A Nightmare Called 21st Century “War”
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I watch and listen with great interest to the press conferences given by our military leaders. These are men who believe in the “free enterprise” system of thought therefore have learned to fight and die for our country by certain rules. They are to be honored for their dedication. We would not be free without their sacrifice. Like most today, I also am an observer of history (traveling recently in the Middle East, living there for almost a year). Therefore some mornings, and this was one of them, I awake still dreaming of how war is fought in the part of the world where Iraq is located. As Americans, we think in straight lines. “Baghdad is our objective and we will reach it. Hussein will be thrown out of power. We will liberate the Iraqi people and begin to reshape the Middle East”. As an observer, I watched my Middle Eastern friends think out a problem which I saw, as a Westerner, being straight-forward, a line from “here” to a not yet realized “there”. I gave myself a time line to accomplish what I wanted to achieve and I made sure that I had the technology and resources to reach that goal. My friend approached the same problem like my cat does in finding a comfortable place to perch. My cat circles the room, never in any hurry to get to a destination which is not yet certain. Time seems to not be a part of my cat’s thinking system, just a general destination. This is what I have observed in Arab countries and their thinking out a problem. A destination, which may become a jihad, is destined by a political or religious leader. Each follower knows that destination but can act by his own will to reach it. Time is not part of the process. It may take generations of followers (sons and daughters) to reach the place to deal with the process. So what is my nightmare with the war in Iraq? I listen to our political and military leaders talk as if the enemy follows our rules: such as, the Geneva Convention, the “rules of engagement”, two sides that are distinguished by uniforms with a civilian population outside the battle lines. To fight this war must we sacrifice our ideals and rules of engagement? If so, he wins. I am old enough to have seen this method of “war” in Viet Nam. This Iraqi enemy, we know from history, does not follow our rules. Saddam Hussein has no qualms about using civilians as shields for hiding gun positions (near schools and hospitals) or hiding troops within the population so that we cannot tell who are the “innocent” or the “bad guys”. Saddam has had years and years of control over the media, the education system, the political scene, and the very life of each individual in the Iraqi society. He has shown that he is a cunning mobster. His name deserves to be added to a list of those monster leaders who should be liquidated. The nightmare is: what if he placed individuals into each village, each city in Iraq and elsewhere, to wait out the technology, to wait out the “peace” that might never come? What if his master plan was to leave a mark upon this corner of the world, a permanent jehad against the Western powers, to leave his name in infamy? All he needs to do is play the cat and begin the circling of the wagons of followers to carry out this goal for some indefinite time in the future. Hussein has already started a public relations war around the world. What if he watched Western television’s recent showing of the desert war on “Dune” and “Children of Dune”, using nature’s sand storms like the Russians used winter against the invading Germans? President Bush and our military leaders talk about a time table of occupation of allied forces but this is an area of the world where they are masters at getting around occupation forces (given infinite time). I see glimpses of this future already happening in Iraq. Our forces move in a line toward a future objective. They do not stop to examine each person in the waving, cheering crowd of civilians and, even if they did, the GIs are not experts in discovering the difference between a soldier in civilian clothes and a true civilian. Truth is hard to discern in any human interactions. And in this society, after years and years of brain washing by Saddam, are there any civilians left? Our solution of liquidation and resettlement which were used on the American Indians is not possible in the 21st century. We have set our rules in documents, in conventions, in the way we think and approach war as well as peace. My nightmare for our servicemen and women is that foreign wars are not fought anymore between armies. They are fought so that superior technology or equipment is offset by “not playing by the rules”. Today, you cannot easily tell who is a “friend” and who is an “enemy”. Our young servicemen have been told to not shoot “civilians”. This is a society where leaders have multiple doubles of themselves. This Iraqi War will not be Shootout at OK Corral. My nightmare is that this may be the beginning of a new Hundred Years War. The one bright light in this Iraqi War is that some of our military leaders understand that war is fought on a mental as well as physical plane. The research for the war began long before Bush announced the commencement of fighting. They got the cell phone and email numbers of the leaders, calling them constantly now about surrender. One thing that we do understand in the 21st century is telemarketing. |
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