The recent bombings – and bombing attempts – in London and Glasgow apparently make it clear that the “Battle of Britain” is over, defeat is inevitable, and that the Brits need to unilaterally withdraw from England, immediately seat an Islamic Courts in Parliament, and replace the British judicial code with Shari’ah Law.
In spite of the almost-hourly body counts put forth by the “despair and defeat” crowd as incontrovertable “proof” that “we are losing”, “the war is lost”, and “we can’t win” – culmulative death and injury to American forces are at the lowest rates ever experienced in a military conflict.
To put it bluntly, the Islamists – although determined and pernacious – are simply not very good at conventional soldiering – and they know it.
In a straight-up, head-to-head fight, they lose every time.
Relatively few US and Coalition troops have been lost to conventional small arms, mortar, or missile attacks. The Islamists presently have no real air power, very little sea power (pirates notwithstanding), no nuclear missles (yet), and their armies outside Iran are mostly loosely-connected terror cells and militias.
The greatest threat so far to troops has been that from clandestine bomb attacks, otherwise known to the general public as “IED’s” and “roadside bombs”.
Aside from the obvious loss of life and limb, IED’s and roadside bombs have provided the Islamists with a treasure of propaganda and public relations, as the spectacular media images of destruction and death are played on an almost endless loop, and the American public chafes at the seeming inability of our forces to successfully defend against such attacks.
Advances in tactics and technology have however been ongoing, resulting in both increased detection and avoidance of bomb threats, and in survivability.
You rarely hear about the hundreds of bombs that don’t go off. It’s the ones that do go off that make the news.
Even staunch critics of the military effort underway in Iraq such as Sen Joe Biden, have been loudly pressing for accelerated development and deployment of improved armored transport vehicles, known as MRAP’s (Mine Resistant Ambush Protected vehicles), even as they publicly push for a unilateral, total, and immediate withdrawal from those very areas where such military assets would actually be useful.
Now, a new technology now being deployed is giving US forces a new tool in the fight. Known as BUCKEYE, the “Buckeye Precision Geo-Referenced Digital Airborne Camera System” takes a hi-res digital 3-D picture of the roads and streets in areas such as Baghdad.
Then, before a convoy travels the road, the system takes another picture, analysing and spotlighting any changes or disturbances to the road surface and surrounding area – “down to the size of a penney”.
According to estimates, http://www.strategypage.com/htmw/htintel/articles/20070624.aspx, use of the Buckeye system has cut down successful roadside bomb attacks in many areas by as much as 90%. Focusing on the main supply routes, the report states it’s use has “virtually eliminated” successful roadside bomb attacks on convoys of ammo trucks and fuel tankers.
As a still-limited hi-tech theater resource, the system has been most useful for defending regular transport routes and scheduled convoy activity, according to the report.
Adapting to better defensive tactics, attackers will now instead plant bombs on less travelled routes, then launch a conventional ambush or attack in an attempt to lure rapid response units and reinforcements blindly onto uncharted roads recently mined with bombs and IED’s.
Even in these circumstances, improved field tactics, intelligence, and detection methods are enabling troops to increasingly counter and avoid the threats posed by the bombers.
In a post on a thread regarding this issue in a different forum, one respondant wrote recently “I again object to the use of this forum for the simple means of propagating a message with a clear political intent and agenda without any merit for discussion.”, and criticizes this thread as “simply exploitation of bandwidth of the WDH website”.
His opinion was clearly shared by more than a few there, as evidenced by concerted public attempts to have my postings barred and banned from that forum.
His reaction however is illustrative of the sort of oppressive liberal bias recently displayed by that great benefactor and bastion of open discussion and free speech rights, the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS), when it decided NOT to air a documentary – originally financed in part by a grant from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting – that examined the question of why there has not been more opposition to the radical Islamists, from the more “moderate” voices of Islam.
According to an interview with the film’s producer Martyn Burke conducted by Bill Steigerwald of the Pittsburg Tribune-Review, “Basically, the attitude was that the Moslems we were portraying as the moderates were in some way, in their [PBS's] view, not true Moslems because they were Westernized. They felt the Islamists somehow represented a truer strain of Islam.”
Among Burkes findings in the film, “Islam vs Islamist”, was that there are a great many moderate Moslems in countries like the US, Canada, France, and Denmark, “but they don’t speak out because they are intimidated by threats of coercion, ostracism, and physical violence from the Islamists in their communities,” Burke was quoted as saying in the article.
Apparently, as a basis for it’s non-support for airing the project, PBS executives also objected to the the participation of co-producers Frank Gaffney, a former assistant secretary of defense, and Alex Alexiev, a former RAND corporation expert on Islamic extremism – demanding that Burke fire his two partners “because my partners were conservatives”, according to Burke in the article.
