Washington Times columnist: "Iraq's bridge too far"

I cannot imagine anyone seeing Sullivan as a "neo-con." """

Well, Sullivan - who as you say is bright and articulate - sees himself as one. If anything, it shows that the word's meaning is not as definitive as you assert, therefore to tar people with malign motives for using it, isn't fair.

Non-sequitur: Yelling "anti-semite ! anti-semite !" to cover up the fact that your entire "analysis" is based on wishful thinking and refusing to face inconvenient facts. The Israelis have spent 40 years trying to pacify the Palestinians and they have failed. They have bugged out of Lebanon, are bugging out of Gaza, and have given up trying to control the cities of the West Bank. One might deduce from that that there is something about Islam that will never, ever, ever accept infidel rule as legitimate.

And if you believe that we are not occupiers, you are living in a fantasy world. Occupiers is exactly what we are and they know it.

The argument that we have abandoned major cities only to have to shoot our way back into them later is absurd. Street fighting negates the advantages of mechanization. And there is nothing more demoralizing to soldiers than to ask them to die for the same real estate twice.

Good analysis.

?Thought you might like to read this letter from a Major USMC posted on Captain's Quarters blog:

September 17, 2004

At The Front: No Doom And Gloom Here

Longtime CQ reader Bob Stakel forwards me a message from his neice's husband, a Major in the Marine Corps who cannot understand why the American media keeps painting such a gloomy picture of their work. I've copied it, unedited, for CQ readers:

A thought from Iraq – “Doom & Gloom about Iraq’s future….I don’t see it from where I’m sitting.” [For those of you who haven’t gotten my “Thoughts” before, I’m a Major in the USMC on the Multi-National Corps staff in Baghdad. The analysts and pundits who don’t see what I see on a daily basis, in my opinion, have very little credibility to talk about the situation – especially if they have yet to set foot in Iraq. Everything Americans believe about Iraq is simply perception filtered through one’s latent prejudices until you are face-to-face with reality. If you haven’t seen, or don’t remember, the John Wayne movie, The Green Berets, you should watch it this weekend. Pay special attention to the character of the reporter, Mr. Beckwith. His experience is directly related to the situation here. You’ll have a different perspective on Iraq after the movie is over.]

The US media is abuzz today with the news of an intelligence report that is very negative about the prospects for Iraq’s future. CNN’s website says, “[The] National Intelligence Estimate was sent to the White House in July with a classified warning predicting the best case for Iraq was ‘tenuous stability’ and the worst case was civil war.” That report, along with the car bombings and kidnappings in Baghdad in the past couple days are being portrayed in the media as more proof of absolute chaos and the intransigence of the insurgency.

From where I sit, at the Operational Headquarters in Baghdad, that just isn’t the case. Let’s lay out some background, first about the “National Intelligence Estimate.” The most glaring issue with its relevance is the fact that it was delivered to the White House in July. That means that the information that was used to derive the intelligence was gathered in the Spring – in the immediate aftermath of the April battle for Fallujah, and other events. The report doesn’t cover what has happened in July or August, let alone September.

The naysayers will point to the recent battles in Najaf and draw parallels between that and what happened in Fallujah in April. They aren’t even close. The bad guys did us a HUGE favor by gathering together in one place and trying to make a stand. It allowed us to focus on them and defeat them. Make no mistake, Al Sadr’s troops were thoroughly smashed. The estimated enemy killed in action is huge. Before the battles, the residents of the city were afraid to walk the streets. Al Sadr’s enforcers would seize people and bring them to his Islamic court where sentence was passed for religious or other violations. Long before the battles people were looking for their lost loved ones who had been taken to “court” and never seen again. Now Najafians can and do walk their streets in safety. Commerce has returned and the city is being rebuilt. Iraqi security forces and US troops are welcomed and smiled upon. That city was liberated again. It was not like Fallujah – the bad guys lost and are in hiding or dead.

