Withdrawal from Iraq and the possibility of Middle East Regional War

[Izzy1]

Interested to hear anyone's defence/security-based opinions (Please - can we avoid flaming/politics) with regards the possibility of an Allied withdrawal from Iraq and the reprecussions such a move could have on the country and the wider Middle East region as a whole.

Some points to consider:

I think it is pretty clear that a withdrawal would signal the intensification of the civil war already underway in Iraq. To aid this debate, the scenario also considers the Iraqi Central Government to be too weak and ineffective to stop the nation spiralling out of control. Thus in such an event, would neighbouring nations move to support certain factions within Iraq?

- Would Iran overtly move to increse its influence within Iraq, even to the point of moving military forces across the Shatt al Arab in the wake of an Allied withdrawal?

- How do the Arab nations respond to Iranian manuevers in an Iraq without US forces? Could the Arab nations pick up where the US left-off in the defence of Iraq's Government? Even more dangerous, maybe Iraq will become the battleground for regional powers...

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2006/12/03/wirq03.xml

- Can such an Iraqi conflict further expand across the region? Oil supplies threatend in the Gulf? Iraqi Jihadi appearing, aiding and intensifying the insurgency in countries like Saudi, Jordan, Kuwait or maybe even the Central Asian nations of the former Soviet Union? Does Allied withdrawal jeopardise NATO's future in Afghanistan? And is it certain that without US securitry in the region, a regional arms race between the major players would get underway, with the distinct possibility of a race to develop WMD?

- If open conflict came to the region, would the US militarily support its allies, maybe in the form limited to Air/Naval Ops like that after the withdrawal from SE Asia in 1973? Or would public opinion at home be too demanding in support of full disengagement?

- Is it a given that the Kurds in Northern Iraq would use a withdrawal as a pretext to stake a claim for independence and would Turkey, as hinted, respond to such a move militarily? Can anyone see Syria and Iran militarily (and quite ironically) siding with the Kurds in such an event?

- And on the "periphery", what of Israel? Could Tel Aviv find itself dragged into such a regional conflict, with a potential for some strange alliances perhaps??

Look forward to your views.

 

[dioditto]

Can Bush find an exit?
http://www.cnn.com/2006/WORLD/meast/12/03/coverstory.tm/index.html

Bush exit strategy
http://www.ifilm.com/ifilmdetail/2684181

 

[rrrtx]

It would be interesting to see the outcome of a civil war. No other power would likely become involved to suppress a conflict between the various factions. I think the Shia is the largest group and the Sunnis would therefore be at a disadvantage. The Kurds could ride it out mostly unaffected but would still need to figure out what to do once the Shia and Sunnis are done with each other.

I think partition would be the least destructive route. If a single group chose to fight for dominance of the whole country it would be a real bloodbath.

I guess my question would be whether or not Syria would side with the Sunnis and Iran with the Shia. They seemed to be cooperating in their support of Hezbollah in Lebanon. If however they were to find themselves in opposition to each other it could mean a Shia vs. Sunni regional conflict.

Iran's ambitions are especially troublesome for Israel. I think any scenario that expands Iran's power and influnece in the region is a problem for Israel.

 

[Waylander]

You should not mix Iraqi Shias and Iranian Shias that close. They may be the same religious Wing but they still remain Arabs and Persians. It does not look like the Iraqi Shias want to be part of the Iran of want to be too dependend on them.

 

[Grand Danois]

- Would Iran overtly move to increse its influence within Iraq, even to the point of moving military forces across the Shatt al Arab in the wake of an Allied withdrawal?

IMV it is almost to complex and unpredictable to me to have a crystallized opinion on this. But I'll say that overt Iranian involvement is very unlikely. As Waylander already pointed out, there is the Persian-Arab issue to consider. And by going overt the Iranian mullahs seriously risk a US reaction ie direct military confrontation, as it provides pretext for such.

And they don't want that.

So, this could IMV be ruled out.

 

[swerve]

I guess my question would be whether or not Syria would side with the Sunnis and Iran with the Shia. They seemed to be cooperating in their support of Hezbollah in Lebanon. If however they were to find themselves in opposition to each other it could mean a Shia vs. Sunni regional conflict.

The Syrian leadership is mostly Alawite, members of a heterodox Shia sect regarded as heretical by both Sunnis & mainstream Shia, & dangerously liberal (on such things as womens rights, drink, religious freedom, & so on - not in relaxation of central control) by religious conservatives. They've not shown any sign of caring for one sect over another, but been willing to ally with whoever suits their purposes. And dump them if they cease to be useful.

 

[rrrtx]

The Syrian leadership is mostly Alawite, members of a heterodox Shia sect regarded as heretical by both Sunnis & mainstream Shia, & dangerously liberal (on such things as womens rights, drink, religious freedom, & so on - not in relaxation of central control) by religious conservatives. They've not shown any sign of caring for one sect over another, but been willing to ally with whoever suits their purposes. And dump them if they cease to be useful.

Which makes guessing their intent even harder. But helps explain why Syria is cooperating with Iran helping Hezbollah.

From what I understand Syria is currently supplying the Sunni faction and Iran the Shia faction in Iraq. Is it possible they are supplying both sides not out of loyalty to their religous brethren but instead to sustain a fight that ultimately harms the US?

 

[.pt]

One problem is that, as you say, in Iraq, in paralel with other past wars, the enemy are being suplied by neighbouring countries, and US seems unable to interdict/stop this flow at the border.. Is there any kind of suply route wich is known? and if so, why does it remain open? seems Cambodia and the ho chi mihn trail all over again, or am i wrong? For so many bomb atacks the explosives and ammo must came from somewhere, or else when Iraqi army colapsed, people stormed armories and took lost of stuff with them, and i mean tonnes and tonnes. theres car bombs going off every day. this kind of thing needs a suported logistic behind to be active for so long. If this could be stoped, perhaps level of violence could go down to a more manageable level.
.pt

 

[Waylander]

No need for real foreign support with explosives.
The "lost stocks" of the former Iraqi armed forces and militias should be able to supply the rebells for generations.
Not to talk of the US Army loosing some hundred rifles + ammo.

 

[rrrtx]

Perhaps the most important supply Iran and Syria are making available are willing combatants. The Bush admin has long talked about "foreign fighters" making up a significant portion of the insurgents. I wonder what the percentage really is and how instrumental Iran and Syria are in training and smuggling people into Iraq.

Although I hate to make comparisons to Vietnam it does seem like there is a Ho Chi Minh trail style problem and another dynamic I find similar. How much of this conflict is a fight between local Iraqis? Or has it become a proxy fight between competing middle eastern powers or a fight between the dominant ME countries and the US? At some point in the Vietnam war it wasn't a Vietcong uprising against the South Vietnamese government. It was North Vietnam with massive material (and some personnel) support from China and Russia.

 

[Kurt Plummer]

RRTX,

>>
Perhaps the most important supply Iran and Syria are making available are willing combatants. The Bush admin has long talked about "foreign fighters" making up a significant portion of the insurgents.
>>

It's now how many but how effectively these F2s are able to reenflame all parties. Particularly with the use of IED and Mortar tactics, anything which comes close to being 'enough for now' as a function of vendetta is quickly blown back to full blown hatred with another 'random attack'. For that kind of work, a very few people, using logistical cutouts between key 'engineers' at the bombmaking or mortar-supplying level, can keep a war going for well nigh on forever without once showing their faces. See Ireland. See Lebanon and the Intifada in the POTs.

