Wednesday, June 02, 2004
The New American Strategy
Yesterday's news brought word of a new American strategy for Iraq. It was announced by Lt. General Thomas Metz who is said to be in command of day to day operations in Iraq. The new strategy will be essentially defensive. The general announced that in the future we will concentrate on defending the infrastructure, defending our forces and on developing an Iraqi capacity to deal with security threats. Since Falluja, this has been the direction that the Americans have been moving. As problems have proliferated we have scaled down our objectives, and I believe reasonably so. I noted that in a recent statement by our President, he spoke of Iraq achieving a "representative government", while in the past he has spoken of creating a "democracy". If it could entrench a representative government, and the result were accepted by the people, even if reaching a more perfect goal were abandoned for a while, we would have accomplished a good deal. It might allow for a way station on the road to democracy during which the country could develop the governmental institutions that successful democracy will require.
The only problem that I have with the new military strategy is that when fighting a guerrilla movement, or forces acting in part like guerrillas (as in Vietnam), a defensive strategy requires an enormous buildup of forces to be successful. They only have to hit here and there; you have to defend everywhere. So the success of our new strategy will depend on whether we are facing a movement in Iraq that can effectively sustain itself in the face of what we hope will be a growing hope that Iraqis can once again handle their own affairs under the new dispensation, that more fighting will not be necessary to throw the Americans out.
Yesterday's news brought word of a new American strategy for Iraq. It was announced by Lt. General Thomas Metz who is said to be in command of day to day operations in Iraq. The new strategy will be essentially defensive. The general announced that in the future we will concentrate on defending the infrastructure, defending our forces and on developing an Iraqi capacity to deal with security threats. Since Falluja, this has been the direction that the Americans have been moving. As problems have proliferated we have scaled down our objectives, and I believe reasonably so. I noted that in a recent statement by our President, he spoke of Iraq achieving a "representative government", while in the past he has spoken of creating a "democracy". If it could entrench a representative government, and the result were accepted by the people, even if reaching a more perfect goal were abandoned for a while, we would have accomplished a good deal. It might allow for a way station on the road to democracy during which the country could develop the governmental institutions that successful democracy will require.
The only problem that I have with the new military strategy is that when fighting a guerrilla movement, or forces acting in part like guerrillas (as in Vietnam), a defensive strategy requires an enormous buildup of forces to be successful. They only have to hit here and there; you have to defend everywhere. So the success of our new strategy will depend on whether we are facing a movement in Iraq that can effectively sustain itself in the face of what we hope will be a growing hope that Iraqis can once again handle their own affairs under the new dispensation, that more fighting will not be necessary to throw the Americans out.
Comments:
Post a Comment
Links to this post:
