(Long Island, NY) A political blogger friend of mine dropped me a breathless email today. “Did you see the ABC News piece on Iraq?” he said, “The mission in Iraq is doomed!” I was slightly disturbed by what seemed to be a gloating tone in the email, but I read on as my blogger buddy quoted ABC. “Lt. Gen. Ray Odierno, the top commander of U.S. ground forces in Iraq,” the ABC quote stated, “says the current surge of 21,500 troops is not “open-ended” and warned that ‘time is running out’ for the United States to turn things around in Iraq.”
Strong stuff. Especially for a line officer to be saying in a media interview. Generals who value their careers don’t go spouting off in the media without getting clearance ahead of time. I should know, I spent more than 13 years covering military affairs. I can promise you that 99% of everything that comes from the mouth of a high-ranking someone in uniform with regard to military service has been thought about quite a lot.
This little quip all by itself wouldn’t have bothered me as much, except for what I heard on NPR recently about the troops surge. Much has been made about the additional forces going in to Iraq. There has been debate about the “escalation” and other semantics, but one very important fact has been missing from much of this talk.
Most people are aware of the troop surge. Fewer people are aware that UK officials are discussing a major drawdown of its troops in Southern Iraq. The U.S. troop surge could wind up being negated by a British pullout. Critics of this way of thinking point out that the Brits are stationed in the more stable southern regions of the country, but is that really going to make much of a difference? A security hole will be left in the wake of the departing British forces if and when they do leave. Sectarian bombers know how to exploit security holes.
In the event that the UK forces do leave, all this talk of troop surges becomes tricky. The additional forces could be distracted by problems in the south, should the violence spread to those areas. Will they? Are these southern areas less vulnerable to sectarian problems based on the makeup of the tribal influences in the region? I don’t know enough about Iraqi politics and tribal issues to make the call.
Does George Bush? He’s blundered so much of Iraq at this stage where simple matters of war and peace are concerned that we can hardly trust him to make the right call as commander-in-chief on this. To top it all off, we have Iran and Syria complicating the whole mess. Sabre rattling on both sides is creating a high-stakes game of poker, and Bush’s poker face is laughable. “The Decider”? He proclaimed, “mission accomplished” on that aircraft carrier, in case anyone forgot.
For a mission that’s been “accomplished,” Bush has eaten a tremendous amount of crow about recent operations and their lack of effectiveness over there.
At this stage in the debacle, Iraq seems doomed no matter what happens. It’s Viet Nam all over again, and unfortunately the only thing left is a modern day humiliation like we suffered as we fled from ‘Nam by any means available. How will we run away from this one? What happens when the American media finally recognizes a civil war in Iraq, one that America is powerless to stop, short of a full-scale, WW2-style occupation similar to the one we did in Japan?
I don’t know what my political blogger friend thinks of any of this, (he has yet to reply to the email I sent him on all this) but I have a feeling he’d label me a gloom-and-doomer in spite of the fact that he, too disagrees with Bush.
I hate to say it, folks, but a full-scale occupation is the only way I can see that we’re going to get anything done over there. I don’t condone it, or approve of it, but I do recognize that it’s the only real option with ANY hope of lasting success. It worked for Japan. It could work in Iraq, if properly administered. But America simply does not have the will, and that’s why Iraq will succumb to a civil war as we hurriedly try to escape the mess we created after the fall of Saddam.
