I don’t know what we can offer Iran, Turkey, or Syria. It is very likely that they would expect us to use whatever leverage we have with Israel to get the Israelis to sacrifice their interests. The bottom line is the Iraq invasion was poorly executed or it was bad policy from the beginning. It would be unethical for us to attempt to sacrifice Israeli interests because we made a mistake and now we need to save face.

If you’re still lurking, this piece on a Brookings Study on our current options in Iraq is interesting.

http://www.realcities.com/mld/krwashington/news/nation/17218752.htm

This option is probably closest to my thinking at the moment:

“CONTAINING THE DAMAGE

If the United States decides it can’t stop civil war in Iraq, an option short of withdrawal is to redeploy U.S. troops out of Iraq’s cities and closer to its borders. There, they would provide haven for refugees fleeing the violence and try to stop foreign fighters from crossing into Iraq.

U.S. diplomacy would be pivotal in preventing Iraq from becoming a battlefield for its neighbors. Washington would have to persuade Iran, Turkey and Saudi Arabia not to intervene to defend their interests.

The past record of containing spillovers from civil war “is poor,” states a January Brookings Institution report. “Despite these odds, if Iraq does descend into all-out civil war, the United States probably will have no choice but to try to contain it.”

The report recommended more than a dozen steps, including establishing “catch basins” in Iraq borders to protect refugees. “This option would require the extensive and continued use of U.S. forces,” it said.

Pollack acknowledged that containment “is going to be hard to make work” politically, not least because of the sight of U.S. soldiers ignoring the likely ethnic slaughter in Baghdad and other cities.”

The question I have is whether a large enough US force would be a deterrent to the kind of wholesale slaughter that you seem to be predicting. But even if it isn’t, there really aren’t too many other options as the Brookings boys point out.

We are building up our forces in Iraq and Kuwait now under the cover of the “surge”. My tealeaves say we will hit 250,000 troops there by the end of the year.

When Bush and Cheney state that we will not let the Iranians get the N-bomb, I believe them. My tealeaves say that the critical time is early 2008.

I believe we will strike Iran in about February, 08 with air power and missiles. As I have posted earlier on this blog, we will hit their comm, command & control, air bases, missile sites, AA sites, and then their multiple nuclear sites with non-nuclear cavebusters from B-2 bombers.
There will be considerable collateral damage and casualties. in Iran.

What happens next is a good question…my tealeaves don’t say…but it will get bloody. That is why we are beefing up in Iraq despite the attempts to shut the war down by our very own two-faced Dems.

It occurs to my tealeaves that the Dems are actually hastening the Iranian strike timetable by threatening to stop the war. Once the strike has occurred, it would appear that we will be fully committed to a win in the ME. … or suffer a huge loss.

At that point, a draft will be possible, especially if the Iranians hit back in some way in the US as they have threatened. This scenario explains to me why the Dems are so concerned; they must know quite a bit about this plan, and know as well that they really cannot stop it if the President wants to go forward with it. The logistics are already in motion.

I don’t know whether to bless my tealeaves or curse them.

I wish I could share your optimism that we will in fact win the war. Your analysis on the Shia I think is basiclly sound. The Sunnis have tried to exterminate them and the Americans have been either unable or wnwilling to provide them with basic security. This means they have had to turn to the militias and to Iran. The Shia are a little closer to Iran than I would like. If we can provide basic security to the Shia, we can probably draw them closer to us and less close to Iran.

Great posts!! I wanted to do the things both of you suggested from the very beginning. Islamic terrorists and the Conmmunists allies in Russia and China are an existential threat to our country. Many people just don’t understand that. We need to fight this war to win or not fight it at all. If we choose not to fight at all, we might as well say hello to our new Islamic rulers. When we finally realize what is at stake, I think we will fight vigorously. I just pray that when we finally do realize that we are in a fight for the survival or our country it will not be to late to win.

Tell us again how there are only two sides in this fight - America’s and the enemy’s. And that the Iraqi people aren’t involved.

You are carefully avoiding the bloody obvious fact that it is THEIR COUNTRY, not ours, and they decide what happens to recalcitrant minorities who persist in murdering their children to obtain power. And the Iraqi people have decided to get rid of the SOB’s.

