Iraq War Analysis [May. 24th, 2007|05:36 pm] tungsten I know I'm preaching to the choir, I'm actually writing this down more for myself in the future, and for myself now because I have actually thought this all through and want to have it written down.



Let me preface this by stating that I disagree with George W. Bush on most things (not really a surprise to anyone - though I do almost agree with him on immigration issues).



On to the war.

How to Win or Lose the War in Iraq:

We keep hearing political spin that blah blah blah blah blah will be to surrender or lose the war. In order to surrender you must have someone you're surrendering to, and as long as we're in Iraq nobody will talk to anyone else so there really isn't anyone to surrender to. To lose the war you have to have a mission that is not achieved.



But lets take a look at this argument anyway. I'm sure some would say we would be surrendering to Al Qaida. This on its face looks like a good argument, except for the facts. Without us there Al Qaida doesn't have a mission in Iraq other than to be a pain in the ass, and that isn't a mission. Certainly they would like a friendly regime in Iraq and have shown tenacity when Iraq is in chaos (Zarqawi was in Iraq as an independent agent of AQ prior to the war - we refused to attack him so that we could help justify the war; though not the lives he would take later) but their base of support is exclusively Sunni and they're opposed to the Kurdish governments in Iraq's north. So that leaves them a consituency of 15 - 20% of the population and of those people the vast majority have no love for Al Qaida. Currently they have the luxury of American troops and because we're an occupier they can rally Iraqi's. Because most of the region see's as for occupiers Al Qaida is able to bring in $$$ via their Iraq operation. Without us there Al Qaida in Iraq would clearly be in collapse. Their funding (which is also being exported to other Al Qaida causes) would be cut off and their agents already marginalized would be in trouble with the locals. So if we left it would clearly not benefit Al Qaida; unless we blundered our exit too by say playing the political expectations game in a way to make our leaving look like a victory for them. Who or what else could we surrender to? We could be surrendering to the general chaos. We created that chaos by destroying the countries infrastructure for 10 years then invading and destroying their civil society, creating a new political structure based on religion and ethnicity, and maintaining an occupation with no promise of end. There is a civil war going on, and if we left it looks as though we would be surrendering to it. On the other hand if we stay and maintain the same course Iraq will most certainly continue in Civil War. So our continued being there doesn't seem to have any effect on the chaos.



Now lets take a look at Losing the war. In order to Lose you have to have not achieved your objective. What is our objective? There were no weapons of mass destruction, we knew that going in. We achieved the goal of removing Saddam Hussein from power. We even set up a democratic republic with a constitution and government. Is the mission to leave a stable Iraq? If so one of the best things we could do is get out of the way and force them to deal with their problems. Is our goal a stable Middle East? Well, we're far too late for that. There is the fear that if we left Iraq the civil war there could escalate and their neighbors could all be sucked into it. Its easy to foresee the possibility of Turkish/IraqiKurdistan troubles. We know Al Qaida in Iraq has strong support in Saudi Arabia, Jordan, and Syria for attacking the occupiers. We also know that Syria, Jordan, and Saudi Arabia are sunni arab countries and Iran is a predominately shia non arab country with close ties to southern Iraq. None of them want to be drawn into a covert regional war. If we leave they all have to talk to each other.... Diplomacy. The probability of a larger regional war while real is very slight. Syria and Iran have more in common than their distrust of the US (after all we invaded a country "pre-emptively" after blatantly lying about them for years and rejecting peace, you wouldn't trust us either if you weren't us, and you may not anyway). The truth is we don't have a mission in Iraq. Leaving wouldn't lose because we have no definition of what "losing" is. If we were to end our occupation we would leave troops along the border to help secure the border (something we haven't been able to do during the occupation) and we would likely be asked to stay in Iraq Kurdistan because the Kurds realize they're stuck between a rock (Iran, Turkey, and Syria don't want an indpendent Kurdistan as it may give hope to the indigenous Kurds in their countries) and a hard place (Iraq's arabs and the distrust created amongst these groups by Saddam's efforts to ensure that the arab population controlled the oil in the Kurdish area of the country). They're the only portion of the country that wants and needs us there, and even so it would most likely be for the border. Actually this vision of withdrawal and redeployment is pretty much the same as representative Murtha and most (though not all) congressional Democrats.



So pretty much the only way to lose the war in Iraq is to maintain the war in Iraq.



But what about us? What would ending the war as we know it do for us? Well it would mean most of our troops would be able to come home, we would save billions of $$$, we would win a battle with Al Qaida, we would help stabalize the region, we would cut off a good deal of the impetus behind Iran's seeking the Nuclear weapons, we could lower the cost of petroleum, we could have the National Guard around to respond to domestic emergencies, and we could close off the spigot of money going to Haliburton of Dubai's price+ contracts that encourage waste (thats where they're based now).



So pretty much ending the war in Iraq is a win, win, win, win situation. We win, the region win's, the Iraqi's win, and the world wins. Next time someone says that leaving Iraq would be a surrender or a loss ask them what their definition of loss is or who they think we'd be surrendering to.