The Opinionated Bastard

Talking with a frequent commenter over email about President Bush, I ended up writing this long piece I've decided to share.

It's long, so I moved it to its own page.

First off, we will win because there is nothing the insurgents can do to the Iraqi people that is worse then what Saddam has done.

Second, we will win because the insurgents are a small fraction of the Iraqis and in order to win, they must defeat the other 90% of Iraqis. That isn't going to happen. The insurgents gets smaller and weaker every day.

Third, we will win because every day, our American Soldiers prove to the Iraqis that Americans aren't the boogeyman they've been led to believe. Our young men and women in Iraq are the most convincing ambassadors we have.

Fourth, every cell phone, ever satellite dish is an agent in the war. The more access Iraqis have to information, the more they begin to think for themselves, to questions their leaders, to say been there, did that, got the t-shirt at my cousin's execution. We will win, because in order for us to win, the Iraqis don't have to like us, they just have to be a democracy. In the game of nations, always bet on democracy. Through the long path of history, the human race has been marching steadily towards more freedom for all.

Fifth, every day our soldiers get smarter.

Sixth, we've made a lot of progress.

Seventh, we've already won!

Qando has some excerpts from the downing street memos, as well as links to the complete memos.

It's very interesting reading the larger excerpts, much more interesting then reading the word “fixed”.

I've got some of the excerpt after the link if you're interested, with my own commentary.

Only 16 days and 14 hours until the release of the next Harry Potter book as I write this.

Lately, I've been way too serious about the Iraq war. I've talked about how we basically needed to invade Iraq because its the bullseye of the Middle East. I've debunked some myths about the war. I've talked about the Euro. I've looked at the numbers to try to see if Iraq is getting worse or better. I've looked at the Downing Street memos.

Enough! It's time to take a break, and be a little silly.

I'm going to talk about the last Harry Potter book, Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix while I wait for the next one, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince.

The plot of the book is that despite a child getting killed in Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire by Voldemort, the Minister of Magic, Cornelius Fudge refuses to believe that Voldemort has come back. So he sets out to discredit Albus Dumbledore and Harry Potter with the help of the Daily Prophet. The Daily Prophet begins printing stories about how Dumbledore has gone senile, and how Harry Potter has been driven mad.

Meanwhile, Voldemort is up to no good. Without the support of the Ministry of Magic, the fight against Voldemort is driven into the shadows; the Order of the Phoenix is the organization Dumbledore creates to fight Voldemort and his followers.

With Dumbledore basically in hiding, the Ministry of Magic appoints a new headmaster, Dolores Umbridge, to oversee Hogwarts. She proceeds to undermine the entire Defense against the Dark Arts curriculum, as well as harass Harry for his claim that Voldemort is back. This forces the students to turn to Harry for instruction, which ends up working quite well given Harry's extensive experience.

The wizarding world goes along with this, because really, Voldemort is so scary a topic that no one really wants to believe he has really come back.

The book ends when Voldemort attacks the Ministry of Magic, forcing even the Minister of Magic, Cornelius Fudge to recognize that he's baaack.

That's the plot. But what is really going on? Glad you asked...

This book series is an allegory of the War on Terror.

Voldemort represents both Saddam Hussien and Osama Bin Laden, that is, the threat of terrorism against the West. Dumbledore represents Uncle Sam as personified by George Bush, and Harry Potter represents Britian, specifically Tony Blair. The first 4 books are sort of a history of terrorism in that Voldemort makes a few attacks here and there, but only Harry and Dumbledore really realize the danger. So the various attacks against the US and UK by Al Queda are will represented. The 4th book ends with Voldemort killing a child this represents 9/11; it should be the wake up call for the entire wizarding world that Voldemort/Terrorism is a problem they need immediately gear up to fight, they have killed the innocent.

Wizards, like all humans, don't want to believe that. Enter Cornelius Fudge and the press, which would rather believe that Dumbledore (George Bush) is crazy/senile. This of course closely parallels world opinion of US and UK actions in the War on Terror. The Ministry of Magic is a bureaucracy, and so represents the interests in London, Washington, and the UN who would prefer to just refer terrorism to a committee.