>>
I wonder what the percentage really is and how instrumental Iran and Syria are in training and smuggling people into Iraq.
>>

The irony being that the Iraqis hold their mosques as 'sancrosanct' and against a guilty-conscienced conquering power yet have the balls to use them as both training, indoctrination and arms cache` and 'underground railroad' nodes for enabling the resistance. I'm particularly certain that if a Shiia stepped into a Sunni mosque there would be equal hollerin' and hootin' about how 'they were defiling our mosques!' but the fact of the matter is that ALL Iraqis need to be slapped down hard with the realization that once they start using their religious holy grounds as target practice and in particular killing each other's religious bodies, they have lost the right to be treated as having 'territory inviolate' to outside inspection. This is the actions of spoiled children and even they know it.

>>
Although I hate to make comparisons to Vietnam it does seem like there is a Ho Chi Minh trail style problem and another dynamic I find similar.
>>

No. We did better on the HCMT. With triple layer canopies and a funnel that looked more like a tree chart feeding 3 major centers of arms buildup. Iraq is dead flat nothin' and we have four times the level of capability inherent to UGS, datarelay and unmanned overwatch. The only excuse for not slaughtering the enemy on a regular basis is not enough men to prosecute the urban wars at the same time we humiliate and destroy the border crossers. Because believe me when I tell you _you cannot win_ a civil war which has 'hard borders' only in one direction. The use of 'externals' is a given and that would mean smacking Syria and Iranian _national_ forces in the chops everytime a single border crosser was captured, tried on national TV and 'slaughtered like sheep'.

They would quickly come to understand that they were not safe. And that supplying a covert war would be mean taking overt casualties of their own. Something which actually worked in SEA. Because efforts to cleanup Laos and Cambodia (wherein the HCMT emptied out it's goods) kept major conflicts from erupting in both 66-67 and 70-71. It was when we DID NOT routinely flush the sewers of the neighboring states while holding The North directly responsible with horrific border strikes on all their villages. That things like Tet and Easter 'happened'.

Sun Tzu said it best:
Know yourself and you win 25% of the time.
Know yourself and your enemy and you win 50% of the time.
Know yourself, your enemy and your ground and you win 75% of the time.
But to win 100% of the time is to convince your enemy that they must /never/ take the field against you. Because you are _that mean_.

In this case, neither the Iranians nor Syrian pissants are worth half as much as 'enemies' as our own people. We should have convinced them from the outset that this was not about finding WMD. It was about facing a threat which refused to fight a standup battle and teaching _it's backers_ (Iran in particular) that we would take the hand that fed the wolf if the wolf would not show itself to be killed.

War is not nice. Had we gone into Iraq with our war faces on and simply laughed everytime Iraqi's blubbered in outrage at our NOT giving them American level rights to have personal arms, cell phones and religious freedom; they would have quickly realized that we are not the people their leadership calls weak. Instead, Bush's policy of overt 'staying the course' and cover accomodation to threat tactics of stating some things were offlimits only to exploit them has indeed proven that we are as weak as the CNN socialists have brainwashed the bahing sheep of our population into believing.

>>
How much of this conflict is a fight between local Iraqis? Or has it become a proxy fight between competing middle eastern powers or a fight between the dominant ME countries and the US?
>>

That's a really good question which means absolutely nothing. We have lost 2,900 men in Iraq. We have had 22,000 injured, many cripplingly. In Vietnam we lost 58,000 and had another 250,000 injured. I'm sorry but if you are dumb enough to join a work force which KILLS PEOPLE, including it's own, to accomplish major national policies, you have no right to complain when you are blown up by a 500 dollar IED or gunned down by a 25 cent bullet at a _two orders of magnitude_ fewer casualties than the other least-losses-of-all-U.S.-wars prior battle. Because those were constants of cheapest-asset-in-the-smart-force 'known' threat even before we went in.

The big comparison to make here is this-

1. In Germany which had 'already had' it's civil war (14 million dead) the Americans _stayed_. So that the Russian cross-border enflamers of revolution could have no chance to start sumthin' up. And that commitment was good, not just for one but two generations before the Soviets collapsed. We owe the Iraqis, who are by no means half as socially developed as the Germans no less than this.

2. In Vietnam, we faced a situation in which one president (and his corrupt system of regional mayors) was assassinated 'by our leave' and replaced with an even more corrupt military one and all his make-a-proft-off-our-materiel lieutenants as fiefdoms. We then 'blamed' the Vietnamese for being too corrupt /as a people/ to be worth our time. And now the Chinese have absolute dominance of the South China Sea areas as their own Mare Nostrum equivalent duckpond. Containment being impossible.

>>
At some point in the Vietnam war it wasn't a Vietcong uprising against the South Vietnamese government. It was North Vietnam with massive material (and some personnel) support from China and Russia.
>>

Oh please, it was /always/ North Vietnam seeking to 'export the revolution' it's just that the we didn't spin it like Hitler 'exporting the National Socialist Uprising'. Tet happened not to win in the South but to make sure that the VC lost to such a massive extent that they could not be an independent political body and could have all their key leadership positions replaced by a cadre force of entirely north-trained 'political ambassadors'. And so the force command structure went from a loose confederation of gang leader punks in it for the thrill and the excitement of hurting the nobody-cares freebie outsiders. To one of an organized system of mafia street bosses who defacto /ruled/ the local populace (and hence the country), as soon as the Americans, like the French before them, went back into their military reservations and locked themselves down like prisoners. At Night.

Easter was then the _military_ solution to make sure that the organized body politic fell while the populace effectively remained mute sheep. And it worked because without an American by their sides and at their backs, the 'Advisors' we had in Vietnam DID NOT engage in active patrol work with their generally worthless ARVN units and so the amount of preposition of key supplies and infiltration by outside forces was extreme.

It's probably no different here. Rather than 'imbedding' with army or 'security forces' units, we should be doing the 'village protection scheme' of lying up with the locals and helping them repulse ALL COMERS. While insisting that vengeance begins and ends at home. In your block. On your street.

THAT is where this war was lost. In creating a puppet shell government to whose wishes we were 'all too willing' to accede in 'remaining, toothless' we left unguarded the febrile if not fertile fields of the Iraqi populace into which the weeds of Iranian and Syrian sponsored (mosques as internet chatroom equivalents) religious zealots made progressive inroads of propoganda 'backed' by the entirely deterministic proof of "See, we told you this would happen!" terrorism which they /also/ sponsor.

The Iraqi military is an exercise in Soviet force constructing in which mixed (Shiia, Sunni, Khurd) forces exist solely to ensure than no one is effective enough to undertake operations against /the other guys/ forces or civillians while sapping the militias of some of their recruitment pool. The only way to stop sectarian violence is to get in among the sectarians which the Iraqi military will NEVER do. Because it is by-design never going to commit to _the_ peoples defense or suppression rather than 'my' people.

Given this 'outside powers at play' move is so incredibly obvious it only proves that the Iraqis are as big a bunch of morons at the bleating sheep level of man-on-street mass psychology as the Americans are. Of course THEY have the added impetus of having bombs and mortars and snipers encouraging them to descend even further into animalistic response.

