Here's some snippets from President Bush's speech on a new Iraq strategy this evening:
The consequence of failure:
The consequences of failure are clear: Radical Islamic extremists would grow in strength and gain new recruits. They would be in a better position to topple moderate governments, create chaos in the region, and use oil revenues to fund their ambitions. Iran would be emboldened in its pursuit of nuclear weapons. Our enemies would have a safe haven from which to plan and launch attacks on the American people...
The cause of failure:
There were not enough Iraqi and American troops to secure neighborhoods that had been cleared of terrorists and insurgents. And there were too many restrictions on the troops we did have.
The new security arrangement:
The Iraqi government will deploy Iraqi Army and National Police brigades across Baghdad's nine districts. When these forces are fully deployed, there will be 18 Iraqi Army and National Police brigades committed to this effort - along with local police. These Iraqi forces will operate from local police stations - conducting patrols, setting up checkpoints, and going door-to-door to gain the trust of Baghdad residents. ...this will require increasing American force levels.
The intended result:
...over time, we can expect to see Iraqi troops chasing down murderers, fewer brazen acts of terror, and growing trust and cooperation from Baghdad's residents. When this happens, daily life will improve, Iraqis will gain confidence in their leaders, and the government will have the breathing space it needs to make progress in other critical areas. Most of Iraq's Sunni and Shia want to live together in peace - and reducing the violence in Baghdad will help make reconciliation possible.
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The President's Iraq plan assumes that there is a cogent, non-sectarian, uncorrupted Iraqi national government to partner with. I propose that this is an illusion, laid bare by Saddam's mob-like execution at the hands of revenging Shi'a. There is no real national government in Iraq that represents all the factions. I don't believe it is possible at this hour.
We're pouring 20,000 more of our forces to go "door-to-door to gain the trust of Baghdad residents". Translation: We're going to unwittingly assist one side of this sectarian conflict suppress the other. We will be taking sides in a conflict that goes back more than a millennium.
It has become inordinately difficult to see how our token force of 20,000 additional troops embedded in Iraq's sectarian war will turn the tide in the Global War on Terror.
I supported this war because I felt it was a gamble worth taking, given the data we had at the time regarding Saddam's WMD programs. But through deception from many sides, error, misjudgment, incompetence, stupidity, naivete, over-exuberance and bad luck, the gamble failed. 20,000 troops in 2007 is 20,000 troops too late.
Perhaps some will think this is an overarching strategy to beef-up forces in the region pending engaging the Iranians. If we need to do that, we need to consider how taking sides in a pointless sectarian war in Iraq now is going to strengthen our resolve in dealing with Iran later. Here's a hint: It won't. It will sap us. The pointlessness of the exercise will be self-fulfilling.
Hell, I'm no military strategist. I don't have a specific strategy in mind to secure even a limited defeat, short of withdrawal. But I think the President's calling for 20,000 troops at this stage of the conflict is not serious. You and I -- private citizens not in uniform -- are asked to do nothing but fret. The sacrifice expected of us is, once again, minimal.
Enjoy your iPhones.
Yep. More of the same, only faster.
Or perhaps this is a tipping point.
The worst case is we fail and have to go back in 10 years with 1.5 million troops and carpet bomb large areas of the ME into dust and blood and suffer 250,000 dead and wounded ourselves with 2.5 million civilian casualties.
Even then, it may not end.
Hey, it's the ME. So biblical.
Wrath of god and all that.
Have a nice day.
When this happens, daily life will improve, Iraqis will gain confidence in their leaders, and the government will have the breathing space it needs to make progress in other critical areas.
Iraqis had that breathing space long ago before their insurgency got as bad as it is.
Saddam Hussein in prison had time on his hands - enough breathing space to breathing space to turn to Jesus or become an enlightened Buddhist sage, if he had wanted to. But he didn't seem to want to.
Thus too for the culture and the country that produced and sustained Saddam.
We keep pouring resources at our enemies, on the theory that this will give them more opportunity to do what we want them to do. But they keep doing what they want to.
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Are we going to cordon off neighborhoods and prevent the death squad guys getting in? How, when they are already in the neighborhoods because they are from the neighborhoods?
