Good Article

[seinfeldrules]

I'm not here to argue the article or debate anything, just thought I'd share this and see what everyone thinks (and yes I am interested to hear what you say, even if I dont respond).

http://msnbc.msn.com/id/10218888/site/newsweek/

Dec. 5, 2005 issue - The rising clamor in Washington to get out of Iraq may be right or may be wrong, but one thing is certain: its timing has little to do with events in that country. Iraq today is no worse off than it was three months ago, or a year ago. Nor has there been a sudden spike in the numbers of American troops being killed. In fact, in some ways things have improved recently. What's driving this debate, however, are events in America. President Bush's approval rating has plummeted, battered by Iraq but also by Hurricane Katrina. The Democrats, sensing weakness, are trying to draw blood. But the result is a debate that is oddly timed. Iraq is in the midst of full-scale political campaigning and is three weeks from a crucial election, the first in which there will be large-scale Sunni participation. This will also be the first election to yield a government with real—and lasting—powers. (It will have a four-year term, compared with the last two governments, which had six months each.)

Why and how we got into this war are important questions. And the administration's hands are not clean. But the paramount question right now should not be "What did we do about Iraq three years ago?" It should be "What should we do about Iraq today?" And on this topic, the administration has finally been providing some smart answers. Condoleezza Rice, who is now in control of Iraq policy in a way no one has been, has spearheaded a political-military strategy for Iraq that is sophisticated and workable.

Many Democrats are understandably enraged by an administration that has acted in an unethical, highly partisan and largely incompetent fashion in Iraq. But in responding in equally partisan fashion they could well precipitate a tragedy. Just as our Iraq policy has been getting on a firmer footing, the political dynamic in Washington could move toward a panicked withdrawal.

To oversimplify, after two years of pretending that it was not engaged in nation-building in Iraq, the administration has accepted reality. Instead of simply chasing insurgents or hunkering down in large armed camps, the military is now moving to "clear, hold and build," in Rice's words. If this trend continues, it means that securing the population and improving the lives of people has become the key measure of success in Iraq. This shift is two years late—call it the education of Donald Rumsfeld and Dick Cheney—but better now than never.

To understand the change, look at the airport road to Baghdad. For two years, when reporters would ask how it was possible that the mightiest military in history could not secure a five-kilometer stretch of road, the military responded with long, jargon-filled lectures on the inherent weakness of long supply lines and the complex nature of Baghdad's urban topography. Then one day this summer the military was ordered to secure the road and use more troops if necessary. Presto. Using Iraqi forces, the road was secured. Similar strategies have made cities like Najaf, Mosul, Tall Afar and even Fallujah much safer today than they were a year ago.

The next great shift will have to be the protection of infrastructure. It remains mind-boggling that Iraq is producing no more electricity and oil today than under Saddam. The U.S. military does not want to protect power plants and refineries, but success in Iraq requires it. It is not just a "clear and hold" strategy. "Building" will bring much-needed economic activity and growth.

On the political front, the overtures to Sunnis have yielded some results. Last week in Cairo, the Sunnis pushed through a united Iraqi position that included support for the right of resistance. It's purely symbolic. The Sunni leaders I talked to in Baghdad are well aware that if American forces left tomorrow, the insurgents would kill them all. But the outcome bolstered their nationalist credentials and also brought in other Arab states that so far have been sitting on the sidelines. That Washington did not overreact to the hot air coming out of Cairo is a sign of its new maturity.

If Washington's strategy is more aggressively pursued, it could actually be compatible with some American troop withdrawals. For obvious political reasons, it would be far better if the "hold" part of the policy was done by Iraqi forces. And, in fact, this has been happening. Najaf and Mosul are now patrolled entirely by Iraqi Army forces. Even Kirkuk, which is politically sensitive, has fewer American troops in it than it did six months ago. This trend could accelerate, which would mean that three or four brigades could be withdrawn in the next year.

Current talk of a withdrawal, properly done, could actually serve a useful purpose. The most dysfunctional aspect of Iraq right now is its government. The Shia leaders don't agree on much. They refuse to listen to the United States on issues ranging from subsidizing energy (a large part of the reason oil supply is so weak) to making concessions to the Sunnis. If Iraq's leaders begin to realize that they could be on their own, without the United States to blame and without the American Army to protect them, they might have a greater incentive to start making tough decisions.

But for any of this to work, the United States needs to be able to maintain a stable set of policies in Iraq that do not appear to be the product of panic or politics. That alone will yield success, which will allow American troops to return home having achieved something. As has often been pointed out, the key here is not the exit, but the strategy.

Write the author at [email protected].

© 2005 Newsweek, Inc.

 

[Solaris]

-. Similar strategies have made cities like Najaf, Mosul, Tall Afar and even Fallujah much safer today than they were a year ago.

To about the two people left alive.

