The Redhunter

#7 is a daydream at this point. Libs are always telling us that Iraq=Vietnam. When it comes to early withdrawal, they're right. The result would be the violent collapse of democracy, followed by genocide.

"After several months, the Iraqi Army defeats all major rivals."

This is a fatal flaw with not only number 7, but also with our strategy to date. The Iraqi Army is not in shambles, but the police force is. Many of the ethnic killings are attributed to the Shi'ite run police force, with it's cast of Iranian backed Badr and Al-Dawa trained goons holding key positions. Let's not kid ourselves, the likelihood that the Iraqi security forces will actually provide security 'in a few months' is as naive as Bush declaring "Mission Accomplished", and then enduring years of quagmire and mocking for the mistaken statement.

In my view, we don't really have a choice, the ground-truth in Iraq is more like #1 (with the ugly potential of 3). The reality of the chaos in Iraq is that multi-ethnic areas are being cleansed and each ethnic group is consolidating power in their respective regions. Turkey has been massing troops on the border of 'Northern Iraq' (aka Iraqi Kurdistan), with foreknowledge that an oil rich independent Kurdish region will ignite further clashes with the downtrodden Kurdish minority in Turkey.

http://www.cdi.org/program/document.cfm?DocumentID=4013&StartRow=1&ListRows=10&appendURL=&Orderby=D.DateLastUpdated&ProgramID=37&from_page=index.cfm
http://www.csis.org/media/csis/pubs/071207_benchmark_summary.pdf

On a frightening note, SCIRI decided to go with a more PC name:

-------On May 13, the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq announced that the word
“revolution” would be dropped from its name and that Iran’s top cleric would no longer reign as
the party’s dominant spiritual leader.-------

That's just great, the leading 'democratic' party just determined that the Iranian Mullahs will 'no longer reign as the party's dominant spiritual leader.' However, Anthony Cordesman notes that, "It is still unclear whether this nominal change may represent a more significant shift in the party’s political platform. For example, the Council continues to advocate a form of
government that would allow clerics to override elected leaders, and has not renounced its ties to
Iran."

http://www.csis.org/media/csis/pubs/070709_iraqinsurgupdate.pdf

Can anyone honestly tell me that they think this 'democratically elected government', who are clearly in allegiance with Iran, are ever going shift away from the hand that supported them in the time of Saddam, trained them in exile, and has now returned them and assisted them in winning 'elections' and dominating the security forces will ever be anything more than Iranian puppets? Look at the history of the Iraqi political parties, they all have backgrounds and histories taken directly from the 'Iranian trained insane extremist/terrorist' handbook.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Iraqi_Alliance#Parties_on_the_list_.2822.29

THE UIA includes:

Hezbollah Movement in Iraq
Hezbollah al-Iraq
Islamic Master of the Martyrs Movement
Badr Organisation
Islamic Action Organisation

Condi and Bush keep trying to tell us these democratic leaders will eventually come to a diplomatic solution and will create a safe, stable and secure Iraq. That is BS, research these groups who constitute the great democratic government in Iraq, they are not secular or rational. They are islamic jihadi groups, pure and simple .

I realize you do not want to hear this - though I agree with you and the points laid out by Austin Bay - I believe this war was miscalculated from the onslaught and for that reason alone we will not see a victory any time soon. I do not want our troops being pulled out - but I do believe this should be considered if after one more year their is no real improvement. Iraq is destined right now for failure due to al-Qaeda and Iran-Americans need to wake up and face reality. There will be no victory in the near future--it may take decades.

You can also use some of Ralph Peters quotes as a rebuttal to the notion that we can't leave Iraq:

---"For us, Iraq's impending failure is an embarrassment. For the Iraqis — and other Arabs — it's a disaster the dimensions of which they do not yet comprehend. They're gleeful at the prospect of America's humiliation. But it's their tragedy, not ours."----

---"If they continue to revel in fratricidal slaughter, we must leave."---

----"And contrary to the prophets of doom, the United States wouldn't be weakened by our withdrawal, should it come to that. Iraq was never our Vietnam. It's al-Qaeda's Vietnam. They're the ones who can't leave and who can't win.

