Cutting off funding is not a plan
 

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...011601334.html

Interesting comparison of the Iraq situation to Vietnam.

If the plan is to withdraw, cutting off funding IS a plan.

Funny considering how much criticism we've heard from the left of the planning for post-invasion how little seems to be required for post-withdrawal. I guess it depends who's driving. :-)

Here is the video of Saddam Hussein being hung:
http://www.livevideo.com/video/landi...ing-video.aspx

This video shows why Iraq is a horrible country that has no hope of improving anytime soon. The hanging of Saddam Hussein is undeniably a significant event in human history - right? So how do the Iraqi people record this important event? With a cheap camcorder shot by some jerk who could not hold the camera steady to save his life!
I also love how the spectators are yelling and barking - what class! It was not a "hanging" it was a "lynching". How pathetic.

Can we please send our soldiers home now? Let the monkeys run their own zoo!

Hanged
Cultural difference - it is not uncommon to see capital or corporal punishment in Arab countries - it is shown on the networks and/ or a public event. Horrible is neither here nor there - I personally think any capital punishment is horrible but I don't judge America by it

Clandestine filming. Probably on a mobile phone that he was trying to conceal. Are you complaining that you aren't getting a good enough view of the lynching then?

They were there, it is their country and their idea of justice. You are the one circulating this for - what reason? - morbid curiousity value? titillation? unable to get tickets to your local execution?
Damn, if only there had been people with mobiles at the one where his half-brother's head popped off, right?

As long as they film the monkey deaths for us to circulate.

Well, the entire war is only going to cost, what, 50 or 60 billion dollars, right? I'm sure we could spare some extra change.

Oh, you say it cost just a tiny bit more than that, currently?

What was once $4.4 billion/month in 2003 is now almost double that. Instead of throwing/not throwing money at the problem, how about we look at what we're doing wrong and what isn't working.

Nah! Let's just ignore the advice and stay the course!

We need to something about it. I think the Dems have right idea but this will only cause more problems because Bush isn't going to budge and try to blame his loss on the Democrats.

@Sundae, classy answer

Exactly who are the "monkeys" to whom you are referring?


Kitsune - did you even read the articles?

Democrats are not positioned to offer a plan in Iraq. The writer likes to call on Democrats to be bipartisan, but anything the Democrats offer will be ignored by Bush. The only thing they can do to affect what Bush plans is manipulate the funding. Not that that is necessarily a viable idea, since I wouldn't put it past Bush to let the funds run out without pulling out, and then blame the results on the Democrats.

"This is like deja vu all over again."


-- Yogi Berra

Insurgencies Rarely Win – And Iraq Won’t Be Any Different (Maybe)
By Donald Stoker


Posted January 2007



Vietnam taught many Americans the wrong lesson: that determined guerrilla fighters are invincible. But history shows that insurgents rarely win, and Iraq should be no different. Now that it finally has a winning strategy, the Bush administration is in a race against time to beat the insurgency before the public’s patience finally wears out.


Not invincible: The that insurgents can’t be beaten is a myth, because history shows otherwise.

The cold, hard truth about the Bush administration’s strategy of “surging” additional U.S. forces into Iraq is that it could work. Insurgencies are rarely as strong or successful as the public has come to believe. Iraq’s various insurgent groups have succeeded in creating a lot of chaos. But they’re likely not strong enough to succeed in the long term. Sending more American troops into Iraq with the aim of pacifying Baghdad could provide a foundation for their ultimate defeat, but only if the United States does not repeat its previous mistakes.

Myths about invincible guerrillas and insurgents are a direct result of America’s collective misunderstanding of its defeat in South Vietnam. This loss is generally credited to the brilliance and military virtues of the pajama-clad Vietcong. The Vietnamese may have been tough and persistent, but they were not brilliant. Rather, they were lucky—they faced an opponent with leaders unwilling to learn from their failures: the United States. When the Vietcong went toe-to-toe with U.S. forces in the 1968 Tet Offensive, they were decimated. When South Vietnam finally fell in 1975, it did so not to the Vietcong, but to regular units of the invading North Vietnamese Army. The Vietcong insurgency contributed greatly to the erosion of the American public’s will to fight, but so did the way that President Lyndon Johnson and the American military waged the war. It was North Vietnam’s will and American failure, not skillful use of an insurgency, that were the keys to Hanoi’s victory.

