Time to leave?

[Barry]

http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/iraq ... lout_x.htm

http://amconmag.com/

I don't think so, but some in the administration, as well as other conservatives apparently do.

[Barry]

Actually, I forgot that the American Conservative is run by the Isolationist branch of the conservatives. So they probably were against going in right from the start.

[Ralph]

It's an issue that won't go away and 21 dead Marines in less than 36 hours has a subtle but real roiling effect,

[operafan]

Aljazeera has been mentioning this since May. I thought it was perhaps a bad translation or some other miscommunication.

Just FYI, Aljazeera also thinks we 'talk' to terrorists (never say negotiate), which they say was the reason the Tunisian ambassador to Iraq was out at night without a platoon of bodyguards a few weeks ago (Tunisia as a facilatator??), and also why things have been going so badly in Faluja lately. Could be a miscommunication, they could be wrong, maybe they are right.

Is it my warped view alone that looks at a spring drawdown as just in time for mid-term election campagning?

[Lilith]

Let me pose a question: You were planning this war and you were told that the best judgment was that the American people would allow for a window of about two years of substantial troop commitment (and casualties) before tiring of this venture. Would you have taken that window?

If there are failures here, it is the failure of the President and Secretary of Defense for some godawful planning (maybe not as bad as McNamara, but almost as bad....).
I think anyone with smarts is now thinking that planning must start for serious withdrawals within 6-9 months.

[operafan]

Although I'm choking on this (I hope I'd never go to war based upon what we know now), I'll take the run up to the war as said and done. If onlys won't get us anywhere.

Here is what I would do before leaving (keep in mind that I am a liberal bleeding heart non-combatant).

1) blow up all the conventional ammo dumps (so the insurgents can't keep robbing them).
2) enforce discepline in the Iraq amy after really really training them (2 years) - no more AWOLs allowed to return from telling their buddies secrets and the American MO.
3) Spread the oil benefit (once there is one) on a per capita basis, not regional. Make it so half goes to education ( this always gets grafted so if one says 1/2, realistically 10% goes.)
4) make the mayors of all the towns responsible for; getting folks to vote, getting the schools open, getting the hospitals, electricity, water, sewage, and trash collection done, with fire and police, and we don't care if they are former Baathists (as long as they were less than generals).
5) make provisions for the orphans, illegitamate children, and the 'spoiled' women/men, the wounded and the needy
6) dispose of our hazardous waste weaponry remains
7) really close the borders.
probably a zillion other things I should think of, and everyone can point out to me.

Would even 2 more years be enough to get this done? I don't think so.

Changing a country like Iraq to democracy is not as easy as changing a country liike post WWII Germany; there were people educated in the democratic system, and though they had say a 10 year dirth of democracy, it was something they could relate to. We have different expectations of Irag, not only to change their politics, but their banking, educational system, some aspects of their religion, etc. Hard to do.

We can not go around like godzilla trampling things and leaving messes in our wake. Messes always come back to bite you or your children - the division of South/North Vietnam, the division of Germany, North/South Korea. Apartide in South Africa, actually practically all of the former colonies were messes that should have been cleaned up, not just retreated from.

[Corlyss_D]

The Buchanan wing of the Republican Party has always been against the war. Fortunately, they remain a small out of power group.

Lilith, you are right: the post war planning was abyssmal.

Operafan, you are right, about the timing of this discussion both from AC and from the general who raised the issue last week: they want to get the public thinking that troop pull out is possible for the midterms. Just as Bush wanted to get the war started after the 02 elections and the major combat operations over before the 04 elections, he wants to get some troops out of Iraq in time for the 06 elections. But as you say, ain't no way the place will be ready to vacate in 06. Besides, we could still be dickin' around with the Iranians in 06. We have to have troops there at least until the Iranian situtation is resolved. We had all these guys on the run in June 03. And then the administration began diddling around in preparation for the 04 election, and we lost the iniative. Bush was bold up to a point. Then it was like he lost interest. I can't get over how inept this bunch is in some things for how bright and ept they are in others.

Training the Iraqis is still a huge problem. People who have had 40 years - that's about 3 generations - of punishment for showing initiative are not going to have enough self-confidence for quite sometime. The ones who are will probably game the system to get ahead rather than work within the system. My buddy in the reserves told me some months ago that things were going to change dramatically in the training department because DoD had finally decided that they had to send bona fide training battalions over to train the Iraqis, they couldn't contract it out to the NATO members, even if the latter were any good at it, which they weren't. However, that was the last I heard of the initiative. His son, who is stationed near Tikrit, describes how difficult it is to get the Iraqis to "think for themselves." They don't believe it when the Americans tell them "you decide how you want to handle this" and they keep coming back to the Americans asking "what do you want us to do?" It's going to be very hard to stand these people up effectively in a few months.

[Ralph]

There's more to the issue than training Iraqis who have no history or culture of initiative and commitment to the rule of law. It's very obvious that both Iraqi military and police assets have been and are routinely infiltrated by insurgents who have paved the way for terrorists to get close to or inside facilities. The means of investigating, effectively, the background of recruits appear still to be nascent at best and incompetent in the main.

