US struggles in "out of control" Iraq, experts say

AFP ^ | 08-29-03

[tsomer]

Every time one of these bombings occurs it drives a wedge between the population and the ba'athist jihadites. As this continues I would expect greater cooperation from Iraqis.They're bound to get tired of those bastards blowing them up.

I think that's what Bush and co. figure, and I think it will prove out in the end, provided we have the patience.

[witnesstothefall]

we invaded their country, promised democracy, and hope to use Iraq as an example to show the rest of the Muslim/Arab world how to become civilized.

So you've bought into the political windowdressing that accompanies every war and are now feeling wobbly? This war, and the next few, will be about smiting our enemies, destroying their countries, setting them upon each other (like today's car bomb) and chasing them into their graves.

One may pause to recall that Iraq, like all modern Arab states, was a purely western invention. Let the brotherly Arabs forge national institutions, if there is any nationalism in them. Meantime, we get to hunt/kill terrorists. When the people of Iraq have had enough, there will be peace. We're not there yet.

[witnesstothefall]

The Iraq War was unjustified and is unwinnable. The sooner we realize it and turn this mess over to the Iraqis or UN, the better.

It's amazing how many incorrect conclusions can be put in one sentence.

It was justified. It was won. If the Iraqis were ready to take over, they would, and we'd let them. The UN! You are a comedian, right?

You have the intestinal fortitude and predisposition of a 60's typle liberal, but none of the passion. A truly sad specimen.

[caltrop]

Yeah, sure. The war's a great success. Just keep telling yourself it is and ignoring the facts. As I mentioned in an earlier post, my guess is we'll know pretty soon what a disaster it really is. Even Robert Kagan and Bill Kristol have gotten nervous - quite an admission from two of the war's biggest proponents.

[boxerblues]

A select few were controlling the Iraqi's. If they would quit blowing that crap out everything, the trains just might run ontime

[David1]

I believe it is a great success. It destroyed Saddam and his government. Now we are in the rebuilding stage with terrorists trying to stop the rebuilding. I believe the terrorist actions will be gotten under control. We are just a few months after the end of major combat. I guess the best way to tell how successful we will be is when we look back a few years from now. Then we will see if you are right or wrong as I believe you are. Time will tell.

[witnesstothefall]

So you've been on the losing side going into this war, now you're desperate to see your POV redeemed. Frankly, that doesn't lend you any credibility, 'specially in these parts.

By what measure do you count this war a failure? Americans are dying by the onesies twosies we'd planned all along. Our enemies, and their fellow travelers, are dying by the dozens everyday, sometimes at the hands of others of our enemies.

What the media and the spineless liberals always forget is we entered this war prepared to absorb over 10,000 battlefield casualties and more. Any American with even a smidgeon of historical perspective is standing proud.

Further, cutting and running has been ruled out as an option. In this war, if you're not pulling on an oar, you're a real drag man.

[caltrop]

LOL I have no control over whether or not my POV turns out to be correct. As far as credibility goes, let's see how this turns out. So far the cheerleaders for this war have gotten everything wrong. The only success so far is that our armed forces prevailed with minimal casualties in short order. Absent the possibility that the Iraqis would have used WMD, I don't think our fairly speedy victory was ever in doubt.

In guerrilla war the guerrillas win merely by continuing to exist. To the extent they sow chaos, inflict casualties, successfully sabotage Iraq's infrastructure, force the US to commit more and more forces to fight them and empty our treasury they help their cause. By that definition they aren't losing, we are. Let's, for arguments sake, assume you're right and that we're killing 50 bad guys a day. That's 18,000 a year. The population is 23 million (assuming it's just Iraqis) and their culture makes them martyrs if they die fighting us. This can go on for some time. We've got half of our Army in Iraq and may be sending even more troops. The impact on Army reenlistments and recruiting of extended tours in Iraq is viewed with trepidation in the Army and it's possible we may need to go to a draft if this becomes a multi year committment, even at current levels. While we're bogged down in Iraq, Iran is building a nuclear facility and the War in Afghanistan - which gave up US forces for the War in Iraq - isn't going all that well even with NATO reinforcments. The question isn't what makes me think it isn't going well, the question is who could possibly think it isn't going badly. Even Bill Kristol and Robert Kagan are nervous.

