Wow. We can't win in Iraq.

[BayouBengal07]

OK, I've been somewhat patient with those who have said "stay the course and wait," that if we just have enough time for Iraqis to get their act together we can stand down.

This just dawned on me. I'm sure it has on many of you, but it hit me like a ton of bricks.

http://www.charleston.net/stories/?newsID=55626§ion=stateregion

Former Sen. Fritz Hollings gave a speech recently:

The 38-year Senate veteran said America needs to either commit more troops to suppress the insurgents and stabilize the country or consider leaving.

"You either have to get in or get out," said Hollings, who retired last year. "We are asking the Iraqis to do what we haven't done: secure the country."

He 's right. We are the best military in the world, and we cannot contain the insurgency. Training of Iraqi security forces has been painfully slow, but even IF it were a rapid process,

1.) They won't have our superior training (not like it has helped), and

2.) There are 150,000 US troops in Iraq. Based on the current environment, we would have to train WELL OVER 150,000 Iraqi troops to even think of containing the insurgency. That won't happen any time soon.

This is a losing strategy. The US will not stand for the kind of casualties it will take to train a respectable amount of competent Iraqi troops, and once we do, there won't be enough of them to stabilize the country. An overwhelming push of US forces would likely require a draft, which the public would not be keen on.

I don't think we can't win.

[GreenPartyVoter]

1. Of course we can't win.

[Lexingtonian]

2. the three Laws of Iraqi Thermodynamics

1. You can't win.
2. You have to lose.
3. You can't get out of the game.

With apologies to my thermo prof and my alma mater's guidebook.

[WritingIsMyReligion]

34. LOL! We're studying the LoT in science as well!

Those are funny :D :D :D

[acmejack]

3. We couldn't win before we went in.

What has happened is exactly what was predicted by a large group. History has proven that a guerilla war conducted by the locals is almost always successful. The drain on resources caused by a drawn out war of attrition is virtually unsustainable, especially so in the face of tax cuts.

[leftchick]

10. Ahh Yes, the Pandora's Box prediction...

All of us in the "focus groups" were predicting. Just like everythig else WE WERE RIGHT!



Now bring them home....

[Hubert Flottz]

33. At least the people in the US can tell the difference between the

GOP and the Democrats, NOW.

They say..."BRING IT ON!"

We Say..."BRING THEM HOME!"

Edit...We need to fix America first, before we go off fixing anything else.

[Warren Stupidity]

4. Oh it is worse than that.

See Seymour Hersch's latest article in the New Yorker. Just as in Vietnam, Iraqification will be accompanied by a major upgrade in air support: we will use our air power to compensate for the inability of the Iraqi (or more correctly Shiite) Army (or more correctly militia) to hold its own. The result will be a huge increase in civilian casualties and as Hersch points out, targeting will be directed by what amounts to assorted Shiite Militias in the civil war. Indirectly Iran will be calling in airstrikes. This is so profoundly fucked up that it is hard to comprehend.

[populistdriven]

15. why bomb a country that has SF, SO, Marines, US & Iraqi Armies in it?

[Warren Stupidity]

20. SF? SO?

Not sure what you meant by that.

The point is that we will substitute air power for ground forces. In order to retain control over congress the bush cabal will engineer a partial withdrawal of US ground forces before the 06 midterms and attempt to keep a lid on things by bombing the crap out of anything deemed hostile. The kicker is that while right now air support is called in by US ground forces, under the New Revised Plan For Total Victory We Really Mean It This Time, air support will be called in by shiite militia posing as Iraqi Army. Iran will be doing targeting for our air forces. Quite a good plan. Go Bush!

[MisterP]

5. that, of course, assumes Iraq CAN be secured--France was said

to be "secured" by the You-Know-Whos in WWII, and it was breaking out all over.

[sam sarrha]

6. i knew that when they started this..i lived in an Islamic Republic..anyone

who knows anything about Islam, Arabs.. knew this was the beginning of the long drawn out gut wrenching end.

[catmother]

7. how can we win when these people are fighting among themselves.

