For al-Qaeda. So says Strategy Page, echoing what we here at Blue Crab Boulevard noted before. The curious timing of the three messages last week, in which binLaden and Zawahri focused outside Iraq while Zarqawi sounded almost desperate to rally troops to him make al-Qaeda leadership look like it is in disarray.
Strategy Page attribute the collapse on three things:
In trying to defeat the United States, al Qaeda made three big mistakes: They fought the last information war, they underestimated the American leadership, and they also managed to anger the Iraqi people.
We must not let the media snatch defeat from the jaws of victory as they did in Vietnam.
Yes, and a happy “mission accomplished” anniversary to you too.
Tano, if I piss you off, I consider my mission accomplished. Twit.
Twit?
Gee Gaius, seems like you be the one thats getting pissed off. Chill out already, that was a pretty mild comment, wouldn’t you say? And, given the experiences of the past few years, isn’t a gentle little reminder of the dangers of overhyping good news a helpful thing?
I mean I could have called you on that absurd little Vietnam “lost cause” argument, but hey, I was trying to be nice.
Absurd?
Yes, absurd.
What are you, hanging out with the guys at the end of the bar who are staring into their drinks and muttering about ‘dem backstabbiz’?
You don’t do yourself, or this country any good by refusing to learn the hard lessons that this world has to offer, or that it slaps us upside the head with sometimes. Becoming an ever better country, just like becoming an ever better individual takes a lot of things, not the least of which is the courage to face your mistakes, understand why you made them, and learn the hard lessons. Vietnam was a tragedy in the fullest classical sense – greatness brought down by its own greatness – which so often includes hubris – the sense that we know enough about any situation that we can just plow ahead – hey, thats how we got great in the first place, right?
Vietnam was engaged in a 50 year war to win its independence from colonial masters. The french, the japs, the french again, then we came along and made the mistake of believing that the war was about what we assumed it was about, instead of realizing that it was about them wanting the foreigners out of their country. Yes, we won all the battles, just like the Brits won all the battles in the American Revolution (till the last one). These people were fighting for their independence (including the right to make their own mistakes). If we had not left, we would still be fighting there today. How goddamn stupid do you have to be to not understand the motivation of people fighting for their homeland? You think that after surviving through fighting the japs as well as the french, they were going to just stop, because we were having some mild successes?
We killed 2-3 million of those people. They would not have stopped fighting us just like you or me would never stop fighting some country that would come here to impose a government on us, no matter whether that government seemed good or not (and of course, the government we tried to impose on them was a corrupt and totally illegitimate one).
Grownups who actually lived through that time (at least the great majority) understand these things, and lord knows it was a difficult and painful lesson to learn. I realize that in the past few years there has been a concerted effort by the “american empire’ types to try to write a revisionist history, to make us all forget these lessons, so as to justify a new round of militarism. The use of the military is not a bad thing per se, but to do it while purposely going out of your way to be stupid, to blatently ignore or deny the lessons of our own experience, is unconscionable.
Well indoctrinated, I see. Read a lot of Cole do you?
Gaius,
You disappoint. Either say, “good points”, or “hmmm, I’ll have to think about that”, or explain why you think I am wrong. But mindless little attempts to insult?
Hey, you are the genius who decided to share your thoughts with the world. Well, the deal is this. The world shares back. If your only desire is to have a oneway rant, then why not forget the blog thing, and go stand in front of a mirror?
Gee, Tano, I didn’t know you had the authority to dictate what I do with my bandwidth.
Your arguments fail on a number of levels, but there’s one underlying theme. That is that the US was there to “impose” a government. Everything you argue hinges from that viewpoint which I do not share. You also take it out of historical context by failing to mention that Russia had a major hand in what was happening there. You ascribe the evil intent to America.