Like Texas, but Bigger

Tell me how would you like it
If on your way to work
You were stopped by Irish soldiers
Would you lie down do nothing
Would you give in, or go berserk

Give Ireland back to the Irish
Don't make them have to take it away

--Give Ireland Back to the Irish, Paul McCartney
___________

West Brothers, Owen and Bing, wrote a NYT editorial piece last Friday arguing for the sagacity of equipping the troops with hand-held devices providing a biometric census of every house and resident in Baghdad (''The Laptop is Mightier than the Sword.'')

''[T]hey can shift senior leadership all they want, but unless they give our troops patrolling the streets the tools they need, our leaders are going to see [the surge] fizzle.''

Patrolling the streets of Baghdad is not a strategy, it is folly.

''Part of the problem was that when the military surge was announced, it became commonplace for officials to assert that political compromise, not military force, would determine the outcome of the war. This vacuous idea would startle George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, Mao Zedong and Ho Chi Minh, to mention only a few unlikely bedfellows who forged success during an insurgency.''

To the first assertion: of course these military brothers do not see a place for diplomacy in determining the outcome of a war. U.S. Grant's strategy still holds--bring a preponderance of firepower to bear upon the situation, thereby eliminating the need for diplomacy. Of course, that is until the opponent regroups, and then you face the initial problem, unaltered and inflamed.

To the latter, it is a stretch to call George Washington an insurgent. His war was a rebellion or a civil war, but not an insurrection. Ditto Abe Lincoln. Ho led a guerrilla war against the Japanese, which transitioned into a conventional war versus the French; it was a conventional war vs.the U.S. in the Second Indochina War.

The Vietcong were insurgents, but Ho presided over a conventional war against the U.S. and its client state, RVN, in its later phases.

The ''vacuous idea'' that startles the imagination is the misreading of history and sweeping falsehood of this over-generalization. Next,

''The goal of American soldiers is to identify and kill or capture the Shiite death squads and Sunni insurgents.''

Why is it the goal of the U.S. military to mitigate the squabbles of Shias and Sunnis? The goal of the U.S. military is to protect the American taxpayer. Nobody has shown the causal relationship between Baghdad power squabbles and protecting the ''Homeland'' from strategic al Qaida attacks.

Why do Mssrs. West, NYT, GWB, Congress, and a goodly portion of the American taxpayers accept the hypothesis that U.S. combat power is legitimately expended on the mean streets of Baghdad?

Forcing democracy upon Iraq is not the function of the U.S. military, nor the U.S. in general. Such actions should be more properly outsourced to KGB operatives.

''The war in Iraq would be over in a week if the insurgents wore uniforms.''

While true, so what? They don't wear uniforms. And why should or would they? It is their country, and we are an occupying power. Since the Wests invoke the memory of George Washington, what did he use as a strategy? He employed militias and utilized the Green Mountain Boys, Rogers Rangers and irregulars like Swamp Fox Francis Marion.

Those units have attained a place in American folklore, yet these same types are demonized when they fight for the other side in Iraq. When such tactics are employed by U.S. personnel, they are patriotic; when used by Iraqis, they are criminal. It all depends on whose ox is getting gored.

The key point in this rebuttal is that the U.S. military is not the force to deal with the citizenry of Iraq. It is not a police force, nor should it be employed as such. Let the Iraqis police Iraqis.

The U.S. military is configured to fight actual military threats to the well-being of Americans. Next,

''Vietnam was a shooting war; Iraq is a police arrest war.''

Yes, Mssrs. West. It is a police arrest function, but that does not equate to war. If it were a war, the captured insurgents would be POW's, and could be legitimately detained. But it is not a war. That is, except when it is a war, as suits our policies. Well, it's something, that is for sure.

It is a War on Terror in name, but a war which produces no POW's. Most peculiar.

Why won't anyone in the Chain of Command define the terms in a legal manner? Ah, that would necessitate conducting the operation in a legal manner, and that could get messy. An even messier prospect than democracy, presumably.

''After an arrest, two soldiers must file affidavits, together with physical evidence and digital pictures. . .''

But, it is not an arrest unless it is done by Iraqi police. The U.S. military man does not have any arrest authority over citizens of other countries. The U.S. military can detain (illegally) and capture, but arrest is not on the plate.

Show Ranger the badge and the jurisdiction. This entire exercise is about legality, legitimacy and democracy, isn't it?

''The scale of imprisonment must be doubled or tripled if we are serious about prevailing.''

Double or triple the prison load. Another fine democratic policy for the Iraqi people.

''The American and Iraqi jails now hold about 40,000 prisoners. . . Texas, with a smaller population, has more than 170,000 in jail.'' Well. if it's good enough for Texans, it must be a good ratio to export to the rest of the world. And Texas isn't even a war zone, I don't think.

Ranger has repeatedly predicted that the future leaders of Iraq will emerge from the prisons of Iraq, and not from the sanctity of the Green Zone. Nelson Mandela would probably agree.