I’m thinking what we need is a good sized strike force somewhere in the Middle East that can be can be deployed either in pieces or as a whole to put out fires wherever they come up, including Iraq. Now here’s a crazy idea. What if we could get the Israelis to agree to a Palestinian State on the West Bank, and station about 50,000 troops there. Great for the economy there. Great for the security in both directions. Fairly easy access to Iraq. But frankly, I’m both a military and a geographic idiot, not to mention foreign relations, so please, tell me why this is stupid.
Getting ground troops in and out of Iraq is dangerous business. If you think there is a likelihood that you’ll need to send troops back in, you would be better off not taking them out.
Yes, but in the short-term long run (if that makes any sense - I think I’m talking maybe 2-5 years) we’re going to need a strike force somewhere, I think. Maybe it’s Iraq. But I don’t think the Iraqis really like that idea much and with good reason. It smacks a bit too much of puppet state. But the whole area is a tinder box waiting for a spark. It needs a local, very powerful firehouse. Maybe a coalition of non-partisan Arab-Israeli forces, but hey, good luck assembling that. Same with Nato or UN forces.
Quite a few years ago, Tom Clancy, hawk of hawks, suggested in, I think, The Sum of All Fears that, IIRC, the Vatican could administer Jerusalem as a free and open city with the Swiss Guard as protection. The problem is, I think the Swiss Guard isn’t big enough for the entire MidEast, and I don’t think there’s any truly neutral, reputedly corruption free military organization in the world that is and would be willing to do it. The American brand has taken quite a hit internationally over the past eight years, but if Obama gets into office, I think we have a real chance at getting a second chance with the world at large, much more so than with McCain. The Islamic mainstream might really be willing to accept with some skepticism but not belly laughs a promise of true neutrality on our part. If the US put up the bulk of it, we might be able to get support from both. Maybe a coalition of Nato or UN forces, but kinda the same thing. But I still like the idea of basing it out of a Palestinian West Bank. Despite the current tensions with Iraq, that really seems to have been the flash point for some forty years. And hell, give Clancy’s idea of an open Jerusalem administered by the Vatican with the Swiss Guard backing him up a shot; it’s a holy city to three major religions, and Christianity seems the least likely at this point to be willing to destroy it in order to ‘save’ it.
I really don’t see a reason why it wouldn’t be all that different than right now. Minimum of 80,000 is my guess, if Obama thinks he needs to placate the more radical elements of his base for re-election.