Iraq: a legitimate plan but no resources for it
ILLUSTRATED: We simply are not going to put up the resources and time required to make the counterinsurgency plan work.
I'm glad General Petraeus is in charge in Iraq, and I hope he becomes Chief of Staff of the Army. His service needs to be rebuilt for the 21st Century. He clearly has a vision for how counterinsurgency warfare works. The thing is, the British have had the most success at this, and their victories in Malaya and Northern Ireland took 12 and 30 years respectively.
Iraq is failing as a state. As callous as this sounds, the body count in the streets does not matter so much as the political process in the Iraqi Parliament. That's going nowhere.
Perhaps if Petraeus were in charge from the beginning, and his political leadership saw this as a police action and not a war, America and Iraq would be in a better place. But the time, manpower, and equipment simply will not be there to make this plan work. We won't walk the walk, to enact this "talk".
Nor should we. As I write this, the town of Greensburg, Kansas has just been destroyed by a tornado. However, 50% of the Kansas National Guard's trucks are in Iraq. Other investments in both security, as well as a host of other problems are not being addressed.
As retired Gen Barry McCaffrey said, there is a timeline, the one ending on November 4, 2008. By that time, there is no way that a functioning Iraqi army or police force will be trained. With half of the educated population gone, there is no way a civil society will be ready to function by then.
This could get ugly with Iran, Saudi Arabia, and even Turkey involved overtly. There will have to be a couple of combat divisions, air, and sea units still in the region to keep the likely war from spreading. There are previous posts where I wrote we cannot leave without stablizing the place for political and moral reasons. However, that has become impossible. We cannot solve the problem, only contain it regionally.
I'm glad General Petraeus is in charge in Iraq, and I hope he becomes Chief of Staff of the Army. His service needs to be rebuilt for the 21st Century. He clearly has a vision for how counterinsurgency warfare works. The thing is, the British have had the most success at this, and their victories in Malaya and Northern Ireland took 12 and 30 years respectively.
Iraq is failing as a state. As callous as this sounds, the body count in the streets does not matter so much as the political process in the Iraqi Parliament. That's going nowhere.
Perhaps if Petraeus were in charge from the beginning, and his political leadership saw this as a police action and not a war, America and Iraq would be in a better place. But the time, manpower, and equipment simply will not be there to make this plan work. We won't walk the walk, to enact this "talk".
Nor should we. As I write this, the town of Greensburg, Kansas has just been destroyed by a tornado. However, 50% of the Kansas National Guard's trucks are in Iraq. Other investments in both security, as well as a host of other problems are not being addressed.
As retired Gen Barry McCaffrey said, there is a timeline, the one ending on November 4, 2008. By that time, there is no way that a functioning Iraqi army or police force will be trained. With half of the educated population gone, there is no way a civil society will be ready to function by then.
This could get ugly with Iran, Saudi Arabia, and even Turkey involved overtly. There will have to be a couple of combat divisions, air, and sea units still in the region to keep the likely war from spreading. There are previous posts where I wrote we cannot leave without stablizing the place for political and moral reasons. However, that has become impossible. We cannot solve the problem, only contain it regionally.
posted by Teka Thomas at 4:32 AM
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