THE IRAQ WAR: Three years -- White House no longer sees quick end to difficult war

San Francisco Chronicle ^ | 3/19/6 | James Sterngold

[SmithL]

When the U.S.-led coalition attacked Iraq three years ago, the Bush administration was brimming with confidence that this would be a war only in the sense that a lot of bombs would be dropped and the military would seize, temporarily, a foreign capital. It was going to be swift, high-tech, clean.

Six weeks later, President Bush spoke in the past tense about Operation Iraqi Freedom, thanking the Iraqis who welcomed the U.S. troops and promising that democratic change would sweep the region.

Now, with sectarian violence roaring and casualties rising, the White House increasingly is talking, in the present tense, about a long war, meaning the old-fashioned kind -- "the crucible with the blood and the dust and the gore," as Gen. Richard Myers, then the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said last fall.

Three years on, experts from the left and the right say, the costly Iraq war has barely begun, and if there are to be broad benefits, as the president still promises, they could be years away.

William Odom, a retired lieutenant general who ran Army intelligence and later the National Security Agency during the Reagan administration, has called the Iraqi adventure "the greatest strategic disaster in our history."

"What we've learned is that you cannot impose a Pax Americana solution," said Conrad Crane, a Middle East expert at the Army War College who is leading a crash rewriting of the military's counterinsurgency manual in response to the unanticipated tenacity of the resistance. "You are not going to have a Western-style democracy, and you're not going to have a market economy."

[Enterprise]

The terms are understandable and logical from that perspective. What I am steering to is the media still calling it a war, when it is not a war. It is fanatics killing their fellow citizens, and whenever possible, U.S. forces. The present state of affairs is like when the IRA carried out terrorist attacks in England. There is an established Government in Iraq, and it too, is being fought, but not by the U.S. My criticism is aimed at the Tokyo Rose Media.

[MacDorcha]

So this is a policing action.

[mewzilla]

That's not a second guess. It's a lie. 43 NEVER said it would be easy or quick.

[Just mythoughts]

What can we expect, since liberals projected their "shock and awe" over the clintons they are reduced to "plantation" status? Winning to them is loosing so they really ought to be rejoicing instead of acting like Sybil, if they really believe that the 'war' in Iraq is lost.

[eddie willers]

From Bush's Sept. 20, 2001 speech.

" Our war on terror begins with al Qaeda, but it does not end there. It will not end until every terrorist group of global reach has been found, stopped and defeated.....

This war will not be like the war against Iraq a decade ago, with a decisive liberation of territory and a swift conclusion. It will not look like the air war above Kosovo two years ago, where no ground troops were used and not a single American was lost in combat.

Our response involves far more than instant retaliation and isolated strikes. Americans should not expect one battle, but a lengthy campaign, unlike any other we have ever seen. It may include dramatic strikes, visible on TV, and covert operations, secret even in success. We will starve terrorists of funding, turn them one against another, drive them from place to place, until there is no refuge or no rest. And we will pursue nations that provide aid or safe haven to terrorism. Every nation, in every region, now has a decision to make. Either you are with us, or you are with the terrorists. From this day forward, any nation that continues to harbor or support terrorism will be regarded by the United States as a hostile regime.......

I will not forget this wound to our country or those who inflicted it. I will not yield; I will not rest; I will not relent in waging this struggle for freedom and security for the American people.

The course of this conflict is not known, yet its outcome is certain. Freedom and fear, justice and cruelty, have always been at war, and we know that God is not neutral between them."

[Allegra]

Oh, I wasn't disputing you. I agree with you.

I was just FYI-ing. I found it somewhat amusing the first time I heard an Iraqi talking about the "first American war" and "the second American war." I said...

"....oh. We didn't call them that." He laughed heartily.

Iraqis have great senses of humor.

[JustDoItAlways]

A few bombs, a few fanatical Islamists, big deal.

We could leave Iraq tomorrow and it would be 1,000 times better than with Saddam at the head.

In the past three years, every Islamic hothead in the Middle East has made his way to Iraq and promptly got his head shot off.

Al-qaeda is dead except for the remnants currently in Iraq who are promptly being taken out one-by-one.

This is the war on terror (and we have already won it.)

[Unrepentant VN Vet]

Don't be too hard on 'em, Allegra.

That daily commute in the time warp from 1968 gets real rugged......those characters never were very strong on either logic or hygiene.

[BibChr]

It's depressing that they think the public is so stupid. Worse, that they're usually right.

...the Bush administration was brimming with confidence that this would be a war only in the sense that a lot of bombs would be dropped and the military would seize, temporarily, a foreign capital. It was going to be swift, high-tech, clean

I would be interested to see one unambiguous direct statement to that effect.

Just another MSM myth.

Dan
Biblical Christianity BLOG
Pyromaniacs

[Allegra]

You're wrong.......we all know this is a civil war........

LOL. I can't believe Allawi said it was a civil war today. Of course, he said this from the U.K.

We figure since he didn't get enough votes in the election last December (I was actually pulling for him), he must be unemployed now and times are a little tough in Iraq these days. And CNN or someone must have offered him a big wad of cash to say "It's a civil war" on TV.

Only explanation I can think of...

[carlr]

We could end this war any day we wanted, just as we could have ended Vietnam any day we wanted.

Yes we probably can,let me give you two options.

