Pacific Views

Hardliner Logic

Listening to Terrie Gross interview David Frum and Richard Perle today on Fresh Air made me angry all over again about the futility of this war. They are on the road touting their book about winning the war against "Evil" and stopped in with Terrie to talk about their book. *

It is not surprising to learn that they believe the Iraq invasion was great: done for all the right reasons and clearly successful. They want to reawaken the feeling of resolve and sacrifice in people that Americans felt after 9/11. I thought Terrie did a good job of treating her guests with respect, yet asking hard questions about their book and Iraq.

Yet, there was one question I wished that Terrie would have asked them about the aftermath of their "successful regime change". Terrie asked them what they would do if they needed to use military force now even when the military is stretched so thin in Iraq and Afghanistan. Well, they don't believe the army is stretched too thin. Perle (along with his good friend friend Donald Rumsfeld) wants to radically revise the military to use small, highly effective forces that go in, strike quickly and win decisively. He believes that the reason people think that the military is too stretched is only because they are being used incorrectly -- in a too labor-intensive way.

I wish that Terrie had asked them what they would recommend for the policing needs of both Afghanistan and Iraq. Once you have "won" your battle, what next? Do you believe that a small, lethal military force will create order out of chaos? And how do you prevent chaos when you execute regime change? Unstable states or more repressive states need more policing power as well as vastly more repressive policies to keep order. It is only when there is a modicum of trust and decent behavior that you can forego extensive and repressive policing.

Considering that the hardliners are all for more control over the American public -- to keep us safe they say -- it is pretty astonishing that they don't consider this a part of their battle against evil as we reshape the foreign regimes into compliant vassels that will not be threats to Western civilization. (Re: civilization: I have a hard time believing that it is very civilized to bomb other people to prevent future bad behavior or as a deterrent to other bad guys.)

* It is really saying something about how important NPR is for book advertising that Frum and Perle are hawking their book on the Public Radio circuit. Do they also go on Rush and Savage to find readers?

Posted by Mary at January 9, 2004 03:55 AM | TrackBack