Iraq/Is it becoming a lost cause? (mpls star-tribune)

http://www.startribune.com/stories/561/4987168.html
(reg. req)

September 18, 2004

Editorial: Iraq/Is it becoming a lost cause?

The news about Iraq this week has been all bad. Indeed, if you read what the experts say, Iraq may now be a lost cause. Some sensible people are beginning to utter the unthinkable: Bring the troops home and refuse to pour more blood and money into an obvious -- and monumental -- U.S. defeat. That is not an easy notion to contemplate for two reasons: what it would leave in Iraq and the Middle East, and the explosive repercussions it would have for the United States at home and abroad. But that it is being uttered aloud in polite company underscores a reality Americans must face: There is no good road forward in Iraq.

That reality is at the heart of the classified intelligence estimate on Iraq which was leaked to news organizations this week. The gist of the estimate is this: If everything goes perfectly in Iraq, the best the United States can hope for is a country, as the New York Times said, "whose stability would remain tenuous in political, economic and security terms."

But nothing is going well in Iraq. The insurgency, which began as small groups of enemies taking random shots at American forces then fading quickly away, has strengthened into a sophisticated, large-group guerrilla conflict that experts say the United States most likely can't win, no matter how long it stays in Iraq and how many forces it throws into the conflict.

Vietnam can be overused as a paradigm, but in this case it is instructive. In January 1963, Viet Cong forces stood and fought for the first time at a small hamlet named Ap Bac. They inflicted a major defeat on South Vietnam and signaled a turning point in that conflict from which the South Vietnamese and Americans never really recovered. It took 12 years for the United States to realize the war was lost and to disengage from the conflict. American experts -- including retired and still-serving military officials of high rank -- are saying that Iraq has passed the Ap Bac mark and can only go downhill from here.

The signs suggest they are right. American and Iraqi deaths and casualties are mounting; more and more of the country is becoming a no-go zone for coalition forces, and even the so-called "green zone" in Baghdad no longer is safe. The backlash against Americans from Iraqi civilians is growing. Prospects for holding elections in January become more doubtful day by day -- because you can't hold free elections in areas held by insurgent forces.

. . .

I said so then and say so now.

There's no solution to the civil war that is already beginning except a pre-emptive dividing of the artifice known as Iraq and the time for doing this is slipping away.

It's the only way the U.S. can leave Iraq with the least amount of civil strife after the vacuum is created.

Otherwise, it's hopeless.

anyone who see that war-mongering bastard was hell-bent on invading and bombing Iraq is ignorant.

We had a hand in creating North and South Korea, then North and South Viet Nam, how about this time we go back to the East West model we used in Germany. East Iraq for the muslims .... West Iraq for the greedy oil thieves and carpetbaggers ... I mean the US and UK. Nah.. north and south has a better PR potential.

But seriously, this line from the editorial shows just how taken in by their own bravado and machismo that no amount of cold hard reality was going to disrupt their war plans.

...That reality is at the heart of the classified intelligence estimate on Iraq which was leaked to news organizations this week. The gist of the estimate is this: If everything goes perfectly in Iraq, the best the United States can hope for is a country, as the New York Times said, "whose stability would remain tenuous in political, economic and security terms."...

Talk about your rose colored glasses! Not only that but it is almost certainly criminal to have followed that course in light of these warnings.

Iraq becoming a lost cause is an unbelievable consequence of a thought process gone wrong in this administration. I think it also sheds light on how we will be able to fight the terrorists in the long run. In many ways the Iraqi insurgency can be thought of as a microcosm(although in no way linked) of Al-Qaeda. Both are a shadowy network that is not extremely large, but can cause a tremendous amount of damage by attacking specific targets of high value, or damaging public confidence. As I watch the Iraqi insurgency grow, I wonder just how much Al-Qaeda has grown in the past year.

Alex Hamilton
http://www.ibtp.org