The 2020 Vision

..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.