You may not have even heard about the city of Samarra. Two weeks ago, that Sunni Triangle city was a “No-go” area for US troops. But guess what? The locals got sick of living in fear from the insurgents and foreign fighters that were there and let them know they weren’t welcome. They stopped hosting them in their houses and the mayor of the town brokered a deal with the US commander to return Iraqi government sovereignty to the city without a fight. The people saw what was on the horizon and decided they didn’t want their city looking like Fallujah in April or Najaf in August.

Boom, boom, just like that two major “hot spots” cool down in rapid succession. Does that mean that those towns are completely pacified? No. What it does mean is that we are learning how to do this the right way. The US commander in Samarra saw an opportunity and took it – probably the biggest victory of his military career and nary a shot was fired in anger. Things will still happen in those cities, and you can be sure that the bad guys really want to take them back. Those achievements, more than anything else in my opinion, account for the surge in violence in recent days – especially the violence directed at Iraqis by the insurgents. Both in Najaf and Samarra ordinary people stepped out and took sides with the Iraqi government against the insurgents, and the bad guys are hopping mad. They are trying to instill fear once again. The worst thing we could do now is pull back and let that scum back into people’s homes and lives.

So, you may hear analysts and prognosticators on CNN, ABC and the like in the next few days talking about how bleak the situation is here in Iraq, but from where I sit, it’s looking significantly better now than when I got here. The momentum is moving in our favor, and all Americans need to know that, so please, please, pass this on to those who care and will pass it on to others. It is very demoralizing for us here in uniform to read & hear such negativity in our press. It is fodder for our enemies to use against us and against the vast majority of Iraqis who want their new government to succeed. It causes the American public to start thinking about the acceptability of “cutting our losses” and pulling out, which would be devastating for Iraq for generations to come, and Muslim militants would claim a huge victory, causing us to have to continue to fight them elsewhere (remember, in war “Away” games are always preferable to “Home” games). Reports like that also cause Iraqis begin to fear that we will pull out before we finish the job, and thus less willing to openly support their interim government and US/Coalition activities. We are realizing significant progress here – not propaganda progress, but real strides are being made. It’s terrible to see our national morale, and support for what we’re doing here, jeopardized by sensationalized stories hyped by media giants whose #1 priority is advertising income followed closely by their political agenda; getting the story straight falls much further down on their priority scale, as Dan Rather and CBS News have so aptly demonstrated in the last week.

Posted by Captain Ed at September 17, 2004 01:36 PM

bump

"To cope with the insurgency, the United States requires 10 times the rebel strength "

The Romans used to solve problems like this with one tenth the rebel strength, but then the Romans were not very PC.

Bump.

"On 11/3 Bush will come down on them with a ferocity that will take the world's breath away.

We will cut a Sherman-like swath of scorched earth through the Sunni triangle on our way to Iran.
"

Given how the US responded whem mercs were dismembered and hung from a bridge in fallujah, I do not think we will see that.

"You have no idea how glad I am you were't around during WWII. We'd all be speaking German now if people like you kept pointing out every single thing that didn't go exactly the way it was predicted to go."

If this war was being fought by WWII engagement rules, iraq would be flattened and the people (minus a lot of able-bodied males) starved into submission by now. It is notable that in WWII the future Bundesrepublik (West germany) and Japan were bombed 'back to the stone age' with surreal numbers of civilian casualties, yet were reconstructed into model republics.

Clearly Fedgov is not out to repeat this pattern of events. I do not believe that level of social reconstruction can occur without tremendous stress, which we are going out of our way to avoid inflicting.

"Off the record conversations with intelligence chiefs..."

Ah, Yom Kippur--the day the Euro-Nazi identity groups bubbled up in America.

De Borchgrave should go back to Russia, the Rump of Yugoslavia, southern Europe or wherever he's trying to come from. We were on the right track in Iraq, and we're on the right track with doing something about Iran.

And that's the way it's going to be.