CONCLUSION:
I feel nothing but contempt for the military which refused to adopt the unmanned systems, Mike Force response teams and general ruthlessness (no cell phones, vehicle transport only probationally, 300,000 men on the ground so there is no whackamole fade-and-reappear problem). I feel nothing but contempt for the 'poor, heartbroken, families' at home who sponsored their children to become killers for a college fund and then lost the percentage odds race that we wouldn't be in a war which takes human life as readily as a bullet flies through a neck. I DO feel 'rather cheated' to think that the better part of a trillion dollars and our economic stability has been thrown onto a fire in the hopes of bribing-it-out. And now the only thing which the worthless-in-Washington can do to cover their sorry asses is 'demand a pullout'. Because, screw the Iraqis. If we get tossed out on our ear, the fiat-currency status which we enjoy viz a viz oil sold in USD will vanish in a heartbeat as Syria (which has a monster military but next to no oil, except that which the Iraqi pipeline pumps out) and Iran (which lost a million men to U.S. Sponsored Iraqi surprise attack in PGW1) vie for control, not of Iraqs oil alone. But of OPEC voting rights. So that they can sell oil in Euros, Yuans or whatever. When that starts to happen on a large enough scale, our debt riddled currency will collapse and with it our 'service' consumerist economy. And THAT actually -is something- to care about. Because it will effect all of us. And the CNN socialists and their Congressional flight-from-responsibility dancing partners will take us there if we but let them excuse themselves from a 'Republican War'.

9/11 was an AMERICAN victimization. Without Osama to politely show his face so we could put a bullet in his eye, Iraq SHOULD HAVE BEEN the 'counter Pancho' /strategy/ by which we 'explained' to the Middle Easterners that they could fight and lose. Or use intermediaries to fight namelessly and STILL lose. Because we wouldn't chase them. We would _own_ them. As the sole means by which WHO HAD THE POWER was ruthlessly illustrated. Power being the only thing people in that part of the world really understand. Who lives. Who dies. Who inherits the wind.

If this was the 19th Century we would treat these people no better or worse than we did the Indians. And WE would be better off for it. WE, The People undersigned on our governments pay checks. Being the only ones WE should care about.


KPl.

 

[Waylander]

If this was the 19th Century we would treat these people no better or worse than we did the Indians. And WE would be better off for it. WE, The People undersigned on our governments pay checks. Being the only ones WE should care about.

I hope this is not your real and serious opinion or I don't understand this!
You think acting like in the past and performing a genzoide of millions of native americans would be the right way?
Great...
I thought you learned form your history and the history of others.

That his how you think the human rights, which are an important part of your culture and laws, should be preserved?

 

[dioditto]

Who cares about the indians, we should have just kill them all off, and they will thank us for it. We, the people, who invented THE BOMB should take whatever we want! It's is our god given right! It is my way or the highway! and oh, I demand to have my Kentucky Fried Chicken with super-sized Happy Meal package in old fashion non-biodegrable styrofoam container deliver to me by a pink Humvee with whale skin interior driven by an illegal mexican immigrant who is only paid 2 dollars an hour on his toilet-break to deliver me this food!! Because it is our god given right! Because we got the bombs!!

 

[Kurt Plummer]

>>
Pulling American troops out of combat in Iraq would reduce U.S. casualties, but doing it too soon could spark a firestorm of unrestrained sectarian violence that will sorely test the loyalties of the Iraqi army.
>>

Is that a bad thing? If someone is bleeding out because their femoral artery has been shredded and you can save them by a rapid amputation of the leg is it better to do so than to try and patch the artery up while the body itself dies in /greater/ 'cellular' numbers?

More to the point: In the 19th century, the Indian Scout was the CSI of the West. Upon coming upon settler-X homestead, 'obviously the victim of Indian attack' his job was not to ID the tribe. Nor the direction. Nor even the outcome. But simply to give a number of days since the bodies had first been killed. EVERY Indian group within that region then being subject to retaliation on the notional basis of "Well, they must be giving aid and comfort and besides, it sets an example by which the more settlers can live in the 'void' of /any/ Indians. Threatening or otherwise."

In this case, the Sunnis are supported by Syria, which has no oil. And Al Qaeda, which has no interest in their redemption so much as it's own hurt-the-Americans one. And the Syrians are themselves kiss-cheek 'allies' with Iran which not only DOES have oil. But will soon have nukes.

These same moron Sunnis have an established history of viciously suppressing the Shiia 'under their care' (for the last 25+ years) and yet, in all that time, they never bred themselves to a population as much as military and governing dominance.

I would thus say that it is the Sunni who are the bleeding leg here and their only chance to prevent the amputational axe from falling is to 'fly right'. Something which NEITHER Syria NOR Iran can allow because it gives the 'American Dream' a foothold in the Gulf.

>>
The Iraq Study Group, a high-level panel reviewing America’s policy in Iraq, said on Dec. 6 U.S. troops should accelerate training of Iraqi forces so that U.S. forces can gradually move into a supporting role and withdraw from the daily fighting.
>>

This is _not_ a 'Dogs Of War' scenario. Leadership is respected from the front. And Americans would have be idiots to give their backs to the Iraqi national armed forces while facing a threat 'all about' killing Americans and their lackeys first, foremost and always.

Which means that if the Americans won't leave their precious bunkers, the Iraqi's sure as hell won't.

>>
Military analysts interviewed ahead of the report’s release cautioned that such a proposal was fraught with peril when viewed against the backdrop of sectarian and insurgent violence that has defied previous U.S. and Iraqi efforts to rein it in.
>>

No bleep. The only way for the Iraqis to be worth a damn as fighters is if WE pay them, house them, protect them. INDEPENDENTLY of their government. Raising them up to be OUR attack dawgs. Just as we effectively resurrected the German armed forces by 'imbedding them' in OUR doctrinal policies.

>>
"The short term will see a drop in (U.S.) casualties. But the military consequence of pulling back will be to cede the initiative to the enemy and to reduce the patrol presence that keeps enemy activity down," said Stephen Biddle of the U.S. Army War College Strategic Studies Institute.
>>

Oh please. The top Marine intel specialist released a report this past May I think it was that said that Anbar /was already/ 'unwinnable' because the local services were already completely suspended and/or corrupted to the ownership of the insurgents. He said _then_ that there was no way we could go back in and win because the insurgents had already made it clear to the locals 'who ruled the roost' AND that they were in the right for doing so.

I personally blame the U.S. military for not falling on it's sword to create a situation whereby the _U.S. PEOPLE KNEW_ that we needed more people on the ground.

Post WWII Germany was a 'successful' occupation effort for three reasons:

1. The Germans had already lost some 12-14 million people. They didn't need to be convinced to stop bleeding.
2. The Russians and French made it easy to be the 'good cop'.
3. We had OVER MILLION MEN ON THE GROUND THERE. Just to counterbalance the 'other Allies'.

As such, given as they are the 'military history experts', it is the U.S. _MILITARY_ fault for pulling another "Yessir, Yessir, Three Bags Full Of It Sir!" Vietnam silent execution of policy statement that allowed the whackamole 'fire brigade' (we go here to put out a fire, then over there to stomp on another conflagration) occupation of Iraq to go wrong. Short of first use nukes (which we don't want to be under) the ROKs can readily kick the crap out of the NORKs from DPRKia. NATO is a hollow body, worthless to U.S.. Those two regional garrison force commitments should have been shut INSTANTLY when this thing began and all 300,000 men put into the field with the notion that there would _be no rotations_ (another WELL KNOWN fault of Vietnam, those who did their year came home just as they were getting good) until it was indeed 'over, over there'.

I despise people who say that they are the only ones good enough to be trusted to do the mission with regards to 'how' (tanks, planes, manning levels) but then leave it to the 'poor dumb amateurs' to rig the policy on /why/ and _to what extent_ their skills are used.

NOBODY WITH AN OUNCE OF HISTORICAL COMPETENCY WOULD REPEAT VIETNAM LIKE THIS.

>>
"Regular U.S. patrols are keeping the level of the violence down. If we stop doing that patrolling the violence is going to get worse."
>>

Sigh. There are two choices here people.

