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I have a friend who books guests for TV talk shows at a major studio in midtown Manhattan. She likes, she claims, to seek out unusual personalities who might have something new or original or interesting to contribute; not the usual “Wieners”. But who, I asked innocently, are the Wieners? Well, she said, if you look out of my window and down to the street corner you will see a food cart. I looked. Like many corners in midtown Manhattan there stood a trolley cart. They are a common fixture in New York City. They arrive early each morning and are taken away each evening loaded on a truck. During the day they serve a variety of fast food. New Yorkers wait patiently in lines to order from them, among other things, Wieners, which are hot dog look-alikes but more tasty than the usual variety. But my friend’s Wieners are not spicy sausages, they are the perennial would-be celebrities who are desperate to be invited to glow before the TV cameras. My friend says they are so anxious to appear that they hover outside the TV studios by the wiener stand awaiting the magic call, thus their nickname: Wieners.

One problem with the current war is the excess of ex-military Wieners filling the TV screens, with retired General this and retired Admiral that, former Supreme Commander so and so, and former Secretary of Defense what’s his name and all with their maps, pointers and ever flapping mouths. Once upon a time there was a useful phrase about “loose lips sinking ships”. It was aimed at those who talked too much in war time, inadvertently revealed battle plans to the enemy, thereby putting lives at risk. But for months now every former retired this and that in the U.S. military has been holding forth endlessly on every possible scenario, plan, weapon, unit strength, and technological advantage that would be used in a new Gulf War. Did they forget that the wily old fox of Baghdad and his Generals would be watching? Did General this, and Admiral that, think for a second about what conclusions Saddam Hussein might draw from all their blabber, or that he would be dumb and stupid enough to fight the war the Americans expected him to fight; which is to say not to fight at all but to surrender, or be intimidated by a massive “son et Lumiere” show over Baghdad, or be overthrown by a popular pro-American uprising, which of course the “embedded” members of the international press at the million dollar Hollywood designed media facility in Doha, Qatar, would then convey triumphantly to a waiting world?

But no such luck. The ex-military “talking heads” on television forgot that understanding what is in the mind of the enemy is the central lesson all great generals know and practice, from the Emperor Hadrian to the Duke of Wellington to General Patton. And they forgot that the weak do not fight the battle of the strong. Instead they fight as best they can - by surprise, by stealth, and with the ugly finality of those who have no way out. The question they forgot to ask was what Saddam Hussein might do to counter the American plans vociferously described to him every night on television ad nauseam. He and his generals did not need a military intelligence service; they just needed a satellite TV link up. Did the former U.S. Generals expect the Iraqis to conveniently sit and wait around for superior air power to target and destroy them? Did they not think Saddam loyalists might turn to irregular guerrilla attacks, or fade and emerge from among the civilian population when an opportunity to strike the enemy presented itself.

Such tactics after all have been used against superior forces at least as long ago as the Peninsular War of 1808-1814, though in fact they were developed much earlier in the Northeast of Brazil during the mid 17th Century by the Pernambucans in their revolt against the Dutch; then let us not forget, a dominant world power which was unilateralist, evangelical in its Protestantism, confident of its superior values, weapons and technology, and contemptuous of the mixed race “natives” who unexpectedly resisted the “modernity” the Dutch thrust upon them. The ex-military experts also forgot that however brutal and totalitarian a leader might be, once attacked by a foreigner even the most hated tyrant can at times aggregate to himself the powerful mantel of nationalism. Stalin, one of Saddam Hussein’s heroes, demonstrated this truth in the heroic defense of Stalingrad. And in Germany, as Hitler prepared to commit suicide in his bunker, the remnants of the German army which had sought not so long before to remove him, still defended Berlin block by block and house by house.

Saddam Hussein we know will sacrifice his own people without compunction. But as the decisive battle for Baghdad fast approaches, the TV Generals should take a rest. No one has to appear on television. It is a voluntary act. Only time will tell if the Iraqis are prepared to die for Saddam; whether weapons of mass destruction exist in Iraq and if at some apocalyptic and desperate moment they are, God forbid, actually used; or if, as the neoconservative ideologues in Washington who pushed for this grotesque and unnecessary war firmly believe, the Iraqis will welcome the U.S. and British forces as liberators once Saddam is disposed of. But in the meantime the Wieners would do well to curb their babble before their loose talk puts more brave young lives at risk on the sandy roadsides of Iraq or in the mean back streets of Baghdad.