Asymmetrical Information

So, us anti-war types are supposed to shut up because we already got our dialogue? How do you folks explain this?

One year before the war, Bush was saying he was going to invade. Why do you folks need to pretend there is any democratic dialogue in this country? You're in control, and I'd personally be able to respect you all a bit more if you admitted you're more interested in controlling the US than you are in democracy.

I'm sorry -- what does that have to do with this post?

Got to hand it to Rummy, though.

He's deceived his enemies, isolated them, divided their forces, feinted, appeared to suffer setbacks, and then all of a sudden advanced rapidly to leave them no option but to capitulate.

(And that's just what he did to the State Department.)

Seriously though, this war went way better than this instinctive multilateralist (who reluctantly was pro-war) dreamed; I though, at best, 1,000 US casualties and maybe 10,000 Iraqis - but this is much lower than Panama (~3,000) in terms of civilians killed. This is the best military campaign since the six-day war.

Warbloggers, enjoy the gloating. You've earned it.

Those who feared a much darker outcome (like me) were wrong; and I'm glad I was wrong.

Nothing, it has nothing to do with your post. But I think you've created an interesting forum with your blog, and I knew people would check out the link. I'm really tired of talking to people who agree with me, and I am genuinely interested in what pro-war people think. In the future I will limit my comments to ones that are relative to your posts.

I've had this sort of arguement with one of my co-workers. He insists that Bush claimed erroneously to have knowledge of Saddam's WMD, but we haven't seen any. We were lied to he claims. I respond that we know he produced X amount of nerve agents and has used Y amount, all of this info has been available since '91. He had them, has shown no evidence that the remainder has been used or destroyed, and must therefore still have them. My coworker wants evidence of new weapons, that he had them before isn't good enough (as though I would give a damn about the age of the VX as I lay dieing) This is the gist of the "dialogue" arguement. Don't you get it? The very article you link demonstrates that a discussion has been ongoing for 12 YEARS! You can't just claim that no dialogue has been going on AFTER the decision was made, the dialogue PRECEEDED the decision. If you weren't paying attention, tough. I suppose some folks just assume the decision to attack Iraq was made in a void, it wasn't. Neither Bush nor Powell could have been described as hawks prior to 9/11. 9/11 showed that we could be vulnerable, there were people in the administration who had thought about the potential sources of attack for 12 YEARS. If you were in Bush's position on 9/12 who would you ask about future threats?

What changed on 9/12 was not the actual threat but the percieved threat. We knew the Taliban was dangerous, but assumed we were safe. The folks who had been telling us we were in danger were right.

As to Rummy railroading State. Get real. It wasn't that Rummy prevailed but that the situation dictated a DoD solution, not a DoS one. The diplomats were doing there job, they have hammers so they use hammers, but there is no guarantee that diplomacy will work. Christ! look at Powell, he insisted that we try the UN route until it was proved beyond a doubt that the UN wasn't interested in solving the problem. This was a problem that required dynamite, not a hammer, so the DoD got to work. To use a sports analogy: if a team has a really good defence against the run, you throw; but don't blame the running backs.

BTW Jack, its not that the antiwar crowd should shut up, but that they should reexamine some of their assumptions. It is that many of them started from flawed assumptions, so no matter how logical their arguement, no matter how consistent, they couldn't have been right. Not to claim my assumptions are always right, but when I am proved wrong that is the best place to look.

"Better yet, they could both have agreed to act as if they'd been bombed and forgone the actual bombing altogether."

Wasn't there a classic Star Trek episode based on this premise, where to avoid the horrors of war randomly chosen people would line up for sanitized immolation?

Getting back to the original post, I'm not sure I agree with the theory behind the article. "That everything you choose turns out to be worse than you expect, because you choose the ones you most overestimate."

The underlying basis of this seems to be that everything is judged on an absolute scale. In fact, most choices are made on a relative scale, you choose which one is best (or least worse) and this should have no bearing on how good they are relative to your expectations.

Looking at the spouse example, you have a selection of prospective spouses. You may rate them as ranging from a 5 to a 9 (on the old scale). Naturally you will choose the 9. THis seems to have no real bearing on whether your guess of 9 turns out to be a 9.5 or in fact a 3.

Now sure, the one you rated as a 5 may in fact have turned out to be a 10, even better than the 9.5 you ended up with, but that doesn't really matter as you don't know this, and the 9.5 you ended up with did indeed turn out better than you expected.

