While Washington is mired in political debate over the future of Iraq, the American command here has prepared a detailed plan that foresees a significant American role for the next two years.
The classified plan, which represents the coordinated strategy of the top American commander and the American ambassador, calls for restoring security in local areas, including Baghdad, by the summer of 2008. “Sustainable security” is to be established on a nationwide basis by the summer of 2009, according to American officials familiar with the document.
The detailed document, known as the Joint Campaign Plan, is an elaboration of the new strategy President Bush signaled in January when he decided to send five additional American combat brigades and other units to Iraq. That signaled a shift from the previous strategy, which emphasized transferring to Iraqis the responsibility for safeguarding their security.
That new approach put a premium on protecting the Iraqi population in Baghdad, on the theory that improved security would provide Iraqi political leaders with the breathing space they needed to try political reconciliation.
The latest plan, which covers a two-year period, does not explicitly address troop levels or withdrawal schedules. It anticipates a decline in American forces as the “surge” in troops runs its course later this year or in early 2008. But it nonetheless assumes continued American involvement to train soldiers, act as partners with Iraqi forces and fight terrorist groups in Iraq, American officials said.
In all honesty, some significant presence will be in Iraq for the next 20 years, As Mr. Powell said “You break it, you own it”.
And when we need more money, we’ll just print it.
Or continue to mortgage our future to China.
We could learn a few things from our Japanese experiences. They surrendered in August 1945. The US didn’t pull out until about ten years years later. We had a limited presence there. We knew at the time we just couldn’t walk away from it. Stability was needed desperately. In the time period of July 1950 through September of 1952 I had no fear of walking Japanese streets even in the middle of the night. It took a few years to help the Japanese learn to maintain law and order once again and get a functioning National Guard set up. They had their own disobedient groups to take care of but it was done. I close with a statement from my Grandson… “Gran’pa I wish the politicians would get out of the way and let us do our job.” He was in Iraq at the time. Nuff said!!
What would your grandson have done that politicians prohibited him from doing? And how, precisely, did those politicians keep him from doing it?
Also, the analogy with Japan is rather weak. Japan was a homogenous nation with a strong central government that actually surrendered to the United States. Iraq is an artificial entity created by the British with a distinct ethnicity, the Kurds, in the north, Sunni tribes in the middle, and Shia tribes in the south. Its dictatorship was overthrown, leaving a power vacuum that Americans, not having any imperial experience or institutions, were not prepared to handle.
Your post also begs the question: is stability in Iraq worth ANY amount of money and casualties? The US does not have infinite resources at its disposal. We can only keep printing money for so long.
Perhaps you’re correct, Reactionary. Japan may not be the best analogy. Perhaps the Philipines where we (the US) confronted an armed insurrection for 40 years is more apt. Or perhaps China where American gunboats patroled for a century protecting trade as well as preventing abuses by other countries is the better comparison.
It would do well to remember that we are not in a war with Iraq; it is simply a battlefield of a much larger war against, not Islam itself, but against a radicalized and recalcitrant sect of Islam.
You might find interesting the following comment:
“When I was in England last week, I talked to an officer in the Royal Navy who had just received his Ph.D. He was saying he thought the larger war would last 20-30 years; I’ve always thought a generation–mine in particular. Our highest calling: To defend our way of life and Western Civilization; fight for the freedom of others; protect our friends, family, and country; and give hope to a people long without it.” – from this: http://weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/013/904pffgs.asp?pg=1
If you want to defend Western Civilization, then don’t waste resources invading Middle Eastern sandpits and don’t allow the Middle East to invade your own shores.
#7 – What does your comment have to do with anything being discussed here?
Your quote from the Weekly Standard. Western Civilization is not being defended in Iraq. Rather, it is being undermined by the US pouring money down an Arab rathole and, to the precise point, the inevitable influx of Iraqis into the US. More broadly, the West with its liberal premise of equality is letting in illiberal people from the Middle East and North Africa while attempting to export liberal values to illiberal regions, even by force. This is a process that can only undermine the West.
Reactionary, how exactly do you propose we not allow the Middle East to invade our own shores if the Middle East is otherwise inclined to do so?
Shoot any Middle Easterners who show up on US soil. Or give them a one-way plane ticket and tell them to get their *** back to the Middle East.
Wow. So, like, we should’ve shot Mohammed Atta as he walked into Boston Logan on Sept. 11, 2001?
