Replies

"I believe that the pullout of Fallujah was a stroke of genius."

Yes. here is my riff on that. Good news/bad news on Iraq, I think it may explain the roller-coaster of emotions on our Iraq war:

"You know many expected Iraq War to be hard, and yet we drove to Baghdad in 3 weeks. Nobody had ever conquered a country with such few casualties!"

"Yeah, so that was good - 3 weeks to Baghdad, low casualties."

"No, it was bad because we couldnt stop the looting with such a quick collapse, and ended up with an occupation where our enemies hid instead of got defeated."

"Ah, looting, that's bad."

"maybe it was good because we were able to give the Iraqis some satisfaction of taking back what Saddam stole from them and totally sweep away the Baathist Governing structure."

"Sweeping awawy, that's good."

"No, it was bad because once we swept out the baathists, we had to create things from scratch. Getting rid of Saddam was good, getting rid of torture chambers and his secret police and henchmen and thugs was good. But they just melted away. And we had nobody to run the country, had to start from scratch."

"Yikes! Bad!"

"No, not bad, plenty of non-Baathists were willing to work in the new Iraq. They were willing to work in ministries and join security forces."

"Oh, yes, that good."

" ... but then the insurgents, alot of them former Baathists started killing the 'collaborators' and hampering efforts to rebuild the country, not to mention setting up bombs to kill our soldiers and make security harder."

"Oh dear, that's bad."

"Not really bad, if you consider that people say it was a mistake to disband the army. Imagine having to deal with these thugs but having them on our payroll instead of our enemy."

"Right, that's worse..."

" ... although some do point out that being unemployed and out of power is part of some of their motivation in the first place."

"So, it was a bad mistake to disband the Iraqi army?"

"Perhaps in the long run it was good. See, if the Baathist thugs were smart they would have laid low, waited for the US to pack up and leave and then retaken the country. Did we want the snake in-house or out of the house?"

"Good point, they exposed themselves - good."

"Yes, but we had trouble finding the insurgents and terrorists."

"That's bad."

" ... although we did catch Saddam and almost all the 'deck of cards'."

"That's good."

"Not totally good, because we found out after we caught Saddam that he wasnt the one animating the so-called 'resistance', and it continued after his capture. Seems to be a mix of Bin Laden-style terrorist Jihadism mixed with the former regime's money and desire to regain power. "

"That's bad."

"Well, yes, very hard for our soldiers, but we promised we would face the terrorists over there and not here, and lo and behold, terrorists came to Iraq to fight our soldiers. So we've been able to get a bead on terrorists."

"Is that good?"

"Beats having them hit us here at home. Beats letting them stay in safe haven rogue nations."

"Oh that is good."

"Only if you dont mind the price of our own soldier's lives. And the problem is, they are taking Americans like Nick Berg and other civilians and brutally killing them too. Not to mention literally hundreds of Iraqis killed by terrorist bombs. They bombed Shi'ite worshippers, murdered police chiefs and killed Basra schoolgirls."

"That is bad."

"Yes, but the shock of this and the death of Iraqis is waking up the people to how bad the terrorism problem is, even if they werent sypathetic to US soldiers plight."

"That is, um, good?"

"Yes and no."

"Gee, thanks for clearing it up!"

"Well, you see, it doesnt take a lot of people to create a terrorist problem in a country. They now estimate maybe 20,000 people are in the terrorist-style 'insurgency in Iraq. The "yes" is that almost all Iraqis condemn terrorism and see how much harm it does. The "no" part is that to a small segment, the violence against US soldiers is appealling to their national pride or to their political or religious extremism."

"Well, that sounds more bad than good, I mean if we dont defeat terrorists, they will keep on killing us and the other Iraqis. Are we even winning?"

"Yes we are. In April we were facing a two-faced front of an attempted uprising, and now one front has melted completely, that is the Sadr militia, which we destroyed in May and drove out of most of the southern towns, and the other is a fragile 'truce' in Fallujah, where we let Iraqis police themselves, after killing maybe 600 terrorists and insurgents."

"Wow, that sounds good!"

"Well, not really good. In Fallujah, we might have destroyed the forces, but held back out of concerns of collateral damage. We let a "fallujah brigade" police the interior of the town, but apparently there are still insurgents and we never got them disarmed as promised."

"That is bad."

"Maybe not so bad. We now have them in a 'fixed position', which is death for guerilla groups. This gives us an opportunity to turn the tables on the terror groups and bomb them for a change."

"Sounds good."

"Well, not really, sounds a bit too much like the Israeli approach to terrorists. We are not in there actually getting the town cleaned up."

"Which is bad."

"but not in the long run, if the Iraqi people begin to see the consequences of their actions and start hating the thugs, like they hated Saddam.

You know, this is what happened with Sadr in the south of Iraq. He called for an uprising and sent his thugs into towns like Najaf and Karbala and other places, within weeks, his thugs were getting very unpopular and the other Shiite clerics were demanding he withdraw. He lost all popular support. You see, these guys promise only 'resistance' and violence, not a popular governing model. So, their act can get very old if we just hold back and let them hang themselves with their own ropes."

"I guess that could be good, if ..."

"... if somehow the Iraqi forces themselves could take care of the situation and flush out the thugs, pacify the town."

"But they cant do that, yet, can they?"

"Well, they are getting up to speed."

"good!"

"But still need our help. But the important thing is that they are going to have to do this thing to secure the new post-Saddam Iraq. We captured Saddam ... "

"Good."

... and now he goes on trial. Meanwhile, Iraq has a transitional law and Government in place, ready to set up elections and a new Constitution next year, ... "

"Good."

"But the main problem, and the #1 complaint of the Iraqi-on-the-street is security. That they dont feel safe. And if they can only manage security on their own for the most part, without damaging their new freedom and democracy then our boys can come home and we can declare a victory."

"Ah. That would be good."

"Yes. That would be good."