Anarchy, Violence, and Politics

Anarchy will bow to nothing but force and I think it is a recurrent theme here that it is used in a much too calculated manner by the US military. D.R.’s constant refrain, “This is not war” rings true to the extent that we are ourselves in a grand experiment of nation building. This is a course that would not have been steered had the decision for an early cessation of hostilities in Gulf War I which had meant to maintain the strategic balance of the region and later Colin Powell’s Pottery Barn admonishment; “If you break it you own it” had not been made. The political price of breaking Somalia would have been much less because the region in which it resides is not as volatile as the Middle East. That is not to say that those societies are stronger but that like a storm starved of energy they are denuded of the strength necessary to turn the spark into a flame. Oil rich lands have no such scarcity of the fuel of war. But just the same the UN mission in Somalia went to great lengths to avoid the appearance gratuitous bloodshed, which gets to my point that as forces are attrited by chaos like relentless waves upon the rocks, so is anarchy equally as fragile for the will to fight must be completely doused and nothing damps the will to rise like the relentless certainty of despair. Rock smashes scissors but paper cuts rock.

Anarchy must be contained first and if it is to be diminished, the arduous process of draining the swamp must begin and it must be doggedly completed in whatever interval of time it takes. The moral dilemma concerns what to do with the endangered swamp monsters, the flora and fauna fair and fowl.

Violence, or counter-violence, if there is such a thing, picks up steam like hurricane and only then will it run its course.

The key point is indeed the application of force, how much and when. Why did the US forces back off during Fallujah I, why was al-Sadr allowed to go free, how come the air strikes and assaults have been so few, why are terrorists being set free so that they can return to shoot LTC Kurilla?

I think most people who support this ‘war’ effort would like to think this ‘we’re not going away’ attitude means not giving in at Fallujah 1, not playing games with Sadr, and using violence with unwavering certainty. To achieve this the appropriate responsibility needs to be pushed down to those that are doing the real work, be that a junior officer or LTC Erik Kurilla who leads from the front and in the heat of the action, else responsibility can be delegated from the divisional level, down from the brigade level, and get stuck at the wrong officer.

The US set out to force Saddam from power and inherited the decrepit political power structure left in his wake. The US, anxious to stand up a new authority by way of bolstering its own legitimacy allowed political decisions by the new government that were contrary to the interests of the US or, for that matter, the interests of the long term stability of Iraq itself. The very government that the US set out to destroy was allowed to assert itself and establish its rule in order to give credence to the legitimacy of the US military that defeated it. In this twisted logic the petty criminals were released back into the populace only to assuage local politicians and their tribes. There is a vicious cycle here and only violence will break it.