I was brought up taught that when you make a mess, you clean it up.

 

This sounds good on paper, but precisely how? Worse yet, what if the Iraq mess cannot be cleaned up by the U.S.? What if we endure a decade or two of occupation, countless thousands' more U.S. lives, and hundreds of billions of dollars and the place is still a mess?

Second, the other aspects of the plan are rather vague and don't sound all too different from what we have heard in the past. Diplomacy with the Saudis, Egyptians, and Jordanians is fine, but excluding talks with the Syrians, and Iranians, which share the largest borders with Iraq leaves two gaping holes in the plan to improve security. There was vague mention of securing these borders ("We will interupt the flow of support from Iran and Syria"), but with the majority of incremental U.S. forces going into Baghdad and the balance going to Anbar province, what are we going to do differently? The President rattled the U.S. saber in an apparent attempt to intimidate Iran (mentioning an additional U.S. carrier battle group being sent to the region), but what will this accomplish? It seems that the implied threats toward Iran will only strengthen radical Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's grip on power. How will that serve U.S. interests? He is a major proponent of the Iranian nuclear program and regularly makes explicit threats toward Israel.

 

We have continually refused to engage in talks with Iran due to their nuclear aspirations. They are obviously not going to stop working on their nuclear program and they aren't going to listen to us. I don't see how excluding Iran from our diplomacy efforts, focusing on the Iraqi-Iran border, and adding an additional carrier group is going to embolden Ahmedinejad anymore than engaging in direct negotiations with him while he retains his nuclear work. He purposely makes arrogant and callous statements about Israel, and sometimes the U.S., to accomplish political goals: Stirring up the Muslim world to rally behind him, even though he is Shia, something from us, either another pre-emptive strike, where he will no doubtedly gain more support for being on the wrong end of an American folly, or for us to turn a blind eye to his nuclear program. Ahmedinejad wants more power, and the United States on its knees begging for help is exactly that.

 

As to the first half of your post I agree. However, I still hold that strategy needed to change there and we need to leave that country in a stable form. If a troop surge can do that, then I am for it, as there has been no real alternative that I have seen. Only time will tell though.

I want to know if the proposal is to send 20,000 extra COMBAT troops, or just deploy 20,000 extra troops. The reason I ask is that from the defense department, here is a numbers breakdown of job functions for every 1000 troops sent to Iraq:

 

For every 1000 troops,

 

229 Combat Troops

 

263 Mechanics, electiricians, and craftsmen

 

131 Supply

 

125 Administration

 

94 Intelligence and Communications

 

61 Tactical Ops Officers

 

60 Medical Staff

 

36 Other

 

1 Generals and Staff.

I want to know if the proposal is to send 20,000 extra COMBAT troops, or just deploy 20,000 extra troops. The reason I ask is that from the defense department, here is a numbers breakdown of job functions for every 1000 troops sent to Iraq:

 

For every 1000 troops,

 

229 Combat Troops

 

263 Mechanics, electiricians, and craftsmen

 

131 Supply

 

125 Administration

 

94 Intelligence and Communications

 

61 Tactical Ops Officers

 

60 Medical Staff

 

36 Other

 

1 Generals and Staff.

 

Yes, but regardless of your MIS, your always a grunt first.

Yes, but regardless of your MIS, your always a grunt first.

True, but it makes you wonder (agian) what the administration is, or is not, telling us.

I don't think that we should know everything...because if we know everything, so do our adversaries.

I don't think that we should know everything...because if we know everything, so do our adversaries.

 

Just trust that the President will do what's best, right?

I trust that OUR leaders will do that, that's why we have put them in that position.

I trust that OUR leaders will do that, that's why we have put them in that position.

That is GREAT to hear, RockPride. I'm glad to see that you will be supporting Nancy Pelosi to do what is best, without questioning her on matters of importance. :thumb:

 

 

Frances

 

PS - we can count on your support of OUR leaders - right?

I don't think that we should know everything...because if we know everything, so do our adversaries.

 

That is so true.

That is GREAT to hear, RockPride. I'm glad to see that you will be supporting Nancy Pelosi to do what is best, without questioning her on matters of importance. :thumb:

 

 

Frances

 

PS - we can count on your support of OUR leaders - right?

I've always been more willing to respect the secrecy of the Oval Office than Congress. Best way to spread the word in Washington is to tell someone in the Capitol Building and tell them that its top secret.

