[Rhodes22-list] Politics - Comparison and Contrast

[stan]

thanks Brad,

No matter which editorials you endorse, the factual issue is that the leader 
of our armed forces landed on a carrier under the banner, "mission 
accomplished" and has since been proven to have been deadly wrong.  Many of 
us do not feel we should be paying this CEO for this level of quality work 
that can only be described as on par with Enron management with their claim 
that as head of Enron they did not know what was really happening.  With all 
the good brains available in this country, the standard the American people 
are getting acclimated to is depressing.  Congress was willing to talk 
impeachment of Clinton for lying and sex.  Why no talk of impeachment for 
Bush for lying and murder.  Of course, with the handling of the war based on 
wishes like "mission accomplished" and "shock and awe", instead of an 
understanding of the underlying facts, an  impeachment proceeding should be 
based on competence required for such an awesome position.

stan/EC

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "brad haslett" <flybrad at yahoo.com>
To: <rhodes22-list at rhodes22.org>
Sent: Wednesday, June 15, 2005 9:22 AM
Subject: [Rhodes22-list] Politics - Comparison and Contrast


> Here's a good excercise in comparison and contrast
> (for those of you who have the time).  If only we had
> a competing newspaper in Memphis.  Brad
> -----------------
>
> ROLLIN' ON THE RIVERS
>
> By MACKUBIN T. OWENS
>
> MAY was a costly month in Iraq: 700 Iraqis and some 80
> Americans died, making it one of the bloodiest months
> of the war. While bombings in Baghdad decreased over
> the last two weeks as the result of a major sweep by
> some 40,000 Iraqi soldiers and policemen, backed up by
> 10,000 troops (Operation Lightning/Operation Thunder),
> insurgent attacks against Iraqi civilians and police
> have resumed.
>
> The continuing attacks have generated the usual sort
> of stories in the U.S. press: America is mired in a
> Vietnam-style quagmire. Thus a recent Boston Globe
> report began by claiming: "Military operations in Iraq
> have not succeeded in weakening the insurgency."
>
> But the Globe is wrong. Coalition operations in Iraq
> have killed hundreds of insurgents and led to the
> capture of many hundreds more, including two dozen of
> Abu Musab al-Zarqawi's top lieutenants. Intelligence
> from captured insurgents, as well as from Zarqawi's
> computer, has had a cascading effect, permitting the
> Coalition to maintain pressure on the insurgency.
>
> Vice President Dick Cheney's recent claim that the
> insurgency was in its "last throes," however, was
> clearly an overstatement. But while the outcome in
> Iraq is far from certain - and even a favorable one
> won't come overnight - evidence suggests the United
> States and the new Iraqi government are on the right
> track to ultimate success. To understand why, it is
> necessary to grasp the essentials of the current U.S.
> strategy in Iraq and how it seems to be playing out.
>
> The Globe's problem, one shared by most of the
> American press, is the tendency to see events in Iraq
> as isolated. They fail to see the overall campaign: a
> series of coordinated events - movements, battles and
> supporting operations - designed to achieve strategic
> or operational objectives within a military theater.
>
> No force, conventional or guerrilla, can continue to
> fight if it is deprived of sanctuary and logistics
> support. Accordingly, the central goal of the U.S.
> strategy in Iraq is to destroy the insurgency by
> depriving it of its base in the Sunni Triangle and its
> "ratlines" - the infiltration routes that run from the
> Syrian border into the heart of Iraq.
>
> One ratline follows the Euphrates River corridor -
> running from Syria to Husayba on the Syrian border and
> then through Qaim, Rawa, Haditha, Asad, Hit and
> Fallujah to Baghdad. The other follows the course of
> the Tigris - from the north through Mosul-Tel Afar to
> Tikrit and on to Baghdad. These two "river corridors"
> constitute the main spatial elements of a campaign to
> implement U.S. strategy.
>
> This campaign began last November with the takedown of
> Fallujah.
>
> Wresting Fallujah from the rebels was critically
> important: Control of the town had given them the
> infrastructure - human and physical - necessary to
> maintain a high tempo of attacks against the Iraqi
> government and coalition forces.
>
> In and of itself, the loss of Fallujah didn't cause
> the insurgency to collapse, but it did deprive the
> rebels of an indispensable sanctuary. Absent such a
> sanctuary, large terrorist networks cannot easily
> survive, being reduced to small, hunted bands.
