Replies

Ok, now you're talking like a realist.
Yes, the 30-Years War. That is a pretty good comparison.

Here's the difference between then and now.
Then, as now, the religious parties were backed by princes of great states, and willing to wage conventional and unconventional warfare, against armies and against populations, in order to win - or to refuse to allow the enemy to win.
So far so, good.
But then, all countries were monarchs and able to continue wafare for as long as they pleased, or as long as their money supply held out.

Today, there is a serious asymmetry.
THEY are ruled by monarchs, either directly or effectively. To the extent that war weariness sets in, it does not affect governance and continuation of the war at all. Just like in the 30 Years War. All of the peasantry of Germany were well and truly sick of it, but it did not MATTER, because Kings and Princes in faraway lands had no stake in any of the suffering. For as long as they had tax money, they could recruit soldiers and continue the killing. There was no popular check on warfare, and there isn't in the Middle Eastern countries now, except Israel (and, paradoxically, Iraq).

But we are NOT a monarchy. In our democratic republic, an unpopular war can go on for at most four years. If war weariness is great enough, the Administration engaged in it will lose an election and the other side will take over and change the strategy. That is how Vietnam ultimately ended. It was neither a military failure of American forces, nor a failure of the logistical ability to support the army. LBJ's government fell because the people turned against the war. After that, America had to lose. Nothing Nixon could do short of nuclear weapons would completely overbear the North Vietnamese and end all resistance in four short years...really 2 years, since a Congressional election would intervene and suck all money out of the war effort had Nixon decided to save American honor and thrown the full armed might of the US into an invasion of North Vietnam. North Vietnam could be invaded, by not pacified in 2 years. And after that, Nixon's government would have lost all support in Congress, and Nixon himself would have been out of office in 2 more years. You cannot wage a war against the will of the American people, not against a determined enemy who won't surrender. Try it, and the enemy - who need not fight elections - will simply fight on until the American will to fight collapses, and the war party is voted out of office.

So, you say 2000 dead is nothing.
But I tell you, I PROMISE you, that if this war is as it is now, by 2008 there will be 3500 to 4000 dead, and the Democratic candidate for President will win, and will withdraw from Iraq just as Nixon withdrew from Vietnam. We CANNOT fight a war of attrition against monarchical or dictatorial enemies in a forever-war insurgency. Americans as a people don't really care all that much about massive battle deaths of civilians: those are the hazards of war. But the slow drip-drip-drip of casualties, with no end in sight, and no sign of any change in strategy, or tactics, or anything: this will be lethal to the war effort.

And we're already on that power curve. There's still time to fix it, but there's no indication that Administration has any intention of changing course. We saw the same attitudes regarding Katrina: these men are ARROGANT. They made up their minds, and they are going to do it that way, and it doesn't matter if it doesn't work.

If we successfully stand up the means, you say.
Sure, IF.
The problem is, to do that, you've got to be able to provide a bubble of protection for the fledgling troops, a sanctuary for the guys you're trying to train. What is happening is that its the soft recruits getting blown up, and the fundamental corruption of the society is such that the effectives within the forces are themselves infiltrated.

In frustration, you are ready to reach for the nuclear option. My friend, the American people will politically nuke our Administration and vote them out of office long before any US President orders a nuclear strike on civilian cities in Iraq.

Now, there still is a template to win this thing, but it involves provoking incredible hostility among the American people, and will harm our government's reputation, because it will be a frank admission that we are not currently winning, despite all the happy talk that we are.

What is required is a massive escalation.
A LOT more ground troops and helicopters and engineering batallions need to be deployed, not to Iraqi cities, but to the empty deserts that separate the Tigris and Euphrates vallies from Iran and Syria. The engineers need to build and extend great earthen berms north to south. This has already been done to an extent, but it needs to be much more substantial. We are talking about Offa's Dyke here. Those berms need to be MINED on their approaches to and from. The deserts, to and from need to be aerial patrolled and seed with mines, and declared free-fire zones. Anyone crossing them, day or night, should be hit from the air and destroyed, or hit with the heavy roving troop patrols. The only way in or out of the Iraqi heartland should be by a couple of roads, and every car should be inspected, every single person who travels it should be photographed, fingerprinted, DNA matched and put into a data base.

This cordons off Iran, Syria and Turkey: no resupply, and no fresh recruits from outside. The Iraqi cities and population centers will be within the wall, and the battle there will need to go on as now. Without the fresh reinforcements from without, the Iraqi security forces will be slowly getting larger, while the insurgents will be getting smaller.

Further, the effort should not be to hold everything. Some cities are hotbeds of insurgency. Instead of sending patrols in to get blown up, let them rebel and become insurgent strongholds. Then concentrate US forces as was done at Fallujah. However, unlike at Fallujah, don't go in house to house and maximize your own casualties. Used ranged weapons and airpower to level the place, killing just about everybody inside. This will kill a lot of civilians who don't evacuate, to be sure, but Americans will accept that (particularly since a well-cordoned city does not have reporters INSIDE, and media access can be controlled). What Americans WON'T accept as a perpetual state of affairs is the drip-drip-drip of casualties with no end in sight.

Most people started out making the calculation you're making. Yes, we're taking casualties, but that's the price you pay to win the war. However, what has happened is that it's become clearer the US is not WINNING the war on the current strategy. It's just simply a reinforcing war of attrition. Which means that the drip-drip-drip is not the slow trade of a few of ours for vast numbers of theirs, with their numbers dwindling. It is, rather, a drip-drip-drip of ours against a steadily reinforcing enemy with an unlimited supply of recruits to draw on.

The reason we have ranged weapons and airpower is so that we can kill at a distance. Killing at a distance means killing a lot of civilians while digging out the bad guys. Iraqis will accept this, in the Kurdish and Shiite areas, if the civilians being killed are the rebellious Sunnis of the insurgent areas.

That is far short of the nuclear fantasy, but it breaks the morbid paralysis we're in.

However, to do it would require a lot more troops.
And the leadership is still asserting:
(1) We have what we need, and
(2) the military says so.

The first is not true, and the second is true, but its a sham. The military always gives a cheery aye-aye and does what it's told and supports the chain in public. In private, the military said: more troops, and was right. And today, the miltary says: gotta put up a sanitary cordon, but that will take more troops. And they're right.

If it's a 30 Years War, we lose after 5.