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The five-year anniversary of the U.S. in Iraq: A Retrospective
Thanatos
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So, I was reading an article in the Seattle Times this afternoon that caught my eye. Iraq hasn't really been in the news lately, what with the election and all, except as an election issue. So, it's interesting that Wednesday is our 5-year anniversary of being in Iraq, and no one is really talking about it. Here's the article:
Does the American public have anywhere close to the minimum four years worth of patience this would take? What about the 7-8 years on the pessimistic (read: realistic) side? If McCain wins it, are our options going to be withdrawal or draft? Are there solutions which no one has considered?
So, the guy in question quoted in this article, Eric Rosenbach, seems like he probably knows what he's talking about. And he puts it, optimistically, at four years before we'll be out of there. Assuming things continue to hold steady over those four years (which is incredibly optimistic, I think), that's another 45,000ish wounded Americans, and another 3,200 dead we're looking at, assuming we can maintain our troop levels.The Seattle Times wrote:U.S. may be just at midpoint in Iraq
By BRIAN MURPHY
The Associated Press
WEST POINT, N.Y. — An American father agonizes as his son prepares for a second tour in Iraq. Baghdad morgue workers wash bodies for burial after a suicide attack. Army cadets study the shifting tactics of Iraqi insurgents for a battle they will inherit.
Snapshots from a war at its fifth year. Each distinct yet all linked by a single question: How much longer?
Most likely, the war will go on for years, many commanders and military analysts said. It's possible to consider this just the midpoint. The U.S. combat role in Iraq could have another half-decade ahead, or maybe more, depending on theresilience of the insurgency and the U.S. political will to maintain the fight.
"Four years, optimistically" before the Pentagon can begin a significant troop withdrawal from Iraq, said Eric Rosenbach, executive director of the Center for International Affairs at Harvard's Kennedy School, "and more like seven or eight years" until Iraqi forces can handle the bulk of their own security.
What that means depends largely on your vantage point.
For the Pentagon, it means trying to build up a credible Iraqi security force while struggling to support its own troop levels in a military strained by nonstop warfare since 2001.
For many Americans, it's about a rising toll — nearly 4,000 U.S. military deaths and more than 60,000 wounded — with no end in sight. Iraqis count their dead and injured in much higher figures — hundreds of thousands at least — and see neighborhoods changed by the millions who have fled for safer havens.
For others, it's about a mounting loss of goodwill overseas: "We've squandered our good name," said Ryan Meehan, 29, sitting in a St. Louis coffee shop.
"War fatigue is real"
The war can also be framed in terms of the cost to the U.S. Treasury: $12 billion a month by some estimates, $500 billion all together, and the prospect of hundreds of billions more.
There are other measures of the war on its fifth anniversary, which is March 19 in the United States and March 20 in Iraq.
These are more difficult to weigh and are found in places such as Jim Durham's home in Evansville, Ind. He tries to fight a sense of dread as he watches his 29-year-old son prepare for his second tour in Iraq with the Indiana National Guard.
Durham, 59, struggled to describe the emotions. He decided: "It's like watching somebody with a disease. Perhaps they can live, perhaps they can't. ... And there's nothing you can do about it."
Echoes of the same lament resounded at a Shiite funeral procession in Baghdad, where mourners gathered their dead from the morgue — the bodies washed for burial according to Muslim custom — after bombings ravaged two pet markets last month.
"We are helpless. Only God can help us," cried a group of women behind the shrouded corpses of several children.
"How much can Iraq endure? How much stamina do Americans have for a war with no end in sight?" said Ehsan Ahrari, a professor of international security at the Asia-Pacific Center for Security Studies in Honolulu. "These questions were relevant years ago. They only grow more critical as the years go by."
Michael O'Hanlon, a foreign-policy scholar at the Brookings Institution, said, "War fatigue is real, first and foremost because of casualties. But Americans also know the stakes."
Some people remain determined. Ahrari recalled seeing a couple at the Gulfport, Miss., airport saying goodbye to their son, clad in desert camouflage and heading for Iraq. He can't forget the mother's face: grim but stoic.
"She did not seem sure that her son was going to the right place to serve America, but that it was still a right thing to do," Ahrari said.
There was also a group of women on a bridge in New Smyrna Beach, Fla., holding "No to War" placards and being alternately cheered and jeered.
Fragmented fighting
The war has lasted longer than the U.S. fight in World War II and Korea. If many experts are to be believed, the Iraq war will follow roughly a 10-year arc, ending after a new crop of soldiers — some now barely into their teens — is on the battlefield.
The halfway scenario is based on historical templates. Many military strategists cite a nine- to 10-year average for insurgencies, with expected drop-offs in recruitment and core strength after a decade.
But the models — analyzing battles from the British in Malaysia in the 1950s to the Soviets in Afghanistan in the 1980s — also show that each fight is unique. Kurdish rebels have been fighting in Turkey more than 20 years, and the leftist Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, guerrillas have been active in Colombia since the 1960s.
