When you Wage War, You Must Wage War

Two examples of nations at war - first, the American way, as shown to us by Mr. Ledeen:

We have arrested some Iranians in Iraq, including “senior military officials.” If you want to understand the failure of the Bush Administration to understand the real war, a couple of quotations tell you everything you need to know.

The United States is now holding, apparently for the first time, Iranians who it suspects of planning attacks. One senior administration official said, “This is going to be a tense but clarifying moment.”

...the heart sinks, as the senior official explains: it’s not about us at all. It’s all about the Iraqis.:

“It’s our position that the Iraqis have to seize this opportunity to sort out with the Iranians just what kind of behavior they are going to tolerate,” the official said…“They are going to have to confront the evidence that the Iranians are deeply involved in some of the acts of violence.”

I imagine a parent of an American soldier in Iraq shrieking at Rice and Hadley “what do you mean, they? The Iranians are killing our kids, how dare you run away from this?”

Those killer quotes from the Times show once again the failure of strategic vision that has plagued us from the beginning of the war. We can only win the war—the real war, the regional-or-maybe-even-global war—if we stop playing defense in Iraq and go after regime change in Damascus and Tehran....

Never going to happen; what would the Washington Post and the New York Times editorial pages say? Not to mention Christopher Dodd, John Kerry, and Nancy Pelosi...perish the thought! We might squander goodwill !

Now, let's turn to that military powerhouse Ethiopia, and check in on how they are doing against an al-Qaeda armed and financed militia in Somalia:

It does indeed appear that the Ethiopians are defeating Islamist forces there. Why are they achieving what American forces in Somalia in1993 did not and what American forces in Iraq today apparently are not?

More “boots on the ground” may be part of the explanation. The Ethiopians are not attempting to have a “light footprint.” They are not worried about whether they will be seen as “occupiers” or whether their “occupation” will be viewed as benevolent. Secondly, the Ethiopians are not overly concerned about whether their tactics will win approval from the proverbial Arab Street – or the European Street or Turtle Bay.

They are fighting a war; their intention is to defeat their enemies; everything else is secondary or tertiary...

What do you mean - the Ethiopians are not building schools, handing out food, or observing the customs of the locals? How can you fight a war this way? Where is the begging for forgiveness every time they scowl at a civilian? And where is the UN Mandate for their mission anyway?

Well, geez, I dunno...I guess they just want to win. Less casualties in the long (and short) run that way. Maybe someone ought to send a memo to W.....