Posted under Iraq
The Washington Post had an insightful article on Sunday: The war in Iraq isn’t over. The main events may not even have happened yet.
Almost every American official I interviewed in Iraq over the past three years agreed. “This is not a campaign that can be won in one or two years,” said Col. Peter Mansoor, who was Gen. David H. Petraeus’s executive officer during much of the latter’s tour in Iraq. “The United States has got to be willing to underwrite this effort for many, many years to come. I can’t put it in any brighter colors than that.”
Many of those closest to the situation in Iraq expect a full-blown civil war to break out there in the coming years. “I don’t think the Iraqi civil war has been fought yet,” one colonel told me. Others were concerned that Iraq was drifting toward a military takeover. Counterinsurgency expert David Kilcullen worried that the classic conditions for a military coup were developing — a venal political elite divorced from the population lives inside the Green Zone, while the Iraqi military outside the zone’s walls grows both more capable and closer to the people, working with them and trying to address their concerns.
So, to address the perceptive question that Petraeus posed during the invasion: How does this end?
Probably the best answer came from Charlie Miller, who did the first draft of policy development and presidential reporting for Petraeus. “I don’t think it does end,” he replied. “There will be some U.S. presence, and some relationship with the Iraqis, for decades. . . . We’re thinking in terms of Reconstruction after the Civil War.”
The quiet consensus emerging among many who have served in Iraq is that U.S. soldiers will probably be engaged in combat there until at least 2015 — which would put us at about the midpoint of the conflict now.
Many worried that as the United States withdraws and its influence wanes, the Iraqi tendency toward violent solutions will increase.
At some point America must withdraw and attend to its own affairs. What if America is incapable of improving Iraq? What if such a task could only now be accomplished by Iraqis themselves?
The general consensus is that the American occupation is somehow morally owed the Iraqis after America took out their ruler, and yet no progress is made and, more importantly, Iraqis don’t want Americans there.
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At least one cause of continued occupation is hubris: American leaders don’t want to admit their country made a mistake, so they bury their collective head in the Iraqi sands.
A quote from the article:
“What the world ultimately thinks about us and what we think about ourselves,” U.S. Ambassador Ryan Crocker said to me last year, “is going to be determined much more by what happens from now on than what’s happened up to now.”
Why is America’s reputation so important? Rather than asking, “what looks right?”, American leaders ought to be asking: “What is right?”
After the bombing of the Beirut barracks in 1983, Reagan cut his losses by evacuating within 4 months of the bombing. However humiliating admitting past error might have been, it was the right thing to do.
Weaver on 19 Feb 2009 at 5:51 am #
I love how popular reconstruction is nowadays… It’s insulting how these elites believe they’ve successfully neutered and reprogrammed the South.
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Anyway, what about Mexico? Shouldn’t America abandon the Middle East and Central Asia and take more interest in matters that will likely affect it? Leave Asia to China, Russia, and India.
roho on 21 Feb 2009 at 1:18 am #
God!…..History will show this to be a sad story. I recently rented “W” at the video store and quickly recognized that the portrayal of the crazy a$$ Bush Boy was absolute truth, but was offended somewhat as “Oliver Stone” and the Jewish Controled Hollywood Moguls tried to portray this “Nutcase” from Texas as a “Bad Apple” in the world of “Christian Evangelical Land”?
The “Dumb Puppet” was surounded with Dick Cheney’s swarm of AIPAC “Israel Firsters”, and actually double crossed poor old Colin Powell with BS inorder to make it look like our former Aly(Saddam Hussien)was UBL’s partner in crime on 911?(And Rummsfeld had Saddam’s back all through the eighties?)
But, what ISRAEL WANTS, ISRAEL GETS!…..As long as the donations keep comming in…….About 600,000 plus Iraqis dead inorder to acomplish “Regime Change”, and soon to be we can start killing the hell out of either Pakistanians or Iranians for Israel? We have built a “Full Blown Castle” in Bagdad, called the American Embassy……………But there is a problem?
Americans now see through this BullShit, and are actually expecting a full blown civil war in America over the next 12 months, as the economy crashes!……..AMMO IS DRYING UP AS IT GET’S BOUGHT BY US CITIZENS IN ALL STATES!………….It’s unbelievable as I travel from retailer to retailer looking at it?…….It’s GONE!
And many Americans have now aquired a siege mentality?
Pray for our Nation, as things are about to get ugly?
Weaver on 21 Feb 2009 at 1:23 am #
I hope things don’t get ugly too soon.
Some warn ammo could be overtaxed or otherwise made scarce in the future, I wonder if reloading machines aren’t what folks ought to be buying.
RonL on 21 Feb 2009 at 4:34 am #
Roho,
US presense in Iraq does nothing for Israel. It only precludes Israel from dealing with the mortal threat of a nuclear Iran.
Now back to your delusions.