Letters to the Editor
ondelette
Published Letters: 1986 Editor's Choice: 19
-
Or maybe not
[Read the article: McClatchy reports on shift in Iraq propaganda]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Those who believe it's their duty to contradict what their superiors say, when their superiors are acting irresponsibly, have to be even more careful.
William Timberman
But Petraeus is already on record contradicting the Administration on those mysterious English language marked mortar rounds that were supposedly supplied to the Iraqi insurgents by Ahmadinejad and Khamanei personally.
And in Fiasco he and the other "Doctors Without Orders" were extremely critical of the strategic level decisions.
These people are damned if they do and damned if they don't. If they criticize the Administration before they retire, the left ignores them like Cassandra. If they don't (like Powell) the left condemns them forever as cowards. I would submit (as I have done before) that the military is one of the good, approachable wedges for busting up this GWOT fantasy, not an irreproachable enemy to hate and dismiss. And I think that goes for certain generals, as well. Odierno is talking a completely different tune than he did when they first invaded, so there, at least, is one guy who can change his mind, given an argument for doing so.
From my point of view, you approach the war supporters as individuals and make one conversion at a time, and mentally give an amnesty to anyone who is currently helping us get out of there. Taiji background, or something, but I don't think a full frontal assault on all the government, all the military, all the corporations, and all the press is going to work this time.
-
@Bryan Hayward
[Read the article: McClatchy reports on shift in Iraq propaganda]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]First, thanks for the detailed reply.
On your point about the Qing:
I was reading something just the other day about how China under the Qing expanded in the 1600-1700’s, bringing formerly independent nations under their sway. Was north Vietnam part of that takeover, and for how long? How long was Vietnam part of the French colonial system?
I am not saying the Vietnamese should be slaves to what “was” before. But they were “one nation” for at least as long as some other nations we could discuss prior to French meddling, at some point in their past. That is the problem with discussing “traditionally” what is true. Whose tradition, and what time period?
China's dominance of what was during the war called North Vietnam is very evident in the poetry of Li Po (pinyin Li Bo), who is Tang dynasty (He has mournful poems in Tang shi san bai sho, sobbing about his fate after being exiled there, the Chinese government exiled political mavericks there in hopes they would die of malaria). China's influence waxed and waned over the centuries, but they either outright laid claim to the region, as they did in the Tang, when they were strong, or collected tributes from local rulers when they were not strong. The region that covers most of what was South Vietnam was under many different rules and empires, including the Siamese, the Khmer, and those who eventually created the Vietnamese empire at Hue, which the French corrupted and dumped.
With regards to your critique of who will tell the U.S. military the truth in hunting Al Qaeda, you are right. But Moktada al Sadr is on record -- as in: public speech, to his militias, in a mosque, on a Friday -- as having a policy that the sooner the violence ends the sooner the Americans will leave, and asking them not to engage in tit-for-tat battles with the Sunni militias. The Sunni sheiks are on record -- as in: talking to reporters, in arabic with interpreters on the radio -- as being well disposed to rooting out foreign fighters and al Qaeda, whom they believe don't share their goals and keep provoking the Americans, who then come down on all the Sunnis.
Those are not American strategies, nor are they strategies put together for American consumption. I said before they were naive, and they are, because they rely on the premise that if the American stated objectives are met to a higher level than the American pain level in dead soldiers, the Americans will leave. The Administration has no such plans IMHO.
That these plans are being exploited for counterinsurgency purposes by Americans is what I was pointing out. That they are being exploited for Bush Administration propaganda directed against us Americans is another issue, and one which I agree with Glenn and others on. That the media is being less than investigative and insightful is also one which I agree on. But little distinctions, like the difference between an American strategy and an anti-American one, and the difference between a military counterinsurgency strategy and an administration propaganda war against the American public, are distinctions that I think are important and could affect the final outcome.