Enter Dolores Humbridge (Hans Blix) the classic bureaucrat. She not only denies all possibility that Voldemort could be back, she actively seeks to undermine Harry, Dumbledore, and any ability of the students to defends themselves.

Dumbledore and Harry are forced to go it alone, and so Dumbledore (Bush) creates the coalition Order of the Phoenix. Rowling's choice is interesting here, because Dumbledore is the most powerful wizard (as Bush is the most powerful man), but Harry (again, Britain) has the most experience in fighting Voldemort/Terrorism. Even though Dumbledore is the most powerful wizard, the only wizard Voldemort truly fears, we all know that it will be Harry (Britain) that saves the day. In fact, there are rumors the Dumbledore dies in the 6th book; perhaps Rowling expected Bush to lose the election?

At any rate, despite the obstacles put up by Dumbledore's secrecy, the bureaucracy's maneuverings, and the tide of public opinion the evil of Voldemort leads him to another attack directly on the Ministry of Magic, much like Al Queda has begun attacking other Arab nations. So finally, world opinion public opinion swings the other direction, and Europe the wizarding world signs up for the War on Terror War against Voldemort.

I wonder what will happen in Iraq the next book.

Having Islamic law as the basis for Iraqi law doesn't necessarily bother me. Its one of those things where the devil is in the details.

Islam talks a lot about justice. It specifically says its the duty of Muslims to obey just governments, and resist unjust ones.

One of the big problems we have in communicating with Muslims is that we keep talking about freedom. There is no word in Arabic for freedom, so it gets translated as non-enslaved.

Its not freedom we want to bring to the Middle East. When American's talk about freedom, we really mean justice. We're sloppy with our speech, and it costs us lives.

If we started talking about justice, the Quran would be on our side...

I would argue that the most Islamic government possible is a democracy, because it is the most just.

Sewer, Water, Electricity and Trash is the key to winning in Iraq, as I've said before.

Here's an article (PDF) on the 8th Engineer Battalion Baghdad working on SWET.

Here's another.

Technorati Tags: Iraq

Pretty much, this picture shows why its been so hard to get the electricity back on in Iraq. From this report. The report goes on to give a broad overview of all the work they're doing on the electricity, but it's in slideshow form so you have to read between the lines. Basically, we're 2 years into a 4 year project...

So after this post I learned that most of the deaths in Iraq are from IEDs. So I'm trying to dig in to find out more about them. Why? Well the mainstream media is so bad that basically the only way for me to really get a sense of what is going on Iraq is to find numbers for me to track, then dig in from there.

Anyways, here's a cool background article on them.

Hat tip: Winds of Change who has a few more links too.

Enron was a player in the Oil For Food scandal

But only obliquely:

Not that Enron did business directly with Saddam's regime in violation of U.N. sanctions, or even did anything clearly illegal. Rather, the tale of its guest appearance in Oil for Food illustrates why in some ways the U.N. scandal dwarfs even Enron. Under cover of Oil for Food, Saddam's system of bribes, payoffs and kickbacks, ultimately totaling billions, ran through chains of often obscure middlemen in places such as Cyprus and Switzerland. Enron shows up on one of the outer spokes of Oil for Food's global web, dealing with a trans-Atlantic crew of companies and characters engaged not only in fraud, but allegedly linked to arms traffic, payoffs to the Kremlin and kickbacks to Saddam's regime. Along the way, this gang did its bit to comply via Oil for Food shipments with Saddam's policy of enforcing the Arab League boycott against Israel.

Al-Qaida's Network in Iraq Goes (Temporarily) Silent

Be really cool if it was good news...

While there is lots of brouhaha over the mention of Islam in the constitution, and whether it uses Islam as “the” source, or “a” source, dare I say it may not matter?

Empty platitudes probably won't have much influence on laws, I'd expect...

Think I'll go ask Volokh what he thinks.

