Hi KyrosL; Re: "An admission that the American forces in Iraq will not be reduced, as originally planned ... I expect the insurgency to die down soon. ... with most of our troops out of there by election time next year."
These are contradictory desires / predictions on your part. As long as our guys are in Iraq, they will continue to be sniped at. (Jesus weeps! Our guys were sniped at in f'ing Kuwait, and we once were those guys big heroes!) A substantial percentage of the Iraqi population has hated us ever since we got pissed with them over the Kuwait incident. We've killed a lot of their friends / relatives / lovers over the year, and some of them want revenge. Our troops provide the opportunity for that revenge.
And it doesn't take a very large number of people to terrorize an occupying army. Hell, two half-assed snipers had CobaltBlue peeing her pants when filling her gas guzzling SUV at the pump. That was less than a dozen killed out of a population of many millions. Our soldiers in Iraq are taking something like 3 dozen deaths in a population of only 146,000 over a shorter period than the DC snipers. Of course our guys are scared, and of course they're shooting a bit wildly at times. And of course that results with even more of the locals being pissed with us.
Imagine how you'd feel if the police at gas stations got trigger happy and started machine-gunning the locals (because of the sniping incidents). Now imagine that the police doing the machine gun work were all black, and they were doing the machine gunning in white neighborhoods. Now imagine that in addition, the police spoke a weird-ass foreign language, and believed in a ridiculous form of religion. And smelled weird, ate strange food, and had a habit of pointing their machine guns at you.
Would you be pissed? Maybe you're a complete coward, but a substantial percentage of the population would be madder than hell, and would begin plotting revenge.
These are simple basic facts of human nature. This is not rocket science.
Re: "The Neocon dreams are being replaced by pragmatic policies, driven by 2004 reelection considerations."
What's going on is that the generals have been told to reduce US combat deaths, and to reduce the amount that they piss off the locals. Operationally, that means that US troops have withdrawn from regions that are particularly dangerous. So far I understand that we have withdrawn from Fallujah as well as the university campus where we recently had a man killed. Naturally, the Iraqis, seeing our withdrawal, conclude that they should attack us in other areas, so that we will withdraw from them too. So the result of the retreat is not a decrease in US deaths, but instead a simple decrease in the amount of territory that we control.
These withdrawals give Iraqi rebels territory to run as they see fit. The eventual effect will be "major" battles, as the Iraqis regroup in these territories. The Israelis have already gone through the same cycles of occupation / retreat many times. Our only long term solution is to retreat completely, a tactic that is not available to the Israelis. By the way, when the first major "post war" battles erupt, Bush's declaration May 1st will look even more stupid.
Re: "The disastrous decision to dismiss the Iraqi army without pay has been reversed. The army will keep getting their salaries "indefinitely". Good move by Bremer."
This is a classic American fantasy. Money can buy friendship, LOL. Or maybe this belief is rooted in your own experience. Certainly a coward wouldn't "bite the hand that feeds it", LOL. Sorry, but to many many people (especially people far away from this silicon investor universe), money is not the most important thing in life.
Re: "The just announced Iraqi governing Council has real power ..."
I doubt that they'll be given real power. The problem is that the Iraqis want to have elections as quickly as possible, but such elections would be dominated by Baathists and Islamic fundamentalists. The US wants to wait until later, but that time will continue to be postponed as the electorate fails to magically transform itself, LOL. So eventually the "governing" Council will make a request at the UN to have the US removed from "their" country, LOL. Mark my words, this is a prediction.
-- Carl |
