The war is over, we have "run out of military options"

U.S. must leave Iraq, retired generals say
By Rick Maze - Staff writer
Posted : Wednesday Apr 2, 2008 21:39:27 EDT
Setting a withdrawal timetable from Iraq might be a shaky strategic move, but it would provide a morale boost for service members and their families, a former Army War College commandant said Wednesday.

Retired Army Maj. Gen. Robert Scales Jr., testifying before the Senate Foreign Affairs Committee about U.S. military strategy in Iraq, said he has no doubt that a major withdrawal of combat forces is coming because the U.S. has “run out of military options” and cannot indefinitely sustain troop levels.

“Regardless of who wins the election and regardless of conditions on the ground, by summer the troops will begin to come home,” said Scales, who headed the war college in 1997. “The only point of contention is how precipitous will be the withdrawal and whether the schedule of withdrawal should be a matter of administration policy.”

White House and Pentagon officials have resisted efforts by some lawmakers to set a fixed timetable for withdrawal of U.S. combat forces from Iraq, arguing that insurgents and other groups would try to use the dates to their advantage.


http://www.marinecorpstimes.com/news/2008/04/military_iraqwithdrawal_040208w/

afghanistan, now that invasion has some legitimacy, but our CIC lacked the intelligence and will to keep his word to the unitestatesamerican people and go after bin laden. bush lied, 4000 died. presidential intelligence is the newest oxymoron.

from the article:
"The only sensible strategy is to withdraw rapidly but in good order,” Odom said. “Only that step can break the paralysis now gripping U.S. strategy in the region.”

McCaffrey, a former chief of U.S. Southern Command and commander of the 24th Infantry Division in the 1991 Gulf War, predicted a withdrawal of U.S. forces within three years or less because there is “no U.S. political will to continue” and because allies “have abandoned us.” (They forgot about Poland!)


bring the troops home now. now.

recommended.

The only point of contention is how precipitous will be the withdrawal and whether the schedule of withdrawal should be a matter of administration policy.”

There was a revolution.

The next president could see oil hit anywhere between $200 to $350/bbl --
I figure the breaking point for folks in my neck of the wood will be around $4.50 a gallon. We will hit the breaking point in May, 2008.

And I live in the second most sprawled urbanity in the US.
We have pathetic public transit, so what will happen next?

We have zero surplus military capacity? What will happen next?

We have an economy with a dollar that is falling like the twin towers.

Only those with the gold are getting parachutes. The oil company executive just gave Americans the finger in front of congress, no less. What will happen next?

The next president will have to decide if they are FDR, or Hoover.

In some places, gas is already beyond 4/gallon. If we go to war with Iran, it will spark a region-wide war.

And that war will require a command economy, and probably a new, non convertable currency. We will use raw materials in trade for what international trade we will be doing.

There is a book called World War Three August 1984. It was written in 76 or so, IIRC, by the Nato Chiefs as a bitch slap to the Soviet Union. In it, they showed that the Soviet client states would not support a nuclear exchange, and that an exchange would have to happen if total theater war went on longer than two weeks, because 20th century conventional war consumed resources at a furious rate, half of our military command school these days is about location and logistics.

A month of theater war in the middle east would collapse the US like a paper cup under a mack truck. We don't have the troops, the carrying power, the fuel, the armaments. We don't even have the refinery capacity. A month after invading Iran, we would be rationing gas like mad, we would be in total war production, but we would not have the infrastructure for the heavy manufacture needed. We could roll out bombers in ww2 because we had industrial capacity fallow from the depression, and a large workforce. Putting a huge number of young workers in uniform helped promote labor.

We have a rust belt where FDR had steel mills.

By the time we rolled up to speed, it would long be over.

the Iranians would retaliate using asymmetrical tactics, such as guerrilla warfare or terrorist-style attacks on American assets from Saudi Arabia to Iraq and perhaps beyond. They would probably begin encouraging Shia militias in the south and center to begin retaliating against American troops, cutting off supply lines to countries like Kuwait which sit on the Gulf. That would be a terrible situation for the troops.

The Gulf would be a warzone. No ship could likely pass through the Hormuz Strait without threat of being sunk by Russian Sunburns sold to the Iranians. That's where the 200 dollars/barrel comes in. All Gulf oil could conceivably be cut off from the rest of the world until the US and Iran call a cease fire or end hostilities entirely.

The Iranians would probably start dropping scuds on Baghdad's Green Zone and operating bases in Gulf States. They'll drop as many as they can until they run out. Mobile scud launchers are difficult to track because they can be moved quickly after firing. They may even attempt to drop scud missiles on Tel Aviv to provoke a "regional world war" between Israel and Arab states or encourage Hezbollah to begin rocketing Israel again from Lebanon.

They'll probably order their agents to put the squeeze on everybody further by blowing up oil pipelines in US-friendly countries like Saudi Arabia, knowing it would kneecap the US economy.

The US Air Force with help from the US Navy could probably destroy Iran's air force and take out its radar defense network and many heavy targets inside Iran within the first several days, but they would not be in a position to deal with asymmetrical warfare like Iran would probably unleash in the region. It would be a mess.

We would likely be forced into a negotiated settlement rather than achieve absolute victory. Otherwise, we destroy ourselves like several European powers at the end of World War One.

But how much will the Islamic world take?
I think we dangerously underestimate the situation.

We rely on the severity of autocrats to keep the crescent bottled up.
But we forget that the autocrats have created the monster to defect anger over their own regimes. We act as though force against their own people makes the Saudis, for example, more stable.

Imagine a revolutionary government like Iran's 1978 one, only roughly covering 1/3rd of the planet.

I have no doubt of it.

someone thought Shock and Awe would bring Iraq to her knees and America would just stand in front of her and receive a continuous blow job as a reward. Bush is so mad that Iraq has a bit of pride and doesn't want to be humiliated by occupation. We are behind the power curve and I don't think we will ever gain the upper hand, again. The only option is to cut our losses and get the hell out now. Hell, we can splash America wins the war across every newspaper and TV channel in the country and as far as most apathetic Americans are concerned we will have won. If we wanted out we'd be out. We are there for the oil companies and that's the only reason. Hence my sig line!

but no political will.

A NATIONAL DRAFT

The only way they can pull it off is if they manage to get Muricans to go down to the recruiters en masse, after a pearl harbor scenario... oh wait, that didn't really happen after 9.11

What am I talking about? (This was told to me by an AF recruiter, who pointed out why I couldn't join... but was amazed that folks who couldn't, including a long retired B-17 pilot, came to volunteer, while the 18 year olds didn't)

I fear the only option left is to greatly reduce our global footprint and military budget.

We will still have nuclear deterrent and a well stocked air force for national defense. We will have a real border security force, and real security efforts. 300 of Reagan's 600 ship navy should be scrapped for new industrial production. That might get us steel enough to remake a steel industry.

And somehow we will have to find a way to have a modern existence using about 30% of our current oil budget. It is gonna be nothing like the future as we mythologized it.