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

To: Neocon who wrote (155453)	1/7/2005 12:00:00 PM
From: Sam	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 281500

I can't say I understand how this: And, as if to underline the security problem, the interim government's intelligence chief, Gen. Mohammed Shahwani, told a Saudi newspaper this week that he believed that U.S. and Iraqi forces were facing as many as 40,000 "hardcore fighters" – twice Washington's previous biggest estimate – backed by as many as 150,000 to 200,000 others who acted as part-time guerillas, spies, and logistics personnel. He blamed the growth in the insurgency on a "resurgent Ba'ath Party" under the direction of former officials, some of whom he said, are based in Syria. "I think the resistance is bigger than the U.S. military in Iraq," Shahwani said. If even remotely accurate – and U.S. officials were quick to cast doubt on Shahwani's claims, although they did not deny them either – those numbers should discourage the U.S. military, since basic doctrine calls for a 10:1 troop-rebel ratio to control and eventually defeat an insurgency. Washington currently has 150,000 troops in Iraq. What's worse, the insurgency, by virtually all accounts, is actually growing. "Until now, the best efforts of the United States and the emerging Iraqi army have not succeeded in preventing the growth of the insurgency," noted Robert Killebrew, a retired Army colonel and counter-insurgency specialist, who believes that even if the elections come off, Washington may well soon face the greater danger of a region-wide insurgency. evokes this response from you: Since it has always been the strategy to replace US forces with Iraqi forces, and to reach out to other countries for aid, for the most part, it seems to me that the discussion reaffirms the Administration........ It leads me to agree with Dobbins, not that this should surpise you: "The beginning of wisdom," writes James Dobbins, an analyst at the Rand Corporation who served as U.S. special envoy in a host of hotspots from the Balkans to Afghanistan, in the latest Foreign Affairs magazine, "is to recognize that the ongoing war in Iraq is not one that the United States can win." "As a result of its initial miscalculations, misdirected planning, and inadequate preparation, Washington has lost the Iraqi people's confidence and consent, and it is unlikely to win them back," according to Dobbins, who argues that the situation can still be saved "but only by moderate Iraqis and only if they concentrate their efforts on gaining the cooperation of neighboring states, securing the support of the broader international community, and quickly reducing their dependence on the United States."