What to Do to Defeat the Taliban

By Con George-Kotzabasis

A short reply to: The Limits of Replicating the “Anbar Awakening”

Published on the Washington Note, June 04, 2009

There is a great possibility of replicating the success of the strategy of the Surge in Afghanistan with the following economic-political-military strategy: To shift the estuary of the stream of revenue from narcotics from the Taliban’s and narco-lords’ mouths to the government mouth with the aim to feed the hungry mouths of the tribal chiefs of Afghanistan. That is, to nationalize the poppy industry and make the tribal chiefs of Afghanistan the direct equity holders of the income that accrues from the production of opium. Such a policy will create a powerful self-interest and lead to a Tribal Chief’s Awakening that will be more widespread and potent than the Iraqi one, since it will mobilize the whole country, through its tribal chiefs, against the Taliban and the narco-lords.

Thus U.S. forces will not have to go to a wild goose chase of serendipity to get “their lucky break” in Afghanistan, as some liberals in America place their hope for the ending of the conflict on the casting of the dice.

This idea was floated by me in a paper of mine on October 2008. The link below will take you to it.

http://kotzas12.xanga.com

 

Reply to American Pessimist about the Gains of the Surge in Iraq

By Con George-Kotzabasis

Andrew Lebovich continues pessimistically to ruminate on his doubts about the surge and on General Petraeus’ counterinsurgency plan. He states, “The strategic outcome of the surge cannot be determined now” as it depends on the establishment of a democratic Iraq “after our occupation…has ended.” And if the gains of the surge are so fragile and can be lost with a resurgence of al Qaeda how can one say that “Petraeus’s counterinsurgency plan is proven,” as is stated by McCain? He is also concerned about the “Sons of Iraq and other local militias’ being integrated “into the Iraqi security forces” and some of the corrupt practices of the Iraqi government.

Starting in reverse of his concerns, it’s decal like clear that he has not learned anything from the mistakes of the Bush administration when in toto disbanded the Iraq army instead of integrating it in the new army of the Interim government that would have forestalled the future insurgency. The Maliki government is integrating the Sons of Iraq and other militias and hence effectively disarming them instead of letting them hibernate until a possible next round of violence. Lebovich also is oblivious of the fact that corruption affects all governments that have not as yet found their point of stability and their members have a strong proclivity to get as much as they can from an assumed short term in office. However, with the stabilization of the government, as it seems to be happening now in Iraq, corruption can no longer be a stable staple feeding the mouths of corrupt officials.

As to the gains emanating from the surge, Lebovich apparently is unaware that one may have a perfect investment plan that will give one immense gains but if one “misinvests” or squanders these gains in boondoggle projects one is bound to lose them. This however does not impugn or diminish in any way the perfection of the original investment plan. And Petraeus’s counterinsurgency strategy falls in this category. The danger lies in squandering these gains, as McCain correctly says, before they reach their stated goal, i.e., a democratic Iraq.

Lastly, Lebovich does not perceive that even the most successful of counterinsurgency strategies can only be effective in a different geopolitical milieu if they make the necessary improvisations and modalities in the new context of their implementation. And this elementary principle applies in Afghanistan.

I rest on my oars: Your turn now… 

Obsessed Denial by Liberals of the Success of the Surge

By Con George-Kotzabasis

All the Sancho Panzas of The Washington Note riding on their donkeys and their Don Quixote, Clemons himself, riding his ‘dishevelled’ steed, are attacking windmills in their intellectually ungracious mean-spirited witless futile attempt to discredit the Surge and deny the great success it was in bringing a reversal of fortune in an almost lost war as a result of the initial strategic mistakes of American strategists, which I pointed out in a paper of mine back in August 2003.

The Surge being a strategic victory for the U.S. not only militarily and politically in Iraq, especially if democracy is consolidated in the country as it seems to be happening with the provincial elections just held, but by blazing its winning footprints on the soil of Iraq is showing the way, and heralding, how the rest of the jihadists, in this borderless war against them, can be defeated.