[Warren Stupidity]

8. what exactly would 'win' mean?

[catmother]

11. good question. according to bushco it's democracy for the

iraqis.

[Warren Stupidity]

12. Apparently not.

They have had elections and are having more elections. They supposedly have a government and a constitution. So it seems that 'democracy' whatever that means to bushco is not sufficient.

[catmother]

13. who knows what goes on in bush's depraved mind. i guess

his mission is following what god tells him. he claims that god speaks to him.

[NNN0LHI]

9. Saddam required an army of 500,000 soldiers plus thousands of police...

...officers and a well functioning highly regarded intelligence service to hold the thing together. Whats that tell you?

Don

[sam sarrha]

14. there is no word in the Arab language for 'compromise', they are not ripe

for democracy

[populistdriven]

16. try this

حلّ وسط

[sandnsea]

19. oh nonsense

Any people who know how to barter know how to compromise. The same thing is happening there that happens here, political ideologues who fan the flames of hatred for their own end.

[Warren Stupidity]

21. Are you aware that Islamic cultural heritage includes

the same mediterranean cultural heritage that europe descends from? European civilization and middle eastern civilization are entwined and inseparable. If they are not 'ripe for democracy' due to some inherent cultural insufficiency nor are we.

[Karenina]

37. Iraq is frying brains

Right, left and center. This guy has been exposing the *BFEE for YEARS.

Victory Says He 12/1/05
Stephen Pizzo

(excerpt)

Americans forget that Iraq is not a nation that was created by folks who wanted to be together. The folks we lump together as "Iraqis" are in fact three different tribes. They were minding their own damn business in what we now call Iraq, until the British unilaterally decided to tidy up their region by drawing boundaries. That was nearly a century ago when it was the Brits who were at the height of their own imperial hubris. The three tribes were just another indigenous nuisance the Brits had long since learned to ignore. They had no say in the matter. When the Brits were done drawing borders, the Shiites, Sunni and Kurdish tribes discovered they had become one big unhappy family. Very unhappy.

What I'm about to say next is ever-so politically incorrect. But people are dying. This is no time to mealy-mouth the situation Bush has gotten us into. So, here goes.

The Iraqis... all three flavors of them ... are not nice people. They are products of a backward, religiously poisoned, misogynistic, brutal tribal culture.

Sorry, but someone had to just come right out and say it. They are really not our kinda folk. And if the real estate they occupy didn't have lakes of oil under it we'd have not shown a whit of interest in them. (Proof? North Korea.. all WMD'd up but no oil. So, who cares? )
Quite simply, we could not have picked a less likable or deserving group of folks to "save" from themselves than the Iraqis.

Oh, and by the way, they don't like us either.

http://newsforreal.com/

[Hyernel]

17. And now, every country knows how to beat us.

Bush has stolen the U.S. military's ability to intimidate other countries.

Fucking Bush asshole cocksucker!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[long_green]

30. you say that like it's a bad thing

swaggering around the globe intimidating other people is why we're in this fix.

if any good has come out of this it is that millions of people here have learned what we can't do with our armed forces. Our armed forces are designed to defeat the armed forces of hostile nations, period. It is tragic that thousands of men, women, and children have had to die to teach the lessson of Vietnam all over again (doesn't say much for our memory).

[sandnsea]

18. Assumes there will still BE an insurgency

No, as we pull our troops out of areas where the insurgency is Iraqi and not terrorist related, the insurgency should die out on its own. So what we need to do is identify those areas first, put the Iraqi troops in and send ours HOME. Let the Iraqis get competent, sector by sector, and then move to the next one. At some point in the process, public opinion should shift when the people realize the only insurgents left are out of state terrorist actors. Then the people will start cooperating with their own Iraqi police to gather up the last of the true terrorists. That's why the sector by sector turnover is better, it doesn't give any particular group an opportunity to expand during a vaccuum because different regions will become autonomous on a rotational basis.

