"I think we are winning. Okay? I think we're definitely winning. I think we've been winning for some time." - Gen. Richard Myers, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, on the Iraq War 04/26/05
"I just wonder if they will ever tell us the truth." - Harold Casey, Louisville, KY, October 2004.
Operation Lightning was the joint US-Iraqi push that started in June aimed at bringing Baghdad under control. It didn't work out. Though it was hardly reported on in the US while it was going on, the news of Prime Minister Al-Maliki's visit last week did point out that it had failed.
I don't know if they're still using Operation Lightning for it, since the original version turned out to be Operation Fizzling Sparks as far as its effectiveness.
Military analyst Anthony Cordesman must be an eternal optimist. Because he's still trying to give the possibilities of some kind of positive outcome to the Iraq War, infintessimal though they may be, a respectable airing. But he's too good an analyst to pretend it's going well: The "Baghdad Problem": The Gains and Risk in Sending In More US Troops (Center for Strategic and International Studies [CSIS]) 07/26/06. He writes:
The announcement that the US is sending more troops into Baghdad is a grim warning of just how serious the situation in Iraq has become. The fact is that US forces are now strained throughout the country in spite of efforts to create Iraqi military, security, and police forces. Reinforcing Baghdad inevitably means weakening both US and Iraqi capabilities somewhere else, and despite all of the talk that the insurgency focuses on Baghdad and four provinces, civil strife is steadily broadening in most of Iraq. ...
The political dimension must move in tandem with the military and security dimensions, and it is not. The fact that Iraqis voted to divide by sect and ethnicity - Arab Sunni, Arab Shi'ite, and Kurd - remains the driving reality. It is being increasingly compounded by intra-Shi'ite tensions, particularly Moqtada al-Sadr's factions but also tensions between Dawa and SCIRI. (my emphasis)
He basically judges Operation Lightning to have been a total flop:
The Maliki government and the US may have had no choice other than to attempt a show of force in Baghdad when the new government came to power. For all of the focus on the numbers killed, population movements, other forms of ethnic and sectarian tension, and economic and social pressures were pushing the capital towards civil conflict. The fact remains, however, that the Baghdad security effort began without critical political progress and without any economic or other social benefits. Force had to be used in a vacuum, rather than as part of a coherent effort and strategy.
He thinks the plan to have US military police inserted into Iraqi units is a good idea. But he questions whether the numbers being made available (500-600) can really make much of a difference.
And the ugly reality is, there are scarcely any real Iraqi forces available. The "government troops" are largely drawn from sectarian militias. Cordesman writes:
Far more US troops will be needed to occupy the city in ways that can compensate for the fact that the 50,000 odd Iraqi forces initially deployed [for the operation] are not effective or trustworthy - and significant numbers are gone, have clearly taken sides, or are passive. ...
The problem is that a total of 10,000 US troops cannot hope to secure the city without more trustworthy Iraqi forces, and it simply isn't clear such forces can be created without Iraqi political success and some form of relief or economic aid. Moreover, US boots on the ground may buy time, but they do not substitute for expert knowledge of the city, language, or religious and cultural affinity. (my emphasis)
Cordesman clearly is not optimistic about the new push to secure Baghdad:
More "occupiers" simply make the lack of Iraqi political Cordesman: The “Baghdad Problem” unity, and the lack of unity and effectiveness of the government's security forces moreclear.
This is particularly true because the militias and local security forces are now clearly as much of a problem in most major Iraqi cities as the insurgents. If US forces end upfighting militias, local forces, and elements of Iraqi forces that have taken sectarian sides in Baghdad or anywhere else, they will lose far more politically than they can win at the tactical level.
War, the Republican Party way. Nothing quite like it.
"Wars are easy to get into, but hard as hell to get out of." - George McGovern and Jim McGovern 06/06/05
No comments:
Post a Comment