I have no new insights. I just want to be able to point to my having made these points out loud way back in August 2006.<\/p>\n
There is one solution to the USA\u2019s involvement in Iraq. When I say \u201cone,\u201d I mean that it is the solution we are doomed to implement\u2014whether we plan for it or not, and whether we like it or not.<\/p>\n
Leave.<\/p>\n
As in, get everybody the hell out as quickly as possible\u2014where \u201cas quickly as possible\u201d is measured in DAYS. Call it 72 hours. Pull the units out of the cities, form them up into proper field deployments under air cover, and head for a coast or border.<\/p>\n
This will be an absolute disaster for Iraq. There will be blood in the streets\u2014rivers of it. There are factions atop factions, and most loathe each other. They\u2019re going to fight it out. Many people will die horribly. Whatever government emerges is going to be a nightmare.<\/p>\n
This is bad. The trouble is,\u00a0this is what\u2019s going to happen sooner or later anyway<\/em>. The Fall of Baghdad is going to be a bigger disaster than the Fall of Saigon in 1975. Unfortunately, there isn\u2019t a single thing the USA can do to prevent it. The fire selector on an M16A4 does not include a setting for \u201cEliminate ethnic hatred.\u201d<\/p>\n Understand that Iraqization is not going to work any better than Vietnamization did. Supporting a specific Iraqi government is not going to work any better than supporting a specific South Vietnamese government ever worked. As with Viet Nam, these realities transcend specifics of the USAen administration\u2014Republican or Democrat, left, right, or center. No matter who takes power in 2009, 2013, or 2017, no matter what their politics or motives, any plan predicated on these notions will fail.<\/p>\n Further, a pullout with a timetable of months or years is just a slow, agonizing buildup to the finale. Recall Nixon and Ford: they understood the USA had to get out of Viet Nam, but they pursued Vietnamization for years. It didn\u2019t help a soul. The final result\u2014total defeat\u2014was the same. They might as well have pulled out the day Nixon took office: it wouldn\u2019t have been any worse for the Vietnamese, and fewer USAen soldiers would have died.<\/p>\n Sooner or later, that finale comes and it\u2019s 72 hours to have everyone out of the country. Putting off the inevitable just costs money and lives while we sit around moaning about how tragic it all is.<\/p>\n Bite the bullet, cue up \u201cWhite Christmas\u201d, and hope the door doesn\u2019t hammer our collective ass too hard on the way out.<\/p>\n I have no new insights. I just want to be able to point to my having made these points out loud way back in August 2006. There is one solution to the USA\u2019s involvement in Iraq. When I say \u201cone,\u201d I mean that it is the solution we are doomed to implement\u2014whether we plan for […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[6],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/stephan-zielinski.com\/dwa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/285"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/stephan-zielinski.com\/dwa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/stephan-zielinski.com\/dwa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/stephan-zielinski.com\/dwa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/stephan-zielinski.com\/dwa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=285"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/stephan-zielinski.com\/dwa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/285\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":286,"href":"http:\/\/stephan-zielinski.com\/dwa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/285\/revisions\/286"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/stephan-zielinski.com\/dwa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=285"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/stephan-zielinski.com\/dwa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=285"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/stephan-zielinski.com\/dwa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=285"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}