A lot of things have gone horribly wrong in Iraq. In many ways it can be justifiably considered a disaster. But if you compare it to similar invasions and occupations of other countries, the US military has been doing a pretty good job.
For comparison’s sake, look at how Russia as been doing in Chechnya. As The Telegraph reports….
In an attempt to stem the steady trickle of Russian casualties, 11,000 of whom are estimated to have died since the second Chechen war erupted in 1999, Mr Putin has made Yamadayev his main battlefield commander.
In other words, the Russian’s have lost 11,000 men in a country that is far smaller then Iraq and they still have not ended the insurgency. I do not mean to pick on the Russian’s here. I don’t think you can point to an insurgency anywhere in the world that looks pretty or has been fought clean. And if the insurgency’s have any kind of popular support, they are never ended quickly.
I bring this up because I hear a lot of commentators saying “if only this had been done (fill in the blank here) things would be so much better.” I don’t think any of them know what they are talking about.
The blunt facts are that Sunnis don’t want to cede power the Shiites. No matter how many troops were on the ground, you would not change this basic fact. At the most, the US would have done a little better job at keeping the lid on things. But as soon as you started drawing down your forces the fight would have flared up just like they had never been there.
In the long run, I think this would have happened even if the US had never invaded. The really bad thing about successful dictators like Saddam Hussein and Josip Broz Tito is that they bottle things up. Thus, the pressure builds…..
But regardless of any theories about how history would have turned out, I think that by any fair comparison the US military is doing a good job fighting the insurgency. It is just that insurgencies are nasty things to fight. No one really knows how to win them short of genocide.
[…] _uacct = “UA-1202685-1”; urchinTracker(); Map of the Ethereal Land The Ethereal Voice Front Page – Politics – Money – Knowledge – Art – Food – Fun Masthead About As wars of occupation go, Iraq is going pretty well…. By Ape Man | March 27, 2007 – 6:52 pm Posted in Category: Politics A lot of things have gone horribly wrong in Iraq. In many ways it can be justifiably considered a disaster. But if you compare it to similar invasions and occupations of other countries, the US military has been doing a pretty good job. For comparison’s sake, look at how Russia as been doing in Chechnya. Click Here to continue reading. […]