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March 22, 2006
Welcome to the quagmire, we got fun and games...
I couldn't stop hearing Axl in my head while reading Max Boot's piece in today's LA Times:
It is sobering to reflect how long even an unsuccessful insurgency can run. Israel has been battling Palestinian guerrillas since the 1940s. Colombia has been battling Marxist guerrillas since the 1960s. Britain battled Irish guerrillas nearly continuously from the mid-19th century until recent years. Even the campaign often cited by experts as a model counterinsurgency — Britain's defeat of a communist uprising in Malaya — took 12 years to succeed, from 1948 to 1960.Many of us who were against the invasion of Iraq in the first place talked about the potential for this very situation. The historical references to Colombia, Israel the Brit/Irish situation were brought out..and we were called unpatriotic terrorist sympathizers who wanted nothing more than to bash the President.
Yes. That's an "I told you so".
It might have been possible to avoid such a costly and protracted conflict in Iraq if Central Command and the Defense Department had been better prepared for the "post-conflict" phase of operations. But, as we now know, there was a horrifying and inexplicable failure to undertake adequate preparation for running Iraq after the fall of Saddam Hussein. The most criticized aspect of this failure — and rightly so — was not sending enough troops to control a population of 25 million. The lack of security allowed the insurgency to flare up and spread like wildfire across the Sunni landscape. Now this rebellion is proving nearly impossible to stamp out. Indeed, it may trigger a wider conflagration as Shiites take up arms to defend their hard-won political gains.
It was entirely possible to avoid a costly and protracted conflict in Iraq, Max.
Don't invade countries that pose no direct threat to the nation, for starters. Don't hire Presidents who carry weird obsessions with dictators and fossil fuels. Don't drown yourself so deeply in the ideological fervor and fear whipped up by faux patriots that you become blind and deaf to those trying to hand you a life preserver.
Is Iraq already in the middle of a civil war? That depends on the meaning of "civil war." Clearly there is increasing internecine violence, and if Iraq isn't already in a civil war, it is heading that way. But bad as the situation is, it could get far, far worse if the U.S. were to withdraw prematurely. At the moment, the presence of about 136,000 U.S. troops is, believe it or not, keeping a lid on the violence and limiting the options of the most extreme elements in both the Sunni and Shiite communities.
The definition of "civil war"? Shades of the Clinton impeachment proceedings...how many ways are there to define "is"?
If the Shias were wearing blue and the Sunni's were wearing gray (while whistling "Dixie"), then could we call it a civil war? Most everything else about this conflict seems to be lined right up under the civil war heading.
Are we making it worse? I don't know. But our presence isn't making it better. Our inability to provide proper security or thwart sabotage of basic services is at the very least not helping. If our troops really are keeping a lid on the extreme elements/major violence..then it seems to me that its a short term lid at best. Its their country. Ultimately we can't decide things for them. It may have to come to a bloody, messy war for them to sort it out.
But still..in the end..Boot tries to create a cushy landing for Bush:
Yet if President Bush has blundered badly — and he has — that does not make him different from any other wartime leader. Think of all the setbacks the U.S. has suffered even in successful conflicts of the past, from the failed invasion of Canada and the loss of New York, Philadelphia and Charlestown in the Revolutionary War to the horrific retreat from the Chosin Reservoir followed by two years of bloody stalemate in the Korean War. All were catastrophes of infinitely greater magnitude than anything that has occurred in Iraq, and yet none precluded a satisfactory resolution. We can still triumph in Iraq if we have the patience to outlast the fanatical jihadists and cynical opportunists who want to drive us out. Of course, that's a big if.
The American Revolutionary War was a necessary conflict. It had some major setbacks, to be sure. But it absolutely had to happen. The conflict in Korea is less clearly defined and was initially very damaging to Truman...whose reputation has since recovered. But Truman's vindication came because he didn't mislead us. The Bush Administration has misled us and that doesn't give Presidents much room for recovery. It also magnifies the disastrous nature of Iraq.
Posted by Carla at March 22, 2006 07:55 AM