Shock and Awe

Tommy Franks, the U.S. Army general in charge of our impending invasion of Iraq, has explained that the overall military strategy for victory is to induce such “shock and awe” in the enemy with totally overwhelming force that they quickly capitulate.

As much as I want this strategy to be successful, I must admit that a front-page Wall Street Journal article earlier this week induced such shock and awe in me that I was rendered speechless, and could only stare numbly at the printed words. The story was entitled “Bush Has an Audacious Plan to Rebuild Iraq Within a Year.”

The plan is to rebuild Iraq with private U.S. companies and completely stiff-arm U.N. and other international agencies. What caused my shock was realizing that this is so brilliant it borders on political genius.

It is emotionally satisfying, yes, to screw all the U.N. bureaucrats and foreign (especially French) companies demanding to cash in on American blood spilt to liberate Iraq – but that’s just a minor side benefit. The brilliance lies in the plan being the best possible strategy to keep a post-Saddam Iraq intact and not splintering into anarchic pieces.

Iraq is not a real country. It is an artificial construct composed of three distinct provinces of the Ottoman Empire forced together into a phony “nation” by the British after World War I. The people inhabiting these three provinces never got to vote on whether they wanted to be all joined together, and have never once had the freedom to vote for the kind of government they want. Iraq has always and only been kept in one piece by tyrannical force.

Once these folks – Kurds, Shiites, Sunnis, and a host of others – are free of that force, Iraq becomes Centrifugal City. Payback bloodbaths, a Hobbesian “war of all against all,” could easily be the future of post-Saddam Iraq.

Thus the worry that keeps everyone in Washington up nights is not the military outcome, for that is foregone. There is no doubt whatever that the U.S. military will quickly and completely demolish its Iraqi counterpart. The worry is the anarchic mess that Iraq is likely to become once Saddam is gone.

Bush’s plan is the answer to that worry. What better way to keep everybody in Iraq together than to pay them to do so? You want to have your roads rebuilt, new schools, hospitals, a functioning society with jobs, payrolls, rule of law? Then don’t even think of setting up your own independent Kurdistan, Shiite Republic, or whatever.

Press for autonomy. Press for your fair say in a democratic Iraq. But please forget about enticing Turkish Kurds into splitting off from Turkey, about Shiite secessions to Iran and other unpleasantries. You will all behave like good boys and girls now, or you don’t get any goodies from Uncle Sam.

Bush knows the Golden Rule – the real one: He who dispenses the gold makes the rules. In bypassing the corrupt international parasite agencies and putting private U.S. companies in charge, the U.S. rebuilding of Iraq will keep Iraq intact.

Once again, I remain in a state of shock and awe that America is so ridiculously lucky to have this man as president – particularly so when I think of how ridiculously close we came to not having him. If you want to give yourself a real nightmare tonight, start thinking of how America would be faring now with Al Gore in the White House.

But there’s no need for such masochism. We can sleep soundly. Saddam is getting what’s coming to him (being dead). Chirac is getting what’s coming to him (reduced to a powerless laughingstock). Putin will soon be at the Crawford Ranch gate with his tail between his legs begging to be let in.

Iraq will stay intact. Our economy will skyrocket while oil and gold will plummet. Al-Qaeda is being rolled up into a ball. And all those who wish America ill, whose souls are devoured with envy, will be rendered inconsequential, rendered stunned and silent with shock and awe.