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Hard Lessons Learned From The War In Iraq
by Mark on 5/4/2007 (7) 
 | | Woman suicide bomber: Feminism, radical Islamic style. | | You broke it, you bought it.
Colin Powell's terse, haunting assessment of the Iraq War seems more true than ever, but can any useful information be gleaned from the conflict, which is still arguably inconclusive at this point in its evolution? Here are some hard lessons won, all paid in blood.
Know your enemy: Perhaps the greatest blunder of the Bush administration was underestimating, or more likely, completely overlooking, the tenacity of the competition between Shiite-Sunni Muslim sects. Unheeded warnings from the European Union rang true in regard to the fierce, vitriolic hatred simmering between the fundamental Islamic sects, which Saddam's brutal Sunni Baath party kept in check through sheer terror.and often overt genocide. Peace in the Arab world, it would seem, is peace through blunt force, to be sure, a concept invisible to the 'enlightened' Western mind.
The enemy can do a lot with a little: In spite of the overwhelming technical superiority of U.S. weaponry, simple homespun devices such as IED's (Improvised Explosive Device) have confounded American military efforts since the war began, at virtually no or little cost to the enemy. Originally devised from artillery shells and surplus plastic explosives, IED's have become refined and ever more deadly, truly the Achilles heel to the U.S. military giant.
Don't underestimate the power of a cultures belief in their God: Who would have thought that suicide bombers, dying willingly for Allah, would come forth in seemingly inexhaustible numbers? Unseen since the Japanese Kamikaze attacks against U.S. forces in the pacific in WWII, there is not an obvious shortage of men, and even young women and sometimes children, willing to die for their beliefs. Another concept completely incomprehensible to the Western mind.
Not everyone loves Democracy: Strange, but true. There are very well defined, self-professed segments of the world's population that seem to prefer heavy handed dictatorship to Democracy, which they view as an ineffectual sham at best. The Western notion that all societies will naturally evolve toward liberal Democracy if given the opportunity is simply untrue. Stalin, Mao, Hitler, Emperor Hirohito, all the way back to Genghis Khan, were loved by more members of their respective cultures than hated. That is how they rose to absolute power in the first place. Many seem to have a fatal attraction to absolute power, it would seem, and this seems especially evident in Iraq
You can't win a war without support from home: There never was, and certainly is not any now, support for the Iraq War. Who is to say that the obvious political and public resistance to the war is the reason we are not winning it? Surely, Al-Qaeda surfs the web as eagerly as you and I to finger the pulse of U.S. opinion of the conflict. If you are going to fight a war, for just cause or not, it is probably best not to display division to the enemy.
Don't publish body counts: The media, especially the Internet based media sites, have made a gruesome sport of reporting U.S. casualties on an almost daily basis. Imagine if daily casualties were printed after every battle in WWII, when 220,000 American G.I.'s died defeating Hitler and Imperial Japan? Would we have signed an armistice with these tyrannical world powers before total victory was achieved? Wars are fought, and won in blood, and reducing the sacrifice of your countries troops demeans the dead, and displays division at home, a cer
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