As in Vietnam, the US can win virtually every tactical encounter. As in Vietnam, this is irrelevant

[BurtWorm]

Steve Clemons of the Washington Note quotes this from an e-mail he received from defense think-tanker Alexander Cordesman:

http://www.thewashingtonnote.com/archives/002189.php

The latest Department of Defense report on "Measuring Stability in Iraq" attempts to put a bad situation in a favorable light. It does not disguise many of the problems involved, but it does attempt to defend the strategy presented by President Bush in January 2007 in ways that sometimes present serious problems. More broadly, it reveals that the President's strategy is not working in any critical dimension.

The are enough indicators in the June 2007 report, however, to make it all too clear that the US is not making anything like the overall progress it needs to implement the President's strategy. Moreover, it is all too clear that the most import issue is not the "Plan A" of the Bush Administration, or any "Plan B" from Congress, but the sheer lack of any meaningful Iraqi political development of a "Plan I" for political conciliation.

As in Vietnam, the US can win virtually every tactical encounter. As in Vietnam, this is irrelevant without political unity, effective governance, and a nationalist ideology with more real world impact than its extremist, sectarian, and ethnic competition.

Part of the problem is that the US is trying to fight the wrong "war." The US does need to fight a serious counterinsurgency campaign, but this seems to be focused far too narrowly on both Al Qa'ida, which is only one Sunni Islamist extremist movement, and on the most radical elements of the Sadr militia. The US does not have an effective strategy or the operational capability to deal with the broader problem of armed nation- building, or with a widening pattern of civil conflicts.

The attached report analyzes both the strengths and weaknesses of the June 2007 report. It also provides a summary of the key trends in conciliation and governance, security, the development of Iraqi forces, economic development and aid.

[Atman]

1. The POLICY is to open the embassy. NOTHING MORE. Doesn't anyone get it???

An embassy is a sovereign nation under international law. The largest embassy in the world, the US city-state built on prime real estate along the Tigris river, is set to open in...hmmm, when was that? Oh yes...SEPTEMBER, when we're supposed to get the full report of how well the surge is going.

Anyone who believes anything less than a major, collossal cover-up scam operation is going down is delusional. There is no "war." There is nothing but a bunch of mercenaries and stop-lossed grunts holding down the fort until we can establish our own legally-recognized "state" in the heart of the ME oil zone.

.

[walldude]

2. You'd think after the "enemy" shuffle we've been doing

you know the one, where this week it's Al Qaeda (Sunni extremists, whom we are now proudly arming) last week it was the Shia, next week it'll be the Kurds, people would have noticed we were'nt exactly fighting a war...

[BurtWorm]

4. Of course you're completely right about that.

It really has become all about sustaining Iraq well enough so that "Embassy" operations can carry on.

[FrenchieCat]

7. Do we need an embassy as large as a town remaining in Iraq after troops leave?

John Edwards wants the troops out of Iraq in 12 to 18 months , but would leave some residual troops to guard the American embassy, making them a continued target of sectarian violence.
http://mydd.com/story/2007/6/8/132520/5750

Senator John Edwards, a candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination, gave this May 2007 speech, entitled "A Strong Military for a New Century," at the Council on Foreign Relations.
"We will also need some presence in Baghdad, inside the Green Zone, to protect the American Embassy and other personnel."--John Edwards
http://www.cfr.org/publication/13432

[genie_weenie]

3. With Trillions at stake what are a few ordinary lives...

[shadowknows69]

5. That's an excellent asessment of this mess

It is irrelevant. the population feeds the insurgency. we'd have to commit total genocide to secure Iraq and that's probably the goal anyway.

[Guaranteed]

6. The whole idea behind guerilla tactics is to not HAVE tactical encounters.

As far as encounters go, the guerilla wants them to be short enough that no tactics can be used by the other side at all. Hit easy targets, do as much damage as possible and get out and back into the civilian population before a response can be made. Military superiority does no real good against those kinds of attacks.