The War in Iraq was ill considered and, given the ethnic and religious jumble that makes up Iraq, almost certainly unwinnable on any basis beyond getting rid of Saddam. Until the dust settles and we see how this turns out, we can't even be sure we won't find ourselves wishing, amazing as it sounds, that we'd left the sorry SOB in charge. If it turns out anything like that, those who chose not to wake up and smell the coffee will have qualified for the Robert F. McNamara Award for Strategic Thinking.

[caltrop]

Oops - Robert S. McNamara

[witnesstothefall]

You're still in college right? Your imagination runs well ahead of your facts. And you're fond of applying New Math to extrapolate upon faulty suppositions.

We are nowhere near instituting the draft. Last I heard, the Services had all the volunteers they wanted or needed. Our "only" success, when our "armed forces prevailed with minimal casualties in short order", is just an afterthought in your construct.

What you don't understand is that the carping you're buying into is the whining of the ones who lost the political war that accompanied what you describe as our "only" success, the military campaign. And in a sense, those losers are winning a few post-war battles, like convincing you that inconsequential drivel has urgent political importance.

Be assured the war in Iraq is for the most part over. There are some bitter-enders, politically and militarily, to clean up and some jihadists coming in from all points. Those could take awhile but dovetail nicely with some other national security goals we have in that neighborhood.

Your need for closure in Iraq is quaint. What about Afghanistan? Americans need to get used to the idea of a very very long war, without traditional closure as one battlefield morphs into the next. And abandon the ludicrous thought that the Left or the UN or the EU give a shit about the Iraqi people.

If any of those characters cared even a little, they could have prevented the Iraqi war by merely acquiescing to the removal of a brutal bloody tryant with a longstanding record of crimes against humanity.

[caltrop]

I'm going to have to stop wasting my time with you. Anything you get right will obviously be an accident. as this plays out try to pay attention, perhaps you'll learn something.

Just for the record and for what it's worth, I graduated from the US Army War College almost twenty years ago.

[witnesstothefall]

I salute you for your service. But I must ask, why do you think the Pentagon hasn't evolved its tactics, training and equipment since Viet Nam? Every one of your posts suggests you think it's 1968 and we're fighting the Viet Cong abroad and the SLA at home.

What we're seeing in Iraq the last 2 wks (when the media/DoD started mentioning foreign jihadists entering Iraq) is quite a bit removed from classic guerrila warfare. There's no strong national or political unity. No great power resupplying them, nothing but a bunch of semi-organized terrorists now blowing up UN offices and other Muslims. So what if jihadists get in league with Saddamites. So much the better for us to kill two enemies at the same time, and for peaceful Muslims to see the real soul of these jihadists. Yet you see imminent US defeat.

And domestically, I see GW still has 60% of the nation behind him and behind the war, despite an admittedly crappy economy and a loud and hateful opposition running to the left of Mondale. Again you see defeat.

With all due respect, I think that's nuts.

[MatthewViti]

what about our Intel?

[caltrop]

Obviously we've adapted our tactics beyond Vietnam, although with the differences between Iraq and Vietnam I'm not sure it matters all that much. In Vietnam we fought in the context of a bi-polar world against an adversary which had external support, a cohesive command structure and nationalist fervor. In Iraq we're fighting against an (to us) alien religion and anti-Western (colonial) fervor. Clearly there are huge differences between the two. The first is we don't fully appreciate what we're up against. Iraq is a hodge podge of different groups who, IMHO, will not easily stay together in a unified country. Given the religious fervor which motivates many of them, it's entirely possible the factions will wind up at war and we'll be caught in the middle. Iraq, unlike Vietnam, has countries around it which would like to carve it into pieces. The Iranians would be happy to see their fellow Shias control the entire country but, failing that they'll be happy to have another Shia state in what is now Southern Iraq. The Turks want Northern Iraq and have an ethnic Turkish population in Iraq to help them achieve their goal. The Kurds seek to establish Kurdistan on the same ground the Turks claim. The Sunnis are in the middle and will attempt to play the other factions off against one another to control at least their own portion of the country. In addition, there are the terrorist groups without any connection to any of the surrounding countries. The second big difference I see is that in Vietnam there were no natural resources, except rice fields. This is good and bad. The Vietnamese didn't have many infrastructure requirements so there was little to sabotage that couldn't be relatively easily repaired or replaced. Vietnam was, in many respects, extremely primitive. Iraq couldn't be more different. Iraq is heavily dependent on electrical, sanitation and petroleum equipment that is expensive to install, easy to destroy and essential to keep the major cities disease free and functioning and, in the case of petroleum, critical if Iraq wants to continue to export oil - essential to provide the funds needed to feed the country, buy medical equipment and other essentials.

