Drug Resistant Terrorists
As I was driving yesterday, I heard a local news story on Tuberculosis and how it's still present in Houston. Regular TB is easily treatable by a long course of antibiotics, but a new "drug resistant" TB has evolved which is leading to deaths in my city.
As TB often strikes/spreads in "difficult" populations, drug addicts, homeless, jails, very frequently, those exposed begin but don't finish the full treatment.
Over time, these partial treatments have led to a "drug resistant" form of TB. (As the treatment is not completed, the bacteria that survive develop an immunity to the drugs.)
For some reason, perhaps it was the next story on the radio, I got to thinking about the insurgency in Iraq.
In a broad metaphorical sense, the partial treatment of "not enough troops" and poor execution post invasion has created a very similar problem. After the fall of Saddam, there was very little "infection" of the type of sectarianism and civil war that we see today.
But after being allowed to survive for years, the insurgency has evolved. They have found new reservoirs of protection and support, found more effective means of attacking their host and its American immune system.
Their means of communication, their transport, their control structures, and their methods of attack have all adapted.
Within the new military leadership in Baghdad, you often hear about the new "cunning" enemy, a "thinking enemy," but really, what did they expect?
Faced with a threat, the insurgency that was not wiped out has evolved. It has developed a resistance to American methods and tactics.
Now the infection looks likely to spread, and the version that will spread will be the new version, the "American resistant" version.
By poor policy, half measures, and incompetence in Iraq, the US has evolved an enemy that it can't "cure," and, like drug resistant diseases, we will be facing that enemy we created for the foreseeable future.
Later: Came across this reposted at Juan Cole, an interesting History of US counterinsurgency efforts in Iraq that I think describes the "partial treatment" phase that allowed the insurgency to evolve.
As TB often strikes/spreads in "difficult" populations, drug addicts, homeless, jails, very frequently, those exposed begin but don't finish the full treatment.
Over time, these partial treatments have led to a "drug resistant" form of TB. (As the treatment is not completed, the bacteria that survive develop an immunity to the drugs.)
For some reason, perhaps it was the next story on the radio, I got to thinking about the insurgency in Iraq.
In a broad metaphorical sense, the partial treatment of "not enough troops" and poor execution post invasion has created a very similar problem. After the fall of Saddam, there was very little "infection" of the type of sectarianism and civil war that we see today.
But after being allowed to survive for years, the insurgency has evolved. They have found new reservoirs of protection and support, found more effective means of attacking their host and its American immune system.
Their means of communication, their transport, their control structures, and their methods of attack have all adapted.
Within the new military leadership in Baghdad, you often hear about the new "cunning" enemy, a "thinking enemy," but really, what did they expect?
Faced with a threat, the insurgency that was not wiped out has evolved. It has developed a resistance to American methods and tactics.
Now the infection looks likely to spread, and the version that will spread will be the new version, the "American resistant" version.
By poor policy, half measures, and incompetence in Iraq, the US has evolved an enemy that it can't "cure," and, like drug resistant diseases, we will be facing that enemy we created for the foreseeable future.
Later: Came across this reposted at Juan Cole, an interesting History of US counterinsurgency efforts in Iraq that I think describes the "partial treatment" phase that allowed the insurgency to evolve.
posted by mikevotes at
8:46 AM
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