>
> With Fallujah captured, the Coalition continued a high
> tempo of offensive operations. After losing the city,
> Zarqawi apparently tried to reconstitute the
> insurgency in Mosul, but was unable to do so because
> of continued U.S. pressure. In Mosul as in Fallujah,
> Coalition forces killed and captured insurgents -
> forcing Zarqawi to move west into Al Anbar province.
> In March, an Iraqi special operations unit captured an
> insurgent camp near Lake Tharthar on the border of
> Anbar and Salaheddin provinces. Such operations forced
> him back to positions along the Syrian border.
>
> Next came the rivers campaign - to destroy the
> insurgent infrastructure west and northwest of
> Fallujah, and so shut down those "ratlines" - which
> continues apace.
>
> May saw four operations within that campaign:
>
> * The first, Operation Matador, was a week-long Marine
> action centered on Qaim, near the Syrian border.
> Matador sought to kill and capture followers of
> Zarqawi known to be located there and to interdict the
> smuggling routes they used to move downriver to
> Baghdad. Some 125 insurgents died in the fighting.
>
> * Next came Operation New Market, another Marine
> operation, in the Haditha area southeast of Qaim.
> Here, a major highway from Syria crosses the Euphrates
> and then branches north toward Mosul and southeast
> toward Fallujah and Baghdad. While the insurgents did
> not stand and fight as they had in Qaim, the operation
> still netted substantial intelligence.
>
> * The third was a joint U.S.-Iraqi operation in the
> Mosul-Tel Afar region that contains the Tigris River
> ratline.
>
> * The fourth operation of this campaign was the
> aforementioned Lightning/Thunder in Baghdad itself,
> which led to the capture of a former general in
> Saddam's intelligence service, who (according to the
> U.S. military) led "the military wings of several
> terror cells" operating in west Baghdad. Hundreds of
> other insurgents were captured as well.
>
> The rapid tempo of Coalition operations will likely
> continue. Indeed, as U.S. and Iraqi forces shut down
> these ratlines, the insurgency will likely fall back
> on its "strategic rear" in Syria. Thus, "hot pursuit"
> into Syria may soon become an issue.
>
> The U.S. strategy in Iraq is limited by a number of
> factors: the U.S. forces available, Iraqi politics and
> the time it is taking to create a competent Iraqi
> military. But the ongoing river campaign indicates
> that America has chosen to go on the offensive, taking
> advantage of the success in Fallujah to deny the
> insurgents respite. The high operational tempo is
> intended to rapidly degrade the rebels' lines of
> communication at both ends of the two river corridors,
> while killing and capturing as many of the enemy as
> possible.
>
> But while military operations have weakened the
> insurgency, military means alone cannot defeat an
> insurgency. That is why it is necessary to bring the
> Sunnis into the government. Recent evidence suggests
> that the steps so far have already begun to drive a
> wedge between the Sunni and the foreign jihadis who
> have come to fight for Zarqawi.
>
> Indeed, one of the reasons U.S. forces have been able
> to go on the offensive - despite the fact that U.S.
> troop strength is actually lower than it was earlier
> this year - is an improvement in actionable
> intelligence. Some of this is coming from captured
> insurgents. But much of it is coming from Sunnis who
> realize that their best chance for a future requires
> them to choose the new Iraqi government and reject the
> jihadis.
>
> If current trends can be sustained, Zarqawi and his
> jihadi murderers will soon run out of time and space.
>
> Mackubin Thomas Owens is a professor of national
> security affairs at the Naval War College in Newport,
> R.I.
>
> NEW YORK POST is a registered trademark of NYP
> Holdings, Inc. NYPOST.COM, NYPOSTONLINE.COM, and
> NEWYORKPOST.COM
> are trademarks of NYP Holdings, Inc.
> Copyright 2005 NYP Holdings, Inc. All rights reserved.
>
>
> ----------------------
>
>
>
> June 15, 2005
> Let's Talk About Iraq
> By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN
> Ever since Iraq's remarkable election, the country has
> been descending deeper and deeper into violence. But
> no one in Washington wants to talk about it.
> Conservatives don't want to talk about it because,
> with a few exceptions, they think their job is just to
> applaud whatever the Bush team does. Liberals don't
> want to talk about Iraq because, with a few
> exceptions, they thought the war was wrong and deep
> down don't want the Bush team to succeed. As a result,
> Iraq is drifting sideways and the whole burden is
