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March 26, 2003
Palestine in Iraq?
Note: this is a post recovered from my old blog, before it died of an insufficient backup. Any comments/trackbacks on it have not been brought over, but can be seen with the original. The date is that of the original posting.
Reading things like this:
Jordanian-Iraqi border :: Martin Asser :: 1152GMTWe've just spoken to two Iraqi young men who've come to the border - just in an ordinary Jordanian taxi - who say they're going to Basra to take part in the war.
(from the BBC's embedded reporters journal) makes me wonder if Saddam's strategy might be to poison the well. He has to know he will be defeated, and captured or killed. It is natural that he would resist with every means available to him, but reports like the above are disturbing.
It appears that soldiers and irregulars are switching into civilian clothes, moving around in civilian vehicles, then switching back into uniform at their destination. In many cases, they are fighting in civilian clothes, and among civilians (in one instance at least, putting women and children in front of them). This will make the coalition troops very wary of Iraqi civilians, leading to frequent stops, searches and interrogations. Each of these tiny humiliations will, as the Israelis found out in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, push the civilian population a little closer to riots and resistance, which pushes our military to be even more suspicious of the civilians, which escalates to suicide bombings and the like.
I used to think that we had to be very careful to not take out civilian targets, and to not kill civilians even if it meant we had to take more casualties. I am changing my mind, though, and slowly coming around to a Machiavellian principle: perhaps we should not regard civilians, hospitals, mosques and the like as sacrosanct in the war itself. Afterwards, when resistance has been crushed, we can be magnanimous in victory. However, if we allow resistance to fester, we could truly become bogged down in an endless repeat of the Israeli situation. And as the Israelis found out in Lebanon, you can't withdraw; that just makes you look weak and emboldens the enemy.
I'm not yet convinced that we should be brutal and remorseless during the phase of putting down the enemy, but I'm moving that way.
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