Saving His Ass(ets)

A week or so ago, I wrote that I would be a wonderful idea for the US to begin the psyop campaign. One of the reasons why I thought it would be a good idea was to convince the citizens of Baghdad to get the hell out of the city before Saddam locked it down.

It seems that the lockdown has already started. UPI reports that citizens of Baghdad are now liable to have their assets confiscated if they flee the city.

Can you imagine the US telling the citizens of New York, for example, that there was likely to be an attack on the city, but if they chose to leave the city for their own safety, they would be subject to penalties? How and why on earth are there any so-called liberals that continue maintain that there is no reason to remove this man from amongst the living?

Meanwhile, the report continues, many officials in the government are selling their properties and exchanging the money for hard currency. This, of course, makes their assets more portable, and as an added bonus, harder for Saddam to get his mitts on, when they decide to shit and git, or as we used to say in the Corps when there were more tender ears about, to "defecate and displace."

Finally, keeping the folks in the city keeps them available to be pressganged into militias to repel the invading Great Satan.

I'd hate to be Saddam right now - think of the decisions he has to make. He can't even allow his regular troops into the city - only the Special Republican Guard (note - not even the regular Republican Guard units) are allowed into the city, for fear of their being used against him in a coup. But at some point, he's going to have to issue heavy weapons (an AK is useless against a tank) and ammo to the people of Baghdad, if he wants to use them to fight the US troops. He has to know that those bullets and rocket launchers are more likely to be used against him than us.

This is All Good. For him to take such drastic measures so soon is a great indicator. You can bet Saddam knows much more accurately than I, or the Pentagon, do about the level of popular support he truly enjoys. Actions like this tell me that is is possible that even his most loyal units will fold like an accordion at the first sign of American attack, and that the people will immediately rise up against him, so that we can avoid the dreadful scenario of having to slug it out house-to-house in Baghdad.

Didn't Saddam's loyal units fold pretty quickly last time, too?

Do you think he wants to keep civillians in his city as human property shields? After all, Americans try to minimize civillian casualties when we attack. This will totally limit our ability to strike. And when civillians are inevitably lost, it makes us the target of "Boo America!" As if we're the only country that has inflicted civillian casualties during a military action. (Merry Christmas, here's a history book, and a reality check).

BTW, I consider myself very liberal, but very pro-military action. I cannot be labeled! ;-)

mld, 8/17/02, 6:07 PM

Liberal Hawks

In GWI, his Republican Guards units never routed like the regular conscript divisions did, despite being pounded pretty hard. It's hard to say what they might have done if we had pressed on to Baghdad. We'll never know until we can get that travel between parallel universes thing going. :-)

So far as using the Iraqi civilians as shields, he almost undoubtedly wants to do so, and will. I've mentioned that in several essays, for the first time in the one tiled "Through a Glass Darkly."

Unfortunately, we are now going to be victims of our own succes. Since we've demonstrated to the world that we have the ability to fight a war with about one thousandth of the collateral civilian casualties that have been typical of any other conflicts, the world will now expect us to maintain that standard. This makes war about 6,247 times more expensive, (don't you just love these precision numbers I'm pulling outta my ass? :-) as smart weapons cost a whole lot more than dumb bombs, but we either pay the higher price, or the world will accuse us of intentional genocide. The fact that everybody else in the world will continue to fight the old fashioned way, as they have no other choice, will not matter. The world will excuse them, as it has been excusing the terror bombers. "They're making war the only way they can." (sigh)

So far as your being a liberal, I don't find that a contradiction. In fact, I'm surprised that liberals are against this war, as I see one of the major benefits of this undertaking as establishing a liberal democratic nation in Iraq. I've argued here for a while now that humanitarian reasons are one of the best casus belli we can cite.

To repeat myself yet again, why every woman in the US is not frothing at the mouth and taking to the streets to demand that we overthrow every single one of the oil theocracies that make women second-class citzens, chattel of their male keepers, is completely uncomprehensible to me.

However, most of the anti-war crowd are demanding the most selfish of justifications, wanting to see direct proof, for example, of Saddam involved in the 9/11 attack, etc. The "liberals" are demanding that we show an overriding national interest before we commit to war, as if it is not in the national interest of the US to someday, somehow, have the entire rest of the planet live under the same freedoms that we enjoy, as if there were absolute moral equivalence between the repressive regimes and the liberal republics.

In this I think that they forget their heritage. Can you imagine the abolitionists arguing that the Civil War should not be fought, because "containment" would work as well, and besides, some of the boys in blue might actually die in the process? Or that the process of creating an acceptable follow-on regime might be tough? As if the Reconstruction was a simple wave of a magic wand, and acconplished in a few weeks, without errors and setbacks. I wonder how much these people read history. I think not at all.

... link