Cynical Nation

"It's pretty goddamn clear who's running the show now."

Barry,
Nope. You got it wrong. NOONE is running the show now. You have a republican party that has imploded and an administration in chaos, in panic mode. Bush has destroyed the republican party. It will take years for the damage to be repaired. But it may be an opportunity for the republicans to get rid of the extreme far-right religious wingnut faction (that was controlling the party until yesterday) and move back to the mainstream. Hopefully, this will happen.

Baker has been running the show for a while. And that's probably a good thing.

Actually, I really HOPE that James Baker is running the show. He's a hell of an improvement over the idiots who've been running the show up until now.

They were talking about this on the Brian Lehrer Show, something about how W is aligning himself with 41's people rather than with Pelosi's people. I don't really know why those are the only two options.

"He's a hell of an improvement over the idiots who've been running the show up until now."

No he is not. He is one and the same and partly responsible for the whole mess. Dont forget who helped W steal the election in 2000 and who helped W destroy McCain in the republican primaries in 2000.

> I don't really know why those are the only two options.

No kidding!

Can some of the more experienced military strategists here give me a brief historical comparison of Iraq to other counter-insurgency campaigns?

Briefly (skipping the "Bush sucks" part): How much more quickly were they successfully concluded? How many fewer lives were lost? How did the government (prosecuting the counter-insurgency) manage to sustain support and approval at home.

On a slightly different (but related) note: I recently read that only about 15% of the U.S. military is participating in Iraq in any way. I also read that more than half of all overseas deployments are unrelated to Iraq or Afghanistan.

I'm sure these numbers must be wrong -- since I continuously hear that Iraq is consuming the military right down to the bone -- so I wonder if someone can provide more accurate statistics, and (once we have the real numbers) fill me in on how things are going outside of Iraq. Anything working in those areas?

WF, I'm not military strategists, but I can recommend a fascinating book by Max Boot called "The Savage Wars of Peace." He recounts fairly extensively all the major counterinsurgency campaigns in American history. Unfortunately, the example that bore the greatest semblance to Iraq was the Philippines, which was indeed pacified, but over quite a few years and at great cost.

You got it exactly right, Barry. James Baker, the family fixer, has been brought in to clean up yet another mess made by Sonny. That's the pattern of his life: Bush makes a mess and then someone comes along and washes up after him. I only wish more people had realized this in, say, 2000.

Anyway, you analyzed that correctly.

The best resolution is to split the country three ways, thereby leaving Iraq weak and divided, but relatively stable.

We can then re-enter to protect the sovereignty of any of the new nations that come under seige, as needed, instead of just standing around being unwelcomed occupiers and terrorist practice dummies.

Splitting Iraq will only lead to more regional instability.

The Kurdish area to the north will claim the oil in Kirkuk, declare independence and will be quickly invaded by Turkey.

The Shia area in the south will become an Iranian proxy and will claim the Basra oilfields.

The Sunni area in the middle will be left with mostly desert and no real source of income. They are not likely to accept that status quo.

That is no solution.

Let them fight each other for the next thousand years, who cares.

BNJ: "WF, I'm not military strategists, but I can recommend a fascinating book by Max Boot called "The Savage Wars of Peace." He recounts fairly extensively all the major counterinsurgency campaigns in American history."

I'm familiar with Max Boot and that book, although I haven't read more than extended excerpts.

BNJ: "Unfortunately, the example that bore the greatest semblance to Iraq was the Philippines, which was indeed pacified, but over quite a few years and at great cost."

I absolutely agree on the Philippine Insurgency. I saw the resemblance to Iraq from the beginning. The Malay Emergency of 1948-1960 also strikes me as an apt comparison.

I've said before that I opposed the Iraq invasion and still believe it to have been a mistake, but now that we are in it, the only satisfactory outcome is success (victory really doesn't apply to counter-insurgencies).

The lesson of history is that these things are always long, nasty and bloody. The mistake was getting in. I don't think things would have been any better even if everyone in the world agreed that the invasion was necessary. More troops, better tactics, some other magic bullet -- History says that wouldn't have made any difference. This is the way these things play out.

Looking for scape-goats to explain "what went wrong" is absurd. We shouldn't have gone in, but -- from a historic perspective -- things are actually going pretty well. I'm still waiting for someone more expert in military affairs than I to show me where this has ever been done better.