Suppose you were given the charge of the U.S. military involvement in Iraq. What would you do? What would be your objectives? What that hasn’t been done do you think should be done, and what objectives that aren’t on the table do you think should be? What steps would you take to stabilize the nation, or would you opt for a full withdrawal?
At risk of being called a troll, I’d rather read what others have to say before giving my own answers.
Leave, as soon as possible. We shouldn’t be there, and I don’t see us as being willing or able to make things better. Even if we were, we’ve lost our credibility.
Well obviously, being an operation of the US military the question is: What is the honorable thing to do?
The US invaded, against advice, on a pretext that turned out to be unfounded. And deliberately misrepresented. The great crime of international justice is ‘waging aggressive war.’
On that pretext, lives have been lost and property damaged.
Human rights abuses have taken place as a matter of official US military policy.
So the first thing must be to open up all the books and show all the evidence, the lobbying and the political considerations that prompted the war.
As to the honorable follow-up to the US’s earlier actions; well that writes itself really.
First off, I would get the body armor and the vehicles armored that need it now. Yell, scream, plead, beg at whomever I need to in order to get it done.
Besides that, what else is there really to do? You have to go after those attacking you to the best of your ability while minimizing your effect on the local population. You have to ensure that order is kept in the country and help transition Iraqi forces into control of the country. I would do those three things to the best of my ability until suchtime as I and/or my forces are recalleld.
Don’t let the door hit us where the Lord split us.
Myself, I would begin the process of disengagement of the US forces from the day to day activities in Iraq…patrolling and such. I would reposition our forces increasingly into a defensive posture, slowly putting more and more of the burden on the Iraqi forces (nothing like a trial by fire to spin up a force rapidly). I would tell the Iraqi’s that this would begin 2 months after the elections (so the clock would already be ticking), with a phased disengagement taking about 8 months…i.e. the US would be 90% disengaged within 8 months and in a defensive posture. At that time I would begin a phased withdrawl from Iraq completely, taking say, another 6 to 8 months before US forces were down to perhaps 10%…mostly SF units.
In the interrim I would step up training of Iraqi forces, and offer our SF forces for use in strike operations.
After all this if Iraq folds then IMO we would have done all we reasonably could (taking into account that we can’t take back the whole invasion thingy). It would be on them at that point, though I would couple the military things with aid packages and other political support…and probably an offer of military assistance IF the Iraqi’s requested it and desparately need it.
-XT
First step would be to get realistic about our goals: to ask what can attempted with reasonable likelihood of success, how you’d go about doing it (and why you believe it would work - concretely, not with Bushy airy-fairy generalities like ‘some people don’t believe Arabs are ready for democracy, but I disagree’), how long it would take, and how much it would cost.
Part of that would be to admit what can’t be done: we can’t defeat the Sunni insurgency in any realistic timeframe; we aren’t going to establish a regime (democratic or otherwise) that respects and enforces Western-style human rights, even basic ones like the right of women to literally show their faces in public; the regime we leave behind isn’t going to be a counterbalance to Iran, it won’t be friendly to Israel, and it won’t be secular in any meaningful sense. The Kurds will have at least de facto semi-independence; they already do, and that’s not going to change. And AFAICT, we really can’t prevent the Shi’ites from establishing a similarly semi-independent southern megaprovince.
We also can’t do that much serious reconstruction without an end to the de facto civil war that’s been going on in Iraq. As long as the Sunnis believe the only role they can play in Iraq is that of spoiler, they’re going to spoil. They’re gonna blow shit up. If we build it, they will come. And blow it up.
So that’s what we can’t do; I’d be looking to hear what we can do and how. One thing I’d measure any plan against is whether it’s likely to produce more benefits (and at what cost) than retreating over the next ~6 months to those “enduring bases” we can’t seem to find out, so our troops can stop playing a direct role in Iraqis’ lives: from there, we’d disperse any massed troop movements via air strikes, whether by Iraqi factions or by invading forces.
What the ultimate plan would be, would depend on what I heard when the assorted experts argued things out while I listened and asked questions.
I certainly wouldn’t pull out from the get go. Because 1. I’m not a little puss, 2. the job isn’t finished, and 3. there really isn’t a reason to since we have only sustained a little over 2,000 casualities over a period of 2 and a half years. When compared with other historical wars waged over alot less land and in less time, 2000 casualties, while regretable is more than acceptable.
