Post by deovindice on Apr 8, 2007 10:11:20 GMT -5
www.msnbc.msn.com/id/18002776/
This story on MSNBC I found very interesting. It came across as rather unbiased, giving differing opinions and tangential viewpoints on the subject of progress in Iraq.
The thrust of the story is the differing timetables, the political vs. the military perception if you will, of how progress in Iraq is to be measured and marked.
Some interesting points:
There are two Iraq wars being waged, according to military officers on the ground and defense experts: the one fought in the streets of Baghdad, and the war as it is perceived in Washington.
Army Gen. David H. Petraeus, who took over as the top U.S. commander in Iraq in February, cited the disparity last week. "The Washington clock is moving more rapidly than the Baghdad clock," he said in a television interview. "So we're obviously trying to speed up the Baghdad clock a bit and to produce some progress on the ground that can, perhaps . . . put a little more time on the Washington clock."
That there are two clocks timing progress is indeed problematic, and indicative of the fact that the nation was never properly mobilized for war. If one accepts the premise that this war must have been initiated, that there was no way around it and no other solution was plausible, then it should have been mastered with an official declaration of war. That would have committed the nation, and more specifically the Congress, to the task. There would be no discussions of timetables and funding, unless the will of the people decided otherwise. We would either win united, or lose united. The manner in which we are currently prosecuting this conflict means we will only lose while fragmented.
There can only be one clock.
An official in Iraq warned that executing the new approach will take time -- perhaps more than Washington is willing to give. "Early signs are very encouraging -- huge drop in sectarian killings in Baghdad, return of thousands of refugee families," he said, speaking on the condition of anonymity so that he could be candid. "But there is no way we can defeat this insurgency by summer. I believe we can begin to turn the tide by then, and have an idea if we are doing it. To defeat it completely is a five-to-10-year project, minimum -- and rushing it along to meet a D.C. timeline is rushing to failure."
Five or ten years? There's quite a disparity between those two figures. The difference can engender an entire political season, which under current conditions can only be problematic for any administration in directing the conflict.
Once again this nation is fighting a war for reasons other than the real and actual defense of the nation for an extended period of time with no clear and decisive strategies for winning it as quickly as possible. Such a program is the only one the nation will support. We should have learned this lesson from the Vietnam era.
..............the new strategy, which has been referred to as a "surge" because it sends more troops into Iraq but which is more noteworthy for moving U.S. troops off large, isolated bases and into smaller outposts across the capital.
Sure. Let's send more and more troops into Baghdad. Let's concentrate our forces there while the insurgents move out into the provinces, keeping just enough violence going in the city to hold our attention there. They can then conduct their campaigns much more unencumbered while gaining more support. That's where the support comes from, friends. From the provinces. Let them re-supply and replenish their ranks. When they are ready and the time is right, we might see a major combined attack on the city that we cannot overcome.
Does a Dien Bien Phu loom on our horizon?
.............reported one Special Forces veteran who has worked in Iraq in the military and as a civilian, "the surge in Baghdad is pushing the sectarian violence to other parts of Iraq." That is one reason for the increased fighting in nearby Diyala province that led U.S. commanders to send in a Stryker battalion that was part of the troop buildup. Likewise, the Marine Corps' new success in Anbar appears to have forced some al-Qaeda fighters to shift to Mosul, Baqubah and Tall Afar, which in 2006 was hailed as a U.S. success story but in the past month has been the scene of a horrific truck bombing and revenge killings by Shiite police. Also, a military intelligence officer warned of other troubling signs outside Baghdad: Kirkuk edging closer to explosion, the Turks increasingly unhappy with Kurdish activity, and an impending British drawdown in the south that could make U.S. supply lines from Kuwait more vulnerable.
So what now? Another troop "surge" to pacify areas outside Baghdad and secure our supply lines? Well, there ain't no more troops. Further, this is proof of the incorrect assumption that the war could be fought on the cheap, i.e. as few troops as possible in order to lessen the possibility of popular opposition to it.
.........in Anbar province, there are solid indications of tribal leaders turning against al-Qaeda extremists.
If tribal leaders are turning against al-Qaeda, it is being done in concert with others, in the interest of forming an alliance to see us out the door. That tribal leaders still hold much sway in the country is proof that the government is marginal. The tribal leaders aren't crazy. They know well that if government becomes effective, their power and influence will wane, thus they have little interest in our vision of "democracy".
Also, officers say, major questions remain about the sustainability of any positive momentum. Military operations can buy time but cannot solve the basic problem in Iraq: the growing threat of a civil war. The U.S. government keeps pushing for reconciliation, but there are few signs of movement toward that goal. "Nothing is going to work until the parties are ready to compromise, and I don't see any indicators yet that they are," said A. Heather Coyne, who has worked in Iraq both as a military reservist and as a civilian. "Until then, any effect of the surge will be temporary."
Larry Diamond, a Stanford University professor who worked with the U.S. occupation authority and has been critical of the Bush administration's approach, agreed: "If we don't get a political breakthrough, nothing we do militarily is going to work."
Once again as in the case of Vietnam, we have assumed that a popularly supported, unified government was a certainty. It wasn't the case then, and it certainly isn't the case in Iraq now.
.................and we can throw our own government into the mix.
We should never commit our forces to solve the political problems of other nations, and that is just what the war has become.
There are no WMDs.
There was no uranium deal.
There is no convincing proof of a threat to our shores so long as our borders remain purposely porous.
