Dear President Bush,<\/p>\n
Let\u2019s relax a few minutes and acknowledge that you are the most powerful man in the world, and the United States is fighting another war in Iraq, and the war is already more than two years old and the insurgency more deadly than ever and that your strategic reasoning for putting troops there \u2013 to stabilize the region for democracy \u2013 is flawed.\u00a0 I\u2019m going to keep this rudimentary because I know you don\u2019t like to read and study, and instead depend on your instincts and your faith to try to reshape the world.\u00a0 It will be necessary to present some statistics, but since you have an MBA the numbers, and their significance, should be understandable.<\/p>\n
We are encouraged to note that subsequent devastation will be much less severe if you begin pulling American troops out of Iraq early next year.\u00a0 You must do this because of the explosive facts that many of your generals have been talking about publicly.\u00a0 I\u2019m sure you at least heard about the New York Times article of May nineteenth.\u00a0 Don\u2019t bother ripping those liberal journalists; they simply quoted your experts in uniforms.\u00a0 Here are the key points.\u00a0 One officer said the United States could be mired in Iraq \u201cmany years.\u201d\u00a0 And other officers said that success is not assured and failure is a possibility.<\/p>\n
<\/strong><\/p>\n Why are military leaders becoming so pessimistic?\u00a0 It\u2019s those damn statistics, the kind that reveal the truth.\u00a0 All last year there were twenty-five car bombings in Baghdad, but there have already been twenty-one such bombings the first three weeks in May, and one hundred twenty-six the last eighty days. \u00a0Nationwide, about five hundred Iraqis have been blown up by such bombs this month.\u00a0 Many victims were Iraqi soldiers and police.\u00a0 Tragically, the Iraqi security forces are still more likely to be killed by insurgents than to kill or even engage them.<\/p>\n That\u2019s always been the case in this war.\u00a0 Perhaps that will change with vigorous U.S. training and ongoing combined operations.\u00a0 It really must change.\u00a0 The Iraqis are going to have to take care of themselves, aren\u2019t they?\u00a0 We now realize how \u201ceuphoric\u201d so many people were after the Iraqi election in January.\u00a0 It was a great day.\u00a0 Let us hope for many more such days in Iraq, and in every other country in the world.\u00a0 People deserve self-determination.\u00a0 You\u2019ve been right about that.\u00a0 But you\u2019ve been wrong that you can bomb and occupy people into permanently accepting our notions of democracy.<\/p>\n People simply hate foreign soldiers on their soil.\u00a0 That\u2019s why the insurgents continue to draw recruits from Sunni Iraqis as well as from Saudi Arabia, your family\u2019s close financial ally and supposedly a friend of the United States.\u00a0 Wasn\u2019t that something a few weeks ago, your holding hands with one of the Royal Saudi dictators?\u00a0 When linked with your distinguished guest, did you discuss the tense admiration your generals have for the \u201cresilience\u201d of the Saudi and Iraqi insurgents.\u00a0 The generals also praised their ability to learn quickly and to improvise.\u00a0 The insurgents are decidedly learning much faster than Iraqi soldiers.<\/p>\n Even when the generals try to be optimistic and say they mustn\u2019t take their \u201cfoot off the throat\u201d of the insurgency, it resonates with pessimism.\u00a0 After all, if a foot were effectively on its throat, the insurgency wouldn\u2019t be able to plan and execute an average of one of two car bombings a day for almost three months.\u00a0 And we must acknowledge the dedication \u2013 or fanaticism, if you prefer \u2013 of the enemy. \u00a0His bloody limbs are being found duct-taped to steering wheels and accelerators.\u00a0 These people, Mr. President, seriously do not want us there.<\/p>\n I regret having to quote another New York Times source, but really it\u2019s a book I\u2019m citing, one called \u201cDying to Win: The Strategic Logic of Suicide Terrorism.\u201d\u00a0 You won\u2019t have to study the forthcoming volume.\u00a0 Just read the article by its author, Robert A. Pape.\u00a0 He\u2019s got infinitely more valuable information than anyone who advised you before you attacked Iraq.\u00a0 Pape, in fact, has \u201ccompiled a database of every suicide bombing and attack around the globe from 1980 through 2003\u2026 (and discovered) there is far less of a connection between suicide terrorism and religious fundamentalism than most people think\u2026<\/p>\n \u201cThree general patterns in the data (emerge)\u2026 First, nearly all suicide terrorist attacks\u2026 took place as part of organized political or military campaigns\u2026 Second, democracies are uniquely vulnerable to suicide terrorists\u2026 Third, suicide terrorist campaigns are directed toward a strategic object: from Lebanon to Israel to Sri Lanka to Kashmir to Chechnya, the sponsors of every campaign are seeking to establish or maintain political self-determination.<\/p>\n \u201cBefore Israel\u2019s invasion of Lebanon in 1982, there was no Hezbollah suicide terrorist campaign against Israel; indeed, Hezbollah came into existence only after this event.\u00a0 Before the Sri Lankan military began moving into the Tamil homelands of the islands in 1987, the Tamil Tigers did not use suicide attacks.\u00a0 Before the huge increase in Jewish settlers on the West Bank in the 1980\u2019s, the Palestinian groups did not use suicide terrorism.\u201d<\/p>\n Most of us knew some of that but few had linked all of it so succinctly and with such mathematical precision.\u00a0 It\u2019s like two plus two: \u201cSuicide terrorism is mainly a response to foreign occupation.\u201d\u00a0 Now you know.\u00a0 This insight can be of great strategic value.\u00a0 You realize you\u2019ve got to get out or face eternal enmity.\u00a0 So how do you leave?\u00a0 You first continue hustling to upgrade water and electricity and other services for the Iraqi people.\u00a0 And you privately tell Iraqi politicians there are limits to U.S. power and money and political endurance, and that they must learn to fight independently.\u00a0 That\u2019s reasonable.\u00a0 They\u2019ve had the backing of a hundred fifty thousand foreign troops for more than two years \u2013 for three years by the time you begin major pullouts in early 2006 \u2013 and they\u2019ve been given billions of dollars and lots of the finest military equipment.\u00a0 With all that, shouldn\u2019t they be able to maintain their fledgling democracy against a bunch of highly-motivated but reactionary suicide bombers?<\/p>\n Sincerely,<\/p>\n George Thomas Clark<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Dear President Bush, Let\u2019s relax a few minutes and acknowledge that you are the most powerful man in the world, and the United States is fighting another war in Iraq, and the war is already more than two years old and the insurgency more deadly than ever and that your strategic reasoning for putting troops…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_uf_show_specific_survey":0,"_uf_disable_surveys":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[40,3],"tags":[],"acf":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"yoast_head":"\n