1. Democracy.
Take over everything. Put the state of Iraq under Military Governance for a decade. And TRAIN THEM UP in the absence of having to 'do the job as you learn it'. Give the social finger to the world and make sure that the Iraqis themselves _know_ that if they want to have control back over their own lives, they WILL learn to do the job before we give them them the /earned/ right to control their destiny.

2. Stability.
Pick a side. Make them your cat's paw if not stalking horse. And BACK THEM. As they put down the insurrection using the 'same ol, same ol' means. For which we are roundly laughed at for NOT doing. Because that is what these bred-to-respect-power fools expect. It's their own view of 'constancy as the best policy'.

The first would have meant the better part of half a million men on the ground over there, ruling with an iron fist, for the better part of a generation until we taught them to build their way out of a social-adolescence based on thousands of years of violence (Alexander the Great fought the Khurds folks).

The second would have meant installing another U.S. friendly dictatorship, similar to that which rules Kuwait and nominally Saudi. Letting them suppress the 'minority troublemakers' and getting on with getting on in the absence of an incompetent military ability to find and finish UBL.

Like I care if it gets us controlling vote over their bloody oil pricing because THAT is what /he/ is about wrecking 'our evil influence' over.

>>
A U.S. troop pullback could have merit if it is done as a threat to increase Washington’s leverage on the Shiite-led government, still dependent on U.S. firepower, to force a political compromise with minority Sunnis, he said.
>>

Don't be absurd. How many of you were taught to swim on the 'drown or paddle hard' schoool of _in the shark tank_ education? This is just the typical U.S. way of screwing up another society without having the evangelical GUTS to replace their corrupt social system with our own 'so much better' solution. You can't teach a bunch of juvenile delinquents the 'easy way'. Because they will exploit you to get what you offer without changing a bit of their own bad behaviors.

OTOH, 'once you have their attention' you NEED to give them room to grow into their boots while holding down the adult-responsibilities until they are /really ready/ for the alternative (note the massive U.S. led 'de-nazification effort' to vet all future German leadership, post WWII).

Room being a synonym for time and stability which YOU, the destabilizer, supply. Indeed it's in the Hague Conventions. Article 42, 43 and 44:

>>
Article 42

Territory is considered occupied when it is actually placed under the authority of the hostile army.
The occupation applies only to the territory where such authority is established, and in a position to assert itself.
Article 43

The authority of the legitimate power having actually passed into the hands of the occupant, the latter shall take all steps in his power to re-establish and insure, as far as possible, public order and safety, while respecting, unless absolutely prevented, the laws in force in the country.
Article 44

Any compulsion of the population of occupied territory to take part in military operations against its own country is prohibited.
>>

Disestablishing any established national government is the equivalent of knocking up a woman. Whether it was rape or 'justifiable' you MUST commit to the next 20 years of raising the resulting kid to it's own educated (on options and alternatives) majority. Or the Oedipal Factor will have your head as much as your eyes.

>>
That echoes the Iraq Study Group’s suggestion that the United States should begin to withdraw support if Iraq’s government does not make major progress towards national reconciliation, improved security and better governance.
>>

ISG is an 'independent' sponsored element of the U.S. Institute of Peace, itself funded in it's entirety by a /rabidly/ antiwar (so that the Dems can elect a President if nothing else) Congress.

Chairing said 'Study Group' are a list of 'Republicans and Democrats' whose very 'bipartisan' nature is itself a code word for direct Congressional influence (as the institution most 'democratically' bought and sold like whores on a purchaseable party-majority membership rule of this nation).

Included on that list are three ex-Senators and two ex-SecStates. But only one ex SecDefense and NONE from the uniform-not-suit 'pro' side of the military mindset.

>>
While the United Nations estimates that some 120 people die violently every day in Iraq, the fear is the death toll would be far higher if U.S. troops hunkered down in their bases and removed one of the last checks on roving sectarian death squads.
>>

Actually, I hope they wash themselves clean in blood. Remember the Freedom Tree gentlemen. It may not grow stronger with the blood of Patriots. But it certainly is not hacked down by one side axing it covertly so the other side can't own it outright.

They are nothing but animals. They seek to dress themselves up in the clothes of a five thousand year civilization but like the Iranians and the Syrians, they are ruled by the actions of THIS generation. And that can only change when one side of the debate is no longer present to continue to make the argument have any point.

See The 'Native Americans' living under eternal POW status as veritable unknowns...

>>
But President George W. Bush is under pressure to change course in an unpopular war that has killed more than 2,900 American soldiers so far, despite his insistence that U.S. forces will stay until their mission is complete.
>>

Try standing up and confronting the idiot parents who put their precious brats at risk, trading training as KILLERS for a 'real life Survivor!' chance at College After. If it's not cool to do this as a criminal, how can it be okay to do it as an 'official' policy of U.S. cowboy diplomacy.

People die horribly in war. Those who wear the uniform are supposed to be /so mean/ that they prevent war itself from happening. They have failed in that task. Utterly. I would say that, in trade for the TRILLION DOLLARS we are likely throwing away on this conflict; 2,900 lives is actually cheap. Only the memory-of-goldfish CNN media agendists forget what /real/ loss is like in a REAL WAR. And they convince the rest of America that those who volunteer to kill deserve some better fate than to be risked to the same death.

>>
IRAQI ARMY
Duncan Anderson, head of the war studies department at Britain’s Sandhurst military academy, said if Bush accepted the proposal to begin withdrawing troops from combat, then this should be done gradually while accelerating training of the fledgling Iraqi army, and paying soldiers on time.
>>

The Iraqi Army should be treated like 'unattached brigades' of the U.S. Army. Paid by U.S. and ORDERED by U.S. While living a better lifestyle than the rest of Iraq. Completely separated (including families) on U.S. styled military reservations where their politics are TO U.S. The hand that feeds them.

Only the blatantly transparent 'Not U.S.!' need to 'enable' the Iraqi government to take hits for destabilization which WE are responsible for (under the above Hague Conventions) keeps Iraq from being ruled by a military governancy until they are ready for something more.

Patton did much the same thing in Germany with ex-Nazis and was roundly criticized for it. But it was not the _civil_ servant bureaucratic functionaries that kept Germany going for mass-organization and subservience to group discipline is in their genes and given enough time, they would have built at castle from the bombing raid rubble if we let them. It was the subjugation of the German military to a U.S. model with U.S. priveleges (real money, real food, real security) that kept loyalties where they belonged: _TO U.S._.

>>
Anderson, who was in Iraq this summer to train Iraqi army officers, said the training and support that U.S.-led forces had provided the Iraqis so far was "not what it should be," although those officers he saw were "pretty good."
He said the number of trainers embedded in Iraqi units should also be "increased considerably." "This gives them some steel and sends a signal they have not been abandoned."
>>

Crap. You don't train men to lead by 'steeling them' from behind. Because one of three things will happen:

A. The supermen will not be aware of the social context of events and will be abandoned because they don't lead from the front of a "For ME do you work!" exampled command.
B. The supermen will not trust their idiot subordinates to guard their backs and will take 'short cuts' based on their own expertise to bypass a proper leadership-in-TRAINING environment for one that works in /combat/.
C. The Supermen will realize they are not and refuse to go into situtations where they can be gunned from front AND back and 'nary an American in sight' to actually stand up as a warrior 'shoulder to shoulder' /because/ they are soldiers.

You want to make a working army from a bunch of miserable currs you'd damn well better START by imbedding THEM in YOUR team. In ones and twos. Where they cannot revolt by mutual refusal but can be cajoled and encouraged by people they SEE doing the job right. Under circumstances where they will /not be allowed/ to schmuck up their own job performance.

Unfortunately, the Iraqis are 'shy' to the point of social cowardice in a lot of inferiority complex ways. But there are always enough tigers among the timid to form a cadre force and THOSE are the ones you want to **challenge** to be the shining-light examples to their own.

