Wednesday, July 23, 2008

More on "the surge" and "the timeline"

So, as I explained in my previous post, there is no war in Iraq, only an occupation. What, then, about the violence you say? And isn't the surge working? And what about these "timeline" thingies -- what about the notion that setting a timeline is a "timeline to defeat"?

There is violence in Iraq, that much is undeniable. None of that has anything to do with a war, but, rather, with insufficient forces in Iraq to police the place. The Army manuals prior to the invasion of Iraq called for 500,000 troops to control the violence that occurs when civil order collapses. Think of what would happen if we had done Iraq right instead of half-a$$. If even the modest surge during the first part of this year managed such a significant reduction in violence, think of what would have happened if we'd *really* surged, and put the 500,000 troops in there that the Army manuals called for?

Of course, we did not -- do not -- have 500,000 troops to put into Iraq. But we could have. If the leadership of our nation had called for our nation to do so. President Ronald Reagan had 18 active duty divisions and 10 reserve divisions in the U.S. Army during the height of the Cold War, over a million men in arms, and these were all volunteers. Instead we had Donald Rumsfeld mumbling about "you go to war with the army you have, not the army you wish you had." Which might have been okay in 2003, but this is 2008 -- there has been plenty of time to build up the Army to the size needed to perform a successful occupation. I mean, 5 years is longer than our involvement in WWII, and we raised a military of over 10,000,000 soldiers, sailors, and airmen during WWII!

In any event, talking about "winning" or "losing" in Iraq is nonsense. The war was over in 2003 and you don't win occupations, you end them after certain conditions are met or by simply ordering your troops to leave. So talking about "the surge is working" is nonsense doubled considering that neither Presidential candidate has proposed doing what's necessary to eliminate violence in Iraq so that civil society can re-emerge from the rubble -- which would require a *much* larger "surge" (the Army manuals called for 500,000 troops, as I mentioned, to police 20,000,000 people). If neither candidate is willing to propose that we do what it takes to pacify Iraq (probably because the American public are thoroughly sick of the place and want nothing more to do with it)... what's the point of quibbling over 12 months, 16 months, 24 months, whatever? It'll still be a mess at the end. A mess is a mess regardless of how long it takes, right?

-- Badtux the War Penguin

4 comments:

  1. in his excellent memior of dealing with the "marsh arabs" around basra, the british diplomat, rory stewart, wrote in the prince of the marshes

    we will not lose in iraq because of anything we did or did not do. we will lose there simply because we are who we are, and they are who they are.

    thus, endeth the lesson.

    ReplyDelete
  2. WWII had the draft. You think the BushSluts would have gone? Say what you will of Bush the Elder, at least he served.

    We could have drafted all the deferments from the Vietnam War, all the conbloggers, and every draft-age child of Congresspersons and Senators. But that would take courage.

    Mold

    ReplyDelete
  3. We've already lost and declared victory, now we are just trying to rationalize or justify the conflict that we started and mismanaged into the disaster it is.

    Luckily for them, they have wrecked the economy also and can distract the simple-minded masses with that disaster.

    fa-la-la-la

    ReplyDelete
  4. So what did you have for lunch? We stopped at Wendys and Helen had a chicken sandwich and I had a small bowl of chili and we both had small frostys.

    ReplyDelete

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