[The constitution empowers legislators, not clerics}(http://www.opinionjournal.com/editorial/feature.html?id=110007157)

This post from over at Captain's Quarters is actually about Howard Dean, but the title caught my eye as being ultimately true about Iraq:

Extremism will Not Win Elections

Yep. That's why we'll win. Let people vote, and they'll vote for people who are going to create a better Iraq, not people who just scream, hate, behead, etc.

Brookings is behind in updating their Iraq Index so I can't easily run the numbers yet but I just thought I'd do a quick post to counter the “2,000 Doom and Gloom” you'll see in the media today.

The insurgents are going to lose. They were always going to lose because what they want is insane.

Don't believe the nonsense you read in the media. If you read the things Al Queda writes about themselves, they want to bring back the caliphate. Guess who gets to be Caliph?

America on the other hand, wants every man to the be the Caliph of his own home. Not one Caliphate, millions of Caliphates.

Which would you choose? Being told what to do by someone else or setting your own destiny? Why do you think the Iraqis are any different?

Sure, they don't like being occupied. Sure they expect their own government to accomplish more then they expect the US Military to accomplish.

This is not news. It shouldn't even be surprising; the destiny of Iraq has always needed to be in the hands of the people of Iraq, not the hands of the US. We've never had a magic wand. Saying that you can't get democracy from the barrel of a gun is like saying democracies don't need policemen. It's never been our job to “fix” Iraq. We only need get them on their feet. And we've been doing that.

To my mind, the insurgents lost the moment Al-Jazeera and the other Arab nations started taking polls in Iraq to determine what the Iraqis wanted, that was the moment we won the war on terror.

Because that means that the Arabs have accepted (whether they realize it or not) that governments rule with the consent of the governed.

And that's the whole ball of wax.

More then anything, if there's one thing the White House has woefully mismanaged in this war, its been the propaganda campaign.

Instead of cursing the darkness, here's my attempt to light a candle.

The first thing we need to do is clarify the victory conditions in Iraq. If we don't set the expectations of the press, the press will make unreasonable assumptions. The media at this point don't have any reporters who have every been soldiers (or had any sort of real job for that matter). So its up to us, the bloggers to set reasonable expectations, since the Administration doesn't seem to be able to. So here goes:

Peace is Relative

Iraq is never going to be as peaceful as say, Flagstaff Arizona. Yet as Americans, we're going to think somehow in the back of our mind that for us to “win”, Iraq will be at peace.

That is unreasonable. For us to win, Iraq need only be as peaceful as say, Compton (famous for its drive-by shootings). That would make it one of the most peaceful of the nations in the Middle East. This is especially true if you consider, as I do, violence done against peaceful citizens to actually count. By that standard, Israel, Egypt, Iran, Saudi Arabia are not at “peace”, and repressive regimes like China and North Korea to not be at “peace”. (See Dhimmi Watch if you'd like to see what the status quo in Arab nations is like towards their own citizens. ) So if we want to consider peace, we should consider true peace. If the US topples a regime that is killing 20,000 of its citizens a month; but incites an insurgency that kills 20,000 civilians a year, that's actually progress.

So victory occurs not when Iraq meets the “Flagstaff, Arizona” definition of peacefulness, but when the violence has dropped to the nuisance level. We will never get to zero violence, there is no place in the world with zero violence. Perhaps that seems obvious to you, but the media will and has amplified every single event in Iraq without any perspective.

Recently, some Al Queda types tried to attack the Palestine Hotel. They were thwarted by the Iraqi Police, without any US aid. This was a huge milestone for the Iraqi Police. To the media of course, this was played as a bad thing. The media no longer has any perspective on what war is like.

The world is, and always has been, a dangerous place. We Americans, we happy few in the world have it pretty good. We can't apply American standards to another country, especially a fledgling democracy.

Agreement is Relative

The Iraqis will never be in complete agreement with each other any more then Americans are in complete agreement with each other. If Iraqis are in the Parliament screaming at each other at the top of their lungs, we have won. At that point we will have turned a violent process into a political process. If Al Sadr runs for Parliament, even if he wins, this means victory for the US.

