. If our troops and commanders are *that* incompetent or our enemies *that* good, it's a wonder that we haven't been pushed into the sea or that Washington D.C. isn't already a smoking ruin."
Well, well, well. The "operation" of the looting doesn't seem to have been extremely sophisticated, and the conduct of the troops wasn't the result of incompetence, as narrowly defined. Granted, that command decisions that other objectives at the time, such as *winning the war*, seemed plausibly more important. No, something worse than tactical incompetence(of which the President was accused)was involved in the decision to avoid "civilian" casualties. -presumably based on reasoning that this was the correct decision to make in order to avoid inflaming domestic and international public opinion(i.e. foreign and domestic John Kerrys), and to avoid outraging the Iraqis who we hoped would forget their hatred of the infidel as they cooperated with us to build a peaceful and democratic post-war country.
It seems likely that commanders of ground (and air forces!)decided in some cases that looters(and their loot)were not so much unimportant as *off limits*.
As argued earlier(many times), a military strike intended for regime change does *not* necessarily deter terrorists or all of the terrorist-supporting operatives of the regime being "changed." Even after the end of "major hostilities" many(I hope!) of us have been outraged and "inflamed" time and time and time and time again when viewing pictures, print or video of Iraqis looting our destroyed or damaged vehicles(and in some cases wounded soldiers)-or of Iraqis demonstrating or rioting, and yes, loudly blaming us for some *terrorist's* attack. The thought, "those bastards aren't afraid of us," comes up with nauseating regularity. And we have given them little reason to be afraid in spite of the valor of our too often hamstrung troops. And responsibility for that *does* go to "the top."
Mark Marzzetti's Los Angeles Times piece asserts, "The soldiers said about a dozen U.S. troops guarding the sprawling facility could not prevent the theft of the explosives because they were outnumbered by the looters." -Let's do some "math." Below some number(a dozen? two?)we could not have been said to be in "control"(or in a sense, "responsible")for the facilities. But *&%$@!, aren't those in uniform generally outnumbered by "looters"?(there *was* undoubtedly some sophistication, perhaps directed by operatives of Saddam, in the looting)-
Mazzeti: "We were running from one side of the compound to the other side, trying to kick people out." -"kick people out"?!?-talk about treating terrorism as a matter of "law enforcement"! That our domestic Kerrys would have been "outraged" had we shot looters of explosives, artifacts, or kitchen sinks is an understandable, but weak excuse(O.K., the prospect of losing the election because of that, or some fifth column creep in uniform testifying that he and his men shot helpless civilians in the back and throwing his medals won in Iraq etc., is a decent excuse-though damning of the good sense of the American electorate.)
And although we weren't there at those times, it's a good bet that even a dozen of our armed guys and gals could have sent an enormous number of the(presumably unarmed or largely unarmed)rats looting Al Qaqaa scurrying for cover. And if our tiny band of brothers(o.k., maybe sisters, too, for all I know) *did* come under fire, one suspects that commanders of air assets might have at least then consider the dirty(they might have been court-martialed for opening fire on the Iraqi scumbucket fireworks brigade)dozen to have been something finally worth protecting.
Had Al Gore been elected in 2000, and been responsible for something like the looting of explosives, it might have hurt him terribly in 2004. But Kerry, whose effort to be all things to all people prevented a McGovern magnitude electoral defeat, being, well, Kerry, the fifth column creep who was on the wrong side of the Cold War, didn't seem to benefit much from mistakes made in attempts at "nation building."
It's at least possible that pro-Kerry strategists and sympathizers tried to time their Al Qaqaa operation so that there would be not enough time for rebuttal before the election. There was even speculation that it was hoped that the "story" would break several days later than it actually did.
IAEA chief Mohamed ElBaradei seemed not a day too late, nor a dinar(for oil?)too short in his October surprise. The US electorate didn't buy his and Kerry's rush to judgment though, for reasons cited above, and because of Dan Rather's crying "AWOL"(and others, as may be inferred from one of Ann Coulter's better columns: "Wolfowitz lied")too often. And then along comes Mazzetti's piece...
Poor Kerry! Nursing a heart(broken)of darkness, far up some polluted creek in Massachusetts, watching a paddle drift by too late to be useful....to have gone so far, yet still come up "Col. Kurz"(time's too "short" to explain this misspelling-sorry, that sucked), uttering, "The irony! The irony!"