America s Scorched Earth Management

With regard to Gaza, Israel had engaged in a scorched earth policy.

As a result of the Army's scorched earth tactics in the countryside, more than 45,000 Guatemalans fled across the border to Mexico.

President Vladimir Putin undertook a scorched earth policy in Chechnya, driving many Chechen nationalists straight into the extremists arms.

However his soldiers were already running short of food and its destruction denied him a useful supply base, adding to the logistics problems caused later by the Russian scorched earth tactics.

So, when an ideologically implacable Republican opposition, in his very first days in office, threw the vision back in his face, adopting a policy of scorched earth opposition, the rejection was about more than policy it affected his very being.

In Guatemala, the central government controlled by a oligarchy of European decent was waging a scorched Earth campaign against an indigenous rebellion, and I saw an image that reflected the history of Latin America conquest through a combination of the Bible and the sword.

What strikes me more now, more than the dismembered and burned corpses I saw two nights ago, more than the intensity of the missiles hitting all around us last night and the feeling that at any moment, Israeli special forces soldiers could enter shooting was the panic on residents faces. Panic fleeing, panic trying to flag an ambulance for the wounded, the dead, panic even in the ambulance drivers and teams.