The media will of course play up every minor squabble like its the end of the world. But I'll point out: ; Democrats and Republicans scream at each other all the time. They're not even very nice about it, nor especially peaceful.

Not all of Iraq's problems or issues will be resolved; 30 years later Americans are still arguing about Roe v. Wade. It is not our job to solve or mediate every dispute in Iraq, even fundamental disputes like Shia v. Shite or Kurd vs. Arab. All we merely need do is get the Iraqis to work together on their problems politically.

Eventually, we will leave

No doubt we left Vietnam prematurely. But at some point we are going to leave Iraq. That does not mean the insurgents have won. Already, there are more Iraqi police then US soldiers in Iraq. In approximately 8 months, we will have met our original goals for Iraqi security forces. At that point, we may very well transition to almost no military role in Iraq.

We cannot let the media paint the withdrawal of troops as another 'Fall of Saigon' moment. For that matter, if Iraq grants us military bases, that doesn't mean we're still occupying Iraq. Are we still occupying Germany?

Not Every Iraqi Will Like Us

It's unrealistic to expect the Iraqis to overwhelmingly like us. We invaded their country. In fact, the amazing thing about the Iraq War is that the Iraqis don't universally hate us. US Presidents never get 100% approval ratings and often have lower numbers then the US does in Iraq. When the US has higher approval ratings then the President, we're winning in Iraq.

Democratic revolutions are slow, painfully incremental miracles

Stolen from an article title by Austin Bay, I think the title says it all. In this 24/7 news cycle world (which frankly, seems to have the same 15 minutes repeated 96 times) it seems like the press expects everything to happen instantly. Some things just take time. Anything that involves people, and especially the perceptions of people can only change so fast. Iraq's progress will be measured in years, not months. The fall of Baghdad was the fastest military campaign in history, yet the press called it a quagmire. Actual accomplishments are the true measure of progress, not speed.

Case in point: Electricity in Iraq. Lead time for ordering giant power plants is measured in years. While I would like to have seen more progress on this front in Iraq, the reality is that we've probably been going as fast as we can: when we ordered new plants, the companies that made them had to start buliding them. Megawatt power plants aren't off the shelf items. Similarly, laying sewer or water pipe means digging trenches, and you can only do that so fast.

Anyways, that's it for the moment. Anyone else have any examples where they think the media is unreasonable?

A reader took issue with my estimate of the Saddam regime causing 20,000 deaths/month in Iraq, so I thought I'd explain my thinking.

Counting the Butcher's Bill can be complicated.

There's the issue of neglect as well when it comes to totalitarian states. During the Oil-For-Palaces program and prior to that, Saddam made choices that lead to the deaths of many Iraqis, so I count those as well. The way I see it, if 1,000 Iraqis starved that year because Uday bought a Ferrari, then Saddam killed 1,000 people plus the 5 or so that Uday ran over directly with his new toy.

That is, I'm counting the indirect deaths as well. Estimates of total direct and indirect deaths for the Saddam regime were 2.5 million people over the last decade, which is 250K/year, or 20K/month.

So that's where I get my 20,000/month.

I could probably argue it even higher:

There are the deaths from the Iran/Iraq war as well. Note that I said citizens, which is actually more inclusive then the numbers reported by IBC which only reports civilians. I would say that Iraqi soldiers killed during the invasion would go to to the US Butcher's bill, but deaths in the Iran/Iraq war go to Saddam, as would deaths to throw him out of Kuwait.

Of course, you can and should count those indirect deaths caused by the coalition actions (i.e. if damage to a hospital causes someone to die), but then you would have to count actions taken by Iraq in Kuwait (the dead Kuwaitis), not to mention people killed by Saddam's funding of terrorism, the Iranian side of the Iran/Iraq war and so on. And of course where do sanctions fit into all that? Or the US aiding both Iran AND Iraq during the war?

The original sanctions caused the Iraqis hardship, leading to the Oil-For-Food program, which Saddam willfully used to subjugate the populace even more. If the UN imposes sanctions, but Saddam keeps building palaces, who pays the butcher's bill?

