J Thomas:

I'm not sure about the supply lines, although I imagine T Ricks knows better.

As for "Suppose we have 50,000 troops in iraq for many years. What exactly will they accomplish, that 140,000 couldn't?" One, a human (as opposed to purely geographical) DMZ will still be present. Two, QRF for Iraqi forces will still be present. Third, POSSIBLY, in terms of credible commitment (in the social science use of the term) it will signal to the Iraqis that we are not leaving per se, and it will signal to the insurgents (Iraqi and otherwise) that there is no end date for which they should simply wait out.

I'll answer your question-No we should not be worried about mitigating the damage to Iraq, Make the Iraqis do it themselves.

I found a lot of disturbing things in your book ( Its a great read though). Mostly I think that in the end-the generals who got blamed like Casey and Admiral Fallon ( who I respect immensely) kept the American perspective in mind. Petreaus and the others went native. In focusing on what was necessary to protect the Iraqis-we lost sight of doing what is our (the US's ) narrow self interest. Every day we are in Iraq-is a day wasted and one more day we can't do something somewhere else to bolster our own position in the world.

The interests of the Iraqis and the Americans are 180 degrees out. At the end of the day or 2011, Iraq will be what it was in 2002-another dysfunctional Arab country, only now its armed with an American trained Army. That's not a bargain for anyone.

We need to pay the troop withdrawals forward and leave sooner rather than later. If the Iraqis have a blood bath it will be their fault not ours. We accomplished what we needed-it was time to go a long time ago. Lets look out for Americans first.

There is no way we are getting out of Iraq by Obama's set date. Iraq is not nearly stable enough, and won't be by next year to pull out from. Ricks is right in that we will be there for years to come.

Bush I had it right; we have no compelling interest in whatever happens in Iraq. He was willing to let the Iraqis sort themselves out once we got them out of Kuwait; sure, very bad things happened, but he understood we have no compelling interest in their internal problems.

Obama seemed like he might be leaning realist during the campaign, but he's been underwhelming so far; with Freeman serving as bottleneck for our intelligence, telling Obama exactly what the Saudis want him to know, and it obviously being in the Saudis' interest for us to be in Iraq to prevent Iran from gaining too much influence, I suspect that we will be there for a very long time, doing the bidding of the Saudi royal family.

Military adventures by empires are only mistakes if lessons available to be learned are not learned. It's illogical to assume that everything an empire does in pursuit of its needs is sensible or justifiable a priori - it follows then that the Iraq adventure can only be designated the 'biggest mistake ever' if inherent lessons have not been learned - your book's premise is that lessons have been learned and therefore your characterization of the war makes no sense.

It's really about time that critics stop analyzing the war completely in the shadow of how it was managed - there's a broader context here that has very little to do with the competence of the former Commander in Chief. For instance you casually imply that one of the reasons Iraq was 'the biggest mistake ever' was that we were already at war somewhere else: well, one, our troop commitment to Afghanistan was small and two, our whole military is, or at least was premised on the ability to conduct simultaneous actions! Your statement is valid only if one presupposes a quite obviously false posit that empires don't make mistakes!

Part of a more rational approach to understanding the war is to say it revealed how many false assumptions were underwriting our strategy - the important point being that we were fated to learn that lesson at some point and possibly it's for the best we learned it now and therefore, in that context, that broader, historical view, one can speculate that continuing attempts to characterize Iraq as 'the biggest mistake ever' is a classic case of not seeing forest because of trees - that the most serious mistake was not the war itself but the litany of false impressions it left behind.

Mr. Ricks. I think people are generally confused on why we invaded Iraq. Let me lead in by stating that the U.S. projecting force isn't the problem: it's knowing when is the time to do so. That said, the probable reason the Bush (meaning his vice-president) administration invaded Iraq was to change the outlook in the Middle East, and specifically Saudi Arabia. Afterall, anyone in the trade would have confidentially told you the money trail financing al-Qaeda lead back to the Kingdom. I can't imagine an inarticulate George Bush trying to sell that to the American public nor the U.N.

Not seeing the forest because of trees may not have been the issue - it may have been more in line with having too many loggers and not enough forestry experts. Because had we listened to those experts we may not have bungled things so badly. We may some day, look back and see this was the best of several bad choices presented to us. Though history will surely judge our military and political prosecution as inept.

Es salaam aleikom J Thomas. Excuse my narrative in the first person; a bad habit carried over from days since past, in uniform and as a contactor, and my connection with others like myself - I most assuredly wasn't involved in any of the process leading-up to our adventure into Mesopotamia. : - }

I'll let this subject go by saying one could also make the case by saying during the aftermath of the First Gulf War, then SecDef Cheney was taken aback by how far along Saddam Hussein had been with his WMD programs and our intelligence community's lack of knowledge. One might make the case, as vice-president, he wasn't going to be taken by surprise this time around by the same Agency being a nay sayer.

However, there's more to it than that: it was the best of a handful of lousy options - never listen to the reports of scared people J Thomas - we were also scared!

That said, I have an analogy that when given something wrong to do, at least do it right! It's been good chatting with you.

Well, it on to Afghanistan again. The snow will be melting in the Kush and the weather warming-up. When that happens, the action heats-up. I noticed Karzai wants to move up the election process? We aren't prepared militarily for that yet - keep any eye on it! : - |

From Commentary Magazine's "Contentions" Weblog:
March 23, 2009

Iraq: Obama’s Bright Spot

By Abe Greenwald

Imagine for a moment that you are George W. Bush. You switch on 60 Minutes last night and there is Barack Obama telling Steve Kroft, “Sometime my team talks about the fact that if you had said to us a year ago that the least of my problems would be Iraq . . .”

Strange, you think. The man who devoted his entire presidential campaign to running against you (even though you were not running against him); who took shots at you during his inauguration; who has, bizarrely, continued to run against you since taking office; whose only presidential triumphs so far have consisted of high-profile signed denunciations of your policies, has just acknowledged that the undertaking with which you are most closely associated — and for which you’ve been most brutally vilified — is now the brightest star on his horizon.

One must remember that Barack Obama is not referring to the benefits of any change that he’s made in Iraq policy — because he hasn’t made any. He is saying that the Iraq War and the future U.S. commitment there, as outlined by the Bush and Maliki governments, have left him with the smoothest, most promising issue on his daily agenda. It turns out that with the heat of campaigning lifted, the Iraq War is finally acknowledged as what it is: a success.

Ironically, and tragically, Obama won’t use this as an issue around which to rally much needed American support. He has spent too long talking down the war to now cite it as an example of American endurance. But for the former president, sitting in Texas, this must have felt pretty good. No matter how many signing ceremonies are to follow.

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