By way of Jonathan Swifts’ ”A Modest Proposal”: The key to a U.S. victory in the Middle East and South Asia is in a word: genocide.

The oft-repeated comparison performed by the Anglo-American punditry with the ”one counterinsurgency success” - the British in Malaysia in the post war 1940's - is completely inappropriate. There is a need to examine the actual histories of these campaigns. To put it bluntly, the U.S. would have to commit a genocide to ”win” in the Middle East and South Asia.

In Malaysia the British could use their tried and true ”divide and conquer” racial policies to drive a wedge between the largely ethnic Chinese guerrillas and the ethnic Malay population. No politically and militarily costly - not to mention morally reprehensible - ”drain the swamp” tactics were required - in contrast to the concurrent campaign against Kenya’s’ Mau-Maus, where the British did have to ”drain the swamp”, rounding up civilian supporters into gruesome concentration camps, Nazi-style. (The Nazis themselves, of course, faced a huge, Europe-wide ”swamp problem” in the massive Partisan resistance, but a genocidal ”will to power” does not make up for lack of military manpower to carry it out).

The U.S. attempted extensive ”swamp clearing” in South Vietnam, of course, but the problem was that the ”swamp” - i.e. the war against the U.S. - extended beyond South Vietnam to all of Indochina. The U.S. would have had to occupy all of Indochina and drain the entire ”swamp”.

So, quite unlike Malaysia, Iraqs’ Shia, Kurdish and Sunni militias are quite indigenous to their supporting populations - they are indeed defined by their ethno-religious identities, are they not? A massive displacement of the supporting ”swamp” would have to be carried out, well beyond Fallujah (And the fighting still continues there). In a much too conveniently overlooked point, Iraq is like Vietnam in that it is just one battlefield ”for” a larger region, though unlike Indochina a much larger region: the entire Middle East AND South Asia up to India! To ”win” the U.S. would have to spread the conflict in just the way that Bush/Cheney and their ”neocons” wanted to do in the first place: to Syria, Lebanon and Iran, at least.

Finally there is this interesting point of difference compared to both Vietnam and Malaysia (and Kenya): in the Middle East and South Asia, the ”swamp” is mostly urban (including ’villages’), not jungle. As we have seen so often in the Middle East, such close physical proximity binds the population very tightly and intensely to its’ fighters. This urban proximity also facilitates rapid ”fighter replacement” in combat. Far from having to kill/round up into concentration camps a dispersed population, the US would have to destroy/clear the urban areas, ironically dispersing the remaining population. Since there is very little cover in the countryside outside of riverine marshlands (Mesopotamia) or bare mountains (Kurdistan, Afghanistan) to dig into, much of this population will be dispersed to to other regions if it is not rounded up and locked down in the now-ruined conurbations, converting these into the concentration camps, Fallujah or Gaza-style. This dispersal is already happening with hundreds of thousands of Iraqis having fled to Syria, Jordan and even Saudi Arabia. This ”uncontrolled” population will only fan the anti-U.S. flames, as we’ve seen with Israels’ assault on Lebanon, whose chief failing is that of the U.S. itself: its lack of a ”will to genocide”. However, this particular character of the war will require that the genocide necessary for a real U.S. victory be spread to most of the region. Although the U.S. (and Israel) certainly have the nuclear arsenals to accomplish this very quickly, there is the small problem of massive residual radiation. The only alternative would be a drastic increase in U.S. ground forces. Unlike the Nazis, the U.S. would have the advantage of not having their army tied down in combat with huge conventional forces (the Soviet Union, the British Empire), which prevented the Nazis from ”properly” dealing with the partisan resistence (a measure of this would be Tito’s Yugoslav Partisans, who managed to tie down some 20+ Italian and German divisions and still remained undefeated). A million, say, U.S. troops could really focus on the task at hand - conquest of the region and subjugation of its population.

One could imagine GW Bush as a sort of anti-Benjamin Franklin emergent from his very own anti-Constitutional Convention, replying to the question, ”What have we, a monarchy or a republic?” with ”An Empire, madam, if you can keep it”.

Happily, the American people lack the "constitutional fiber" for such a ghastly slaughter - they’d rather go shopping. Shopping at Wallmart is much cheaper. So it is doubtful that they will be keeping Mr. Bushs' would be "Empire".