If nothing else, particularly in a military organization deliberately 'paralyzed long the Soviet model' by multiple ethnicities, you DO NOT want to have free indig opsec problems that amounts to a sieve of freebie intel to the militias and home-town mullahs. And that is a helluva lot simpler to achieve if there are a lot more of you than of them and they live in YOUR camp besides.

>>
But others say that placing too much emphasis on training the mainly Shiite army, which Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki said last week would be ready to take control of national security next June, ignores the fact that the country is in the midst of a deepening conflict that pits Shiites against Sunnis.
>>

 

[Kurt Plummer]

Hey, it's Darwin's way of the world. Nobody gives bupkis to the 'embattled but tragic loser'. They worship success and success is not about accomodation at this point. Not about a 'working model' of a bipartisan-unity anything. It is about kicking the crap out of enough people on ONE side to be determinative in saying that X is the definition of victory.

In this, the Sunni are doomed to lose. Because they have the poorest backer and the fewest numbers. Let's get the Native American problem out of the way and 'however many Sunni are left' will no longer be a problem.

Such is the one way to also defuse the Syrian and Iranian finger in pot problem. Because they only 'win' so long as the revolution itself is kept at near-boil to embarrass U.S. And so long as they are kissing each other's cheek as tag-team players who visit one another's capitals to congratulate themselves on how stupid the Americans are, we will ALWAYS be the losers in a dial-an-intensity insurgency by external design.

Of course Iran has the long term strong hand here anyway. Because no matter what John Q street Iraqi thinks about nationalism, he is ruled by his mullahs relative to 'think globally' morals. And that in turn means he is ruled by the people who fund those mullahs private armies. And such will always be Iran.

>>
"We can train Iraqis to be better soldiers but it is not proven we can train them to be better Iraqis. They will still be loyal to communities and tribes rather than central government," said Loren Thompson, defense analyst at the Lexington Institute.
>>

No. Good soldiers are efficient ones. And morality is based on efficiency not some ivory tower proof of absolute good. FAIL to make this clear to the Iraqi army and you _guarantee_ that they will never function as more than dogs let off the leash by whatever hidden-vendetta ambiguity of prior social habituation 'training' they have grown up believing in.

The way you buy soldier's loyalties is convincing them that they ARE fighting for something worthwhile. And then showing them, literally, through the safety and status of their families, exactly what that is about.

With all the money we've hurled into this worthless war, we could BUILD 'gated communities' for Iraqi Army personnel and their families. Deep in the desert behind a Mortar Free Zone. And we could /give/ them the kinds of basic status symbols (working plumbing, satellite TV, phones, emergency services, and medical care) 'on base' to make them see what they NEED to do to justify their actions in bringing a better world to their country.

And we don't. Because we are too damn stuck up on the concept of 'by the bootstraps' enabling a society through mutual hardwork rather than envied elitism.

The biggest problem in Iraq for U.S. right now is that we believe in THEIR labelling system. Rather than forcing an alternative in our own. Such has /nothing/ to do with 'corrupt Western ways'. It is ALL about the basic securities of living outlined in our own preamble. "Life, Liberty, Pursuit Of Happiness".

You want warriors who come on strong for their country. You first convince them _directly_ that OWNING that country is in their best interests.

Bleep the politicians and their street mob justice. Over there or here.

>>
"There is too much unjustified optimism that Iraqi forces are tractable and trainable. To date there is little evidence."
>>

Well /duh/. You built them up to be that way remember? Utterly ineffective and thus completely useless, to either side.

>>
While Maliki has pushed Washington to accelerate training of his forces and hand over security control, their ability to fill the security vacuum is questionable, despite efforts by U.S. generals to publicly boost the image of the new recruits.
>>

Snort. "And today another bomb went off at an Iraqi recruiting center..."

SHOW DON'T TELL.

Show Iraqi Army privates living better lives than Iraqi working professionals. Show them with housing and yards and soccer fields and GREEN THINGS (water as wealth) in their existence.

You want to fight Al Jazeera? You SHOW things on AMERICAN television which bely the notion of 'who the real monsters are'.

And then the Iraqis will start to come over. Partly in fear of what well fed, totally loyal, soldiers could do to them 'no matter what their label'. And partly because _they want that_. That kind of basic quality-of-lifestyle security which 'only those loyal' can get.

>>
"Even if you’ve got an effective military you still have the problem that that amounts to arming one of the two sides in the civil war. And as the death toll rises the military will takes sides among the militias ... and splinter," warned Biddle.
>>

Crap. Stop taking the dregs of society and the deliberate infiltration of it's mob-militias as your baseline for an Army. Start giving ONE SIDE the benefit of the doubt. And making the other realize that /it's too late/ to blow up more stuff. Because those who live in the 'elitist American compounds' are _untouchable_.

>>
Thompson said much of America’s new military strategy in Iraq would depend on how the Bush administration now defined its political goals in Iraq.

"If our goal is to prevent the spread of civil war, then we are not going to be pulling troops out, because the moment we do, the war will grow so ferocious we will stop deploying.
>>

Snicker. You can prevent the 'spread of civil war' the instant you appease the Iranians /by/ pulling out. Just as you could have appeased Hitler by not playing a part in WWII.

Which of course instantly renders the 'findings of the ISG' a complete farce because they would have U.S. do exactly that. Hand over the future of Iraq to those who have absolutely no reason to put emphasis on EITHER Iraq's own 'best interests' (a strong, stable, Iraq would readily point the way towards a strong, stable Iran and Syria and they couldn't afford the finger pointing "Can I have summa that?").

Or Ours.

In this case, 'Our' interests come from slashing our worthless military to the bone and rapidly recapitalizing our society and particularly our foreign debt and WTO commitments to resource and technology rape. That cannot happen if Iran topples or even challenges Saudi loyalty to a USD fiat currency basis of oil sales. Our economy would collapse before we could get there from here.

THAT is what 'go big, go long, go home' should be honestly debated as, now. How long we have to stay to get ourselves out from under not simply an oil addiction like crack cocaine. But also the associated monetary vulnerability.

Bleep the Iraqis. They have long since proven why some men walk on four legs rather than stand tall to be wide-shoulders burdened with a higher responsility on two. Don't act as if that kind of "Awwwwh, de po wittle dust bunnies' infantilization of their rebellious stupidity is going to work NOW.

Not after a "Welcome U.S. with open arms" policy prediction turned out to mean /small arms/ and IED.

>>
"If our goal is to get out, then we are going to have to accept an even higher level of civil strife. If Americans leave Iraq, it will not be peaeful by anybody’s definition."
>>

Like any American cares. You want our sympathy? BE GRATEFUL. It doesn't take much more than that. American's have big hearts for the underdogs and the victims but little time for the hand biters.

Which is sad because the Iraqis and indeed much of the PG are operating at a level of social adolescene more akin to the 14th century than the 21st. And we _cannot_ allow such opportunistic, exploitative, psychologies to thrive by active dissent in a world that NEEDS to move away from the incredible resource waste and environmental contamination of war and the preparation for same.

Which means we are rapidly approaching a situation where it would _cost less_ to simply 'fix the problem' massively and with brutal application of excessive force. Than to continue to try and 'play nice'.

CONCLUSION:
Mohammed would be ashamed to look upon the Arab peoples because they have effectively degenerated to the very level of debased tribalism that his teachings sought to common-morality unify against an system of unjust rule by local caliphates in the Arab peninsula. How bitterly ironic then that 'fellow muslims' are using his philosophies to institute a 'Divide et Impera' policy to gain their own toehold on a wider regional powerbase.