Similar misunderstandings persist over the Soviet Union’s defeat in Afghanistan, the other supposed example of guerrilla invincibility. But it was not the mujahidin’s strength that forced the Soviets to leave; it was the Soviet Union’s own economic and political weakness at home. In fact, the regime the Soviets established in Afghanistan was so formidable that it managed to survive for three years after the Red Army left.

Of course, history is not without genuine insurgent successes. Fidel Castro’s victory in Cuba is probably the best known, and there was the IRA’s partial triumph in 1922, as well as Algeria’s defeat of the French between 1954 and 1962. But the list of failed insurgencies is longer: Malayan Communists, Greek Communists, Filipino Huks, Nicaraguan Contras, Communists in El Salvador, Che Guevara in Bolivia, the Boers in South Africa (twice), Savimbi in Angola, and Sindero Luminoso in Peru, to name just a few. If the current U.S. administration maintains its will, establishes security in Baghdad, and succeeds in building a functioning government and army, there is no reason that the Iraqi insurgency cannot be similarly destroyed, or at least reduced to the level of terrorist thugs.

ernment. If they reach this point, they can very well succeed.Insurgencies generally fail if all they are able to do is fight an irregular war. Successful practitioners of the guerrilla art from Nathanael Greene in the American Revolution to Mao Zedong in the Chinese Civil War have insisted upon having a regular army for which their guerrilla forces served mainly as an adjunct. Insurgencies also have inherent weaknesses and disadvantages vis-à-vis an established state. They lack governmental authority, established training areas, and secure supply lines. The danger is that insurgents can create these things, if given the time to do so. And, once they have them, they are well on their way to establishing themselves as a functioning and powerful alternative to the govt.

That’s why the real question in Iraq is not whether the insurgency can be defeated—it can be. The real question is whether the United States might have already missed its chance to snuff it out. The United States has failed to provide internal security for the Iraqi populace. The result is a climate of fear and insecurity in areas of the country overrun by insurgents, particularly in Baghdad. This undermines confidence in the elected Iraqi government and makes it difficult for it to assert its authority over insurgent-dominated areas. Clearing out the insurgents and reestablishing security will take time and a lot of manpower. Sectarian violence adds a bloody wrinkle. The United States and the Iraqi government have to deal with Sunni and Shia insurgencies, as well as the added complication of al Qaeda guerrillas.

But the strategy of “surging” troops could offer a rare chance for success—if the Pentagon and the White House learn from their past mistakes. Previously, the U.S. military cleared areas such as Baghdad’s notorious Haifa Street, but then failed to follow up with security. So the insurgents simply returned to create havoc. As for the White House, it has so far failed to convince the Iraqi government to remove elements that undermine its authority, such as the Mahdi Army. Bush’s recent speech on Iraq included admissions of these failures, providing some hope that they might not be repeated.

That’s welcome news, because one thing is certain: time is running out. Combating an insurgency typically requires 8 to 11 years. But the administration has done such a poor job of managing U.S. public opinion, to say nothing of the war itself, that it has exhausted many of its reservoirs of support. One tragedy of the Iraq war may be that the administration’s new strategy came too late to avert a rare, decisive insurgent victory.

Donald Stoker is professor of strategy and policy for the U.S. Naval War College’s Monterey Program. His opinions are his own. He is the author or editor of a number of works, including the forthcoming From Mercenaries to Privatization: The Evolution of Military Advising, 1815-2007 (London: Routledge, 2007)

Damn, I didn't realize the US troops were paid that well. I guess they'll all come home millionaires. :right:

Well, Duh. In order to "establish(es) security" and "build(ing) a functioning government and army" the insurgents must first be defeated.
What Stoker doesn't grasp, or at least address, is insurgents are fellow country men with different political ideals. Not true in Iraq. Iraq has a holy civil war going on, which is a whole different animal than political dissidents.

What Stoker doesn't grasp, or at least address, is insurgents are fellow country men with different political ideals. Not true in Iraq. Iraq has a holy civil war going on, which is a whole different animal than political dissidents.


Not exactly true...I believe most of the insurgents are Iranian or Syrians with a direct outside political viewpoint...with Iraq being a threat to their to their balance in the middle east.

Not only "their balance", but also their POWER.