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Aug 30, 2003 It is a sad day when you have to admit that some one else is right. Yes, the Europeans, Pravda, and realpolitikers who have for years said that Americans have no sense of history are right. If that were not the case then people like Maureen Dowd and the ‘war never settled anything’ folk would know that they were wrong and spare the rest of us their diatribe. Alas, unfortunately it is true that Americans have no real knowledge of history for if we did the nation, as a whole, would look at the situation in Iraq and the name Scipio Africanus would flow from their lips. Scipio Africanus had the detestable job of having to fight a war against Carthage, one of the series of conflicts that get lumped into the catchall title of the Punic Wars. Scipio knew he could defeat the Carthaginian armies on Roman territory, but that fighting battles on Roman land meant that said land would be ravaged and unusable to feed and sustain Rome. Faced with such a horrible prospect (the death of his fellow citizens, the destruction of Roman villages, and the slow to heal land) Scipio came up with a rather novel strategy to face the Carthaginians: he’d fight on their lands. He left a few small garrisons behind (to slow down any Carthaginian incursions) and then sallied forth with his legions dragging every Carthaginian old enough to hold a kitchen knife back into North Africa. By taking the initiative, instead of ceding it to his opponents, Scipio decided when and where fights would occur, and, more importantly, protected the citizenry he was charged with defending. Does this sound familiar? We invaded Iraq, and, if Dowd and her crowd are right, every Jihadist ever spawned is heading to Iraq. If they are heading to Iraq they are not going elsewhere to cause trouble and are planning operations against military instead of civilian targets (namely the US, British, and other nations occupying forces). In this way all the blood, gore, and destruction that the Islamic terrorists have in store for you and I sitting in our homes is instead being played out an ocean away. In this way the deaths occurring are of those who volunteered, on both sides, and not unsuspecting women and children (ala the World Trade Towers and all the attacks in Israel of late) . Yet, this will not mollify the Bush haters cum conflict haters. They will then carp about the death of American soldiers. I respond with, “Would you rather be fighting here, or over there? Would you rather it be you in your bed instead of a gung ho GI who volunteered?” I also paraphrase Sun Tzu in saying all under heaven cannot be made secure by hiding behind walls. In other words, as every strategist since Sun Tzu has observed, you cannot win a conflict by remaining on the defensive. No wall, no fortification, no ocean will ever be enough to intimidate someone into inaction or prevent someone from doing harm once it is known he intends to do harm. Instead, as Napoleon, von Clauswitz, Mao, Ho Chi Minh, Sun Tzu, Dwight D. Eisenhower, Winston Churchill, Josef Stalin, von Schlieffen, von Moltke, and Scipio Africanus understood harm to ones own is prevented to taking the fight to the other jokers back yard instead of fighting in your own front yard. ------------ Email Ryan Patrick Parsons: c6h5x@aol.com Comment on this column in the forum. ------------ |
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