This is purely non-sequitur, for in Vietnam the chaos stemmed from thousands of South Vietnamese who feared for their lives under communist rule, and not the withdrawal of our troops which had not been abrupt but had steadily progressed over years.
Three times the North Vietnamese were brought to the peace talks table and each time were given a reprieve and a glimmer of hope they could win by the anti war protesters and supporters of communist rule. When the Congress announced that it was no longer going to fund the war so we could win the communist in the north started to move south. Yes, it is as you wrote a gradual advance and as each province was taken by the north the words of the atrocities preceded them. s we retreated they advanced, careful not too attack our troops to give us an excuse to come back until there were only a few hundred troops left in the country then they attacked to make a show of throwing us out of their country.
If we abruptly pull our troops out of Iraq the same thing will happen only a little faster.
The military strategy against Qaeda cells in Iraq is as bad as our lackadaisical assaults on those in Afghanistan. The so-called surge should have been to track down Qaeda camps as they had done two years ago in killing al Zarqawi, enhancing our image of ridding the country of truly sinister terrorists and recruitment.
This would be true if the surge was designed to hunt down AQ. The purpose of the surge was to change the minds of the locals that were supporting AQ. This worked great! By the way the leader of AQ in Iraq was captured thanks to the change of position of the locals. Also captured was his laptop computer with a huge amount of information in it and to top it off the leader of AQ in Iraq told us that the entire movement was designed to give the impression that the locals were attacking our troops when in fact AQ in Iraq was made up of foreigners not locals. The locals (Iraqis) are now fighting on our side and they know were AQ is allowing us to focus the surge on those areas. All of this is public knowledge on the NYT, Washington Post, AP, and CNN all flaming right wing news organizations.
Instead Petraeus capitulates with a handful of Sunni leaders to do the tedious, dirty work, rather than pressuring them toward political capitulations with Baghdad. Endlessly we see nightly images of our troops patrolling through the rubble, kicking down doors of homes, firing willy-nilly at insurgents, riding their humvees and risking IEDs, when we should be deploying our troops to wipe out Qaeda resistance and leave the insurgents of both Sunni and Shia to fight their civil war and let the chips fall.
It is not the militaries function to play politics it is the militaries function to kill people and break things. During our nations early years we had insurgents from Briton, France and Spain trying to destroy our political way of life. Are you suggesting that although we did not stop the internal problems until after the Spanish American war in the 1800’s early 1900’s that Iraq should all come together in four years? Try being realistic, it took the soviet Union sixty years to work out its problems and ten years later the nation collapsed and is starting to rebuild.
To counterbalance the billions wasted in nation-building, Crocker must make clear that there will be a moratorium on funding infrastructure until Iraqi forces systemically intensify efforts to prevent sabotage. Meanwhile the marines and infantry must return to a strengthened line of assault, together with artillery and air cover in order to rout Qaeda and similar forces who are indisputably relying on Iranian support to wreck the country. If the Iraqi people is against this true “surge,” we have no alternative but to pull back, initiating winding down our forces until all US troops, coalition, and all US and coalition civilians have left the soil—unless the Iraqi “government” accedes to UN, NATO, Arab League peacekeeping.
This move will clearly make it easy for the nation of Iraq to be taken over by our enemies.
Either way—stay the course, or a true coalition surge, or leave—Iraq is doomed to a brutal, theocratic Shia governance, which in the end and understandably with the support of Iran will lead to the final routing of Qaeda enmeshed in Sunni fundamentalism.
Yes, either way we do this, either by doing it your way or doing it your other way we will lose. However doing it the way the President and his generals are fighting the war seems to have worked and worked well. Yes, there were some set backs and some missteps but overall AQ is losing ground in this war in more than just Iraq and Afghanistan pay attention to the news and you will see how we are winning in other countries as well. If you listen to hate radio, and the people in the news that are only interested defeating the president then you will only see and hear news that is bad and demoralizing.
