Tom knows about a million times more about the military angle on this than I, so I will defer to him for the most part. I do disagree with his categorical assertion that more troops would have been of no use -- I've read too much by too many military people and other experts not to take those accusations seriously -- and I can come up with lots of reasons why war supporters (John Keegan, Max Boot, Thomas Ricks, all of whom know a bit about the military themselves) might go wobbly. For one thing, the case the administration made to Congress proved to be fallacious -- maybe not intentionally so, but fallacious nonetheless, and I believe that in a democratic republic where Congress is supposed to give its imprimatur to the administration's military gambits Congress ought to have all of the information at its disposal or at least a fair rendering of all sides going in. Furthermore, while I supported a war in Iaq, I did not support this one, handled as it has been handled. Finally, I'll never be convinced that we had to go to war when we did and the way that we did.
That said, Tom has what I believe to be a spot-on assessment of the big picture, which I will quote in full:
The tough reality is that the war in Iraq is really now in the gray area between a counterinsurgency and policing of a violent region. The insurgents are beginning to look more like criminals than guerrilla warriors. The only way for them to be revived into a serious fighting force is to receive a lot more outside aid from places like Iran and Syria, or for us to misstep and turn the Iraqi people against the new government.
At this point, we need to continue to develop Iraqi security forces. We must draw down our troop levels in Iraq so that we can avoid missteps, but keep enough in country so that we can react when areas inevitably flare up (like Baghdad right now). We must do everything possible to close down supply lines from outside the country (right now there are over 200 border forts around Iraq). Keep in mind also that this is not Vietnam--there are no regular divisions on the border ready to invade at the first opportunity.
And, most important, we must take a very long view of this policing action. It does not take much for a few fanatics to cause a painful amount of death and destruction. The enemy will continue to try to pinprick us until we pull out support for Iraq, at the cost of hundreds of American dead.
Those losses are painful but must not be prohibitive. For all the hand-wringing, no one has ever made a good case that we are not doing the right thing in Iraq.
My own quibbles with interpretation aside, it is a very good blog post. Please go read it.
4 comments:
It is a very good post.
It's a pretty good example of contemporary history in action.
dcat
Let me clear up one point that was unclear in my post: I'm not saying that more troops at the outset absolutely would not have helped with providing security in Iraq, but I think more troops would not have helped with institution building, and probably would have gotten in the way.
Ahh -- thanks for that. Another good point -- and an important differentiation for people who tend to lump it all together.
dcat
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