> being carried by our military. The rest of the country
> has gone shopping, which seems to suit Karl Rove just
> fine.
>
> Well, we need to talk about Iraq. This is no time to
> give up - this is still winnable - but it is time to
> ask: What is our strategy? This question is urgent
> because Iraq is inching toward a dangerous tipping
> point - the point where the key communities begin to
> invest more energy in preparing their own militias for
> a scramble for power - when everything falls apart,
> rather than investing their energies in making the
> hard compromises within and between their communities
> to build a unified, democratizing Iraq.
>
> Our core problem in Iraq remains Donald Rumsfeld's
> disastrous decision - endorsed by President Bush - to
> invade Iraq on the cheap. From the day the looting
> started, it has been obvious that we did not have
> enough troops there. We have never fully controlled
> the terrain. Almost every problem we face in Iraq
> today - the rise of ethnic militias, the weakness of
> the economy, the shortages of gas and electricity, the
> kidnappings, the flight of middle-class professionals
> - flows from not having gone into Iraq with the Powell
> Doctrine of overwhelming force.
>
> Yes, yes, I know we are training Iraqi soldiers by the
> battalions, but I don't think this is the key. Who is
> training the insurgent-fascists? Nobody. And yet they
> are doing daily damage to U.S. and Iraqi forces.
> Training is overrated, in my book. Where you have
> motivated officers and soldiers, you have an army
> punching above its weight. Where you don't have
> motivated officers and soldiers, you have an army
> punching a clock.
>
> Where do you get motivated officers and soldiers? That
> can come only from an Iraqi leader and government that
> are seen as representing all the country's main
> factions. So far the Iraqi political class has been a
> disappointment. The Kurds have been great. But the
> Sunni leaders have been shortsighted at best and
> malicious at worst, fantasizing that they are going to
> make a comeback to power through terror. As for the
> Shiites, their spiritual leader, Ayatollah Ali
> al-Sistani, has been a positive force on the religious
> side, but he has no political analog. No Shiite Hamid
> Karzai has emerged.
>
> "We have no galvanizing figure right now," observed
> Kanan Makiya, the Iraqi historian who heads the Iraq
> Memory Foundation. "Sistani's counterpart on the
> democratic front has not emerged. Certainly, the
> Americans made many mistakes, but at this stage less
> and less can be blamed on them. The burden is on
> Iraqis. And we still have not risen to the magnitude
> of the opportunity before us."
>
> I still don't know if a self-sustaining, united and
> democratizing Iraq is possible. I still believe it is
> a vital U.S. interest to find out. But the only way to
> find out is to create a secure environment. It is very
> hard for moderate, unifying, national leaders to
> emerge in a cauldron of violence.
>
> Maybe it is too late, but before we give up on Iraq,
> why not actually try to do it right? Double the
> American boots on the ground and redouble the
> diplomatic effort to bring in those Sunnis who want to
> be part of the process and fight to the death those
> who don't. As Stanford's Larry Diamond, author of an
> important new book on the Iraq war, "Squandered
> Victory," puts it, we need "a bold mobilizing
> strategy" right now. That means the new Iraqi
> government, the U.S. and the U.N. teaming up to widen
> the political arena in Iraq, energizing the
> constitution-writing process and developing a
> communications-diplomatic strategy that puts our
> bloodthirsty enemies on the defensive rather than us.
> The Bush team has been weak in all these areas. For
> weeks now, we haven't even had ambassadors in Iraq,
> Afghanistan or Jordan.
>
> We've already paid a huge price for the Rumsfeld
> Doctrine - "Just enough troops to lose." Calling for
> more troops now, I know, is the last thing anyone
> wants to hear. But we are fooling ourselves to think
> that a decent, normal, forward-looking Iraqi politics
> or army is going to emerge from a totally insecure
> environment, where you can feel safe only with your
> own tribe.
>
>
>
> Copyright 2005 The New York Times Company Home Privacy
> Policy Search Corrections XML Help Contact Us Work for
> Us Back to Top
>
>
>
>
>
> __________________________________
> Discover Yahoo!
> Find restaurants, movies, travel and more fun for the weekend. Check it 
> out!
> http://discover.yahoo.com/weekend.html
>
> __________________________________________________
> Use Rhodes22-list at rhodes22.org, Help? www.rhodes22.org/list
>