My war speculations are working out in practice (though of course this isn't happy news for Iraqis or for "coalition" soldiers and taxpayers). The US Marines are arresting civilian men seen as potential threats (because many of them are threats, defending their country using classical guerilla-war or suicide-bomber tactics) in the towns on the way to Baghdad, creating a vicious circle of an unwanted occupation army. Innocent civilians are dying, while Iraqi nationalism is on the rise (without backing Saddam exactly), so that bulldozers will be pushing "hearts and minds" into burial pits instead of "winning" them. So the "California-sized Gaza" scenario is beginning to happen. I expect that the US troops will start knocking down buildings simply to prevent urban guerilla warfare. One difference from the Israeli occupation is that the US forces don't involve any movement to grab land and water. There's no settler movement and nothing like expansionistic Zionism. The building razings won't be encouraged by the wish to "transfer" the indigenous population out of Iraq. Of course, there is the expansionistic ideology of US hegemony with "full spectrum dominance" and the need to control "our oil." But that encourages quisling-type governance, not settler colonialism.
While I don't think the Stalingrad syndrome is likely to hit, so that the US is quite likely to "win the war," there is already a loss. Rummy and the Neo-Cons -- sounds like a rock group, with Wolfowitz on lead guitar, Perle on the bass, etc. -- had the idea that the war could be won with a combination of psy-ops, "shock & awe" bombing, and short/sharp/shock warfare using a relatively small number of troops using high tech digital tools. So far, this seems to have been a failure (partly due to the heroic resistance of the Turkish people to the use of their land as a staging area for the attack). So it's back to standard US doctrine of preponderant force and a high-cost war using a lot of old-fashioned military doctrine (with Dubya _et al_ trying to make sure that their friends, i.e., the rich, the military, etc. don't pay the cost).
What this suggests is that the larger neo-con strategy is sinking: their idea is that the US could fight lots of "cheap" wars (following the model of the one against Afghanistan or the one against Panama or of course the heroic and glorious victory over the Grenadan Threat). After Iraq, Iran, Syria, and Saudi Arabia could be conquered. And tomorrow the world! But this "domino theory in reverse" is much less likely to happen than it was a few weeks ago, since Rummy's strategy -- and his micro-managing of the Pentagon -- has turned much of the military-industrial establisment against him and the neo-con job. That doesn't mean that the US is going to give up and pull out of Iraq. It doesn't mean that the US will start promoting world peace or co-operating with other Big Powers or the UN. (It won't stop the US from being imperialistic or hegemonic or even unilateralist.) It does mean that Rummy's star is sinking, so that his influence will be increasingly small, while it's likely that he'll resign when the war is over (to spend more time with his family, of course). (Or he might come down with SARS and have to retire early. After all, he is the oldest Secretary of War the US has had, so that all sorts of AARP-related diseases could hit (or be portrayed as hitting).)
In 20-20 hindsight, I don't think the Rummy strategy could have worked. The Iraqis weren't going to rise up against Saddam (no matter how hated he was) except in a limited way in the Shi'ite areas, while their troops weren't going to surrender. (A rebellion limited to the Shi'ite areas would have encouraged Iraq to fall apart as a country, something the Bushists don't want.) The military strategy wasn't that different from the fallacious idea that air power can win the war without ground troops. It was that air power (and psy-ops and special forces) could get away from military doctrine of protecting flanks and supply lines. With no Northern Alliance (local allies), the strategy seems to have been doomed from the start.
BTW, we should stop calling Rumsfeld "Rummy." It's an insult to a late cat of ours, Rum-Tum-Tugger (nicknamed "Rummy"). Not only was he cute, but he used to sit on my wife's shoulder (while she was reading the morning paper) and lick her ears and nostrils...
Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] & http://bellarmine.lmu.edu/~jdevine