With that said, I would cut loose the chains when it came to allowing the military to do their job, which is, in essence, killing the enemy. The num,ber of troops would be greatly increased. I would not allow what happened in Vietnam to happen in Iraq, which was when politics overrode the trade of the military. I would guard the border around Iraq ruthlessly. Organizations that were linked slightly towards terrorism would be branded criminal and alleged members of the said organizations would be handed to the Iraqi court system to be held for trial. If found guilty then they would be locked up and if found guilty of violent acts, they would be executed.
Meanwhile, I would build up the number of native Iraqi troops, in hopes tghat ina few years they would be able to do the job themselves. Civil reconstruction of buildings and infrastructure would go at a faster rate and the costs would be put on the new Iraqi governments bill to be paid when they are in a better situation. Once we get the wells working I don’t think they would have a problem.
It should be remembered that Iraq is an occupied country and under martial law, thus certain rights are curtailed. With that said, all teachers would have to be certified by the state and in being certified they would have to be pro-american in their ideals. A teaching curriculum sponsored by the state would be put into place that would reinforce American indoctrination on the ideals of freedom of religion, speech etc… Much like what was done to Germany and Japan after WII. Since it took almost 10 years after the war for Germany to have free elections and 20 for Japan, I recognize that the job will not be a quick fix. However, changing teh beliefs of any country/culture lies with the young and their education. Oh, and censorship of Iraqi radio and tv would be an absolute must…American stations too. Oh and currently, Iraqi households are allowed to have one rifle a piece, that must be changed. No weapons are to be held by civilians, an armed populace is a possibly rebellious populace.
I’d create a bunch of tiny states, each the size of Kuait, and dominate just those with oil and abandon the rest to religious nuts.
That’s not because I want the oil - we can donate it to the oil-less nations of Africa - I just don’t want religious nuts to get funding.
I think I’d try to get the international community involved in the peace process by allowing anyone who really helps out to bid for recontruction projects on identical terms with US companies(throw in some oil if that doesnt get the Chinese, Germans and French off their butts). If I managed to get 750000-1000000 troops total on the ground I’d stay, secure the borders and fight the insurgents; if not - oh well.
I believe the Iraq war can still be won, but in order to do that the US will have to truly spread the wealth that a peaceful Iraq could potentially bring as without help from other countries - its time to get going, and without economic incentives - they ain’t helping.
Since this is a misconception that crops up fairly often re Iraq I’d like to address it even if it’s not properly the subject of this thread.
Western Germany (American, British and French zones of occupation):
1945/1946: municipial elections
1946/1947: state elections
1949: federal elections
I don’t know about Japan but I really doubt that they went without free elections until the 1960s
Indeed. Japan had it’s first post-war national election in April of 1946.
What’s the job? We went there to eliminate the threat of Saddam’s WMDs falling into the hands of terrorists. There were no WMDs. That job’s done, apparently by Clinton in 1998. So what’s the job now? Without defining the job, you can’t assert that we’re not done.
That’s the next problem: who’s the ‘enemy,’ and why do we consider them to be an enemy? Yeah, I know there are Sunni insurgents trying to blow our troops up, but that problem’s solvable by retreating either out of country, or to those ‘enduring bases’ situated away from the cities. They weren’t our enemy before we came, and they won’t be our enemy in any meaningful sense after we leave. By staying, we are perpetuating their enmity towards us. So why stay?
Proposals to increase American/allied troop strength in Iraq crop up with some regularity. The problem is, we’re having trouble sustaining existing troop strength. Where are you going to get these additional troops from? A draft isn’t politically feasible, and fewer volunteers are to be had, because they know volunteering = trip to Iraq.
The problem with this is, wars are fought for political reasons. Sure, the military can kill everyone in sight; we could have turned Vietnam into a glowing sheet of glass, and we can do that with Iraq too. But we fought in South Vietnam supposedly to protect the South Vietnamese from the Communists to the north, and we claimed to be rescuing the Iraqis from the evil Saddam. (That’s not sarcasm; he was an evil ruler.) So you can’t exactly destroy the country in order to save it, and that inherently places limits on the military’s turning the country into one big field of fire.