That said, bring 'em home.
This story on MSNBC I found very interesting. It came across as rather unbiased, giving differing opinions and tangential viewpoints on the subject of progress in Iraq.
The thrust of the story is the differing timetables, the political vs. the military perception if you will, of how progress in Iraq is to be measured and marked.
Some interesting points:
There are two Iraq wars being waged, according to military officers on the ground and defense experts: the one fought in the streets of Baghdad, and the war as it is perceived in Washington.
Army Gen. David H. Petraeus, who took over as the top U.S. commander in Iraq in February, cited the disparity last week. "The Washington clock is moving more rapidly than the Baghdad clock," he said in a television interview. "So we're obviously trying to speed up the Baghdad clock a bit and to produce some progress on the ground that can, perhaps . . . put a little more time on the Washington clock."
That there are two clocks timing progress is indeed problematic, and indicative of the fact that the nation was never properly mobilized for war. If one accepts the premise that this war must have been initiated, that there was no way around it and no other solution was plausible, then it should have been mastered with an official declaration of war. That would have committed the nation, and more specifically the Congress, to the task. There would be no discussions of timetables and funding, unless the will of the people decided otherwise. We would either win united, or lose united. The manner in which we are currently prosecuting this conflict means we will only lose while fragmented.
There can only be one clock.
An official in Iraq warned that executing the new approach will take time -- perhaps more than Washington is willing to give. "Early signs are very encouraging -- huge drop in sectarian killings in Baghdad, return of thousands of refugee families," he said, speaking on the condition of anonymity so that he could be candid. "But there is no way we can defeat this insurgency by summer. I believe we can begin to turn the tide by then, and have an idea if we are doing it. To defeat it completely is a five-to-10-year project, minimum -- and rushing it along to meet a D.C. timeline is rushing to failure."
Five or ten years? There's quite a disparity between those two figures. The difference can engender an entire political season, which under current conditions can only be problematic for any administration in directing the conflict.
Once again this nation is fighting a war for reasons other than the real and actual defense of the nation for an extended period of time with no clear and decisive strategies for winning it as quickly as possible. Such a program is the only one the nation will support. We should have learned this lesson from the Vietnam era.
..............the new strategy, which has been referred to as a "surge" because it sends more troops into Iraq but which is more noteworthy for moving U.S. troops off large, isolated bases and into smaller outposts across the capital.
Sure. Let's send more and more troops into Baghdad. Let's concentrate our forces there while the insurgents move out into the provinces, keeping just enough violence going in the city to hold our attention there. They can then conduct their campaigns much more unencumbered while gaining more support. That's where the support comes from, friends. From the provinces. Let them re-supply and replenish their ranks. When they are ready and the time is right, we might see a major combined attack on the city that we cannot overcome.
Does a Dien Bien Phu loom on our horizon?
.............reported one Special Forces veteran who has worked in Iraq in the military and as a civilian, "the surge in Baghdad is pushing the sectarian violence to other parts of Iraq." That is one reason for the increased fighting in nearby Diyala province that led U.S. commanders to send in a Stryker battalion that was part of the troop buildup. Likewise, the Marine Corps' new success in Anbar appears to have forced some al-Qaeda fighters to shift to Mosul, Baqubah and Tall Afar, which in 2006 was hailed as a U.S. success story but in the past month has been the scene of a horrific truck bombing and revenge killings by Shiite police. Also, a military intelligence officer warned of other troubling signs outside Baghdad: Kirkuk edging closer to explosion, the Turks increasingly unhappy with Kurdish activity, and an impending British drawdown in the south that could make U.S. supply lines from Kuwait more vulnerable.
So what now? Another troop "surge" to pacify areas outside Baghdad and secure our supply lines? Well, there ain't no more troops. Further, this is proof of the incorrect assumption that the war could be fought on the cheap, i.e. as few troops as possible in order to lessen the possibility of popular opposition to it.
.........in Anbar province, there are solid indications of tribal leaders turning against al-Qaeda extremists.
If tribal leaders are turning against al-Qaeda, it is being done in concert with others, in the interest of forming an alliance to see us out the door. That tribal leaders still hold much sway in the country is proof that the government is marginal. The tribal leaders aren't crazy. They know well that if government becomes effective, their power and influence will wane, thus they have little interest in our vision of "democracy".
Also, officers say, major questions remain about the sustainability of any positive momentum. Military operations can buy time but cannot solve the basic problem in Iraq: the growing threat of a civil war. The U.S. government keeps pushing for reconciliation, but there are few signs of movement toward that goal. "Nothing is going to work until the parties are ready to compromise, and I don't see any indicators yet that they are," said A. Heather Coyne, who has worked in Iraq both as a military reservist and as a civilian. "Until then, any effect of the surge will be temporary."
Larry Diamond, a Stanford University professor who worked with the U.S. occupation authority and has been critical of the Bush administration's approach, agreed: "If we don't get a political breakthrough, nothing we do militarily is going to work."
Once again as in the case of Vietnam, we have assumed that a popularly supported, unified government was a certainty. It wasn't the case then, and it certainly isn't the case in Iraq now.
.................and we can throw our own government into the mix.
We should never commit our forces to solve the political problems of other nations, and that is just what the war has become.
There are no WMDs.
There was no uranium deal.
There is no convincing proof of a threat to our shores so long as our borders remain purposely porous.
That said, bring 'em home.