Hammering dirt bags.

Daniel J. Gallington expresses our post's title in a more refined way but basically says the same thing to the Colonel's eye.

His insightful Washington Times piece dates from September 2003 but definitely stands the test of time now we've had a chance to assess how we've been doing in Iraq.

In it he describes a more workable national war strategy than the present one. Not that we fault the President. Wars are sloppy undertakings and, as a friend recently quoted Field Marshal Helmuth von Moltke, "No battle plan survives contact with the enemy."

Major damage.

Mr. Bush's efforts in Iran have been beneficial for heralding the death of the old policies of cut and run whenever any minuscule damage is inflicted on us. They have also been salutary for their removal of a monstrous regime, their educational effects on various missing links around the world, and their inspirational effect on oppressed people.

Missing link.

However, actually occupying Iraq after getting the job done, which is to say, "regime removal," necessarily has involved us in the details of internal political maneuvering and rooting out fanatics able to blend in with a supportive native population. This being classical police work rather than infantry work, we are nevertheless committed to seeing the job through.

Mr. Gallington makes very clear that our sworn enemies "are fanatics, mostly ignorant and politically backward" and that they will use nuclear weapons if they get them. We must, he thinks, strike anywhere there are such people who have "sworn to fight us to the death" thereby leaving us no choice to do otherwise. He quotes the clueless former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright's asinine statement that "we can't just go around attacking people." Which begs the question, "When would we ever?" according to her assessment of the national interests of the U.S.

However, we should not, in most of these situations, plan to keep forces on the ground to "settle" the postcombat environment. There will prove little to be gained by such ventures; in fact, it may be to our security advantage to allow the postconflict situation in certain regions to remain in chaos for a time. . . .

If what emerges is again a threat to us, we should again take the leadership down and be prepared to repeat this whenever necessary — in other words, we should have a very low threshold for going back in and removing dangerous successor regimes.

On the other hand, if there is real promise for rational and reasonably responsible leadership, we should support it in more traditional ways, but only so long as it is prepared to behave responsibly.

Mr. Bush has chosen to be involved in the "postcombat environment" and while we like it that there are still eager jihadis being ground up by our military, it does resemble more of a tar baby enterprise which we wish had not been pursued in lieu of the "death from above/in and out" approach advocated by Mr. Gallington.

George Bush's strategy is still infinitely preferable to that of his father, who made the absurd choice to dabble in internal Iraq politics without really removing the cancer that was at the heart of the country. We read an account that Saddam got down on his knees and gave exultant thanks when informed that Bush I had halted his troops.

We did too.

We were crying.

The Gallington approach is simple and avoids situations like our current involvement.

We especially like this concluding thought:

While we cannot turn back the clock with regard to the Middle East and North Korea, the civilized world no longer can afford the time required for responsible political evolution in many inherently dangerous and unsettled regions of the world. In effect, such areas have temporarily lost their right to self-determination and status as sovereign nations. While they can get these essential tenets of statehood back, they have to first demonstrate they will behave like responsible nation-states.

Mr. Gallington calls these unconventional ideas. We wish they were policy gospel at this very moment.

Not acting to take out Iran's nuclear capability is not an option. If a few bombs land on all the Revolutionary Guard barracks in the process, that would be an unfortunate mistake.

"Exploitation of perilous hatred." By Daniel J. Gallington, Washington Times, 9/30/03.

Daniel J. Gallington is a former Deputy Asst. Secretary of Defense for Territorial Security, among other things, and now a research fellow at the Potomac Institute for Policy Studies in Arlington.

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UPDATE: Bob's comments in "The Democrats Muddled Message," Aargghhh!!!, 12/2/06, make clear that sitting on various groups of contentious ethnic groups can achieve the desire result of getting them to get along. Well, getting them to appear to get along. After all, that was what Tito was all about – quashing splittism and intercommunal strife.

Bob also graceful admits that U.S. forces are still in Bosnia-Herzogovina. John also points out that we had to sit on German and Japan for 10 years before there was a "realign[ment]" and it's a fair inference that he thinks the result was worth the effort. Which it was.

But our discretion so far as entry into those expensive, long-term endeavors was concerned was limited to nonexistent. Not so with the establishment and deployment of "Muslim Chastisement and Islam Suppression Force Command" (MUCISCOM) troops. (Darn. There. We said it!0

Coming soon to a hemisphere near you.