Bob Woodward in his book Bush At War depicts with a cascade of clear irrefutable evidence that the sharp instrument that cut the umbilical cord of the insurgents with some of the Iraqi populace was the deployment of Special Forces that ratcheted up “the heavy-handed counterinsurgency methods” by killing or capturing their higher echelons and spreading fear among the ranks of the insurgents. Coupled with these hard measures was the soft embedment and quartering of U.S. troops in the neighbourhoods of Baghdad and other towns where the insurgents were previously residing and dominating. It was these two tactics and the ‘revolt’ of both Sunnis and Shi’tes against al Qaeda and the Sadrist militias respectively that stopped the sectarian killings and ushered greater security in Iraq. To say, like Clemons does, that “bribery of local leaders” and a less “heavy-handed’” approach were more significant in subduing the insurgency indicates that he has not read Woodward’s book, or if he has, he deliberately refuses to acknowledge the factors that led to the defeat of the insurgency as an outcome of his ungracious and partisan lapse to give credit where credit is due, to Bush’s determination to implement the Surge.

And all the other cackling of the excited and ‘emotional’ geese “how many of my descendants you’ve killed”, to quote Dan Kervick in his wrath against the ‘warmongers’- a disciple of the two philosophers mentioned below– will not save the Rome of their intellectual infantilism and political dilettantism, even under the great names of Bertrand Russel and David Hume. 

Obama Plays his Victory Fiddle While America is Burning

By Con George-Kotzabasis

Barack Obama in another crucial test of leadership–the others were his withdrawal of troops from Iraq and his diplomatic parlay with Iran—has irretrievably failed. In his response to John McCain’s proposal to suspend their campaign and postpone their debate that is to take place next Saturday and concentrate all their efforts in persuading Congress to pass immediately and urgently, in a modified form, the financial measures of Paulson-Bernanke– measures that were elaborated by the experts in the field and not by primitive “tzu-tzu” practitioners nor by populist nostrums–that would have a better chance than none in saving America from descending into depression, that they should not postpone their debate and by having it they would allow the American people to have their say on the financial package, shows Obama to be abjectly and callously irresponsible to the “main street” people whom he presumably professes to represent and protect, all in the name of a stampede of voters rushing toward him on the heels of the debate that would facilitate him to capture the White House.

In his delirious manic run to catch the fleeing damsel of the ‘oval shape’, he is completely careless and unconcerned that this unprecedented financial crisis since the 1930’s depression that threatens many millions of Americans of losing their jobs and their houses, and, indeed, their life-savings, as there is a high probability if the Paulson-Bernanke measures are not passed promptly and expeditiously by Congress might engender a stampede, a run on the banks by ordinary Americans that would bring the collapse of the whole American economy.

Thus Obama’s sinister aim to have his debate for the purpose of bringing a stampede of votes to his side might turn out to be a stampede on the banks. And while he gives his glorious victory speech to Americans the latter will ingloriously be losing their savings. Hence, his ‘victory’ will rest on a pile of ashes, on the ashes of ordinary Americans’ life savings.  

Your opinion…     

 

How U.S. Strategists Missed Opportunity to nip in the bud Insurgency in Iraq

By Con George-Kotzabasis 

 

 The following was written on August 23, 2003 and is an extract from my book, Unveiling The War Against Terror, published in Melbourne on May 9, 2004. under the title How to Legitimize the Interim Government in Iraq and How to Trap Terrorists. It’s republished here for the purpose of higlighting the serious errors committed by the Bush administration in the initial stages of the occupation of Iraq. But despite these errors I was unshakable in my belief that the U.S. would defeat the insurgents as presently is happening under the generalship of Petraeus.

As events have shown, the Americans implemented at the beginning of 2004 two of the proposals below–though not quick enough and not in the form I suggested in regards to the second, i.e., the formation of an elite National Guard–(a) the establishment of the Interim Government and (b) the arming of Iraqis. But to my surprise and chagrin, they did not implement the core of my plan, i.e., to make Iraqis the owners of oil (They did this too late, under Article 108 of the Constitution of Iraq, voted by Iraqis in 2005, “Oil and gas are the ownership of all the people of Iraq in all regions”, without however making them direct equity holders and paying them dividends in advance, as I had suggested), that in my opinion if they had done so (a) would have prevented the insurgency and (b) would have captured or killed the foreign jihadists.

