Fighting the LAST War

One of the things stressed in my naval officers training courses in college was the hazard that military commands would make the dire mistake of fighting the last war rather than the present one. The classic example with which we were presented was the French defense of the Maginot Line -- a series of gun emplacements directed against any possible German invasion that it was thought would deter an attack. The Nazi Blitzkrieg tactics simply dropped parachutists behind these formidable gun emplacements who dropped explosives down their air vents, effectively disabling them and allowing a gap through which the Nazi tanks poured: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maginot_Line

It should be pretty obvious now that the neocons, not particularly trained in military matters, are carrying out a game plan based on Cold War military dominance planning -- what worked for Reagan to bankrupt the Soviet system, must be the way to go in taking charge in the Middle East. That our current Secretary of State is a Sovietologist fits in neatly along with the Rumsfeld senility factor here and Bush's general lack of knowledge about much of anything apart from running a ball club and executing murderers in Texas. These guys (and gals) seem to think that the way to defeat terrorism is to attack a country to tempt the terrorists in where they can be properly dispatched by air power -- the next line of attack in Iraq according to Seymour Hersh.

Needless to say it did not work in Viet Nam and it is unlikely to work against the odd collections of factions that are using terrorism as a tactic to bedevil the neocons -- some Islamic extremists defending Islam against the 'born again' Bush holy crusade and others, nationalists, set on driving out the neo-colonialists apparently bent on taking over their oil resources once again.

Needless to say our military have blown it -- making us enemies rather than friends. There will be no incentives for the Iraqis whatever to do business down the line with us rather than the Russians or Chinese. The Bushies have pretty well smeared us with their torture routines now memorialized in living color on more than our own TV screens. And the Middle East, country by country, looks to be set up for chaos of various kinds thanks to our interventions.

Needless to say "staying" in any form looks to be less and less likely as a viable prospect. We are a nation apparently bent on bankrupting itself while our competitors watch the self-destruction process proceeding.

And so it all went.
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"A war is just if there is no alternative, and the resort
to arms is legitimate if they represent your last hope." (Livy)
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Ed Kent 718-951-5324 (voice mail only) [blind copies]
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