It is common sense that you cannot possibly stop every terrorist attack. The terrorist choses the time and the place out of all possible times and places. They watch and probe for exactly the place and time where the opposing forces are not to be found.
Anyone who believes that any force, no matter how large and ruthless, can stop dedicated groups from blowing something up is simply a moron. All the defenders can do is take the losses stoicly while they drain the swamp, kill the croc’s and try their best not to create conditions conducive to breeding a new batch.
Not all terrorist attacks succeed. Against an aware opposing force many will fail. If the population is also against them… most can be stopped. Perhaps the recent mosque bombing was a wakeup call to the Iraqi populace. They can not sit complacently and expect someone to take care of them. “Let George do it” is something that just doesn’t work in a free society. Your liberty and your security are largely your own responsibility.
It is with interest I read of an attack thwarted by the Iraqi police. (Link via Glenn Reynolds.)
Mah libertarian brudda from Northern Ireland, from da narrow ground of Taig and Prod!
Brudda, you say ‘Iraqi populace’? Wot you mean ‘Iraqi populace’?
Remember:
The Sunnis and Shiites
Think the Kurds are turds
The Kurds and Sunnis
Think the Shiites are shites.
The Shiites and Kurds
Think the Sunnis are cunnis.
For all I know, all three may be right about one another.
Brudda, you say those people “ cannot sit complacently and expect someone to take care of them..”
It’s when they stop being complacent that the fur will really begin to fly.
…. but no doubt if their average IQ’s were higher, the whole situation could be resolved peacefully, yes?
zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz…..
Yep, it certainly wouldn’t make things worse if our Iraqi friends were a bit smarter — like if they began to take their tribal and Koran-based hatefest cum grano salis .
They’d all stop hating one another, make love not war, get themselves a PC, and spend their time trawling through Samizdata …
I agree with Dale.
Short of implementing ‘the buddy system’, we can’t be everywhere in Iraq. It only really works if the Iraqi people are part of the solution.
Most Iraqis have not learned to cooperate for the common good. They have been too busy avoiding Saddam’s secret police.
How long will it take for them to develop a civic identity? Probably just a bit longer than the US can afford to stick around.
The occupation of Iraq has always been a very risky gamble. Given the history and population of Iraq, the odds were never very good that Iraq could be turned into a peaceful, democratic country with a mostly secular government.
The payoff would be huge, however, if it could only be done.
What a marvelously rational discussion, may I say. No really! I’ve always regarded Dale as a well reasoned blogster who attracts reasoned comments. So here’s my tupence worth…
It is true that eventually we (who ever “we” or “they” are) must take responsibility for ourselves. This includes security, health and all things politic. But by what process this is best achieved I am not sure. This is still strongly debated in the free societies of the world, let alone a socio-political quagmire like Iraq.
Unfortunately it seemed that a military victory was all that was planned for by our estwhile defenders of freedom. Which, with hindsight, has turned out to be a less than totally useful strategy. That the Allied forces could beat the Iraqi military was never in doubt (was it?).
However that the Allied forces had the means or method to bring democracy to a repressed country was always the subject of the real discussion. The commentators who said that the death of this Iraqi or that Ba’athist would bring real benefits have still to be proved right. And every death in our own military forces has to be balanced against what is actually being achieved at such great cost.
I don’t think I am alone in thinking we have taken two steps forward and one step backward in our dealings with the middle east. And the “second step backaward” or a “total tantrum” looks like the only options at the moment. I do have sympathies with the aims of the “war on terror” but I am at a loss to understand how we have furthered this cause with our recent military actions in Iraq.
As has been cynically commented elsewhere, “Al Quaeda probably did not have much of a presence in Iraq when Saddam was in power – but they sure do now”.
As the Brits and the IRA have found to their cost. It is easy to go anywhere with a gun and start shooting people. It is more difficult to go somewhere with a gun and attempt to rebuild a society by force. Indeed I believe it was in Northern Ireland that the British and the Republicans were advised to stop using guns and start talking. I think it may even have been an American president who advised this strategy.
At the moment all the allied forces could hope for in Iraq is to act as a mercenary force to stabilise any emerging government. But, as a libertarian, one might suspect that any government that needed to be proped up by a foreign power (not just American but Iranian, Syrian etc) would fall far short of our qualification of “a government for the people and by the people”. But pulling out would allow all the other foreign interests to flood Iraq now that it has no nationally organised forces of its own.
We would seem to be damned if we do and damned if we don’t. What bright spark suggested this strategy in the first place?
Oy vay! What to do … :0)
The main goal in Iraq was the removal of the mad dog (Saddam), the freeing of the Iraqi people from his terrorist regime, and freeing the neighboring nations and the world of a constant threat.
This was accomplished – no small matter.
Having a peaceful and democratic regime in Iraq is nice to have, but a long term and maybe elusive goal.
The current difficulties, by no means unexpected, in no way diminish the importance of what has already been acheived.
I alsways thought that the main objective in Iraq was to stop Saddam from holding or using weapons of mass destruction. Or this was the major objective stated by the commander in Chief (and Mr Blair).
If the real reason was more socialist/social engineering in nature (as in “to aid the poor Iraqi people come to their senses”,”rid them of the plague” etc) then that might at least be a more tenable argument but not particularly well founded.
What libertarian seriously thinks we should pay in money and blood to re-engineer someone else’s society? Especially when that society is perfectly capable of re-engineering itself and currently presents no serious threat to anyone.
Indeed if the intention was to go out and help our fellow man then why go around the world to do it. There are many people in America (and Britain) who would be very happy to have their lives brightened up with several billion of our tax payer dollars.
Saddam not being in power is good. Although reports suggest that he still has some influence in as much as encouraging bombings and other attacks. However the progression of Iraq from an introspective Ba’athist regime to an outward looking centre of Al Quaeda activity is not a particularly useful thing.
As for the situation now being better than the situation before, well I have some sympathy with that. But I think the Iraqi people are not so happy as they anticipated. Their choice seems to be between being a “dead lion or a live dog”. Neither is really acceptable and their frustration with their current situation is a powerful force in the hands of unscruplous manipulators.
Unless real improvements are brought to Iraqi society soon what has been achieved will have been squandered at great cost.
And what’s this I see before me – commander in chief of the free world asking the UN for assistance. What the heck is wrong with the guy?