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

To: NightOwl who wrote (128848)	4/10/2004 9:45:04 PM
From: Bilow	Respond to of 281500

Hi NightOwl; Re: "In the first instance, your comparative ratios fail to account for the efficient removal of Fighters and potential Fighters, by the prior stupidities of the late Saddam administration." This is a good point, but unfortunately, it's not in your favor. Iraq hasn't had a major war since the Iran/Iraq conflict ended in 1988. Between Iran and Iraq, there were about a million casualties. I would guess that they were more or less evenly divided. This was a significant event in terms of killing potential fighters, but it was 16 years ago. That would mean that Iraqis under the age of 34 were not involved in it. In fact, as is traditional in human society for young men, they undoubtedly grew up hearing gory stories and thought they were hearing about glory. By comparison, the Kuwait liberation took very few Iraqis out of the equation. And that was back in 1992, so fighters now under the age of 30 missed it. Since the prime military ages for guerilla warriors is from 14 to 30, what happened in Saddam's wars just doesn't mean a hill of beans now. But if my crystal clear logic isn't good enough for you, go open your newspaper and read what has happened lately. Re: "Then too, the political basis underlying your projected unsuccessful outcome in Iraq, is teetering on the edge of an abyss." Hardly. Support for the war has never been so low. Bush's approval rating is down to 43%. Re: "Come to think of it ...unless I am mistaken... you have not even defined the point at which success devolves into failure. Just how long do you expect to be able to continue asserting that this focal point arrived in March of 2003?" I don't get your point. Some things are obvious to some people long before they're even an inkling in other people's (or bird's) brains. When the US was attacked at Pearl Harbor, Winston Churchill saw that WW2 would end with success. And there were Americans who knew very early in Vietnam that it would end in failure. With me, I knew that Iraq would fail when the civilians began shooting at us from regions which were no longer under the control of Saddam. And as I posted before the war, civilian resistances take time to develop, so it was not a surprise to me that the place was relatively quiet for a month or two. Re: "Whatever potential political basis you might be relying upon is rapidly being frittered away by defeatist Democratic offerings and the new UnAmerican Committee For Sedition." It really doesn't matter much, as far as Iraq goes, who gets elected in the US, I believe. I should note that my ability to predict the behavior of individuals like the President is fairly limited (as is seen by the Iraq war itself, which I didn't think would happen), but there are no choices that any President can now make that will bring order to Iraq. All they can choose between is how many troops we lose, and over what time frame, and when we leave. Because of domestic political considerations, they will choose to lose as few troops as possible while postponing the abandonment of Iraq. Because of this, I expect to see a gradually worsening situation in Iraq. But I could be wrong. The guy in charge could pull us out early, or he could order major offensives and get lots of our guys killed quickly. From here, your post devolved into incomprehensibility so I will leave it unanswered. -- Carl