political foo

[alpharaposa]

aefenglommung has summed up the war in Iraq and its ramifications excellently. I fully agree, so I'm linking to it.

Basic support for our side to win shouldn't be political, but it is these days.

Comments

[silussa.livejournal.com]

Sad to say, the political part comes (at least to an extent) from screwing up how we went into Iraq. It seems the current Administration forgot a basic in military lessons in the modern era - it takes a lot more to hold ground then to take it, and primarily infantry, not armor and aircraft.

If we're going to win in Iraq, then we're going to need a LOT more RELIABLE forces.

[stryck.livejournal.com]

You should tell that to those who keep saying we should leave, then. For some reason, there are quite a lot of politicians either saying we shouldn't be there anymore, or that it's okay to make plans, but that those plans will then go unfunded.

It's terrible, irresponsible behavior. If the need is for more troops, then to threaten to unfund those troops, or to come up with some "we don't really approve of this plan but we're not going to do anything else about it" resolution is morally corrupt politics at its worst.

[silussa.livejournal.com]

If the Democrats try to unfund the troops currently there, I guarantee there won't be enough left after the next election to fill two adjacent booths in a Denny's.

But I don't think anyone wants to consider the ramifications of another 100,000-150,000 troops, either, which is what the counterinsurgency manual calls for. (interestingly enough, the Marines wrote the basic book on counterinsurgency....we just ignored it in Vietnam)