More rigourously I guess the real question is how the error in your Ranking of alternatives compares to the error in your estimate of the enjoyment/difficulty of the whole experience in the first place. It is the second error, not the first, that determines how disappointed you'll be. Only a very large error in the Ranking will result in a disappointment providing you got the second part either correct or conservative.

Tom,

> Those who feared a much darker outcome (like me)
> were wrong; and I'm glad I was wrong.

Wow; I sure wish there were more anti-war folks who were singing this tune. Let me bow down in respect for your honesty (both intellectual and moral) as well as civility. I would only hope that, if things had gone horribly, horribly wrong, that I would have been as ready to admit I was wrong to have expected ready success.

Kirk,

Your post makes crystal clear a phenomenon that makes me crazy. You wish that "more anti-war folks" were as honest as Tom. Very gracious, except for the fact that Tom describes himself as an "instinctive multilateralist (who reluctantly was pro war)". Could he state any more clearly that he is not anti-war ?

Guess what - a lot of us 'anti-war folks' were in the same very large boat as Tom. That means we're just as honest, and we weren't anti-war. Call us cautious, call us skeptics, call us cynics. But we were only 'anti-war' in the halls of narrow minds.

Cheers,

Jack, you asked, "I'd personally be able to respect you all a bit more if you admitted you're more interested in controlling the US than you are in democracy."

Isn't this an example of pre-judging? You have drawn this conclusion from your observations of the words and actions of others with whom you disagree. Now, you are not asking if you have it right, you are presuming that you have it right, and all that is required is that the other side "admit" that you are right. What if you are wrong? Can you see that you have not opened a door to discussion, but have declared the case closed?

Think about it.

Jane, I'm sorry about following Jack off topic in my previous note.

Seems to me that Landsberg hasn't really thought through his thesis. On the box of chocolates, speaking for myself, I just take one, not supposing it to be "the best," but one of many. On choosing a wife, I did find myself comparing: not all with all, but all the others with one. And it finally dawned on me that I should go for the one I was taking as the standard. (She said 'Yes,' and, all being well, we will observe our 39th anniversary this year.) And on how the war is going, I think that I could find examples of predictions of both extremes: "a cakewalk" and "a quagmire," as well as most positions between.

I expected that the war would be relatively short, in the sense that major conflict would be measured in weeks. I would not be at all surprised to see skirmishes and smaller firefights here and there for an extended period of perhaps 18 months, slowly dying down. Has the war, then gone as I expected? In broad outline, yes; in detail - well, I had no detailed expectations, so that question is meaningless. One thing I fully expected: that there would be carping by the unwilling.

CMN wrote:

Wasn't there a classic Star Trek episode based on this premise, where to avoid the horrors of war randomly chosen people would line up for sanitized immolation?

Yep, it was "A Taste of Armageddon" where the citizens of Eminiar VII and Vendikar would make computer-simulated attacks and computers would calculate the casualty rates and anyone who was listed as a "casualty" would step into a disintigration booth.

A more apt analogy might be the episode "Slipfighter The Dogs Of War" of Gene Roddenberry’s Andromeda (non-Trek) in which the planet Marduk is ruled by a dictator who overthrows his government, isolates and oppresses his people from the rest of the Commonwealth, and tries to develop nova bombs while his people are starving in the streets. The Commonwealth is afraid to act because of treaty obligations and an unwillingness to act pre-emptively against a former ally but Captain Hunt and his crew go in and destroy the nova bomb reactor (while the Commonwealth officially condemns their actions).

Gee, I wonder where they got the inspiration for that episode? ;)

One wonders how Krugman comes up with his twisted
take on reality. Then one hears of this totally
assinine comment (which is worthy of an ANSWER or
NION member) not of a distinguished professor of
economics. The German Luft-Krieg (first applied
in Guernica) and the Anglo American strategy of
the 8th Air Force, both employ the same tools.
Except one is to terrorize civilians, and make
them susceptible to facilitating their conquest
and the application of the Final Solution, and the
other, is to (at least) try to liberate said peoples from one's grip. Has Herr Professor's analytical gifts, failed him so thoroughly that
he misses the context. (Apparently)

Thorley:

Isn't it sad that I was thinking the same thing. Damn us SciFi geeks!

I would like to point out that the war is not over yet. Yes, we've won the major battles but even Rummy is urging caution. We need to make sure that we rebuild Iraq, and it's certainly not going to be easy.

