James Bennet has written an excellent column in the NYT’s ‘Week in Review’. Here is a RBN decoded excerpt:
The Mystery of the Occupation
Resistance forces in Iraq have often been accused of being slow to apply hard lessons from Vietnam and elsewhere about how to fight an occupation. Yet, it seems from the outside, no one has shrugged off the lessons of history more decisively than the occupation forces themselves.
The occupation forces in Iraq are showing little interest in winning hearts and minds among the majority of Iraqis, in building international legitimacy, or in articulating a governing program or even a unified ideology or cause beyond suppressing the resistance. They have put forward no single charismatic leader, developed no alternative government or political wing, displayed no intention of amassing territory to govern now.
Rather than employing the classic tactic of provoking the resistance to use clumsy and excessive force and kill civilians, they are cutting out the middleman and killing civilians indiscriminately themselves.
…
This surge in the killing of civilians reflects how mysterious the long-term strategy remains – and how the occupation forces’ seeming indifference to the past patterns of occupation is not necessarily good news for anyone."Instead of saying, ‘What’s the logic here, we don’t see it,’ you could speculate, there is no logic here," said Anthony James Joes, a professor of political science at St. Joseph’s University in Philadelphia and the author of several books on the history of imperial occupation. The occupations actions now look like "wanton violence," he continued. "And there’s a name for these guys: Losers."
…
What you have read above, is consistent with historic facts and reports. It makes a lot of sense. Even the cited expert is right.
But the piece is discussed and criticized as ‘naive’ elsewhere. I do not believe this critic is justified.
Bennet’s piece is excellent. Yes, he had to code the original a bit to keep his pay check, but then, what do you expect from a mainstream journalists.
Just replace ‘black’ with ‘white’, ‘insurgency’ with ‘occupation force’ and the ‘new caliphate’ with the ‘promised land’ and you will see the real meaning. Apply this to your daily dose of newspaper reading, and you may even start to feel informed.
Sigh.