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

To: one_less who wrote (155276)	1/5/2005 1:48:21 PM
From: GST	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 281500

A depressingly sober assessment -- just one element is missing -- the US will declare victory once an "election" has been conducted. After all, once a single Iraqi casts a vote, then Iraq will be free and all will be well -- time to pat ourselves on the back, head home and wash our hands of the mess.

To: one_less who wrote (155276)	1/5/2005 4:37:18 PM
From: Neocon	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 281500

If nothing changes, we may as well build a wall around the Sunni Triangle and concentrate on containing the Sunnis and protecting the rest of the country. Of course, for a proper resolution, something must change. What must change is that the ability of armed men and suicide bombers to hold the country hostage must be curtailed. Israel manages pretty well, by limiting the ability of the various terrorists groups to operate on its territory, so that outrages are not so overwhelming as to ruin the country. That is our goal in Iraqi, to reduce the amount of carnage to something that people can live with, like car accidents or plane crashes. That seems to me to be an achievable goal, not to say that there is no worry over the pace of progress or outcome if there is a lapse into civil war. In most organizations, only about 5% function in significant leadership roles. To me, that means that we have to kill or incarcerate at worst about a thousand people to disrupt normal insurgent operations and make it difficult to replace the infrastructure. In addition, these people have a lot of guns, which we are blowing up, and money, which we must do more to locate. We can paralyze all but the most primitive operations pretty easily, as we get a better hold on things. It is mainly a question of time, and whether the situation deteriorates too rapidly.