“Don’t Listen to Me…”
“I’m a Pinhead.”
Perhaps for the first time in recent history, cooler talking heads will prevail. I could live with that.
One of the most resonant arguments in the debate over Iraq holds that the United States can move forward by pulling its troops back, as part of a phased withdrawal. If American troops begin to leave and the remaining forces assume a more limited role, the argument holds, it will galvanize the Iraqi government to assume more responsibility for securing and rebuilding Iraq.
…But this argument is being challenged by a number of military officers, experts and former generals, including some who have been among the most vehement critics of the Bush administration’s Iraq policies.
Anthony C. Zinni, the former head of the United States Central Command and one of the retired generals who called for the resignation of Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, argued that any substantial reduction of American forces over the next several months would be more likely to accelerate the slide to civil war than stop it.
“The logic of this is you put pressure on Maliki and force him to stand up to this,” General Zinni said in an interview, referring to Nuri Kamal al-Maliki, the Iraqi prime minister. “Well, you can’t put pressure on a wounded guy. There is a premise that the Iraqis are not doing enough now, that there is a capability that they have not employed or used. I am not so sure they are capable of stopping sectarian violence.”
…While Mr. Levin’s plan calls for beginning troop reductions over the next six months, it does not stipulate a time-frame for completing the withdrawal, or spell out precisely how many troops should be removed in the initial phase. The plan, however, does call for shifting the American military role to more limited missions like protecting the American Embassy, training the Iraqi forces and engaging in counterterrorist operations against cells of Al Qaeda.
“The point of the proposal is to force the Iraqis to take hold of the situation politically,” Mr. Levin said.
But some current and retired military officers say the situation in Baghdad and other parts of Iraq is too precarious to start thinning out the number of American troops. In addition, they worry that some Shiite leaders would see the reduction of American troops as an opportunity to unleash their militias against the Sunnis and engage in wholesale ethnic cleansing to consolidate their control of the capital.
John Batiste, a retired Army major general who also joined in the call for Mr. Rumsfeld’s resignation, described the Congressional proposals for troop withdrawals as “terribly naïve.”
Especially since the Iraqis in uniform seem to be a BIG part of the problem. Even super-secret-squirrel-serial-numberized-impossible-to-copy-Iraqi-uniformed guys are fakes.
Gunmen dressed in Iraqi police commando uniforms and driving vehicles with Interior Ministry markings rounded up dozens of people inside a government building in the heart of Baghdad on Tuesday and drove off with them in one of the most brazen mass kidnappings since a wave of sectarian abductions and killings became a feature of the war.
I’m still of the opinion that splattering copious amounts of Muqtada al-Sadr fat deposits would help immensely. And in the power vacuum to follow, there is opportunity ~ we’d just have to be the first ones in.
Plus, DAMN! It would just be so satisfying in a ‘wrath of God’ kind of way.
Military Thingies | Mr. Bingley | 
November 15, 2006 9:32 am
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“splattering copious amounts of Muqtada al-Sadr fat deposits”
An excellent idea. On a a slightly related note, I have a rare military-related post.
“On a a slightly…”
Damn. Preview is my friend.
“splattering copious amounts of Muqtada al-Sadr fat deposits”
The failure to do this immediately is and continues to be a primary part of the problem. Fallujha and other terrorist strongholds should have gotten the same treatment already.
Carrots only work when there is a stick the size of a telephone pole to back it up. A pity we don’t have the kind of leadership that understands this.
Someone needs to b**chslap some sense into those Democrats. Bush didn’t go far enough, and they want to reverse course?
The mind boggles.