Typical Ryan S Bullshit ?
He posts a note from a guy inside Iraq and guess what? We are winning (if not for the francophone deafeatocratist media).
The Baghdad Security Plan is working and can achieve an endstate. It took the Brits 12 years in Maylaya. We are following their plan.
The biggest enemy we have is an over active media and spineless Host Nation government which is intimidated by the JAM and has the JAM as key constituent group.
Pretty cool right? Freedom is on the march. But if you click through and read the whole post you also read this:
The texture of the situation on the ground is too complex for limited internet access I have right now and I have a few more stops to make as I continue my quest to find the civil war.
Baghdad is a violent and dangerous place now. There are people who kill without reason. JAM kills plenty of Shia and AQIZ kills plenty of Sunni and they both kill coalition members.As a High Value Target being hunted by a platoon I rolled around with last week said over the Iraqna phone to the company commander—the killing has gotten out of control, it must end, I don’t even know why I do it anymore.
Ryan takes a complex post and boils it down to a few graphs that support his position. Well, knock me over with a feather.
Side Note: I have no idea what this means: <i>The Baghdad Security Plan is working and can achieve an endstate. It took the Brits 12 years in Maylaya. We are following their plan.</i>
I guess he is harkening all the way back to <i>the Malayan Emergency,</i> which lasted from 1948 to 1960. If so, who knew that was are model and who is playing the communists? Us? We are the ones who invaded.
Tags: Bush's FUBAR War
The thing is, Jason, violence does not mean that it is a civil war.
The factions are not organized enough for it to be a civil war, and random violence is just that, random.
I never implied JD’s words were anything but that…his words.
Ryan, what level of organization does there need to be for you to think that it is a civil war? Do you actually have a definition in mind? How about this statement over the weekend:
on one of the deadliest days in the country in recent weeks, with at least 137 people killed or found dead.
Hmmm, perhaps they have to have headquarters and brigades for you to consider it a civil war. But it seems to me that when civilians are killing each other for their beliefs or where they live, that is a civil war when executed on this scale.
I think we’re the British in the Malaysia-Iraq analogy. 😉
A civil war, definitionally, is when two or more factions with visible top-down leadership are fighting for control of a country.
What Baghdad is right now is chaos in pockets. It is driven by reactionary militias and al Qaeda, not factions trying to take over the whole country.
So this isn’t the Iraq war now but the Iraq Random Violence Fest or is it Operation Iraq Random Non-Violence Restore?
Wow just when you think they can come up with an even less credible argument for sticking with this fiasco they always manage to take it down another notch towards total incoherence.
“on one of the deadliest days in the country in recent weeks, with at least 137 people killed or found dead.”
Sounds like Philly on any given weekend…Civil war in Philly to. 🙂
Well, there were 137 murders in Philly (pop. 1.5M) in 2005. 539 in NYC (pop. 8.1M). So NY is a more appropriate model, since Baghdad has 7.4M inhabitants. In October, 3700 people were killed in Iraq, mostly in Baghdad.
Also, in these cities, the murders are mostly by acquaintances, not death squads.
Also, more than 1500 civilians have been killed by attacks that killed 50 or more. When was the last time 50 or more people were killed in a single attack in the US? There have been 14 since January in Iraq. Remember the attack at VT? There were 32 killed there, we haven’t been able to stop talking about it since. They have had more than 2 a month this year.
“When was the last time 50 or more people were killed in a single attack in the US?”
That would be 9-11…in case you forgot.
look up, quick…
Too late, you missed my point.
I know when it was, and more Iraqis were killed in a non-civil-war in October and you are pooh-poohing it.
Arguing the numbers won’t make much difference to folks who are invested in a narrative that quite utterly disregards what military commanders and planners have been really clear about.
And that is much of what they are dealing with is a civil war. Much of what they are dealing with are multiple factions who are either vying for political control or looking to influence political controls. The al- Qaeda fighters (according to DOD maybe 5 – 10% of the fighters) are exploiting the sectarian divisions between Shia and Sunni and providing material support to the Sunni nationalists (the ones who want Sharia).
A civil war does not need to look like the Battle of Gettysburg everyday. The Reagan-overseen civil war in El Salvador killed about 75-80K people with 8K missing over 10 years. Iraq is certainly at a higher intensity than that. The real difference is that Iraq has more factions in play.
A year ago, the really smart Anthony Cordesman wrote an article on the skide to civil war. If you hear him now (and he is about as impartial as it gets), he does talk about the civil war in Iraq.
The commanders on the ground are pretty scrupulous to talk about there being no military solution to the Iraq insurgency — the military can help with some level of security in the short term, but the solution is a political one to be provided by the Iraqi Congress. And they are apparently about to reconvene in Crawford, TX for a two month brush-clearing session.
It is not chaos in pockets. It is a real civil war with the endstate of a government at stake.
I’m working with military types much of the week and have friends who have been in Iraq and they all report to me that this business is FUBAR. And having our guys and our money stuck trying to hold off what the Iraqis clearly can’t just makes no sense.