KPl.


Source LINK-
http://www.defencetalk.com/news/pub...y_Experts_Question_Iraq_Pullback_Proposal.php

 

[rrrtx]

Interesting analysis. Some thoughts:

"It's now how many but how effectively these F2s are able to reenflame all parties."
What I am interested in is the extent of outside involvement. The type of involvement is important obviously but what I am interested in is how committed outside elements are in their support of their "interests" inside of Iraq. Smuggling arms is one thing. Smuggling technical people/engineer types is worse. Smuggling combatants, especially in volume is an indicator of a higher level of committment in my view.

"No. We did better on the HCMT."
I'm not talking about how the US is handling external supply issues. I am simply pointing out that the Vietnam scenario had the similarity of an enemy supply chain external to the country we had a presence in. And the inherent challenge of disrupting a supply channel that originates in a country you aren't interested in engaging militarily. I would agree that we seem to be doing a crappy job of stopping it. We should be wasting anything crossing the border emitting a heat signature and shaped like a human being.

"That's a really good question which means absolutely nothing."
The tone here isn't...helpful. But I'll respond anyway. I feel like you missed what I was trying to say completely. Put simply is this really a civil war between groups within Iraq - a local conflict. Or is it proxy fight between external powers?

"Oh please, it was /always/ North Vietnam seeking to 'export the revolution' ..."
Again - the tone. I do see a difference between the early stages of the conflict where most combatants in the south were locals and later where you had complete NVA units with artillery and everything doing the vast majority of the fighting. Clearly the north wanted to see the south fall from day one but their resource commitment was much higher towards the end.

I don't disagree with some of your views on how the war is being fought. I strongly agree that the WMD focus was a mistake and that the "selling" of the war was and is being mishandled. I am trying to keep focused on the topic and examine the extent of external involvement in Iraq leading up to discussion of what might happen if the US pulls out or reduces its presence.

 

[Kurt Plummer]

Waylander,

The Indians were consumate single combat and SUW warriors, in this arena, their 'average' made our euro-modeled best look like rank amateurs. Geronimo may have been 'The Quintessential Apache' but he was NOT the sole exponent of Native American unconventional warfare. Look at the Dog Soldiers and even Custer for instance as an example of major actions within an 'unconventional warfare' conditioned fight (and the consequences for all that derived from them).

What kept the 'Indian Problem' from becoming even more an act of genocide than societal disenfranchisement was the fact that _we were better as an organized force_.

One which just kept moving forward until we effectively occupied not just NA home territories but 'all points inbetween' as key assets and resources no longer available to their home and hearth war effort.

This strategy of choking off your opponent is less about the individual pieces in a chess like determinism of victory (on which conventional/high intensity combat is 'destroy your enemy until he can no longer take the field' based).

But rather more like Go in which surrounding and interpenetrating a threat force can only occur if you have THE NUMBERS to always cut off your opponents stones, both literally and figuratively giving him no options for freebie coup warfare.

Such 'parental discipline' is something that any Arab or indeed anyone with an understanding of the Arabs perennially childlike, fearful and 'unproven' yet exploitative mindset in the face of generations of losership could understand as the SOLE way to deal with a threat that would otherwise attempt 'unending endruns' around attempts at 'fair and equal treatment'.

As such _our_ best solution IS their best solution, at least as relates to stopping the violence and making them sit down and CHOOSE the way they will take this forward.

But only so long as you accept that, thanks to the generally cowardly and vicious nature of Osama-the-Assassin's approach to warfare. SOMEONE has to lose.

To make it clear that we won't tire ourselves chasing a phantom but rather hold them ALL equally responsible for 9/11 as a function of 'do this and we will own your futures _anyway_' (we have to).

That latter condition being what most terrifies the other leaders in the PG.

Because if ONE nation can stand on it's own 'with our Governing model and yet not without Islam'. Then ALL nations in the region have to start thinking about what happens when facing populaces which demand to no longer be split into a 90% havenot and 10% have level of priveleged existence solely because their annointed elite are also lipservice muslims.

And _that_ sir is how you beat the terrorist. Destroying your enemy by befriending /his/ friend. Or at least someone he identifies with. Thereby isolating him and making him look a fool for his 'death to Israel' and 'death to the America Satan!' idiocies of falsely presented image.

But it can ONLY begin when you treat a conquered enemy civilian populace 'as well as they deserve' and not a bit more.

CONCLUSION:
If the Indians (with the exact same adolescent mindset of desultory coup warfare) had seen the U.S. Cavalry treat them the way we molly coddle the Iraqis; we would still own the U.S..

But there would be a hundred million dead Indians instead of about 40-45 and what was left would not be worth being even permanent-POWs for want of failing to acknowledge that their time as 'stewards of the land' was over and change was here, like it or lump it.

The sadness being that I can see this even though Indians ARE 'my people'.

The Iraqis are not and never will be.

And for YOU to assume that they are deservant of something like OUR laws and protections or indeed anything more than the status of _A DEFEATED ENEMY CIVILIAN POPULATION_ means you don't understand get 'U.S.' at all.

For what it is about America that makes us great is that we pull together for each other. First foremost and always: U.S. We The People. Not you. Not the rest of the world. Not the bloodyminded muslims or jews or indeed ANYONE but //U.S.//. You can admire and emulate that if you find it worthy of such. But you cannot claim to own the rights to it if you are not in fact _One Of U.S._


KPl.

 

[Kurt Plummer]

RRTX,

>>
What I am interested in is the extent of outside involvement. The type of involvement is important obviously but what I am interested in is how committed outside elements are in their support of their "interests" inside of Iraq.
>>

OF COURSE 'the type of involvement' is important if it includes the ability to engage in leveraging warfare that spikes the apparent desperation of matters entirely beyond what local (insurgent against U.S.) resistance would suggest is the necessary consequence of local violence!

The Terrorists play their games for airtime and the repugnance of Americans, not for proof of their own 'moral supremacy'!! What better way to do that than to show that the Iraqis are a bunch of mutts with no self control over the violence they do unto each other 'whether we're there or not'?

This exploitative behavior in turn deriving from The Arabs own status as cheerleading fence sitters. Being powerless and/or pre-allegianced to situations beyond their control, they /love/ watching the powerful get humiliated by familiar faces.

It's their equivalent of the Roman Arena and when we respond to that on a tit-for-tat basis, they gain confidence, not merely in the 'rightness' of their own indignation at our presence but the -certainty- that if they join in in the way their neighbor did it, _to their neighbor_, they can count-coup as readily as the foreign technician who started it all by supplying said neighbor with a rigged soda can.

Thus the foreign individual is someone they will never need know as 'getting away with it' becomes the motive as much as the modis operandi to a cascade effect that brings those carrion crows aggressively down off the fence. Pecking each other as much as their 'common foe'.

Thus, when someone blows up a carbomb in a Sunni Mosque, the PROPER response is not to increase security around all Shiia territories to 'lock in the animals or prevent retaliation' it is to to GO IN to the Shiia mosque and grab the leader that you /fabricate/ evidence to prove association with the Sunni bombing.

And thereby _destroy 'the mosque system'_ as both a point of value in targeting each other's leadership. And as a means of isolating the infidel apostates from 'our war'. A war whose definition you make clear by your own untouchable nature as it's narrator.

Which is what the Foreign Fighter wants to have happen. Wants to rest away from the U.S. as a focal point of identity. So that the Iraqi failure becomes ours because we can't stop them from killing each other.

It is NOT the Iraqi goddamn battle. It is OURS. We beat the snot out of those that chose to play nail to the hammer. The rest need to be forced to realize that they DID LOSE 'by default'. So that we can reinvest their inferiority complex to the point where we can finish the fight by denying the recruitment process.

