SPEAKING FREELY GI Joes who just want to go
home By Sarah Whalen
Speaking Freely is an Asia Times Online
feature that allows guest writers to have their say.
Please click hereif you
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"Rogues!" screamed Frederick the Great at the
1757 battle of Kolin, berating his soldiers for
hesitating in battle. "Do you want to live forever?"
They decided they didn't and went forth, sacrificing
themselves for an immediate battle defeat, Frederick's
first. But still, Frederick pressed on, won a great
victory, and Prussia created the trappings of modern
Germany.
That's the
difference between 17 soldiers of the
US 343rd Quartermaster Company fuel platoon of the
13th Corps Support Command based in Tallil, Iraq, and
the frothing mix of Iraqi insurgents and jihadis who
want them to leave. US soldiers increasingly want to
live forever, or at least for as long as it
takes to get home, whereas insurgents and jihadis are increasingly
willing to die - to be killed and kill themselves
and also their own, to make sure the Americans go. President
George W Bush's Pentagon destroyed Fallujah in
order to save it but received a glancing blow from its
own forces last month, heralding a far more serious
future wound when those 17 soldiers refused to embark on
what they called a "suicide mission" convoy. They
claimed their vehicles were inadequately armored, poorly
repaired and running on contaminated gas that could
cause them to become victims of roadside bombings and
sniper fire.
And then they called home to their
mommies to complain. One man even called his grandpa.
Imagine Frederick the Great calming mommies
and grandpas on CNN's Sunday news show, as was US
Brigadier General James E Chambers, patiently addressing each
and every soldier's complaint, explaining that every
five convoy vehicles are escorted by a five-ton
truck operated by heavily armed contractors or
military police, that every US soldier on the convoy is
heavily armed regardless of position, that convoys
generally receive air coverage by army rotary aircraft, that
special quick-reaction forces are often attached to
convoys, and that all gas is carefully filtered and
tested. And still, regrettably, insurgents kill and maim
them.
Frederick the Great would go out of his
mind. If he didn't die laughing first.
Do
insurgents call their mommies to complain? Does their
leadership appear on al-Jazeera Sunday news shows,
explaining why they have no shoes, no socks, no latest
anything? No. Why? Because they're busy fighting.
Insurgents don't need much because they've never
had much. And still they fight. They don't get scared
delivering the gas. What gas? What food? They were born
into a harsh world. They know they're not going to live
forever. Twenty years is good, 30 is better, 40 is old
in a lot of places on Earth.
Bush sent America's
military and its international coalition into Iraq
ostensibly to rid the world of Saddam Hussein's weapons
of mass destruction. But he now fights a war with people
armed with homemade bombs and kitchen knives who seem
unstoppable. Why?
It started with the Soviet
invasion of Afghanistan and its American continuation.
In fighting a comparably unarmed enemy with overwhelming
force, America accidentally created within the "enemy" a
new class of killers through naturally selecting out the
most extraordinarily talented fighters. Israel has
unwittingly done the same in its creation of a
Palestinian state as an internment camp. These
natural-selected fighters survive not only their
surrounding poverty and hostile environment, but a
murderous onslaught from the most powerful militaries on
Earth.
US Army General Charles Dunlop saw the
coming wave years ago while serving in Somalia: "I was
struck," Dunlop says, "by the resourcefulness,
cleverness and fierceness of the Somalis in confronting
us" even though they had only primitive weapons and were
often starving. Dunlop warns, America underestimates "the
combat capability of societies we had considered too
resource-poor to challenge us."
The insurgents
will go far, break even their own taboos and religious
law. They want us to leave, and finally reportedly shot
aide worker Margaret Hassan full in the face. Almost
simultaneously, a US soldier not under any threat fired
his weapon murderously into a crumpled, captured
insurgent lying in a mosque awaiting medical attention.
Hassan, a British citizen who obtained Iraqi citizenship
through her Iraqi-born husband, was killed by anarchists
to achieve a political end - forcing the West to leave
Iraq.
The unfortunate insurgent was killed for
no particular pressing reason other than his status as
one of "them" and the shooting soldier simply decided to
do it. Are both murders the same kind of thing? Not
really. Both are horrendous tragedies. Two people were
killed, but for very different reasons. And while the
insurgents are answerable to themselves, God, and
eventually the Iraqi state, our soldier is answerable to
all these and our laws, which abhor what he did. War may
be hell, but if we are using it to deliver democracy, as
we claim, we must make it less hellish.
While
Bush says he can win in Iraq by pressing ahead as is,
and US Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld promises to
reduce troops by adding "smarter" weaponry, neither
strategy is impressive. Iraq's insurgents wage not
limited textbook war, but "a vicious form of
confrontation" focusing "on shattering the will of an
opponent by employing brutality openly and
unapologetically against combatants and noncombatants
alike," Dunlop observes. It doesn't cost much or require
any special training to take someone hostage, cut off a
head, shoot a woman in the face, or rig a booby trap.
The terrifying effects are profound; pretty soon US
troops won't even want to take out the trash, let alone
deliver the gas. Or they will become so contemptuous of
Iraqi human life, and of "them" that no Iraqi will be
safe in their own country as long as we are there. They
will shoot off the weak and defenseless, as our soldier
did.
How to save the situation and still fight
the "war on terror"? Cutting off the money isn't the
answer, although forcing the charade through our courts
will definitely make a handful of trial attorneys
richer. While the US Senate Intelligence Committee
spends millions "following the money" to link terrorism
with a supposedly diabolical international banking
system, new warriors don't spend much. Technology gets
cheaper all the time, just as it gets easier to use.
Dunlop predicts: "Realistic new combat simulators and
self-paced computerized teaching technologies will make
sophisticated training available to the masses in the
less-developed world." US Federal Aviation Agency
officials say off the record that American flight
schools did not likely train the September 11, 2001, terrorists
half so well as Microsoft's $30 flight simulator
computer program.
That's why getting into Iraq
was far easier than getting out will be. Give General
Dunlop another star for being so right.
Sarah A Whalen writes a weekly column
on US foreign policy for Arab News, and is an expert in
Islamic law.
(Copyright
2004
Sarah A Whalen.)
Speaking Freely is an Asia Times Online feature
that allows guest writers to have their say. Please click hereif you
are interested in contributing.
