They trained and led the Malays, focused on creating safe havens rather than trying to control the entire countryside, and convinced the fence-sitters to come over to their side (winning hearts and minds).
Well, that, and starved the opposition. Think we should restrict food in the Sunni provinces?
Damn interesting question.
Frankly, if the Sunni forces do the Palestinian thing and refuse to say yes to any deal, I don’t really see any reason to support the sector. Aid to the Palestinians has produced a population with nothing to do but pick up their rations and foment hatred. Absent the aid checks, they would be forced to spend their time trying to scratch out a living instead of promoting terror.
I simply don’t know if the region is economically viable on its own. It would be nice to have a public education on the matter, rather than pictures of the latest bombing on the news.
Like that is going to happen.
Starve them into political submission? That hardly seems like a good recipe for changing the dynamic in the Middle East…
I didn’t exactly say that. On the other hand, wasn’t it John Smith that said in the Plymouth colony, if you don’t work, you don’t eat?
The world doesn’t owe them a living.
The Brooks article’s strategy was the areas that cooperate and work together prosper. Those that don’t, well…
I think Saddam said something similar as well…
And they were supposed to feed the opposition? I have never known that to be a military strategy. Did the Germans drop food on Russian cities during WWII? Did we feed Japanese soldiers on islands in the Pacific? Oh, Mr. Japanese soldier, please come in and get some rice so you will be stronger and able to fight better.
C’mon Vitus, you can do better than that.
Several letters to the editor in today’s NYTimes (including one Lt. Col) point out that the “oil spot” strategy was used in Vietnam (“strategic hamlets”) and Rhodesia (“protected villages”) to little effect, and that the insurgency in Malaya was led by ethnic Chinese who did not have the nationalism motivation that the Vietnamese and the Iraqis have. Not to mention the fact that in Iraq, as in Vietnam, you can’t tell friend from foe.
From your description, it sounds like Iraq is a lot more like Malaysia. The insurgency is led largely from outside. There are no nationalism issues in Iraq, unlike Vietnam. Arguably there is the opposite force trying to divide the country into three parts.
I am not persuaded that we followed that strategy in Vietnam at all. Similarly, I am not convinced about Iraq either. If we were following this strategy in either case, you would expect it to be articulated clearly and often from POTUS all the way down. I have been listening a lot. Haven’t heard it.
If this were going on, you would expect areas to rapidly divide into prosperous, peaceful areas with rapidly improving infrastructure and outlaw run slums. Maybe this is going on, but with all the reporting coming from the Palestine Hotel, how would we know?
Agree that the “oil spot” strategy was initially tried in Vietnam. The question is–was it given enough time to work before Johnson and McNamara went in there with close to 1 million troops and tried to pave over the whole country? We know that strategy didn’t work.
Vietnam had a distinctly different wrinkle, I think, than Iraq. In a large part, Vietnam was basically a proxy war between the US and the Soviet Union/China. The USSR and China were supporting, in a major way, the North Vietnamese. Soviet ships were unloading weapons in Haiphong harbor, and we did nothing about it to prevent escalation into WWIII. As McCain points out, there is some support coming across into Iraq from Syria and Iran, but nowhere near the scope that happened in Vietnam. The real insurgency in Vietnam, the Viet Cong, were largely defunct after Tet.
Richardson/Obama vs Rice/Gulliani (to appeal to the gay/pro-choice middle): that would be a friggin circus + comedy show all in one. Any bets on who would win?
Hillary/Sharpton anyone?
I heard him speak here in Idaho
I knew you and vitus were the same person!
Which one of you lives closer to Napoleon Dynamite?
Heck yeah!
It’s a beautiful state. I lived smack dab in the middle of it for a year. Good times.