Here's an article from the NYT saying 1,000,000 at least

Using only direct costs though:

Going over to Iraq body count, they have 30K on the high end for direct deaths. So out of the last 32 months (since March 2003), that's 937.5 deaths/month, or 11,250/year.

But do insurgent caused deaths count towards the Coalition butcher's bill? I don't think you can make that argument, because then it NEVER makes sense to intervene in a civil war or genocide. That is, if the Sudanese genocide is 5,000 deaths/month, and the UN intervened and cut that down to 1,000 deaths/month, it seems to me like the UN should get credit for a 4,000 death decrease. So counting insurgents kills towards the coalition total doesn't make sense either. According to IBC, only 37% of the first 25K were from US-led forces, 36% were from “post-invasion” criminal violence.

Even so, by all accounts Saddam killed more Iraqis towards the end of his regime then the beginning. If I remember correctly it was like 2-1. So if you take the estimates that Saddam killed only 300,000 Iraqis during his Presidency, that's 12,000 year, but probably more like 24,000 towards the end of his reign.

So the 11,250 doesn't seem so bad now.

So there's this press release from DOD announcing Iraq troop rotations: here. Only 92,000 though, and scheduled to begin mid 2006. Does that mean we're drawing down the troops? Any military types know the answer?

Remember my theory on when we start pulling out of Iraq is here.

The UN approved our stay in Iraq through 2006, with a review after 8 months. Read here.

Like I said, we start pulling out in Aug 2006.

In the end, the story of the run-up to the Iraq war is about intelligence, but not in the way most people think. Intelligence is always flawed and imprecise, even more so when you're dealing with a closed, paranoid and authoritarian regime like Hussein's. It's foolish to suggest Bush should have bucked consensus estimates on Iraq WMD built from more than a decade of intel, and it's even worse to suggest he lied for not doing so.

What President Bush did instead was put an end to the decade-long guessing game and place the burden squarely on Saddam Hussein by saying in front of the world: “This is what we think you have. It's now your responsibility to prove us wrong.” In the aftermath of the worst terrorist attack in the history of America, it was absolutely the right thing to do.

From Real Clear Politics, via Blogs for Bush

Mass Graves

Hat Tip: My Co-Worker Matt who really gives it to the Democrats in the piece I just linked to.

So the entire blogosphere missed the biggest story of the week, as did all of the newspapers, and both Senators Kerry and McCain: The Pentagon announced on November 8th that they would be reducing the number of American troops in 2006 down to about 92,000.

I more or less expected the papers to miss this. They've never quite gotten the war on terror, or understood exactly how the “rotation plan” works; the Pentagon was able to slip a troop increase of about 30,000 troops past them this quarter. But two of the most famous Senators spent the week arguing back and forth about what troop levels should be. Much ado about nothing? No, much ado about ignorance! I've always assumed that Senators had access to better (classified) information then me. I guess I was wrong...

Kerry said we should cut troop levels by 30,000 troops in Iraq by the end of the year. Um, Senator, there are currently 170,000 troops in Iraq, up from 140,000 prior to September. The Pentagon quietly raised the number of troops in Iraq for the October and December elections by overlapping the OIF-4 rotations against the OIF-3 rotations. That overlap ends in the first quarter of 2006, so the US was already going to reduce forces by 30,000 troops. This is so typical of Kerry. I think he has CEO disease; he gets a briefing and thinks it is his idea. “Bush should be doing exactly what he..er..is doing”, he'll thunder.

Meanwhile, McCain gave a speech to counter Kerry, saying we needed more troops in Iraq. Well, I agree with that, I just don't think they should be US troops, they should be Iraqi troops. We're training 7-10,000 new troops a month in Iraqi. Those troops are about 3-4 times more effective then our own troops; after all, its their country. So by the end of the year, when we rotate those 30,000 troops home, there will be more then enough Iraqi troops to replace them. By August, we'll have 270,000 Iraqi troops in Iraq, which compares well to the previous regime which had more troops, but they were inadequately trained. Saddam didn't even provide food or uniforms for half of them.

