U.S Armed Forces.Lack of experienced pers

Originally posted by Laelius No but they need the support of the civilian populace, consider US operations against filipino guerillas during teh filipino insurrection.  It is my understanding  that some US commanders had begun herding the local populaces into concentration camps.  Without the civilian populace to hide amongst an insurgency cannot survive.  The trouble with Iraq is that the US does not exist in a political vaccuum, more traditional efforts to pacify the Iraqi insurgency would be devastating to the US politically and economically.

Edited by Cryptic - 25-Mar-2007 at 17:39

I think a viable strategic option right now would be to withdraw to strategic positions within Iraq, in particular the Al-Faw peninsula, and wait out the coming civil war.  This will put the US in an advantageous position to not only produce a cease fire agreement, after a couple years of good fighting.  But also to maintain a strong hand in the region for years to come.  With the Al Faw in hand the US would maintain control over the exit terminals of Iraqi oil production thus allowing a stranglehold over any Iraqi government that might arise and for that matter preventing the Iranians from ever taking full advantage of their influence in southern Iraq. 

Originally posted by Laelius I think a viable strategic option right now would be to withdraw to strategic positions within Iraq, in particular the Al-Faw peninsula, and wait out the coming civil war.  This will put the US in an advantageous position to not only produce a cease fire agreement, after a couple years of good fighting.  But also to maintain a strong hand in the region for years to come.  With the Al Faw in hand the US would maintain control over the exit terminals of Iraqi oil production thus allowing a stranglehold over any Iraqi government that might arise and for that matter preventing the Iranians from ever taking full advantage of their influence in southern Iraq.

Edited by pikeshot1600 - 25-Mar-2007 at 22:11

Originally posted by Laelius Comparing the Lincoln administration to the Bush administration is like comparing a ferrari to a Yugo without an engine.  One has been regarded as one of the finest in American history and the other appears to be totally disfunctional.

Originally posted by pikeshot1600 No grand conspiracy theories there, just politics.

Edited by Cryptic - 26-Mar-2007 at 13:30

Well guys this is a very tricky matter, and Im sure a great number of reasons were applied in deciding to invade Iraq.  Principle among these, Iraq's oil wealth, ease of invasion, the administration's goal of strengthening the US's hand in the region and creating a host of opportunities for American businesses.  Perhaps this is one reason why the US seemed determined to wipe out the former arsenal of the Iraqi military.  In doing so American contractors would have made a windfall in selling billions of dollars of shiny new American equipment to a new Iraqi army.

That makes a lot of sense to me as well, the situation is deeper than just a lack of veteran troops, however, the lack of definetly is a possible reason for some of the failures. The Pentagon may well plan, and create scenarios for the whole war. However, war planning never is compliant with reality a 100%, take for example the situation in WWI, when the German high command implemented the Schleiffen Plan, which looked flawless and highly effective on paper, but that piece of paper never considered the fortress in the low countries, which held up the mobilization for a considerable time period. The plan had been created to work on exact timing, as soon as mobiliziation time expanded due to unforseen circumstances (and forseen) they were not able to win the Western Front. The war had been lost in the first few weeks to effectively win, or at least gain some favourable peace treaty France had to have been subdued, which it was not. Same in Irak, the US government and military command expected a flawless invasion, which it got, and then favourable conditions to completely re-create the whole government apparatus of a rather large country, which it did not implement yet, nor will it in the near future. By dismembering the entire civil infrastructure, and political, and military structure of the country, banning high ranking officers who have had decades of experience governing, administrating, and running the armed forces they lost hundres of thousands potential and crucial collaborators to the various rebel factions operating inside of Irak. A lot was due to the choosing to implement the wishes of the exiles who collaborated with the American government who wanted to see the people in power ousted, and replaced with rather inexperienced individuals who have had no experience running a country. Same happened in Afganistan, Hamid Karzai had been a members of Cheney's company working on a pipe line in the 80s not a career politician. Sometimes you need the corrupt career politicians to at least establish the groundworks for a stable political infrastructre. Furthermore, without the veteran support, they really did not know what they were getting themselves in to, the US military that is, it is hard to occupy an entire country. Peace keeping missions and special forces operations are a rather different animal compared to establishing an effective occupation force.

Edited by es_bih - 27-Mar-2007 at 01:07

I like Cryptic's ideas of turning the militias on each other... but that creates problems in Iraq, as we can clearly see. The Militias have been turned against one another, but we haven't put one or the other on a leash, and now, instead of a bunch of Yanks and confederates shooting each other in the woods of Missourri, we have the Mahdi Army and al-Quaeda fighting battles in the middle of crowded city streets in Baghdad. It's not the small insurgent cells in the desert that are confounding US troops; it's the internecine warfare of terrorism going on in urban centers. And the Mahdi Army and al-Quaeda 9and all their opposing subsidiary organizations) aren't even fighting against each-other; they're fighting against each other;s civilian bases, which is the worst part of the public-relations disaster, and the humanitarian crisis.
The US has shown it can eliminate about 99% of the attackers the militias throw at them, with minimal casualties on their own side (3,200-some dead, and the occupation has been over 4 years- Those deaths include Afghanistan, as well). When we went to retake Fallujah, they had to get rid of the bodies of the Jihadis in the streets, so many died. They may clip one or two men every couple of days with an IED or sniper attack, but in no way are the insurgents winning the war... they're just massacring eachother to undermine public support back here in the States. To put the US casualty rate into perspective- the Allies sustained over 10,000 Casualties (including wounded, though 2700 men died that day) on D-Day (June 5th-6th, 1944) alone. 9386 Americans lost their lives during the Battle for Normandy, as did 17,769 Brits, and 5002 Canadians. The Battle of Normandy was about two months long.

In contrast, 3,200-some American dead over a four year period in a two-front war makes this one of the most successful military operations in history. Politically and diplomatically, it's a disaster, but our boys over there and doing a world of hurt to the insurgencies.

I think an ultimatum ought to be offered in Iraq, personally: Stop this pseudo-civil war you're fighting, or we're leaving you to tear each other to pieces. Rather than protesting the idea of a withdrawal, we should be threatening the Iraqi government (under Nour-Maliki) and the Iraqi army with a complete US withdrawal. Maliki knows he's only in power because of American boots on the ground. The withdrawal will give him a bit of incentive to get the Iraqi army involved in crushing the insurgency, and to get his house in order. As it is, right now it seems the Shi'ite government is using the US to help protect it's power base while it carries it out it's own form of house-cleaning, in the form of brutalizing the Sunnis. But if those politicians know we're not going to stand for them dicking around, and we're only going to protect our own interests in the region (i.e. policing the oil fields and the ports), they'll be constrained by necessity to get down to the business of getting down.

Personally, one reason I think this war is such a diplomatic disaster is because we lied our way into it. If we had just taken the same stance that Bush Sr. had during Gulf War 1 ("Hey, you, Saadam. We want the dag-gone oil, and we're gonna git it!"), people would have been a lot more supportive here at home. Afterall, know one likes being lied to. Since we were unclear about our stated purposes and interests in the region, we only empowered the media even further in pursuit of their own self-righteous agendas. If there were no lies, no scandals, what would the media have to say? In the age of whistle-blowing, if there's no alarms to sound, they could have put Lou Dobbs out of a job.
Cheers.