Thursday, August 16, 2007

Redcoat generals deride colonial guerilla-style musket attacks as thoroughly uncivilised

Remember that lesson we were taught in elementary school--the reason the British lost the Revolutionary War was because they were used to the more civilized style of European warfare, whilst our American forefathers took advantage of every nook and cranny of the countryside and kept them off balance with cunning guerilla-style attacks? Yeah, I remember that stuff as well. Which is why it is so very odd--and unsettling--to read American commanders in Iraq saying the following:

Officials attribute the increasingly sophisticated attacks [note: talking here about house bombs, which is where troops are lured to a house, only to have it explode] to desperation on the insurgents' part after troops became too successful at finding roadside bombs and other explosives.

"It's a clear sign that they could not get to us by other means, and that's a good sign," said Lt. Col. Michael Donnelly, a spokesman for the American operation in northern Iraq, describing the pattern of house bombs in that area. "Obviously we're countering the improvised explosive devices, and force on force, they know that they can't fight us."
Once again we bear witness to the Bush Administration's penchant for insisting that the latest example of very bad news is in fact GOOD NEWS (!!!), as it demonstrates some feature of the enemy's psyche we had not previously considered. For example, the truck bombs of earlier this week, which killed some 300 people, are now considered by the Bush Administration's sycophants to be a sign of the enemy's profound weakness. Yeah, go figure.
The foreign terrorists slaughtering the innocent recognize that their only remaining hope of pulling off a come-from-way-behind win is to convince your senator and your congressman or -woman that it's politically expedient to hand a default victory to a defeated al Qaeda.
Got that? If the number of killings drops, it means we're winning. But if it goes up, it mean...we're winning. Neat logic, that.