That is GREAT to hear, RockPride. I'm glad to see that you will be supporting Nancy Pelosi to do what is best, without questioning her on matters of importance. :thumb:

 

 

Frances

 

PS - we can count on your support of OUR leaders - right?

I will support them...maybe not always agree with their decisions, but only as long as they support their superiors.

I will support them...maybe not always agree with their decisions, but only as long as they support their superiors.

 

Which, in Nancy's case, is everyone.

^ she has superiors that's for sure.

Can we accept that on decisions of troop strength, as well as other tactical and strategic decisions, there is always going to be differing points of view? There has probably never been a major strategic decision made in the history of mankind that was unanimous. Frankly, a strength of the decision making process is having differing viewpoints on issues. Lest anyone think to the contrary, it was not the unanimous view of the military that we needed more troops when we invaded Iraq. Some respected military types thought we needed more. Some respected military types were very comfortable with the number. And I think the results showed that we had enough troops to win the war.

 

And I think the results also showed that we did not have enough troops (I'd say boots on the ground, but that cliche is rather worn out) for the post war phase although some people felt we had enough and some felt we did not. The results proved that we did not. The salient question needs to be why didn't we?

 

Pretend you are the President. You know that before our troops fire the first round, you and the U.S. are going to be criticized by supposed allies like France and Russia as well as the Islamists world wide that this whole invasion was a subterfuge to take over and occupy Iraq for the oil. You likewise know that making Iraq 'work" post war is going to require the cooperation of the Iraqi people. They are going to have to "receive' the U.S. troops as liberators, not occupiers; as people not in Iraq to run their country, rather as people who came over to Iraq to liberate them so that they could run their own country. Making sense so far?

 

Thus as you do your post war planning, you have a choice to make: do we flood post war Iraq with multitudes of U.S. troops on every corner and risk the Iraqi people concluding that the U.S. is, as the critics have alleged, there to take over their country? Or do you attempt to minimize our presence in post war Iraq and hope that the people of Iraq will rise up and take over and operate their own country? I can fully seeing Bush and his advisors reviewin the two options and going with the latter approach, as I know that's how I might be inclined to decide. Unfortunately, as we all can see with our specially created hindsight glasses, the Iraqi people have not stepped up in the manner we hoped. Part of that is understandable. With the streets extremely dangerous, with bus loads of men on their way to sign up for the IDF being blown up, its kind of hard to stick your neck out too far. Its absolutely understandable in the current situation that more Iraqi people are not stepping up.

 

I do think Bush and his advisors totally underestimated the effectiveness that the insurgents would have on disrupting the ability or willingness of the Iraqi people to take more operational control of their country. They greatly misjudged the level of insurgency action. But that mistake is over and done with. It got us where we are, but doesn't help us get to where we need to get. Some can choose to dwell over the mistakes. I'd rather focus on what needs to be done. And I believe we now need to totally swarm the entire country with troops. We need to be on the corners, in the markets, in the police stations and in the recruiting centers. The Iraqi people clearly understand that without U.S. troops on every street corner, they will not be safe and secure. I believe that they will now much more willingly accept a much greater U.S. presence, something I do not believe they would have accepted immediately post war. In other words, the situation almost had to deteriorate before it could get better. With more troops we should be able to do a much better job of locating and destroying the insurgents and making Iraq a safer place for the Iraqi people. If we can do that, I believe the Iraqi people will assume control and responsibility for their country. Will it happen overnight? Nope. Will it happen without more losses to our troops? Nope. In fact I agree with the critics that we will have more losses of our troops than ever before. But such will be necessary if we really intend for Iraq to be a free and safe country. We have to throw out the insurgents until the Iraqi people and military are able to destroy them when the insurgents come back. And they will undoubtedly attempt to come back. The insurgent groups cannot allow the Iraq experiment to be successful. We and the Iraqi people cannot allow it to fail. And thus we really have no choice but to increase our presence to make Iraq safe for the Iraqi people if we don't want Iraq to be an even bigger mess than when Hussein was in charge. And for those reasons, I think Bush is right in increasing the number of troops on the ground. And I understand why he may have been hesitant to do so right after the war. He made a calculated decision to limit the number of troops so it did not appear we were occupying Iraq. His decision ended up being wrong, but that does not mean it was not a well thought out decision. We now have to do what it takes to straighten out the situation. Too much is at stake to just pull out the troops, cavalierly tell the Iraqis its time for them to step up to the plate and cross our fingers. It won't work and within 5 years we'll be back over there with an even bigger mess than exists today.