Interesting Analysis of Loss of Support for Iraq War

[GePap]

Originally posted by Lung
Irrespective of the reasons for going to war in the first place, the worst thing the Yanks can do is to be seen to have been chased out of Iraq. Now that they're there, they have to be in it for the long haul.

Except that storng sections of Iraq's ody politic want the US to leave. The question is for how long do democratic Iraqi governments deny the relative whishes of the mayority of Iraqis for the US to leave sooner rather than later?

Certainly, the insurgency is continuing unabated, but the truth still remains - you can't win popularity contests by killing everyone. The fact that they have become indiscriminate in their killings means that politically, they are losing. The only way for them to win is for the US to leave hastily.

The insurgency is too small to ever win-what the insurgency can do is leave things chaotic enough to allow the country to collapse into secterian fighting.

Of course, this remains the incentive for the insurgents to keep killing people, but for the Yanks to pull out to quickly qould be disasterous. The lunatics will end up running the asylum, and it will embolden fanatics everywhere

The way to win is to marginalise the insurgents and humiliate them in the eyes of their peers by defeating them and throwing them in gaol, rendering them impotent.

The alternative is to see them claim victory, and claim the future of the middle east, away from the brink of democracy and back towards oppression.

The insurgents embody a small portion of the Iraqi population. The notion of them coming to power is extremely far fetched. What they could do is convince the Shia in the South and the Kurds in the North to either split from Iraq, or move in to ruthlessly crush them with their own militias. After all, the government of Iraq has barely 70,000 trained men currently, yet the Kurds have 100,000 strong militia.

But if Iraq splits, the whole region will be in chaos, since the Saudis and the Gulf states would really freak about a Shia south as an Iranian pawn, while the Turks, Syrians, and Iranians would do what they could to undermine or destroy and independent Kurdish state.

And there is not much the US could do period if this occured , meaning that the insurgents diod not win, but that the notion of a free Iraq would go down in flames, pretty much making the whole war moot, or a net negative.

[Dinner]

I'm afraid we are stuck and we're going to have to remain there for years to come. However, we need to really concentrate on the Iraqification of the war. This has been one of the great failings of the Bush Administration that they've been penny pinching on stupid **** and they've been dragging their feet on the training of Iraqis for the new national army. Three years less then 100k have recieved meaningful training towards the Army and that is dispite the Administrations cutting the training time from 8 weeks to three weeks.

Bush loves to quote the figure for "Iraqi security forces" which includes police men who recieve five days worth of training and are then considered trained. Heck, the Iraqi Army still doesn't have a single tank and there isn't an Iraqi air force because Rumsfield stupidly is insisting that the US & UK will always be there to fill that role. We need to face reality and understand that the US & UK will go home at some time. That means Iraqi will have to be truly independent with its own Army, complete with armor, and Air Force to defend Iraq's national interests. This is especially true since Iraq is located in the world's worst neighborhood.

[KrazyHorse]

The Iraqi Army is pathetic.

I bet Canada could kick Iraq's ass.

[Imran Siddiqui]

That'd be until Iraq demoralized Canada's troops by spreading rumors that the NHL season was canceled... oh wait...

[KrazyHorse]

Originally posted by Imran Siddiqui
That'd be until Iraq demoralized Iraq's troops by spreading rumors that the NHL season was canceled... oh wait...

QFT

Yeah. The Baghdad Badgers were a favourite for the Cup last year, I hear...