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Politics : Foreign Affairs Discussion Group -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Hawkmoon who wrote (101895)	6/21/2003 9:16:35 PM
From: Dayuhan	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 281500

Risk assessment, at best, consists of "fuzzy logic" and statistical predictions which are essentially the analyst's "best guess". It can NEVER be an exact science.. But risk is often increased when our response, or reactions, are not powerful enough... Not an exact science, but a whole lot more than a best guess. Risk can also be increased when response or reaction is misdirected or takes a form inappropriate to the challenge. Iraq is not Vietnam. It's not condusive, IMO, to long-lasting guerilla warfare.. Because the minute they expose themselves enmasse, they are vulnerable to massive counter-attack. I agree, and I wouldn’t anticipate anything remotely similar to a Vietnam scenario. The opposition doesn’t need anything like that: all they have to do is sustain a security threat level sufficient to prevent effective physical reconstruction, and at the same time work the political front. A few hundred committed terrorists can accomplish this without ever having to expose themselves en masse. In the long term, I think our biggest problem will not be Baathist remnants, but the organized Shiites. These guys are not stupid – many of them survived Saddam, no mean trick – and it would be a huge mistake to underestimate them, or to view them purely as Iranian pawns. They want to run the show, and they know it is very close to being within their grasp. They also know that while we will make public efforts to placate them, we will do everything in our power to keep them out of the big chair. So they will play both sides of the fence. They will make a show of cooperation, and use their seat in the nonentity that was once the INC for all it’s worth. At the same time, they will be doing everything they can – and their grassroots network is way better than ours – to whip up resistance. Duplicity is the name of the game, and I’m not convinced that our guys play it better. Vietnam-style guerilla war is not a threat: as you say, we are well equipped to deal with it. Our huge vulnerability is to terrorism, street demonstrations, and intifadeh-style violence. As for the police.. etc.. It's been a little more than two months.. And there wasn't much in place beforehand that wasn't Baathist and corrupt. My comments were not meant as criticism of the occupation government. The situation they face with respect to terror – essentially, total helplessness – was a given from day one. We knew when we went in that when we were finished we would face a high risk of terrorism with no effective way to fight it. We elected to assume that risk. Absolutely no fault accrues to the occupation government for this, but that doesn’t change the fact that we are very exposed and we have no effective way to prevent or respond to terror attacks. Large-scale military sweeps and house-to-house searches are what terrorists like. They piss off the populace and pose very little risk to the terrorist. A guy with an AK under his bed is almost certainly not a terrorist; the terrorist is going to keep his gear wrapped in plastic and buried somewhere well away from where he sleeps. You knock on the door and search, he’s just another peaceful guy. Creating effective immigration controls, investigative services, and police forces will take years, and loyalty will always be suspect. The problem will continue. My gut feel is that the real problems will start during the campaign, and that the attacks will not be limited to Iraq. The easiest way for them to get us out of there is regime change. They can’t force it, but they can still accomplish it if they convince the electorate that the risk of extended occupation exceeds the reward. It struck me the other day that Saddam on the loose may actually be a good thing for us. A lot of Iraqis that don’t really care for our presence will be willing to tolerate it if they think our absence might mean a Saddam return. I suspect that having his head on a pike might bring more “Yankee go home”, not less.