I will feel like we've won the war when there is a stable government in Iraq that was freely elected and when Turkey isn't standing on the boarder desperate to get in there and kill them some kurds.

I the meantime, I'm optimistic that my anti-war stance was incorrect. I hope so.

"As to Rummy railroading State. Get real. It wasn't that Rummy prevailed but that the situation dictated a DoD solution, not a DoS one."

I see the humor-challenged aren't just on the left/liberal side.

OK, I can either believe he threw his diplomatic hand grenades into the fray ("Old Europe" "We don't need Britain", etc.) because he was (1) a dumbass loose cannon or (2) delibrately making Powell's [and Blair's] job harder so as to make a compromise in the UN more difficult. I think we can all agree (1) is unlikely. He is scary, and I have an intense distaste for his ideology, but I can admire that he knows how to fight military & bureaucratic battles.

He was CEO of Searle, wasn't he? Would be interesting to see if he was as ruthless & uncompromising in business strategy.

Tom-
You left out option (3); making State's job easier by showing the French/German's that there would be a downside to avoiding a compromise at the UN. It is clear that France/Germany, for whatever reason, did not want this war to be fought; if they faced no negative consequences for blocking UN backing, there is no reason to believe that they would ever have agreed to it. It is certainly possible that Rumsfeld was playing the bad cop to Powells' good cop; showing a little stick in contrast to Powells' honey. Now, you may disagree with that approach, but you can't just assume it wasn't part of the plan.

i have to agree with henry,
we usually know a lot more than lansberg gives us credit for. when i check out the box of chocolates, i look underneath, and find the one with the same image or shape as the (take your pick--praline, toffee, caramel, etc.) and avoid the fruit cream centres. previous experience with this kind of thing. as for marriage, prior experience helped me there as well, to realize what i was looking for (and not looking for). the us has had a lot of experience in fighting wars. after the dysfunctional mess of vietnam, it has a better sense of the kinds of wars that it can fight well. iraq is that kind of war. the surprses during the war, fit within the expected parameters of the military operations, and they got dealt with (just imagine if the fedaykin had come on out on sand worms, gobbling up abhrams tanks & supply trucks all over the place on the first couple of days of the war! that would have been interesting to counter, especially in the sand-storms... now that would have been a bit of an unexpected surprise!)

the winning of the peace may be a different matter (much less experience with that kind of situation apart from the end of wwii). time will tell on that one.

Matt wrote-
"You left out option (3); making State's job easier by showing the French/German's that there would be a downside to avoiding a compromise at the UN."

I'm sorry. Given the contempt that the neo-cons have shown for the realists, and the loud and very public rows between the Pentagon & State, I'd have a hard time believing Rummy would give Powell a sheet of paper to wipe his arse if Powell was in the next stall, out of bog roll, and busting for a crap. That is, unless the sheet of paper was 80-grade sandpaper.

" ...It is certainly possible that Rumsfeld was playing the bad cop to Powells' good cop; showing a little stick in contrast to Powells' honey. Now, you may disagree with that approach, but you can't just assume it wasn't part of the plan."

I could believe that, but then there's also the clanger Rumsfeld dropped when he said that the US would go to war even without Britain. This was when Blair was trying to fix a compromise in the UNSC. Rummy was signaling that Britain had zero leverage with the administration; so there was no incentive on the part of the French and Russians to believe the British could deliver US acceptance of a compromise.

That's how I read it. I may be giving Rumsfeld too much credit for cunning plans & Machiavellian intrigue (seeing as last week I was in the "Rummy is a dumbass loose cannon" school); but we'll let the historians sort that out.

"Why do you folks need to pretend there is any democratic dialogue in this country? You're in control, and I'd personally be able to respect you all a bit more if you admitted you're more interested in controlling the US than you are in democracy."

Uh, Jack, I would have figured you knew that we don't live in a democracy here in the USA. We live in a representative republic. And it operated just as it was supposed to. We elect representatives to use their best judgement in cases like this, which they did. We don't open up every issue to a public referendum, in case you didn't know that.

And in light of 70+% public approval rates for this war, why do you even raise this question?

I'm afraid that the ideas in that article are extraordinarily simplistic. For instance: "In other words, somebody's overconfident. That's why the war gets fought—to find out who the "somebody" is. So, right off the top, each combatant has at least a 50/50 chance of an unpleasant surprise."

