im neuesten Privateer:

The Background Problem:
Since late October 2001, when the U.S. air campaign began in Afghanistan, the U.S. military has fired
about 21,000 smart weapons and missiles. The drain on the ordinance depots got so bad that the U.S.
Navy had to call on the Air Force to help out. U.S. aircraft carriers were running out of the high-tech
attachments which make even dumb bombs smart. In sum, the Afghan air campaign nearly exhausted the
“smart” weapons which make U.S. air power a precision tool. This “background” problem causes two
other problems. First, the air support for the ground fighting in Afghanistan has had to be scaled to the
available means, which means that the ground campaign cannot go any faster that the available amount of
air support. The second problem is that the full required build-up of stocks of “smarts” close to Iraq
could not take place. The strategic/logistic sum of this is that (unless the U.S. wants to gamble) U.S. air
power will not be able to GO - anywhere - until June at the earliest.
The Present Problem:
What to do between now and June?
Anybody who has paid attention to what is now going on knows the answer to that question. The Bush
Administration has shouted itself next to hoarse, yelling war cries and claiming that Israel has been given
the go ahead to fight terrorism in its own backyard, all this done simply to ensure that the American
public (as well as the rest of the world) will not lose sight of the fact that terrorism and the military
responses to terror are both terrible things. Imagine, just for a moment, what the state of American and
world public perceptions would have been if, in military terms, next to next to nothing had actually
happened. What if there had been no shoot-out in Israeli and Palestinian territory, continually escalating
since February? What if this great vacuum had lasted until June, or even later, when all the while, the
Bush crew of terrorism fighters were all yelling war and vengeance at the top of their lungs? What would
have happened is that the Bush crew in Washington would have long since looked silly, and by now they
would look increasingly deranged.
“Something” had to be done in the interval to keep at least American public attention focussed upon
terror. To achieve this, the Bush Administration let Prime Minister Sharon’s Israel off the leash.
The Interval Player:
Israel is, of course, the geo-political/geo-strategic interval player. But the effect of letting Israel off the
leash with Prime Minister Sharon sending ever larger tank-supported raids across Palestinian cities and
hamlets has been to unify politically the entire Muslim world. That can be seen from the protest rallies
outside Israeli embassies there. It can also be seen from the Muslim Summit communique, which makes a
(non Muslim) attack on one, an attack on all.
The effect of using Israel as the “interval player” to fill the time gap until the U.S. is ready to go against
Iraq has massively narrowed the U.S. geo-political corridor for its announced attack upon Iraq.
This is NOT the same situation as Mr Bush’s father faced in 1990-91. There is no chance of any kind of
“coalition” to be formed to attack Iraq. The Muslim world will not participate. Mr Blair of Britain has
been warned by his own Members of Parliament (and his army) to back off. Now, the only two nations
who stand ready and willing to attack Iraq are the U.S. and Israel.
In Israel, the call up of reserves - about 31,000 of them - has seen the economy grind to a halt. If these
reserves cannot be released back into the economy, it will die. Israel has two choices. It can “win” the
war against Palestine fast, or it can release its reserves and end up with an unending war. If Israel does
not change its policy or escalate the war, it can hold out in its present posture until the end of April. That
is too soon for the U.S.. It will not be ready to attack Iraq until June.

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