Off The Radar?
By Mitch Berg
Along with Robert Kaplan, no author has done more to expose Americans to the theory and practice of counterinsurgency warfare than Max Boot.
And has he notes in the title of his latest piece in the Weekly Standard, We Are Winning; We Haven’t Won.
Today we know that the surge has succeeded: Iraqi and American deaths fell by approximately 80 percent between December 2006 and December 2007, and life is returning to a semblance of normality in much of Baghdad. Now the danger is that public opinion may be turning too optimistic. While Iraq has made near-miraculous progress in the past year, daunting challenges remain, and victory is by no means assured.
I saw many achievements and an equal number of obstacles during 11 days touring the American brigades spread across central and northern Iraq. (I was traveling in the company of my friend and fellow author Bing West at the invitation of General David Petraeus.) In broad strokes, the picture that emerged was of an Al Qaeda in Iraq (AQI) organization that is on the run but not yet fully eliminated. AQI has been largely chased out of the capital and its southern and northern belts, but the terrorists have taken refuge in the rural areas of Diyala, Salahaddin, and Ninewa provinces, where, as part of a new operation called Phantom Phoenix, American and Iraqi troops are starting to root them out. Likewise, the Jaysh al-Mahdi, the Shiite extremist group headed by Moktada al Sadr, has seen its influence curbed and its ranks splintered, but it remains a threat.
As always with Boot, you gotta read the whole thing. Like Kaplan, he has no interest in pulling punches.
February 1st, 2008 at 11:20 am
Let me guess. The next six months are crucial.
February 1st, 2008 at 11:40 am
Let me guess – whatever we do, we’re still doomed to failure.
And that sending troops into the field in smaller groups is a recipe for disaster…whoops. Don’t mean to keep rubbing that in.
Wait. I do.
February 1st, 2008 at 3:36 pm
“Let me guess – whatever we do, we’re still doomed to failure.”
Pretty much, just like jumping off a bridge. That is what made it such a bad idea in the first place.
February 1st, 2008 at 3:48 pm
“That is what made it such a bad idea in the first place.”
So, RickDFL, were you happy with allowing Saddam to build WMD? Or were you one of the few people who didn’t think he had them?
February 2nd, 2008 at 12:57 pm
Terry:
I did not think he had WMD and that the sanctions regime was the best way to keep them out of his hands.
February 2nd, 2008 at 8:18 pm
“I did not think he had WMD”
Based on what? Faith?
February 3rd, 2008 at 9:27 pm
“Based on what?”
This is a pretty good summary.
http://d-squareddigest.blogspot.com/2004/05/d-squared-digest-one-minute-mba.html
“My reasoning was that Powell, Bush, Straw, etc, were clearly making false claims and therefore ought to be discounted completely, and that there were actually very few people who knew a bit about Iraq but were not fatally compromised in this manner who were making the WMD claim. Meanwhile, there were people like Scott Ritter and Andrew Wilkie who, whatever other faults they might or might not have had, did not appear to have told any provable lies on this subject and were therefore not compromised. “