"Kevin Brooks" wrote in message
...
If you can't afford to do it right, maybe you should consider not doing
it
at all. Especially in a case where doing it wrong can have disastrous
consequences. With (admittedly) 20/20 hindsight, can you honestly say we
are better off now than if we had never invaded?

Well, that depends upon how you look at it. We have an endgame at least in
sight, versus the neverending flyswatting that was going on before. We do,
however, have a bunch of misguided regional native jihadis rolling into
Iraq
to take shots at our forces, true enough...but would you rather have those
same jihadis instead trying to get at civilian targets here in the US or
overseas?

Ah yes, the tactic of infuriating the masses so the radical elements attack
your military and die. sarcasm That has worked so well in the past. After
all, the Soviets spent a decade killing "misguided regional native jihadis"
in Afghanistan and it was such an effective tactic that not only did the
surviving Afghan's establish an enlightened secular government but none of
them ever considered supporting the Chechen resistance. The French in
Algeria and Isralies in the West Bank are also examples of how effective
this particular tactic is. /sarcasm

Can you name one place where this tactic has actually worked?

Add in that the majority of the MRNJs would probably not bother to take
direct action against the US if we were not simultaneously ****ing them off
and providing a nearby target. More worrisome is that only the stupid ones
are going to Iraq (where they become dead or experienced and stupid). The
smart ones are raising money and/or plotting major attacks outside of Iraq.
And, of course, for everyone we kill there is a distinct possibility of
creating more than one MRNJ.

Your hindsight may allow you to critique that from the advantage of
knowing
how things played out in the end, but looking at the situation from
*their*
view at the time, with the information they then had available, it would
be
danged hard to critisize their priorities. Smart CinC's don't interfere
with
their warfighting command's planning by inserting a laundry list of "do
this, and this, and this..."--they provide very broad guidance and let the
subordinates do their thing as they best see fit, and provide the
resources
that the subordinate requires to do it.

Hardly. If I was arguing from hindsight then -- given the lack of dirty
bombs exploding in NYC using material from Al Tuwaitha -- I'd have to say
the correct decision was made. Based on the available intelligence at the
time, however, it seemed a terribly stupid risk.

Add in that CinC's do give the military objectives that are for essentially
non-military reasons. The scud hunt of the previous Gulf war is a good
example of this. Arguably, the decision to send the Marines into Fallouja
was another.

Note also the requirement, however, to provide the appropriate resources.
There have been many comments that US forces were inadequate (not to defeat
Iraq but secure the peace afterwards). Dismissing General Shinseki soon
after he estimates that several hundred thousand troops would be needed in
postwar Iraq has the distinct flavor of shooting the messenger. I wonder why
none of the military commanders after that claimed they needed more forces.
Was that because they truly felt they didn't need them or they felt any such
request would be a ticket to an early retirement?

That last statement reveals a further disconnect with reality on your
part.
First, where were you going to move the 4th ID(M) *to*, given that Kuwait
was already reaching the saturation point with the 3rd ID, elements of the
101st AASLT DIV, USMC units, British units, etc.?

I hadn't quite realize that all of Kuwait was packed tread to tread to tanks
and could have sworn there was a much higher density of forces in the run up
to the previous Gulf war. But, I'll grant you, that it would have been a
concern.