In other words, because one side will win and the other lose, the result is a tossup. Which is ludicrous; would Luxembourg have a 50:50 chance of defeating the US in an all-out war?

What he's discounting is the fact that some nations live on bluster and hope, but that other nations actually have very realistic views of the situation. A large part of why this war went as well as it did for us was because we spent truly vast amounts of time and effort and money to make sure it came out the way we wanted. I am once again stunned by how well CENTCOM has performed; its planning and control were astounding and amazing. General Franks isn't very telegenic, but he's going to go into the history books now as one of the greats.

The article itself starts by asking why the war went worse than I expected. In reality, it went far better than I dared to hope it would.

hi steven,
"I am once again stunned by how well CENTCOM has performed; its planning and control were astounding and amazing. General Franks isn't very telegenic, but he's going to go into the history books now as one of the greats."

given that this war was a complete mismatch on just about every level (thank goodness, since that kept american and civilian casualties down)--don't you think that proclaiming this mantle of greatness is a slight exaggeration?

Rofe wrote:

"Kirk,

Your post makes crystal clear a phenomenon that makes me crazy. You wish that "more anti-war folks" were as honest as Tom. Very gracious, except for the fact that Tom describes himself as an "instinctive multilateralist (who reluctantly was pro war)". Could he state any more clearly that he is not anti-war ?"

Well, Kirk was kind, so let me speak up in his defence.

If the multilateral policy I had supported been followed, Blair & Powell would have hammered out some kind of shitty compromise with France, Germany & Russia, extending the inspector's deadline. Probably Hussein would have complied sufficiently to take the pressure off, so no war, but a continuation of containment, but 1.5-2 years from now, when US attention was elsewhere (like, say in the middle of the 2004 elections), he'd provoke a crisis similar to 1998, and UNMOVIC would suffer the same fate as UNSCOM. Meanwhile, Iraqi dissidents would still be being processed through PET recycling equipment, and that country would still be living in fear and economically crippled by sanctions.

Or possibly Hussein would have been, like Milosevic, tactically shrewd but strategically deluded, and would have created a situation in which we would have went to war in an international coalition, and reached the same spot we are now, for months later, with more international political credibility intact. We won't know now.

But the policy I advocated might have left the Iraqis still suffering, because of my fears on the adverse consequences of the unilateral exercise of US power. Intellectual honesty requires me to acknowledge this; if I'd been in Bush's shoes, making the decisions, we would be in a worse position than we are now.

Instead, the neo-cons were in the saddle; we went to war with hardly any international support, and I reluctantly supported the war 'cos even worse than saber-rattling diplomacy is not drawing your saber when the other party calls your bluff (mixing metaphors here).

But this victory gives us a huge amount of flexibility to remake the middle east. And it does improve our national security (providing the Hindi chauvinists in India don't nuke Pakistan in the interim). No rational nation is going to try sponsoring terrorist groups or making WMDs after this.

The neo-cons took a big gamble, and they drew a full house. Kudos to them. May their luck continue to hold, and they know when not to overplay their hand. But this victory is the result of their policies, not those of the realists nor of liberal multilateralists like me. Like DenBeste (who I rarely agree with) says, this victory makes it far less likely we'll have to fight another war in a similar situation. That's an outcome I would never, never, have predicted.

It probably also means another Bush winning another term; I can't say I'm really happy about that, but if the price of Iraqi freedom is an extra four years of me grinding my teeth and impotently giving Bush the finger when he appears on the TV, then I'm willing to pay it. Others have paid far, far more.

I'm still worried about the future. But the downside scenarios I thought were likely have become much, much less probable.

If, under the Clinton years, we'd hammered out a more solid "liberal interventionist" doctrine, on when it was appropriate to violate state sovereignty for the protection of the citizens in a particular state, then we might have seen a different effect of this Iraqi crisis on the international order; one in which the international community was strengthened, not weakened. (We started to see the beginning of such a doctrine take shape in the Kosovo conflict, but too late). More on this from UK commentator John Lloyd at http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,3604,934302,00.html.

And now, if you'll pardon me, I have some crow to eat. Mmmm-mmmm.

I thought the column had some simplistic features. It assumed that people only go to war when they believe they have the edge.
Not so. Sometimes people go to war because they see no choice - because they think the issue is so important that they must fight. (Did the American colonials really believe they had 'the edge' against the British Empire?)

Landsburg said we chose to fight Iraq instead of North Korea (partually) because Iraq was easier. Thats silly. We fought Iraq because it was potentially more dangerous.