And you can only do that by CRUSHING the 'nodes' in their own netcentric command-as-propoganda system as the inflammatory messages of men like Al Sadr.

AT THE MOSQUES.

And the way to get there is to make sure that everyone knows _there is no fence_. No place to safely sit and decide not IF they are going to play. But when and to what advantagement.

That this begins by denying them the holier-than-thou'ism inherent to 'off limits' religious shrines should be kindergarten level logic after they render themselves hypocrites by attacking these very 'sacred places' themselves.

>>
Smuggling arms is one thing. Smuggling technical people/engineer types is worse. Smuggling combatants, especially in volume is an indicator of a higher level of committment in my view.
>>

Only if the U.S. was willing to do something about it more than 'hint at outrage'.

You _cannot win_ an insurgency fought within one-way porous borders.

YOU JUST CAN'T.

And as long as the leadership of Iran and Syria don't feel that they are themselves 'touchable' by their acts in a foreign land (acts which their own people would cheer on only to the point that U.S. bombs started falling on 'terrorist compounds' at home, ala Libya).

They will continue to undertake actions which 'law abiding U.S. politicians' would find atrocious because WE KNOW that OUR population would string them up if they ever were caught doing that kind of bleep.

But Arabs and Persians are not 'Real People' responsible to a higher moral code than what they get caught doing. They lead by inspiring others to hooliganism and them exploiting the fallout.

Thus, whether you 'engineer' the discovery of foreign involvement by black SOF ops leading to official military action. Or simply make it clear (a line of charred corpses at a border crossing) what the consequences of under the table state sponsorship to terrorism is 'at the personal level'.

You have to preempt _the enemy_ by making HIS populace fear what HIS actions in YOUR territory will bring down on THEM.

>>
I'm not talking about how the US is handling external supply issues. I am simply pointing out that the Vietnam scenario had the similarity of an enemy supply chain external to the country we had a presence in.
And the inherent challenge of disrupting a supply channel that originates in a country you aren't interested in engaging militarily. I would agree that we seem to be doing a crappy job of stopping it. We should be wasting anything crossing the border emitting a heat signature and shaped like a human being.
>>

Then you had better triple the yearly purchased of GMTI radar and REMBASS++ and UAV plus a reasonable Mike Force type gas and basing logistics tail so that you can bring in another 100,000 men to make it happen without depleting the internal security mission so much that Iraqis are no longer shamed by having Americans hand-hold them through every patrol they would otherwise refuse to show up for.

(If it is possible) DEFENSIVELY WINNING A CROSS BORDER INSURGENCY IS DUMB.

Dumb things take twice the energy of smart things. Which is why morality is often seemingly twisted because it works on what is efficient in stopping the -excess waste of effort- that is 'low level violence'. By using extreme violence make a point of the fight.

To get there you also need to break the assumption of Vietnam 'bicycle brigade' logistics. Prove beyond any reasonable doubt your SOF force are producing more than boogie man kills but rather something which ONLY an
'official' organized cross-border war effort could achieve.

i.e. You need to humiliate and challenge Syria and Iran at every opportunity to ensure against the very 'rapproachment to an Iraq support group' attitude that Carter and the other appeasement specialists are laying the ground work to an 'Iraq owned by outside powers (by default)' endgame for.

By selling the notion that Ahmadinejad and Assad 'are reasonable men' rather than instigators of violence they refuse to own up to.

Given this is NOT the first time we have done this kind of thing and the environmental conditions are so much easier relative to sensor LOS, this is OUR fault.

Not the Iranians or the Syrians. **OURS**.

>>
"That's a really good question which means absolutely nothing."
The tone here isn't...helpful. But I'll respond anyway. I feel like you missed what I was trying to say completely. Put simply is this really a civil war between groups within Iraq - a local conflict. Or is it proxy fight between external powers?
>>

I'm sorry, I should have rendered my response more on-point.

The problem is that we are allowing our prosecution of what is likely going to be a /generational/ fight be 'labelled' by our own presumptions of success=correctness in it's immediately achieved results.

i.e. At the 'day to day' level, where propoganda is in fact won in the nightscope and displayed corpse line of /died horribly/ infiltrators; you first must prove that the problem is not going 'unacknowledged' (unexistent) so that you have a leg to stand on in fighting the seemingly open hand of the devil offering an alternative.

The longer we look for rationalized excuses to preconditionally lay blame at the feet of as 'impossibilities for victory'. The more our rationalization will come true in the way of fantasy-outcomes that are easy, not right.

The FACT of the matter is that we went into Iraq without any real belief (as a function of troop levels) in our subsequent right-of-prosecution of a 'wider war' On Teror outside it's borders. No matter how much easier to justify attacks on 'known terrorist watch list states' such a fight might have been if it had been a part of our initial mission statement.

Or how much simpler it would have been to shame these states into a war of deliberate main-force vs. main-force humiliation 'for trying' by making cross border ops the standard by which THEY suffered everytime a foreign national was caught crossing a border.

Even if only as 'external' raiding ops, you need a good division or better strength level PLUS five times that amount in CS/CSS troops PER REMOTE BORDER you wish to 'sweep clean'. And when we didn't take the time to 'override or reposition' the 4th ID from Turkey, that option was instant-chink negated.

A chink rendered unto a gaping wound of vulnerability when we also refused to position troops in Iraq 'for the duration' of a conflict which needed every man there to BE THERE, not rotating out.

Without either a blatant threat (to keep the bloody buggers 'guessing' as much as behaving) or a full occupational effort, the _U.S._ showed WE WERE NOT SERIOUS about winning the Iraqi campaign. And that is when the jackal complex came out in the Arab shy-predators eye. When the carrion crows came 'off the fence'.

As a function of this, the U.S. Military in particular failed to take the chief lesson of the Vietnam campaign to heart: That if the 'professionals' fail to fall on their career swords rather than fight half-assedly. If they don't DEMAND the troop levels to turn each and every major city into it's own, fully vested, festung. The 'amateurs' will run rings around their hubris of assumptive can-do incompetence.

Whether you stopped 90% of the cross border infiltration 'where it broke fence' or 10%. Whether you go make /their/ lives miserable, humiliating the Syrians and Iranians to the extent that they CAN'T sustain cross border ops /from their own side/ for the fear that local villagers have of being the victim of their own government.

Even given you simply render Iraq 'so safe' (permanent lockdown) that they can't stir nothin' up when they finally get there. You can't get away from the notion that it was OURS TO OWN the strategic commitment which said "The Americans are too riled up to be bleeped with, let's sit quiet and see what happens in ohhhh ten years..."

With an Arab, it's either all in or all out UNTIL they change their minds. But it is up to YOU to ensure that they do so solely based on the /correct/ observations of no-holes-no-gaps-no-lack-of-will.

That said, the Syrians have needs, not oil. A need to retain political distance but not loss of funding from multiple 'renter' encampments of foreign fighters on their territory.

The need to pay off massive 'war debts' to the Soviets for 1970s-80s hardware and Lebanese occupation costs that they lack the national GDP to achieve on their own.

And a need to excuse a ruling party which is seen by both shiia and sunni alike as subcaste if not 'culted' following of near-Western non orthodoxy.

Thus they only gain by keeping things in the air playing off every option WITHOUT picking sides.

Not so the Iranians.

Who can steal the Syrian wind at a moments notice, simply because Baghdad is Shiia owned.

Even as most if not all the wellheads are in the East of Iraq.

And the Shiia Iraqis will no more sit still for Syrian no-money occupation than they do for U.S.

