It might seem far-fetched to suggest that one can learn anything about the Iraq War from New Hampshire forests but, I beg you, trust me when I say there is a very helpful lesson in our northern woodlands. At least there's something to learn from the loggers who drop off firewood in our yards each year.
Recall, first, that the Iraq War was not about weapons of mass destruction, or about imminent terror threats. The war was and continues to be about eradicating a regime, a particularly tyrannical one, from the Mid-East political calculus. No one believes that had WMDs been found in abundance, and then confiscated, US soldiers would have immediately returned home. Nay, the war since its inception has been about removing a particularly loathsome regime, defiant to the last (a defiance that could only embolden others of the same ilk), regardless of whether one agrees with that fact or not.
How, pray tell, can loggers teach us anything about war; about insurgency and the difficulty of changing a regime? They can teach us merely by describing the difference between clear-cutting and selective-cutting.
Clear-cutting, the easiest, most aggressive and safest form of logging merely requires equipment, manpower and energy to sweep through a forested plot to lay the land to waste. Analogically speaking, clear-cutting is to forestry what the bombing of Dresden or the atomic fires of Hiroshima are to warfare. A shock-and-awe campaign of sweeping devastation against a distinct enemy is the strategic equivalent of clear-cutting.
Selective-cutting attempts to remove a predetermined species of tree from a diverse forest. Removing oaks, for example, from a forest of deciduous and coniferous trees is to be selective. Moreover, selective-cutting, an oft used method for harvesting the best firewood, is fraught with difficulty and hazard. Felling and removing giant trees through and around other trees without damaging oneself or the surrounding plants is timely, costly, difficult. Just ask a logger.
The Iraq War, then, is the task of selectively cutting from a people the villainous without harming the harmless. It’s like trying to remove every vestige of an oak - be it a sapling or acorn - without disturbing the surrounding landscape.
Imagine, now, if you will, what it would be like for loggers, even those with the best training and grandest gear, to enter a woodland where the oaks not only move and hide, the oaks wield guns. Imagine if the oaks sometimes dressed like birches or pines; and even, in some cases, dressed like loggers. How long would it take to get the job done? Could it be done without damaging neighboring trees; or claiming loggers’ lives? How so, if such oaks move and plant themselves in the midst of poplars, and then blow themselves up; if oaks from other forests come to replace those hewn down; if even the oaks carry chainsaws?
Sound difficult, or time-consuming? Just ask a soldier.
Those who have ceaselessly complained about the difficulty of the Iraq War, using that difficulty as proof of failed American policy, have not for one second understood what the US military has attempted to do: It has attempted to rid the forest of harmful growth without hurting that which is beneficial (imagine removing all the weeds from a long-neglected garden; or cancerous cells from healthy). Those who proclaim “Quagmire! Disaster!” have not spent one minute selectively cutting their own woodlots. And the most hawkish among us who decry US strategy for not being one of clear-cutting violence, must recall that there were survivors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Clear-cut Baghdad with a nuke and Saddam Hussein may still rule Babylon. To clear out a regime, the fighting must be detailed and methodical, excising every stem, root and seed of that regime. After all, it was selective-cutting that captured Hussein, guaranteeing the inevitability of complete regime change. Dangerous, yes, but more exact than a well-aimed cruise missile.
In short, the US has been conducting a humane war, cautious to a fault, against an invisible enemy that has no sense of neutrality; an enemy that attacks anyone, anywhere. And with a new democratically-elected Cabinet formed in Iraq today (though arguably an imperfect Cabinet) one can only conclude that the job of America’s armed forces has been remarkably well-done. It might be slower and more costly than what some may desire. That's the price of selective regime change. But what is the alternative? Withdrawal? To do that would guarantee the return of tyranny; and it would be a bitter defeat of all Americans.
©Bill Gnade 2005/Contratimes - All Rights Reserved.
1 comment:
My sympathy goes out to the good people of New Hampshire.
About 15 years ago, we took a three day August trip up to Lake Tahoe to celebrate a wedding anniversary. It was beautiful except for the depressing fact that the forests were showing the pathetic effects of a long-term drought. Every other tree demonstrated a varying degree of jaundice and slump. Or, at least that's how my mind's eye has recorded it.
I had not previously been aware that your state was currently suffering from such a infestation of termites aided by a lack of precipitation. So please convey my empathy to your fellow New Hampshire residents for never, since those three days in Tahoe, have I encountered such a rotting forest of sick and tottering trees.
I do not have enough time to harvest all of the dead lumber in your forest, Bill.
But one tree deserves to be cut more than all of the others. In fact I heard an audible cry during my first reading of this post of yours, "Cut me, cut me first." If, in the event that your state is not suffering from a drought, it must be that this is the tree which is the source of the pandemic of diseases that afflicts the remainder of your woods.
But, since I do not live in your state, it falls to you to see that this malevolent tree be felled. My responsibility, as a tourist, is just to point it out to you.
I do not take a position on your insistence
"that the Iraq War was not about weapons of mass destruction"
other than to point out that, in the first month of our occupation of Iraq, Paul Wolfowitz singled out WMD as the only rationale the war cabinet could agree on as the best marketing tack to take in selling the war to the American people.
But the question I want you to answer, more to your satisfaction than mine, is this:
When did regime change become a legitimate reason for war in American foreign policy?
Some to the left of me would argue that, within the Monroe Doctrine, all of our actions in banana republics were derivative of a desire to change government. But my question is when did regime change achieve the status of a legitimate casus belli in the tradition of American foreign policy?
One possible answer on your part might be that you agree with Dick Cheney, that 9-11 "changed everything". I would find that answer indicative that you are not a true conservative. That would be disappointing but it is always a possibility, of course.
Another answer I can anticipate because of our previous conversations is that Clinton asserted 'regime change' as a policy objective toward Iraq - which is true - but that he engaged in invasion and occupation of a sort (you have argued) in pursuit of that goal.
Neither of these two cards, I submit, belong in the deck of a reality-based game of cards. And I don't indulge in fantasy games.
But please do give it a shot, Bill. I haven't quite given up on you yet. I'm close to doing so, but your soul is salvageable, I think.
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