My conservative hawkish friends keep telling me that the war in Iraq is strongly backed by the American people. They point to the fact that the shrub was re-elected. If it's so gosh darn popular, why can't the US Army recruit enough soldiers?
I read an article in today's local newspaper that the Army missed it's recruiting target in March by 32%! They also missed there recruiting targets for the previous two months and EXPECT to miss their targets in the foreseeable future.
If, as my cohorts tell me, this war is so popular, why aren't droves of young people beating a path to sign up?
The answer is obvious. The war is NOT popular and most young people don't want to go to Iraq to become a human target. They want to go to college. They want to get good paying jobs. They want to get married and raise a family. They want to hang out with their friends.
They don't want to go halfway around the world to shoot people and be shot at.
Seems very sensible to me.
I read an article in today's local newspaper that the Army missed it's recruiting target in March by 32%! They also missed there recruiting targets for the previous two months and EXPECT to miss their targets in the foreseeable future.
If, as my cohorts tell me, this war is so popular, why aren't droves of young people beating a path to sign up?
The answer is obvious. The war is NOT popular and most young people don't want to go to Iraq to become a human target. They want to go to college. They want to get good paying jobs. They want to get married and raise a family. They want to hang out with their friends.
They don't want to go halfway around the world to shoot people and be shot at.
Seems very sensible to me.
No war is popular with those who must fight it. This one is a mess and violated every precept in The Art of War, especially intelligence and counter-intelligence. Since we went to war as a result of being attacked on September 11, Sun Tzu would consider it all a failure, actual combat is a failure of strategy. But, even in going to war it was bungled. Like him or not, Rumsfeld has the right idea of using small groups of elite troops who get in an out quickly, like a very good martial artist who can neutralize an opponent with broken bones, dislocated joints or, if all else fails, death. A combination of a decisive smashing of terrorist sites in Afghanistan, Yemen, Syria, Somalia and Iran combined with true interruption of financial pipelines would have stifled the Islamists. Instead, like a fighter who assigns someone else to look for and finish a crippled opponent, as the US did in Afghanistan, letting the leaders melt away, the opponent survives. In the meantime the US chooses a scapegoat and figuratively sends a fully armored samurai against a straw man in a nest of scorpions. As brave and dedicated as the samurai may be, and agree or disagree with the war, US combat troops are good at what they are trained to do, an armored samurai cannot effectively fight scorpions. Go after the scorpion nests with those qualified to kill scorpions, wherever the nests are located. And always remember, send in an army with the caution of crossing a frozen river.
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