juan cole's letter to a reserve officer

[jbfam4]

http://www.juancole.com/
This is a piece of private correspondence with a thoughtful reserve officer who kindly took the time to remonstrate with me about comments he took to be "anti-military" on my web log.



Dear . . .



There are nevertheless things I don't like about the way the Iraq war is being prosecuted. I don't doubt that much of this is at the behest of "General Rove" and is by no means the fault of the military itself. They after all have to shoot where they are told to. Nevertheless, I do feel a need to speak out when I see things going wrong. That is my function as an analyst of the scene, and not to do it would be a dereliction of duty. And, sometimes the only way to make a strong point is to make it rudely.

One reason for my vehemence is that I think the US is walking a tight rope in Iraq. The Americans seem not to realize it, but it is entirely possible that the Iraqis will mount a nationwide urban revolutionary movement aimed at expelling the US. At that point the US military will be faced with a choice of committing massacres (as the Shah's troops did at Black September in 1978) or leaving. Neither eventuality will lead to anything good.



In general, as you can tell, I deeply disagree with the tactic of using helicopter gunships and warplane bombardment of civilian neighborhoods as key tactics in fighting urban guerrillas. If the LAPD bombed Watts to get at the Cripps and the Bloods, there would be outrage. (In fact, that sort of thing was done in Philly with regard to MOVE and did cause outrage). You can't attack urban areas that way without killing a lot of innocent people. It isn't right, and I suspect it is a violation of the 4th Geneva Convention. It is also politically inadvisable, since the people you are bombing in Kut and elsewhere started out only having a few guerrillas amongst them, but are pushed into vehement anti-Americanism by seeing their relatives killed this way.


Not only were all the Shiites in southern Iraq outside Najaf itself angered by the fighting in Najaf, but so were the Lebanese, Bahrainis, Iranians, Pakistanis, and Indians. An operation would have to be really important and urgent to make it worthwhile alienating 120 million people. I didn't see the urgency. Most of the cities in Iraq are not under US control and are patrolled by militias. If you were going to pick a fight, Ramadi or Kut would have been preferable, because they lack the "gut" factor.