Temptress_1960
Just a bit tied up...
- Joined
- Nov 27, 2000
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This is a column from the Rutland Herald, in Rutland, VT.
Dire predictions
March 18, 2003
I believe I am the only living American with this unique background, which may allow some informed predictions on the results of the proposed Iraqi war:
* I fought in World War II as an enlisted decorated combat infantryman.
* I lived as an American diplomat in the Arab world for eight and one-half years (four and one-half in Syria, two each in Tunisia and Libya) and headed the United States Information Service Greek-Turkish-Iranian desk for two years in Washington.
* I served as chief information officer for the United States in Vietnam for almost two years, including Tet, trying to explain U.S. attempts to nation-build while helping one side in a civil war.
With the convictions this experience has engendered, I will make some rather dire predictions. Assuming that we, and Britain as our only significant ally, invade Iraq within the next month, I predict:
1. The invasion will be successful in that Saddam will be gone — one way or another — although our losses in even limited urban fighting will be considerably higher than the 148 killed in action in the Gulf War.
2. Invasion of Iraq will no more help cure the Israeli-Palestinian cancer than readers taking two aspirin with water. That problem will only be solved when the majority of the people on each side decide to control the fanatics who refuse to entertain the compromises that alone can bring peace. I have never met an Arab who was not convinced that America is pro-Israeli and did not think that one motive for Iraq invasion is to protect Israel.
3. American casualties will begin to mount as soon as we have occupied the country. Even those who hate a regime — or an administration — will not abide an invader. In this case the invader is a Western (read colonial) nation almost wholly composed of infidels.
4. Arab (and Kurd) fighting tactics have always been akin to guerilla warfare. Make a raid on a few, hit hard and disappear. Such tactics, used by the Viet Cong and often by the North Vietnamese, tend to neutralize the advantage of a highly technological military. We will also see our weekly casualty list increasing inexorably. In Vietnam it finally totaled 47,383 dead.
5. Invasion of an Arab country will strengthen the resolve of young people throughout Islam’s 1,188,344,000 adherents. We will be far less safe abroad or at home than we are now after Sept. 11. Americans will be targets everywhere. Our civilian casualties will probably be higher than our military ones.
6. We will either be attempting to discourage a civil war between combinations of Kurds, Shiites and Sunnis, or we will stand aside to watch the killing fields. Remember Yugoslavia in World War II, where Croats and Serbs waged a war against each other except on the occasion when they found any opportunity to collaborate on raids against the hated German occupier.
7. Iraq has never had a democracy, and democratization will not come out of a gun barrel. Iraq will either be ruled by a latter-day MacArthur or by the winner of a domestic war. Neither will have a cohesive country made up of one people speaking one language, as in Germany and Japan. It will be neither easy nor pretty.
8. How a crushed and divided Iraq is supposed to act as the seed from which other Arab democracies will spring takes an imagination beyond that of J.K. Rowling. Regime changes, however urgent, in Syria, Saudi Arabia and Egypt, must be made by Syrians, Saudis and Egyptians. They will not spring from a political system inflicted by an alien nation.
9. Oil is, of course, a very volatile commodity. Easily set afire, easily sabotaged at the well head, easily spilled from desert-crossing pipelines, and equally easily destroyed in its deepest pools, we will have little Iraqi oil to pay for occupation or for minimal nourishment of the population.
10. Costs of this invasion, and above all of the occupation, will be in the trillions. Or we can, of course, just let millions of Iraqis starve to death. Not, thank God, likely. To meet the debt, we will do what every other country has done when it has spent disastrously: print money. Hyperinflation, here we come.
I apologize for the pessimism that pervades these predictions. I hope that I am wrong. But there is still the fact that I’m perhaps the only one who has been a front-line soldier, a diplomat in the Arab world, a nation builder and has lived to amalgamate the experiences.
Pray, though, that we find a better path to peace and security than war. Let the world never say of America, as it once did of Rome, “They created a desert and called it peace.”
