A plan to temporarily boost troop levels in Iraq, followed by a sharp reduction, is gaining favor at the Pentagon, the Washington Post reported. U.S. forces might increase by 20,000 to 30,000 for a short period to try to curtail violence, then might be reduced by as many as 100,000. The stated purpose of the plan would be to focus on training and advising Iraqi forces. But the shift, the Post noted, could also be akin to Michael Jackson’s moonwalk dance move, in which we appear to be moving forward while we’re actually sliding in reverse.
Posted by Phillip Brownlee
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17 Comments
Very good description. We got our troop strength up to over a half-million while training and equiping the million-man ARVN. It failed when the ARVN melted away. The ARI is even worse; they seem to be the source of much of the sectarian violence taking place today.
The idea of overwhelming force to create stability might have made sense when Bush made the consious choice to ignore that advice; it is to late now. Bush has deliberately FUBARed it to the point that it might not be salvageable. I suspect our least bad option is to give it to Syria and Iran.
MISSION ACCOMPLISHED!
We’ve had almost four years to “train troops.”
If it were going to get done, it would have gotten done by now.
No matter what plan is finally agreed on, you know as well as I, that the Republicans will use it to hammer the Democrats if it is goes wrong.
Of course, the Republicans started the damn war but they will never admit it.
Capn – we spent a decade training them in Nam …
GOP Congressman – Iraqis shuold be doing the fighting:
“House panel chair pushes for Iraqi armyANNE PLUMMER FLAHERTY and LOLITA C. BALDORAssociated PressWASHINGTON – The United States should push for available and trained Iraqi security forces to be sent to the front lines of the fight to stabilize the wartorn country, House Armed Services Committee Chairman Duncan Hunter said Monday.
“We need to saddle those up and deploy them to the fight” in dangerous areas, primarily in Baghdad, Hunter, a California Republican who is interested in his party’s 2008 presidential nomination, told The Associated Press in an interview. He took a different tack from Sen. John McCain, a front-running 2008 hopeful who has urged that additional U.S. troops be sent there.”
more …
http://www.kansas.com/mld/kansas/news/breaking_news/16054898.htm
I think it’s more about leadership in the Iraqi military than the number of trained troops. With proper leadership, a military can do almost anything they wish.
It takes a long time to ‘create’ a Battalion Commander who knows what to do and when to do it.
From the way I read it, the Iraqi army is more or less a reserve unit with about much discipline as a boy scout troop in Disneyworld.
In that case JM, use our commanders to run the Iraqi units. Even use advisors. But the ARI should be doing the fighting.
Unfortunately, I think they already are – against us and as part of the sectarian violence. Note how many of the recent attacks involved uniformed ARI personel.
I like Micheal Jackson’s other idea better. It’s called “Beat It.”
I heard a Bush (TM) spokesman actually using the word “Iraqization” the other day.
Oh man, are you kidding me?
After “Vietnamization,” they would dare reconstitute that word?
Unbelievable . . .
Frank Miller of Bush’s NSC visited Iraq in March, 2004 – from Woodward’s book _State of Denial_:
“It was striking, Miller thought, that the Iraqis he saw seemed generally friendly, or at least not antagonistic. Little kids came running out, smiling, saying hello, and giving them the thumbs-up sign as they moved through. It wasn’t the middle finger, he noted, not realizing that in Iraq the thumbs-up sign traditionally was the equivalent of the American middle-finger salute” (p. 290).
This cracked me up…
http://www.netscape.com/viewstory/2006/11/20/hersh-cheney-said-dem-win-wont-stop-us-plans-for-iran/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.newyorker.com%2Ffact%2Fcontent%2Farticles%2F061127fa_fact%3Fpage%3D1&frame=true
Cheney wants to bomb/invade Iran. US election be damned:
“A month before the November elections, Vice-President Dick Cheney was sitting in on a national-security discussion at the Executive Office Building. The talk took a political turn: what if the Democrats won both the Senate and the House? How would that affect policy toward Iran, which is believed to be on the verge of becoming a nuclear power? At that point, according to someone familiar with the discussion, Cheney began reminiscing about his job as a lineman, in the early nineteen-sixties, for a power company in Wyoming. Copper wire was expensive, and the linemen were instructed to return all unused pieces three feet or longer. No one wanted to deal with the paperwork that resulted, Cheney said, so he and his colleagues found a solution: putting “shorteners” on the wire—that is, cutting it into short pieces and tossing the leftovers at the end of the workday. If the Democrats won on November 7th, the Vice-President said, that victory would not stop the Administration from pursuing a military option with Iran. The White House would put “shorteners” on any legislative restrictions, Cheney said, and thus stop Congress from getting in its way.”
_( ((\ =\__\_ `-\(____))( \—-(____)) _(____))(____))____/—
Hey, Cheney, imagine we are in Iraq!
It seems to me that the Iraquis don’t need much training to fight. The Shea are fighting the Sunni. The Sunni are fighting the Shea. Those who don’t know what they are seem to be fighting everything else.What more training do they need? Does it make sense to give them guns (more than they already have) and uniforms and tell them to “keep the peace” when all they seem to know how to do is aim and pull the trigger?
hmmm,”I suspect our least bad option is to give it to Syria and Iran.”Has anyone inquired whether either of those countries want it? All those explosions might negate their desire for the oil.
very misleading headline
The ARVN melted away? That has to be one of the greatest lies of the 20th century. “On January 15, 1973, Nixon announced a suspension of offensive action in North Vietnam”. It was not until April 30 1975 that Saigon fell. So for almost a year and a half the ARVN did not melt away. “In December 1974, the Democratic majority in Congress passed the Foreign Assistance Act of 1974, which cut off all military funding to the South Vietnamese government and made unenforceable the peace terms negotiated by Nixon.”
Sen. Kennedy and his crowd cut off the funding so the ARVN couldn’t fight, that’s why they so called melted away. Kennedy couldn’t afford to let Nixon win the war that his brother started and Johnson failed to win. The Democrats didn’t care how many Vietnams died or how much they suffered as long as they could discredit Nixon.
And now history repeats itself. We have a Democratic majority in Congress and they are going to see to it that we loose the war in Iraq, just like they saw to it that we lost the war in Vietnam.
I still have yet to hear a measurable goal for the war. Until “winning” is defined, we can never win.
By the way George, we lost Vietnam for the same reason we’ll “lose” Iraq (whatever THAT means): The indigenous people don’t want us there.
The best possible outcome of defeating Saddam was to turn Iraq into a clone of Iran. This isn’t hard to figure out: If they have democracy, then the majority (Shia) will rule. This has already begun, but you won’t read about it in the US.