1)We surrender and go home,leaving the Middle East to evolve in whatever way other external forces wish to push it.

2)We blow the whole place to hell,and have to deal with a world which the Chicoms or North Koreans are willing to supply the islamofascist world not located in the Mid East the weapons necessary to balance the scale.

Pick one or provide details on any other alternatives.

[MacDorcha]

I agree, I was simply trying to clarify the original poster's standpoint.

Several of the new soldiers (and many vets) are worried about deployment for a cause they don't believe in to a situation they aren't fully aware of (yet.)

I remain optimistic and share that as much as I can with my fellow soldiers.

This war has a suprising safety record. Fewer casualties per foot than is normally seen.

Though I would also like to clarify my own standpoint at this time:

The "war in Iraq" is more comperable to a "policing action" (look at that as a long-term battle of strategic importance) meant to put us and our allies into a better position to finalize this war on Islamic terror.

Iraq is a chapter, not the book.

[bluefish]

I think you guys are being unfair to CP. He says it is like Vietnam in that we aren't fighting hard enough. Not that we *shouldn't* be there, as your reaction seems to imply. Nowhere in his / her statement was a DU like statement made. The "Go Back to DU" crap is getting kind of old, don't you think?

[Mogollon]

Dubya seems to follow the advice in this poem pretty well:

Rudyard Kipling

If

If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you;
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too;
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or, being lied about, don't deal in lies,
Or, being hated, don't give way to hating,
And yet don't look too good, nor talk too wise;

If you can dream - and not make dreams your master;
If you can think - and not make thoughts your aim;
If you can meet with triumph and disaster
And treat those two imposters just the same;
If you can bear to hear the truth you've spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to broken,
And stoop and build 'em up with wornout tools;

If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
And never breath a word about your loss;
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: "Hold on";

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
Or walk with kings - nor lose the common touch;
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you;
If all men count with you, but none too much;
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds' worth of distance run -
Yours is the Earth and everything that's in it,
And - which is more - you'll be a Man my son!

[gotribe]

And the Democrats' solution is what exactly?

[Lakeshark]

I read that. The news cycle has gotten to his brain, perhaps.

Or he is trying to get into the news the best way he can.......by repeating the MSM religious beliefs.

Hey.....I have a Subway Baghdad t shirt that he brought me.......have you seen those? Evidence of your earlier post about imperialist takeover capitalist inroads......

[Enterprise]

No

[FreeReign]

The difference the nay sayers never get is that between the war against Iraq, which ended with the famous "Mission Accomplished" banner, and the war in Iraq which we are fighting, along with the Iraqi military, against global terrorism. Those we fight against in Iraq are not Iraqis, but Iranians, Syrians, Al-Qaeda fighters from foreign nations as well as Al-Qaeda members who are Iraqi. Iraq just happens to be the current front in our war against Islamic terrorism. That war was never going to be a quick one, and no one in the Bush administration ever said it would.

Exactly right.

[Allegra]

Oh, unwad your knickers. That post reads like something I'd see on an A.N.S.W.E.R. website.

That's my opinion. I've got one; you've got one. Mine doesn't agree with yours.

Get over it.

[sono]

Gerard Baker has an alternative history.

Within months of the avoided showdown, the UN gave Iraq a clean bill of health — there were no stockpiles of weapons at all, it said. The US and the UK were sceptical, insisted that Iraq retained the capability to produce weapons quickly — the real test, they said, of the scale of the threat — and pressed to keep sanctions in place. But it was a losing cause. Saddam invited news organisations to see that the sanctions regime now seemed to be killing even more innocent women and children than it had in the previous ten years And for what? The media hearts bled. Iraq had given up its weapons, had opened its facilities to UN inspectors: why should this punishment go on? The reporters were not allowed to see the stream of foreign companies and officials treading a path to Saddam’s door with gifts, bribes and kickbacks to ensure their share of the wilting Oil-for-Food programme. Nor could they report that Saddam was channelling the money to terrorist groups around the world, as he had before March 2003: only this time, with more money and more international support, the funds got larger, the channels got wider and the terrorists got bolder.

He goes on.

As pressure grew on governments, massive protests in solidarity with the Iraqi people were held around the world. When the US and Britain blocked a Security Council resolution to lift the sanctions, the other UN members simply ignored them. Iraqi oil began to flow again. No one paid much interest when Iraq resumed its interest in uranium purchases from Africa. A. Q. Khan dined expensively in the best Baghdad restaurants, next to Islamist terrorists with suddenly realisable global ambitions. I SUPPOSE in fairness I should say this is not the only alternative history of the past three years. You might prefer to believe another one in which the failure to attack Iraq produces the most benign consequences: perhaps Saddam really gives up his lifelong ambition to be the new Saladin; perhaps Iran meekly agrees under little pressure from the West to end its nuclear programmes; perhaps the tightening repression of the ever-more-restless peoples of the Middle East produces a real peace and stability. Perhaps.

There's more about Iran, Libya, etc but you get the gist. It took about 15yrs to go from The Third Reich to the Federal Republic of Germany. If we date America's own nascent struggles to the Boston Tea Party, it took over 15 years until the adoption of the Bill of Rights. History's judgement awaits, but its retrospectoscope only gets clear after about 20 yrs. Patience, grasshopper.