Amen to that. My first wish for the new Administration is to arrest Bush, Cheney and the rest on charges of fraud and perjury (material witness warrants can allow you to keep them indefinitely).
Sounds about right.
When 'The Surge (TM)' comes to an end, what then? More of the same aimlessness I would hazard, with a country unable to function and apparently dependent on the US............. FOR EVAH!!!!!
Nope.
Worst case is that they kick us out. Which they can do anytime the Shia decide to throw in with the Sunni insurgents. Right now, we're useful fools, because we've enabled the Shia to gain control of Baghdad and what is left of the central government.
That can end at any time. It WILL end when we either invade Iran or start bombing the living hell out of it, which Cheney's wing of the government is salivating to do.
The United States occupation of Iraq is living on borrowed time.
Man.
I commented on counter-insurgency tactics and methods when Steve (RIP) was alive.
And you know what?
The tactics and methods do not change; they haven't since XIX Century.
You need intelligence on who is shooting you. For that, you need soldiers and administrators who speak the language, but more, you need people who are experts in the region and the country, preferably who were living in country for a decade or so.
You need an efficient administration who help out the local populace that is not hostile to you or at least refrains from shooting you. Build hospitals, wells, treat the sick kids for free, build good will.
You need a ruthless occupying army, putting into practice that dreadful word called PACIFICATION, which is army (every army in the world) code word for rolling up your sleeves, going into a village and putting all the men (sometimes the women and children too) against the wall and shooting them; then burning the village to the ground.
The combination of these tactics wins a counter insurgency war.
The degree of which each tactic is emphasized over the other depends on local conditions and your military and administrator know how, wisdom and professional skills.
What do we have in Iraq?
We have soldiers whose job it is to drive a humvee back and forth on a road escorting trucks carrying ice cream, fruit juice and Haliburton et al profits.
You have soldiers kicking in doors and intimidating women and children in houses for no apparent reason. Perhaps once you do that, soldier, you should shoot at least the man of the house - that way the Iraqis will be scared of you instead of just being bewildered and bemused.
And the hearts and minds?
The war was lost not when the idiotic Bremer, who really represents the best America has to offer in career diplomats (you get to be a diplomat by graft, corruption and ass kissing); no, the war was lost when, after "liberation", American soldiers did NOT demolish Abu Ghraib, the prison where Saddam's thugs tortured men, women and children, but instead started to use said building complex, for the same reasons - imprison and torture of Iraqis.
THAT was the moment the war was lost.
After that, no amount of hearts and minds, hospital and school building, "surges", kicking down doors will work.
After Abu Ghraib, the only way to win Iraq is to turn on pacification, with whole villages going up in smoke and scores of dead women and children.
And despite US military using an incredible tonnage of bombs on any urban area or village where shots were fired at American soldiers (or thought or heard they were fired) (this is a dirty little secret of Iraq War now - the USAirForce bombing of civilians 100 times more than Israel was doing in Lebanon with 100 times more casualties), the USA is ultimately too squeamish to pull that off.
Sobering conclusion - no matter what we do, the war is already and irrevocably lost. Unless we want the USArmy to complete its transformation and turn into the Waffen-SS.
Stormcrow:
Do you have any thoughts on the likelihood of an attack on Iran? My own evaluation is that there's a pretty good chance it won't happen because there are a lot of people in the elite who realize what a total disaster it would be, and they seem to be making their voices heard in our normally acquiescent mainstream media. As a very small example, CNN last week had poll asking the website's readers if they thought Pres. Bush was "stirring up Iranophobia". What that rather leading question sounded like to my ears was, "Don't you think Pres. Bush is being a war-mongering putznozzle who needs to shut the fuck up?" (70% said yes.) Not to place too much importance in this one unscientific poll on a website, but I thought it was kind of funny in a heartening sort of way. 
Loveandlight - Well, for what it's worth, I think the odds of an attack on Iran went way, way down when the NIE was published. Not only did that contradict seven years of calculated demonization of Iran, but it also signaled that the intelligence services aren't going to cherry-pick and forge on order the way they used to do.
Of course, as we just saw, the Navy is still fully capable of lying on command from the White House. But the ducks are no longer in a neat row.
americangoy - Nice. I wish I had written that.
Except that it seems to me that the basics of counter-insurgency have been pretty much the same for millenia. Because that is the same combination of effective local intel, utter military ruthlessness, and administrative competence that made the Romans masters of the entire Mediterranean basin.
When they were on their game, that is. They weren't always.
Adrianople was the direct result of botched administration, followed by a serious military mistake. So that sort of failure can be VERY costly.
If this country did attempt "pacification", not only would we face far more terrorist attacks [or maybe COUNTER-attacks would be a better term after "pacification"], but also the rest of the world might decide WE were now the rogue state and find some way to pull the plug on our economy. Of course, all economies are interconnected these days and they would be hurt too, but they might decide that was the lesser evil.
The Germans practiced 'pacification' in Belgium during the 1914-1918 war, including the shooting of hostages and the destruction of villages (including the destruction of the great library at Louvain), and all it did was further inflame the franc-tireurs.
Our institutions don't learn, it seems.
"americangoy - Nice. I wish I had written that. "
That makes me feel all gooey inside...
I was so proud of that train of thought I had to use it on my POS...
Continuing the discussion here:
"Except that it seems to me that the basics of counter-insurgency have been pretty much the same for millenia. Because that is the same combination of effective local intel, utter military ruthlessness, and administrative competence that made the Romans masters of the entire Mediterranean basin."
True... but... well true actually, no buts...but
In XIX Century, the golden age of imperialism, the modern armies had such an edge on firepower and training over their native adversaries, when the concept of pacification was perfected. The Romans concept was slightly different - they didn't massacre a village, they did it to whole cities or regions even, selling ALL men (and women and children) into slavery. Even the British and French in XIX would balk at that.
And re: the wanderer - we are not doing classic pacification.
What we are doing in Iraq is its more "clean" cousin: bombing the hell out of Iraq wherever we think there is trouble.
Steve wrote about RAF in Iraq pre WW2, we are doing that with a vengeance now.
American Goy, true enough. We're doing what the British did when they tried to pacify Iraq in the 1920s - use air power as artillery to economize on actually deploying infantry.
Goering had the same idea of using bombers, provided that the USSR capitulated first (source: Shirer, "Rise and Fall of the Third Reich").
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