Paradoxically, it could be Iraq, allied with the American Coalition Forces, that would be instrumental to the defeat of global Islamist terror. By the capture or killing of a substantial number of Jihadists who, at the end of the major combat operations against Saddam Hussein, were able to infiltrate into Iraq, with the aim to fight and destroy the American infidel occupier, with the help of local remnants of Saddam’s supporters and Islamist fundamentalists. It’s for this reason of the utmost importance, that the Coalition Forces do not prevent the infiltration of terrorists into Iraq, from neighbor muslim countries, as the distinguished war historian John Keegan suggests in one of his recent articles, but, on the contrary, facilitate their entry into the country and trap them.

The set up of this trap will be accomplished by two imaginative strategic moves, as will be explained below, with which the American led-coalition in alliance with the future Interim Government of Iraq and its military forces, would achieve its three major political and military objectives. First, the formation of a legitimate democratic government in Iraq. Secondly, the substantial defeat of global terrorism. And thirdly, the quick withdrawal of American military forces from Iraq. Hence, the Bush administration at one fell swoop would succeed in keeping the promises it made to the American people and to the world at large, about the establishment of a democratic government in Iraq, and about the war against global terror.

The two-pronged stratagem will involve the following: The first one will entail the hastening of the formation of an Interim Government ( IG ) in Iraq by its present Governing Council. At its formation, the IG will make the following historical announcement to the Iraqi people. That the latter will be equity holders in the major wealth of the country, i.e., its oil production. Each Iraqi household will be a recipient of an annual dividend from the profits of oil. That this is not a promise for the future but a real offer, will be exemplified by the immediate payment of the dividend to each Iraqi household, whose amount will be assessed from the flow of oil profits issuing from future sales. This advanced payment will be funded either by a newly-established financial institution of the UN, or of the IMF or the World Bank.

The equity of the Iraqi people in the major resource of the country will effectively demonstrate the bona fides of the IG to Iraqis, and will immediately confer unassailable legitimacy to it. It will blot out all internal initial opposition to the IG as being a quisling governing body of the Americans, as well as take the wind off the sails of all the jaded “unembedded” commentators, who claim that the US invaded Iraq for its oil. In the same announcement, the IG will inform the Iraqi people of the formation of an elite National Guard, whose objective, among others, will be the safeguarding and protection of this national property of the people from any incendiary acts of sabotage against its producing facilities perpetrated by either external or internal enemies of Iraq.

The Americans will have nothing to fear from the formation of the National Guard. As the latter will be mainly enlisted from former members of the Republican Guard, who were nurtured on secular principles, and whose loyalty to Saddam arose only from the fact of their elite status given to them by the latter. Moreover, the members of this elite overwhelmingly have enormous respect of American military power, and of the personnel manning that power. Therefore, as an elite corps, they will be proud to serve as equals with their American counterparts, in defense of Iraq’s national interests.

The second prong of the stratagem will be a proclamation made by the IG to the Iraqi people ( And this act will sound the clap of the trap that will catch the Jihadist terrorists en masse. The proclamation will be made in the following terms: That any one who harbors, aids, and supports Iraqi and foreign guerrillas will be considered to be an enemy of the State and of the Iraqi people. And will be dealt with the ultimate punishment, as that to be meted out to the terrorist guerrillas. At the same time, the IG will issue an order, not only to the National Guard and the adjunct security forces of the country, but, also, to its Coalition allies in Iraq, to commence a relentless punitive campaign against the guerrillas and those who harbor and support them, and pluck them out of the soil of Iraq, root and branch. This order of the IG will bestow legality to the actions of the American led-coalition already taken against urban guerrillas, as they will be seen by Iraqis to have the imprimatur of their Government. Furthermore, that the American Command Centre and its ground forces will be abiding to, and executing, this order of the Iraqi Government, will have a tremendous psychological impact upon the Iraqi people. Because of the primary status that pride has in Arab culture, this will be a proud moment for all Iraqis.

This order of the IG, will accomplish two strategic tasks. First, it will make a strong impression on the Iraqi people, that the American led-coalition are not an occupier of their country, but a defender of their interests. Secondly, and more importantly, the fear that will instil on people in Iraq who aid and support guerrillas ( this time fear will be on the side of a good cause, unlike Saddam’s fear ), that they will be treated as traitors and hence punished accordingly, will induce them to stop sheltering the guerrillas and abandon them. Once the terrorists are abandoned, by their current and would-be supporters, they will be consigned to the “furies” of their fate. As they will be forced to operate “in no man’s land” , where they would be easily captured or killed by the National Guard and the Coalition forces.