If we could do that, we surely would have. There’s a difference between being made Iraq Czar and being given super-powers.
Etcetera.
Left one out:
The acceptable level of casualties is always in the context of the war aims, the public’s support of those aims, and whether continuation of the war, with its attendant casualties, are likely to bring about substantive progress towards those aims.
There’s some confusion about our war aims and their achievability, there’s little evidence of progress, and there’s pretty obvious evidence of regress as well. In that context, 2000 fatalities and the much larger number of serious casualties (let’s use these words properly, now) are much more of a political problem than the much larger number of WWII casualties were.
Definitely.
This site lists fatalities at just over 2,200, with 15,955 wounded.
The U.S. very much needs a strong ally in the M.E. Political instability and a strong anti American (read that anti U.S. policy)
trend is detrimental to world politics in general. The primary reason is, of course, oil and the worlds need for it. The other
important reason is the, almost 60 year old, dispute between Israel and the Palestinians, or the Arab world in general. At the
same time maintaining a U.S. military presence in the area is extremely counter productive.
The key to establishing political stability in the M.E. is, and has been, finding a resolution for the Isreali/Palestinian conflict.
While it may have been necessary to use military force in Iraq, Bush was precipitous and extremely misguided in forcing the
issue and staging the invasion w/o a strong coalition. He should have concentrated military efforts in Afghanistan, completely
rousting the Taliban and capturing/or killing Bin Laden. At the same time he should have concentrated on finding a political
solution to the Isreali/Palestinian conflict and continued the containment of Iraq. At the same time the State Dept. could have
been building a coalition to address the Iraq problem.
Bush’s, tough guy, rhetoric served no useful purpose and that along w/ this administration’s intractability in rejecting diplomatic
discourse has resulted in our being in a very difficult position regarding world politics. We are left w/ relying on our economic
power to persuade other governments in cooperating w/ us on many political matters.
These tactics might work if we were undisputedly the big dog on the block, but, in case you haven’t been paying attention, we
may not be the biggest economic, or perhaps even the dominate military power, in a very few years.
We must be working on long range plans to insure the the U.S. maintains its position as an economic power. While the M.E. is
an important part of the mix, Bush’s actions have done more harm than good in cementing our relations in the area.
Bush’s folly has placed the U.S. in a very precarious position. We desperately need to stabilize Iraq and have it as a strong,
reliable, ally, but I’m not optimistic. There’s no doubt that we should have had many more troops to effectively secure the
country immediately after the initial invasion, but Rumsfeld, w/ Bush’s approval, ignored Pentagon planners and micro managed
things. Several months later, when Bremer requested more troops, he was ignored, again by Rumsfeld and Bush. Now it’s
probably too late to add any significant number of U.S. troops and no other country wants to get involved.
The only possible solution left is a protracted occupation with the hope that Iraq can establish a gov’t that appeases all the
ethnic, religious and economic factions that want power.
This is a tremendous drain on our economic and military resources, but I see no other way. If we arbitrarily pull out it will only
postpone the inevitable.
We’ve made a lot of mistakes after the invasion, and greed has led us to ignore the biggest problems.
We need to get these people clean water and 24-hour electricity.
We need to let the Iraqis participate in the process. We are paying US truck drivers and construction workers $80K a year plus high-risk life insurance. Do we think Iraqis don’t know how to drive trucks or nails? Hire them!
There were more than a dozen cement plants in Iraq before the war; now all cement for the rebuilding in being shipped from the US at enormous cost. Get those factories running, with Iraqis working there.
Get serious about recruiting and training Iraqi troops and police. It’s outrageous that it’s taking so long.
We need to support the mainstream mullahs who don’t advocate killing us.
In short, we need to put the country back together, so we can get the hell out and let them run it.
I would give each Iraqi a monthly check which (when totaled together) would be half the price of all the Iraqi oil sold the previous month.
With money, the Iraqi people can buy electricity, sewage and water and all the other needed services. With money from oil, they would have an incentive to let the oil flow.
Rich people are very rarely oppressed.
Leave once the Iraqis have gotten about six or eight checks. God help the fool who tries to cancel the program when we leave.