Firm grasp of the obvious department

"Knight Ridder's Tom Lasseter files this breathless report from the front:


A growing number of senior American military officers in Iraq have concluded that there is no long-term military solution to an insurgency that has killed thousands of Iraqis and more than 1,300 U.S. troops during the past two years.


Instead, officers say, the only way to end the guerilla war is through Iraqi politics


What's that "growing number?" From 97 percent to 99 percent? I don't get it. I've never met an officer in my life who didn't think that the decisive point in the counterinsurgency was political, not military. In fact, I wrote just that in some of the very first posts to this blog in November of 2003.



We don't have the combat power to defeat radical Islamism in the same way we defeated Nazi Germany. Radical Islamism thrives on being the underdog. But I think it can be defeated in the same way that Communism was defeated: wallop it with Satellite TV, Fax machines, and the internet age, push it until it eats its own young, and force it to deny reality until it is thoroughly discredited with its own people on its own turf."
CounterCoulumn