This trap sprang on the Jihadist terrorists will be a devastating blow on global terrorism. It will demoralize active and would-be terrorists on such an immence scale with the outcome of drying up the well from which fundmentalist mullahs get their deadly recruits. And providing these mullahs are severely dealt with by the Coalition against global terror, wherever they happen to be, in the East or in the West, the black veil of death will enshroud the heads of terror. The Bush administration’s total war against global terror, not only will be justified, but it will also be a glorious total victory against it, morally, politically, and historically.

The above is an extract from my book Unveiling The War Against Terror written on August 23, 2003. My proposal was sent to the WhiteHouse on the same date.

ALL THE PRESIDENT’S DISABLERS

SEASON’S GREETINGS

A healthy, joyous, industrious, and challenging 2008 to all readers and commentators of this blog. 

A response by Con George-Kotzabasis to:

All the President’s Enablers by Paul Krugman
The New York Times July 20, 2007

The fundamental principle of power and of any political activity is that these should never be any appearance of weakness. Niccolo Machiavelli

The eminent professor of economics Paul Krugman who ditched his solid professorial chair for the ephemeral glitter and celebrity status that accrues from being a peer pundit of The New York Times, ridicules George Bush, in his latest article, of a misplaced confidence that verges to a “lost touch with reality”. Confident to bring in Osama dead or alive, confident toward the insurgents “to bring it on”, confident that the war will be won, when the latest report of the National Intelligence Estimate is so gloomy about the prospects in Iraq and the war against al Qaeda that would make even the most optimistic of Presidents to have second thoughts about his policy, but not George Bush. Krugman states, “thanks to Mr. Bush’s poor leadership America is losing the struggle with al Qaeda. Yet Mr. Bush remains confident”. Such a stand “doesn’t demonstrate Mr. Bush’s strength of character” but his stubbornness to prove himself right despite the grim reality.

But Krugman saves his main grapeshot to fire it against the Republican doyen Senator Richard Luger and General Petraeus both of whom he considers to be the “smart sensible” enablers of the President. He argues that while Senator Luger knows, and indeed, acknowledges, that Bush’s policy in Iraq is wrong, he nonetheless is not prepared to take a strong stand against it. And he cleverly in anticipation of the September report of General Petraeus that might be favourable to the situation on the ground as an outcome of the surge, he launches a pre-emptive strike on the credibility of the general by quoting extensively from an article the latter wrote in the Washington Post on Sept. 26, 2004, whose assessment about Iraq at the time was overly optimistic if not completely wrong. In the article the general wrote, “that Iraqi leaders are stepping forward, leading their country and their security forces courageously” and “are displaying courage and resilience” and “momentum has gathered in recent months”. It’s by such implied non sequiturs that our former professor attempts to discredit General Petraeus. Just because he might have been “wrong” in the past it does not follow that he would be wrong also in the future. And Krugman caps his argument by saying that because of these “enablers” of the President, “Mr. Bush keeps doing damage because many people who understand how his folly is endangering the nation’s security still refuse, out of political caution and careerism, to do anything about it”.

But how serious are these strictures of Krugman against the President and his so called enablers? Let us first deal with the optimism of Bush and his confident statements about the war in Iraq and the struggle against al Qaeda. Krugman is lamentably forgetful that when the President committed the U.S. to take the fight to the terrorists he stated clearly and unambiguously that this would be a generational struggle. And in this long war against al Qaeda and its affiliates and those states that support them, he was confident that America would prevail. Hence all the confident statements of Bush were made in the context of a long span and not of a short one as Krugman with unusual cerebral myopia made them to be. His argument therefore against the President’s optimism and confidence, which he ridicules with the pleasure of one “twisting the knife”, is premised on a misperception. Moreover, did Krugman expect that the Commander-In-Chief of the sole superpower not to have expressed his hopefulness and confidence to the American people, when they were attacked so brutally on 9/11, that the U.S. in this long war would prevail? And is it possible that our pundit to be so unread in history and not to have realized that in all critical moments of a nation’s existence it’s of the utmost importance that its leaders rally their people against a mortal threat with statements of hope and confidence, as Winston Churchill did in the Second World War, that the nation would be victorious against its enemies? Would Krugman have the President of the United States adopt the gloom and doom of the so called realists as a strategy against al Qaeda, its numerous franchises, and the rogue states that support them by sinister and covert means?