As for how I caught this when the press missed it, remember how I suspected that we were planning on reducing forces in Iraq in 2006? Then there was this announcement by the DOD of the new troop rotations? And then I noticed that the UN mandate has been extended through 2006, but that the Iraqis have the ability to cut it short if they want?

At first, I thought maybe I was getting it wrong, so I talked to a couple of people and they just sort of shrugged. Then I watched a newsreport by the internal DOD news channel saying it and I thought “aha!”. Finally, I asked the DOD directly and they confirmed it:

The story about the 92,000 troop rotation for 2006 seems to be implying that we'll be drawing down our troops in 2006.

This briefing makes it more explicit.

Can I have confirmation that this is true? This seems like pretty big news.

We can confirm that the plan is, in fact, to reduce the size of Coalition Forces in country in 2006. It's big news inasmuch as the Iraqis are increasing the size and strength of their footprint and, by the same token, we're reducing ours.

As we've stated in the past, rotation planning is flexible, conditions-based and operationally focused; it is not based on timetables or political pressures. The coalition is committed to assisting Iraq while Iraq works to achieve political stability and the maintenance of a secure environment.

How was I able to read the tea leaves that the New York Times and the Washington Post missed? Simple. I've always understood the war plan.

The war plan, for good or ill has never been to occupy the country. It's always been the plan for the Iraqis to provide security in their own country. In other words, do the exact opposite of what we did in Vietnam:

• Instead of installing a puppet government, we've spent 2.5 years building up an Iraqi one.
• Instead of having 500,000 troops and 60,000 casualties from trying to take over Vietnam, we've 170,000 troops but only 2,000 casualties because we weren't trying to take over.

In other words, instead of going into Iraq and trying to run the country like we did in Vietnam (Step 1 install a Christian leader in a Buddhist country? What idiot thought up that one?), we've done the minimal amount of work to keep Iraq in a holding pattern until the Iraqis could run it.

It's pretty simple really, and it's actually not a bad plan. I think the US has learned the lessons of Vietnam and Somalia; let people run their own countries. The main mistake we made in this whole war was thinking that it wouldn't take most of 2004 to train the Iraqi Police and Army. It just takes time to do that kind of thing.

Once you understand the war plan, the minute the number of Iraqi Police started to pass the number of US troops, it was obvious we were going to be able to draw our own troops down. With the 210,000 Iraqis, plus the 170,000 US troops, there are 380,000 troops working towards security in Iraq, the most we've ever had. So I was looking for troop reductions, and I found it. By August, with 270,000 Iraqi troops and 92,000 US troops, 3/4 of the troops in Iraq will be Iraqis, and the US may not be needed at all. Hence the provision in the 2006 mandate to end the presence of coalition forces early if need be.

So there you go, spread the word. Be sure to read Defining the Victory Conditions so you can realize that our pulling out troops is a sure sign of success in Iraq, and you can read: Route Irish has Improved if you want to see how much more effective the Iraqis are then our own troops. For one thing, not only do all Iraqis speak the language, but they can recognize someone who doesn't belong the same way a Flagstaff resident can see a Phoenician a mile away. (Phoenician being a tourist from Phoenix.)

Update:

Welcome Instapundit readers. As you can see, I originally noticed this on the 12th of November, so its been a weird week for me listening to the debates about all this. Looks like the media has caught up though. Here's an interesting interview with the Marine commander in Fallujah, he says the Iraqis could take over there in 6 months.

Update #2: Wow, Glenn linked me twice. Mudville Gazette has looked at the same stuff here. Like me, he concludes that troop reductions may be coming but they may not be down to 92,000.

For new readers to my blog if you like what you see, you may be interested in:

Brookings which is all my coverage of the Brookings Institution's Iraq Index reports.

Debunking Iraq Myths where I lay out a moderate position on Iraq.

Friction where I discuss “Why Iraq?”

Bush Lied, People Died, Er, Kinda where I talk about that meme.

Ground Truth are pieces that provide information on how the war in Iraq is going from either soldiers or Iraqis.

