Was Saddam the head of a representative government after all?

[Lancer]

Ah well, hindsight...

[MichaeltheGreat]

aka "sticking with the plan"

[Lancer]

Post 9/11, MtG is the pres, what happens?

[SlowwHand]

Judging history is kind of, well, chicken****.
You know the outcome. Dealing with the now with the facts at hand is a crap shoot.
The only automatically wrong decision is no decision.
Did someone say Clinton? They could.

[MichaeltheGreat]

Originally posted by Lancer
Post 9/11, MtG is the pres, what happens?

Like I posted at CivFanatics (different handle there, haven't posted there for years) when Chris and I were posting back and forth about it.

Use 10MD (full force) to secure Ghazny-Khost-Parachinar area and XVIII Airborne Corps forces to control Khyber Pass/Tora Bora/general SE border area, plus the two plains areas around Kandahar and Ghazny, to block escape routes to and resupply/reinforcement from Paki tribal areas. That gives you the anvil.

Lighten other infantry elements plus use 25ID(L) and detached aviation elements plus SOF from NA and EA positions as the hammer.

Throw relative ****loads of money at nationbuilding plus development of central government and etc. Probably still use Karzai (not really a better alternative), pay off warlords to sit on their asses except the initial NA and EA forces in place at the outset.

Get Karzai to do the loya jirga process and tell all the tribal types we have no desire to stick around, but there's a few people whose heads we need for the next easter egg hunt on the White House lawn, and meanwhile, can we fix a few broken things like your economy and infrastructure and give you baubles (sorry, no firepower) to keep you happy while we do a little headhunting.

Wrt Iraq, **** 'em - keep sanctions in place, let the status quo be the status quo unless we see some real evidence of a real threat.

Meanwhile, increase army size, airlift capacity, etc. and expand various MOS and specialist areas, particularly relevant language specialists.

Get into Afghanistan faster (and obviously far heavier from what I described above) and work intel/diplo angles with rest of ME. See how above plays out over fall/winter and make adjustments as necessary.

[MichaeltheGreat]

Originally posted by SlowwHand
Judging history is kind of, well, chicken****.
You know the outcome. Dealing with the now with the facts at hand is a crap shoot.
The only automatically wrong decision is no decision.
Did someone say Clinton? They could.

It's not the history, it's the decision making process in the face of known facts. The whole filter facts you don't like and pick facts you do like to support what you want to do in the first place.

Clinton shares a good chunk of the blame (most of the 19 *******s got into this country on his watch), but it wasn't until very close to 9/11 that anyone anywhere really considered that maybe OBL would escalate to anything like that degree.

I don't think Bush can be seriously faulted for the failures leading up to 9/11. They still have to be looked at, (fix the problem, not the blame), but the facts are that OBL and AAZ got away, and whether we whacked the **** out of the central AQ organization or not, the end result is that the continued non-martyrdom of OBL and AAZ is a propaganda point they exploit, and the result of whacking the centralized apparatus is a probably a whole bunch of semi-autonomous decentralized operators. Can't fault Bush for the latter, either, it's an inevitable evolution of doctrine as we kill portions of the senior leadership. Their tactics and doctrine evolve, so must ours.

[Lancer]

That sounds good.

How about buddying up to Saddam and going after Iran together?

[Kidlicious]

Originally posted by Lancer
That sounds good.

How about buddying up to Saddam and going after Iran together?

Why don't you live with your ex-wife for 3 years so she can set your penis on fire when you are drinking vodka on the couch?

[Lancer]

For one, the fire would be too large.

[Lancer]

General conflagration...

[MichaeltheGreat]

Originally posted by Lancer
That sounds good.

How about buddying up to Saddam and going after Iran together?

We need Iran. What would you rather have, one regionally dominant set of fanatic loonies who hate you, or two sets of fanatic loonies who both hate you, but live next door to each other, have a long, nasty history with each other and don't like/trust each other in the least?

[Lancer]

With Iraq out of the way, the US going home eventually, Iran has no counter balance, yes?

[Dr Strangelove]

Originally posted by SlowwHand
U.N. pissed on their own shoes by not taking Hussein out. So make what you think are jokes.

Maybe Scwarz-negger ................. I mean -kopf shouldn't have so grossly overinflated estimates of how badly the Iraqi Army was damaged in the first few days of the war in '91. If he hadn't boasted so convincingly that he had utterly destroyed the Iraqi Army the Saudis and the UN might have approved continuing the war until the coaltion forces truely had destroyed Saddam's military power. If he hadn't convinced the US establishment that there was nothing left of the Iraqi military but an empty shell we might not have made the mistake of encouraging lightly armed Shiite and Kurdish rebels to attack a military that still had the means to squash them.

[SlowwHand]

The Iraqi army was giving up in numbers that taxed the system. We blew it, via the U.N.

[Dr Strangelove]

Dead tanks pay no tax. At the time of the ceasefire the next group of Iraqis likely to become overrun was the group falling back on Basrah. We could have left their care to the good citizens of that city.