Friday, November 14, 2003

Names Have Meaning

The latest campaign against hostile forces in Iraqi has been dubbed "Operation Iron Hammer". This name was obviously chosen to make the American people feel that the military is taking firm control of the situation in Iraqi. This is understandable since the administration feels that tough steps need to be taken about the guerrillas that have been attacking coalition forces, but with a name like this I feel that we are only going to be alienating the common Iraqi citizen and turn them against us. We have to remember that we managed to alienate the common citizen in Vietnam and look what happened to us in the long run there. To help us in the long run in Iraqi we need to win the trust of the people, not fill them with fear and make them want us to leave. There is an old saying, you can attract more flies with honey than with vinegar.

History ... is, indeed, little more than the register of the crimes, follies, and misfortunes of mankind.
But what experience and history teach is this—that peoples and governments have never learned anything from history, or acted on principles deduced from it. Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770–1831)