Day: March 31, 2003

At least one of the organizers of Columbia’s recent anti-war are event is not happy that the media has focused largely on Nicholas De Genova’s comments that “the only true heroes are those who find ways that help defeat the U.S. military” and that De Genova hoped to see “a million Mogadishus.”

Daniel Drezner has a quote from Columbia University undergraduate Leigh Johnson saying,

It is curious to me that only his speech was picked up by the press. Keep in mind that there were 30 some speakers, who covered various topics and political positions over the course of 6 hours. But somehow, the remaining remarks hardly raised an eyebrow.

This should go down in the annals of logic as the Trent Lott defense — why did the media focus on poor Trent’s brief defense of segregation when there were plenty of other speakers at that birthday party they could have focused on. Life is so unfair!

Of course anti-war activists saying they oppose the war or Republicans saying they’re glad that Strom Thurmond enjoyed yet another birthday party are hardly news. Calling for millions of U.S. combat deaths or fondly remember segregation are.

Johnson goes on to describe the real importance of the event,

I think we have to resist every attempt of pro-war and conservative reactionaries to turn what De Genova said into an indictment of the anti-war cause, and we have to instead shift the debate to his constitutional right to say those things.

Hmmm . . . Again, I wonder if Johnson would have agreed with someone who made the same defense of Lott,

I think we have to resist every attempt of left wing and liberal reactionaries to turn what Trent Lott said into an indictment of the Republican cause, and we have to instead shift the debate to his constitutional right to say those things.

Somehow I doubt it. Of course people have a constitutional right to wish for millions of dead American soldiers as they have a right to wistfully reminisce over segregation. But don’t expect to hold on to your job for very long in either case.

This illustrates one of the biggest problems that the Left has had in organizing its anti-war protests. Much of the Left has adopted a version of freedom of speech which implies there is censorship not only when government formally forbids certain speech, but also where certain speech is unpopular enough that it lacks a forum.

One of the problems with this is that Leftists then have a lot of difficulty turning away even the nuttiest viewpoints. Rather than limit the topics and purpose of the anti-war movement to actually stopping a war, it quickly expands to every mainstream and marginal left-liberal cause under the sun. This is very reaffirming for the dedicated left-liberal, but makes it extremely difficult for the anti-war movement to reach beyond the usual suspects who are going to show up for the weekly rally anyway.

Eric Margolis seems to have taken the article he wrote at the start of the U.S. war in Afghanistan and recycled it in an article about the start of the U.S. war in Iraq.

On Iraq, Margolis writes,

The opening weeks of the Second Oil War against Iraq – a.k.a. Operation Iraq Freedom – produced the advertised “shock and awe” all right, but it came in Washington rather than bombarded Baghdad.

His lead for his Afghanistan column was a bit more clever, if equally inaccurate,

The 21st Century went to war against the 11th Century in Afghanistan last week. The 11th Century won.

In both wars, mass defects of troops the U.S. was supposedly counting on simply failed to happen. In Afghanistan,

Mass defections from Taliban predicted by Washington’s `experts,’ didn’t happen. Afghans flocked to join Taliban. Thousands of Pushtun tribesmen from Pakistan crossed into Afghanistan over the fabled Malakand Pass to fight the American invaders.

. . . and Iraq,

The immediate uprisings against Great Satan Saddam, the quick, almost effortless “liberation” of Iraq, and the joyous reception by grateful Iraqis promised by the neo-conservatives who misled America into this increasingly ugly war have been exposed as a farrago of lies or distortions.

Iraqis, quite clearly, do not want to be “liberated” – even many who have long opposed Saddam’s brutal regime. To the contrary, the American-British invasion appears to have ignited genuine national resistance among 17 million Arab Iraqis, just as the 1941 German invasion of the USSR rallied Russians and Ukrainians behind Stalin’s hated regime.

A major problem in any war is supply lines, and Margolis informed his readers those would sink the Afghanistan and Iraqi efforts. In Afghanistan,

Who will keep a pro-US/pro-Russian regime in power in Kabul? American troops will likely be required. How will the American garrison be supplied? Just like the Imperial British invaders, who were twice defeated by the Afghans, US forces will have to rely on vulnerable land supply lines at great distances from their depots that cross narrow mountain passes.

The other alternative, air supply of an American garrison in Kabul, is a recipe for a Dienbienphu-like disaster. The Soviet Red Army tried everything from carpet bombing to poison gas and biological warfare to break the Afghans, but failed.

While in Iraq,

So far, regular Iraqi army units, militia groups and guerrillas have been delaying and harassing the northward advance of U.S. forces by assaulting their overextended supply lines, then retreating into cities and towns. Any 18th century general worth his snuff would tell you never leave enemy garrisons athwart your communications (supply lines). Napoleon said lines of communications were the most important factor in war, a lesson U.S. forces are painfully relearning in Iraq.

In Afghanistan, Margolis’ advice was clear — the United States should declare victory and leave before it was bogged down in an endless and costly war. Margolis says the same thing about Iraq, namely that even if the U.S. takes Baghdad, it will face interminable guerilla warfare.

It’s an interesting commentary on the perception of American military might that after talking control of half of Iraq in only 11 days with ridiculously low casualties, the focus seems to be “why is the war against Iraq going so poorly?”