Mali’s army needs to be almost completely reformed

(MORE: Gaddafi’s gift to Mali—civil war.)

“Mali’s army needs to be almost completely reformed,” says

Andrew Lebovich, a researcher on North African and Sahel

affairs, based in Washington. “For years, parts of the army

existed as a kind of patronage institution. Now some of the

best-trained and equipped segments of the military”—loyal

to the previous civilian government—”have been effectively

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disbanded.”

Even if ECOWAS and Bamako launch an offensive, it’s hardly

guaranteed to succeed. They’re up against experienced, hard

-bitten fighters, used to maneuvering and slipping away in

the Sahel’s terrain. “If the military skill set and

political willpower is there,” says Gregory Mann, Mali

expert and professor of history at Columbia University, “I

imagine it would not be enormously difficult to remove these

Islamist fighters from urban centers like Timbuktu and Gao.”

What happens thereafter is a different matter, with the

increased likelihood of al-Qaeda-backed actions in West

African capitals. “A kind of urban guerrilla terrorism could

emerge that we haven’t seen before in this region,” says

Mann.

In another scenario, the ICG warns of the risk of ethnic and

communal bloodletting:

In a worst-case scenario, chaos would break loose in Bamako,

triggering the redeployment of the army, possibly led by even

more radical commanders; the buffer zone between north and

south would become the theatre of clashes between communal

militias and armed Islamist groups; and atrocities would be

committed against civilians. Another collapse of the state in

Bamako would spread unrest throughout the country, as the

regular army would be just as uncontrollable as the rebel

militias and groups in the north.


the views of Young's life

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Throughout, the film interweaves congressional action on that resolution with the views of Young's life that followed from its passage. The complicating result, in two timelines, is that Body of War is at least as much about politics, indeed about history, as it is about Young's physical and emotional travails. Mercilessly, the film flaunts quotation after quotation from congressional speeches in that debate--missing no chance to cite parrotings of White House phrases--and intersperses all this with scenes of Young's life since his return. Some of the senators and congressmen who objected to the resolution are also seen in that 2002 debate, but the soundtrack rings with "Aye" after each of the proponents.
We see Young's marriage--the groom in a wheelchair--and his married life, with his mother much present and helpful. (We rarely see his stepfather, who, oddly enough, is almost a cartoon of a satisfied gung-ho type.) The difficulties of the newlyweds' sex life are discussed in detail by Young. But despite those details, sex is not mentioned when, after a time, the couple separate. Young, an intelligent, aware, unillusioned man, is now active--as far as that word can apply--in movements against the war.
Thus the film's intent is to braid two historical elements: political action to start a war and some of the less publicized results. The theme is realized quite simply at the end, when Young visits Senator Byrd in his office and the old senator says that the proudest moment in his public life is his vote against that resolution. The film's last shot is of the two men moving down a grand hall away from us, Byrd walking, Young wheeling along next to him. There is no originality in either segment of the theme: unfortunately, they are constants. But the cinematic intertwining gives them special size and ache.

their commanders to engage in wanton

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"Especially in the heat of combat," Faust writes, soldiers "could seem almost possessed by the urge to kill." Small wonder that historians have used the terms "brutal," "cruel," "merciless," and "ruthless" to characterize the Civil War. But was it really that bad? This is the question Mark E. Neely Jr. asks us to ponder in his interesting yet rather tendentious book. Neely believes that historians, almost without exception, have taken the war out of historical context and sensationalized its human costs, effectively equating battle tolls with the nature of the fighting. Without denying or making light of the casualties and suffering inflicted by civil warfare, he is nonetheless impressed by the relative restraint exercised on both sides: more specifically, by the reluctance of Union and Confederate soldiers and their commanders to engage in wanton destruction or commit atrocities.
To make his case, Neely compares the character of the fighting during the Civil War with other military engagements of the time, while also taking us to episodes during the war itself when the prospects for ruthlessness and brutality seemed most auspicious. He begins with the Mexican-American War, which has been attracting much-needed scholarly attention these days, and shows that American soldiers, especially the volunteers, engaged in such widespread and heinous depredations that their own officers bitterly denounced them. "Our militia & volunteers," General Winfield Scott told the secretary of war in early 1847, "have committed atrocities--horrors--in Mexico, sufficient to make Heaven weep, & make every American of Christian morals blush for his country. Murder, robbery, & rape on mothers & daughters, in the presence of the tied up males of the family, have been common all along the Rio Grande."