Browse column

I can't believe you people. First you jump around like Alabama cheerleaders for a war in Iraq, then you turn chickenshit once we lose a few soldiers in the occupation.

I just read the new polls. Americans are losing their war hard-ons faster than a fag in a whorehouse. At the start of May 2003, 61% said the war was going "very well." Now only 19% say that. Back in May, only 4% said the war was going "not well." Now 35% think so.

You make me sick.

What the Hell did you think was gonna happen? The Iraqis were gonna fall in love with an occupying army? "Oh thank you for blowing up our power plants and water supply! Allah be praised, now we have democracy!"

We were so sure the Iraqis would rise up once we landed. That's one feature you'll find in every bad military plan ever devised: "...and then the people will rise up." That was how Bay of Pigs was supposed to go: "We'll land a few hundred men, and then the Cubans will rise up." Which they didn't, naturally. Every time a lieutenant in some African hellhole talks a half dozen of his barrack drinking buddies into staging a coup he uses the same line: "...and then the people will rise up to help us." Cut to him and his friends hanging from the nearest lamppost.

The Iraqis rose all right. But not against Saddam, against us. They got a lot more upset about foreign troops in the streets than they ever did about not having "democracy." When did Iraqis ever give a shit about democracy? All they know is the airconditioning doesn't work, they have to get their water off the back of a truck, and some scared GI manning the .50 on a humvee just blew half the shacks in the village to kingdom come because he mistook a garden rake for an RPG tube.

That's how occupations go. That's what it's like. It ain't pretty, it ain't good TV, and it takes a long time to make it work.

I tried to tell you it wasn't going to be the "cakewalk" the DC chickenhawks were crowing about, but all you did was send me emails gloating about how easy the march to Baghdad turned out to be. Well, I never said that was going to be the hard part. When you're fighting tank battles in open country like we were then, you can use your air force at maximum efficiency, and we've got the best air force in the world.

Truth is, this occupation isn't going that badly. We're losing a man a day, more or less. That's not bad. That's just the way these things go. The British used to lose a few dozen men a day when they ran the world.

Hell, when they tried to take Afghanistan they lost a whole army. But they didn't lose their nerve and start sobbing to the pollsters. They knew it takes blood to run an empire. Even when their wars went bad, like the Boer War -- and that was about as bad as it can get -- they stuck with it, kept pouring in men and materiel and won. Along the way they had to do some grim stuff. Like concentration camps. Hell yes -- you think Hitler invented the concentration camp? Shows how much you know.

Concentration camps were invented by the British for the Boer War.

If you want to know what kind of coldblooded hardass discipline it takes to run an empire, the Boer War is a good place to start. The Boers, mostly Dutch and French, settled in South Africa way back in the 1600s. The British showed up later and took the prime coastal land from them. The Boers fought and lost a big battle in 1842, then just moved inland to get away from the British. For a while the British left them alone. Then gold was discovered on Boer land and the Limeys suddenly decided they needed to bring the blessings of empire to those poor lonely Boers. So they invaded in 1899. They thought that one was going to be a cakewalk too. The Boers were farmers, not soldiers. But the Boers were marksmen and they knew the ground. Even though they could only field about 50,000 men against 500,000 British troops, they were winning.

Pages:     Previous   1 2 Next

Print   Share article