And most importantly, of course, if uppity wimmin Senators and shrill left-wing bloggers would stop giving aid and comfort to The Enemy by asking pesky questions, then the Decider and the Commanders On The Ground could get back to implementing the Plan For Victory (TM).

don't you mean the commanders at the AEI?

What happened to the American can-do spirit?

Kaplan clearly outlines what needs to happen. The problem solvers that we are as a nation, we have the capacity to make all this happen.

I assume that gregor is typing his response from his 120 degree military issue tent in Iraq.

And as my Irish Da used to say "If my grandfather had tits, he'd be my grandmother."

What a waste of pixels.

My own personal term of choice is "pablum-puking, pinko-commie liberal" as an hommage to the late, great Morton Downey, Jr., the underappreciated trailblazer who, despite being cancelled, became the model for all the cable news personalities who followed. May he Rest In Peace.

And if pink and yellow winged monkeys flew out of my ass, I'd be the star of the Ringling Bros./Barnum & Bailey circus.

Who gives a shit what Petraeus thinks or what the terrorists (whoever they are) think of us? GET THE HELL OUT OF IRAQ IMMEDIATELY, STOP WASTING OUR CHILDREN'S TAX DOLLARS AND IMPEACH CHENEY AND BUSH FOR WAR CRIMES!!!

THAT is about the size of it.

You forget the most important "if", the only one that matters in DC: If Iraq isn't any better when we leave, that means we really, really fucked up, big time.

Many thanks to the moderator who showed the door to the troll.

IF the president were more afraid of the political consequences of losing the Iraq war than the political consequences for reinstating the Draft (which would be required to raise enough troops to give us a decent chance of victory) then maybe there'd be a point entertaining these hypotheticals.

Clearly the easiest 'out' for the president is simply to run the clock out so the footage of the troops leaving will fall on another president's watch. And then they'll have as much plausible deniability to blame the loss on Democrats as they did after the Vietnam war.

If we had a competent administration who hadn't lied to the nation every step of the way, from the lies to sell the war to the lies about how we have been continually making progressing and turning one corner after another, and another, and another, and if the administration showed any hint of being capable of admitting mistakes and correcting them... then maybe we wouldn't be in this no-win situation to begin with.

if we had some ham,
we could have ham and eggs.
(if we had some eggs.)

GREEN eggs and ham.

I am waiting for al and egbert to tell us that we are on the road to success in Iraq and predict that total victory is just a year away. Just like before the war when they predicted Iraq would be a peaceful democracy three months after the war ended. Just like they predicted when looting broke out it was only a few dead-enders and would soon be wiped out by our military. Just like they agreed a couple of years ago with the Vice President that the insurgency was in its last throes and would be finished in a few months. Al and egbert, the greatest predictors in history.

My big complaint with this description is that it tends to put too much blame on the Iraqis. Given the sectarian differences in Iraq before the invasion, its authoritarian control, and its weakened state due to 10+ years of sanctions, what can one expect? Just imagine (if you can...I know this is a little far-fetched) if back in the 70's the USSR had invaded the US, taken out the government, failed to provide adequate infrastructure, rigged an election and reduced the US military to roving street gangs, and then hung around for four years shooting up the place, killing civilians in large numbers. Food for thought.

Has Fred Kaplan, as opposed to Robert Kaplan who knows what he is talking about, ever written anything positive about the national security plans of the US? I have not seen any. Why is he an expert ? Why not hire "Scott Thomas" to write the Slate military columns ? Seems pretty much the same POV.

A president should not be able to persist in such folly without annual approval of 2/3 of the House(the Senate is far too unrepresentative). A draft should be required prior to gutting the national guard. Tax cuts should be outlawed during a conflict of a certain magnitude without 3/4 approval of the House. Black, off budget expenditures must be monitored and restricted. America is occupied by the MIC. Military success is, at best, a bonus for this cabal. For them, military action is it's own financial reward.

Well said, Michael.

Robert Kaplan? Of the Delusional Kaplans? The family of morons who keep insisting that the situation in Iraq is getting better. That it was getting better when we had Mission Accomplished? That it was getting better before the 2004 elections? That it was getting better before the 2006 elections? That it is getting better now that the surge has increased the rate of body bags coming back from the meat grinder?

That Robert Kaplan? The know nothing, do nothing,brainless cheerleader for war and death?

Mike K, you are a first class idiot. Try to limit your remarks to something where you can contribute something of value. Perhaps you can illuminate us on the differences in taste in various brands of paste. Or, if (as I suspect) that topic taxes your intellect, you could limit yourself to discussions of how your potty training is going.

