The great advantage of insurgent forces is that they are able to choose the time and place at which they engage their enemy. This has the effect of neutralising superior force (it also makes it very hard for the insurgents to achieve absolute victory, as once they start controlling territory they lose some of that advantage).

For a military power to destroy an insurgency it typically needs to use overwhelming force plus the acceptance of unconscionable acts against the enemy population (e.g. Britain’s use of concentration camps in the Boer war). That’s what the US (fortunately) doesn’t have the “will” for – conscription and mass exterminations.

No, it shows that people like me think that it is better for the oppressed people of the earth, as well as the oppressed people of the U.S.A, to promote an anti-colonial anti-interventionist policy. The Vietnam syndrome is otherwise known as self-doubt – and self doubt, in persons and nations, is the first intimation of a more reflexive, and even mature, position in life. If the U.S. hadn’t interfered by throwing a monkey wrench into the elections that were slated after the Geneva accords that ended the first Vietnam war, Ho Chi Minh would undoubtedly have been elected the leader of a united Vietnam. If the U.S. had then accepted him as such and negotiated a relationship with Vietnam, maybe 2 million Vietnamese would not have died, and surely 60 some thousand Americans and thousand more wounded would have benefited.

Luckily, it looks like conservatives are going to have to be driven crazy again, as the fallout from Iraq is likely to put the keebosh on, say, bombing Iran, and other things unlikely to help the oppressed of the earth, and likely to sustain the inordinately massive military sector in the U.S. Keep that up and the U.S. will have to negotiate instead of unilaterally demand, have to cooperate internationally instead of take the lead, and in other ways become a normal nation, rather than the ‘indispensable’ nation that, in truth, it has never been. I hope that the U.S. succeeds at this. I hope the U.S. fails at being a hyperpower. I can’t imagine any advantage the vast majority of Americans would ever accrue from the successful completion of vanity projects dreamt up by the bungalow militarists in D.C.

Weapons of mass destruction ….blah, blah, human rights abuses by Saddam …..blah blah these are the phoney justifications given by George W Bush for the war on Iraq.

The real reasons will have included such things as enriching corporations that have access to the massive cash flows from no-tender contracts for rebuilding Iraqi infrastructure paid for by Iraqi funds and which can in turn direct some of this cash to The Republican party to cement its control of US politics.

Iraqis may have been grateful for the removal of Saddam Hussein but by now they will have no illusions that American goals in Iraq are in any way consistent with their own perceived interests and they will eventually turn against the US occupation if they have not already done so.

The failure of the US in Iraq has nothing to do with US will to win, but with the inevetible recognition by Iraqis that US goals conflict with their own interests. If the US exhibits a failure of will it is because the cannon fodder and their families are recognizing that the goals of the US elites whom the George W Bush presidency represents have nothing in it for them.

I don’t buy at all the concept of the US as the one global power that can rally the forces of law and order. The only reason we have this much military power is because we are insane bellicose warmongers. Kinda like deciding that the bouncer at the biker’s tavern would be a good choice to run for sheriff. Seems pretty plain to me that the world would be better off if we would just ‘butt out’ for a while.

As noted above, I’m dealing with persistent trolls by replacing their text with my shorter interpretation – this will be done without notice for you, Mike

Statements like that are what make conservatives believe that “willpower” is the problem. It drives them batty that there are people like Roger who actually hope the U.S. will fail so that they can feel confirmed in their pacifism, and win over others to their cause. And on this point, I share the conservatives’ sentiment.

The fact is, this war was lost by incompetent execution, pure and simple. And that’s not a godsend; it’s a tragdey. It’s a tragedy for all the vast majority of Iraqis who were thrilled to see the end of Sadam’s dictatorship and who desperately wished to live in a democratic, federal, and peaceful Iraq.

Roger may consider his anti-colonial non-interventionism a morally superior policy, but really it just shows that people like him care more about feeling morally superior than about really doing something for the oppressed peoples of the Earth.

America’s “unique capacity to enforce the global law” is limited to non-nuclear half of the world.

Maybe less, actually. I can’t imagine America could intervene in a meaningful way in non-nuclear countries with large populations like Brazil, Nigeria and Indonesia, eiher.

So, in reality, America’s power to enforce “global law” only extends to non-nuclear, small population countries like…Iraq and Afghanistan.

In response to George W. I agree with your point, which I’ve seen from Bobbitt, but the critical thing about wars of choice is that the status quo ante is an available option. The US could have negotiated with Britain in 1812, left the Phillipines alone and imposed a favorable peace in 1950.

Of course, the world is dynamic and things change over time, but mostly the status quo ante is the best basis for estimating the likely consequences of inaction.

Of course that’s exactly why the advocates of aggressive wars almost invariably produce pretexts that seem to demand immediate action.