FALLACY OF OVERWHELMING FORCE

An interesting little sidelight came up this morning on Morning Joe. One of the guests on the show made the statement that overwhelming force does not work against populations. This is not a simple matter. Overwhelming force within a population is the forte of dictators; torture and terror is how they retain power.  However, the reference was to outside force; the United States massive army attacking Granada did work. The little island was totally “overwhelmed”. In addition, it worked in Iraq in Desert Storm when we invaded and then left—the sin of the Father Bush in the eyes of the son of a Bush. Where it does not work is against the Muslim world for the obvious reason, which is that there is no defined political structure within that world. The “enemy” is sub set of people or terrorist within that world. The rabble rousers in the Untied States—, for example, Senator bomb, bomb, McCain, Sen. Lindsey Graham, and Rep. Stephen King (R-New York) see the solution as making the entire Muslim World the enemy then we would have something to attack. That is what George W. Bush did when he declared war on a tactic—a war on terrorism—he guaranteed an easily definable enemy. We cannot be that simple minded. We must face reality and develop a system of retaliation short of using overwhelming force against an illusive enemy. The story about the use of overwhelming force reminds me of an Army General during the Iraq War who said that if “they” stand and fight, we would beat them in every battle. We as a Nation have to do better than that.

URL: firetreepub.blogspot.com Comments Invited and not moderated