Originally posted by Stringer
Confuse who with Facts??
Rumsfield??...the person who couldn't admit the actual situation in Iraq??
Are you of the opinion that the handling of the occupation to this point has been succesful?
What is your plan for success, Mav? More troops, less troops, pull-out, indefinite stay, at what cost in Billions do we say the investment didn't work or is working? At some point, there has to be recognition of an ACHIEVABLE goal, because if there isn't you have meandering (the current situation).
What do you think, now, is a realistic, ACHIEVABLE goal for the US in Iraq. Not for the Iraqi's, because deep down, none of us give two ****s for them, but for the US.
You do realize we had Saddam's arse contained after the first gulf war, and that was better than what we have now.
First off there isn't any chance of swaying your opinion in any case on any of these points so I'm not going to spend much time doing so. I'll just try to respond to the "reasonable" parts of your post.
My point is this, election "mandate" or whatever the incoming power party will call it does not have to match reality on the streets of Iraq. If they don't hear what they like they should at least listen to it and then perhaps revise their "lectoral mandate" opinions rather than full speed ahead with the "mandate". Reality should always trump preconceived opinions wehn they clash.
As to the strategy, hell there are far better military minds than mine that have been unable to crack the non conventional warfare nut. The options are fairly straight forward, either fight the insurgent war with a conventional force by meeting force on force when possible or failing that simply react the best you can in a wear one side down to the end format. BTW that is the insurgent strategy of choice in any combat with the US at this time since Viet Nam proved it's efficacy. The real battle never was on the ground there, it was always in the media and public relations area in the US. The same holds true today (IMO).
Another "strategy" with a conventional force is to simply raze everything. Not too good for nation building ya know. It also has a tendency to make us less than welcome in other places.
A third option is to use unconventional force against another unconventional force. It's a bit difficult to set up but may have better specific targetting oportunities. This is where you can blend the conventional force "hammer" with the unconventional trigger. Somewhat similar to what is going on in Afghanistan. Please note that again according to the media there is no victory in sight there either.
The other strategy and the one that seems to have been selected in Iraq was to fight option one while setting up the "home team" to take it over later on. It really didn't work in Viet Nam and I'm not sure (IMO no one else knows either) it will work oin Iraq. "Nation building" with it's encumbant infrastructure has to happen first before the "organic" forces are ready to take over. In the case of a "civil war" situation it's got major problems.
Given the situation we have in that region where they have been fighting among themselves for centuries it's hard to think a unified "popular" govt. will be able to handle the region / country.
What I do know is that a fixed, anounced timetable is just setting the date for the loss of the entire conflict. All the oposition has to do is simply hold back and wait until we leave, knowing there won't be any interest on the part of the US public to go back, before they move in and finsh the job.
Will Iraq as a country survive? Possibly but it will likely be another sectarian regime. Will it self divide? I don't think so as there aren't enough evenly matched factions to be able to stake out and hold a specific territory similar to a warloard scenario.
What is my idea of how the whole thing could have been handled? I favor a method that is against our laws. It would, IMO have worked the best but it wouldn't be possible for our govt. to do it legally, by our laws. That would have been a coup with our help setting up an interim govt. with someone who would be willing to step down oince an open election was held. Likely? Who the hell knows. Cheap compared to what we have now? You bet it would be in both money and more importantly, lives. Even during GW2's major combat we could have had our "puppet" ready to take over as long as it would be an Iraqi who had some military and political connection. Kind of hard given saddumbs handling of the country. His opposition had a tendency to discorporate.
Of course "my" method would have made us much like an earlier euro power setting up a quisling to run the country in the mean time. It kind of grates on the country's ideals much less laws. While it would have certain advantages I have to say even I couldn't and wouldn't endorse it.
Given the situation we have now there are limited options. I won't go into the justification or reasons for being there save it was purely in our country's self interest. We did not, and do not want a unified arab world as long as we and the rest of the globe are dependant on oil.
Our options are:
Simply bring everyone back right now as fast as secure transport can be arrainged.
Ramp up the force and pressure on the insurgents accepting the cost both in lives and $.
Maintain the force level and bring up the Iraqi forces to speed (assuming we have a way to screen out insurgent sympathizers better than we ahve been. Impossible task that it is.)
What I do know is that option 1 is a guaranteed loser with an unstable Iraq and a possible opening for Iran or another "interested" country to take it over.
Options 2 and 3 are both unpleasant, but in the future of the US, I believe better options than #1. This is based on an understanding of the US remaining a global power, active in the commerce and politics of the world with respect to the country's self interests rather than a pure isolationist state and withdrawing. Frankly given the need to maintain our current technological levels I don't see any isolationist policy being successful for any industrialized country much less the US.
This was far more time than I had intended to put into it but given our previous squad relationship I felt it was proper to respond assuming you really wanted to have a discussion. (Rather unusual on this BBS anyhow)
