Counter-insurgency warfare is playing defense.  Kind of like expecting that negotiations are going to help change Iran.

Administration Officials: Tehran's Influence in Iraq Is Called Surprisingly Deep   [Andy McCarthy]

The Washington Post reports:  "The Bush administration has begun mobilizing support for a third U.N. resolution that would impose tougher sanctions against Iran, as the top U.S. military and diplomatic officials in Baghdad said yesterday that one of the biggest and still unfolding surprises in Iraq has been the depth of Iran's intervention."  (Emphasis added.)

Other big, unfolding surprises include that night may follow day, Ahmadinejad may not be looking to play the "stabilizing ... neighborly" role Secretary Rice was hoping for, and this Peyton Manning guy may turn out to be pretty good after all.

http://corner.nationalreview.com/post/?q=MDgyM2Q3ZWQ0NTY0YTA1NDdjYjdkN2Y5ZTI0NzJjM2M=

I still don't think Bush is serious enough about killing the enemy

President Bush formally labelled the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps this week as terrorists. This could be the predicate for the Bush administration's effort to go after the IRGC while claiming not to be targeting Iran.

In other words, this could be the Bush version of the Johnson administration's efforts to pinpoint bomb North Vietnam without doing any real damage to the communists' war-making capability. We all know how that turned out. What can we expect if the inference we suggest here is correct in the Iraq-Iran theater of battle?

***

In an article this week (The media missed a big one yesterday), Lt. Col Ralph Peters (US Army, ret.), the well-known military commentator and indiscriminate religion-basher, is sanguine about the August 15^th designation by the Bush Administration formally labeling Iran's Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) -- a component of the Iranian armed forces -- as a terrorist organization. Col. Peters reasons that such a diplomatic action by Bush & Company was a legal necessity before attacking this terrorist organization and that it signals the beginning of selectively bombing IRGC installations.  Whether President Bush has the courage to bomb IRGC bases is a matter of conjecture that will be answered sooner or later (probably later if it happens at all). But here is where we part company with Peters (on this particular point because we have long ago condemned his well publicized attack on all religions as the cause of war and his failure to properly discriminate between the Judeo-Christian West and the murderous political ideology of Shari’a-based Islam) and do not share his optimism.

If Bush starts playing "tit-for-tat" bombing with the mullahs, he will have taken the first step on the dubious road that Lyndon Johnson took when he started bombing North Vietnam in response to the Gulf of Tonkin incident in August 1964 and later in retaliation for the VC attack on Pleiku in February 1965 that killed 8 GIs. This VC mortaring of Pleiku was the impetus for the launch of US FLAMING DART air attacks. FLAMING DART air attacks then grew into ROLLING THUNDER air attacks.  The objective of these air campaigns was to demonstrate to the North Vietnamese we were serious and, consequently, they had better scale back their war of aggression against South Vietnam (which would be the same objective with respect to Iraq in bombing IRGC bases).

The fallacy which was the failure of FLAMING DART and ROLLING THUNDER was the targets; they were always restricted. In other words, Johnson limited the attacks to targets that might hurt North Vietnam (think IRGC bases in Iran’s case), but he would not strike to militarily incapacitate Hanoi to end the war. Rather than a strategic offensive (or total war), which would have included the bombing of the Red River dikes, Hanoi logistic depots, railroads coming out of China, fighter airfields, SAM sites while they were being constructed, and the Haiphong harbor docks, the Johnson administration chose a defensive strategy of limited war based on selective, restrictive bombing to send diplomatic messages

http://www.saneworks.us/The-SameOld-SameOld-or-IraqIran-and-the-Vietnam-Redux-article-466-59.htm

Gabriel, oh dear.  Then the old article I posted gave the administration more credit than they deserved? 

Yikes.  It's not exactly positive as is.

Aaron: Massoud t-shirts here:

http://www.zazzle.com/ahmed_shah_massoud_shirt-235674667707406979

Ace:  Thanks for the link, even though I'm on indefinite hiatus.

Everyone else: For more Abdul Sattar blogging, follow the link to the links:

http://alphabetcity.blogspot.com/2007/03/chem-attacks-sign-of-al-qaeda.html

Posted by: rolex watches at December 17, 2009 08:18 AM (EGD2i)

Posted by: wholesale jewelry at December 17, 2009 08:51 PM (1dySH)