Lets start with VDH, on adding more troops to a field of battle:
William Tecumseh Sherman’s Army of the West finally reached a level of nearly 100,000 troops in late summer 1864. Yet its success was predicated not on increased numbers per se, but rather on a radical shift in tactics, abandoning reliance on rail support and living off the land. When Sherman left on his March to the Sea, he actually pruned his forces. A good argument could be made that Lee finally cracked, not because Grant’s surges smashed his lines, but due to southern desertion and loss of morale, once it was known that a huge and unpredictable Union army under the unconventional Sherman was approaching the Confederate rear through the Carolinas.
That is exactly what we need to do in Iraq - create a loss of morale in the Iraqi insurgents (i.e. the Muslim terrorists). That doesn’t have to mean a huge number of deaths, but it does have to mean the feeling of them being “terrorized” – feeling that all will be lost if they continue to fight against the US army. We are doing no such thing now, instead we are often pussyfooting around the country, careful not to disturb the current Iraqi corrupt government.
And the dangers of more troops:
If the United States sends more troops into Iraq, especially Baghdad, then we must expand the parameters of operations — otherwise, thousands of fresh American soldiers will only end up ensuring the four things we seek to avoid in Iraq: more conventional targets for IEDs when more soldiers venture out of our compounds; more support troops behind fortified berms that enlarge the American infidel profile; more assurances to the Iraqis that foreign troops will secure their country for them; and more American prestige put into peril.
Hanson then continues to outline the specific steps required to win in Iraq. It is a MUST READ - here is the link again - it is even critical to read to really understand what is going on in Iraq, and what our strategy should be going forward.
Krauthammer has a very critical piece against the way Saddam was executed. Even though, “of the 6 billion people on this Earth, not one killed more people than Saddam Hussein,” he writes that, “the whole sorry affair illustrates not just incompetence but also the ingrained intolerance and sectarianism of the Maliki government. It stands for Shiite unity and Shiite dominance above all else.”
It is a very tough situation as an observer. Many of us feel glee (and not at all “sorry for him” like Hillel Halkin) that Saddam was killed, but it was in many ways a missed opportunity. And Krauthammer is on the mark when he writes, like VDH, that what we need now is not more troops, but a better strategy for winning in Iraq.
Posted by Adam at January 5, 2007 10:41 AM