Indeed, the liberal’s and The New York Times’  “Bush derangement syndrome…has spread” not only “to former loyal Bushies”, to quote Krugman , but to more than two thirds of the American people thanks to this ignominious coterie of  all the President’s disablers of the liberal establishment, and its pundits, like Paul Krugman. The paramount duty and responsibility of the media, being the Fourth Estate in the political structure of a democratic society, at a time when a nation faces and confronts a great danger from a remorseless and determined enemy, is to morally mobilize and rally its people behind their government and their armed forces that are engaged in war. In the present defensive pre-emptive war–the latter as a result of the nature of the enemy and his potential to acquire nuclear weapons–that has issued from the aftermath of 9/11 and the cogent convincing concerns of the Bush administration of a possible nexus in the near future between al Qaeda and its sundry affiliates with rogue states armed with weapons of mass destruction and nuclear ones, and the portentous and abysmal danger this would pose not only to the U.S. but to the world at large, the media has a “sacred” obligation to unite the American people behind its government of whatever political hue. No errors of judgment or mishandling the planning of the war by the Bush administration can excuse the media from abdicating from this historical responsibility.

There is no fogless war and no one can see and perceive and measure correctly all its dimensions. And the frailty of human nature further exacerbates this inability. But no Churchillian confidence in one’s actions and strategic acumen throws the towel because of mistakes. One corrects one’s errors and keeps intact his resolution to defeat the enemy with a new strategy. (And one has to be reminded that the greatest scientific discoveries have been built on a pile of mistakes.)  It would be an indelible obloquy to one’s amour propre to even consider that these uncivilized obtuse fanatics, and seventy-two virgin pursuers, could come close to conceiving a strategy that would defeat the know-how and scientific mastery of Western civilization and its epitome the United States of America. Only a lack of resolve of its politicians and its opinion-makers, as a result of their fatal embrace with supine populism, appeasement, and pacifism, could lead to such shameful and historic defeat.

America at this critical juncture of its historical and Herculean task to defeat Islamofascism in a long, far from free of heavy casualties, painstaking arduous war  needs a wise, imaginative, and resolute political and military leadership that will overcome all the difficulties and imponderables of war and will strike a decisive lethal blow to this determined suicidal enemy. The new “Surge” strategy of the resolute Bush administration implemented by that “superb commander”, according to his troops, General Petraeus, seems to be accomplishing its objectives. Two prominent and vehement critics of Bush Michael O’Hanlon and Kenneth Pollack of  The Brookings Institution who had accused the President of mishandling the war, after an eight-day visit in Iraq talking to high officials now believe that we are fighting in “a war we just might win”. And Petraeus, like a stronger Atlas, is pushing the rise of the sun of victory in the up till now dark sky of Iraq. Hence, the courageous actions and sacrifices of U.S soldiers in Iraq are not wasted and will be written with adamantine letters in the military annals. At this momentous noteworthy victory all the President’s and the nation’s disablers will be cast into the pit of ignominy by history. 

 Your turn now…   

                   

IRAQ:LEGACY OF VICTORY OR LEGACY OF DEFEAT?

Forget Legacy-Building:Iraq is NO Japan Mr. President

By David Sanger, Washington Note, January 1, 2006

The following reply is republished here as it clearly shows how wrong all the critics of the war in Iraq and its ‘unraveling’ have been. It’s obvious now, except for those who continue to be in a state of denial, that the new strategy of the Surge implemented by the capable and superb commander General Petraeus is defeating the insurgents and is laying down the rudiments of democracy in Iraq. If these offshoots of freedom grow eventually into the tree of democracy in Iraq, then president Bush’s objective to start democracy rolling in the Middle East will be glowingly achieved. And the pessimists and the naysayers of the neocon strategy to spread and establish democracy in countries that breed terrorism, will have so much egg on their face that will be a full time job for nannies to wipe it off their face.

A brief reply by Con George-Kotzabasis

Legacies do not fall like manna from the sky. Nor are they tailor-made of an original design. They are made by “wearing” for long the hard course of action that will ultimately shape and give birth to the legacy. Moreover, its creator is not one person, but a set of intelligent human beings, who however, are always “escorted” by the jump less shadow of fallibility and serendipity, which inevitably take their toll, but without which no great achievement can be accomplished in human affairs.