According to a recent post by Dr. Jack Kelly, who writes as a national security analyst for the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, the liberal doctrine of “fairness” and free speech is clearly “free for me, but not for thee”.
“Many liberals,” he writes, “will not be happy until all viewpoints other than their own have been suppressed.”
Kelly reports this from first-hand experience working at the Post-Gazette, which he characterizes as “very liberal” in editorial tone.
“Conservatives,” Kelly writes, “often write angry letters to the editor, criticizing the arguments made in an editorial, or what they perceive as the slant in a news story. Liberals unhappy with my columns often demand that I be fired. They object not just to my point of view, but to the fact that it was expressed.”
Myopic demands for arbitrary dismissal are certainly not confined soley from those of liberal bent, of course. Locally, the self-admittedly liberal opinion page editor often fields conservative complaints regarding the suitability of his work for continued publication. Such equality of non-opportunity however does not excuse such brown-shirt behavior in either case.
Thus the earlier-mentioned charge that my posts – on this topic and presumbably others – were somehow “utilizing the WDH forum to propogate these ideas, thereby driving click throughs here, thereby giving these ideas exposure.” is an interesting one, especially from one whose liberal “ethic” ostensibly includes a “right to free speech”, to propagate ideas (even if unpopular and controversial), and to give them exposure.
Such is, I believe, the entire purpose of a “public forum”.
I certainly in many (and perhaps in most) cases find the views and world paradigms espoused by many on that particular forum to be distastful and often without substance or merit – but as critical as I am of their often hate-filled and spiteful vitriol, and as hopeful as I am of perhaps someday introducing them to a more positive way – I defend their right to hold and express their views, on any stage willing to have them.
Which is another point to be made, especially given the Democrat return to the schtick of “fairness” when it comes to getting one’s message distributed.
Because of the nature of their industry, Gannett Newspapers and the Wausau Daily Herald (who maintains the forum in question) operate under a business and perhaps an ethical imperative to present and to be open to the broadest array of perspectives possible.
This imperative however does not insulate them or diminish the effects of the personal preferences held by those who either work there or are in decision-making capacities.
This imperative also does not “entitle” anyone to space or coverage on it’s pages. If they wanted, they [the editors of the WDH] could exclusively promote the world-view of Karl Marx, Al Gore, Michael Moore and Rosie O’Donnell wall-to-wall, 24/7 . The sponsors and subscribers to the WDH pay the freight. It’s their dime, bub – they’ve got the phone.
As the sponsors and promoters of Al Franken’s Air America discovered, however, much to their embarrassment, such blatant liberal one-sidedness is rarely a good business decision. It is clearly much better commercially to be generally more subdued and subtle about one’s liberal biases.
Perhaps that is why some liberals of the left hold the same definition regarding “fairness” as the Islamists do regarding “peace”; specifically, that the goal is not really “tolerant co-existence with the absence of conflict”, but “the absence of opposition”.
“Fairness” would dictate that I be given an editorial column in the WDH opinion pages equal in space to anything being printed on that day written by the afore-mentioned left-leaning editor, or by the collective Editiorial Board.
While it might be “fair” under the liberal “doctrine of media fairness”, however, it is not likely to be something that my detractors on the forum, or anyone at the WDH, is likely to accept.
Nor are they properly obligated to.
One of the challenges presented by the current form of asymetric urbanized guerilla warfare being engaged in by a trans-national, borderless fanatically ideological enemy, is that there is ultimately no central authority to conceed, no “army” to surrender, and no sword or folded flag to hand over to the victor, after a clear and stunning victory on the battlefield.
The enemy also does not generally wear uniforms (of their own), and deliberately blends itself in to surrounding civilian populations, using women, children, and entire families as concealment and cover for its operations and attacks.
Thus any pre-emptive raids or counter-attacks become “unprovoked attacks on innocent civilians”, as even the enemy combatant appears to be one himself – dead or alive.
This does not mean, however, that there is not a war to be fought and won. There are battles to be fought on many fronts – military, economic, political, intellectual, social …. and in public perception.
And in that, in the end, and as always – we run the risk of succumbing to the pessimistic, self-abasing voices of despair and defeat, and of being once again, our own worst enemy. Perception often becomes reality, especially in politics.
In this modern fight against an old enemy, we need to support our ally’s – not surrender them.
Or as Benjamin Franklin sagely put it almost exactly 231 years ago today, “We must hang together, gentlemen…else, we shall most assuredly hang separately”.