Fantastic!
Forgot to add…turned out Atta had a one-way ticket in the first place. Oops.
That’s what happens when you pursue simultaneous policies of invading the world and inviting the world. My solution is simple: the Muslims stay over there, and we stay over here and shoot any Muslims who show up. Unfortunately the liberal society, with its premise of equality, is unable to defend itself from such invasions and in the case of the US, even goes so far as to engage in liberal crusades in an effort to force its worldview on others.
Actually, with our ‘open borders’ policy (unofficial) in place and practice right now, the “Middle Easterners” are just waltzing it as it is, waiting their chance and opportunity to act. And we don’t know who or where they are.
‘frightening, isn’t it?
I would like to remind folks that WWII ended over sixty years ago, the Cold War in 1989 and we still have the US military in Germany, England, Italy, Greece, and Turkey. And these folks were relatively tame and it’s peaceful. Yet, I hear no one demanding we pull out of Europe. Hmmm.
The Spanish American War ended more than a century ago and we still occupy Guantanemo Naval Base and Puerto Rico.
I wonder if Spain would take them back? Especially now that McKinley’s “liberal invasion” seems to be over, at least in Puerto Rico. ;->
# 16: Ron Paul is demanding we pull out of Europe. I think we should have pulled out of NATO when the USSR collapsed in 1991. The Europeans could easily defend themselves, but imperialist dreamers want to make sure the US keeps a global militray presence.
Like Pearl Harbor? Today’s “imperial presence” can be tommorow’s state.
The issue I have with posts like #18 or Reactionary’s isn’t that they are wrong, but rather because they address only short term issues. I’m not saying to offer statehood to Iraq, but it is necessary to recognize that in many cases what is a present problem is a long term opportunity.
Puerto Rico should be given its independence. Now, whether they want it or not.
The US is incapable of empire and, as Pat Buchanan points out, you cannot have an empire abroad and a republic at home. Britain has tried it two ways: first, the traditional way, and then they destroyed their finest citizens in two meat grinder wars as their empire rolled up around them, and second, by encouraging an influx from their former imperial holdings to prop up their welfare state. To maintain this multi-ethnic, multi-cultural social democracy requires totalitarian national security and anti-discrimination measures in order to maintain a quiescent diversity. That’s why I say these quasi-imperial ventures can only undermine the West.
But, as Bob Carlton #1 notes, we broke it, so we bought it.
But I thought Puerto Rico had been lobbying for STATEHOOD, not independence. It’s [i]Hawaii[/i] that is arguing for independence.
I don’t care what Puerto Rico wants. Give them their independence. And Hawaii. And Alaska too if they want it. And then it will be utterly clear to boobus Americanus that all those trillions of dollars in debt piled up for the welfare state and overseas wars represent real claims on wealth.
Ah, the truth is out — you don’t CARE what THEY want, only YOUR ideas/feelings/etc. matter. For Shame!
If you want to support an island of unassimilable net tax consumers, do it on your own dime. Where does this duty to care about what everybody else wants end?
I [i]think[/i] that is what happens in a democratic Republic with majority rule with consideration of minority rights? If PR voted to join the United States, and Congress, the President and the courts agreed, than that would be their right.
Given your stance, why not dissolve the United States and the federal government and institute the Articles of Confederation? Oh, right, that war was fought and lost from 1861-1865, wasn’t it?
[blockquote]Given your stance, why not dissolve the United States and the federal government and institute the Articles of Confederation?[/blockquote]
Sounds good to me.
On a fundamental level, your argument is that might makes right. After the Republicans have been reduced to a permanent demographic minority and we are engaged in similarly misguided crusades all over Africa, I expect you’ll rediscover the rule of law.
No, actually, what I’m saying is that your arguments do not make any sense. If a territory or a province, or a colony or a protectorate votes/decides/wants to join with a larger nation as part of that nation, as a State, as 50 colonies/terrorities have already done so, there is nothing in the rule of law that prohibits them from doing so. In fact, procedures are in place for just such actions. It’s how we became the United States of America in the first place.
Oh, wait, I get it — you are arguing for [b][i]ISOLATIONSIM[/i][/b]!
I’ve got news for you — it’s been tried in the past and it hasn’t worked very well, Before WWI and again before WWII.
