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Pastimes : THE SLIGHTLY MODERATED BOXING RING -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Lazarus_Long who wrote (3305)	3/17/2002 11:03:37 PM
From: Dayuhan	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 21057

E's scenario assumed little or no involvement by Kurds, shiites, or anyone else. Yes, the discussion of the Kurds goes back to an earlier discussion of a proxy-based war. I do not doubt for a moment that we can successfully invade Iraq. I think we can probably do it with fairly minimal casualties. What bothers me is not the invasion phase but the occupation that would follow it. Occupying troops tend to be static, more dispersed and much more susceptible to guerilla attacks. An occupation force would likely be faced with semi-armed mob resistance in the intifadeh style, a very awkward situation. This situation would be likely to continue for a long time: any government we install is likely to require indefinite military support. The question here is simple: do we have the political will to stick it out. For us it isn't that big an issue. If it got really sticky, we could destroy all WMD and WMD construction capacity, and bail. For our potential allies it is harder. A chaotic or partitioned Iraq would make life very complicated in the region. This is the sticking point: not our ability to successfully invade, but our will to see the situation through to a stable outcome that would likely be a long time a'comin. Getting rid of Saddam would be nice, but there's a potential for this thing to turn into a nightmare that makes Israel's Palestinian mess look good. Precisely. The real question is this: can our need to protect ourselves be served by anything short of a full-scale invasion. I'm assuming here that the goal of replacing Saddam is subordinate to the goal of making sure he cannot attack us (I'm not sure that this is actually the case). I wonder if any intermediate step is possible. Surely we must have some idea of the location of the facilities that we suspect are involved in the chemical/biological/nuclear side of the equation. I wonder if it would be possible to use massive air strikes to degrade or eliminate the defenses at those sites and to prevent reinforcement, and insert ground forces for long enough to penetrate the sites, determine what is going on there, take prisoners for interrogation, and leave. Complex and very risky, certainly, but an invasion/occupation would be also. This sort of limited operation would be a much easier sell to the allies, and might provide information that would make a more accurate assessment of risk possible.