The fragmented nature of the Iraq fighting — what has been called a "mosaic war" — also may add years to U.S. involvement. The different tactics needed for various regions create difficulties in training Iraqi forces and making decisive strikes against insurgents such as al-Qaida in Iraq.
At West Point, professor Brian Fishman is an expert in al-Qaida. He tells his cadets that the Iraq war is fundamentally "a collection of local wars" to preserve key local alliances with Iraqi groups and keep pressure on insurgents from regaining footholds.
"Iraq is a fight that, no doubt, is evolving," said Fishman after teaching his class for the Combating Terrorism Center at the U.S. Military Academy. "But when you talk about some kind of end for American troops, it's certainly in terms of years."
His cadets were in high school when the war started, and they could be well into their military careers before it's over.
Lt. Gen. Raymond Odierno, the former No. 2 commander in Iraq, said in January that U.S. aircraft could be used to support Iraqi combat operations for "five to 10 years" along with "an appropriate number of ground forces."
That same month, Lt. Gen. James Dubik, the former Fort Lewis commander who now heads the Multi-National Security Transition Command in Iraq, told the House Armed Services Committee that Iraqi officials estimate they can't assume responsibility for internal security until as late as 2012 and won't be able to defend Iraq's borders until 2018.
Internal violence
The insurgency, however, may not be the most worrisome problem in coming years. Some people think the worst struggle will be keeping friction between Iraq's Sunnis and Shiites from ballooning into civil war.
"I don't know anyone who pays serious attention to Iraq who thinks that we are over the hump in terms of internal violence," said Jon Alterman, the Middle East program director at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington. "There are a lot of unsettled scores and no ongoing political process that seems likely to address them."
If the Democrats win in November, these type of assessments will clash with their calls for a rapid and comprehensive withdrawal.
By that time, U.S. troop strength is expected to shrink with the pullout of many of the 30,000 forces that poured into central Iraq last year as part of President Bush's buildup. Pentagon officials expect to be at 140,000 soldiers by July, 8,000 more than the total before the buildup.
Sen. John McCain, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, has predicted the insurgency will "go on for years and years and years." But, eventually, the Iraqi forces will have to fight alone. It's the often-touted South Korean scenario: local forces someday on the front lines with a U.S. military presence in a supporting role, possibly for decades.
"A thousand years. A million years. Ten million years," McCain said in New Hampshire in January. "It depends on the arrangement we have with the Iraqi government."
It depends, too, on whether the Iraqis and their government can hold on. To a lesser extent, the war's length also hinges on world sentiment. The U.N. Security Council mandate for the U.S.-led force in Iraq is set to expire at the end of the year, which could increase international pressure for withdrawal.
But more than anything else, it depends on whether Americans are willing.
Mary Shuldt is losing patience. Living at Fort Campbell in the Kentucky lowlands, she wonders how many more times her husband and the 101st Airborne Division will be called to Iraq. "Our families are being ripped apart," she said. "When is enough enough?"
Associated Press writers contributing to this report: Carley Petesch in New York, Chelsea Carter in San Diego, Ryan Lenz in Evansville, Ind., Betsy Taylor in St. Louis, Bradley Brooks in Baghdad.
Does the American public have anywhere close to the minimum four years worth of patience this would take? What about the 7-8 years on the pessimistic (read: realistic) side? If McCain wins it, are our options going to be withdrawal or draft? Are there solutions which no one has considered?
Thanatos on
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There probably will be a lot of lives lost. It's always sad. I just hope people consider the potential of a complete bloodbath in Iraq if we pull out now, before calling for the immediate withdrawal of our troops.
There are some of us who are completely sane, and believe going to Iraq was the right thing to do, even though the reasons for our ouster of Saddam Hussein were absolutely false.
https://steamcommunity.com/profiles/76561197970666737/
Saying we shouldn't leave because of a potential bloodbath is just delaying the inevitable. Furthermore, we've watched bloodbaths go on and we'll do it again. The way to stop a bloodletting in Iraq is to get the Sunni and Shiite groups to reconcile. I don't think I've ever read many suggestions on how to do this.
It's the same debate all over again and it makes me sick.
Ugh.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/03/16/us-nears-4000-dead-in-ir_n_91782.html
It's both eerie and ironic that those 2 dates will be close together. I really hope people talk about this (especially the candidates), instead of it getting swept under the MSM rug of "Tits! Tits! Spitzer fucked a girl! Tits!" but I'll believe it when I see it.
Besides this, has anybody noticed that the minute that troops started drawing down from the surge, violence in Iraq went up to what I believe are pre-surge levels. That's right, we haven't even reached the top speed of drawing down, and things are already as bad as before.
I just started reading his book, and I'm not sure I buy all his analysis...then again, I'm not a Nobel prize winning economist, so what do I know? A big part of his argument focuses on long-term costs that haven't really been factored into most estimates--things like health care (physical and mental) for soldiers, rising costs for recruiting new soldiers (including increases in signing bonuses), recovery and maintenance costs for equipment, etc. Plus he includes estimates for the damage done to the larger US economy due to oil costs, lost productivity, and such.
