Silicon Investor (SI) -- The First Internet Community

STOCKTALK

We've detected that you're using an ad content blocking browser plug-in or feature. Ads provide a critical source of revenue to the continued operation of Silicon Investor. We ask that you disable ad blocking while on Silicon Investor in the best interests of our community. If you are not using an ad blocker but are still receiving this message, make sure your browser's tracking protection is set to the 'standard' level.

Politics : Politics for Pros- moderated -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Snowshoe who wrote (202784)	4/16/2007 6:55:36 AM
From: unclewest	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 793868

UW, those are very good excerpts but they're focused on describing an insurgency. Does the author explain how to defeat an insurgency? Thanks for taking the time to read that. First, we all must focus on understanding the problem. That is the key step that our leadership seems to want to avoid. Yes, the author goes on to describe various insurgencies and what worked and what didn't work. Do you think all the smuggling is via Syria and Iran? I have no evidence, but I strongly suspect people, money, and supplies for Al-Qaeda and the Sunnis are also coming in thru Jordan and Saudi Arabia. You are correct. Some are coming from those and other locations. I think the 25 Indonesian militants probably infiltrated from Saudi Arabia. we can't even seal our own US borders, so how can we seal Iraq's? Yes, I have used that argument too. But I really think differently. Our own current porous borders are not a good indicator of what is possible. When the Mexicans begin using car bombs and suicide vests to kill us, I don't believe it will take more than a few days to slam our borders shut. Petreaus is looking for and has been provided an opportunity to find a quick military solution to ancient political and religious problems. Any study of insurgencies will confirm that a successful counter-insurgency cannot be fast tracked. Our own military and political problems are born of and flounder within that dichotomy. GWB understands the need for a lengthy campaign and attempted to commit us to a 30 year war. Initially Congress bought into it by a huge margin. Ditto for our conventional military forces. Now some who sided with GW want out and pronto. That is the flip flop. Our conventional military minds made one huge mistake. They failed to plan for an insurgency accompanied by terrorism. Their was no plan and no attempt to nip it in the bud even though those ODAs and CIA operators living and working among the people kept reporting what was developing. The same conventional brains now think they can fix their error by putting more M-16 operators in Hummers on the streets of Baghdad until a quick political solution is found. Most long wars end eventually via political decisions. I have bad news for Petreaus, that quick and unifying political solution he envisions is no where in sight. The political situation is not getting better, it is worsening. This morning al sadr ordered all of his minions to pull out of the Iraqi national government. We destroyed Iraq's conventional war fighting capability, their political infrastructure, and their internal security apparatus. Abandoning them now will leave the country in a shambles and 25 million people in chaos. We are spending huge sums (blood and money) to get no where. We can sustain our support and increase our odds of eventually prevailing, but it must be done with a much lower US military profile and much lower intensity. We are trapped in a box of our own making. We need to leap out of that box. Every American DOD civilian, military commander, and politician who thinks sending more American Infantrymen to kill more Arabs (or die trying) is the long term solution to GWOT should be fired immediately. uw