one post that should be three
General Barry McCaffrey, in testimony to the Senate:
First, we must commit publicly to provide $10 billion a year in economic support to the Iraqis over the next five years. In the military arena, it would be feasible to equip and increase the Iraqi armed forces on a crash basis over the next 24 months (but not the police or the Facilities Protection Service). The goal would be 250,000 troops, provided with the material and training necessary to maintain internal order. Within the first 12 months we should draw down the U.S. military presence from 15 Brigade Combat Teams (BCTs), of 5,000 troops each, to 10. Within the next 12 months, Centcom forces should further draw down to seven BCTs and withdraw from urban areas to isolated U.S. operating bases -- where we could continue to provide oversight and intervention when required to rescue our embedded U.S. training teams, protect the population from violence or save the legal government. Finally, we have to design and empower a regional diplomatic peace dialogue in which the Iraqis can take the lead, engaging their regional neighbors as well as their own alienated and fractured internal population.
I don’t know if he (or the other generals who testified today) is right or not. But isn’t it funny what a breath of fresh air it is to hear an actual plan?
Via Salon’s War Room.
Additionally, Juan Cole explains how the Bush escalation plan is based on a fundamental misreading of the enemy. Among other things, he notes:
The guerrillas know they cannot fight the U.S. military head-on. But they do not need to…. Iraq is a country of clans and tribes, of Hatfields and McCoys, of grudges and feuds. The clans are more important than religious identities such as Sunni or Shiite. They are more important than ethnicities such as Kurdish or Arab or Turkmen. All members of the clan are honor-bound to defend or avenge all the other members…. The guerrillas mobilized these clans against the U.S. troops and against one another. Is a U.S. platoon traveling through a neighborhood of the Dulaim clan, where people are out shopping? They hit the convoy, and the panicked troops lay down fire around them. They kill members of the Dulaim clan. They are now defined as the American tribe, and they now have a feud with the Dulaim. Members of the Dulaim cannot hold their heads up high until they avenge the deaths of their cousins by killing Americans….
President Bush in his speech Wednesday imagined that guerrillas were coming into neighborhoods in Baghdad and in the cities of Al-Anbar province from the outside. He suggested that…U.S. and Iraqi troops should clear them out and then hold the city quarters for some time, to stop them from coming back. But the guerrillas are not outsiders. They are the people of those city quarters, who keep guns in their closets and come out masked at night to engage in killing and sabotage.
Okay, I’d be thoroughly depressed now if wasn’t for having seen Stephen Colbert on Bill O’Reilly’s show earlier. Colbert was brilliant and had me laughing out loud several times, but the best part was watching how, when Colbert would deliver a fawning (and utterly ironic) compliment to “Papa Bear,” O’Reilly would smile and glow. He just can’t help himself, the giant gasbag. Oops, time to go watch the Daily Show and O’Reilly’s appearance on the Colbert Report. Hopefully all this stuff will be on YouTube or something tomorrow.