Options in Iraq
Hey guys: I wrote this one up tonight as a sample piece for UNF's student newspaper, The Spinnaker. It wasn't supposed to have my own ideas, just analisys. I think it's dry. I had to keep it around 400 words, so I never drew a final conclusion.
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Though many lament that we are in Iraq at all facing the difficulties that we are, wisdom would urge us to make the best of the situation. Sun-Tsu argues that the only way to win on the battlefield is to know both yourself and the enemy. Bush wants Iraq to become stabilized enough for reconstruction to begin and Iraqi’s to feel say enough to have a pluralistic government, so that troops might return as quickly as possible. The enemy, and there are many, are seeking to keep reconstruction workers and money out, shake the ethnic and religious fault lines running through the country, all of which would lead to a hopefully “Vietnam-ize” Iraq and get America out.
To confront the challenges the multi-faced resistance is putting out, we must adjust our tactics to neutralize their strategy. Realizing that the current tactics are not working, Bush has finally begun opening doors to new options. There are two primary options on the table, each carrying their own distinctive advantages and disadvantages.
The option Bush favors most is the Afghanistan model, which has faced growing criticism of late. The plan involves retraining a large Iraqi police force in how to work in a pluralistic and open society capable of taking on the security needs of protecting Iraqi citizens and infrastructure. Doing this would allow us to withdraw troops from police duties and keep them relatively unseen from the Iraqi public but still stay strong enough to crush any organized threats inside and outside of the country. It would also allow Iraqi’s to feel “liberated” and self-governed and not invaded and occupied. The inherent disadvantage is that it will be prone to infiltration by collaborators to the resistance who wish to destroy the very infrastructure they are meant to be protecting, which likely helped by the Najaf bombers who killed al-Hakim and the UN bombers; it also seems to be coming quite a bit late in the game.
The second option Bush has begun considering is gathering more troops under the banner of the UN. India, Russia, and Turkey have all signaled that they might be willing to send in substantial numbers of infantry and money to Iraq, even to places within the “Sunni Triangle” to help pacify the nation and protect infrastructure. Multi-lateral military cooperation will only mean different foreigners patrolling Iraqi streets in different foreign tanks, which doesn’t resolve the humiliating issue of having foreign armies occupying your nation in the first place. Additionally, the diplomatic concessions that must be made behind closed doors before Security Council meetings might alone make the endeavor too costly.
Tags:Treyopia Spinnaker Current Events Iraq