War is NOT a box of chocolates.

Actually, I don't know about Korea being less dangerous than Iraq in terms of long-term security issues. But I have to hand it to Bush, I think he managed another short-term credibility sacrifice in exchange for long term objectives.

Iraq was invaded without any other Arab state or its 'street' (save for the Palestinians, but that was to be expected) rising up in mass opposition. I can't say this would be the same with an intervention in NK, which would be incredibly sensitive with both SK and the Japanese.

At the same time, once China and Russia saw that the US gun was loaded, they suddenly got very nervous about future prospects in Pyongyang, and have become a lot more proactive in applying pressure against Kim's regime.

Now the question is...once Iraq's massive oil fields are fully online, how will the US relationship with the Saudis change? Will the US stave off oil imports from politically unstable Venezuela, set Iraq as the swing producer, and let the Saudis resume full output so they can counteract their falling GDP problem *OR* will the US begin pressuring the Saudi government for faster reforms, using oil from Iraq and Venezuela as an alternative source to current Saudi production?

as to iraq vs nk choice...

current price of invading iraq is much lower, while future cost of not invading is much higher..

nk has high current cost of invasion (buh bye seoul) but low future cost (china is realizing that they really do have to count japan and sk as independent players, and having them agitated and nuclear armed just might not be what china wants)

and w already have excellent strategic position in SE Asia (japan, sk, australia as bases, with options in taiwan, philippines, thailand..... should things be necessary) and the sas are wide

in the middle east we had bad position in small orhostile countries, with bad seas... we now have an excellent pivot point, control the persian gulf, and can get people shaking just by giving don rumsfeld a mike!

on that note.. I LOVE RUMMY! he's speaking what's on a lot of people's minds... the world should have to think about the us' opinion and not enraging it, rather than the US always having to play diplomatic patsy... a welcome change!

Powell is also coming around to this, though his language needs a tuneup (still to foggy striped pants for effective communication... he should really bust out the old uniform and fruit salad for briefings and meetings... maybe even get a version of the qatar set and do a replay of his gw1 briefings (modified to show paris and berlin as the targets of course)... be sweet

yes i am that hard core... obviously won't be disappointed if bush wins... but i like tom's comments, and hope that i'd be as mature as he is being in a reversed situation (though given my respect, or lack of, for roosevelt and truman, that seems doubtful)

good website

bad website

“The article itself starts by asking why the war went worse than I expected. In reality, it went far better than I dared to hope it would.”

Steven Landsberg is simply nitpicking the Bush administration. The liberation of Iraq has been a fantastic success. Also, Paul Krugman’s so called efficiency argument is patently silly. If the world was entirely logical---there would never be any wars in the first place!

The Democrats and their ilk are going to do everything within their power to hurt George W. Bush. He can do nothing right in their eyes. They will continually raise the bar. My imagination is getting the best of me. I can see it now: “The war was a failure because all of the Iraqis do not own a new automobile and have at least $50,000 in their checking account!”

wittehuis
us central command
defenselink
military.com
number10
mod today
iraakse overheid
irak buza
irak vnmissie
unmovic iaea
debka file
janes
stratfor
global security
coverage daily
cyberjourno
cursor

"given that this war was a complete mismatch on just about every level (thank goodness, since that kept american and civilian casualties down)--don't you think that proclaiming this mantle of greatness is a slight exaggeration?"

No.

(1) Superior military forces have been beaten time and again for a wide variety of reasons.

(2) The prosecution of this military campaign was done in a way that imposed very significant risks on our soldiers to achieve a large number strategic objectives (save the oilfields, prevent the use of WMD, spare the civilians, etc.). All of those objectives were achieved, in very little time, at low cost.

(3) As John Keegan has pointed out, this war should have been much more difficult and costly than it was, but we got inside the Iraqi decision loop with an audacious plan brilliantly executed. The Iraqi regime could have made our victory much less complete and more costly, but we outwitted and outfought them. While the outcome wasn't in doubt, the speed, completeness, and low cost of the victory are what make this campaign brilliant.

