Gripping
If you haven't seen the NYTimes piece on the first "joint security station" in Ghazaliya, you've got to give it a read. There's too much to even excerpt it.
This is the Bush plan, and they want 20 more. Read it.
This is the Bush plan, and they want 20 more. Read it.
posted by mikevotes at
7:03 AM
4 Comments:
I guess what comes up for me is, "why did it take them so long." If you are going to run a counterinsurgency and general peace-keeping, this is the way to do it. So now we are finally going to give it a try, 4 years in?
With the resources available I'm guessing it is too little too late. Still, it would be foolish not to give it a chance.
By
Praguetwin, at 6:55 AM
Not ot argue, but we're not primarily fighting a counterinsurgency, at least not in Baghdad, we're standing in the middle of a civil war.
In the civil war theory, these guys' job is to stand in the middle of the battle to try to keep it as calm as possible while some sort of political settlement is reached. And that could be a litlle while, you know?
The inkspot counterinsurgency strategy is designed to slowly build faith in the group doing the inkspots which is largely the US, and only secondarily the Iraqis. And we can't transfer that legitimacy so long as the Sunnis believe the Iraqi gov't is party to the civil war.
So long as the Shia government is favoring its own, even in the smaller stuff like hospital funding, this will not work.
Mike
By
mikevotes, at 7:18 AM
Iraq was allowed to spin out of control because George Bush rejected the facts on the ground and chose to be guided by his beliefs -- little more than delusional wishful thinking.
With a civil war now raging, putting American troops in the middle, at best, acts as a lid on a pressure cooker. While it may diminish some of the overt violence, it also allows the unrealized hate in each community to fester. Each is striving to rival the other and the fighting will erupt again in 50 years as easily as tomorrow. Or to use another metaphor: putting our finger in the dike doesn't fix the dike.
The problem is not "how do we stop the violence," but "how do we stop the hating," or at lest drastically reduce the intensity of hate. Yet, everything this administration has done in Iraq has, in some way, fanned the flames of hatred: at US, at the Sunni's, at the Shia, at the Iranians, at the Syrians.... ad in.
By
-epm, at 12:51 PM
That's an interesting point about separation allowing the hate to fester.
All wer're doing is erecting a porous fence between the two sides made out of US soldiers.
Your third paragraph is hearts and minds writ large, and that's why the US effort will not likely work. The goal is not to make the Iraqis accept the US and stop fighting, outside of Anbar, they really don't want to be fighting the US.
We're trying a counterinsurgency startegy designed to give the occupier some authority, and then trying to transfer that onto the Shia government. The problem is, the Shia government is undermining that at every turn.
Mike
By
mikevotes, at 2:41 PM
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