I just got on this forum so I may be a little late on the current discussion. This is my understanding of the point being made at the beginning of this forum and my coinciding point:
The war in Iraq, however big a mistake it was whether due to lack of reason, intelligence (both military and actual), management, etc. is a war that can be won, but not without inciting hatred all over the earth.
Yes, it is true, sheer brutality cannot win the day, the Russians in Afghanistan are a good example of that because the Russians have never cared for International law unless it was for their own agendas and killed at the drop of a hat. But neither will weak military force (not forces, but effort), careless diplomacy, nor a public with a weak stomach for war.
So why are we there (a general, opinion based review):
The reality is, we went into this because of fear. 9/11 was on everyone's mind still and we needed a scapegoat. Bush II wanted to prove daddy wrong and many people, even those who left the administration (watch "No End in Sight: An Insider's view of the war in Iraq"), agree that he wanted to draw a connection between Al-Qaeda and Iraq as soon as that stupid look on his face after they told him the towers fell cleared. You think Bush Snr. didn't want to go after the guy who tried to kill him? Of course he did.
But daddy knew better. You have the Saudis in the west, our two-faced business partners, and extremist Iran in the East. In the center you have a secular dictator who is hated by both sides. Geopolitically and oil-wise it made sense to leave Saddam there. That's why daddy didn't go there and daddy wasn't exactly in agreement with junior on taking on Saddam.
We should have focused our efforts on Afganistan and Bin-Laden, because had any of our suit-wearing leaders had any military training or I dunno, a good history professor, they would've known that the Afghanistan campaign was going to be tough enough.
Russia v.s. CIA trained Islamist extremists in the 1980s should have been pretty good proof of the fight we had ahead of us in Afghanistan.
Secondly, bad management on the part of the Bush Admin. and extreme abuse of Executive powers/privileges has led us to where we are. Congress is a joke and I am in agreement with Mr. Ron Paul (despite some quirks) about a return to non-interventionist foreign policy (especially with the superpower-like competition we face today), following the constitution (true conservatism), and giving back power to Congress and not letting the Executive do whatever the hell they want (WE ARE NOT ROME!!!).
Since I cannot touch on all the points I want without it being a novel, I'll touch on one last point about how to truly win this war:
First and foremost, we have without any doubt the greatest military force in history, so it is not that we are stretched. Saddam supposedly had the 4th or 5th largest standing army in the world (and we know where he got most of it from), and our Air Force slaughtered their efforts with minimum casualties to the point that their jets hadn't even left the ground.
So screw the media and those who say we can't win this because our forces are exhausted, that's BS.
Again, this war was horribly managed, had our leaders put those who knew about war, our generals,etc. then we would have Iraq under lock and key and probably would either be pulling out now or had done so a year or 2 ago.
By bad management I include the following:
- the lack of troops (Gulf I we sent about 480,000 troops WITH OTHER PEOPLE HELPING US-----not this coalition of the willing crap)
-lack of policing/VERY necessary martial law (looting)
-lack of proper reconstruction efforts (Bremer's incompetence can't even be expressed in words)
-disbanding and blacklisting former Republican Guard troops (they lost and they knew it and we kicked them in the balls anyways)------THIS IS THE SOURCE OF OUR INSURGENCY AND THE HELP SOUGHT FROM IRAN
-reconstruction planning 60 days before the fall of Baghdad (in WWII they planned 2 YEARS AHEAD)
-assigning imbeciles to very important posts with too little time
So how do we win this? I am not a politician, self-declared expert, media-tool-declared expert, etc. but I here's what I think and not necessarily in order:
- Let Bush play out the rest of his term, because when it comes time to write about him historically, he will be the worst President our nation has had (his foreign and domestic record proves it----with one shining star being getting us out of the recession)
- NOT PULL OUT OF IRAQ
- Push Congress to officially declare War or at the very least, convince the next President to let the military leadership make the military decisions (and keep the Pentagon cronies out)
- Put troop levels at a realistic point by pulling troops out of I dunno, maybe 5 or 6 of the 128 nations we have troops in (WHY THE HELL DO THE JAPANESE NEED 50,000 Marines......they are rearming themselves anyways)
- Modify the system by which troops stay and go by giving them a choice between tours of duty or confirmed kills/point system (with of course some kind of audit system to insure no innocent civilians are killed for the sake of the count)
- Give our troops culture training so that the idiot marine doesn't accidentally piss off someone enough for them to go and become an insurgent
(marines are meant to be killing machines, but this isn't total war, it's not even a declared war, so adapt the killers to think just a little)
- Engage in psychological warfare and Covert-Ops to deliver a message to the insurgency; as stated by the creator of this post "to allow victory to be an option against an insurgency you must establish a dominant mindset over your enemy by making them scared as hell to fight you or go near you."
- Crush the Mahdi army/insurgency by any means necessary, conduct strike operations at the Iraq-Iran border to stop the flow of aid from Iran, and form provincial Iraqi-US Coalition Militias with the fresh troops thus sowing the seeds of multicultural cooperation, focusing on "the enemy of my enemy"--insurgents/terrorists/whatever the media calls em that week, and letting those involved at the local level see that we are there to help
- Undo all of Bremer's idiotic policies; most of all giving former Iraqi soldiers/Ba'athists a clean slate/jobs/a vote to counter the insurgency we created (they wanted jobs or new military positions when we came into Baghdad)
- Allow the U.N. to step in where deemed necessary
- Not acquiesce for even an instant when it comes to confirmed areas of insurgent activity---KILL ANYTHING THAT MOVES.....after:
---you surround the city, you air-deliver pamphlets, you use air strikes, set up roadblocks/checkpoints to check those leaving, and engage by ground after the air strikes are done with another 2 battalions
These are a few of the many many things that can be done to win this war. We can fight and slaughter like the British or Russians did in the past, but not at the cost of civilian lives, that creates more terrorists. But yes, this is war and even though we supported it as a nation in the beginning (mostly), most us seemed to think of war like a videogame until bodies piled up on our side. Our weak stomachs need to wake up and realize, war is hell. People die, it isn't checkers, it's f***in' chess. Leaving Iraq will be the nail in the coffin this administration has built and only make us seem like cowards.
Unfortunately, according to mass media, most of us want to leave Iraq because of disagreement with Bush.
Consequences?
I can think of one major one: oil prices and loss of commercial faith by the rest of the world (we will be branded as cowards) and loss of faith in US commerce is loss of dollars = degradation of the economy -------remember our dollar is already
suffering and its worth is based on faith alone. Also, we do ALOT of business with the Middle East and those who "hate" us including France.
Some of you are going to tear me apart on my comments, but look at the big picture. And please, correct any facts that may be wrong.
