Centerfield

William,

I think the potential arrangement in Fallujah could be a positive step toward involving Iraqis in the maintenance of stability; and, we avoided having to raze the city to control the city. What do you think?

Nice to be back up. Tnaks for posting this William, I noticed it earlier and was planning on pointing it out.

I agree with your assessment...sobering indeed. And it highlights something which strikes me as an obvious point that the hawks have been loath to address. And that is that we can't remain as an occupying force in Iraq if a substantial majority of the population turns strongly against us. There has been a lot of talk about how we can't afford to fail and how we "MUST" stay the course. My take is that we indeed must stay the course to give Iraq its best chance, but if the population turns very much against us, the game will be up.

This is not to say that we're at that point now, only to suggest that even though we must stay the coursew right now, we also have to be savvy enough to recognize the type of environment in which our effort has become untenable, if that should come to pass.

The going has gotten tough, and we have to hang tough.

These are the crucial days right now where the future hangs in the balance, so I hope the call to de-politicize the war is heeded.

Oh, and as a grad of UMass, although UMass-Boston, I'd like to express my sense of shame at the appalling, ugly, and uncompassionate editorial written by a UMass student suggesting that Pat Tillman got what he deserved. What kind of person has such a lack of any sense of common decency? I do not know.

The steps they're taking in Fallujah and Najaf might be pretty savvy ... but they're fraught with both upsides and downsides.

On the down-side, by holding off for a couple weeks we give our opponents a chance to regroup.

On the plus, we give ourselves a chance to evaluate the tactical environment and find effective military strategies -- which I gather we have been with the combination of air power and ground forces in recent days.

Also on the plus -- avoiding big confrontations makes it at lease *possible* that a political process can be going on behind the scenes. The diplomatic part of this needs to evolve quickly if we're going to build some kind of legitimate authority there. I hope our guys are savvy enough to pull the various strands of that together.

Ultimately, we need to convince people of two things -- that we aren't about to withdraw militarily, and that they will have effective civil authority soon. We need them to know that we won't abandon the security environment to the militias, but that we will hand over political authority.

In Najaf, the Sadr militia are slowly but surely being pushed out of the city by local Shiite militias. Najaf lives on pilgrims to the shrines, and they're staying away in droves while Sadr is in town. Also, Sistani and crew are quite effectively passing the word that Sadr is allied with the mullahs of Iran, and on the Iranian teat. While this is happening, it's a real good idea for us to simply hang back and let the Iraqis take care of the Iraqis. We may look weak for not sweeping them right out, which we could do in a day or so, but it's still MUCH better to let fed-up locals kick 'em out of the mosques than do it ourselves and incur local animosity. And in the long-run this more throughly discredits Sadr than anything we could do, while also fostering some backbone among the locals. Backbone may be a pian now, but is essential in the near future.

In Fallujah, the rebels, foreigners, and dead-enders keep getting together to attack Marine forces. And when the rebels concentrate, they get bombed and strafed. There is no strength in concentrated numbers when fighting someone with long-range pinpoint ordinance delivery and good intelligence. Any true civilian with a brain has left the Golan area of the city by now. Intel analysis now suggests it was a very damn smart move not to charge into Fallujah understrength to "avenge" the four contractors, as it looks like an intentional outrage calculated to provoke a stupid response, and lead troops into an ambush. Of course, that could be military 20/20 CYAism.....

Strategically and politically, in the short run, there are serious problems with both of these situations, especially when the press is involved. Tactically, and in the long run, they're smart moves.

As far as Fallujah goes, I'm not believing any pronouncements on future talks and actions until I see them actually begun. There's an awful lot of psyprop and misdirection going on, and the press keeps reporting it as serious proposals. Personally I believe our own commanders are not lacking in skills of cunning and duplicity, and I think they're using them.

I keep reminding myself that the goal is not to be liked. The goal is to establish an effective form of democratic government.