We can't just pull out but I do doubt the validity of GEN Casey's projection for a 2006 reduction in our forces.

[Corlyss_D]

Changing a country like Iraq to democracy is not as easy as changing a country liike post WWII Germany; there were people educated in the democratic system, and though they had say a 10 year dirth of democracy, it was something they could relate to.

Don't forget the "unconditional surrender" of a finally "defeated" enemy and the Germans' penchant for abject servility to conquerors. What was it Churchill (the real one) said about the hun being at your throat or at your feet? Something like that. We have not had "unconditional surrender" and we have not got a finally "defeated" enemy in Iraq. I hope for something better after the constitution (not because of its impact on Iraqis so much as for its impact on the insurgents - Zarqawi keeps saying that each milestone achieved is a stake thru the heart of militant Islam and his ambtions in particular)

We can not go around like godzilla trampling things and leaving messes in our wake. Messes always come back to bite you or your children - the division of South/North Vietnam, the division of Germany, North/South Korea. Apartide in South Africa, actually practically all of the former colonies were messes that should have been cleaned up, not just retreated from.

O, you were doin' so well with the analysis. Why this pointless naive diversion? Look, we will do whatever is in our national interest (except when Dems are in charge because the post Viet Nam Dems can't recognize national security interests if they bite them in ass). To analogize the US to a mindless monster flailing about in indecisive and heedless destruction is to deny that great powers have bidness everywhere at all times and that they do things in furtherance of their interests at the time. The fact is, those interests change constantly. One might wish that the interests were pursued more effectively, but that requires more buy-in from a public that 1) understands the facts surrounding what we are trying to do; 2) agrees with the ambtions; and 3) is willing to pay for it, in blood and treasure. That will always be iffy at best in a democracy, so the entire contraption appears to lurch from expensive failure to expensive failure. How many times have you said or heard about the Islamofacists: "Well, the US created UBL, and this is just blowback (or payback if you will) and what else could you expect?" But to give Clinton his due, who in 1995 would have been willing to take on the Islamofacists, who really represent the last battles of WW2, not the first battles of the 21st Cent? (The Nazis created these monsters, we used them fitfully but didn't exstirpate them when we were done with them, and here we are!) Not the Republicans. Not the Dems. Not me - I railed about the Somalian frolic at the time. Not you either in all likelihood.

[Barry]

Philadelphia Inquirer
Tue, Aug. 09, 2005
The courage needed to win the war

By John C. Bersia


Every time an American soldier falls in Iraq - a disturbingly frequent occurrence in recent days - concerned minds should ask: How much longer will the Bush administration persist with the fiction that the United States and its allies have sufficient military capabilities to end a conflict that now stretches into its third year?

Indeed, how can U.S. officials even dare propose a substantial withdrawal of American troops from Iraq in 2006?

Talk of a drawdown would seem plausible in the face of victory. Such talk now inspires little confidence and may virtually guarantee more bloodshed. If I were an insurgent in Iraq, I would see opportunity in all directions.

Now, no one should expect to intervene in another country without fatalities. But the U.S. government should not have to stretch and contort its messages for Americans to understand that the sacrifice of their family members and other loved one serves the national interest.

As Iraq developed into a major front in the war against terrorism, the United States needed to retain troops there until the new Iraqi government was capable of defending itself. But we have not yet arrived at that point, nor can we hope to reach it by this time next year - unless we and our allies, especially in NATO, manage to dispatch enough troops, an additional 100,000 or more, to lock down Iraq from end to end. I am talking about the kind of lockdown that should have happened early in the intervention, one that would allow the rounding up of disruptive parties, confiscation of weapons, sealing of borders, and other necessary steps.

Otherwise, Americans will continue to witness horrific hemorrhaging that, with each passing week, will stiffen their opposition to the intervention and induce them to press for premature withdrawal.

If the Bush administration has no intention of gathering enough troops to complete the task, it might as well pull out the ones currently deployed and let Iraq slide down the tubes into chaos this year rather than next.

But that would not serve the best interests of Americans, Iraqis, Europeans and others who stand to gain immeasurably from a secure and democratic Iraq. If we wish to deliver a safer world to our children and grandchildren, eliminating the roots of extremism in places such as Iraq is critical. If we leave Iraq and kindred problem areas to the manipulation of diabolical misfits, their troubles eventually will drift to America, and our current casualties will appear small by comparison.

Every new American casualty in Iraq tells us that the current strategy is not working. Our troops have known that for some time. The insurgents know it. So does the Iraqi population and anyone else who has examined the crisis in an objective manner.

The United States has three clear choices: the status quo, which would allow the insurgents to sap the mission's remaining stamina; withdrawal, which would doom Iraq to relentless turmoil; or decisive action, which would finish the job properly. The last option is the only one that would serve long-term U.S. interests, while offering relief from what has become, for many Americans, the most painful and dubious phase of the intervention.


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John C. Bersia (jbersia@orlandosentinel.com) is a writer for the Orlando Sentinel and a special assistant to the President on global affairs.