Suppose that everything in the war goes wrong…Saddam maintains his grip on iraq, and the coalition forces start to take massive casualties. Then, Saudi Arabia finds itself under internal attack-the ruling elite decides that to survve, they must cut a deal with the Islamic opposition. So, they ask the US and Britain to leave. This makes the US position in Kuwat and Quatar untenable. Meanwhile, the long supply lines of the coalition forces have come under attack-the soldiers at the front are running out of food and ammunition. The US stock market collapses…triggering a massive depression.
My question: have Bush and Blair thought this thing out? Is there an exit plan in case this all goes horribly wrong?
There is no exit plan. We are in it until Baghdad falls and Saddam’s head is on a pike no matter what the cost. The US may then leave having done little except create anarchy and a lot of dead, but there ain’t no way the US will back down now - they would rather leave it radioactive waste that pull out without at least getting Saddam.
The Dynamic Duo have, of course, considered less than ideal outcomes, as must any realistic world leader.
The Iraqi people may not, in fact, line the streets to throw roses in the path of our liberating armies. They may confine themselves to restrained and polite applause and passing notes offering thier daughters.
While there is little doubt that they will insist on dedicating their oil revenues to underwriting the expenses of the invasion and occupation, they may balk at referring to Mr. Blair as “sahib pasha”.
There is some disappointment being expressed as regards Iraqi restaraunts entering the “ethnic food” markets here and in Jolly Old. I regard this with sanguine aplomb, personally. I cannot eat Arab-type food, it makes me feel awful.
The Muslim world may look upon this war with consternation, which may, perhaps, border on dismay. We are bracing for the prospect of stern notes of disapproval being delivered to our Ambassadors.
It’s certainly true that the coalition will not back down no matter what; it would be humilating and set a bad precedent for future wars (ie, “If you fight us hard enough, we’ll get upset and leave.”)
I think, even in the worst case, we can rule tactical nukes out. The Yanks have B-52s and MOABs and all that and all that which can do the same job, and think of the global outcry.
The classic US military doctrine is to be able to fight two major land wars similatenously. That means they must have plenty of reserves to draw on if they really need a lot of extra manpower to finish the job. We can’t rule that scenario out for a second.
However, if destroying the Saddam regime still left lots of loyalists who went guerilla and continued to inflict losses on our forces, the plan might well be to finish the war, set up a nice friendly interim government in Baghdad, and then leave ASAP.
The worst-case scenario does not involve Iraq alone. There’s no way that Iraq can inflict ‘massive’ casualties on the U.S.
The worst-case scenario is that the U.S. has to commit so many troops and resources to Iraq that it can’t fight a second front elsewhere - and then North Korea invades South Korea.
The coverage of this war is getting more and more shrill and alarmist. You’d think the U.S. was fighting the bloody Chinese here or something. The U.S. has about as many forces on the ground in GERMANY as it has in Iraq. Let’s get a grip here. This is not Vietnam. It isn’t jungle warfare against a dug-in guerilla force backed by the Chinese.
The worst-case scenario for Iraq is that the U.S. has to go in and dig out Saddam’s regime house by house in Baghdad. That would be very tough, and could potentially cost thousands of casualties on both sides. A better analogy would be Beirut, ca 1980.
Not that I disagree with the main thrust of your post, Sam, but I’d say the worst-case scenario for Iraq involves not just a street fight in Bahgdad, but, in light of Rummy’s comments of late, escalations involving Syria and/or (less likely, I think) Iran. Were Syria to get involved, I’d think that keeping the IDF out of things would become much dicier, and if ever they joined in…blah. I hope it was just sabre-rattling, but the language Rummy used was awfully reminiscent of that used to build support for attacking the Taliban. Can somebody please promote Mr. Powell to Head Dude in Charge of the War?
I think the worst case scenario is that we are going to have to kill ALOT of innocent civilians in order to achieve our goal. Its not like we are going to lose or quit or something- no friggin way! In order to spare civilians, we are going to have to spend a whole lot of money and use a whole lot of precision bombs and missles to hit only non-civilian targets; so unless we go broke (we wont go broke, we will just slip farther into debt) we will not see the worst case scenario of losing this war. Of course there is always the option of compromising civilian lives, but i would hope the american people wouldn’t stand for that…
I expect that this war will take a long time to win and will cost a lot of money… we will be paying interest on this war for a long time, we may never get out of debt… This country is like a teenager with a credit card who has no self control, LMAO…
World War II in Germany ended in 1945.
We’re still there.
The Korean truce began in 1953.
We’re still there.
We will be in Iraq for a long, long time.