The Invincible Might of American Arms

He who knows when he can fight and when he cannot will be victorious – Sun Tzu

Yesterday I watched a video shot by someone with US troops in Iraq that was fondly posted on an internet site I occasionally visit to get a handle on how right-wing Americans really feel. (Discourse there runs from intelligent to “turn the desert into glass”.) The brief clip was from a battle in Mosul in December of last year and was shot using night-vision technology. It showed a surreal green-and-black scene with confusing lights and a menacing green searchlight that scanned the battlefield ahead (US forces use infra-red search lights for people using night-vision).

“Here they come,” a calm voice announces, and then there is a sickening spray of cannon fire from what must be a helicopter that is behind and above the person filming. The tracers in the cannon fire appear as bright green globs, but it’s the sound that is the most disturbing. This isn’t the “rat-tat-tat” you’re accustomed to from World War 2 or Vietnam footage, or from action movies. Modern cannons fire literally thousands of rounds per minute, creating an appalling continuous screaming noise, like a macabre buzz-saw. This spew of molten metal is punctuated by several rocket salvos from the same aircraft.

The action stops as suddenly as it began. The green search light, invisible to anyone without night vision (like their targets, presumably) reaches out again like the sickly finger of death. The clip ends. The responses on the site are the usual: “Dang, night vision owns”, “Sweet”, “OMG that is wicked”. It’s another display of overwhelming American firepower – the invincible might of American arms.

Except that the improvised devices used by Iraqi insurgents are proving no less deadly, and their guerilla tactics are rendering the American military ineffective. Fourteen American soldiers were killed today in a roadside bomb explosion. Seven others were killed two days ago in an ambush. The insurgents are picking the times and the places. They seek to avoid situations such as the one in the video clip I described above, because they have increasing awareness of when they can fight and when they cannot.

They are also increasingly sophisticated (according to US intelligence they are more resilient and have better tactics than a year ago), increasingly adept (according to media reports, they are now designing and using shaped charges in their roadside bombs to increase their power and effectiveness), and increasingly bold and persistent (there were 50% more attacks against US troops this July than in last July). Insurgents as well as common criminals have also infiltrated many Iraqi police and army units.

The bottom-line is, they’re winning. Every single independent news source from Iraq paints a very different picture from what the US administration – and the mainstream US media – would have you believe. The country daily descends further into chaos and bloodshed. There are constant and deadly suicide attacks, with bombings on the scale of the ones in London occurring once every few days. Baghdad shakes regularly with massive detonations. Violence between Iraqi factions – such as militant Sunnis and Shi’ites – is on the rise, and civil war is not out of the question.

Worse, from a Western perspective, is what this means for our long-term future. It’s not just an unstable Iraq and an unstable Middle East that we have to worry about. Insurgents in Iraq are learning first-hand how to build car bombs and suicide bomber belts, how to perform assassinations, the tactics and strategies of urban combat. The war itself is radicalizing Muslims in nearby countries, many of whom are travelling to Iraq to take part in the conflict. This is knowledge and willingness to kill and die for a cause that will spread well beyond Iraq. The violence there seems remote, but the Middle East is just a plane flight away from London, Paris, Tokyo, New York, Toronto.

So we see a century of promise turn into yet another century of instability and bloodshed as another legacy of violence is built in Iraq. It was supposed to be a necessary war. It wasn’t. It was supposed to be an easy war. It isn’t. Reminding one of another famous quote, from approximately 30 BC:

The outcome corresponds less to expectations in war than in any other case whatsoever – Livy