OTOH, the Iraqi 'Ruling Majority' (hoisted by our own petard) may well be willing to allow for hand-behind-throne 'advisement' from Iranians without whose 'pilgrimmage a$ patronage', any sustained civil war is apt to be made far more bloody.

Their own experience levels in business, governing and tactical arenas being near-nil thanks to the nepotistic rule of Saddam and the priveleged Sunni factions.

Again, I don't see room for an analysis of external power struggles here.

Because the Arabs will do unto themselves (obliterate cultural sub identities in a flood of blood) what they forever j'accuse U.S. of attempting to do socially 'and no one will mind because they're all animals and it's still just about oil'.

And after the mopup is finished, the minority Sunni populations will STILL have /nothing/. Because win or lose as a national body-politic or military force, their powerbase and certainly supply lines are also in central-western regions with little or no oil. And they no longer have the tech or the 'sense of superiority' (through instilled terror) to win back what they have forever lost to the Shiia.

 

[Kurt Plummer]

WHY would Syria want to back that? Is there even a strongman to replace Saddam with if they do?

Whatever happens in Iraq, it will be an Iranian play. They have the better links through the Mosque and Pilgrimmage system. They have the bagman money system to supply hits on whomever (including most probably Osama if Al Qaeda In Iraq tries to anything to upset the applecart with fundamentalist nonsense) whereever there needs one in the ME.

And most importantly, they have a reasonably competent tech and oil base from which to continue to selectively supply weapons and debt relief/social welfare.

I doubt if the Syrians are more than lackeys to them and the Syrians know it better than anyone.

>>
"Oh please, it was /always/ North Vietnam seeking to 'export the revolution' ..."
Again - the tone. I do see a difference between the early stages of the conflict where most combatants in the south were locals and later where you had complete NVA units with artillery and everything doing the vast majority of the fighting. Clearly the north wanted to see the south fall from day one but their resource commitment was much higher towards the end.
>>

Neither faction of the Vietnamese social debate had a functioning road transport system that could move individual rebel cells halfway across the country in a single night. Nor did they have COE based phone bombs and all the other goodies by which to forever Hashishin mask their murdering faces.

They had to do things the 'old fashioned way': up close and horrifically personal.

Yet the hitsquad 'here and gone again' technique is the ideal means you use to avoid living among your victims as you leverage a small force into something able to cow a herd of human animals into a constant state of near-frenzied 'lohing disappointment' with their rulers lack of ability to secure their local situation no matter which way they turn. Because, if nothing else, it ensures that they turn on their own rather than fight a larger phantom menace and that is what is wanted.

The Syrians/Iranians, quite aside from being even more monstrous in their acts of brutality than the VC ever were, DO 'get this'.

Even as they can control it by selective direct betrayal and border porosity.

And no matter who is pulling the ultimate puppet strings (if any), the one thing that IS occuring is a retranchment of the many-times-proven Arab ideal that 'better the devil you know'. As an acknowledgment that stable corruption is more predictable than inconstant and everyday-worthless 'freedom'.

And that is something WE could have fixed.

For what the terrorists are doing is saying "Sure! Hate the Americans! But don't do anything to secure your own future because you're powerless outside your own little communities! And there we want you to go nuts!"

Such is how you restrict a budding egalitarianism by 'purifying' multi-ethnic and religous diversity to the extent that each individual region no longer feel a need to go looking to solve other peoples troubles (for good or ill) until and unless they are themselves threatened.

And that threat will INSTANTLY stop when the Americans leave. Even if things subsequently get much more 'deliberately' worse.

Externally inspired or otherwise (the Iranians have no need for Sunni insurrections in THEIR 'peace process').

Because Iran has all the cards now relative to a legitimately enacted _U.S._ 'inspired democracy' by which Shiia majority rule is a given before the UN.

And they probably won't need more than this to retain a discrete influence at the national level which stubbornly primitive Iraqi defeatism will 'refuse to recognize' as having just traded their slave collars to a capital rather further east.

How does that old Arab saying go again? "My brother, my cousin, my tribe, my Islam, what is Nation?"

Work that insular clannish mindset and you can do anything you want, wherever you want and 'so long as you don't do it HERE' (today) nobody will stop you from gradually steam rolling the entire nation. Be you devil or saint.

We missed this. The Iranians won't.

>>
I don't disagree with some of your views on how the war is being fought. I strongly agree that the WMD focus was a mistake and that the "selling" of the war was and is being mishandled. I am trying to keep focused on the topic and examine the extent of external involvement in Iraq leading up to discussion of what might happen if the US pulls out or reduces its presence.
>>

'Go Big, Go Long or Go Home' has already long-since been resolved sir. It's only a matter of 'properly fixing the blame not the problem' so that Americans can live with their latest Vietnam victimization for nothing.

The utter ridicule which will be heaped on U.S., politically, diplomatically, economically and at home for _losing the War On Terror_ (AfG is next, you can count on it and UBL will /never/ be given up now) being the one thing which the urgent-to-dealbatross Democrats will 'chose not to look at' as OUR reap as sewn inheritance. At least until the consequences of another pathetic Constant Guard residual commitment has long since faded past any 'No Paris Required' running scared outcome.

Which only leaves the President. A man who could well turn out to be as much of a 'signature' personality for Congress as they were a legislative 'copy writer' for Bush.

Yet this man (or woman) cannot afford to do as Clinton did in masking the absondery of American industrial, defense and trade issues for simple debt relief and 'universal health care'.

Because even given we retire 2/3rds of the utterly worthless military to a well deserved oblivion, it will likely take a massive power-and-transport INDUSTRIAL (not social) redevelopment program on the order of Roosevelt's PWA to get us off oil dependency before Damocles Sword falls on any further state-as-terrorist actions (what I think UBL is waiting for, if anything is a chance to declare himself 'affiliated' so that the terrorist brand no longer is quite so bright a Cainic Mark).

That we might have a couple hundred thousand disgruntled troops bring home an 'attitude' of yet another national-ego collapse at the same time further terrorism pushes us into an even deeper paranoia of 'but what can we do?!' Arab Vendetta nonresponsiveness is what could ultimately set the mood for what comes next.

Disrupting the 'New New Deal' democrats at the very time that (commercial) 'outside interests' wish to condemn America rather than see it reinvent itself as again an isolationist _free_ society. Such is the basis for a nightmare scenario of a Security State gone amok because it can't win abroad and can't unify at home.

And Americans deserve more than that. If not from our soldiers then at least from our way-forward inspired leadership.

Given that _we_ are 'choosing' the cut-and-run solution through a Congress-becomes-Presidential power shift, it's obvious that said leadership is apt to be no smarter than The People who elect them to appease their fears with what amounts to 180` solutions.

I myself see no point in dealing with 'not OUR devil' the Iranians or Syrians over Iraq if it doesn't buy us control of the oil which Osama's act should have made clear as the "Careful or You're Next!" consequences to all-Islam of an attack on American soil.

And that doesn't leave much left to do overseas so much as it implies a real urgency in breaking our petro-dependence right here at home.

The Dems will have to be morons to politically risk that at a time when they have only just regained control of both houses and are looking at another key legislative election, less than a year after the new President is instated...


KPl.

 

[Waylander]

@Kurt Plummer

Woah, you posts are so full of extreme right wing ideology and ultra nationalistic that I instantly stop discussing with you.
Your ideas are so disgusting that here in germany you would be close to being ready to take you to the court.
You are a shame for the ideals of the US how I understand them.
Freedom, humanity, simpathy, fairness,...

I am not a mod and I am far away of wanting to dictate them what to do but I think that often enough people here were warned for smaller things.

End.