Harris Peel is a resident of Danby.
Dire predictions
March 18, 2003
I believe I am the only living American with this unique background, which may allow some informed predictions on the results of the proposed Iraqi war:
* I fought in World War II as an enlisted decorated combat infantryman.
* I lived as an American diplomat in the Arab world for eight and one-half years (four and one-half in Syria, two each in Tunisia and Libya) and headed the United States Information Service Greek-Turkish-Iranian desk for two years in Washington.
* I served as chief information officer for the United States in Vietnam for almost two years, including Tet, trying to explain U.S. attempts to nation-build while helping one side in a civil war.
With the convictions this experience has engendered, I will make some rather dire predictions. Assuming that we, and Britain as our only significant ally, invade Iraq within the next month, I predict:
1. The invasion will be successful in that Saddam will be gone — one way or another — although our losses in even limited urban fighting will be considerably higher than the 148 killed in action in the Gulf War.
2. Invasion of Iraq will no more help cure the Israeli-Palestinian cancer than readers taking two aspirin with water. That problem will only be solved when the majority of the people on each side decide to control the fanatics who refuse to entertain the compromises that alone can bring peace. I have never met an Arab who was not convinced that America is pro-Israeli and did not think that one motive for Iraq invasion is to protect Israel.
3. American casualties will begin to mount as soon as we have occupied the country. Even those who hate a regime — or an administration — will not abide an invader. In this case the invader is a Western (read colonial) nation almost wholly composed of infidels.
4. Arab (and Kurd) fighting tactics have always been akin to guerilla warfare. Make a raid on a few, hit hard and disappear. Such tactics, used by the Viet Cong and often by the North Vietnamese, tend to neutralize the advantage of a highly technological military. We will also see our weekly casualty list increasing inexorably. In Vietnam it finally totaled 47,383 dead.
5. Invasion of an Arab country will strengthen the resolve of young people throughout Islam’s 1,188,344,000 adherents. We will be far less safe abroad or at home than we are now after Sept. 11. Americans will be targets everywhere. Our civilian casualties will probably be higher than our military ones.
6. We will either be attempting to discourage a civil war between combinations of Kurds, Shiites and Sunnis, or we will stand aside to watch the killing fields. Remember Yugoslavia in World War II, where Croats and Serbs waged a war against each other except on the occasion when they found any opportunity to collaborate on raids against the hated German occupier.
7. Iraq has never had a democracy, and democratization will not come out of a gun barrel. Iraq will either be ruled by a latter-day MacArthur or by the winner of a domestic war. Neither will have a cohesive country made up of one people speaking one language, as in Germany and Japan. It will be neither easy nor pretty.
8. How a crushed and divided Iraq is supposed to act as the seed from which other Arab democracies will spring takes an imagination beyond that of J.K. Rowling. Regime changes, however urgent, in Syria, Saudi Arabia and Egypt, must be made by Syrians, Saudis and Egyptians. They will not spring from a political system inflicted by an alien nation.
9. Oil is, of course, a very volatile commodity. Easily set afire, easily sabotaged at the well head, easily spilled from desert-crossing pipelines, and equally easily destroyed in its deepest pools, we will have little Iraqi oil to pay for occupation or for minimal nourishment of the population.
10. Costs of this invasion, and above all of the occupation, will be in the trillions. Or we can, of course, just let millions of Iraqis starve to death. Not, thank God, likely. To meet the debt, we will do what every other country has done when it has spent disastrously: print money. Hyperinflation, here we come.
I apologize for the pessimism that pervades these predictions. I hope that I am wrong. But there is still the fact that I’m perhaps the only one who has been a front-line soldier, a diplomat in the Arab world, a nation builder and has lived to amalgamate the experiences.
Pray, though, that we find a better path to peace and security than war. Let the world never say of America, as it once did of Rome, “They created a desert and called it peace.”
Harris Peel is a resident of Danby.
