Intermarkets' Privacy Policy Support
Donate to Ace of Spades HQ! Recent Entries
Tuesday Overnight Open Thread (10/15/24)
Birdfluencers Cafe Quick Hits Asked About the Murder of Laken Reilly, Bill Clinton Fails to Position Kamala Harris for Success Trump Releases Campaign Ad Decrying "WOKE" Military, Using Clips from Full Metal Jacket; Stanley Kubrick's Daughter Denounces Him. Wait, My Mistake: Stanley Kubrick's Daughter Defends Him. Trump Pauses Campaign Event While Several Attendees Are Escorted Out for "Medical Emergencies;" Kamala Harris and MSNBC Claim Trump Had a Senior Moment Final Proof That Kamala Is a DEI Hire: She Has a Massive Plagiarism Problem Ben Weingarten: The US Government Is Funding Foreign Entities Which In Turn Censor American Citizens Incredibly, Kamala Harris's Staff Again Puts Out the Word That Biden is Failing to Position Her for Success The Morning Rant: Minimalist Edition Absent Friends
Bandersnatch 2024
GnuBreed 2024 Captain Hate 2023 moon_over_vermont 2023 westminsterdogshow 2023 Ann Wilson(Empire1) 2022 Dave In Texas 2022 Jesse in D.C. 2022 OregonMuse 2022 redc1c4 2021 Tami 2021 Chavez the Hugo 2020 Ibguy 2020 Rickl 2019 Joffen 2014 AoSHQ Writers Group
A site for members of the Horde to post their stories seeking beta readers, editing help, brainstorming, and story ideas. Also to share links to potential publishing outlets, writing help sites, and videos posting tips to get published.
Contact OrangeEnt for info:
maildrop62 at proton dot me Cutting The Cord And Email Security
Moron Meet-Ups
|
« CNN Censors News to Bash Israel, Pimp Hamas |
Main
| Chuck Schumer Suggests Novel Plan for Reducing Price of Oil: Drill More! (in... Saudi Arabia) »
July 16, 2008
Merry Xmas/War is Over?Michael Yon cannot personally decide whether a country is in a state of war or not -- only the supreme military historians at NBC have that right -- but 1) he's there 2) he's sharp and 3) we all sort of are thinking this anyway. Barring any major and unexpected developments (like an Israeli air strike on Iran and the retaliations that would follow), a fair-minded person could say with reasonable certainty that the war has ended. A new and better nation is growing legs. What's left is messy politics that likely will be punctuated by low-level violence and the occasional spectacular attack. Yet, the will of the Iraqi people has changed, and the Iraqi military has dramatically improved, so those spectacular attacks are diminishing along with the regular violence. Now it's time to rebuild the country, and create a pluralistic, stable and peaceful Iraq. That will be long, hard work. But by my estimation, the Iraq War is over. We won. Which means the Iraqi people won. Big, big starting caveat with that "unexpected" business of an Israeli strike, which isn't really all that unexpected. Similar thoughts from the Kagans and Keane: All of the most important objectives of the surge have been accomplished in Iraq. The sectarian civil war is ended; al Qaeda in Iraq (AQI) has been dealt a devastating blow; and the Sadrist militia and other Iranian-backed militant groups have been disrupted. They don't say the war is over, and in fact the rest of the article is about the firmness and vigilance with which we must continue the fight, but obviously they are saying something big has happened in Iraq, and something good. Is the war over? I'm not sure any guerrilla terrorist war is ever officially over; as long as one extremist with a gun or a bathtub full of chemicals is willing to kill, it's not "over" in the sense that hostilities have ended as with a conventional war and conventional armistice. But is it effectively over? The media will of course never deem it so, but if violence in Iraq falls to the level that any peaceful state might experience if terrorists take a bad interest in it, I'd say it's over. At the peak of violence, and the lowest point for war support, I admittedly went pretty wobbly on the war. I'm not sure how honest I was about that at the time, though I did make statements along the lines of "The surge is our last, best hope for a success in Iraq; let us give it six months and see if it results in progress." Implicitly, I thought if there was no progress, we had to pull the plug. I just could not conceive of any realistic series of events unfolding which would result in victory. I thought the surge had a chance of working and for that reason must be tried, but I didn't think that chance was very high, nor did I expect the success of the surge to be more than incremental. Instead of incremental gains, this past year our troops (and the Iraqis fighting beside them, and the Poles and Australians too) have succeeded spectacularly. And not merely spectacularly in a military sense, but spectacularly politically as well. Al Qaeda and the Sadrists have not merely been decisively defeated on the battlefield -- always important, of course, but not necessarily the equivalent of the political victory all wars are ultimately fought to secure -- but in their well-nigh complete rejection by the population in which, as they say, they once swam. Just as I was hard-pressed to imagine how victory could occur in 2007, I'm having a hard time conjuring scenarios in which the victory is lost now. But