I suppose I've been mum on the Iraq "War" for some time now, but Duke Bloggins--if that is his real name--persuaded me to revisit the issue in light of Dubya's upcoming unveiling. Briefly, if we are to do a surge, let's not kid ourselves--7,000, or even 20,000 troops will not cut it. A "surge" to me would involve 100-200,000 American troops methodically knocking down doors and crushing the opposition--whether Al Qaeda, Mahdi army, Shiite death squads, or Baathist brigades. What happened to: "If you're not with us, you're against us"? I think the so called insurgents, regardless of their stripes, have proven that they are not with us.
It is time to stop waging a PR campaign and start prosecuting a real war. That's right, bombs flying, stray bullets cutting down innocent civilians. None of this 21st century surgical warfare bullshit. There is no such thing as a moral war. Right? Was the Civil War fought morally? Even World War II? Regardless of the justifications (and I am not brushing over the WMD embarrassment), we are there now--and we do have a political and economic (if not moral) debt to the Iraqi people. So, President Decider, do what you best--decide--resolve resolutely. If you are not prepared to do what you SURELY FUCKING KNOW has to be done, pull our troops out gradually and admit your failure. The "battle for hearts and minds" should be the battle to pierce the former with our bayonets and splatter the latter all over the streets of Sadr City.
For the first time in a long time, let's try to do the hard thing, the right thing. Then we can go back to dealing with social security bankruptcy by washing our hands of it and drafting gay marriage bans.
5 comments:
Dude, I don't fully feel you on this one. Specifically, I don't think that adding 20k is a drop in the proverbial bucket. Most of these soldiers - the vast majority of them - will be going to Baghdad, one particular city.
Baghdad has a population of 7M, people, so we are talking about an increase of 1 *more* soldier per about 350 civilans, not taking into account women and children and retards, etc. Put another way, that's about another soldier on every block. That counts for something.
The bigge problem, and here I agree with you, is that this more of a PR campaign than a war. Another problem, is that it's too late to make it a war again. You can't go around destroying the country and killing civilians in a low intensity conflict, because that would be worse than the status quo. The time for that was 2003, and they fucked it up by letting the Iraqi army walk off the field instead of annhilating them, and the commandeered civilan vehicles they rode in on. Now it's too late. By slaughtering the population in a guerilla war, you only make more guerillas. That's what happenned in Ukraine,(where they initially liked Hitler).
The only thing, for my $.02, they can do now, is make the local army as viable as possible and the GTFO. Redeploy to Somalia and Darfur, where we can kill skinnies, do some good, and make the US military look good again.
I'm not talking about going after civilians. I am talking about having enough troops where counterinsurgency "success" is not even a question, with civilian death toll taking a back seat. I am talking about saying to Sadr's supporters and whomever else: if you want what's good for your country (i.e. employment, electricity, elections, education), get on our side, and we need to say it through a bullhorn mounted atop a huge cannon (do we still have those?).
I don't believe we should be thinking about the best way to save face in the short term, but about our long-term reputation (coupled with Vietnam, lesser adventures, and our declining superpower status, I'd say rocketing what remains of Somalia into submission won't make us look good with anyone but Ethiopia) and our moral debt to Iraq.
Dude, you seem to be treating the questions of beating the insurgency on one hand, and inflicting civilian casualties on the other, as separate issues, when they are really not. If you just mean that we should take a harder line, such as when they hide in a mosque, shit like that, then I'm with you.
Secondly, Somalia is more important than you make it seem. If Islam in Adrica becomes what it became in the middle east, we are in for a world of heart. Nipping it as we are, not quite in the bud, is a smart course of action. An AIDS-ridden, internally disastrous Africa is always better than an Africa exporting Islamic terrorism.
I should note that my father's keyboard jas literally not a single marked letter, due to overuse, which explains some of the spelling errors, if not the reasoning ones.
My comments did not address Africa, as that thread was brought up by you. I was treating the question of retreat (or gradual acquiescence to the status quo) in Iraq. We can launch these strikes in Somalia, Sudan, wherever, while fighting the main war (those recruiters need to start offering better candy to HS'ers). If we don't finish THIS, how can we start another major conflict?
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