Bill Sykes' Newsletter
from America.
(April 2003)
An ex-Brit gives his views-(without fear
or favor)---of the American Scene
A different time, a different type of war, same
place.
 The
difference in war planning for Gulf War Two is far different
from Gulf War One, in that Iraq was then the aggressor
and America could, and did, bomb Iraqi cities with impunity.
Gulf War Two is very different, in that America and Britain
are now the aggressors against Iraq and in order to avoid
the anger and opposition of World opinion, the coalition
has to be extremely careful to avoid killing thousands
of Iraqi civilians.
The backlash of the war against Iraqis is starting to
adhere to the American travelling public. It will take
many years for the people of America to be able to hold
up their heads in public and travel freely through out
the world. The President and his Administration have yet
to realise, and take notice, that a majority of the citizens
of this world are against a war with Iraq for fear that
it will ignite the whole of the Middle East and set the
Muslim population on an accelerated path to seek revenge
against the perpetrators.
Determining who is winning the war.
It would appear that the United States is once
again using a body count formula to establish who is winning
the war.
Perhaps someone should remind the Pentagon, and members
of the current administration, of what happened when Secretary
of Defence Robert S. McNamara, supported by other military
leaders of that time, (such as General William C. Westmoreland),
used a similar formula in the Vietnam War. Secretary Rumsfeld,
please do not follow the same path as your Vietnam era
predecessor as the end does not justify the means. Beware
the failures of the past before committing the same mistakes
in the future.
The post war future of Iraq.
I would suggest that the American vision, (when
the war is over and won), of a unified democratic peaceful
society in Iraq, to be a pipe dream. I foresee that  three
factions, the Kurds in the North, the Shiites in the south,
and the Sunni Arabs of central Iraq, (squashed in between
them), will be fighting each other for political supremacy.
That of course could be changed if we bear in mind the
distinct possibility of a Turkish incursion into northern
Iraq and the take over of the Kurdish controlled area
of that country.
We welcome feedback about any of the contents
of these newsletters. Please send all correspondence to
bill_sykes@huddersfield1.co.uk
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