…Robert Kaplan who knows what he is talking about…. Mike Kook at 10:22 PM

…In his book Warrior Politics: Why Leadership Demands a Pagan Ethos, published shortly after 9/11, Kaplan offered the opinion that political and business leaders should discard Christian/Jewish morality in public decision-making in favor of a pagan morality focused on the morality of the result rather than the morality of the means. …Kaplan's book Imperial Grunts:The American Military On The Ground, was published in October 2005. … Kaplan predicts that the age of mass infantry warfare is probably over and has said that the conflict in Iraq caught the U.S. Army in between being a "dinosaur" and a "light and lethal force of the future." Kaplan sees large parts of the world where the US military is operating as "injun country" which must be civilized by the same methods used to subdue the American Frontier in the 1800s. At one point he observes a Filipino and says that: "His smiling, naïve eyes cried out for what we in the West call colonialism." He also praises the revival of Confederate military virtue in the US armed forces… suggests the inevitability of war between the US and China…..

This is nothing more that standard right wing jingoism. Saying the ends justify the means and people are begging to be ruled by imperialists is idiotic and in complete ignorance of reality.

Kaplan wrote:

"The deals with the Sunni sheiks are explicitly opportunistic. Assuming that the alliances of convenience whip the jihadists, there is nothing preventing the Sunnis and Shiites (and Americans) from going back to killing one another."
______________________

The practical idea (and human hope) is that cooperation can even temporarily stop most of the violence in an area or city and will lead to more cooperation in the future. A few weeks of blessed peace might work wonders. Perhaps the Missus remarks how much more safe she feels, the kids become less tense and withdrawn, and Abdul takes a chance on that job he was wishing he had instead of ducking Predators and Strykers and knowing that for every American who dies, on average about fourteen guys like him don't come home. A few weeks, a few months of improving commerce, a chance to breathe, to simply have a tea with friends without the fear that any car might wipe them all out.

Just as our own soldiers feel the strain of combat, so too do insurgents and militias. In part, that's how insurgencies are eventually defeated. Not by climactic battle, but by the slow wearing away of the will to keep killing and replacing it with something more.

What's to prevent everyone from going back to killing each other? Nothing but the realization that they don't actually have to go back to killing. That they might have a future, after all.

Pray to God it works, but it takes time and patience and the willingness to accept setbacks. We might not have enough time, nor patience, nor willingness.

Pray to God it works, but it takes time and patience and the willingness to accept setbacks. We might not have enough time, nor patience, nor willingness.

It is simply logistically unsustainable. And with recruiting and retention numbers like the Army is experiencing we will be severely limited for the next three decades. We are facing a more uncertain future with a military far more compromised than it was after Vietnam.

Well, we can handle it from the pure logistics viewpoint, Blue Girl, meaning beans and bullets and the like. Manpower might be another thing, especially among the young, but experienced, 11B sergeants. I keep hearing from returning officers that retention in deployed units is good, but overall, we're in that annual recruiting slump that we've seen for the last few years. My nephew, Josh, is getting out to go to college and he's just the kind of soldier we need to stay in - experienced, conscientious, smart.
I must say, however, that I'll be relieved to see him home.

It won't take three decades to recover. As a young officer, I experienced the wreckage of the post-Vietnam era and we were in much worse shape back then. Remember, in the mid-70s, we were drawing down from a hugely more numerous military, one in which the Air Force had more manpower than the Army does today.

We aren't facing many of the problems we had back then - drugs, a transition from conscription, a truly ruthless downsizing. And, so far, the military doesn't have the enervating feeling of failure that we had in 1973. There's nothing fundamentally wrong with our military that a good dose of peace won't cure. Things can always get worse, of course.

I said logistics when I meant manpower. Can't get anything past you.:)

Hubby was enlisted '75-81, then bootstrapped 81-83 (the first time he laid eyes on me I was rappelling down the face of the student union) and was a junior officer the remainder of the 80's. I didn't know jack squat about the Air Force before we got together. (Hell, I didn't know anything about the Army pre-ROTC - and the medical corps is a whole 'nuther animal. Hardly counts.) You wanna talk about carrier groups, hell that was dinner conversation when I was growing up, and admittedly this whole land thing has been a learning experience, but I'm a quick study.

I've been spending a lot of time reading Lucian Truscott, and materiel assessments. And Steven Metz, of course.

As to the drug abuse, it's back and it is worse than the stoners of the 70's and 80's. It is meth, and it is brutal. Our local press in these parts have covered it some. It's only going to get worse with the number of waivered troops going in. We are recruiting gang members. Just what we need - trained amoral dirtbags.

