Islamic deja vu
By Arnaud de Borchgrave
May 23, 2007
http://www.washingtontimes.com/commentary/20070522-085024-1854r.htm

Muslim peoples excel at expelling imperial powers by terror and
guerrilla war. So wrote Patrick J. Buchanan six months before
Operation Iraqi Freedom.

Islamic deja vu
By Arnaud de Borchgrave
May 23, 2007http://www.washingtontimes.com/commentary/20070522-085024-1854r.htm

Muslim peoples excel at expelling imperial powers by terror and
guerrilla war. So wrote Patrick J. Buchanan six months before
Operation Iraqi Freedom. "They drove the Brits out of Palestine and
Aden, the French out of Algeria, the Russians out of Afghanistan, the
Americans out of Somalia and Beirut, the Israelis out of Lebanon," he
reminded us.

Lacking institutional memory, Congress is blissfully unaware the
history now being written on Capitol Hill will add yet another chapter
-- "they also drove the Americans out of Iraq." And the scenario is
eerily reminiscent of how Congress ensured a U.S. defeat in Vietnam
when lawmakers, in their infinite wisdom, decided to sever any further
military assistance to our Vietnamese allies.

Betrayed by Congress, the South Vietnamese quickly understood there
was no point in further resistance. In Hanoi, Gen. Vo Nguyen Giap had
to improvise a general offensive in 1975 to take Saigon, which he
reckoned (in his memoirs) was an opportunity at least two years away.

Similarly, Gen. Giap, who once said the U.S. could not be defeated
militarily, conceded the 1968 Tet Offensive was an unmitigated
disaster for Hanoi. And he was astonished to see Walter Cronkite,
America's most trusted newsman, had declared Tet a decisive defeat for
the U.S. Most of the Saigon-based press corps followed "Uncle
Walter's" lead.

Gen. Giap defeated the French empire -- in 1954 at Dienbienphu. But
America's defeat was on the home front and in the halls of Congress.
Hanoi achieved final victory with a 2,500-year-old blueprint for
victory -- Sun Tzu's "The Art of War." The template was undermining
home front morale. In Hanoi in September 1972, this reporter met two
French communists who bragged about organizing antiwar demonstrations
in the United States.

Israel's Martin van Creveld, one of the world's foremost military
historians, has drawn many parallels between Iraq and Vietnam. With 17
books on military history and strategy, he is required reading for
U.S. officers. He says almost all countries that have tried to fight
similar wars since World War II have ended up losing.

The multiparty electoral system, says Mr. van Creveld, has
institutionalized and consolidated Iraq's ethnic, sectarian and tribal
divisions -- precisely the sort of thing that should be avoided when
attempting to democratize. Free elections and democracy are not
synonymous.

"Vietnamization," the process whereby U.S. troops handed control to
local forces in South Vietnam (ARVN), is now under way in Iraq. But
Mr. van Creveld says the chances of that succeeding look even bleaker
than in Vietnam. The new Iraqi army is weaker, less skilled, less
cohesive and less loyal to its government than ARVN was. Worse still,
in Mr. van Creveld's judgment, there is no equivalent of the North
Vietnamese regime poised to take over.

Those who argued against the invasion are apprehensive about what
might happen once U.S. troops leave. Terrorists from around the world
were attracted to Iraq but they didn't go for the "flypaper." A few
were caught. But Iraq spawned a new generation of terrorists who
acquired the kind of expertise that can be used in other parts of the
world for a long time to come.

Iran is the real victor in Iraq, and the world must now learn to live
with a nuclear Iran, says Mr. van Creveld, the way we learned to live
with a nuclear Soviet Union and a nuclear China. But what about Israel
-- and Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's threat to wipe it out?
"We Israelis have what it takes to deter an Iranian attack," he
answers in the June 2007 issue of Playboy magazine. "We are in no
danger at all of having an Iranian nuclear weapon dropped on us. We
cannot say so too openly, however, because we have a history of using
any threat in order to get weapons ... thanks to the Iranian threat,
we are getting weapons from the U.S. and Germany."

"Our armed forces are not the 30th-strongest in the world, but rather
the second or third," according to the Dutch-born Mr. van Creveld, a
professor at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem since 1971. "We
possess several hundred atomic warheads and rockets that can launch
them at targets in all directions. Most European capitals are targets
of our air force. ... We have the capability to take the world down
with us. And I can assure you that this will happen before Israel goes
under."

As for a future Palestinian state emerging from the present chaos in
Gaza, Mr. van Creveld doesn't see it. In any event, Israel should not
attempt to facilitate the birth of a stillborn, failed or failing
state. Some 40,000 Israeli settlers now on the east side of the
physical barrier should be brought back to live in the protected
settlements on the west side. This would leave some 30,000 Israelis in
Palestinian territory. Next, everything between the barrier and the
pre-1967 war border should be officially annexed to Israel.

Thus, the Palestinians would be left to their own devices to fight
among themselves -- or to make peace and build a country with the
economic assistance of the Arab oil producers of the Gulf. This could
also be a recipe for another half-century of on-again-off-again
Arab-Israeli warfare.

--
There may come a time when the CO2 police will wander the earth telling
the poor and the dispossed how many dung chips they can put on their
cook fires. -- Captain Compassion.

Wherever I go it will be well with me, for it was well with me here, not
on account of the place, but of my judgments which I shall carry away
with me, for no one can deprive me of these; on the contrary, they alone
are my property, and cannot be taken away, and to possess them suffices
me wherever I am or whatever I do. -- EPICTETUS

Celibacy in healthy human beings is a form of
insanity. -- Captain Compassion

"Civilization is the interval between Ice Ages." -- Will Durant.

Joseph R. Darancette
dar...@NOSPAMcharter.net