A U.S. soldier on patrol in Baghdad.
Posted on 05/14/2007 11:04:15 PM PDT by MinorityRepublican
There is a serious and widening disconnect between the timetables that commanders are using to guide their actions in Iraq and those being demanded by politicians in Washington. Gen. David Petraeus and Lt. Gen. Ray Odierno, the senior U.S. commanders in Iraq, are quite properly planning for the troop "surge" to extend well into next year. That's why the Pentagon has alerted 10 combat brigades with some 40,000 soldiers to get ready to deploy in August. They will be needed to replace troops rotating home.
Back home, however, politicians are demanding results in the next few months -- or else. And not just Democrats. House Minority Leader John Boehner has said that if they don't see progress by the fall, even House Republicans will start demanding a Plan B for Iraq, which would presumably involve pulling troops out, not sending more. That message was reinforced by the group of 11 House Republicans who visited the White House last week.
Gen. Petraeus has promised to report back to Congress by September on what kind of progress he is making, but don't expect a definitive answer. He is unlikely to say "the surge has worked" or "the surge has failed." He will instead probably point to a variety of indicators, some of which will be positive, others negative. It will be left to the American people and their leaders to interpret these results as they see fit.
Inevitably, since suicide attacks will still be occurring in Iraq in September, many commentators and politicians will write off the surge as a failure. Many are already doing so, even though the Baghdad Security Plan is barely three months old and the fourth extra U.S. brigade has only recently arrived. The fifth and final one won't be in place until June.
(Excerpt) Read more at online.wsj.com ...
A U.S. soldier on patrol in Baghdad.
We need to use the Super weapons we have, and quit showing political cowardliness. If we would have actually had a war of shock, and awl, then most of our guys would have been home now. Instead we are pussy footing around with the silly rules of engagement. Unless they change a surge will never work.
We have to fight this War WWII style not Vietnam. In other words don’t hold back for anything. And Frankly I don’t give a dam who is offended by this. The thought of losing in Iraq just sickens me.
All those ‘armchair Generals’ in Congress, in both parties, need to shut the hell up and let the military do the work for which they have been trained, and have vast experience.
No argument, you’re right.
I hear people say this and it is as if they don't even understand what they are saying. Who are exactly are you going to kill and how. Every area in Iraq has some people who support us and a lesser number of skulkers who don't. So what do you propose to do, bomb Iraq wholesale the same way we bombed Japan. That didn't bring the Japanese to their knees. We had to nuke them for that to happen. Even so, that was probably the appropriate way to deal with a country where 99.9% of its people were ready to fight us to the death.
But in Iraq, there are entire regions that are generally supportive of what we are doing. For example, the Kurds are very supportive of America. Do you propose to bomb them, because if you don't there are going to be a whole bunch of bad people in Al Anbar and Central and Southern Iraq who are going to move into the Kurdish areas once you start bombing Al Anbar and Central and Southern Iraq but not Northern Iraq.
And if you refrain from bombing the Kurdish areas because they support us are you also going to refrain from bombing the majority Shiite areas because there are a whole lot of Shiites who have been generally supportive of us as opposed to how they rebelled against the British in 1920 when the British took over. And if you refrain from bombing the majority Shiite areas because they support us, are you also going to refrain from bombing Al Anbar, because there are a number of significant tribes in Al Anbar who have recently swung over to our side and have begun attacking Al Qaeda.
Once you've written off all of those areas because they support our efforts, who exactly is it you are going to bomb?
I just don't understand people who can't wrap their heads around the idea that Iraq isn't Germany or Japan. And thank God for that because we lost 400,000 people in WWII fighting the way your propose. In contrast, we have lost roughly 1/100 that number in Iraq. So in Iraq, we have traded time for a significantly lower body count than we suffered in either WWII or Vietnam. One hopes that everyone would agree that that is a good trade. One also hopes that everyone would understand that to bomb Iraq wholesale would be to adopt the very tactics which are progressively causing Al Qaeda to lose support as it mindlessly lashes out at the very people it is purporting to represent.
Eventually, someone is going to win this war and whoever does will be almost certain to have adopted these tactics.
There is a side in the war that is already ussing those tactics. It's called Al Qaeda and it's losing the war.
We could win this war, if we had the political will here at home, but unfortunately it appears that we don't. To win it we either need to be willing to stick it out for another 5 to 10 years or adopt more aggressive tactics in order to beat the terrorists in a shorter time span. We have used those tactics successfully in the past, notably in Germany following WW2 and the Philippines following the Spanish American War and recently the Russians have used similar tactics successfully in Chechnya.
Al Qaeda will indeed lose the war. They are a tiny minority and largely composed of foreigners, but just because they lose, doesn't mean we'll like the victors any better.
The problem is that most of the “suspected terrorists” aren’t, and every time we “round them up”, we make another bunch of people dislike us and want us to go away.
It doesn’t help if every time we capture some low-level “terrorist” (someone who maybe hides weapons for others but doesn’t fight), we make another 5 people who now dislike us enough that they will hide those weapons.
We aren’t even in a real war. We won the war after weeks, and won the peace after a couple of years. There is now a legitimate government in Iraq. We are working FOR that government to help them deal with terrorism, and the aftermath of our war, and the aftermath of 30 years of Saddam’s rule.
To some degree we are victims of success, because we can’t simply ignore the legitimate government of the country. But it would be bad for us if they ordered us out of the country, because we need to do more to make sure the bad people don’t get power.
If we did leave now, or they forced us out, the people who like us would give in to the people who were killing them, and we would lose the somewhat pro-american government we have today.
I certainly agree that from time to time we have not been aggressive enough. A friend of mine from Church who served in Iraq and thought we were stupid to be there pointed out to me that the culture of that world is one of strength, and that they controlled prisoners best when they just pointed large weapons at them (he said they laughed at pistols).
Our “diplomacy” makes them despise us, but we also can’t be harrassing those who support us. It’s a tough line, one our military was not well-suited for.
I worked with a very intelligent (uber-geek was the word we knuckledraggers used to describe him) MI officer in Iraq in ‘03 after the ground offensive was complete.
He was sitting in a big intel meeting “planning the future” when the question was posed “Where is our center of gravity?”
The major responded “The U.S. Media”
He was told to get serious and stop thinking so far outside the box.....
Kind of points out the linear thought that too many senior officers share in the military.
Guys like Petraeus are too few.
RLTW
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