 

[No Limit]

Again, more crap about simply fogetting how badly this administration ****ed up and moving on. Do people not understand that this is the guy that started this war and the thousands of lives that have been lost are due to his policies. The reason democrats or any smart americans will not let this go is so people will never elect such an incompetent leader again; which they did in 04 despite the fact that everything we know today we knew in November of 2004. People like seinfeld or raziaar simply didn't care to hear any of it.

Yes, it is extremely important to focus on our current and future policies with dealing with Iraq. I am one of the few hardcore liberals that believe pulling out would create a bigger mess; but we should never ever forget who got us in to this mess. Why so many of you do want to forget this for partisan reasons is beyond me.

 

[baxter]

It is an interesting read and to be quite honest paints a some what optimist view of what is happening.
I am not going to dispute the author’s word but prefer to put forward another article written about the same time by Martin van Creveld.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,2763,1653454,00.html

To describe Iraq as the most foolish war of the last 2,014 years is a sweeping statement, but the writer is well qualified to know.

He is Martin van Creveld, a professor at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem and one of the world's foremost military historians. Several of his books have influenced modern military theory and he is the only non-American author on the US Army's list of required reading for officers.

Professor van Creveld has previously drawn parallels between Iraq and Vietnam, and pointed out that almost all countries that have tried to fight similar wars during the last 60 years or so have ended up losing. Why President Bush "nevertheless decided to go to war escapes me and will no doubt preoccupy historians to come," he told one interviewer.

The professor's puzzlement is understandable. More than two years after the war began, and despite the huge financial and human cost, it is difficult to see any real benefits.

The weapons of mass destruction that provided the excuse for the invasion turned out not to exist and the idea that Iraq could become a beacon of democracy for the Middle East has proved equally far-fetched.

True, there is now a multi-party electoral system, but it has institutionalised and consolidated the country's ethnic, sectarian and tribal divisions - exactly the sort of thing that should be avoided when attempting to democratise


The fall of Saddam has brought the rise of Zarqawi and his ilk, levels of corruption in Iraq seem as bad as ever, and at the weekend former prime minister Iyad Allawi caused a stir by asserting that the human rights are no better protected now than under the rule of Saddam.

Welcome as a pullout might be to many Americans, it would be a hugely complex operation. Van Creveld says it would probably take several months and result in sizeable casualties. More significantly, though, it would not end the conflict.

"As the pullout proceeds," he warns, "Iraq almost certainly will sink into an all-out civil war from which it will take the country a long time to emerge - if, indeed, it can do so at all. All this is inevitable and will take place whether George W Bush, Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld and Condoleezza Rice like it or not."

This is one of the major differences between Iraq and the withdrawal from Vietnam. In Vietnam, it took place under a smokescreen of "Vietnamisation" in which US troops handed control to local forces in the south.

Of course, it was a fairly thin smokescreen; many people were aware at the time that these southern forces could not hold out and in due course the North Vietnamese overran the south, finally bringing the war to an end.

Officially, a similar process is under way in Iraq, with the Americans saying they will eventually hand over to the new Iraqi army - though the chances of that succeeding look even bleaker than they did in Vietnam.

"The new Iraqi army is by all accounts much weaker, less skilled, less cohesive and less loyal to its government than even the South Vietnamese army was," van Creveld writes.

Worse still, in Iraq there is no equivalent of the North Vietnamese regime poised to take power. What will happen once the Americans have gone is anyone's guess, but a sudden outbreak of peace seems the remotest of all the possibilities.

Not surprisingly, many who in principle would argue that the Americans had no right to invade Iraq in the first place are apprehensive about what might happen once they leave. The conference organised by the Arab League in Cairo last week was one example: it called for "the withdrawal of foreign forces according to a timetable" but didn't venture to suggest what that timetable might be.

With or without American troops, the war in Iraq has acquired a momentum of its own and threatens to spill over into other parts of the region.

There are four major issues: terrorism, Sunni-Shia rivalries, Kurdish aspirations, and the question of Iraq's territorial integrity - all of which pose dangers internationally.

Contrary to American intentions, the war has also greatly increased the influence of Iran - a founder-member of Bush's "Axis of Evil" - and opened up long-suppressed rivalries between Sunni and Shia Muslims.

The impact of this cannot be confined to Iraq and will eventually be felt in the oil-rich Sunni Gulf states (including Saudi Arabia) that have sizeable but marginalised Shia communities.

Kurdish aspirations have been awakened too - which has implications for Turkey, Syria and Iran, especially if Iraq is eventually dismembered.

With a fragile central government in Baghdad constantly undermined by the activities of militants and weakened by the conflicting demands of Sunnis, Shias and Kurds, the demise of Iraq as a nation-state sometime during the next few years has become a distinct possibility.

The effect of that on the regional power balance is difficult to predict, but at the very least it would bring a period of increased instability.

No one can claim that any of this was unexpected. The dangers had been foreseen by numerous analysts and commentators long before the war started but they were ignored in Washington, mainly for ideological reasons.

In his eagerness for regime change in Iraq, Mr Bush blundered into a trap from which in the short term there is no way out: the Americans will be damned if they stay and damned if they leave.