If you think Bush/Rove were thinking about the iraqi people, you got another think coming. It was whether we feel safe with hussien the way he is.

Not even a thought in their minds. Nor the consequences of their failed debacle.

Nor mine. It is what we do best as human beings. We take care of our own first. If they benefit, so be it. However to sell ourselves a nice song so we can sleep better, we say it is for their benefit.

Don't know about that. I don't think they would want a plan to fail

Chalk that up to total incompetency.

I believe it is still too soon to call the Iraq adventure a failure. That would be like calling WWII before the Battle of Midway incompetently run. Wars do not follow a predictable path and the outcome is never certain. There is one thing that is certain. Abandoning the field will lead to defeat.

One thing that bothers me is the disparity between what mid-level bureaucrats and soldiers say upon return from Iraq as compared to the hallucinatory assessments from the White House on one extreme and the defeatist attitude of of the press and Democrats.

The mid-level people that I know and talk to say that things are mostly going pretty well in most of Baghdad and most of the provinces. There are some bloody-awful areas in Baghdad and in some provinces. What I get from them is that they don't think it is possible for the coalition forces to subdue the insurgents.

But they do believe that the Iraqi Army is improving dramatically. When the Iraqi gov controls its own army and we step aside, then it will be the Iraqi Army bearing the brunt of the battle and they have a FAR different attitude than we have.

Most Iraqi Shiites DO NOT want to be ruled by Tehran. None of the Kurds nor Sunnis will accept Iranian rule. As the Iraqi Army gains strength and confidence they will be able to meet Iran as equals and gain respect taht they currently do not have.

I'm not saying that the strategy we are following right now is the only one or the best one. I don't know. The proof will come as more an more of the country is controlled by the Iraqi Army. If their army is capable of defeating the insurgency then we will know the current strategy is correct. If their army remains incompetent then we will know it is the wrong strategy.

B

Any strategy requires a stratiegic goal.

The current goal is to aid in the creation of a state that is a democratic example for the Mid East and to create a state that will fight with The United States against terrorism. While not necessarily exclusive they are not necessarily synonymous and both might well be pure fantasy.

We need to lay out our vision for the future in such a way that we play one side and back it. A secondary goal is acceptable but a primary goal is essential. Once you understand your primary goal you can figure out who is with you and who is not.

Oil allows the Mid east to sit back and do nothing to get ahead, but there's no future in it.

Fundamentally, giving a sith about what happens in the Mid East is our biggest weakness. Every increased measure of self sufficiency, energywise, increases the strength of our hand in fact and in the eyes of those who assess us. Energy independence may be the only sure thing we can do to contribute to winning this war. We need to buy from our friends and not our enemies even if that means we have to do without or reinvent the current system. The term cheap energy gains relativity over time.

Things worked out pretty well for us during the cold war when there was a wall and everything that passed it recieved the utmost scrutiny. When you let the 'enemy' work your side of the wall by the barrelful, your over one.

Time to re-deploy the home front. So lets get out over the long term and let the situation resolve itself... oil prices through the roof... we do something about it through re-tooling our fueling and consumption accross the board... and the situation resolves itself as it competes with our model.

the mantra that there is no goal ignores about 4 years of speechifying to the Congress and us lesser mortals. It has been laid-out numerous times. Kudos to the Democrats for successfully convincing the voters that there is no plan and shame on the Administration for failing propaganda 101.

Has anybody ever seen any contest, from toddley-winks to global war, in which a purely defensive strategy triumphed?

B

The current situation is not comparable to the Battle of Midway. (remember "Mission Accomplished'} The current situation is more like 1947 or 48 in Japan or Germany.

Good point.

[. If their army is capable of defeating the insurgency then we will know the current strategy is correct. If their army remains incompetent then we will know it is the wrong strategy.

B[/QUOTE]

door #2

tom w

not at all comparable. both of those countries were pacified by having been beaten thoroughly.

that is certainly not the case in iraq.

this is more like viet nam in the aftermath of the tet offensive.

tom w

Iraq was beaten thoroughly, in the sense that the central government and its army was destroyed. The population in Iraq had a more ambiguous relationship to the central government than either Japan or Germany. There is no cultural unity underlying Iraq as there was in Japan and Germany.
I'm not sure that Vietnam is a good comparison. I don't think there was much doubt that once the US left Vietnam, there would be a unified country. It would be a nationalist and communist government, but it would eventually control the country which had a long cultural history (I think)

Iraq is a unique situation for this country it, but for the British this is not so new. What do the British think?

We have never fought a war quite like this, Vietnam it most certainly is not. Its also a far cry from Korea, WW1/2, Spanish American, Civil, War of 1812, ect. I am sure I missed a couple...

Is the situation closer to the British pullout of India when Pakistan and India were created?