(4) You seem to have fallen for the trick of unrealistically inflated expectations. Our troops went into this war outnumbered 3:1, with very little air preparation of the battlefield, and liberated Baghdad in three weeks with allied dead of under 150. Anyone with the least knowledge of military history and affairs regards this achievement with slack-jawed amazement. You should too.

hi mr/ms. t hartin,

main point: i have no argument re results: they were better than anyone dared hope (we will see if they translate into long term stability). and i will grant that the speed, mobility, and intensity of coalition bombing/disruption had a huge part to play in all this. greatness in battle requires more than this.

let us take what you said one point at a time:

"1) Superior military forces have been beaten time and again for a wide variety of reasons."

yes, but name me one battle or war, fought in the open, where a superior technology was defeated by inferior technology (and the chinese use of gunpowder against the mongols does not count). if you want to add total control of the air, feel free.

"(2) The prosecution of this military campaign was done in a way that imposed very significant risks on our soldiers to achieve a large number strategic objectives (save the oilfields, prevent the use of WMD, spare the civilians, etc.). All of those objectives were achieved, in very little time, at low cost."

these were good results, i grant you. we do not know yet why the oil-fields were not set fire (special forces, sloppy work, disobeying orders?). we do know, according to most competent observers that the iraqis did a poor job of executing their own battle plan (smaller units, strong points, independent command structures, leaving bridges unblown, etc). as for risk: in what way do you mean? risk is a relative concept here--we hold ground, and when counter-attacked, call in close air support. our enemy has few effective counters, they die. yes there is risk, but the whole point of the plan was that the acceptable risk was to be offset by overwhelming firepower and control of the skies, which the coalition had from the very get go.

theoretical point: the dramatic advantage in mobility, accuracy, etc., led to lower civilian casualties. let us substitute b-52 bombing of baghdad, and see low casulaties. that is absurd you would say, because the smart bombs kept casualties down. that is the point. it was an advance in technology, not new daring tactical doctrines that kept civilian casualties low.

also: how many campaigns do you know where a commanding officer has such a complete sense of the battle-field given to them by such superior technology? (note: the shakiest moments in this campaign where the coalition looked strictly average--during the sandstorms--when the unparalled coalition vision of the battlefield and the technological advantages of armament of the coalition were temporarily disrupted.)

"(3) As John Keegan has pointed out, this war should have been much more difficult and costly than it was, but we got inside the Iraqi decision loop with an audacious plan brilliantly executed. The Iraqi regime could have made our victory much less complete and more costly, but we outwitted and outfought them. While the outcome wasn't in doubt, the speed, completeness, and low cost of the victory are what make this campaign brilliant."

it is easy to outwit and out fight someone when the enemy cannot get within range of you to attack you, but you can attack them at leisure. my guess (sorry if it is a wrong guess)is: you probably thought that the iraqis were "wrong" for doing the suicide attack and false surrender thing. what other choice did they have? surrender or die at distance (and many did both).

i wonder if the most brilliant part of the battle-plan was the initial missile strike on baghdad. time will tell on that.

"(4) You seem to have fallen for the trick of unrealistically inflated expectations. Our troops went into this war outnumbered 3:1, with very little air preparation of the battlefield, and liberated Baghdad in three weeks with allied dead of under 150. Anyone with the least knowledge of military history and affairs regards this achievement with slack-jawed amazement."

i agree that it was a great achievement to do all this--in its results. i don't want to get into an argument about the preparedness of an enemy debilitated by ten years of sanctions, etc. except to note this: very few commentators thought the iraqis would offer meaningful resistance, and though heroic in instances, failed as expected under the onslaught of american firepower and mobility. don't confuse numbers of troops with effectiveness (a matter of mass, morale, velocity, vision, and armament; check out napoleon on this).

on your reading, the european conquest of africa in the late 19th century should also go down as an amazing feat of arms. i am sorry, "but anyone with the least knowledge of miltary history and affairs regards this achievement with slack-jawed amazement." yes, we call that time-period, apart from some sporadic and heroic, and ultimately futile resistance, by the term it most deserves: a slaughter. a slaughter made possible by an incredible disparity in technology. and that is the way that history, a hundred years views it as well.

"you should too." amen.

Cas: "but name me one battle or war, fought in the open, where a superior technology was defeated by inferior technology".

I suppose by "fought in the open" you mean to exclude Mogadishu. Not exactly a fair exclusion, since control of the cities is often the whole point of a war, but there is still one outstanding example: Isandlwana (1879). Zulus armed mainly with spears overan a battalion-sized British & native force armed with breech-loading rifles.

