The sacrifices we make... or not

[pecunium]

Fred Kagan, the much touted "expert" claiming we can win the War on Terror, if only some 30,000 troops are added to the mix, for not less than months, is younger than I am.

He thinks this is the defining struggle of the age. It is at least as perilous to the state of things as WW2.

Is he enlisting? No. But he does hope other people will heed his call, that the President will make an impassioned plea for more people to enlist, and that such exhortations will lead to the needed troops enlisting.

For his part, he is more than willing to stay home (like Jonah Goldberg, who at least responded to people who asked him why he wasn't signing up) and make lots of money convincing people to send more troops to Bagdad and al Anbar.

It's all summed up at This Modern World

Comments

[minnehaha.livejournal.com]

Tom Tomorrow is a genius.

B

[minnehaha.livejournal.com]

Also, this.

B

[wcg.livejournal.com]

Fred is a pretty smart guy, but I'm with you in that he ought to be setting an example by signing up to serve. I'm sure he could get a commission just by asking for one, and probably be assured of nice safe stateside duty. But at least he'd be DOING SOMETHING. ('Scuse the caps, got excited there.)

When this surge idea developed it required 50,000 troops. Now it's somehow morphed to 20,000. The plan might have worked with 50,000, but I see no way possible for it to work with 20,000. It's going to be like trying a bold leap across a yawning chasm in two steps.

[sinboy.livejournal.com]

Is it drafty in here, or is it just Rep. Rangle?

[sinboy.livejournal.com]

I tend to suggest 100,000 or more, just for fun. It's is about as much as we suggested bringing the Iraqi army up to. They're about as useful as a screen door on a submarine, so if we expect that many soldiers to be able to pacify Iraq, we should have about that many more, given that that's how many soldiers we expect the Iraqis to have to keep the peace.

It's also an impossible number. But when Republicans accuse me of being a defeatist I tell them I'm in favor of increasing troop levels to the original metrics that Bush gave us. Just with our troops, and not the Iraqis, as the Iraqi forces are not competent or trustworthy.

This usually leaves them confused. Few pro-war Republicans I've met actually have a handle on how bad the political situation in Iraq is in terms of the Shia in charge being a hair's breadth away from either turning the country over to Iranian Mullahs or just killing off Sunni wholesale, instead of piecemeal

Oh, and I loooove the suggestion that we grant amnesty to illegal immigrants by offering them an army tour. Yes, let's *arm* the Mexican immigrants. And train them. At our own expense. Brilliant!

[pecunium.livejournal.com]

He may be a smart guy, but on this one, he's daft.

What are the troops supposed to do? Pacify Baghdad. How is that to be done?

Sadr has an army. Twice he's managed to hold us off, and managed to out politic us. The rhetoric seems to be that the troops are supposed to disarm him.

I don't see it happening. What I see happening if we try, is ugly.

I also see that this escalation seems to be planned around changing tour lengths, up the boots on the ground time to 18 months (and the present ones of 12 months keep getting stretched, so what are the odds of that happening to those who get the 18 month orders).

It's Rummy's plan of doing on the cheap, dusted off and given a coat of gilt.

TK

[fidelioscabinet.livejournal.com]

Man, I thought Mogadishu was in east Africa, not Mesopotamia. I blame my mother for teaching me geography--she's a liberal, after all. /snark

No, seriously. Didn't we try this, with fewer troops, on another continent, in the 1990s? And didn't it fail to work with a great deal of suckitude then? I really don't think we've become better at this since then, because it's not the kind of thing you get better at, really.

Does conservative mean "fails to learn from experience", or are these people just seriously committed to the Jiminy Cricket School of Warfare? (And which star are they wishing on, anyway?)

[wcg.livejournal.com]

I could tell you what the plan looked like when it was proposed as 50k. I have no idea what it looks like now. There's no damn way the 20k can manage the take/hold/rebuild process that was proposed.

You're right that trying to do it with 20k is doing it on the cheap. And just like the other times we've done things on the cheap there, it's going to fail, with a lot of good people dead to satisfy the conceit of GWB.

[wcg.livejournal.com]

And why stop with the Mexican immigrants living mostly lawful lives? Let's just draft La Familia en masse out of the California prison system! Send a few regiments of Aztec-identified, Quatl-speaking hardened criminals over there led by lifers who would otherwise live out their days in the California SuperMax! I mean, what could *possibly* go wrong?

[wcg.livejournal.com]

It's still just Charlie Rangle. A draft right now would take a lot of low-cost labor away from red states. The RNC would never, ever, agree to it.

[pecunium.livejournal.com]

Honestly, I don't think 100,000 is enough.

If Sadr decides he has two choices, fight the Americans, or lose his chance to be a player/in charge, he'll fight.

If he fights, Katie bar the door, because supply lines, and the numbers/fish in water nature of the Madhi army are such that engagements are going to be hard on the U.S., because it will be Viet-nam, in that they get to choose the moment of attack, but they can engage in close quarters, and with superior numbers.

Blackhawk down, in half a dozen places at once.

TK