Thanks for dropping by.

Mathijis,

Thanks for your opinions as well.

Until we can be honest in our nation’s political pulpits, we will not win this war. We’re too busy fighting each other to fight the religious fanaticism that threatens the values so many of us hold.

We can argue all day about who, what, where, when and why. When the night comes, though, the insurgents in Iraq are not fighting for national pride. They are not fighting for justice and equality for all Iraqis. They are not fighting for a better society, with more opportunities for all those who want to work hard.

Either we give in and let them slaughter anyone who gets in their way until either Sunni or Shia once again dominate or we don’t. So far, we haven’t seen fit to take the gloves off and really, truly fight back. If we did, there might be a lot of short-term bloodshed, but Iraq would be pacified and those who remained could get back to the business of living instead of feeling trapped between Scylla and Charybdis each and every day.

Should we pay private groups to enforce security in Iraq? Maybe. We always want to take the moral high ground, but if we do that and lose, then what was the point?

We need to jettison the democracy angle and start thinking about locating the bastard son of Saddam. In the long run, they’re going to wind up with a son-of-a-bitch running Iraq. Better he should be our son-of-a-bitch.

Regards

Then the non-Alzheimer’s portion of brain kicked in. ‘Yo, it’ ain’t ‘live.’ It’s ‘exist’!

And sure enough, there it was, transplanted to CONUS, updated and all, referencing Georgie’s Surge and the Sandbox!

Carry on, Sergeant!

This article suggests that it is not possible to built an democracy in Iraq: http://www.tcsdaily.com/article.aspx?id=010807B I doubt whether Iraq can become some kinds of a consociational democracy. The current government seems to be pro-Shiite. Some ministries are even in the hands of militias. Although it is bad for the reputation of the US, it might be good for the CIA to take action now. Without democracy you can still have constitutional liberalism. The UAE or Hong Kong under British control can be seen as autocratic countries with liberal constitutionalism.

Some more international cooperation could be helpful as-well. It is believed that Jordan played a major role in tracking down Al-Zarqawi. Arab countries are could be helpful to gain intelligence and to influence the Sunnis. For the US it would make a big difference if Europe and Asian countries contributed troops and paid some of the costs of the civil war. Perhaps we could make a deal with some poor countries. We pay them and they deliver troops or we start some army containing foreigners ourselves. The war currently costs about $500,000 per employed soldier in Iraq (72000/0,125=576000). Furthermore, there are other costs: psychological, medical and welfare.

I’ve also an controversial idea: Paying money for every killed insurgent. Private defence companies, Kurdish peshmerga forces or other Iraqis could then earn money by killing insurgents. Insurgents, as private groups, have some benefits that states under public law don’t have. They don’t have to wear uniforms and so on. We can fight them on equal terms if we use private organisations as-well.

It would be fair to support an independent Kurdish state if we opt for loosing this conflict.

You’re right… engaging in small firefights here and there will not win this war. We need to go in with a military mind, not a media biased political mindset and just get the damned job done already regardless of how abhorrent it is to the non-military citizens of the US.