Not all of them - there are about 250,000 Sunni Arabs living among about ten million Shiites in the Shiite dominated south, and those Sunnis have been very well behaved for the past four years because they know what the alternative is.

But ALL the terrorism directed against Shiites and Kurds has been done by Iraq’s Sunni Arabs, or with their knowing help. And none of that happens in areas where there are few, if any, Sunni Arabs.

So the formerly 78% majority of Iraqis, now about 91% after a year of ethnic cleansing, have decided that the fastest and most effective means of protecting their families is to get rid of the Sunni Arabs.

The Sunnis could have changed sides earlier. They didn’t. Now it is too late. Tough for them. The Middle East is a hard place for ethnic minorities which persist in violence against ethnic majorities.

But you say IT’S OUR FAULT THAT IRAQ’S SUNNI ARABS KEEP FIGHTING? IT’S OUR FAULT THAT THEIR VICTIMS ARE FIGHTING BACK? Gimme a ****ing break!

It’s not our job to save the world, and particularly not to save truly nasty ethnic groups from their own nastiness.

We can’t stop Iraq’s Sunni Arabs from getting what’s coming to ‘em, and we shouldn’t try. We gave them a chance to change sides. They rejected it. Let ‘em die!

Our principal objective in conquering Iraq was to elminate it as a threat to our homeland, and keep it from emerging as one again afterwards. We don’t need Sunni Arabs in Iraq to achieve either objective.

My exact comments on this 42 months ago were, and pay particular attention to my last sentence:

http://www.danieldrezner.com/mt/KeYaHaMlAs.cgi?entry_id=849

“The one absolutely crucial objective in reconstructing Iraq seems to have already been achieved - securing a firm alliance with the Shiite Arab majority (we had one with Iraq’s Kurds prior to the invasion). The media/press are clueless about this. They have no idea what the important stories are. Our relations with the various Shiite Arab tribes are the most important story in the occupation. I’ve paid close attention to the details emerging here. It looks like we’ve won. They’re slowly dealing with their own crazies and the Iranian trouble-makers. Sometimes they need some backup from American forces, but we haven’t had to actually take any action ourselves.

The differences between us pacifying Iraq’s Sunni Arab tribes, and not doing so, will chiefly be these:

(1) how many Sunni Arabs remain in Iraq once we leave. Note that the Iraqi armed forces are being rebuilt with an all-new, i.e., non-Sunni, cadre. Unreconciled Sunni Arabs in Iraq will have the following choices once our occupation ends - (a) becoming reconciled, (b) becoming gone or (c) becoming dead.

(2) whether there is a significant prosperous and peaceful Sunni minority in Iraq to serve as a model for reconstructing the Sunni majorities in other Arab countries. It will be much more difficult for us to succeed with the latter if we don’t.

Keep in mind that we will win the war on terror. The major question is how many Arabs survive the experience.

Posted by Tom Holsinger at October 28, 2003 08:48 PM”

http://www.danieldrezner.com/archives/000976.html#007417

“Victory in the Iraq occupation campaign (conquering the place was a different campaign) depends on our relationship with Iraq’s Shiite majority, not its Sunni minority. The Shiites are the strategic center of gravity.

It would be nice if we succeed in turning all of Iraq’s factions into ones we can live peacefully with. That’s not the only way to win.

A horrible example of the price of not kissing up to the Americans would be useful too. The Sunnis have some influence on which way we win.

Iraq won’t be the last campaign in our war with terror.

We’re doing this for us, not for them.

posted by: Tom Holsinger on 12.26.03 at 10:51 AM”

With the will to win, the rest follows. We draft men. All we need. Remember wartime drafts? We have the resources.

Get this straight: The man without the will to call for a draft or do any other other hard things to win this war is named George W. Bush.

Maybe you’ve heard of him?

Rumor has it he’s the president of the United States.

When the will isn’t there, there is no way to win. So it is simple: you either support winning, or you are supporting losing. Never mind the ideas of graceful withdrawal. There is no such thing.

If you think losing is a valid option, you will get your chance in heaven to apologize to the Iraqi who are shaughtered when we draw down our forces.

It really doesn’t matter how we got to where we are. That is the blame game, and it is not helpful in our war today. What matters is what we can do to get the results we want now.