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I truly don't know what is the best strategy for Iraq. Obviously, that makes me very much like a Democrat.
We shouldn't have gone in there in the first place. In retrospect, George Senior is looking like a friggin' genius in the first Gulf War for chasing Saddam's troops out of Kuwait and halfway to Baghdad, then pulling back without taking Saddam down and thus keeping Iraq stable.
None of the options are good, for one side or the other or both. Pulling out entirely is good for us in the short run, but what happens when Iraq falls apart? -- because it would. What goes into the vacuum we've created? I suspect we'd end up with a violent partitioning of the country, with the Kurds forming their own enclave in the north near Turkey (which will piss off Turkey mightily), the Shia forming their own country below Iran with Iran's help, and Saudi Arabia allying with the Sunni minority to hold some of the south. It would be a terrific, bloody mess, but hey, it wouldn't be American soldiers dying in the morass...
King George believes that after all the failed strategies he's employed before, this one will somehow magically work. I don't believe that either. I was curious and looked up a few figures. In the wake of WWII, we occupied Japan. In that occupation, in 1946 we had in excess of 400,000 troops there. According to GlobalSecurity.org, as of Mid-November, 2006, 152,000 US troops were in Iraq. Japan covers 145,883 square miles; Iraq covers 169,243 square miles -- so, in a militarily-defeated country that is (roughly) 16% larger than Japan, we have only 26% of the troops that we used for the occupation of Japan.
Yes, I know Japan is not Iraq (especially culturally) and this was a different war and a different time. The analogy is imperfect and maybe even wrong. But... we put close to half a million troops into Japan to make certain it was stable and safe -- in a culture, I would argue, where shame and honor are strong emotions, and where as a result there was far less danger of an 'insurgency.' I suspect that anyone who knew the Middle East at all expected that once Saddam was gone that a civil war would erupt -- and that if we were to control it, then we needed one hell of a lot more boots on the ground.
Another 20,000 troops won't do it. It's throwing a bucket of water on a raging house fire. Here's what I suspect will happen if we follow through on this: 1) we will be saying to those factions who already hate us that yes, we really are an Occupation Force; 2) the violence will escalate; 3) we still won't have enough troops on the ground to control the escalation, and the Iraqi forces will be next to useless; 4) we'll end up losing more of our soldiers; 5) we'll be hearing a speech in a year or so saying "Well, that didn't work either, but now I have a better plan..."
And we're leaving aside the issue of Afghanistan, which is increasingly looking as if it needs some propping up as well.
Doubling the forces in Iraq might do something about stopping the violence, but then there's still the whole panoply of Sunni/Shia/Kurd problems, and those will need to be addressed before Iraq can ever be stable again. But we don't have another 150,000 troops to throw at Iraq -- not without a draft... and I, for one, certainly don't want that again.
We broke Iraq. It's really, really broken. And looking at the pieces, I'm not convinced it's fixable. And if that's really, truly the case, then I would make the reluctant decision to say let's get our people out of there while we can...
Anybody got a better idea?
We shouldn't have gone in there in the first place. In retrospect, George Senior is looking like a friggin' genius in the first Gulf War for chasing Saddam's troops out of Kuwait and halfway to Baghdad, then pulling back without taking Saddam down and thus keeping Iraq stable.
None of the options are good, for one side or the other or both. Pulling out entirely is good for us in the short run, but what happens when Iraq falls apart? -- because it would. What goes into the vacuum we've created? I suspect we'd end up with a violent partitioning of the country, with the Kurds forming their own enclave in the north near Turkey (which will piss off Turkey mightily), the Shia forming their own country below Iran with Iran's help, and Saudi Arabia allying with the Sunni minority to hold some of the south. It would be a terrific, bloody mess, but hey, it wouldn't be American soldiers dying in the morass...
King George believes that after all the failed strategies he's employed before, this one will somehow magically work. I don't believe that either. I was curious and looked up a few figures. In the wake of WWII, we occupied Japan. In that occupation, in 1946 we had in excess of 400,000 troops there. According to GlobalSecurity.org, as of Mid-November, 2006, 152,000 US troops were in Iraq. Japan covers 145,883 square miles; Iraq covers 169,243 square miles -- so, in a militarily-defeated country that is (roughly) 16% larger than Japan, we have only 26% of the troops that we used for the occupation of Japan.
Yes, I know Japan is not Iraq (especially culturally) and this was a different war and a different time. The analogy is imperfect and maybe even wrong. But... we put close to half a million troops into Japan to make certain it was stable and safe -- in a culture, I would argue, where shame and honor are strong emotions, and where as a result there was far less danger of an 'insurgency.' I suspect that anyone who knew the Middle East at all expected that once Saddam was gone that a civil war would erupt -- and that if we were to control it, then we needed one hell of a lot more boots on the ground.
Another 20,000 troops won't do it. It's throwing a bucket of water on a raging house fire. Here's what I suspect will happen if we follow through on this: 1) we will be saying to those factions who already hate us that yes, we really are an Occupation Force; 2) the violence will escalate; 3) we still won't have enough troops on the ground to control the escalation, and the Iraqi forces will be next to useless; 4) we'll end up losing more of our soldiers; 5) we'll be hearing a speech in a year or so saying "Well, that didn't work either, but now I have a better plan..."
And we're leaving aside the issue of Afghanistan, which is increasingly looking as if it needs some propping up as well.
Doubling the forces in Iraq might do something about stopping the violence, but then there's still the whole panoply of Sunni/Shia/Kurd problems, and those will need to be addressed before Iraq can ever be stable again. But we don't have another 150,000 troops to throw at Iraq -- not without a draft... and I, for one, certainly don't want that again.
We broke Iraq. It's really, really broken. And looking at the pieces, I'm not convinced it's fixable. And if that's really, truly the case, then I would make the reluctant decision to say let's get our people out of there while we can...
Anybody got a better idea?
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From:
Brains
Daniel Gilbert wrote (http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/sunday/commentary/la-op-gilbert2jul02,0,4254536.story?coll=la-sunday-commentary):
It's not exactly the same as what we're talking about, but I think there's a similar explanation.
(BTW, that whole Gilbert op ed is worth reading.)
B
From:
Re: Brains
What I'm thinking of is along the lines of "Grandfather Ug told us that big animals with sharp teeth eat our kind. I saw Brodf get eaten by big animal with sharp teeth. Berries I want grow by cave where lives big animal with sharp teeth. I don't want big animal to eat me."
Choice A: Find berries in a safer place.
Choice B: Forget about berries and find other food.
Choice C: I want berries. Grandfather Ug told me nothing; I saw nothing; I know nothing about animal living in cave. Go get berries.
Humans seems to be constantly picking C, and I can't figure out how the species has survived.
From:
Re: Brains
From:
Re: Brains
From:
Re: Brains
From:
Re: Brains
My mother, for example, kept smoking until she had to give it up to move in with us, when she was 70 and already had emphysema. She kept saying that her chest xrays were clear, and as long as she didn't have cancer, everything was OK. This was a woman who had at that time spent more than 35 years transcribing medical reports, and she was well- and widely read.
From:
Re: Brains
But the more I read about the brain and its reaction to risk, the more complicated the issue seems.
B