The Bush administration, despite some serious mistakes in its strategy (which must creatively and imaginatively be criticized, but not by doomsayer scenarios–which regrettably some readers on this blog are incapable of making a distinction between imaginative critics and doomsayers–is still on the right strategy, both in realizing the prowess and the malice of the enemy and how to confront him. To compare, as Sanger does, this prowess of the religiously fanatic terrorists, whose lethal actions have the great potential of becoming a ceaseless series of successes, with the one off bombings of anarchists, is historically ludicrous. Secondly, to compare the fate of democracy in the Philippines in 1898, with the fate of democracy in Iraq in the age of TV and of the Internet, when most people in oppressed countries can see how other people live in democratic countries and can virtually breath the air of freedom that emanates from these countries, is to compound this incomparable inanity of Sanger.

Also, John Dower’s proposition, “that people know what victory looks like”, as he deems Bush’s victory to be a fabrication, is overtly contradicted by the polls which showed Bush’s ratings for the war jumping from 36% to 46%, after the President’s intense campaign to explain the war to the American people. Lastly, David Donald’s seemingly poignant statement, about Bush’s comparison of the spying intrusions to the “sleeping partners” of the terrorists, with Lincoln’s suspension of habeas corpus, that there was an uproar against Lincoln and a “lot of people believed it wasn’t necessary”, why is this so surprising, did he expect a unanimous agreement by the American people about such a fundamental, but necessary, reversal of rights even in times of war?

The Administration’s strategy in Iraq was to establish an Archimedean point from which it could turn the terrorist’s world and its sponsors upon their own heads. By defeating Saddam and the current insurgency, it can defeat by proxy, as Libya has shown, all other rogue states, and hence expedite the defeat of global terror. History has not as yet passed its verdict. But the chances are that the Bush administration will accomplish this historic task, and prove wrong all its doomsayers and shallow, unimaginative critics.

 Your turn now…

Posted by: Con George-Kotzabasis on January 2, 2006 03:23 AM

THE WAR CANNOT BE WON IF ITS COMMANDERS ARE HOSTAGES TO POLITICS

Dear readers of the Global Journal 

 I’m republishing this proposal sent to President Bush as Washington politicians were  attempting in the mid stages of the Surge to micro-manage the war.

By Con George-Kotzabasis

The following was written on April 11, 2004 and was sent to President Bush on the same date. It’s republished now, as the Bush administration is forging a new strategy for Iraq that hopefully will be victorious against the murderous insurgents.

Dear Mr. President,

The present armed insurgency, threatening to become a general insurgency against your forces in Iraq, unless its momentum is promptly nipped in the bud, of Shiites and Sunnis against the Coalition, threatens to put off balance your whole strategic project for Iraq and the Middle East in general, which would have tremendously negative effects on the war against global terror. Needless to say therefore, the stakes are infinitely high.

At the present moment these fanatic thugs are fighting your forces under the misperception that they have the “upper hand” in this confrontation. It is for this reason therefore, that any conciliatory move your Authority in Iraq will be making toward the insurgents will be perceived by them to be a sign of weakness by your side. A current example of this is the ceasefire in Fallujah, that Paul Bremer was probably compelled to declare as a result of pressures put upon him by some members of the Interim Governing Council (IGC). This was done to presumably give the opportunity to diplomatic palaver to resolve some of the issues that are contested between, in my judgement, irreconcilable opponents. These talks are bound to fail, as you will confront the hardened positions of these fanatics, which arise from their false belief that they will be bargaining from a strong position, that will be totally incompatible with your military plans against the insurgents, and therefore will be rejected by your side.

It is neither surprising nor unreasonable, that some members of the IGC have condemned your military actions in Fallujah and have opted for negotiations with the insurgents. What is unreasonable however, about the stand of the IGC – which apparently does not have political and military strategists among its members – is the futility, except as a public relations stunt of doubtful value, of these negotiations on the core issues between the belligerents, and the loss of valuable time that could be expended instead by your military commanders in putting, urgently and immediately, a stop to the momentum of the insurgency that threatens to engulf the whole country.

Paul Bremer therefore, has the responsibility to awaken these members of the IGC from their somnambulistic illusions, and spell out to them the high stakes involved, which can only be resolved by the use of major military force by the Coalition. However, despite these negative aspects of the ceasefire in Fallujah, it can be used positively by enabling women and children to evacuate the town, hence saving them from becoming collateral casualties from a future attack by your forces.

