The Bush administration is now relying primarily on the generals to justify their concept of a seemingly endless commitment of 150,000 troops to Iraq. First, it was Gen. Petraeus and Gen. Raymond Odierno. Today, Gen Benjamin Mixon, the American commander in Diyala province weighed in.
I don't have a problem with generals believing in their mission, but that the whole surge concept has turned out to be a non-starter.
The overt idea was to create more stability in Baghdad so Iraq politicians could pound out the compromises needed to draw Sunnis into the government. But there was also a latent agenda of destroying Moqtada al-Sadr's Mahdi militia so that the Iraq government could evolve in a moderate, secular, and pro-American direction.
It was a bad assumption to begin with. There is no reason to think that political compromises over de-Baathification and the distribution of oil revenues would have diminished the appeal of Sunni insurgents. However, Petraeus and Odierno won't be able to test their ideas because the surge did not create stability and the Iraqi government has not been able to compromise.
What happened to the American command was that Sunni insurgents "counter-surged" before the American surge was fully in place. Insurgents turned Diyala province into an insurgent operations center, launched a string of car bombings in Baghdad, and bombed the Shiite shrine in Samarra again. It is important to emphasize that this was an outcome of the surge. Sunni insurgents around Baghdad had been pretty hard pressed by Shiite death squads in 2006. But because the Shiite hitmen went underground after the increase in American troops was announced, the Sunnis were able to re-emerge.
More importantly, however, the surge has not touched the Mahdi Army let alone the other Shiite militias. By going underground, the Mahdi Army avoided a big confrontation with the Americans. The Mahdi Army also fragmented away from Sadr's control to a certin extent. But the outcome is clear. Moqtada al-Sadr is still the most popular Shiite political figure in Iraq. His militia is still the biggest and most effective Shiite fighting force and his presence will keep the Bush administration's dream of a secular Iraqi government from coming true.
The key to the success of the surge was always confronting and defeating the Mahdi Army. Given that there's going to be no confrontation, the game is up and the American military needs to think about what if anything it's really accomplishing.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Posts
7 comments:
WHOS PLANTING THE IEDs ?
The old 'red dye bomb trick' works
on identifying a bank robber in New York why not during curfew as
the opposition place their killer landmines? If you cant control the turf after you cleared it, you COMMANDER should be planning to get
your ground force out,..you lost!
Wouldn't it be better to ask who isn't planting IED's?
The imported al-Qaeda fighters, the local Sunni guys, and the local Shiite guys are all planting IED's. It's like all the Joeys from Brooklyn, Kareems from North Philly, and Bobby's from Eastern Kentucky are getting together to attack the foreign invaders. You might be able to suppress them if you had five or six hundered thousand armed men sitting on top of them for a couple of decades. But the U. S. was never going to do that.
George Bush fired Abizaid and Casey for not bringing us "victory." But the disastrous mistakes in the Iraq mission have been made by the policy-makers rather than the generals implementing the policies. It was plain in 2003 that the mission had little chance of succeeding (and yes, I did say that in 2003). In hindsight, it's obvious that it never had a chance and that war supporters (i.e., people like you) were deluded.
Have any of the stated purposes of this travesty in Iraq been achieved? Of course not. So of course this rediculous "surge" has been an utter failure. Republicans are beginning to defect and abandon the killing. And who wouldn't? Especially if you are a US Senator staring down the barrel of a tough 2008 re-election season. I count at least 14 Republican US Senators:Saxby Chambliss of Georgia, Ted Stevens of Alaska, Pat Roberts of Kansas, Michael Enzi of Wyoming, James Inhofe of Oklahoma, Jeff Sessions of Alabama, Norm Coleman of Minnesota, Richard Lugar of Indiana, George Voinovich of Ohio, Gordon Smith of Oregon, Christopher Bond of Missouri, John Warner of Virginia (ranking Republican on the Senate Armed Services Committee),and Sen. Olympia Snowe of Maine. They learned the lesson of 2006 well. They don't want to leave and they know that if they cannot distance themselves from the carnage of Iraq, their careers are very likely finished. The wildcards in the debate are senators, like Roberts, Stevens and Chambliss, who have staunchly defended Bush but are watching his poll numbers drop. No doubt fearing the shift among the party faithful, the administration has been attempting to reach out to Republicans posing alternative scenarios in Iraq to gauge political support,so I've read. The President and his administration talk a lot about the soldiers, but in Iraq, the situation keeps getting worse. Unless the Republicans to whom I referred above and other Republicans both House and Senate finally dig in and demand action instead of words, casualties will continue to rise at a horrendous rate. My party is in charge, more so in the House than the Senate and that's great. But we can't stop a rogue White House without at least some Republican help. Too many Republicans in the House and the Senate know the truth, but they remain silent and give up their congressional responsibility. The American people have spoken, the Democratic Party has spoken, we all said the same thing: Set a timetable and get U.S. soldiers out of Iraq's civil war. Even the majority of Iraq's elected Parliament has demanded a timetable for U.S. withdrawal, but the President ignores it all. Without the help of Republicans desperate not to lose their seats next year, U.S. casualties will continue to rise as the President continues to escalate his stay-the-course policy in Iraq. The President's stubbornness has nothing to do with taking new ground in Iraq, but it has everything to do with gaining rights to what's underground in Iraq, the oil wealth of the Iraqi people. It's not worth the price we've paid in human lives, American and Iraqi nor the enourmous and ongoing monetary price tag. Iraq had nothing to do with 9/11. Saddam had no ties to Osama. Saddam had no weapons of mass destruction, We have liberated no Iraqis, we have not delivered democracy, we're not even close. Our presence is a destabilizing force and our men and women in uniform are targets. Our government is overwhelmed now in trying to care for our wounded, and the President has this Nation on course to see 20,000 more casualties before he leaves office. That's what will happen unless his own Republican Party finally tells him and the American people the truth about Iraq, and the urgent need to get their soldiers out of harm's way. It's time to get our people out of there and back home where they belong.
Anonymous, Please quit impersonating me!
Todd says:
"My party is in charge, more so in the House than the Senate and that's great. But we can't stop a rogue White House without at least some Republican help."
It seems to me an alternative (to non-binding resolutions) way of getting these vulnerable Republicans off their asses might be Mike Gravel's idea of binding legislation making the occupation illegal after Christmas 2007. The American people will not be confused about where we are, which what they are currently. They would respond to this goal. It doesn't matter it starts off as politically unrealistic. Since the senate cannot introduce articles of impeachment, Senators can stand up, point to their line in the sand, and tell their colleagues to put up or shut up. Do it everyday, without amendment, without backing down.
Ric says:
"But there was also a latent agenda of destroying Moqtada al-Sadr's Mahdi militia so that the Iraq government could evolve in a moderate, secular, and pro-American direction."
I've tried to make the case that the last thing American policy should be attempting to do is to rub out Moqtada al-Sadr's Mahdi militia. That's assuming U.S. policy is to leave Iraq in the immediate to intermediate future. If the policy is to stay in Iraq-Nam indefinitely, than I have no suggestion other than insurrection in my own country.
Tod is scorching the blog. Right on! And Vigilante is right about the stupidity of trying to wipe out al-Sadr. Unfortunately, the Bush people have a knack for stupidity.
Post a Comment