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

To: Bruce L who wrote (154956)	12/31/2004 11:25:49 AM
From: michael97123	Respond to of 281500

I have been saying exactly the same thing for months now. Below is the key. "The withdrawal of U.S. forces west and south of the Euphrates and in an arc north to the Turkish border and into Kurdistan would provide the United States with the same leverage in the region, without the unsustainable cost of the guerrilla war. The Saudis, Syrians and Iranians would still have U.S. forces on their borders, this time not diluted by a hopeless pacification program." What will develop after the civil war is anyones guess but we certainly can help the Kurds defend themselves and help the shiaa and balance iranian influence with our presence. And concentrating on the borders we can attempt to dry up the flow of jihadists into iraq. Thanks for the post and you are right about this thread. Mike

To: Bruce L who wrote (154956)	12/31/2004 12:12:37 PM
From: Neocon	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 281500

Stratfor, as always, is very good. However, it underestimates the extent to which are committed to making Iraq into a viable state with progress towards democracy, and therefore the strategic debacle of abandoning Iraq to civil war without a stronger effort to crush the insurgency. And it overestimates the element of choice involved: we could not abandon Iraq to chaos after invasion, no on had the stomach for a long term occupation, and we could not avoid civil war without a constitutional solution backed by internal security forces, allowing us to demobilize the main body of our forces in the country. So it was inevitable that "democratization" would become a stated goal, and that complete failure would be a strategic setback. The crucial problem of "moles" is well- cited. However, it presupposes a bottomless insurgency, which I think is a mistake. What is more important is our training of intelligence and special ops forces, and whether we can vet them better than the overt operations forces. In my opinion, that is what is really taking so long, getting agents and commandos that we trust and who are very well trained "on line". I do not believe that the insurgency can survive against a well- trained network of spies and informants backed by special ops forces.