Warning, I do consider myself a moderate on the war. I don't think Bush was totally straightforward, I don't think he could be. I do think Iraq was necessary. All my foreign policy pieces are here.

Technorati Tags: Iraq, puppy

Here's chart of the number of troops we'll have in Iraq over the next few months:

Here it is in “Mainstream Media Fashion”, where I omit the first bar, so it looks like we're going to be dramatically pulling down the number of troops in Iraq:

So my readers all know that the DOD announced plans to reduce troops in Iraq in 2006. But nobody else does, which means I keep seeing pieces like this is the news. (Hat Tip to Jon).

It's not like I didn't try to get the word out, I sent several emails to some of the A-list bloggers to point this out. Like the mainstream media and our political leaders, it seems the blogosphere is more interested in screaming at each other then in knowing the truth.

Perhaps its not just the mainstream media that is aspiring to be professional wrestling, the blogs seem to be following the same path.

So now both the media and the blogosphere are surreal for me.

sigh

MSNBC on withdrawing troops from Iraq. Note the 60,000 number? Guess what 170,000-92,000 is?

Hat Tip: Defense Tech which has some other interesting links.

Remember, you heard it here first

Update: Here's another one from CNN, Hat Tip: Jihad Watch

Over at Black Iris a Jordanian website.

Murdoc also read the tea leaves, and he made a good point on the 92,000 number.

No Marines.

However, I think he's missing that some of the Marines currently in Iraq were already part of OIF-4, so they'll be staying. But he's right it that we shouldn't take that number too seriously folks. Without the complete rotation plan, we won't really know. Besides no plan survives...

I still think:

• Drawdown in January after the elections as a side effect of the existing rotation plan.
• Drawdown somewhere between August and November. Murtha may be right, because I know for a fact that we've planned the war to coincide with US Political Timetables. In fact, I said so on November 3rd, long before the Pentagon announcement.

Hat Tip: Defense Tech who was one of the first people to link to my original piece about troop reductions.

The White House has published its Strategy in Iraq. This is the plan they've been working off of since 2003.

If you're a long time reader though, nothing in this document will be news.

Nice to be vindicated though. :-)

The document leaves out Why Iraq? though, which I've covered here.

Here are some interesting tidbits about the Administration's viewpoint. They see 3 sorts of enemies in Iraq:

• Rejectionists are the largest group. They are largely Sunni Arabs who have not embraced the shift from Saddam Hussein’s Iraq to a democratically governed state. Not all Sunni Arabs fall into this category. But those that do are against a new Iraq in which they are no longer the privileged elite. Most of these rejectionists opposed the new constitution, but many in their ranks are recognizing that opting out of the democratic process has hurt their interests.

• Saddamists and former regime loyalists harbor dreams of reestablishing a Ba’athist dictatorship and have played a lead role in fomenting wider sentiment against the Iraqi government and the Coalition.

• Terrorists affiliated with or inspired by Al Qaida make up the smallest enemy group but are the most lethal and pose the most immediate threat because (1) they are responsible for the most dramatic atrocities, which kill the most people and function as a recruiting tool for further terrorism and (2) they espouse the extreme goals of Osama Bin Laden – chaos in Iraq which will allow them to establish a base for toppling Iraq’s neighbors and launching attacks outside the region and against the U.S. homeland.

The administration sees the war in Iraq to function along three tracks:

Political: Isolate, Engage, Build Security: Clear, Hold, Build Economic: Restore, Reform, Build

What I notice is that all 3 tracks have “Build” as a major element. The mistake the White House made in the Iraq war was overestimating how functional Iraq was as a state.

Also, as I predicted but haven't written about much yet:

As security conditions improve and as Iraqi Security Forces become increasingly capable of securing their own country, our forces will increasingly move out of the cities, reduce the number of bases from which we operate, and conduct fewer patrols and convoy missions.

Basically that means less Marines, and more airplanes. That is, we'll have an Air Force base or something somewhere in Iraq, the Iraqis will go into a town, we'll bomb the terrorists. That kind of thing. That means less deaths from IEDs. As I've pointed out for a long time, the insurgents switch to IEDs is a losing strategy. In fact, I think its worth another blog post.

