Bloody
The surge has bloodied our troops. While troop deaths have surged in general over the past six months, the recent surge in and of itself has proved fatal to so many of our people on the ground. The current death toll for our troops in May is 106 (101 American), or 4.1 per day. The last time troop deaths were so high was January 2005–but then the death toll was high only because of two aircraft crashes, a transport plane crash that killed ten British soldiers, and a helicopter crash that killed 31 American soldiers.
So discounting January 2005, May 2007 is set to become the third bloodiest month strictly due to combat.
So far, I have not heard of evidence that we are much closer to winning the war as a result. This is not due to the failure of the troops; rather it is simply because Bush has by now rendered Iraq unwinnable. These good men are dying for no other purpose than to allow Bush to look like he’s doing something.
This is also known as “supporting the troops.”
I don’t get just what is the objective that they are trying to achieve?
A government must have a monopoly on the use of coersive force. Are we trying to be that coersive force? Why?
The persistent attacks implies to me that there is a fairly organized opposition and it’s impossible to achieve a monopoly on the use of force.
Therefore negotiation between all the major armed interest groups is necessary for achieving a stable arrangement.
Does this require us being there? For a decade? For a half decade?
What’s the point? What’s the purpose?
The big mistake was entering Iraq. The second big mistake was doing it contrary to the Powell Doctrine’s prescription of overwhelming force – which in my mind, initially should have been over 500,000 troops, (Shinseki’s estimate was a minimum estimate) – one million would have been better, most of whom would have been MPs. The lack of numbers is what allowed Saddam’s vast collection of weapons cache’s to go unguarded for as much as three months after the invasion. The third mistake was disbanding the army and other civil institutions.
Collectively, all of this suggest an invasion that was written out on the back of an envelope during desert at some Washington D.C. eatery under the influence of fine wine and brandy.
Now I hear tell that the U.S. force level is approaching 200,000. I wonder how many more mercenaries we have there at $100,000 a year salaries?
But then again, what is the purpose?
A democratic Iraq can not hold together – there are three ethnic groups there. The Kurd’s want independence – but they also want to expand their territory just a bit to include some near by oil fields in order to give their pseudo-state some econimic integrity, the Turks and the Iranians both hold one third of Kurdistan in their respective territories and loathe any autonomy for Kurds outside their jurisdiction, the Sunnis want dominance and both they and the Shia’s fear political disenfranchisement.
The only possible arrangement would be some sort of federated state, but that would probaby lead to dissolution.
There is little keeping the Shia’s from becoming a satelite of Iran, and a likely hood of Iran and Turkey carving out sphere’s of influence in Kurdistan. The Sunnis would be cut adrift, with little geographical connection to Jordan, Syria, or Saudi Arabia (vast deserts) and much cultural and ethnic distinction, so they would be indanger of being eclipsed or dominated by Iran. It seems likely that they would forge some confederation with Syria, which is ruled by, you guessed it, the bath party. And Bagdad is likely to be a large scale blood bath of ethnic cleansing.
So the real point of our presence in Iraq, right now, is to avoid all of this catastrophy from coming about during Bush’s term of office.
Iraq’s GNP in 2002 was $52 billion. We will have spent well over $500 billion on Iraq for what good end?
Bush appologist have their work cut out for them.