US losing war of wills for democratic Iraq

[CShine]

WASHINGTON - Counter-insurgency experts are advising the Pentagon that recent positive policy shifts in Iraq may have come too late for the United States to avert defeat, or at least a protracted and unpopular military commitment. Although US forces are performing extremely well at a tactical level, the advisers - some recently returned from Iraq - say the wider war of winning 'hearts and minds' is slipping away. The Bush administration runs the risk of losing its broader goal of establishing a stable democratic Iraq. Those held responsible are the post-war military planners, who refused to heed warnings of a pending insurgency and commit enough resources, and the politicians, for failing to produce a coherent strategy.

President George W. Bush insists the US is winning the war in Iraq, a view also held by some senior officers on the ground. But the broad conclusion of a number of advisers is that the US will need to deploy large numbers of troops for several years to prevent a slide into civil war. They question whether the US public has the stomach for this.

Professor Ahmed Hashim of the Naval War College, Rhode Island, returned recently from Iraq where he was a counter-insurgency adviser to the US military. He came to the military's attention nearly a year ago with a paper delivered at the Middle East Institute in Washington, describing the complex nature of the nascent insurgency.

Fighting it would be 'like eating soup with a fork', he said, quoting T.E. Lawrence. Last week, he returned to the institute and wrote a paper for the Jamestown Foundation, a strategic studies think-tank. Again he quoted Lawrence of Arabia in Iraq in 1920: 'We are today not far from disaster.'

http://www.straitstimes.asia1.com.sg/world/story/0,4386,257834,00.html?

[CharlesGroce]

1. Not just losing: LOST

Bring them home now!

[Sagan]

2. then why are they coming back?

Bremer and the rest of those bastards that screwed this up should STAY in Iraq until it's fixed or until the Iraqis storm the Green Zone.

[acmavm]

3. Too frigging late. Every last damn horrible thing that we were warned

about before the 'shock and awe' has come true. The US is hated by almost every Iraqi man/woman/child. Civil war is a distinct possiblity, especially if the Kurds try for an autonomous homeland. And we will have to keep spending billions to occupy the place for years. All because of a group of psychopathic assholes and their delusions of granduer and their insatiable greed.

[Aidoneus]

4. "for democratic Iraq"

Why is it still referred to as that? One cannot honestly lose what one has no intention of bringing about, at least by any decent standard of terminology.

The phrase "extremely well at a tactical level" may be questionable; matched off against the "hearts and minds" rubbish, I guess it means "they're slaughtering left & right, but approval ratings are still falling".. which, I'll have to check to be sure, is a working model for "DUH!".

What they define as a "civil war", which can be supposedly prevented by occupation, is also dubious. If it is meant that their Vichyite puppets left behind getting blasted, I'd say that is merely a continuation of the resistance war at hand, for the quislings act not as an independent body but as an arm of the invaders, whom they alternately hide behind and act as cannon fodder for in the process of forcing their will upon the occupied population.

[Malva Zebrina]

5. this is ineresting

President George W. Bush insists the US is winning the war in Iraq, a view also held by some senior officers on the ground. But the broad conclusion of a number of advisers is that the US will need to deploy large numbers of troops for several years to prevent a slide into civil war. They question whether the US public has the stomach for this.

and it makes no difference how stupid they are and will be as long as their assessment of the US public is such that they are not paying attention.

There is no leadership here. There is only manipulation and bluffing according to what the US public can stomach.

[Malva Zebrina]

6. this is ineresting

President George W. Bush insists the US is winning the war in Iraq, a view also held by some senior officers on the ground. But the broad conclusion of a number of advisers is that the US will need to deploy large numbers of troops for several years to prevent a slide into civil war. They question whether the US public has the stomach for this.

and it makes no difference how stupid they are and will be as long as their assessment of the US public is such that they are not paying attention.

There is no leadership here. There is only manipulation and bluffing according to what the US public can stomach.

[dbt]

7. This is the kind of shit that happens

When you start a war based on LIES. And as Will Pitt points out, every justification that the Regime gave for going into Iraq has turned out BOGUS.

And now, nobody can figure a way out of this mess. Karma's a bitch, no?

:freak:
dbt

[teryang]

8. "Winning the war"

Iraq has certain national interests that will continue to assert themselves in a direction opposed to predatory American economic and military objectives. Thus American policy of war in Iraq will ultimately be judged an unmistakable foreign policy failure. We are trying to impose our will and our rule by force.

When the administration says things are going well they mean they are prepared to take and impose this level of casualties indefinitely, that it is tactically acceptable to them as leadership. This is the old body count in a new guise.

It is acceptable or winning in bushista terms because a broad range of corporate interests are profiting from the war financially and politically, and stand to profit more in the future. That is entirely different from saying that our tactics are effective but the truth cannot be expressed politically.

The much higher level of Iraqi casualties is the result of an anti-colonial war induced by our presence. That is pretty much a matter of racist indifference on the bushitas' part. It is semantics to refer to Iraq as slipping into civil war- it is civil war.

[DrBB]

9. Yeah, I guess appointing a Saddam death-squad goon

...who is ALSO, just for added, you know, benefit, a CIA stooge as Prime Minister was probably not altogether the most auspicious way to "win the war of wills for democratic Iraq."

[David Zephyr]

10. The Inevitability of Civil War in the Christian Artifice Called "Iraq"

"But the broad conclusion of a number of advisers is that the US will need to deploy large numbers of troops for several years to prevent a slide into civil war."

I know I am in a minority here, but folks, we need to be on the pro-active side of this quickly developing hell on earth that will soon envelope the British invention we call Iraq.

Break it up now while there is still time allowing the Kurds self-government, as well as the Sunnis and the Shiite.