..it is not just that there will be additional forces in Baghdad; it is what they will do and how they will do it that is important. -- General David Petraeus, 12/2006
..In fact, typically, I think, historically, counter insurgency operations have gone at least 9 or 10 years -- General David Petraeus, 6/2007
I suppose I should acknowledge that the troop surge is working. I did after all predict that it would not. It seems to have had the intended effect, and is about as positive an outcome as any of us could have wanted. The question that does keep popping into my mind though, is what are the 120,000 non-surge troops doing there, and why did we need another 30 k to quell Al Qaeda? I don't pretend to know how to run a war, but I do know that this army, the world's best fighting force could go into any country in the world a week after Easter, accomplish every meaningful military objective, and be home for the World Series. Here we are 4-1/2 years later; dealing with what must be "security" plus a myriad of non-military objectives.
The non-military ones are always better left to the people themselves. So, the only reasonable goals are enhancement of security. Well, what does that mean? Does it mean restricting the rights of law abiding citizens like we do at home? I'm sure that's making a lot of friends. ...but I digress.
Historically, we have World War II, Korea, and Vietnam to compare to. Well, WWII left us with troops located to this very day in Germany and scattered in a multitude of islands across the Pacific. We are still in nearly all these spaces. Doing what? I dunno. Nation building, I guess. Security doesn't seem to be at play.
We are only now talking about leaving Korea. Why did it take 50 years to close that book? Security might seem a little shakier there now with a madman across the border. So, what has improved here, that allows us to go home..has Kim Jong Il opened up his first McDonald's?
In Vietnam, we skedaddled pretty quickly and the people lost millions of lives in the subsequant Pol Pot invasion. In view of that fiasco, we certainly can't get away immediately in the sense that the nitwits in Congress suggest we can. That means the optimum time frame is somewhere between 0 and 50 years. Let's say 10 years to make sure things go smoothly. As I've said before, we are not good at ending these relationships. So, Petraeus may be right with his estimate of 9-10. Add a few more years for gross inefficiency by the occasionally and accidentally elected Democrats, and we're looking at 2020.
Might as well settle in. Maybe sometime between now and then, we'll stop referring to it as a war, and with any luck we'll probably see a petition for statehood from the Iraqis.
4 comments:
The Busheviks never meant to leave Iraq--seven military installations right smack in the middle of the oilfields WAS the goal. Suck it up, soldier.
I have to agree. Given history, there had to be every expectation that we'd be there indefinitely.
I seriously doubt that we would have had troops in Korea and Germany even today if it wasn't for the Soviet Union. Today, troops are kept in Germany more out of habit, and because the Germans keep bitching about loss of revenue if they leave, they are more of a military welfare program, although due to the fact that wars can break out anywhere at any time, it's useful to have troops deployed at intervals around the globe. Plus GI's love German beer. Korea, not much reason to be there except to act as a counterbalance to China and because the Gargoyle, Kim Jong Il, is a demented little madman with a huge army.
People who expected the Iraq war to be over quickly well, the real major fighting is, we kicked the Iraqi Army's butt, but insurgencies are harder to deal with. This isn't warfare, it's pacification, and Petreaus is right, successful counter-insurgencies take about a decade, it takes that long to put them down. And it has been successfully done before, using the tactics and approach that Petraeus is using.
Unfortunately, the US, largely due to the liberal water carriers who support the goals of the insurgency, either knowingly or by accident (and deliberate ignorance), all too often lately never stays around to finish what it starts. The inevitable result of such weakness and lack of resolve is massive death after we leave (about 3-4 million in SE Asia), erosion of trust and confidence in the US and a lack of willingness to work with us by other nations (people don't like being abandoned), and that thing that liberals seem to car about. You know, loss of credibility and respect in the world.
And every time we back out, it just makes our diplomacy that much harder, as it erodes our credibility, and ultimately makes military action more likely as it reduces the effectiveness of our threats. There is a passage in Frontinus's Strategems about a Roman siege of a town that we would do well to remember. The Roman Army laid siege to a walled city and the city fathers haughtily told them "Go ahead, we've got provisions and water for 10 years!" To which the Roman commander replied "So, that means we'll just take your city in the 11th year." The next day the city surrendered and opened their gates, as they knew that, unlike the US, if the Romans said they'd still be there 11 years from now, they would indeed be there 11 years later, and their mood would not have been improved by the wait. Now, just as then, if they believe you will stomp them, you often don't have to actually do it.
Anonymous seems to actually think that maintaining a military presence in a dangerously unstable region full of petty dictators that supplies most of the world's supply of a critical raw material, oil, that not only the US but world economies run off of is a bad idea!
Obviously anonymous must not have a car, or use any oil, or any electricity, but lives in a shack in the woods with an outhouse. Anything else would be hypocritical, and we all know anti-military liberals are never hypocritical.
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