Author: Eric Johnson

Algore, on the subject of invading Iraq: “…[M]y friends, this nation has never in our two centuries and more made a worse foreign policy mistake….”
Maybe it’s the Internet, maybe it’s our schools’ failure to teach history, but have you noticed that hyperbole is the dominant mode of discourse these days? The Democratic presidential candidates are falling over themselves to show how gosh-darn mad they are. Fine — but why does everything have to be “the worst ____ in history” or “a total failure” or “a complete disaster”?
Hyperbole precludes real arguments from taking place. How can anyone seriously argue that “never” has there been a “worse foreign policy mistake”? Never ever? How about the failure to encourage France and Britain to crush Nazism in the 1930s? Or in 1919, to “smother Bolshevism in its cradle,” as Churchill wanted to do? The prosecution of the Vietnam war in the 1960s? The flaccid response to Soviet aggression in the 1970s?
Or take a matter close to Catholic Light readers’ hearts. Remember when the homosexual priest scandal was at its height? People who should have known better were saying that this might be “the end of the Catholic Church in America.” Some fevered souls were saying that this would “shake the roots of the Church itself.” While it was probably the most grave scandal in American church history (or is that hyperbolic?), it hasn’t affected the direction of the Church, at least not yet. If anything, it has emboldened orthodox Catholics to press for true reform, and encouraged the heterodox We Are Church types to increase the volume of their shrill, rear-guard campaign to abandon the Church’s solemn teachings.
For the record: Algore is the worst politician in 5,000 years of recorded history. So there.
(Thanks to Publius for bringing Algore’s words to our attention.)

I have no problem with using appropriately harsh tactics against insurgents anywhere. No matter whether they’re domestic terrorists, like the Weathermen or Earth Liberation Front, or foreign terrorists, our government — any government — must ensure the safety of its own people. Those who make war on a society by killing officials and the innocent should be imprisoned or eradicated.
That said, articles like this disturb me. I find it unlikely that bulldozing civilian houses or arresting relatives of suspected insurgents is going to make murderous thugs go away. It’s all well and good that the Israelis have used similar tactics in the last few years against the Palestinians, but one might ask whether their campaign has been a success.
Other observations:
1. The Army is no good at counterinsurgency operations. They are good at destroying large formations of troops, wrecking equipment, and smashing their way into enemy-held territory. They aren’t good at the delicate, murky, gut-level actions that must be used against insurgencies. The Marine Corps is the only U.S. force that is good at such things, as they have proved in every clime and place (though usually the clime is hot and/or topical, e.g. Haiti, Nicaragua, Vietnam.)
2. Nobody ever rooted out a vicious band of thugs by cordoning off villages and monitoring who comes and goes. True, the British made similar moves in Malaysia, and defeated the Communist insurgency there. Anyone who thinks Malaysia — where the Chinese minority lives under an apartheid regime — is a model society, you’re welcome to explain why.
3. An officer who makes an asinine statement such as, “With a heavy dose of fear and violence, and a lot of money for projects, I think we can convince these people that we are here to help them” should be shuffled off to a desk job in the bowels of the Pentagon, where he can exchange impolitic e-mail messages with colleagues instead of talking to New York Times reporters.