then, I was wrong in 2007, due to a failure of imagination, and a lack of appreciation that all those "Red on Red" fights we read at the time (Sunnis insurgents fighting Al Qaeda) were actually more than isolated events and represented more than petty differences which would soon be papered over, and of course an ignorance at how profoundly strategy and tactics could turn a war. (I stupidly thought that war was 90% just numbers and logistics, and strategy and tactics, while obviously important, were very secondary concerns, and probably could not, except in the oddball case, reverse the course of a war.) That last bit was stupidity that I now feel pretty embarrassed about. I did, however, note a lot of times that it is not merely Americans who can be exhausted by war, and that the enemy was not the Supermen the media always portrays them to be (and which they sometimes seem in the collective imagination; the Nazis, too, were seen by some as unstoppable supermen), and that the terrorists might be pretty good at senseless destruction, but our boys were much better at sensible destruction. I also kept in mind that prior to our breakthroughs in Afghanistan, it seemed to the media, and to those who weren't listening to reports from the military, that the situation was a "quagmire" and were were stuck in another unwinnable war. Look -- the battle-lines aren't moving! Our troops aren't moving! So we're not having any success at all? Of course, the military reported we were doing quite a bit, despite those battle-lines not moving much. We were coordinating with the Northern Alliance. We were buying the support of warlords. And, of course, we were bombing the living shit out of the Taliban. We were hollowing them out. Their lines stood on paper maps, but in fact were barely there anymore; we were just waiting until they were all but decimated to move forward and take control of the ground. When our troops finally did move, they blitzed all the major cities in a matter of a week with light resistance. What appeared to the ignorant, and by "the ignorant" I mean our quagmire-happy media, to be a stalemate (a stalemate of ten or fourteen days!) was in fact simply a catastrophic defeat for the Taliban which simply hadn't yet been formalized by ground control. Similar stuff was going on in Iraq, under the surface of the water, such as the very real and very profound split between Al Qaeda and indigenous Sunni insurgents, and our troops' and intelligence agents' exploitation of that split by bringing the Sunnis over to our side. I hadn't been fooled by the superficial lack of progress in Afghanistan, but I was fooled by the apparent lack of progress in Iraq. And then came the surge, and all those beneath-the-surface gains suddenly became apparent. There may still be such subtle shifts going on Iraq, but in favor of the terrorists. I have to admit that's possible, having missed all the invisible but very real progress being made in Iraq while I despaired. But it seems pretty unlikely -- they're being demolished militarily, they have lost all their key havens, they have lost the people, and the once-derided government is now looked upon as favorably. What would it take for the Iraqi population to suddenly choose civil war and terrorism over security and increasing prosperity, especially given their very recent memories of the former option? I'm having trouble seeing what could animate the public to begin shouting "Let's give Al Qaeda and Al-Sadr another chance." Again, though, I've been wrong before.
| Recent Comments
Ben Had:
"Pug, you will both be missed. I so enjoyed seei ..."
four seasons: " Internet has been out all day, so probably this ..." Pug Mahon, Balding American: "It pains me and the missus that we won't be in Tex ..." [/i][/b]andycanuck (hovnC)[/s][/u]: "She is bleeding badly in the working class SE of t ..." TeeJ: " - Sagan and his ilk. He would have been so excite ..." Dave in Fla: "Looking forward to that hug :) ..." Stephen Price Blair: "[i]you do know what your obligation is, right?[/i] ..." Dave in Fla: "Yeah, I was pulling ammo out of the gun safe for t ..." Ben Had: "Stephen Price Blair, you do know what your obliga ..." Stephen Price Blair: "[i]Then y'all can suffer through my bitching about ..." Ben Had: "Dave in Fla, we are a respite for the road weary ..." Eromero: "She is bleeding badly in the working class SE of t ..." Recent Entries
Tuesday Overnight Open Thread (10/15/24)
Birdfluencers Cafe Quick Hits Asked About the Murder of Laken Reilly, Bill Clinton Fails to Position Kamala Harris for Success Trump Releases Campaign Ad Decrying "WOKE" Military, Using Clips from Full Metal Jacket; Stanley Kubrick's Daughter Denounces Him. Wait, My Mistake: Stanley Kubrick's Daughter Defends Him. Trump Pauses Campaign Event While Several Attendees Are Escorted Out for "Medical Emergencies;" Kamala Harris and MSNBC Claim Trump Had a Senior Moment Final Proof That Kamala Is a DEI Hire: She Has a Massive Plagiarism Problem Ben Weingarten: The US Government Is Funding Foreign Entities Which In Turn Censor American Citizens Incredibly, Kamala Harris's Staff Again Puts Out the Word That Biden is Failing to Position Her for Success The Morning Rant: Minimalist Edition Search
Polls! Polls! Polls!
