Col. Kurtz: How to win in Iraq

[maxsolomon]

from the Apocalypse Now transcript:

KURTZ
" ...Its impossible for words to describe what is
necessary to those who do not know what horror means.
Horror. Horror has a face...And you must make a friend of horror. Horror and
moral terror are your friends. If they are not then they are enemies to be feared.
They are truly enemies. I remember when I was with Special Forces...Seems
a thousand centuries ago...We went into a camp to innoculate the children.
We left the camp after we had innoculated the children for Polio, and this old
man came running after us and he was crying. He couldn't see. We went
back there and they had come and hacked off every innoculated arm. There
they were in a pile...A pile of little arms. And I remember...I...I...I cried...
I wept like some grandmother. I wanted to tear my teeth out. I didn't know what I
wanted to do. And I want to remember it. I never want to forget it. I never want
to forget. And then I realized...like I was shot...Like I was shot with a
diamond...a diamond bullet right through my forehead...And I thought:
My God...the genius of that. The genius. The will to do that. Perfect,
genuine, complete, crystalline, pure. And then I realized they were
stronger than we. Because they could stand that these were not
monsters...These were men...trained cadres...these men who fought with
their hearts, who had families, who had children, who were filled with
love...but they had the strength...the strength...to do that. If I had ten
divisions of those men our troubles here would be over very quickly. You
have to have men who are moral...and at the same time who are able to
utilize their primordal instincts to kill without feeling...without passion...
without judgement...without judgement. Because it's judgement that
defeats us. "

And that, ladies & gents, is an example of what it will take to defeat the insurgents. This is how they are fighting us.

To win, we must increase the troop levels by 100,000. We must be equally brutal, we must inflict 5, 6 more Fallujahs, and be resolute about it. If they see us as more brutal than they, we will kill or cow the insurgents into compliance with the occupation. The jihadis? Perhaps them, too. One of the reasons the PNAC wanted to go in there is because the Arabs thought we were cowards, that we were brave from the sky, but not on the ground.

The question is, do we have the stomach for it? Does the Neo-Con Cult running our country? Does their Puppet? We didn't in Vietnam. And we're better off for it. No liberal democracy should.

[Kraklen]

1. So we should cut off little children's arms.

I don't see any method at all.

[maxsolomon]

2. if we want to "win", that's where we need to go

or maybe we "negotiate" with them? like we're doing now.

[Kraklen]

3. Drop the Bomb.

Kill them all.

[johnfunk]

17. I'd rather nuke the Swiss and steal their gold...

in other words, no go.

The point re. Kurtz saying exactly what would be needed to "win" Iraq is well taken.

[PeaceProgProsp]

6. We did "cut off childrens' arms" (metaphorically spkg.) in Vietnam

That's not the point.

The point is that the Vietnemese were willing to sacrifice their own children's arms in order to reject everything about American occupation. Americans would never sacrifice their own childrens' arms in order to continue to occupy Vietnam. Republicans with nothing to lose will ask that of Americans, but Americans who actually have something at stake won't be willing to risk that much.

[htuttle]

4. Why we will lose anyway

"Charlie didn't get much USO. He was dug in too deep, or movin' too fast. His idea of R-'n'-R was cold rice and a little rat meat.
He had only two ways home: death or victory."
-- Captain Willard

[PeaceProgProsp]

7. Charlie don't surf either.

[PeaceProgProsp]

5. That quote isn't the allegory for success. It's the story of why...

...the US will never win guerrilla wars.

In an imperialist war, no American soldier will EVER be willing to make a bigger sacrifice for land than the person whose land the American soldier is occupying.

That story -- although fictional -- is the story of an America which had committed Fallujah after Fallujah on North Vietnam, which had overwhelming fire power, and which stuck out the war long after most Americans criticized it, and America still couldn't win there.

[maxsolomon]

8. well, yeah

in the past, empires have been willing to brutalize a populace into submission or cooperation.

but we are not that empire.

you'd think * would have seen this movie.

[PeaceProgProsp]

9. All empires fail. Federalism has a better track record.

Brutal subjugation never lasts.

[wtmusic]

10. Please stop perpetuating the myth that this war is winnable

What I want to know is--do we have the stomach to admit to a mistake?

[maxsolomon]

15. i'm not doing that - Apocalypse Now sure didn't.

but we, and by we i mean our administration & its enablers, have already shown that they cannot admit they've made a mistake. and they won't admit it even when we withdraw with our treasure spent & the weak foundations of our empire exposed.

what did John Kerry say? "how do you ask a man to be the last one to die for a mistake?"

[ksilvas]

11. If we follow the river, into the heart of darkness

what have we won?

[depakid]

12. My recollection of both the book and the movie

was that Kurtz failed in his endeavors and went insane....

[ksilvas]

13. We lost this war after the first 2 weeks,

when we out ran our supply lines,
the worst mistake an army can make, the most classic,
and a sure sign we were doomed to fail. But then
mabey that was the intention.

[Lisa]

14. If I ever got hold of an original PNAC document ...

I would not be at all surprised to find, scrawled in the margin:

"Exterminate all the brutes"

[pretzel4gore]

16. belgian congo

the africans do hack kid's arms off; you've probably seen pics from rwanda or sierra leone. but if you want to see 'piles' of arms hacked off children, check out the belgian congo during colonial era.....pics and documentation are available that hacking limbs off kids was routinely used to force the parents to work.....joseph conrad wasn't inventing anything when he wrote 'heart of darkness'....and no one can claim the colonialists were men filled with 'strength'...in 'heart of darkness' they were bumbling idiots full of greed and slapstick violence and cowardice and they were as stupid as a death camp entrepeneur (see hans frank)...the 'apocalypse now' bit quoted mixes up conrad's mr kurtz from 'darkest africa' and the vietnamese liberation movement ..no american, or westerner, has any right to pass judgement on the men who fought to free their country (remember, vietnam had been part of french indo-china empire until the 'communists' kicked the french out)from foreign domination/exploitation. The real 'cadres' are the bushevik nazipoo pigs who lied/dragged the US into the vietnam war in the first place, with the objective of enriching the same type of people who today are raking in money from the insane US involvement in the iraq mess...