While Jeff Danziger isn’t my favorite political cartoonist, he did have an interesting one the other day — it showed Radical Islam as a hydra with Al Sadr as one of the heads. I suppose it’s supposed to be Rumsfeld astride the beast saying, “Don’t worry, as soon as we get Al Sadr, everything will be fine.” I can’t recall anybody in the Bush administration or in the military saying anything like that – here for instance Rumsfeld does not single out Al Sadr.

But the conception of Islamic Terrorism as a hydra is an interesting one – if you’ll recall, the hydra was a mythological beast that when you cut off one head, two would grow back in its place. So we’re faced with a difficult choice in how to fight such a beast. 

We can decide resistance is futile, and thus condemn ourselves to a period of terror, death and ultimately our own destruction – but at least we didn’t make the bad guys any angrier. This is the course those few who didn’t want us to topple the Taliban advised. 

Or we can stamp out a particular group such as al Qaida, and have two groups take it’s place. This is the course the many who didn’t want us to topple Saddam advised. In the cartoon, simply replace Al Sadr’s head with Bin Laden, and the anti-Iraq war people are now the ones saying “Don’t worry, as soon as we get Bin Laden, everything will be fine.” Oddly enough, Danziger was firmly opposed to going after Saddam. 

Or we can try to kill the hydra – all the heads and the body too. This means kill each head and cauterize the wound in mythological terms, or in real terms it means destroy all the different islamic terrorist groups and reform the nations they sprang from.

The first choice leads to our own destruction; the second choice leads to war without end (or a different choice); the third choice leads to our enemies destruction. Realistically, I don’t think we have a choice.

At the Midwest Blogbash, Charles Austin mentioned that he is tiring of the sameness of political arguments. How many posts about gun control (pro or con) can you read (or write) before they all sound the same and your eyes glaze over? I think if you get caught up in the partisanship, you can continue to make the same arguments over and over and not care that nothing changes – which is why partisans tend to carry on most of the arguments. Partisan politics kind of resembles a food fight between kids – its fun for some, but it turns a lot of people off and the grownups have to clean up afterward. Speaking of grownups cleaning up after the kids, (yes, this is the longest intro to a topic yet), you should check out Ken Pollack’s interview with The Atlantic (link via Jon Henke at Q and O) about WMDs and Iraq. You certainly don’t have to agree with Mr. Pollack’s conclusions, but he advances your understanding without partisan rancor. Since I dislike it when the press takes remarks out of context to drive their own agenda, I won’t excerpt him so go read the whole thing. It’s worth it.

Jason Van Steenwyk at Iraq Now has a great post up about how the army works told in the historical language of the region. Warning though – profanity at the end.

When the Marines head back to Iraq, they will be adopting “new” tactics according to the Washington Post. What are these new tactics? More interaction with Iraqis, respect for peaceable civilians and religious and cultural etiquette, and Marine platoons scattered throughout the region living among the people in towns and villages to facilitate training of the Iraqi police and civil defense forces. For Iraq, these may be new tactics, but they really come pretty much straight out of the Marines Small Wars Manual (available here for download, which was written in 1940 and summarized the counter insurgency experience of the Marine Corps in such places as the Phillipines, Cuba, Haiti, the Dominican Republic, and Nicaragua. An excellent account of the experience can be had by reading Max Boot’s The Savage Wars of Peace, as well as the use and applicability specifically to Vietnam alluded to in the WaPo article in Lewis Sorley’s A Better War.

Both books are excellent reading and well worth your time, and if I had any, I’d write and post reviews of them over on Blogcritics.

When the Marines head back to Iraq, they will be adopting “new” tactics according to the Washington Post. What are these new tactics? More interaction with Iraqis, respect for peaceable civilians and religious and cultural etiquette, and Marine platoons scattered throughout the region living among the people in towns and villages to facilitate training of the Iraqi police and civil defense forces. For Iraq, these may be new tactics, but they really come pretty much straight out of theMarines Small Wars Manual (available here for download, which was written in 1940 and summarized the counter insurgency experience of the Marine Corps in such places as the Phillipines, Cuba, Haiti, the Dominican Republic, and Nicaragua. An excellent account of the experience can be had by reading Max Boot’s The Savage Wars of Peace, as well as the use and applicability specifically to Vietnam alluded to in the WaPo article in Lewis Sorley’s A Better War.