Fisking Powder Line
I want some of what Paul Mirengoff was snorting when he wrote On Kicking Donald Rumsfeld.
the Taliban was overthrown with ease. Recently, a mini-insurgency, spearheaded by Taliban remnants and new recruits as well as drug lords and other criminals, has broken out. NATO forces and the government (which is fairly weak and corrupt) appear to be having problems subduing this mini-insurgency in some areas. But this has nothing to do with Rumsfeld.
Afghanistan is a major front in the war on terror. The Pentagon is deeply involved (as it should be) in what goes on there. To glide over the deteriorating situation there and obliquely blame it on NATO is bizarre. I’m not saying that conditions in Afghan are all Rumsfeld’s fault. Not at all. But it has “nothing to do with him?” Nonsense.
The next major military operation was the invasion of Iraq. Many predicted that toppling Saddam Hussein would cost the lives of thousands of American troops.
The Bush administration told us we would be greeted as liberators. The intel handed down to our commanders in the field was to expect widespread capitulation of entire Iraqi divisions.
Soon thereafter, the Sunni insurgency, aided by al-Qaeda, broke out. Our military was slow to adapt to this insurgency. Eventually, though, we gained the upper hand. In the process we killed hundreds of al-Qaeda terrorists, including Zarqawi. In early 2005, Sunni participation in elections was far from robust. But later that year, with the wind being taken out of the insurgency, Sunnis participated en masse in elections. The insurgency thus had failed in its mission,
The insurgency has failed? I could not believe I had read this correctly. Attacks on our forces are up. IED attacks are up. Tips to our forces are down. Casualties hover around 50-80 per week; largely through force protection. It’s not the case that we can walk around more securely; we are just getting better at defending ourselves.
But meanwhile major sectarian violence broke out, presenting the threat that Iraq would descend into civil war. Though once again a bit slow off the mark, our military command eventually responded by re-deploying troops to Baghdad, the focal point of the violence. Though it’s too early to say whether this strategy will work, the early returns are positive — casualties in August were one third of what they were in July.
No. That last statement is not true. The Powder Line guys should read a newspaper.
First, it is clear that we did not need more troops to topple Saddam. Second, it is not clear that more troops would have prevented the Sunni/al Qaeda insurgency, as opposed to merely delaying it. Suppose we had sent in so many troops that the insurgents were unable to mount a serious resistance. In that scenario, it’s doubtful that we would have kept (say) 300,000 troops in Iraq to deal with a non-insurgency. But as our troops withdrew, the insurgency likely would have emerged for the same reasons it did in real life.
The insurgency “emerged” because of a power vacuum, a lack of stability, and because of the heavy-handed actions of the American forces, who, largely because they were stretched so thin, went into a “force-protection” and “heavy reaction” mode, alienating the Iraqis and fueling the insurgency.
Even so, one can fairly criticize Rumsfeld for not neutralizing the insurgency sooner either by sending in more troops as it became more deadly (something the Democrats never advocated) or by adapting more quickly. Whether the fact that Rusmfeld’s performance at this juncture was less than optimal justifies his removal, given our eventual success in causing the insurgency to fail, is another matter.
“our eventual success in causing the insurgency to fail????” It took me a second reading to grasp this. He doesn’t mean that the insurgency will fail. He means it already has. Bizarre. “Don’t Bogart that joint, my friend, pass it over to me.”
Finally, would more troops help curb the main problem we face today — sectarian violence. The answer appears to be yes. Sending more troops into Baghdad seems to have helped, but it may leave us less able to stem sectarian violence elsewhere, …
Only because we don’t have enough troops in Iraq overall! Of course, at current troop levels, we have to shift them around and be “less able to stem violence elsewhere.”
… and sending yet more troops into Baghdad might further limit the violence there. But if the Democrats want to make this criticism, they should be advocating that we send in more troops now. This, of course, they are not doing.
He may have a point. I’m not a Democrat. Not yet, anyway. So maybe I can’t speak for the Dems, but Rick Moran, John Murtha, the Balloon Juice guys, myself, and many other commenters have advocated a “commit or quit” policy to the Bush administration. I will repeat myself here. If the security of the civilized depends on the outcome of the war in Iraq, as Bush claimed in his recent speech, then it calls for a more serious commitment of national effort.
Rather, they are pushing for a troop reduction. And they are contributing to a political climate in which the president is unlikely to send in more troops even if Rumsfeld urges him to (which, for all I know, he may be doing).
If the apostle of “transformation” is urging more troops at this time, that would be the most remarkable about-face of policy in history, about like Pat Robertson guest-blogging at Pharyngula.
(Links on request. It’s Friday afternoon; I’m lazy.)
Powder Line: Beyond Confused
Straight Talk Express - Next stop: Neverland
Powder Line Retrospective: Iraq in June 2004
Supporting the troops, blaming the generals
Today, the war in Iraq is over