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Title: Our Iraq Strategy is Now a Tale of "Diminishing Returns"
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URL Source: http://townhall.com/columnists/Dian ... _a_tale_of_diminishing_returns
Published: Aug 15, 2009
Author: Diana West
Post Date: 2009-08-15 10:00:20 by Eric Stratton
Keywords: War, Constitution, Liberty, Tyranny
Views: 195
Comments: 8
Our Iraq Strategy is Now a Tale of "Diminishing Returns" Question for Americans: How can we as a nation even consider using our military for another "surge" in Afghanistan when the "surge" in Iraq has left little more imprint on the sands of Mesopotamia than the receding tide? This, to clarify, is not the antiwar Left writing. I am writing from a pro-military, anti-jihad point of view that has long seen futility in the U.S. nation-building strategy in Iraq, and now sees futility in the rerun in Afghanistan. Problem is, the same blind spot afflicts both strategies: the failure to understand that an infidel nation cannot fight for the soul of an Islamic nation. This, in essence, is what President Bush and now President Obama have ordered our troops to do. I don't suggest these missions are ever considered in such terms, which implicitly acknowledge intractable differences between Judeo-Christian-based Western cultures and Islamic cultures. Doing so, of course, is a taboo thing -- a grievous violation in the PC realm where decisions are made. But the omission helps answer my opening question. I seriously doubt Americans would approve of re-running the surge in Afghanistan if there were an honest reckoning of the religious, cultural and historical reasons why the surge failed to achieve its promised results in Iraq. This is not to say the U.S. military failed. On the contrary, the U.S. military succeeded, as ordered, to bring a measure of security and aid to a carnage-maddened Islamic society. Given U.S.-won security, surge architects promised us, this same Islamic society was supposed to then respond by coming together in "national reconciliation." They were wrong. Not only did Iraqis fail to coalesce as a pro-American, anti-jihad bulwark in the Islamic world (the thoroughly delusional original objective), they have also failed to form a minimally functional nation-state. And the United States is now poised to do the same thing all over again in Afghanistan. I write this as the volume of talk of an Afghanistan "surge" is getting louder, drowning out the quiet undercurrent of eye-opening reports now emerging on post-surge Iraq. Late last month, for example, the New York Times reported on a bluntly revealing memo written by Col. Timothy Reese, an adviser to the Iraqi military's Baghdad command. In it, Reese urgently argues that the United States has "reached the point of diminishing returns" in Iraq due, among many other things, to endemic corruption ("the stuff of legend"), laziness, weakness and culture of "political violence and intimidation." Reese considers Iraqi Security Forces (ISF) "good enough" -- just -- to keep the Iraqi government from toppling. That's reason enough, he writes, to leave early, by August 2010 instead of December 2011. Reese describes a "fundamental change" in the U.S.-Iraq relationship since the June 30 handover -- a "sudden coolness," lack of cooperation, even a "forcible takeover" by ISF of a checkpoint. While Iraq will still "squeeze the U.S. for all the `goodies' that we can provide," he writes, tensions are increasing and "the potential for Iraqi on U.S. violence is high now and will grow by the day." And that's the good news. The Washington Times this week reported on an even more dire prognostication to be published by National Defense University written by Najim Abed Al-Jabouri, a former Iraqi police chief and mayor. Al-Jabouri focuses on problems within the ISF, where, he writes, the divided loyalties of what is essentially a series of militias beholden to competing "ethno-sectarian" political factions could easily drive Iraq to civil war. He writes: "The state security institutions have been built upon a foundation of shifting loyalties that will likely collapse when struck by the earthquake of ethnic and sectarian attacks. Iraq's best hope for creating a long-term stable democracy will come from an independent national security force that is controlled by the state, and not by political parties competing to control the state." Al-Jabouri insists the United States should exert its "leverage" to revamp the ISF, which, given Reese's evidence of plummeting U.S. influence in Iraq, seems farfetched even if it were a good idea. Which it is emphatically not. An infidel nation cannot fight for the soul of an Islamic nation -- a truism that, in a more rational (non-PC) world, might bring surge enthusiasts to their senses.
Diana West
Friday, August 14, 2009
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#1. To: All (#0)
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An infidel nation might fight for the soul of an Islamic nation if it were not seen as governed by grasping and venal factions of elites, tied to the apron strings of a regional power that perverts the domestic and foreign policies of that infidel nation, and intent on sending it's most viscious praetorians abroad to lord it over the people in the streets. There's not a thimble full of trust for us and our motives, and we are suffered over there only to the extent that Uncle Sugar buys off the locals and pays off the Iraqi goverenment. It's going to get harder and harder to sell this at home. Now that the dems are in charge, support for our adventures will become ever more unstable. Even Mr. Savage Weiner has declared himself in the anti-war camp. (I trust that man as far as I could throw him, but he is something of a barometer, I believe) The returning vets I talk to are not at all sanguine on Iraq and Afghanistan. We're also edging closer and closer to being genuinely broke, and Mr. Obama, I am sure, would like to bag the shekels that go to war for historic domestic projects that will earn him monuments of marble. Soon, after this "healthcare" hash is over this year, the lamestream hacks are going to have to begin addressing the question "How long is this gonna go on?" I'll be interested to see how our cowardly politician respond to this question.
Join 2x4 Tuesdays & protect your RKBA. deleted
You are genuinely right. Perhaps I should have said we're all-but-admittedly broke. When we become admittedly broke, all hell will break loose. I predict that one day an F-15 will nail Barney Frank's private flight to the Cook Islands.
Join 2x4 Tuesdays & protect your RKBA. deleted
HOLY SMOKE! The Right to Keep and Bear Arms, of course. Also known as the Right to Kick the Bastards in the Ass.
Join 2x4 Tuesdays & protect your RKBA. deleted
#2. To: Eric Stratton (#0)
An infidel nation cannot fight for the soul of an Islamic nation . . .
www.righttokeepandbeararms.com
#3. To: randge (#2)
#4. To: Eric Stratton (#3)
We're well beyond genuinely broke
www.righttokeepandbeararms.com
#5. To: randge (#4)
#6. To: Eric Stratton (#0)
#7. To: Eric Stratton (#5)
What's RKBA?
www.righttokeepandbeararms.com
#8. To: randge (#7)
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