[Warren Stupidity]

22. We actually tried that and we got fallujah

and we were shocked that if we let the Iraqi forces out without their leashes on they went feral. No the situation is hopeless. For all practical purposes the only foreign terrorists in Iraq are all wearing US uniforms or working as US mercenaries.

[sandnsea]

23. What???

Please explain when we began a sector by sector turnover, turning over the most secure areas of the country first?

And if the Iraqi forces are the ones "going feral", then how does that make the US terrorists, or more precisely the only terrorists?

[Warren Stupidity]

25. The first siege of fallujah

We decided to pull back and sent an Iraqi force in lead by a sunni Iraqi commander from the old Iraqi army. They went in, 'restored order' and helped establish free fallujah. It was a disaster, from a 'Plan For Victory' standpoint. It seems that everyone on both sides were cousins. The alternative would be to send shiite militias in to establish order in sunni towns (or vice versa) and that would result in blood baths of the highest order.

If one labels 'terrorist' those responsible for killing Iraqi civilians, then our forces, uniformed or otherwise are by far the largest foreign terrorist force in Iraq. Despite all the lies coming from the administration, there is no evidence of a significant foreign terrorist force in Iraq. That is just yet another bullshit excuse for why we have to stay there and kill lots of Iraqis. Instead we have an Iraqi insurgency. Do they carry out acts of terrorism? Yes. But their civilian death toll does not match ours. On the other hand if you somehow absolve anyone in uniform blowing up civilians as 'not a terrorist' then you would be objecting to the label.

I define terrorism as attacking civlians. All we have done since junior jumped the shark with his mission accomplished moment is attack Iraqi civilians. We are by far the biggest baddest terrorist organization in Iraq. We operate with impunity, out in the open, brazenly brandishing our weapons. We don't even bother to put on masks. Our leaders crow our terrorist accomplishments. How many times have we crushed sammara or ramadi this month?

[sandnsea]

27. You are mixing two entirely different scenarios

Who is talking about seiges? Not me. Turning over peaceful towns to total Iraqi control has absolutely nothing to do with Fallujah.

And you simply can't say that the Iraqis are causing bloodbaths and our military are the chief terrorists and claim to have a congruent thought. It's just idiocy.

Then say terrorism is attacking civilians??? Our military is not attacking civilians.

Your entire post is gibberish. I am fed up with gibberish, from all corners, on this war. That was the only thing that ridiculous zombie movie got right, the war isn't a game where you say anything in order to advance your own agenda in order to be the political winner or the ones who "knew".

See ya.

[Warren Stupidity]

29. "Our military is not attacking civilians"

Oh really? There are no military forces other than our own in Iraq, so who are we attacking if not civilians?


Who is talking about sieges? Not me. Turning over peaceful towns to total Iraqi control has absolutely nothing to do with Fallujah.

It has everything to do with Fallujah. The entire sunni region refuses to participate in the government we have imposed on the country. You presented a plan where we turn over 'peaceful towns' whatever that means to 'the Iraqis' whatever that means. The only prior model we have for this is Fallujah where we turned over that town plus two or three others to the sunnis and pulled our troops out. We didn't like the results as it seems the sunnis, left to their own, set up their own government and sought to liberate other sunni areas. So I want to know, with your plan for peace, what the heck is a 'peaceful town' and are you going to put shiite militias in control of sunni towns? Or are you under some delusion that the 'Iraqi Army' is not ethnically divided and essentially a branch of the shiite militias?


And you simply can't say that the Iraqis are causing bloodbaths and our military are the chief terrorists and claim to have a congruent thought. It's just idiocy.

I didn't say that the Iraqis are causing bloodbaths. I said if you put shiite militias in charge of sunni towns you will get a bloodbath. Do you disagree? If you put sunni militias in charge of sunni towns you get Fallujah all over again. Quite the quagmire.

I did say that as far as foreign terrorists are concerned we are by far the largest foreign terrorist organization in Iraq. In fact as there has been no evidence of any significant foreign force other than our own in Iraq, I think it is pretty clear that our military, routinely engaged in operations designed to terrorize the population of Iraq, is the only significant foreign terrorist force in the country.

