WRONG AGAIN
Remember the Gulf War? We were headed for trouble, the experts said. The Iraqis were dug in, behind miles of barbed wire, minefields and trenches filled with flammable oil. Behind the front lines were the Republican Guards: hardened Desert Warriors, battle-wise veterans of the conflict with Iran. They had more tanks, more artillery, and more fanatical devotion to their leader than we did. We might win, the pundits said doubtfully, but we’d have to take massive casualties to do it, and it was doubtful that America had the stomach for it. As for the air war, the experts said, you couldn’t win a war from the air. Everybody knew that. We could bomb from now till the cows came home, and the Iraqis would still be there, ready, willing and able to send American boys home in body bags.
The experts were wrong. After days of being pounded from the air, the Iraqi military was so shattered that they were just looking for someone to surrender to. Some even attempted to surrender to low-flying helicopters. As for the Republican Guard, they ran like cockroaches. The ones that attempted to make a stand, at places like the line known as 33 Easting, were cut to shreds.
Remember Panama? The experts said that it was crazy to send in troops to arrest one man. It would be impossible, they said, to find him.
The experts were wrong. Manuel Noriega was chased to the papal embassy in Panama City, where he was surrounded and subjected to a constant barrage of ear-splitting rock and roll until he surrendered. He’s rotting in an American prison even as we speak.
Remember Kosovo? There was no way, the experts said, that bombing would force Serbian thug Slobodan Milosevic to release his hold on Kosovo. The Serb tanks were too well hidden. The ground forces performing "ethnic cleansing" were impervious to attack from the air. The NATO air offensive would never work.
The experts were wrong. When NATO planes started hitting targets in Serbia and Central Belgrade (including, some say, factories owned by Milosevic’s wife), the Serbs abruptly announced that they were puling out.
In the war in Afghanistan, the experts weighed in again. The Northern Alliance was too disorganized, they said, to prevail against the Taliban. They were too fractious, too prone to fall apart along their own ethnic fault lines. An American air war against the Taliban was useless, due to the shortage of centralized command and control and their fanatical devotion to the cause of dying for Allah. Even if, by some fluke, the Northern alliance could advance against Taliban lines, they could never take Kabul. If they took it, they couldn’t hold it. The hatred the ethnic Pashtuns felt for the tribes that made up the Alliance, and the Alliance’s previous track record of bloodshed in Kabul, would lead to a disastrous bloodbath. Even George Dubbya practically begged our own allies not to press their advantage and fight their way into Kabul.
Wrong again. After American and British planes took command of the skies over Afghanistan and began pounding the Taliban positions (aided by American and British Special Forces guiding them from the ground), the defensive lines around Mazar i Sharif and Kabul shattered under the first firm blow. The Taliban and al-Quaeda troops ran, and they didn’t stop till they got to Kandahar. Once they got there, they found some of their own tribesmen turning on them (backing a winner, even against the people you were allied with yesterday, is apparently a time-honored tradition in Afghanistan). The Alliance troops rolled into Kabul simply because there was no one in their way to stop them. Further, they were hailed as liberators by people who danced, played music that had previously been banned by the Taliban, and shaved off their long state-mandated beards.
All of this begs the question: why do we keep seeing these same experts trotted out again and again? Who hires these people? Why do these people keep getting paid? And, most importantly, if these people can get on TV as experts without really knowing squat about what they’re talking about, why not your Humble Columnist? I mean, I can be wrong just as often as these people can, and I bet that I’ll probably be able to do it for less money. I know I’m not all that photogenic, but have you seen some of the people on CNN lately? After they gave that Greta Van Susteren her own show, I think we can all agree that the Homely Barrier is down for good.
So help me out here, loyal readers. Write to the networks and urge them to keep hiring the clueless. My time has come.
Dusty Rhoades lives in Carthage, practices law in Aberdeen, and if he gets hired by the network, he promises to send you all a postcard.
OUR GRACIOUS HOST (BOOKS-N-BYTES)
COPYRIGHT 2001 BY JERRY D. RHOADES, JR.