Vietnam was a guerrilla war only as a sideshow to the organized units, either VC or NVA, which were capable of fighting traditional, high casualty battles. Once it became clear we were leaving, the large scale battles took a back seat to the guerrilla war as it was cheaper for the VC and NVA to conduct and still kept the pressure on the US. In Iraq, given the various groups we're fighting, the open cover which prevents large units from forming and the lethality of our forces, we're going to see only guerrilla warfare. My guess is they'll get better at is as they go along.

You and I differ on how easy it is to kill the terrorists. Today's car bombing was, I suspect, electronically triggered and that the guy who pushed the button got away. While we continue to see RPG attacks on our convoys we're also seeing remote controlled devices and land mines being used. Single RPG attacks, which have a good chance of getting the terrorist killed, will probably fall off in frequency as we get further into this. Iraq is one huge arms depot so finding the weapons to continue attacking us is evidently not a problem for the terrorists.

Given all that, I see a very tough road ahead. A seemingly endless supply of terrorists, targets (many of them risk free) everywhere the terrorists look and a mix of interests and states that can almost all win if our stated goals fail.

IMHO, this all adds up to a fool's errand.

[witnesstothefall]

We do agree in the basic description of the lay of the land. But I'm behind the President's decision to take the fight to the terrorists and the states that harbor them and the ones who proliferate wmd's to terrorist states. I also disagree in that I think it a great advantage that our opponents in Iraq, the ones we have today and the ones we might earn tomorrow, are divided and likely to remain so. The civilized among them will opt for a settlement and peace. The uncivilized need to fight, and to die.

We can agree it's a messy war with a nebulous opponent(s). But you haven't offered a constructive alternative. As a war college graduate, isn't it fair of me to expect more than detached criticism, tainted in any event by hindsight?

What's your take on Korea?

[caltrop]

You won't see my solution as a constructive alternative but I'll give it to you anyway. Incidentally, I've been all over FR with this so I presume you've already seen it. IMHO, the entire region, absent oil, isn't worth an American sprained ankle. I'd remove our ground forces and let the region's various powers have at it. Which thug sells us oil isn't my concern. They will sell it to us since they have to eat and it's their only export. The alternative is to continue to involve ourselves in the region - a sure formula for seeing the region's conflicts exported to the US. As far as I was concerned, Saddam was in his box and assuming we sold the Turks and Saudis whatever arms they needed, he'd have stayed there.

North Korea's a far more dangerous problem than Iraq. Given the nature of the regime, its instability, their willingness to sell to all comers and their WMD and missiles (capable of reaching the US) we have to move forcefully unless we can be certain a negotiated settlement won't be abrogated. We should be prepared to address NK militarily and take preemptive action. NK is and has been a far more significant threat than Iraq and should have deserved priority under any circumstances. Not having given it priority is, IMHO, pretty close to criminal.

[frei_staat]

Agence France-Presse

'nuff said

[witnesstothefall]

Your solution gets criticized as simplistic, right? But I'll allow that I wish it could be so. Meanwhile the byzantine realpolitic of the Middle East must be embarked upon.

Your premise is that all of our problems with Muslim nations are because of our projected presence in their regions, right? And further that should we "retreat" back to our own shores, the problems will go away, or at least shrink dramatically? Is that fair to say?

[caltrop]

My approach gets criticized on a number of counts. Some critics say it's simplistic, some say it's unrealistic and some say it leaves Israel exposed. While it is a simple, straightforward approach it doesn't prevent access to the oil we need. The supporters of Israel are generally Christain fundamentalists who believe it's God's will that we support Israel and, therefore, need a massive presence in the Middle East. The Jewish supporters of Israel are frequently only too happy to ignore US interests in favor of Israel's. Some of them don't feel the need to sugarcoat those sentiments and will tell you that point blank.

Our ground presence in the region aggravates whatever problems exist in the region. To the extent we're seen as siding with one faction or another we make ourselves a target, either in the region or here at home. I don't favor our retreating in any respect beyond removing our forces from the region and am very much in favor of rebuilding our Navy and making sure it is a visible presence throughout the Middle East and the rest of the world. Ground forces are another story and, unless we're in a hot war, prepositioning them almost never makes sense. Either airborne forces or Marines (if there's a coastline) can provide us access and with a rebuilt Navy with adequate transport capability we can go anywhere we need to.