You don't think we are terrorizing Iraqis? In what respect? How do you define terrorists? Only muslims qualify? If you are wearing a uniform you are not a terrorist? Do you somehow think that our weekly expeditions to pacify the western sunni regions only kill 'bad guys'? You buy the smart bomb bullshit? Bombs blowing up civilians isn't terrorism when we do it? Leveling whole cities isn't terrorism? Using banned incendiary devices to subdue resistance isn't terrorism? What? I'm really curious has to what you think is going on in Iraq.

[sandnsea]

40. "Iraqi forces went feral"

That's what you said. And again, Fallujah wasn't a turnover at all so I don't know why you keep bringing it up. Incongruent, nonsensical. Not worth my time.

[Warren Stupidity]

41. You simply misunderstood me.

By "Iraqi troops went feral" I meant that we lost control of them. Feral as in 'wild': out of control. They merged with the insurgents controlling Fallujah that they were sent in to subdue.

You obviously don't even know the history of Fallujah. "Fallujah wasn't a turnover at all. ... Incongruent, nonsensical." I'm tempted to tell you to fuck off but I won't. Instead I will inform you of what happened in the first siege of Fallujah and why it is directly related to your incompletely thought out and ill-informed peace plan.

The time frame of the first siege of Fallujah is April - June of 2004. This was the time around the incident where 4 mercenaries were executed by insurgents in Fallujah and hung from a bridge. The Marine 1st MEF was assigned to take control of Fallujah and apparently capture and punish the insurgents who executed our mercenaries. They failed to do so as it seems that the insurgents were militarily well organized and entering the city by force would have resulted in a blood bath. So instead a compromise was worked out. An Iraqi force was organized under the command of Maj. Gen. Jassim Mohammed Saleh, a former Iraqi infantry commander in the Republican Guard. The troops were ethnic sunnis from region around Fallujah. This became the 'Fallujah Brigade' and is the one I referred to as 'going feral when let off its leash'. Technically it was under the command and control of the 1stMEF. In reality, as it left the 1MEF and entered Fallujah it became part of the insurgency.

Just google "Fallujah Brigade" if you think I am making this up. Perhaps you will learn something.

A year later, the Fallujah insurgency having spread to the cities of Sammara and Ramadi, the US leveled Fallujah, committing war crimes in doing so by deliberately targeting civilians and by using banned weapons.

The point of all this is that your peace plan is, like the rest of the peace plans that claim to result in a peaceful Iraq acceptable to our way of thinking, is delusional. The sunnis are not going to accept shiite rule, nor are the kurds or shiites going to accept sunni rule. I ask again: do you think that the sunni regions are going to accept rule by the now ethnic shiite 'Iraqi Army'? If not then how is your plan going to work?

Iraq is going to either de facto or de jure split into shiite, kurdish, and sunni regions, and there will be quite a bit of additional bloodshed, perhaps even regional conflict, as that separation occurred. We are not going to put Iraq back together again, not through force of arms, not through half baked peace proposals, not through some mythical international intervention. We can't, as we are the proximate cause of this disaster, act as anything other than a continuing cause of disorder and destruction.

The Pottery Barn fallacy of 'you break it you own it', used to rationalize our continued interference in the region, the continuation of our criminal enterprise in Iraq, is ethically wrong and realistically foolish. We not only broke Iraq, but our continued presence makes the damage worse every day. We simply need to get out, and to stop deluding ourselves that we can make Iraq right.

[sandnsea]

43. Fallujah was not a turnover

It is not relevant to anything. Except to show how NOT to conduct ANY operation in Iraq.

Whether we are there, or not, the Iraqi people are going to have to figure out how to get along and create a government. The Sunnis are going to have to accept some Shiite rule, and vice versa. As well as Kurdish and Sunni and Shiite areas. It is just a reality. As long as we are in there, they won't have to deal with their own internal problems. A gradual turn-over, sector by sector, will allow them to face that reality piecemeal, rather than dumping them into a free for all. It's the only humane way to get out of the country.