We have severe problems, and yeah, a good dose of peace will go a long ways toward ameliorating the ills. But I disagree that we are not facing a two decade process. I think we most certainly are. 4K army officer billets, unfilled. Captains and Staff Sergeants exiting in droves. Can't run a military that way for long. I read recently that 97% of Captains are being promoted to Major. Traditionally that is the cutting off point, and about 30% didn't go up so they went out. When he read that he shook his head and said "Damn. Clusters are cheap these days."

If democracy could be rammed down people's throats at the point of a gun AND if the engendering of democracy were the actual end being sought by the person directing the ramming-down (instead of oil concessions) then 10-20 years might do it. As a counterbalance to such optimism, note that Turkey is wobbling on the westernization of their politics. Take heed.

Has Fred Kaplan,... ever written anything positive about the national security plans of the US?

With Bush in office, there is nothing positive about the national security plans of the US.

Who the fuck is Scott Thomas and why are all the pathetic, disgusting trolls referencing him today? Did I miss the meme?

Middle East Sports are Complicated
.
I've been trying to imagine the Iraq situation as a football game.
Start with Shia on one side of the ball and Sunnis on the other. The Yanks are the Officials.
Embedded in both side are criminal elements who from time to time shoot somebody in the huddle or kidnap a prominent son or daughter, demanding a first down as payment.
Also playing are a few forein Jihadists who plant explosives in the football just when one side appears poised to score. They, to date, have been so efficient that the goal line areas have all but disappeared.
The field is surrounded by US tanks because the stands empty in violent protest after close calls bring cries of favoritism. For cheers, “Satan’s Lackeys� and “Give us back our Oil� seem to be crowd favorites.
The Mullahs, of course, declared a fatwa regarding the use of pigskin which was particularly dicey but had the cheering side effect of seeing all participants line up on the same side for a mercurial moment.
The Mullahs also pointed out that the “Hail Mary� pass was forbidden eleven centuries prior to the invention of the game of football which speaks volumes about the locals’ concept of time.
The part of the game that is most dispiriting however are the cheerleaders. First of all there are one hundred and six different cheerleader contingents representing each of the religious, familial and tribal loyalties with feuding interests. Then there's the fact that the pulchritudinous Iraqi lasses are covered head to toe in black which gives one the sense of how oxy-islamic the whole concept of organized competition here truly is.
The fact that the stands keep disintegrating, which requires additional kickbacks to Halliburton and KBR, who somehow have all the concessions, doesn’t help in the slightest.
Well, to quote Rummy, “it's complicated.�
To quote John Madden, "Geez, they play for keeps here."
--craig johnson--
(orig. Nov. 2006)

….In part, that's how insurgencies are eventually defeated… by the slow wearing away of the will to keep killing…. ….trashhauler at 11:55 PM

Good one, cognitorex. You might also add that the Yank officials are threatening to unionize, and are about to be fired by the owners who want to change the rules...

trashhauler:

"The practical idea (and human hope) is that cooperation can even temporarily stop most of the violence in an area or city and will lead to more cooperation in the future."

Let me ask you the same question I asked al and egbert above, namely how accurate have your predictions about Iraq been in the past?

As to your theory about peace becoming permanent, if that was true then the first time peace broke out ten thousand years ago, it would have been permanent. More specifically with respect to Iraq, the deepest problem is that decades, even centuries, of hostility between them have lead to very deep-rooted mistrust.

….it won't take three decades to recover. … I experienced the wreckage of the post-Vietnam era and we were in much worse shape back then. …. so far, the military doesn't have the enervating feeling of failure that we had in 1973…trashhauler at 1:43 AM

That is why the US military cannot succeed with its current mission: in a population of 300,000,000 there are not enough volunteers to provide the manpower. Perhaps the current military establishment will realize that, perhaps not; but it is obvious that Rumsfeld/Cheney/Bush never did. If leaders and the army itself realize the new dynamic, they, too, will realize that failure is not only possible, it is the only possible result of long-term occupations.

Mike, There is another reason why the idea of the draft is frowned upon-labor economics. I think that most economists would tell you that drafting a lot of people is bad because you pull people out of the civilian economy with skills that would not be properly utilized. This assumes a relatively low unemployment rate. The situation changes considerably when the unemployment rate is high enough-that would make a draft favorable since you wouldn't need to give people "signing bonuses", etc, to get them to join, skilled people would be looking for work anyway, and you would need the demand stimulus. If the next recession gets particularly nasty-kind of like '81-'82 (my bet), a big draft probably wouldn't be inflationary at all. Uh oh...