Amar C. Bakshi - President Bush will outline his latest policy approach to Iraq this week and some suspect he will call for a "troop surge." Blogs and op-eds are busy debating it. What do you think is the right course of action?
What is the best course of action in Iraq and what sources do you recommend your fellow readers examine?
The American Enterprise Institute's Robert Kagan recently released this report calling for more troops. He writes:
Iraq has reached a critical point. The strategy of relying on a political process to eliminate the insurgency has failed. Rising sectarian violence threatens to break America's will to fight. This violence will destroy the Iraqi government, armed forces, and people if it is not rapidly controlled.... America must use its resources skillfully and decisively to help build a successful democratically elected, sovereign government in Iraq. We must send more American combat forces into Iraq and especially into Baghdad to support this operation. A surge of seven Army brigades and Marine regiments to support clear-and-hold operations that begin in the spring of 2007 is necessary, possible, and will be sufficient to improve security and set conditions for economic development, political development, reconciliation, and the development of Iraqi Security Forces (ISF) to provide permanent security.
Andrew Cordesman of the Council on Foreign Relations disagrees, saying in a recent interview:
One thing he [Bush] has to go far beyond is the so-called "surge" [an increase of U.S. troops for a short period] which has become one of the strangest debates probably in American national security history, because it is almost completely irrelevant. So many people who should know better have focused on it. If a "surge" or any other development is to have meaning, there has to be progress in political conciliation or at least in finding some form of nonviolent coexistence. That is right now the most critical single problem in Iraq. Iraq is not a conflict dominated now by insurgency or by active open civil fighting. It is a struggle for the control of space and resources, which is playing out at a sectarian and ethnic level, not only in the different regions of Iraq, but in each of its major cities.
Let us know what you are reading, what people say where you live, and what facts you think your fellow readers should consider.
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Comments (5)
Evanel L.
"Axis Germany had only 2 major allies, Italy & Japan, while Axis America, only has 1, the UK." Almost - Albania, Armenia, Australia, Azerbaijan, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Czech Republic, Denmark, El Salvador, Estonia, Georgia, Kazakhstan, Latvia, Lithuania, Macedonia, Moldova, Mongolia, Poland, Romania, Slovakia, South Korea, United Kingdom, Japan, Portugal, Singapore and the Ukraine. Granted not all "major" allies but more than 1.
"I am sure that the average Iraqi is much more terrorized than the average American." You got that right - Saddam was a butcher, especially if you were a Kurd or Shiite.
America is not the bad guy and there is a War on Terror (or whatever you would like to call it - war against Islamofacists, war against axis of evil). The bottom line is that there are people out there that want to kill Americans and are doing everything they can to accomplish that. Either the rest of the world will come around or things will really be miserable on this planet for the forseeable future.
January 8, 2007 11:05 PM | Report Offensive Comments
Posted on January 8, 2007 23:05
After 5 years of failed military policy, Mr Bush's last conclusion is... we didn't escalate enough. Adding more troops is adding more wood to the fire.
The Bush administration seems to believe that Right is Might, and he will win simply because he is Right & God is on his side.
Many more Americans will die for the sake of his own Jihad.
We Americans are so used to thinking ourselves as the good guys, that we cannot ever fathom that we could ever be the bad guys. But in this war, we are definitely not the good guys. Axis Germany had only 2 major allies, Italy & Japan, while Axis America, only has 1, the UK.
The War on Terror? It is a War OF Terror. I am sure that the average Iraqi is much more terrorized than the average American. Many, many more innocent Iraqis have died on our hands than the Americans who died in 9/11. What we endured for 1 day, Iraq has been enduring for the past 5 years.
This should be a clear signal that maybe, perhaps, we are not on the right side. But we are so blinded by our own righteousness, that we cannot see what the rest of the world sees. We are becoming the enemy that we ourselves once fought against.
January 8, 2007 2:50 PM | Report Offensive Comments
Posted on January 8, 2007 14:50
a troop surge without a political solution would be a disastor.
January 8, 2007 11:57 AM | Report Offensive Comments
Posted on January 8, 2007 11:57
What if they gave a war and nobody came?
Desertion is a better option than being cannon fodder for George who has nothing to lose. Coup!Coup!
January 8, 2007 5:47 AM | Report Offensive Comments
Posted on January 8, 2007 05:47
Iraq is in the grips of Shiite Islamist death squads and the failed state's current prime minister, Nouri Al Maliki, is a stooge of the most powerful, anti-American Shiite militia leader in the country. In this context, President George W. Bush's expected troop surge scheme seems like a last-ditch attempt (a) to salvage a disastrous United States intervention, and (b) to save a divided and demoralized Republican Party from further electoral defeats and permanent political marginalization.
But there may be more to the scheme than meets the eye. Boosting US troop strength in Baghdad could be effective if the escalation is tied to taking out the militias' main backer--Islamist Iran. We suspect that the US has decided to give Israel the green light to do just that--eliminate the nuclearizing Iranian regime through devastating air attacks--and that the coming surge of 20,000 troops in Iraq will be followed by an even greater increase in boots on the ground in order to crush the Shiite militias there for once and all. Maliki will be swept away if he refuses to break with the Islamists.
As for Iran's secular ally, Syria, the Bush plan could be to give it a chance to come around either before or after the attacks on Iran. If Damascus persists in behaving badly, it, too, will be attacked and defeated.
Wild ideas? Maybe. But don't underestimate Bush. He does not want to go down in history as the president who, after 9/11, lost Iraq--and the whole Middle East--to Radical Islam. Bush would rather be remembered as the president who dismantled the Axis of Evil, paving the way for ultimate victory over the movement he correctly considers the new Nazism--Islamism.
The appointment of John Negroponte to second-in-command at the State Department could be a sign of things to come. Hold onto your seats if he replaces Condoleezza Rice as Secretary of State. That surprise switch would signal that we are indeed in for a wild ride.
Hint: Negroponte served as a political aide to former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger in the late 1960s and '70s. More specifically, he was on the National Security Council staff from September of 1970 until February of 1973, during which time he was in charge of the Vietnam office of the National Security Council staff, supporting Kissinger in his peace talks with the North Vietnamese.
Like Nixon before him, Bush may be a man with a plan ... call it Iraqization ... authored by Kissinger, not James Baker, the Israel-bashing, self-styled political realist and former Secretary of State under W's father, President George Herbert Walker Bush. Baker's Iraq Study Group may go down in US diplomatic history as one of the great sideshows--and diversions--of all time.
See http://chinaconfidential.blogspot.com/ for more.
January 7, 2007 11:31 PM | Report Offensive Comments
Posted on January 7, 2007 23:31