[Warren Stupidity]

44. "A gradual turn-over, sector by sector"

to whom? What do the Iraqis have to do to get back control of their cities and towns?

Again with Fallujah. Do you not understand anything I have said? There were two seiges. The first one in 2004 ended with our handing control over Fallujah to the 'Fallujah Brigade' which promptly became part of the insurgency. I cannot fathom why you insist that this did not happen. Google broken for you?

Why is Fallujah relevant? As I have stated over and over again, because your 'plan' has two choices: hand sunni towns over to the shiite Iraqi Army, or hand sunni towns over to sunni militias. Neither choice results in a peaceful Iraq. One will result in masscres the other in separation.

[sandnsea]

47. Your limited view

You assume the country as a whole would continue the insurgency if there were no US troops to insurge against. You say we are the biggest terrorists, which would appear to recognize that we are the primary target. If we were gone, you appear to recognize that much of the insurgency would end. Thus, no "Fallujah Brigade". That's the entire point. You turn over the hot spots LAST. Start with Basrah, Nasiriyah, Irbil. Complete military withdrawal. Then dump in reconstruction money directly to the Iraqi people. Get everybody busy building their cities. Give them hope. Meantime, stop the search and destroys and all military operations, let the Iraqi police that are available do their own policing. And keep moving forward, rapidly. It at least gives them a chance to avoid wholesale massacres, like the "feral Iraqis" you're talking about.

Because I guarantee you if we pull out all at once and end up with Cambodia, you and every other anti-war activist will be bitching about that too.

[USA_1]

24. There was no "insurgency" in Iraq ...

... before Bush conducted his criminally illegal invasion. Its rapid growth and power shows how committed Iraqis are to their liberation from Bush's criminal occupation of their land.


"Staying the course" is only an excuse to prolong the war thereby generating war profits for the wealthy elitists in the Military Industrial Complex.

[Warren Stupidity]

26. actually there were two insurgencies.

There was the Kurdish insurgency in the north that fought the Iraq army to a standoff with our air support, and there was the Shiite insurgency in the south, which we gave Saddam the green light to crush after gulf farce I, and for which crushing we are about to have him hanged by our stooges.

[genie_weenie]

35. insurgency

A question I have for DUers is who do they mean by "Iraqis"? I've never understood this dogged determination to call Iraq a sovereign nation? Who do you mean when you say "their land"? I am confused. And as guerrilla warriors go, the Iraqis suck, but our troops are the proverbial "fish in a barrel". I don't know... Some of these discussions perplex me... All I can do is succumb to my naseau...

[Warren Stupidity]

42. Iraq is a fiction invented by the British

and carved out of the former ottoman empire. What we did when we stormed Baghdad is to drive the last nail into the coffin of that fiction.

[Quixote1818]

28. This kind of war is impossible to win

We could stay their 100 years and they would continue to hide in the shadows and make road-side bombs picking off two or three soldiers a day and wounding another 10 or 15. If we put in more troops, more soldiers would get killed. Their is no way to secure the country unless we put in a million troops and went house to house removing all weapons and once securing an area cut it off to all those trying to get in. We don't have the man power to do that.

The best thing we can do is get out soon so Jihad warriors will stop coming into Iraq. We are part of the problem not part of the solution.

[kentuck]

31. Not even Saddam could clean up this mess by George Dubya...

He's has outdone himself this time. This is one for the history books.

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

32. It's very hard for generals and politicians to admit defeat.

So, they keep the killing going to cover their sorry asses.

[Toots]

36. How did one man do it all?

Saddam controlled his country. There was no insurgency when he was in power. Was he and his soldiers so much better trained than the US soldiers are. Of course not. This is not a way for invading soldiers to win. You must win their minds and we aren't even trying. Iraq has been around much much longer than even England has let alone USA and they have prospered. they were the most westernized of all Middle Eastern countries and had the highest education standards. Why do Americans feel so superior that we feel no one can take care of themselves unless we guide them in it. If we don't want them as friends and that is obvious that we don't then what are we there for?