The paradigm of Vietnam has shown conclusively that your brave commanders and troops could not win a war that was politically restrained, as to the appropriate kind of weapons used against their enemies, by the hands of “micro-politicians”. In any major critical military engagement, military considerations should have the upper hand over political considerations. Certainly, the overwhelming military response of your forces against the insurgents will have local and international repercussions and will spark a “wildfire” of protests against your Administration. But despite this, the priority of the military over the political must not be modified and must prevail. It is the price that statesmanship must pay.

Moreover, what is of the utmost importance in this conflict is to inflict such a deadly blow on the insurgents in selected towns of Iraq, from which they will never be able to recover. It is not enough to capture or kill them in small numbers, but to do so in the largest number possible. Their capture or killing en masse, will have a powerful psychological effect upon other insurgents in other towns, and will irreparably breakdown their morale and their fighting spirit. To achieve this goal, you Mr. President, as Commander-in- Chief, must direct your commanders on the ground to use the weapons that would inflict this devastating blow on the insurgents. That means that incendiary bombs, and the “daisies cutter” be used as a last resort against the insurgents, whose total defeat is so pivotal to your historic project in Iraq and to the war against global terror.

Sure enough, as I said above, there will be multiple political repercussions on a world scale. But one has to be reminded that wars are won or lost by military actions not by political repercussions. It is a terrible situation to be in for a Commander-in-Chief, but the question for free, open, and civilized societies, is to be or not to be. It is by such tragic and historic burdens that your leadership and Tony Blair’s are weighed with presently. But the mantle of statesmanship falls on Churchillian shoulders.

Your turn now…

A Response to an American Isolationist

By Con George-Kotzabasis

It’s in the nature of power politics from the Roman republican times of Scipio Africanus (Carthage must be destroyed), to our own that no superpower can metastasize itself into isolationism, as your “minding our own business” implies. A benign superpower such as America by its ineluctable engagement with the world is the axis of global order.

Also, one must not forget that bin Laden is a symbol of a fanatic mass movement with multiple heads whose goal is to destroy the West and its incarnation, “evil America”. You cannot defeat such an enemy by merely “catching” or killing its symbol, bin Laden. You can only defeat him in the field of battle. Islamist terrorism is a mundanely “anarchic” movement with no centre of command. For all its true believers the centre of command is heavenly, since all of them ineradicably believe that they are the instruments of, and take their orders from, Allah.

The only way to defeat decisively such foes is to make them fail in the field of their operations , as presently seems to be happening with al Qaeda in Iraq with the new strategy of the surge which is crippling its suicidal jihadists. It’s at this point that they might start having doubts about being instruments of God and abandon their cause. This is why the outcome of the war in Iraq is of paramount importance to the war against global terror and to the security of the West.

DEMOCRAT’S SEARCH FOR POLITICAL SOLUTION IN IRAQ A SEARCH IN ABYSS OF DEFEAT

The following article that was written few months ago illustrates how wrong the critics of the war in Iraq have been.

By Con George-Kotzabasis

The Democrats after seductively saying “I do” to the war bride of President Bush in their nuptial bliss to her four years ago, are wishing now that their bliss has been transmogrified into the difficulties and ugliness of war to dump and replace the old ugly hag of war with the beautiful “maiden” named “political solution”. Now that the war is showing its true changeless nature and its ugly features, the “teddy boy” Democrats, too timorous and panic-stricken to face its monstrous mien are scrambling before it and running to hide under the maiden’s bed sheets. Having lost once their hearts and minds to the goddess of war Minerva, presently they are losing their hearts and minds to retreat and ignominious defeat since they consider that a military solution in Iraq is impossible. Hence their current vehement opposition to President Bush’s new strategy in Iraq.

Politically buoyed by the unpopularity of the war and the massive opposition to it by Americans, that led the Democrats to capture both houses of Congress in the November elections, they have chosen to turn themselves into populist leaders, in these dangerous times that have been forged by the fire and ashes of September 11, and hence they have become turncoats to their historical, political, and moral responsibilities to the future of America. Instead of leading from the front they are leading from the “tail”, pushed by the populist wind.

