War by Car Bomb
Charles Johnson
Fri Oct 31, 2003 at 7:51 am PST • Views: 191
Charles Krauthammer has a very good column today on the Arab guerilla war against the US in Iraq: War by Car Bomb.
The Iraqi resistance, such as it is, is rooted in Sunni Baathists who have everything to lose if the Americans succeed. But it is precisely because they represent so small a minority that they are likely to fail, barring a collapse of American will at home.
Which is why the enemy has turned to the car bomb. The car bomb does not require a constituency. It does not require popular support. It requires only one person who knows explosives and another who is willing to drive and perhaps to die.
The car bomb is the nuclear weapon of guerrilla warfare. The 1983 car bomb attack on the Marine barracks in Beirut, killing 241 Americans, drove the United States out of Lebanon. Commemorated here on its 20th anniversary just last week, it has long been celebrated by jihadists as proof of American weakness. But there was another car bomb in Beirut in the early 1980s that was just as significant. It is now largely forgotten in the West, but well-remembered by the Arabs.
Frank says: