Analysis: Bush's Iraq trip highlights war unwon
BAGHDAD (AP) - President George W. Bush's whirlwind visit to Iraq was his ostensible victory lap for what often looked like a personal crusade.
The president leaves behind a war that even he and his own generals acknowledge is not yet over - and a devastated country whose divisions are far from healed.
Certainly, Baghdad is safer than it was a year ago. Bush visited the Green Zone on Sunday without being hustled for cover from the rockets and mortars that rained down on the area only six months ago.
But the country is far from safe by any normal standard. Nearly six years after the U.S. invasion, Iraq is a country of daily bombings, kidnappings and ambushes.
"There is still more work to be done," Bush said after his meeting with Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki. "The war is not over."
Prospects for stability are as uncertain as the fleeting stare of the heavily armed security guards who scour the streets for threats when they escort U.S. officials who foray outside their Green Zone enclave.
Suspicion among Shiites, Sunnis and Kurds - which fueled the war that erupted after Saddam Hussein's ouster - still run deep.
Nearly 150,000 U.S. troops remain in Iraq - more than when Bush ordered the "troop surge" largely credited with curbing violence and arresting the country's slide toward full scale civil war.
"There is still more work to be done," Bush said after his meeting with al-Maliki. "The war is not over."
The architect of the surge, Gen. David Petraeus, didn't even like to use the word "victory" in connection with the Iraq war.
Petraeus left in September to take a new post as the U.S. military's regional commander for the Middle East. Before his departure, Petraeus said "this is not the sort of struggle where you take a hill, plant the flag and go home to a victory parade."
"It's not a war with a simple slogan," he told the British Broadcasting Corp.
It has taken more than 4,200 U.S. deaths to learn that simple truth.
The U.S. presence in Iraq was riven by mistakes for years, starting with what Bush called the "intelligence failure" that led him to believe Saddam Hussein held weapons of mass destruction.
Bush then dispatched enough troops to defeat Saddam's army - but not enough the maintain law and order. The 2003 decision to disband the Iraqi army and purge members of Saddam's party drove thousands of Sunni Arabs to the insurgency.
U.S. officials were slow to respond to the insurgents. Dismissing them as "dead enders" from the Saddam regime, the Bush Pentagon failed to anticipate the Sunni-Shiite fighting that plunged the country to the brink of civil war in 2006.
The U.S. was also too quick to hand over responsibility to Iraq's fresh-minted security forces - a blunder that was reversed by the troop surge.
As the American public turned against the war, Bush remained resolute, even as his popularity dropped to historic lows.
He ordered the surge in 2006 after the Republicans lost control of Congress and against the advice of some of his party's most experienced foreign policy veterans.
Experts will debate for years whether it was the troop surge, or a Sunni revolt against al-Qaida, or the Shiite government's decision to confront Shiite militias that turned the tide.
Nor is in clear that the downturn in violence will last.
Nearly 100,000 Sunni insurgents turned against al-Qaida and joined forces with the Americans, who paid them. But they could switch sides again if the Shiite-led government fails to honor its promises of jobs for them.
Al-Qaida in Iraq and at least a dozen other Sunni groups remain active, especially in the north. Although U.S. and Iraqi forces crushed the Shiite militias last spring, U.S. commanders acknowledge privately that many of the fighters eluded them and could regroup.
With so much uncertainty, U.S. commanders are cautious.
"We are in no hurry to race away and have things crumble on us," said Lt. Gen. Lloyd Austin, the No. 2 commander. "This is hard work" because Iraq "is so very complex."
The future is in the hands of Bush's successor, President-elect Barack Obama, and the Iraqis themselves.
Obama campaigned on a promise to end the war, which he consistently opposed. The newly ratified U.S.-Iraqi security agreement sets a timetable for a U.S. withdrawal by 2012 - something the president resisted for years.
The challenge is now to manage the end of the war better than the beginning. Obama is keeping Bush's defense secretary, Robert Gates, to oversee it.
"It's important that we maintain enough presence here that we can help them get through this year of transition," Petraeus' successor, Gen. Raymond Odierno said this weekend. "We don't want to take a step backward because we've made so much progress here."
MyWay
We Cubans would grovel at you feet for the failures of Iraq.
The president leaves behind a war that even he and his own generals acknowledge is not yet over - and a devastated country whose divisions are far from healed.
Certainly, Baghdad is safer than it was a year ago. Bush visited the Green Zone on Sunday without being hustled for cover from the rockets and mortars that rained down on the area only six months ago.
But the country is far from safe by any normal standard. Nearly six years after the U.S. invasion, Iraq is a country of daily bombings, kidnappings and ambushes.
"There is still more work to be done," Bush said after his meeting with Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki. "The war is not over."
Prospects for stability are as uncertain as the fleeting stare of the heavily armed security guards who scour the streets for threats when they escort U.S. officials who foray outside their Green Zone enclave.
Suspicion among Shiites, Sunnis and Kurds - which fueled the war that erupted after Saddam Hussein's ouster - still run deep.
Nearly 150,000 U.S. troops remain in Iraq - more than when Bush ordered the "troop surge" largely credited with curbing violence and arresting the country's slide toward full scale civil war.
"There is still more work to be done," Bush said after his meeting with al-Maliki. "The war is not over."
The architect of the surge, Gen. David Petraeus, didn't even like to use the word "victory" in connection with the Iraq war.
Petraeus left in September to take a new post as the U.S. military's regional commander for the Middle East. Before his departure, Petraeus said "this is not the sort of struggle where you take a hill, plant the flag and go home to a victory parade."
"It's not a war with a simple slogan," he told the British Broadcasting Corp.
It has taken more than 4,200 U.S. deaths to learn that simple truth.
The U.S. presence in Iraq was riven by mistakes for years, starting with what Bush called the "intelligence failure" that led him to believe Saddam Hussein held weapons of mass destruction.
Bush then dispatched enough troops to defeat Saddam's army - but not enough the maintain law and order. The 2003 decision to disband the Iraqi army and purge members of Saddam's party drove thousands of Sunni Arabs to the insurgency.
U.S. officials were slow to respond to the insurgents. Dismissing them as "dead enders" from the Saddam regime, the Bush Pentagon failed to anticipate the Sunni-Shiite fighting that plunged the country to the brink of civil war in 2006.
The U.S. was also too quick to hand over responsibility to Iraq's fresh-minted security forces - a blunder that was reversed by the troop surge.
As the American public turned against the war, Bush remained resolute, even as his popularity dropped to historic lows.
He ordered the surge in 2006 after the Republicans lost control of Congress and against the advice of some of his party's most experienced foreign policy veterans.
Experts will debate for years whether it was the troop surge, or a Sunni revolt against al-Qaida, or the Shiite government's decision to confront Shiite militias that turned the tide.
Nor is in clear that the downturn in violence will last.
Nearly 100,000 Sunni insurgents turned against al-Qaida and joined forces with the Americans, who paid them. But they could switch sides again if the Shiite-led government fails to honor its promises of jobs for them.
Al-Qaida in Iraq and at least a dozen other Sunni groups remain active, especially in the north. Although U.S. and Iraqi forces crushed the Shiite militias last spring, U.S. commanders acknowledge privately that many of the fighters eluded them and could regroup.
With so much uncertainty, U.S. commanders are cautious.
"We are in no hurry to race away and have things crumble on us," said Lt. Gen. Lloyd Austin, the No. 2 commander. "This is hard work" because Iraq "is so very complex."
The future is in the hands of Bush's successor, President-elect Barack Obama, and the Iraqis themselves.
Obama campaigned on a promise to end the war, which he consistently opposed. The newly ratified U.S.-Iraqi security agreement sets a timetable for a U.S. withdrawal by 2012 - something the president resisted for years.
The challenge is now to manage the end of the war better than the beginning. Obama is keeping Bush's defense secretary, Robert Gates, to oversee it.
"It's important that we maintain enough presence here that we can help them get through this year of transition," Petraeus' successor, Gen. Raymond Odierno said this weekend. "We don't want to take a step backward because we've made so much progress here."
MyWay
We Cubans would grovel at you feet for the failures of Iraq.
2 Comments:
TWO COLLAPSING TOWERS - WALL STREET AND THE MILITARY INDUSTRIAL COMPLEX
While we observe Wall Street go through an implosion and our lawmakers mortgage the future of America with the associated bailout, let us keep an eye on another adjacent and related tower with a weak foundation, teetering dangerously in the wind. The Military Industrial Complex (MIC) is also subject to bad decision-making by misinformed and manipulated government officials.
HISTORY
Congress has just funded the MIC at only slightly less than the 700B now necessary to bail out the US Financial catastrophe. The MIC is monumentally dangerous and has led our country into a continuing series of costly, fraudulent wars since Korea. Eisenhower forecasted the danger in his departing speech:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8y06NSBBRtY
The most recent MIC adventure is being fought in the memory of 3,000 dead civilians attacked by a terrorist the US created by not leaving the Middle East after the first Gulf War. That excursion has killed thousands of our finest youth and maimed the lives of countless others. The average American will pay for this ruin in decades to come through taxes supporting hospital care, social services and veteran's homes.
HOW DO I KNOW?
I am a 2 tour Vietnam Veteran who recently retired after 36 misguided years working in the defense industrial complex on many of the weapons systems being used by our forces as we speak. Given a clearly defined mission and the best armaments and systems in the world, I believed that another Vietnam could be avoided for the American Soldier.
I was wrong.
I live in a Veteran's home, having recently undergone treatment through the VA for PTSD and Depression, long overdue some 40 years after the Tet Offensive that cap stoned my military 2nd tour in Southeast Asia with a lifetime of illness:
http://rosecoveredglasses.blogspot.com/2006/11/odyssey-of-armaments.html
Politicians make no difference. I saw this on a daily basis from inside the MIC.
ABOUT THE MILITARY INDUSTRIAL COMPLEX
It is corrupt and driven by corporate influence:
http://www.playboy.com/magazine/features/lockheed/index.html
http://www.vanityfair.com/politics/features/2007/03/spyagency200703
http://www.vanityfair.com/politics/features/2007/11/halliburton200711
It is broken and riddled with incompetence:
http://rosecoveredglasses.blogspot.com/2008/04/us-federal-government-procurement.html
http://rosecoveredglasses.blogspot.com/2007/01/what-american-public-must-know-about.html
THE COLLAPSE
The MIC, like Wall Street, will go bust and then be re-scaled, fixed and re-designed to run efficiently and prudently, just like any other big machine that runs poorly or becomes obsolete or dangerous. The situation will right itself through yet another trauma.
A government ENRON is on the horizon, with an associated house cleaning. The next president will come and go along with his appointees and politicos. They will try to fix the financial mess and become pawns of corporate America in widening our military influence attempting to mend corporate bank accounts. But the MIC tower will implode as well - the next big event in government you will watch is the collapse of that establishment.
HOPE
Non-profit visionaries and small business know the course that must be taken and they are taking it:
http://techinsider.nextgov.com/2008/04/einstein.php
These "Action People" are not in our government. They are more practical than that. They are the communicators, the true venture capitalists setting up worldwide non-profit foundations (Gates and Buffet for example). They are like the Bill Moyers, perpetually exposing waste fraud and abuse and then going one step further to fix it from the inside. They are the young inspirational members of the small business base in this country that will be tasked with picking up the pieces and re-inventing the future so our government can follow along.
As a volunteer counselor, handling 30 cases a week through SCORE I see every form of unique small business inventiveness imaginable - efficiently created, using technology to the max and not seeking financing to the hilt - only the opportunity to succeed:
http://www.smalltofeds.blogspot.com/
http://www.score.org/
The US GDP is still the largest in the world.
Our high technology cannot be matched.
We have enough weapons systems and science to beat all our competitors and solve our problems.
We need to come home.
How do you propose we beat anyone if we are not use our technologies?
Should we wait till they are knocking on our front door?
Hiding under our beds is not an option.
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