While President Bush is seizing the chances of winning the war by their “forelock”, to paraphrase Friedrich Nietzsche, with his quantified and qualified Surge, i.e., new rules of engagement, the devastating use of the means of war against the insurgents, and tackling the “forays” of Iran and Syria in Iraq, the Democrats are deflating their surge of honor and political and strategic nous into the fizzling balloon of populism. The fierce indomitable adventurous spirit of Moby-Dick’s captain Ahab, who would “strike the sun if it insulted him”, that is the spirit of America, is transformed by the Democrats and the besotted with defeatism “speakeasy” media, into a romantic misadventure. Their romance with a political solution in Iraq is no more than a political misadventure at the expense of the vital interests of America and its people.

America is at War

America in the aftermath of September 11 is not involved in a skirmish with the holy warriors of Islam, but in a global war against them. The attack on the twin towers in New York by the suicidal fanatic recruits of Islam, has however redefined the meaning of war. The decisive existential battles of the West against the fundamentalists of Islam are not to be fought behind Maginot Lines and by panzer divisions against clear-cut enemy lines whose combatants are easily identified, but among civilian populations where the terrorists live, are nurtured and hide and are indistinguishable from, and from where they launch their cowardly stealthy murderous attacks against civilians and on the military forces that try to protect them. Moreover, these suicide bombers with belts of death around their bi-gender waists clad in civilian clothes, are “identified” mostly only after perpetrating their murderous actions and not before. Also, this foreground of the terrorists has a concomitant lethal background of fifth columnists that reside as citizens and blend with their more moderate co-religionists in the countries that are waging war against global terror. Lastly, the overt supplying of arms and finance by rogue states, such as Iran and Syria, and covertly by the so called cultural fronts of other nations, such as Saudi Arabia, is a crucial element in fuelling the deadly actions of the global jihadists as well as “oiling” the world-wide Wahhabi Madrassas and Mosques that are the breeding grounds and cradles of Muslim Saudi “bastard” fanaticism. Taking also in consideration that in the near future these war-martyrs of Islam would be possibly armed with weapons of mass destruction, and, indeed, with nuclear weapons, which they would unhesitatingly use against the infidels of the West, since in their warped minds this is decreed by their Allah, this would be the ultimate greatest danger to the survival of Western civilization.

It’s all the above factors that have redefined the meaning of war and its combatants. The war that is waged by the jihadists against America, the sole superpower, and the “infidel” West, is the most “economical” war that one could ever fight, i.e., with box cutters and Saudi “subsidized” tickets on air flights. The “wealth” of fanaticism needs only to be armed with the poorest of war means to subdue and slay the wealthiest military power on earth, America. The holy warriors, making the most of their shadowy existence, have only to be armed economically with the most nondescript but lethal weapons, to bring about havoc, fear, and immeasurable destruction among civilians in the major cities of the West. Their arming with weapons of mass destruction and nuclear ones will bring the Islamist Armageddon in the metropolises of Western civilization.

This is the tragic reality that the latter will be facing especially because many of its political elites, academia, and media are afflicted by a poverty of thought, imagination, and historical sense, that is making them deaf to the reverberating hoofing sound that is send forth by the galloping Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse with their unsheathed scimitars aiming to behead Western civilization. In America itself, the indigence of cognitive power among many of its politicians and cultural and media elites makes the country powerless, despite its military supremacy, to confront this great danger that would engulf and drown America itself in this Mohammedan made deluge.

The Democrats, especially, lacking Churchillian mettle and wisdom, are morphing themselves into political eunuchs, impotent to mobilize the American people behind a winning military and political strategy, presently attempted by general David Petraeus in Iraq, that will deal a decisive mortal blow to this irreconcilable and tenacious enemy and thus defeat the infamy of global Islamist terror sooner than later. They are totally unaware of the elementary lesson of history that instructs that when one confronts an irreconcilable remorseless enemy, whom no diplomatic demarche, no matter how refined and clever, will ever induce him to negotiate, as is the case of the jihadist and his divinely ordained grievances, it is wise to destroy him while he is still weak and before he becomes stronger.

Hence, the Democrats’ search for a political solution, without the backing and relentless use of military power, is not only most unwise, but also a mortal political sin. The speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi, and the leader of the Senate Harry Reid, will be immortalized by being quartered in Dante’s Inferno for their political sins.