According to the WaPo, the Pentagon may be warming to increasing U.S. troops in Iraq and then boosting training and guidance of Iraqi forces during a U.S. drawdown. But citing first-hand meetings with President Lyndon Johnson during the Vietnam War, former Washington Governor Dan Evans in a Seattle Times op-ed today asserts increasing U.S. troops makes little sense. The more hawkish conservative columnist Charles Krauthammer agrees, but in yesterday's Times goes further than Evans today. Krauthammer argues the great need is for a reformulated coalition government that can win the allegiance now granted by Iraqi troops only to "mosque or clan or militia," following 30 years of political rape by Saddam.
The Economist's blog Free Exchange today argues that a liberal economy and a liberal democratic political system in Iraq or anywhere are "superior to the alternatives;" and the "role of culture in impeding political and economic development" must be acknowledged. As must, Free Exchange fails to specify, cancerous theocratic tendencies. Muqtada al-Sadr, the radical Shiite Muslim militia leader allied with the vehemently anti-U.S. Iranian Islamist regime, would seem to rank high among current cultural impediments to political progress in Iraq. Mark Steyn notes:
When I had the honor of discussing the war with the president recently, he was at pains to emphasize that Iraq was "sovereign." That may be. But, at a time when a gazillion free-lance militias are running around the joint ignoring the sovereign government, it seems a mite pedantic to insist that the sole militia in the country that has to obey every last memo from Prime Minister Maliki is the U.S. armed forces. Muqtada al-Sadr is an emblem not of democracy's flowering but of the arid soil in which it's expected to grow. America would have been better off capturing and executing him two years ago....Someone in the GOP needs to do what Ronald Reagan did so brilliantly a quarter-century ago: reconcile the big challenges abroad with a small-government philosophy at home. The House and the Senate will not return to Republican hands until they do.
A good place to start on the current Iraqi challenge is not only with increased U.S. troops to Baghdad, but also the taking out of al-Sadr. As John McCain recently urged. al-Sadr's two million or so Baghdad-based adherents are called The Mahdi Army. This particular protector-in-chief of the Mahdi - the envisioned apocalyptic redeemer of Islam - needs to be put on an express bus to the hereafter.
Posted by Matt Rosenberg at November 21, 2006 05:17 PM | Email ThisWilliam T. Sherman said it best, "...we are not only fighting hostile armies, but a hostile people, and must make old and young, rich and poor, feel the hard hand of war, as well as their organized armies."
Posted by: Splinter on November 21, 2006 06:54 PMWe have much to lose if we run from the field we created.
The terrorist were celebrating when the libs won Congress. And for good reason. That provides assurances that victory is theirs now and into the future.
1) Delta Force sniper team, using Iraqi or Combloc sniper rifle. Bullet to the brain. Downside: looks too much like a US hit-Iraqis, for the most part, don't do sniping.
2) Blow up his car with a Hellfire missile. Tell the Iraqi government, "Somebody rigged his car to blow. If you say otherwise, we leave, starting tomorrow."
3) Find a Sunni/Wahhabist extremist who hates Shii'tes enough to kill Sadr. Give him Allah's own VBIED (with our own remote safeties that he needn't know about) and put him in position to do the deed.
Oh yeah, and get rid of the stupid "No assassinations" ExecOrd.
Posted by: Heartless Libertarian on November 21, 2006 09:44 PM1. Remember when the troops were rolling to the north and left supply lines thinly guarded. The MSM and Democrats were calling the war a "quagmire".
2. I was worried that after the bombing in the "softening" process, there were no Hussein soldiers to fight the troops. They blended into the background.
3. The Battle of Fallujah. We were in there to take out alSadr and he did the midEast shuffle and agreed to come to the peace table. We lost our chance to diplomacy. You can't trust the extremists.
IF the terrorists win, it will be due to gross (possibly criminal) incompetance by the Bush administration.
Posted by: Splinter on November 22, 2006 08:25 AMSadr wasn't in Fallujah-that was Zarqawi. However, in the more general sense, you are correct, in that 1st Armored Division had Sadr and his followers hemmed in and backed off let the Iraqi govt. cut a deal with him.
Posted by: Heartless Libertarian on November 22, 2006 08:57 AMDon't worry, this chicken s--- congress only has another month in office. Hopefully, the new congress in January will have the testicular fortitude to stand up to the criminally incompetent administration responsible for this foriegn fiasco.
Posted by: Splinter on November 22, 2006 10:46 AMSplinter, you haven't convinced me that going into Iraq wasn't the principled and right thing to do. Especially, your last paragraph.
Posted by: swatter on November 22, 2006 11:20 AMReally? Then why are our enemies celebrating the Democrat victories?
IF the terrorists win, it will be due to gross (possibly criminal) incompetance by the Bush administration.
See? You've already got your ready-made excuse when our emboldened enemies strike harder. It's not because they see and smell weakness from us; it's because we should've never responded to their attacks on us in the first place. (and before you predictably chant Iraq never attacked us, shut up. It's a global war, and the fact you and those like you still haven't figured this out proves you're not capable of protecting this country.)
I take back my previous statement about you being a reasonable person. You're a fool just like the rest of the short-sighted Left.
If we hadn't gone into Iraq and it became a safe haven for Al Queda and Saddam more entrenched in power (which was extremely likely, if not probable) you and your ilk would be the first people screaming about how incompetent and criminal the Bush Administration was because we know how much of a threat Saddam is and any fool would know he sides with enemies of the U.S., blah, blah, blah.
Your Monday Morning Quarterbacking sickens me. Why? Because the longer it goes, the better chance the rest of us will be killed as a result of your idiocy.
Posted by: jimg on November 22, 2006 11:46 AMYou can't just draw up a constitution, hold an election, and expect things to work out just fine. And the President's expectation that you could do just that is one of the reasons I was so very hesitant to vote for him in '04.
"When you set out to take Vienna, take Vienna!" - Napoleon
Posted by: Allen McPheeters on November 22, 2006 11:47 AMSadr is Shii'te. They don't like each other, and other than seeing violence as a means to increase their power, they don't have much in common.
And as it turns out, the Sunni tribes in al Anbar province now don't like a-Q much anymore, either. Google "Bill Roggio" for more on the story.
Posted by: Heartless Libertarian on November 22, 2006 05:42 PM