There are aspects I don't understand, and those I'm not sure I agree with, but one thing is crystal clear; even if we look merely at the economic cost of the war, and ignore the human and political fallout, the War on Terror is costing a metric fuckton of money, and the government is largely ignoring how to actually pay for it. This stat put things into perspective right quick.
"The operating costs, or monthly "burn rate" in these wars have been rising steadily since 2003--from $4.4 billion to $8 billion to $12 billion to an estimated $16 billion in 2008. To think of it another way, roughly every American household is spending $138 per month on the current operating costs [his italics] of the wars, with a little more than $100 per month going to Iraq alone."
$100 per month per household for a war that's just getting more expensive. 4 more years of this, plus record oil costs (and oil company profits).
IOS Game Center ID: Isotope-X
We should expect this. If higher troop levels are correlated with lower levels of violence, then lower troop levels are correlated with higher levels of violence.
Moreover, the surge (luckily for its proponents) happened to coincide with Muqtada al-Sadr's cease-fire, which helped exaggerate the effect that the surge was having on violence. Now, though, Shi'ite militants have lost patience with al-Sadr, and are acting out on their own, so we can expect violence to rise again.
On the article: You would never see something like that over here.
As for the violence, this was already predicted and doesn't surprise me in the least. Without a MASSIVE influx of troops to lock that country down, the military solutions at this point simply don't exist anymore (if they ever did at all). I'd love to see someone bring up the draft on the news and see the faces screw up.
I remember a country with 100% global support. I remember a President with a 94% approval rating and rockstar status. I remember ludicrous enlistment levels and morale. I remember being hot on Osama's trail. I remember thinking that, handled properly, this should only last a year or so. And now, we've not only lost Iraq (which was never in "danger" until we went there) but poised to lose Afghanistan too. It just makes me so mad.
...Osama bin Ladin
I think some of the Irish might.
They were latched to Osama as the face of war effort until we invaded Iraq, and all talk of Osama simply...vanished.
There's really only two places bin Laden could be right now. He's either in South/Eastern Afghanistan, or he's in the border regions of Pakistan. Both of which are populated heavily by Pashtuns who don't listen to their respective central governments and have never done so.
If NATO was really serious about finding bin Laden and stabilizing central Asia, there would be 100 000 troops in Southern Afghanistan right now, locking down the border between Pakistan and Afghanistan, and sweeping every single cave or crevass in the Hindukush.
I was over there 15 years ago when Omagh was bombed, and yes, yes the Irish may think of it as such.
I was thinking of in reaction to the Black and Tans, but okay.
No, but China seems to be at war w/ Taiwan.
For nomenclatural precedent, we have the Revolutionary War.
Well, things were pretty in-fucking-sane in the south. It was basically sectarian warfare.
I don't think wanting out is like, a failing of the American people. No country wants to support another country indefinitely both financially and with blood, especially when there's a running tally available 24 hours a day 356 days a year.
Yet we also refer to America's counterinsurgency operations in Vietnam as a war, France's counterinsurgency operations in Algeria as a war, etc. Major combat operations in Iraq are ongoing; insurgents are fighting the coalition. Its a war.
I don't like the talk about "war" in Iraq or Afghanistan either. I pay much more attention to the later, because that's where my country is actually involved, and 90% of those calling it a "war" are doing it simply for propaganda purposes, and the emotive response your average person has to war - that crowd wouild like to see Canada and NATO just quit the country . . . conveniently ignoring what the consequences of that would be.
Problem is though that, unlike Vietnam for example, this is a problem of America's making - for good or bad.
Walking away from Vietnam could have been a sensible way of just letting the natural course of things take over, that interjecting America in between those two combatants was just making things worse in the long run - if the communists are going to win, might as well be now rather than later after hundreds of thousands of more people have been killed. Hard to see the same dynamic here. Instead, Iraq has been taken from peace (albeit one backed with horrendous repression and dictatorship, I am most definitely sensitive to that) to violence and chaos.
It'll be especially popular among the Iraquis.
Besides, the increase at the very beginning or the drawdown means that it's likely to be a bloodbath anytime we leave, so we should get it out of the way now, so that a self-made government can be made (that seems to be the only kind that works).
Yes, but it'll be their civil war, and isn't that all that matters to an adolescent country?
What do you call the conflicts now? Civil Disagreements?
For most of the war, the US fought the Viet Cong who were mostly South Vietnamese insurgents, albeit armed and led by North Vietnamese. This is not dissimilar to the foreign nationals who led the Iraq insurgency, or the Shiite militias backed by Iranian arms. Only late in the conflict, when the US was winding down, did the NVA directly invade.
Either way, the point still stands that guerrilla warfare iswarfare, which comes in conventional and unconventional flavors.