Go Big. Will be seen in Iraq, and the region, as colonialism. A new crusade. It will again swell the numbers of insurgents. Go Big is what they should have done at the very beginning. Compare it to the British and American war leadership styles of WWII. British tried to reduce casualties as a priority battle by battle (Monty). American thought was to fight big to end the war faster as a way to reduce overall casualties (Patton and Ike). We already missed our opportunity to Go Big and be successful at it.
Go Long. That's where we are now, and politicians will be loath to stretch the war out even longer due to voter response of last election. More advisors and redeploying troops (within Iraq) to cover the borders (Jordan, Syria, Iran...) as well as some nodal points in the country where U.S. rapid response teams can deploy from to help Iraqi forces when called upon may be the best bet from a losing hand. Try to stave off flow of foreign money, terrorists, supplies. Still plenty of resources in Iraq to continue insurgency though.
Go Home. Civil War. Whole region brought into the fight as Sunni and *****es fight jihad. Oil supplies disrupted. Gallon of gas in the U.S. going for $6 a gallon... or more. World crashes into economic depression.
We turned Afghanistan over to NATO, whose member nations restrict their forces use, and the Taliban and terrorsits grow stronger and more active. We fail to chase down terrorists in Pakistan. We fail to chase terrorists to Indonesia from Afghanistan. We fail to seriously develop alternate fuel and energy to put the United States interests out of that region completely.
The Iraq War will be seen as an example of how to screw up by the numbers 30 years from now. Win the war, lose the peace.
1. - Not enough troops at the beginning: we won the war, but lost the peace. Unable to secure the ground from looters or enforce even martial law until a government could be stood up. They tried to do it on the cheap, and touting high tech solutions. Low tech war in urban environments requires boots on the ground.... lot's of them.
2. - Firing 400,000 Iraq military personel from the beginning. That's 400,000 soldiers, sailors, and airmen that found themselves unemployed, trained to be professional thugs and bullies, and knew where most of the ordanace was buried. Those that did not become insurgents or part of armed militias turned to organized crime all across the country stealing, raiding, extorting and kidnapping everywhere.
Gen Patton would not have made this mistake in post WWII Germany. MacArthur neither in Japan. It took the U.S. State Department to mess this up, and the Generals should be fired for allowing to happen. They certainly should know enough history to have made a better decision.
IMHO, the Biggest Blunder of the whole war. Should have kept them on payrole, shuffled their leadership around, and locked them down on their bases until they could be retrained.
3. - Forcing democracy in that region totally ignores that region's history and ethnic realities. They don't see themsleves as Iraqis... they are Kurds, Sunni, *****es, Turkomen.... their borders created by a shrinking British Empire. Loyalty is to the Clan, their family, their religion..... all before they look at national loyalties. That is the oldest of the old world there. Some people there actually remember Alexander the Great fondly, and would like to see the return of such a ruler. Strong one-man rule is the ideal. The Byzantine Empire, the Ottoman Empire, modern day Saudi Arabia. They look for kings and emperors..... not corrupt elected officials.
We'd have been better off installing a dynastic ruling family along side an parliment with a royal house and a elected common house. Or a dictatorship. Putting in a republic form a government similar to our own was vanity on our part. It does not work well there with so many ethnic and religious tensions and power grabs.
Too many mistakes over too long a period of time. There is no right answer now..... just varying degrees of failure and disaster to be courted. Snatching defeat from the jaws of victory becoming a tradition in this country.
