How not to fight a war

As in Afghanistan, the Americans are fearful of losing men.  They rely on technology and airpower and think that foot soldiers are old-fashioned.  To quote Shekhar Gupta "Each time some Iraqis as much as fire from a distance, they call it fierce resistance. Then their armies are not conditioned to do what old-fashioned armies do in such cases: send out a patrol led by a young officer to check out the source of trouble and neutralise it."  No offence intended, but whenever I saw a photograph of an American soldier hugging his family and weeping before leaving US shores, I was bemused.  These guys are supposed to be soldiers, not cowards.

I bet Bush's gang ran half a dozen computer simulations and war games and thought they they understood the minds of the Iraqi army and people.  Neither has the Iraqi army surrendered in large number nor have the populace come out with open arms to greet the coalition.  [Now, why is it "Coalition" and not "Allied Forces" ?]  Also, they have seriously miscalculated the impact that the international media [particularly Al-Jazeera !] could have on public opinion worldwide.

Not that I find any justification in Operation [what was it "Enduring" or "Iraqi" ?] Freedom.  It is an unjust and uncalled for war.  Saddam Hussein may hold WMDs.  But so do Bush and Putin and Blair and Chirac and Jintao and Vajpayee and Musharraf.  Is Saddam Hussein a threat to his neighbours ?  Have the neighbours actually complained about him in the past 12 years ?  The supposed link to terrorism has never been proven.  And finally, if Saddam Hussein is the problem [and Bush and Co. pointedly speak of "Saddam" and "regime change"] why should there be War on the nation of Iraq ?  If the Chinese President is a threat to the Americans, do the Americans wage war on the nation of China ?  As Vajpayee pointed out, no nation has the right to determine for another who should govern that other or what form of governance it should have.  It is for the people of Iraq to fight oppression and, if they want it, call for external assistance.  An outsider cannot unilaterally decide to intervene [particularly when no action had been taken for 12 years].  When Bush can't even pronounce the names of foreign nations and their leaders properly -- he doesn't bother to put in the effort to find out how to pronounce these names before making public declarations -- how much can we trust his assertion that he has evidence to back up his pronouncements ?

Ever since Bush came on the world scene [since before the incident that the Americans call 9-11 which I call "the attack on the World Trade Centre buildings in New York"], I've been wondering if this is the beginning of the end of American dominance.  The war on Iraq brings to mind the old saying "vinash kaale viparit buddhi".  Continuing trade imbalances, deficit fiscal budgets and financing of war could very well do to the US economy what the Dot-Com bust, Enronitis and the WTC attack couldn't --- a collapse of the US dollar and the flight of capital out of the US.  In fact, there is an interesting theory by a Chinese economist which asserts, rather provocatively, that the reason why the US went to war on Iraq is not just oil but the threat of the Euro -- war in Iraq could destabilise the Euro more than the US Dollar and so prevent the outflow of capital [or encourage investment back into the US].  How many times have we read of economists pointing out that with the massive trade deficits it is running up, it is actually the rest of the world that has been bankrolling the US growth in the past decade.