Islamist terrorists have chosen Iraq as their battleground and, even after our departure, it will continue to consume them. We'll still be the greatest power on earth, indispensable to other regional states — such as the Persian Gulf states and Saudi Arabia — that are terrified of Iran's growing might. If the Arab world and Iran embark on an orgy of bloodshed, the harsh truth is that we may be the beneficiaries."-----

----"My disillusionment with our Iraq endeavor began last summer, when I was invited to a high-level discussion with administration officials. I went into the meeting with one firm goal, to convince my hosts that they'd better have Plan B in case Iraq continued to disintegrate. I left the session convinced that the administration still didn't have Plan A, only a blur of meandering policies and blind hopes. After more than three years, it was still "An Evening at the Improv."-------
http://blogs.usatoday.com/oped/2006/11/post_6.html

In this article, Peters is almost the ultimate apologist for those who say pull out now: We should play no part in their civil war, the US won't be weakened by a withdrawal, Bush has royally messed this up and has been bumbling along without a Plan B, much less a Plan A. I don't agree with him in this case (most of his ideas are unsubstantiated), but he seems to argue for pulling out.

Hello everyone

As always, thank you for stopping by and leaving your thoughts.

It's all very fine to say that the war was misconceived, but since I've never met anyone with a time machine, we have to live with our present as it is.

That Peters column you reference in your second comment, jason, was from November 2006. This was when we were employing the Rumsfeld/Abazaid/Casey "small footprint" strategy, which was failing. If you read Peter's recent stuff I think he makes it clear that he thinks the Gates/Fallon/Petraeus strategy may well work.

I can't buy the notion that we can leave Iraq, let it descend into chaos, not be harmed. Boiled down to it's essence, the consequences of leaving Iraq prematurely would be

1) A victory for al Qaeda and jihadists everwhere. They would certainly crow that it was a victory, that they'd chased us out, and they'd use it to bolster their recruiting drives.

2) Other countries in the area would relearn an old lesson; that it's dangerous to be a friend of the US, but often profitable to be its enemy(witness Pelosi's visit to Damascus). They'd start to make their own "accomodations" with the jihadists. U.S. basing rights would dry up because...

3) al-Qaeda and other jihadists would attack us in our "redeployment" area. They'd use the same tactics in Afghanistan they used against us in Iraq. Pretty soon the same people who demanded that we leave Iraq would want us out of those places as well.

4) The world will hold us responsible for whatever happens in Iraq after we leave, and rightly so. Oddly, the same people who demand that we leave now will also condem us 'if' a massacre ensues. We have a moral obligation to make the country work (ok, the time is not unlimited, but I don't think we're anywhere near the point where it'd be justified to give up). "You break it, you fix it".

As far as why we don't have a political solution within Iraq, I think that the reason is pretty clear; lack of security. We put the cart before the horse when we scrambled to set up a new Iraqi government before securing the country.

I think that political progress will only happen after security is achieved. Compromise will only occur after military victory.

One mistake we make is assuming that we everyone else plays by our rules. We're not talking about negotiations between two companies here in the US, or a sales rep with a client, or between Republicans and Democrats.

Extremist groups will not make concessions until they have been defeated. The reason why these groups are holding firm is that they believe they can get what they want if they hold firm, that is to say they think they can get it through violence after we leave. And, given what they read in the US press, why not?

Lastly, from a typically brilliant Thomas Sowell column

"It took centuries for democracy to evolve in the Western world. Yet we tried to create democracy in Iraq before we created the security -- the law and order -- that is a prerequisite for any form of viable government.

Having made democracy the centerpiece of the reconstruction of postwar Iraq, Americans have been hamstrung by the inadequacies of that government and the fact that our military could not simply ignore the Iraqi government when its politicians got in the way of restoring law and order.

People will support tyranny before they will support anarchy. Both can be avoided by creating an interim government based on competence, rather than on its being an embodiment of democratic ideals."