Food for thought:

Somebody we've never heard of before, William S. Lind (of UPI), wrote an interesting essay about a war with Iraq.

Excerpt:

... the real threat the United States and the American people now face is non-state players such as al Qaida, Hamas, Hezbollah and the like who have been grimly effective pioneers of non-state and extra-state forms of conflict that I and other military analysts have termed Fourth Generation warfare. They can only benefit from a U.S. war waged against Iraq -- regardless of how it turns out.

If we win, the institution of the state is further discredited in the Islamic world, and more young men will give their allegiance to non-state forces that the U.S. military with its current configuration and extremely weak human intelligence assets will find exceptionally hard to defend against. And if Saddam wins, their own governments will look even less legitimate, because they failed to stand with him against the hated American neo-Crusaders.

UPDATE: Atrios tells us that William Lind is a bigwig in Paul Weyrich's Free Congress foundation, and has written things like What If The South Had Won The Civil War? (concluding that it might have been a good thing)

Next time, we'll be more careful when citing anything from the UPI.


posted by Quiddity at 3/09/2003 12:43:00 PM