The Eternal War

Many a naive, lovesick woman has asked her suitor to protect his masculine health in order to avoid undesired pregnancy. However, the young man has usually left that protective accessory in his house, and his inclination, if consumed by the fires of passion, is not necessarily to get dressed again and run out to get it.

He could easily lose an hour in the process and register any number of disagreeable incidents. Therefore, he argues that nothing will happen in the amorous encounter, for he will barely introduce the extremity of his manhood in his lover’s body. This rarely happens, and we witness the consequences daily.

The North American military doctrine of “just the tip” finds its most illustrious example in the Vietnam War, whose promoter was President John F. Kennedy. In the beginning, the idea was to “insert the tip” by sending several CIA consultants to observe the war from the ground and give advice to the corrupt Saigon government about how to confront the North Vietnamese army. (The Vietcong guerrilla was an important but not decisive part of that war. Partisans are good at harassing the rearguard of the enemy, but only in rare occasions do they change the course of a conflict. A conventional army is needed to destroy the enemy.) Once the escalation had begun, and with Lyndon Johnson’s administration leading the conflict, the North American nation became impregnated with a war during which it would be forced to put more than half a million boots on the ground.

Now, General Martin E. Dempsey, Chief of the General Staff of the Armed Forces, has remarked that if the aerial bombings against the Islamic State’s Sunni militias turn out to be insufficient, he will recommend that President Barack Obama send soldiers to Iraq.

The United States withdrew its forces from the Arab nation in 2012, signaling that its mission had been completed. During those years, Sunnis and Shias killed each other without affecting national sovereignty. But soon, the Islamic State made spectacular advances in Syria and Iraq, announced the creation of a caliphate, and after decapitating hundreds of enemies committed a propagandistic error — it slit the throats of three Westerners: James Foley, Steven Sotloff, and David Cawthorne Haines. As Stalin said, “When one person dies, it’s a tragedy, but when a million people die, it’s a statistic.”*

Probably the first two deaths with a face and a name, Foley and Sotloff had more of an effect on American public opinion than all previous Islamic State actions. And now, as the New York Times stated in the recent title of an editorial, “The Slippery Slope Begins.”

Let’s count lies

Just a few days ago, President Barack Obama announced that the fight against the Islamic State would be carried out through aerial bombings. “As I have said before, these American forces will not have a combat mission.”

Unlike the Chavist government, which invents a new tall-tale every day, Washington, the oldest democracy in the world, has a repertoire of lies as decrepit as the planet. It just limits itself to recycling them when it becomes necessary to put old wine in a new wineskin.

From the first day in which it decided to tackle the Islamic State, Washington knew that it would resume the conflict in Iraq and extend it into Syria. To calm any anxiety, it announced that it would launch aerial bombing against Islamic State strongholds. Any military analyst knows that aerial bombings do not win wars.

But Obama is coy, and he wants to avoid a wildfire. Real conflicts are resolved with boots on the ground. During World War II, the Germans bombed British cities and the British continued fighting. Soon after, the allies bombed Dresden, leaving 135,000 German civilians like smashed pastries, and the Germans continued the fight.

The only time that an aerial bomb defined a conflict was when the United States destroyed the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki with nuclear weapons. Even though the Japanese had more dead citizens than Dresden, the reason for their surrender was the threat of additional atomic bombs.

But on this occasion, Washington does not plan to use nuclear weapons in Iraq or Syria — at least not for now. What can be done to convince a nation of the necessity to continue failing in military conflicts? General Dempsey cannot say to the American people: Our plan is to return to Iraq and send troops to Syria in order to get involved in another war.

Even though Americans generally have a fairly short memory span, it would be difficult for them to have forgotten all that occurred during the last decade. The principal lesson is that a Sunni insurgency cannot be destroyed. It is like a starfish. You cut off an arm, and it grows right back. You destroy one of their organizations, and another appears in its place, stronger and smarter.

The Islamic State is the product of a split from al-Qaida in Iraq. Its leader was Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. When Zarqawi died in a bombing by the U.S. Air Force in 2007, al-Qaida had some 10,000 guerrillas in Iraq. Transformed into the Islamic State, the new group contains between 17,000 and 30,000 combatants and is led by Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi.

Al-Qaida never tried to conquer territory. The Islamic State already possesses a caliphate; it governs various populations and it controls Mosul (the second most important city in Iraq, after Baghdad), the wells and oil refineries in Iraq and Syria and the Syrian air base of Tabqa — where it slit the throats of 250 soldiers and seized their jet fighters, tanks, artillery and munitions.

The enemy grows more formidable every day, and the military strategy of the United States is like that of a battered boxer that telegraphs his punches. But a clear mind does not decide to do something novel, or at least different. If the United States lives impregnated with wars, it is not because its citizens are war-like, but rather because of an efficient military doctrine known as “just the tip.”

Sigmund Freud said that the idea of castration was a conquest of modern civilization. Man castrates his instincts and prefers diplomacy to combat, because otherwise, he will one day destroy the planet. Perhaps some future leader will decide that even Onan’s vice is healthier than unwanted pregnancies.

*Editor’s Note: This quotation, accurately translated, could not be verified.