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Jewish World Review
Nov. 20, 2006
/ 29 Mar-Cheshvan, 5767
The U.S. needs to give up the fiction that Baghdad can save itself
By
Michael Goodwin
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http://www.JewishWorldReview.com |
Everybody is talking about Iraq, but nobody knows what to do about it. The White House, Congress and the military say all possible ideas are being considered and that "everything is on the table."
I beg to differ. Not everything is on the table. Every idea mentioned is a slight variation of what we're already doing. It's nipping and tucking around the edges while hoping for dramatically better results. I don't think that's going to work. We need to consider something really different if we want to stop the downward spiral.
Maybe it's time to bypass the lame Iraqi military and the lamer Iraqi government and do the damn job ourselves. Let's go in with massive force — 100,000 extra troops — and flatten the resistance and sectarian killers once and for all. Let's crush the bastards and be done with it.
Okay, accuse me of channeling the late Gen. Curtis LeMay, the gruff Vietnam commander best known for saying we should "bomb Vietnam back into the Stone Age." LeMay denied he ever said that, and I'm not looking to unleash a firestorm on Iraq.
I'm simply saying that if a stable Iraq is as important as President Bush says it is, and it is, and if the Iraqi government is as hopeless as it seems, and it is, then we may have no other choice if we want any semblance of victory. I'm not advocating overwhelming force. I'm saying it needs to be considered.
The problem with all the other options is that nobody in Washington has real confidence they're going to work. That was clear from the gloomy Senate Armed Services Committee hearing last week. Gen. John Abizaid, our military boss for the region, was like the piņata at a child's party as senators from both parties took turns whacking him.
You could say he deserved it, and not just because he sometimes engaged in "happy talk." Reading his testimony of September 2003 illustrates that Abizaid was telling fibs or was clueless. His claim then that "the preponderance of the country, including Baghdad, has achieved a very high degree of security and stability" can charitably be called "fact-free."
And he isn't knocking any socks off with his latest approach. Asked about troop reductions, he said it was a bad idea. Asked about more troops, he said it was a bad idea. I thought Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) was going to throttle Abizaid, but settled for a seething comment that "I regret deeply that you seem to think that the status quo and the rate of progress we're making is acceptable. I think most Americans do not."
Abizaid said he was not defending the status quo and insisted a new emphasis on training was a "major change." I think McCain got it right, because here's the "major change" Abizaid wants: "There will also be American military transition teams embedded with Iraqi units, and it's our opinion that those military transition teams need to be substantially increased and given the capacity to operate more robustly with the Iraqis."
That's such an obvious idea that it would be malpractice if we haven't already done it. And if we're adding more of our troops to Iraqi units, where are they coming from?
Abizaid is not the only one out of ideas. Donald Rumsfeld's tank was empty, which is why he's soon to be former secretary of defense. Everybody else is hoping the bipartisan Iraqi Study Group will come up with something brilliant and new.
Perhaps it will. But if not, let's at least consider cutting out the Iraqi middlemen and doing the job ourselves. After all, our national security is too important to leave to a country that can't even defend itself.
Every weekday JewishWorldReview.com publishes what many in Washington and the media consider "must-reading". Sign up for the daily JWR update. It's free. Just click here.
Michael Goodwin is a Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist for the New York Daily News. Comment by clicking here.
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