Tuesday, November 22, 2005

[POLITICS] Responsible Democrats like Murtha are now calling for a phased pullout from Iraq before the Army falls apart as an institution and the Guard and Reserve are destroyed. Some irresponsible Republicans are still insisting we can win the war with the troops we've got.

Neither is a good option. Obviously we're not winning the war. On the other hand what happens after we pull out? Shi'ite dominated theocracy? Corrupt and fragmented pseudo-democracy? Entire country fragments and becomes a failed state, just like Afghanistan before the Taliban took over?

All of these sound like ideal places for Al Qaeda to set up. Cheney was lying when he implied that Saddam was pals with Al Qaeda -- the secular dictator hated the anarcho-jihadists -- but does anyone believe the Iraqis will have the national will to root out terrorists? Why would they, when lots of Jordanians apparently think blowing up a hotel in Amman and killing a lot of Jordanians is a fine thing so long as it spits in America's face?

(Yes, there were demonstrations, but reporters had no trouble finding people who approved of the bombings. And even if Iraqis can be convinced to stop killing other Iraqis, that's a long way from convincing Iraqis to take action to stop their fellow Arabs from training in Iraq for 9/11-style missions in the West.)

Why is no one asking what it would take to actually win the war? Because it would be political suicide, that's why. It would involve drafting at least 250,000 young men, training them in Arabic, and sending them to pursue a "clear and hold" strategy in the Sunni heartland. Many of them would get killed. None of them would be happy to go. Rich kids would pull strings to get deferments, as Cheney did, or find their way into units guaranteed not to serve overseas, as Bush did.

On the other hand, we might have a shot at establishing a secular Iraqi state with enough internal coherence to keep the terrorists from setting up shop.

The alternative is what we've got in western Pakistan -- chaos in which no one can agree on anything except hating Americans -- except in downtown Baghdad, with easy access to the Gulf States and tech-savvy, English-speaking, Western-educated jihadis.

If we were actually willing to put our national heart into it, could we win the war?

Tags: Iraq; war; Army

8:35 AM

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