Hard Pounding

Hard Pounding
Who will keep his nerve?



If I could sum up the new orthodoxy about Iraq, it might run something like the following: “I supported the overthrow of the odious Saddam Hussein. But then the poor postwar planning, the unanticipated sectarian strife and insurrection, the mounting American losses, the failure to find weapons of mass destruction — all that and more lost my support. Iraq may or may not work out, but I can see now it clearly wasn’t worth the American effort.”




Aside from the old rehash over disbanding the Iraqi army or tardiness in forming a government, three observations can be made about this “readjustment” in belief. First, the nature of the lapses after March 2003 is still the subject of legitimate debate; second, our mistakes are no more severe than in most prior wars; and third, they are not fatal to our cause.

Consider the most frequently alleged errors: the need for more troops; the need to have restored immediate order; and the need to have had up-armored vehicles and some tactical counterplan to improvised explosive devices.

In none of these cases, was the manner of the solution all that clear-cut — especially since on the first day of the war the United States was trying to avoid targeting civilians, avoiding infrastructure as much as possible, and waging a supposed war of liberation rather than one of punitive annihilation.

More @ http://tinyurl.com/e6ksw NRO

Victor has the cart before the horse, again. Yes we gave meticulous planning to the invasion and the defeat of Iraq. What we did not do was make any coherent plans for what came after Iraq's defeat. (And Iraq's defeat was a given from the start of hostilities)

When US & UK troops first set foot on Germany soil during WWII and while the war was still going on teams of US & UK administrations and experts in everything from sewage to communications went to work in each German city that came under Allied control. (I know we did this as I've read many accounts of it. If you don't believe me do a Google and see for yourself. I've not the time or patience to do it for you)

Now contrast what we did in Germany as we conquered territory as to what we did in Iraq. In Germany we established security, hunted out high profile Nazis, fed the populace, and started putting things back in working order in an order of priority.

In Iraq we did nothing except establish security for our troops and maybe hunt for a few of Saddam's merry men. (See looting in cities after we had dispatched Saddam's troops) We had no post war plan for Iraq and we still don't have one. All we have done is reacted to events as they have unfolded in a knee-jerk fashion.

The failure to have a workable post war plan for Iraq is a failure of leadership at the highest levels. We killed the monster and then had no idea what to do with the corpse.