Posted on 07/27/2006 6:45:59 AM PDT by aculeus
July 27, 2006 -- WHEN I visited Baghdad in March, there was no civil war. There is no civil war in Iraq today. But it's beginning to look as if there might be one tomorrow.
Something vital has changed. In Baghdad. [snip]
We helped make this mess. Instead of relentlessly destroying terrorists and insurgents, we tried to wage war gently to please the media. We always let the bad guys off the ropes - and apologized when they showed the press their rope burns. We passed up repeated chances to kill Moqtada al-Sadr and break his Mahdi Army militia. We did what was easiest in the short term, not what was essential for the long term.
Now the only way to avoid an outright civil war is for our troops and the Iraqi army to break the sectarian militias in a head-on fight.
[snip]
Here's the brutal reality: If Iraq is destined to become yet another monument to Arab failure, there could be far worse outcomes than a bloody civil war - as long as our troops are out of it. We should be drawing up contingency plans to move a reinforced division and adequate airpower to the Kurdish provinces in the north, to withdraw the remainder of our forces to the south, and then to let Iraq's Sunni Arabs and Shias go at it.
(Excerpt) Read more at nypost.com ...
Ralph Peters sound worried. I thought he was a strong supporter of the war effort.
What gives?
Peters is a strong supporter of the war effort, but he has no patience when he sees what he believes is incompetence in waging it. He has been demonstrative in his anger at the Rumsfeld way of war. He is as apolitical as one can be. All Peters wants is results.
Ralph Peters sound worried. I thought he was a strong supporter of the war effort.
What gives?
... and A:
Something vital has changed.
As for the coming civil war, it is primarily to determine which version of Islam will run a Theocracy Government in Iraq.
Either we adopt a RUTHLESS mindset to conduct the war to prevent a Civil War, or get the hell out!
(Go Israel, Go! Slap 'Em Down Hezbullies.)
Good post. Peters makes sense.
I don't know about Peter's at times. That he is brilliant is beyond question. At times however, I question his judgement. Recently, he was on a program I was watching and he said that Senator McCain was one of the greatest Senators to grace the US Senate. McCain and Daniel Webster, William Borah, I think not. Cmon Ralph, wasn't McCain one of the Keating five plus one?
I completely agree with your comment.
It's hard to argue with Ralph here. I've been thinking along these lines too.
The problem is, this is exactly (more or less) what we did in Afghanistan. The Soviets pulled out, a civil war broke out and we hit the road. In the end, we wound up with the Taliban and Al Qaeda. Now, what would happen if a similar thing happened in Iraq and they had all that oil money? We'd be back in there in short order and possibly against a much tougher foe.
Sorry Ralph, that is why we like a president with backbone. We will get the job done. Iraq will stand up as an arab democracy, and we will see to that it does.
I think it's more about lack of politcal will than ability. Look how long it took us to go into Fallujah. The problem is, the Left and the Media has intimidated the Administration. JMHO....
Let Iraq splinter into three independent states: the Kurds in the north, the Basra area in the south, and the Baghdad centrality. That's still a lot better than the psycho-state Saddam ran.
It appears that muslims are not happy unless they are butchering. Let them butcher each other until they are all in hell.
The only way to make something decent out of that place is to let those afflicted by excessive tribalism and sectarianism to reciprocally extirpate one another [and even help them in doing so], or to do this job ourselves. And this means tolerating or even provoking their civil war, and then managing it.
I often wonder why that wasn't the solution from day-one. All they had to do was work out some sort of revenue sharing agreement over the oil money. I think the Turks are fighting a separate Kurdistan. But, as far as I am concerned, they lost their vote when they prevented us from using Turkey.
Wonder why Peters sold out to the Democrats on this? Or maybe this drama queen hysterics show he puts on is designed to grasp subscriptions? After all the ground truth in Iraq is rather mundane and boring, We are in the mopping up stages. The slow tedious clean up. That hardly makes for good columns or gets you invitations to show up on TV.
Peter's got to create some hysteria to get the attention of the Always Whining. IF he doesn't they simply will go to someone who will say what they want to hear. Just another Drama Queen whoring for his ratings.
What is it going to take for the Chicken Little Freeper Generals to wake up to the fact that Counter Insurgency is NOT Total War? This is as much political as it is military. This hurry up hysteria being pumped out by the side line Generals is really really dumb. Counter Insurgency is slow and steady.
Instead of big military blitzes that make the heart of the Junk Media drama queens flutter, you have to UPROOT, not merely prune back the terrorists. It takes time. All the "Hurry up" crowd would do is get a lot of people on our side killed while the core of the insurgency simply fades back into sanctuary zones then returns after we redeploy. Same utterly absurd hysterics here as was in his column about Israel last week. We want to boot them, not splatter them as the "Hurry UP" crowd would.
I'm not ready to say this cannot be solved yet, but if not, then he is right. A lot of advantages accrued to the U.S. when Iraq & Iran were preoccupied with slaughtering each other in the 80s. While not the optimal state of affairs, there are worse outcomes than a Sunni-Shia slugfest in Iraq for the next five years or so.
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