And I certainly remember all sorts of whining predictions by American and foreign "liberals" of "another Vietnam", "quagmire", heavy American losses and millions of civilian deaths. Only a few of them are honest enough to say, "I was wrong". (Admittedly, the quagmire may be yet to come as we try to establish a decent government in Iraq, but the one thing we don't have to worry about is the Saddamites...)

hi markm,

thanks for your comments. no, i was thinking vietnam--the guerilla war (though tet was an unmitigated disaster for the north vietnamese, though a political victory). i wonder if we can call mogadishu a defeat. the us troops killed over a thousand people for so few us dead. i guess that the tet example may be instructive here... if us forces had actually had sustained political will backing them...?

i grant your example concerning isandlwana. but let us look at isandlwana in closer detail. lack of coordination & communication between brit columns. outnumbered over 10:1. no machine guns. only six cannon. it was an exception, not the rule, and consider the fact that the english could not sustain a high enough rate of firepower (running low/out of ammunition--the brits had done ok till then in the battle, for the zulu could not get near them till that happened). consider the battle of Omdurman (1898). that was more typical of the pattern. 20,000 brit and egyptian troops, charged by over 52,000 sudanese. result, over 10,000 sudanese left dead, 400 imperial casualties including 48 dead brits. that sounds more like the situation today, doesn't it?

"(Admittedly, the quagmire may be yet to come as we try to establish a decent government in Iraq...)"

hopefully not for ours and the iraqis sake.

http://www.meki.8m.com/

At least Donald Rumsfeld, unlike some of the apologists for his Administration, is still saying it is important to find Saddam's toxic weapons:

He noted that finding these weapons is "clearly on our priority list of things to be done, but it's not something you spend much time doing when you're in a war and you're trying to stop the violence and stop the killing."
BUt he's changed his tune about knowing where they are. Way, way back on March 31 this year he said:

"We know where they are, they are in the area around Tikrit and Baghdad and east, west, south and north of that," he said.

Kate wrote:

I would like to point out that the war is not over yet. Yes, we've won the major battles but even Rummy is urging caution. We need to make sure that we rebuild Iraq, and it's certainly not going to be easy.

I agree, I think that "nation-building" is no longer a swear word except in the circles of a few palecons and ultra-left sorts (you know the kind the demand we leave immediately lest we be accused of "imperialism"). I don't know though why you're saying "even Rummy is urging caution" since it seems to me that while Secretary Rumsfeld has certainly been a hawk, he never struck me as the sort to make overly-optimistic predictions about our chances for victory or the difficulty of the peace ahead.

I will feel like we've won the war when there is a stable government in Iraq that was freely elected and when Turkey isn't standing on the boarder desperate to get in there and kill them some kurds.

Turkey seems to have been surprisingly contained but I agree it is a danger. I wonder though if a seperate Kurdish state is entirely out of the picture at this point but I suppose it might be too much to hope for.

I supported this war under the condition that we stay to finish the job and I am hoping that the Iraqi people who tend to be more literate, educated, and cosmopolitan (or so I've read) than most people in that region are willing to embrace a more secular republican form of government and are more open to a classicly liberal society which respects individual rights.

I the meantime, I'm optimistic that my anti-war stance was incorrect. I hope so.

I must say that Jane Galt's website does seem to attract a higher quality of individuals. How rare and noble it is to see someone on the other side of such a highly contested issue express such a beautiful sentiment as being optimistic that their previous stance was incorrect.

Cas: I agree that isandlwana was an exceptional case. The British leadership was dreadful - repeating Custer's mistake of arrogantly assuming that natives wouldn't fight effectively, so you didn't have to worry about tactics or how many of them there were. Note that Custer at least had some basis for that assumption; the Sioux were undisciplined and even tiny forces (like the smaller detachments from Custer's force) could stand off an infinite number of Indians if they could reach a hilltop and prepare a defense before the Indians were among their lines. But the Zulus had a terrifying reputation in Africa, and had earned it by discipline and tactics matching the British best.

The Zulu king also made a serious mistake - so many warriors were killed charging the British rifles that a mere company was able to stand off the remnants of his army at O'Rourke's drift. He probably had no experience with breechloaders and so had no idea what concentrated rifle fire was going to do to his ranks, but a better general might have seen what was happening and promptly recalled the troops. For example, at Cold Harbor it only took U.S. Grant a few minutes to recognize that he had misjudged the situation and sound retreat; he lost thousands, but still had an effective army and would get replacements for the losses eventually. (I don't know if the Zulus even HAD a signal for retreat - by their reputation, they might not have ever retreated since Chaka Zulu took charge.)

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