Iraq and Afghanistan

In Sunday’s paper we read that the Administration plans to make a major military effort to take control of Falluja, Ramadi, Baquba, and Samarra toward the end of the year. The reason cited for delay is that they want Iraqi forces to spearhead the drive and these forces will not be adequately trained or equipped before then. In today’s paper we read that the effort to train the Iraqis has been lagging. The reason given is that, among other things, “only 230 of the nearly 600 military personnel required by the headquarters have been assigned. . .” Authorities say that “It takes time to build these new organizations. . .” One commentator notes that there doesn't seem to have been much urgency about the effort.

Let us think for a moment. We invaded the country on March 19, 2003. The war was “over” in about a month. Soon after that we announced the dissolution of the Iraqi army. Being told by many military experts before the war that the forces we were planning to use for the invasion were not adequate to police the country, are we to believe that it did not occur to the Administration that we would need a substantial new Iraqi army to take over security tasks after we left? Yet here we are in September, 2004 and we are told that the headquarters for the effort is not yet half manned! Not quite right. There was an earlier Iraqi security force put together by some other part of our occupation structure. When it collapsed in battle, we were told that these forces had not been sufficiently trained and that they had not been provided with enough weapons or body protection. Apparently, the “lagging program” that we are talking about now is a new training program that replaces rather than develops the failed earlier program.

Was our Administration this incompetent, or are we simply seeing the development of excuses for not taking back out of control areas until later. Could it be that the real reason for the United States delaying its offensive is not lack of a poorly staffed training headquarters but a desire to avoid American casualties in Iraq in the weeks before the election?

We can conclude that the Administration is either impossibly incompetent or crassly playing politics with its war. Meanwhile, Americans and Iraqis die every day.