Douglas A. Borer

And, what do you know? in the course of researching my previous posting, I discovered that John Arquilla is not even unique in his views among the faculty of the Monterey, California Naval Postgraduate School. Its Department of Defense Analysis is a little hotbed of Peace Studies.

In addition to Mr. Arquilla, it includes assistant professor Douglas A. Borer, who, on last January 24th in the Christian Science Monitor, also editorialized that, in response to Osama bin Laden’s truce offer, the president needs to decide whether to stick to the moribund old cliché “we don’t negotiate with terrorists,” or whether he should use this as a potential opportunity to redirect global politics along a path that serves US national interests. … (that) even if negotiations fail, we may have more to gain than to lose by exploring peace.

Certain professors of defense analysis seem to overlook the fact that only four and half years ago, dozens of Americans were forced to choose between jumping from 90 floors, or burning to death. The United States has no honorable alternative to avenging their deaths upon the persons responsible. There is nothing moribund or clichéd about our government having the basic decency to refuse to bargain with bin Laden.

John Arquilla

Would anyone living outside America’s coastal enclaves of leftism actually believe that any major American newspaper would run an editorial arguing that we ought to be accepting Osama bin Laden’s recent truce offer? Remarkable, isn’t it?

But we can top that. Would you also believe that the editorialist, one John Arquilla (a man with these kinds of views) is employed by the Defense Department as a professor of Defense Analysis, no less (in his case, clearly: Surrender Analysis), at the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, California. Arquilla is additionally a senior consultant for the RAND Corporation, and an advisor to Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld(!).

It’s a wonder we’re not all speaking Arabic.

Arquilla writes:

Osama bin Laden’s offer of a truce has sunk from sight without leaving a ripple, but it should have made waves… bin Laden’s overture should be carefully weighed and thoughtfully debated. …the practical upside of giving peace a chance looks very attractive. Our ethical obligation to try in good faith to negotiate is even more compelling… Reconsidering the immediate dismissive response to his overture is the necessary next step. I pray we have the courage and compassion to take it.

How does anyone with this person’s philosophy and strategic acumen ever come to be hired to teach at a US military educational facility in the first place? Shouldn’t a personal philosophy of Utopian Pacifism be considered a disqualification for a defense analyst?

Mr. Arquilla somehow manages to overlook in his supine analysis the fact that Osama bin Laden and his confederates were responsible for the murder of more than 3000 innocent American civilians. There are no legitimate truces or negotiations after 9/11. The only conclusion to the current conflict acceptable to Americans ought to be the deaths of bin Laden and his terrorist associates.

“Never pick a fight you know you cannot win.” advises Guardian columnist Simon Jenkins.

Iran is a serious country, not another two-bit post-imperial rogue waiting to be slapped about the head by a white man. It is the fourth largest oil producer in the world. Its population is heading towards 80 million by 2010. Its capital, Tehran, is a mighty metropolis half as big again as London. Its culture is ancient and its political life is, to put it mildly, fluid…

I would sleep happier if there were no Iranian bomb but a swamp of hypocrisy separates me from overly protesting it. Iran is a proud country that sits between nuclear Pakistan and India to its east, a nuclear Russia to its north and a nuclear Israel to its west. Adjacent Afghanistan and Iraq are occupied at will by a nuclear America, which backed Saddam Hussein in his 1980 invasion of Iran. How can we say such a country has “no right” to nuclear defence?..

Iran is the regional superstate. If ever there were a realpolitik demanding to be “hugged close” it is this one, however distasteful its leader and his centrifuges. If you cannot stop a man buying a gun, the next best bet is to make him your friend, not your enemy.

Now what do you suppose Jenkins would have said in the period of 1936 to 1939 about Nazi Germany? One can only assume that poor fellow has been living in Paris for too long.

Mr. Jenkins ought to remember that, historically, large barbarian armies have done remarkably poorly against far smaller Western forces on numerous occasions.

The Persian experience of the overwhelming superiority of Western arms in ancient times at Thermopylae and Marathon, during the Retreat of Xenophon’s Ten Thousand, and at Issus and Gaugamela will inevitably be repeated all over again today, if the Iranian regime persists in its course.

Saddam Hussein’s Iraqi Army, though repulsed in its initial invasion of Iran, was still able to fall back, stand on the defensive, and battle Iranian military forces to a draw over the final six years of an eight year war. That same Iraqi Army was twice beaten by US forces virtually effortlessly in a matter of days. The disproportion of technology, of military capabilities, is so great that an Iranian Army confronting US forces would not be much better off than the Mahdi’s dervishes were facing Kitchener’s machine guns a century ago at Omdurman.

The US invasion of Iran can only result in one of history’s classic turkey shoots, as any Iranian forces which fail to surrender or flee would be quickly and efficiently annihilated by precision-directed American firepower. The Iranian military would have about the same prospects against contemporary American military forces that the ants in my front yard have against the garden pesticide sprayer.

Nor is it likely, for that matter, that the current brutal and tyrannical regime can expect so much loyalty from its own citizens that substantial portions of its Army and civilian population will fight for it to the death. Frankly, there is every reason to suppose that Iranians in general would welcome invading Americans as liberators, and the Revolutionary Islamic Dictatorship would collapse upon receiving a single blow. Overthrowing the present Iranian regime may, in all likelihood, prove about as difficult as kicking to pieces a rotten pumpkin.