[Mr_Spock]

39. True, and the Republican "brute force" mindset doesn't allow for victory

They cannot get people to cooperate, because Republicans treat everybody like they were weaker than they are. It's a mental illness of the Republicans due to some strange relationships with their sick republican parents as children. They are incapable of "winning their minds" because they do not understand what that means and think that sort of thing is a weakness and will cede too much control of our duly conquered oil fields to the Iraqis. We are losing due to our own mental illness.

[Mr_Spock]

38. I think Iraqi's might actually show more respect for Iraqi troops

This is why we need to train as many as we can and get out of there ASAP. They will have to train their own after that - that's how it works. Why should we train an army that might turn on us someday anyway?

[wiggs]

45. We can and will win

We will draw down and declare victory. Half of the troops will come home (the other half will remain to guard bases). There will be positive news coverage of Iraq leading up to November elections. We will be told that a brutal dictator has been removed and Iraq now has a chance for real freedom for the first time in its history.

The 35% of Americans who still support Bush to this day will remain happy and vocal. Fox, CNN, and MSNBC will spend countless hours convincing another 15% of the public that this is a great time to be an American, that Bush was right all along, that he is a giant among Presidents, that we are seeing an historic sea change in global politics. It will work with a frighteningly significant number of people. Especially if Osama or Zarqawi turn up.

Chalabi will be prime minister.

In the face of all this good news, white phosporous, Abu Ghraib, post invasion incompetence, Chalabi, Fallujia, missing 8 billion, Halliburton, and lies about Iraq military readiness will be forgotten. Anyone who brings it up will be labeled a whiner who focuses on the past for purely partisan reasons.

We will be reminded that the dems couldn't come up with ideas for success in Iraq, but Bush found a way to get it done. We've already heard how Biden is copying Bush's plan for sucess in Iraq, right? That Kerry had a detailed outline for success 1.5 years ago is already forgotten.

This is one reason why the dems need to kick these guys while they are down. Each and every lie, scandal, or disaster must be fully discussed, recorded, and allowed to build on the legacy of other lies so that there's no restoring credibility with the most unprincipled, corrupt, effective, and undemocratic PR machine ever created.

Iraq is a disaster. But it can and will be spun into victory.

The only way it won't is if this adminsitration is kicked out of office soon. Then another government can declare the former administration "rogue" apologive to the world, and begin to deal with Iraq without the baggage and hidden agendae that this one has.

[Warren Stupidity]

46. Actually I don't think it can work.

I agree with your outline of the rovian Plan for Victory: that is how they think they can play it. The problem is that the sunni insurgents aren't going to play along. As we stand down, it won't be the Iraqi Army that stands up, it will be sunni insurgents. The more troops we pull out (and we haven't pulled any out, in fact we are at historically high levels - 160,000 or so) the more difficult and dangerous supply and logistics becomes for those that remain. If we withdraw enough troops we will revert to the situation in spring 04 where the anbar regions was essentially a liberated zone - Sunnistan if you will. We will be confronted with an unacceptable reality on the ground, and The Cabal of Incompetents will have some rather unpleasant and politically disastrous choices confronting them.

[wiggs]

48. My post may not have been clear.

I did not say the strategy was wise or effective in terms of Iraqi stability. I said that manipulation of opinion on Iraq will be effective.

Iraq is a disaster and will likely be unstable for a long time...or stable in a way that we don't like. Most people won't know it though, because the administration effectively controls information and interpretation of information. In terms of public opinion, it doesn't matter if the Sunnis mount and insurgency after we leave...chances are that most Americans won't hear about it. Or if they do, it will be in the context of Saddam loyalists expressing sour grapes in the face of a new democratic Iraq.

I think the reality right now is much worse than even most of us in DU realize. We here try to pay attention, and WE don't even know how much bad stuff is going on! We aren't there. DU'rs get bits of info here and there...that's it. Perception of Iraq conditions is already controlled pretty effectively, when you think about it.