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"We're pouring 20,000 more of our forces to go "door-to-door to gain the trust of Baghdad residents". Translation: We're going to unwittingly assist one side of this sectarian conflict suppress the other. We will be taking sides in a conflict that goes back more than a millennium."
About four out of five Iraqis are inclined to blame America for anything and everything, including making the security situation worse, and they want the Americans out of their country within a year. About three out of five, and growing approve, of terror attacks on the Americans, and among Sunnis that's about ten out of ten. And that was with Donald Rumsfeld's justifiably cautious "light footprint".
In view of that, I thought the translation of "We're pouring 20,000 more of our forces to go "door-to-door to gain the trust of Baghdad residents" was, "we're going to pour more American blood down the gullet of a beast."
But your translation will serve too.
Not as bad as that. OF COURSE we are picking winners. It's smart. Westhawk has advocated a strategy like that for some time.
Pick the winner; but allow the loser the ability to retreat to various sectarian-safe enclaves. Distribute enough oil money around. Play off Tehran and Riyadh.
This ain't perfect, but a lot better than losing to bin Laden and Ahmadnutjob.
"Thus too for the culture and the country that produced and sustained Saddam."
Oh give me a break. And german culture produced Hitler.
Look, you take a conservative Ottoman culture, that needs to be modernized, in which Sunnis are traditional rulers, you carve out a state that has a Sunni minority and Shia majority, and give it an orthodox Sunni royal family, and a Kurdish minority, at just the time when most of the few modernizers in the region are focusing on pan-Arab nationalism rather than state nationalism, and youve got a formula for trouble. As long as most people were rural types who followed their sheiks, and the old style king could cut deals with the old style sheiks, and pan-Arabism was still relatively weak, the kings could hold it together. Then add oil, which is the curse of every 3rd world oil exporter, add largescale urbanization creating a dissaffected shia underclass leaning Communist, and you get the Arab nationalist examples of Egypt and Syria, and its not surprising that you get a coup by arab nationalist army officers, and you get a Saddam Hussein.
Who then proceeded to brutalize all Iraqis EXCEPT for the Sunni Arabs (and of course even a few of them as well) To blame the Iraqi people for Saddam is too much.
There are many good things in President George W. Bush's speech.
The main one is: he wants to win and he is serious about doing what it takes to achieve that.
I think it's not going to work, because a requisite is lacking, namely friendlies.
His attitude is still a good and necessary one, and that kind of optimism and toughness would be all the more necessary after defeat in Iraq because the global jihad wars will go on regardless.
Another good thing is the change in rules of engagement, and the recognition that the old rules were too restrictive. This will do some good in Iraq, and it will be needed as a key part of altered military doctrine in the global jihad wars.
"Fellow citizens: The year ahead will demand more patience, sacrifice, and resolve. It can be tempting to think that America can put aside the burdens of freedom. Yet times of testing reveal the character of a nation."
The character of a man, too. The character of George W. Bush remains good. I am still an admirer.
#5 from liberalhawk: "'Thus too for the culture and the country that produced and sustained Saddam.'
Oh give me a break. And german culture produced Hitler."
We hear often about that the troubles of Iraq are because Saddam brutalized Iraq for many years. I think that's deceptive. He didn't do it alone, and the people who supported him are still there, and the cultural influences that meant a man like Saddam Hussein could get to the top and stay there are still there. Islam is a key influence, though not the only one.
It was reasonable to talk about Kuwait as a country traumatized by Saddam. He was the villain, they were the victims, and they had nothing to do with him except being his target. It's not equally reasonable to talk about Iraq as a country traumatized by Saddam. This is my point.
And yes, I would support saying the Poles were traumatized by Hitler but that it was not equally reasonable to say that the Germans were traumatized by Hitler.
I hope that ends this diversion from the topic.
"The sacrifice expected of us is, once again, minimal."
This always make me laugh when someone complains that Bush isn't asking people to make any sacrifices. The minimal sacrifice that's already been asked (roughly 1% of GDP per year and the lowest rate of casualties of any major war in our history) has already caused more than half the country to completely choke. You can only go to war with the weak dying culture that you have.