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EMULATING ETHIOPIA |
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Written by Jack Kelly
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Friday, 05 January 2007 |
It's hard to win a war if you quit fighting in the middle of
it. That's the lesson we should learn from Ethiopia's New Year's message
to us.
Six months ago, when the militia of the Islamic Courts Union
seized the Somali capital of Mogadishu, it appeared that the al Qaeda-affiliated
radicals were on the verge of a major triumph. The redoubtable
StrategyPage declared them "unstoppable," and the usual hand wringers
were urging us to negotiate with them.
All Islamic extremists are unlovely, but the Islamic Courts
Union are a particularly nasty bunch. They modeled themselves on the (now
deposed) Taliban in Afghanistan, and imposed their harsh version of Sharia
(Islamic law) on the territory they controlled.
Movies and the playing of music were banned. So were
smoking tobacco and chewing khat, a mild hallucinogen. Women were
barred from beaches. People who didn't pray five times a day were
threatened with beheading.
More than 20,000 Somalis fled in small boats across the Gulf
of Aden to seek sanctuary in Yemen, said the United Nations High Commissioner
for Refugees. Thousands more clogged refugee camps in neighboring
countries.
In November, the Islamic Courts Union began an offensive
against the provincial capital of Baidoa, where the UN-recognized government of
Somalia had taken refuge, and announced plans to extend its "jihad"
to Ethiopia, Somalia's neighbor to the west, and Kenya, its neighbor to the
south.
But all that changed in the last week of 2006. A
Reuters dispatch Dec. 28 indicates why:
"The bloated corpses of Islamist fighters and an
unbroken line of tank tracks along the Baidoa-Mogadishu highway tell the story
of a swift advance for the Somali government and its Ethiopian allies."
That dispatch was in some ways more politically correct than
accurate. Such Somali government forces as there were followed well
behind the Ethiopian tanks. And considering how rapidly they fled, to
describe the Islamists as "fighters" was excessively kind.
The Islamists swiftly abandoned Mogadishu, but declared they
would make a stand at the southeastern port city of Kismayo, but as Ethiopian
troops approached on New Year's Eve, the Islamists fled once again without
giving battle.
The Islamists hoped to flee into Kenya, but Kenyan troops
barred the way. The bulk of the Islamist forces who haven't gone home are
thought to be hiding in the forests west of Kismayo, doing their best to avoid
the attention of Ethiopian tanks.
Ethiopia won in short order because it unapologetically used
force against vicious people who understand only force. They killed the
people they needed to kill without worrying overmuch about collateral damage,
and not at all about world opinion. And though the Ethiopian soldiers are
Christians, they were hailed as liberators in this overwhelmingly Moslem
country.
When, during the march on Baghdad, we unapologetically used
force in Iraq, we also had rapid success with minimal casualties. But
since the statue of Saddam fell in Firdous Square in April of 2003, we've acted
as if the war were over.
Our focus shifted to peacekeeping and nation-building,
though it's hard to be a peacekeeper when there is no peace to keep, and it's
hard to rebuild a nation when the bad guys are still out there blowing things
up.
We've become a Gulliver bound by our own politically correct
strictures. The first battle of Fallujah was called off in April of 2004
because Sunni politicians in Iraq's parliament objected. The result
was a major propaganda victory for al Qaeda, and a bloodier battle in November
of 2004.
When the Moqtada al Sadr, an Iranian puppet, staged an
uprising to coincide with the first battle of Fallujah, he was allowed to
remain free, even though he was wanted for the murder of the moderate Shia
cleric Majid al Khoie, because the leading Shia cleric, the Ayatollah Ali al
Sistani, reportedly insisted upon it.
Today, Sadr's death squads are responsible for most of the
sectarian killings in Iraq, and Sadr is considered the most powerful figure in
the country.
President Bush is expected to announce soon a temporary
"surge" in U.S. troop levels in Iraq. Troop strength is
important. But more important to success is what our troops -- who
currently must operate under very restrictive rules of engagement -- are
permitted to do.
Half measures in war typically produce half-assed
results. If the military measures we take in Iraq must first be approved
by Iraqi politicians and the editorial board of the New York Times, we will not
succeed even if we double the number of troops.
But if we remember -- as Ethiopia did -- that the surest way
to win in war is to kill the enemy, we could yet emulate Ethiopia's success.
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