“Isolationism” is a smear word used against those who, like George Washington, have believed America’s calling is different from that of empire. The so-called “isolationists,” of the 1920s and ’30s engaged other countries in intense diplomatic efforts aimed at peace and prosperity. They may have been naive, but they were not isolationist, and neither are we, who today resist the rhetoric of those who would have us live by the sword.
denying Puerto Rico entry into the Union, or insisting that Hawaii and Alaska leave, does not have anything to do with ‘living by the sword’, but everything to do with isolationism.
And lest you forget, the U.S. was senselessly and brutally attacked onSeptember 11, 2001 by those who are truly imperialst and want to impose a fascist regime (in the true sense of the word) on the rest of us. Since Iraq, Al-quida has been forced to largely focus attention on that part of the world, not here.
libraryjim,
If you think Islamic militants are “fascist,” you really have no understanding of either. The Catholic generals and heroes Augusto Pinochet and Francisco Franco take strong exception to your remarks. You also need to read up more on the origins of WWI and WWII. I’d add that you don’t seem to understand the training camp known as Al Qaeda now located in Pakistan’s tribal areas and the Wahabbist “Al Qaeda” movement, which is not the main insurgency force in Iraq, nor is it allied with Shi’ite Iran, by the way.
Anyhoo, the September 11 attacks occurred precisely because, for right or wrong, we have chosen sides in an ancient Semitic conflict and stationed troops on the Arab peninsula, simultaneously while throwing our borders open to all and sundry. If you want to maintain US global hegemony, then you had better discriminate brutally against Muslims and any other group we manage to offend in overseas conflicts in immigration, the right to vote, and domestic policy–Jim Crow, if you will. If that offends your democratic sensibilities, then you do not have what it takes for empire and had best give up the endeavour.
[url=http://www.amconmag.com/2007/2007_07_16/article1.html]Here’s[/url] a writer with whom I urge you to get familiar.
Yeah, reactionary, the same propagandist poop you and Nancy Pelosi have been reading in the Villiage Voice. Frankly, I’ve seen too much of THAT garbage to take it seriously. Start reading some GROWN-UP sources for information.
The link is to The American Conservative, which I doubt Nancy Pelosi reads. The writer is William Lind who, to my knowledge, has never published in the Village Voice, which I have never read though I wouldn’t doubt Nancy Pelosi has.
Your arguments are emotional, not intellectual.
and yours are not? Thanks for the laugh! Your arguments have been disproven so many times over. Even my daughter sees through those holes. 🙂
Indulge me, and disprove them. Better yet, since he as a military historian argues the case much better than I could, disprove William Lind. It is a detailed article though so I ask that you read it thoroughly from beginning to end. I have also not seen one deconstruction from you of the thesis that imperial or quasi-imperial ventures serve only to undermine the mother country, leading eventually to a collapse of empire and/or a change from a liberal society to an illiberal one.
This is a forum, not a history classroom. You have seen others disprove those claims here and in the old T1:9. If you don’t listen to them, what makes you think you would listen to me? I have no illusions that your mind is so ‘open’ to your point of view that no other point of view has room in there. No amount of fact will interfere with your pre-conceived conclusions.
So you found one pundit who calls himself conservative and supports your pov. Good for you. 🙄
We were attacked not because of whom we support (we support many Islamic nations as well as the one, lone Jewish state), but because of who We are and the freedoms we hold — freedoms that Islamofascists can’t abide. (and no, I don’t think that if you look up Fascist in the American Heritage Dictionary, you will find Glenn Beck as the definition, as RFK, Jr. claims but rather:
[blockquote] “A form of political behavior marked by obsessive preoccupation with community decline, humiliation or victimhood and by compensatory cults of unity, energy and purity, in which a mass-based party of committed nationalist militants, working in uneasy but effective collaboration with traditional elites, abandons democratic liberties and pursues with redemptive violence and without ethical or legal restraints goals of internal cleansing and external expansion.” {Robert O. Paxton, “The Anatomy of Fascism,” 2004}[/blockquote]).
Fascists like Mussolini would laugh at that definition.
You are still not deconstructing the theses. I can only assume it is because you cannot or will not.
Now, you assert that our “freedom” is what causes Muslims to attack us. (It’s not, per bin Laden himself.) Again, if that is the case, then we clearly cannot simultaneously invite the Muslims to our free society while we invade Muslim lands. We must therefore either cease being a free society, or we have to stop invading Muslim lands.