Note that despite the long description of card game rules, this post is really about Iraq.

During the holidays, my family likes to play this card game called Canasta. If you've ever played Canasta though, this game bears little resemblance to the real game. Supposedly, the variation we play is called Mexican Canasta except the rules have no resemblance to what everyone else calls Mexican Canasta.

So I just call it Wetter Family Canasta, especially since my wife claims that the rules change every time (they don't we just remember a few during play, honest).

Full rules are in the extended entry, but there's a few points you need to know:

• Canasta is one of those games where you can pick up the previous player's discard. The catch in Canasta is that you pick up the entire discard pile if you can use the top card. Since its a “collection” game, picking up the pile is a good thing.
• Red 3's are basically free points, while black 3's are considered the “perfect discard” because they aren't worth anything. So not only can't you use a black 3, but whoever is after you can't pickup the pile if you discard a black 3.

The nice thing about playing Canasta over the holidays is that basically its something to do while you all sit around and visit while having coffee and pie. It gives you something to do then between the first feast (the turkey) and the second feast (the desserts).

After playing this game for a couple of years, my wife, who is quite competitive, asked me “How come I keep losing at Canasta?”. I asked her: “Where are you sitting?”

See, long ago I figured out that where you sit at the table determines how well you do. Sitting right after my mom or dad means you'll lose. The worst is right after my Mom, because she loves to pick up the pile, which means you'll be staring at black 3's all night. My dad is the same, but even when he doesn't pick up the pile, he'll sacrifice his own collections in order to discard stuff you won't be able to use.

So don't sit after my mom or my dad. If at all possible in fact, arrange it so my dad sits after my mom. Then my dad will be looking at black 3's all night. In fact, the perfect spot is just before my mom. Then whenever she run's out of black 3's and there's not much in the discard pile, you can feed her a convenient discard.

Also, never let my dad sit across from my mom if there are a lot of people either in case you end up having teams.

So in other words, long before you make the small tactical decisions about which card to discard and which to play, you've already determined how well you can do by the strategic decision about who you've sat next to.

Which brings us to Iraq. I've been saying for awhile now that the decision by the insurgents to use car bombs, IEDs and suicide bombings was a war-losing move. While tactically it seems to be good (most of the troops killed in Iraq are from IEDs), strategically its a disaster. Actions in war need to accomplish something. Ultimately, that's the difference between a terrorist and a soldier. Both may kill civilians, but soldiers do so accidentally in pursuit of a goal.

Terror is not a goal. That's the strategic mistake the insurgents and terrorists ultimately make. Sure, it gets your cause noticed on the news, but only for one day. To get anywhere in war, life or politics, you need to hold territory. A mine field or IED merely denies territory, and generally from both sides. There's a fundamental flaw in their strategy in that they're assuming that our side _needs that territory.

The thing is though, long term, we don't. From the White House document released this morning:

As security conditions improve and as Iraqi Security Forces become increasingly capable of securing their own country, our forces will increasingly move out of the cities, reduce the number of bases from which we operate, and conduct fewer patrols and convoy missions.

To some extent, in order for an IED to be effective, we have to cooperate. If we don't drive down the street where the IED is implanted, it can't be effective. Long term, we're going to be spending more and more time isolated on our bases in Iraq, leaving patrols and such to the Iraqi Police. As that happens, it's just like going “around” a mine field. If we fly “over” the places we're driving through now with a helicopter, no IED attack.

So the insurgents are basically sitting right after my mom at the Canasta table. They can play their hearts out, but ultimately, they're going to be looking at black 3's all night.

Come to think of it, fighting the US in Iraq has been a “sit after my mom” strategy for Al Quida in general...

(Wetter Family Canasta rules follow)

Technorati Tags: Iraq, Canasta

Over at American Future someone has gone through all the New York Times editorials to see what their pre-Bush Iraq policy looked like.

So its not that the NYT didn't want us to invade Iraq, its that they didn't want Bush2 to invade Iraq...

Technorati Tags: Iraq