Frequently Asked Questions
The (Almost) Complete Paul Anka Integrity Kick
Primary Document: The Audio
Paul Anka Haiku Contest Announcement Integrity SAT's: Entrance Exam for Paul Anka's Band AllahPundit's Paul Anka 45's Collection AnkaPundit: Paul Anka Takes Over the Site for a Weekend (Continues through to Monday's postings) George Bush Slices Don Rumsfeld Like an F*ckin' Hammer Top Top Tens
Democratic Forays into Erotica New Shows On Gore's DNC/MTV Network Nicknames for Potatoes, By People Who Really Hate Potatoes Star Wars Euphemisms for Self-Abuse Signs You're at an Iraqi "Wedding Party" Signs Your Clown Has Gone Bad Signs That You, Geroge Michael, Should Probably Just Give It Up Signs of Hip-Hop Influence on John Kerry NYT Headlines Spinning Bush's Jobs Boom Things People Are More Likely to Say Than "Did You Hear What Al Franken Said Yesterday?" Signs that Paul Krugman Has Lost His Frickin' Mind All-Time Best NBA Players, According to Senator Robert Byrd Other Bad Things About the Jews, According to the Koran Signs That David Letterman Just Doesn't Care Anymore Examples of Bob Kerrey's Insufferable Racial Jackassery Signs Andy Rooney Is Going Senile Other Judgments Dick Clarke Made About Condi Rice Based on Her Appearance Collective Names for Groups of People John Kerry's Other Vietnam Super-Pets Cool Things About the XM8 Assault Rifle Media-Approved Facts About the Democrat Spy Changes to Make Christianity More "Inclusive" Secret John Kerry Senatorial Accomplishments John Edwards Campaign Excuses John Kerry Pick-Up Lines Changes Liberal Senator George Michell Will Make at Disney Torments in Dog-Hell Greatest Hitjobs
The Ace of Spades HQ Sex-for-Money Skankathon A D&D Guide to the Democratic Candidates Margaret Cho: Just Not Funny More Margaret Cho Abuse Margaret Cho: Still Not Funny Iraqi Prisoner Claims He Was Raped... By Woman Wonkette Announces "Morning Zoo" Format John Kerry's "Plan" Causes Surrender of Moqtada al-Sadr's Militia World Muslim Leaders Apologize for Nick Berg's Beheading Michael Moore Goes on Lunchtime Manhattan Death-Spree Milestone: Oliver Willis Posts 400th "Fake News Article" Referencing Britney Spears Liberal Economists Rue a "New Decade of Greed" Artificial Insouciance: Maureen Dowd's Word Processor Revolts Against Her Numbing Imbecility Intelligence Officials Eye Blogs for Tips They Done Found Us Out, Cletus: Intrepid Internet Detective Figures Out Our Master Plan Shock: Josh Marshall Almost Mentions Sarin Discovery in Iraq Leather-Clad Biker Freaks Terrorize Australian Town When Clinton Was President, Torture Was Cool What Wonkette Means When She Explains What Tina Brown Means Wonkette's Stand-Up Act Wankette HQ Gay-Rumors Du Jour Here's What's Bugging Me: Goose and Slider My Own Micah Wright Style Confession of Dishonesty Outraged "Conservatives" React to the FMA An On-Line Impression of Dennis Miller Having Sex with a Kodiak Bear The Story the Rightwing Media Refuses to Report! Our Lunch with David "Glengarry Glen Ross" Mamet The House of Love: Paul Krugman A Michael Moore Mystery (TM) The Dowd-O-Matic! Liberal Consistency and Other Myths Kepler's Laws of Liberal Media Bias John Kerry-- The Splunge! Candidate "Divisive" Politics & "Attacks on Patriotism" (very long) The Donkey ("The Raven" parody) |