Our Understanding of Iraq
Reader comment on item: Tempering Ambitions [in Iraq]

Submitted by Leonard Markowitz (United States), Nov 12, 2006 at 05:58

I don't believe that our current situation in Iraq is driven by our attempt to achieve the "high values" that we hoped that the Iraqis would have. The Department of Defense, the Pentagon and our State Department has never had and still does not have an understanding of what makes an Iraqi tick. Our government and its military believed that success on the open battlefield would translate into a grateful Iraqi population agreeing to anything that we would suggest, including the initiation of democracy as a way of life. We couldn't have been more wrong.

The day the Saddam's statue was pulled-down in Baghdad and the American troops stood,helpless to stop the looting, it became clear to the killers and the spoilers in Iraq that the US had an inadequate number of troops to maintain order and the inhibit the influx of more terrorists through the porous borders of the country. So, the only way to provide sufficient troops to Iraq would be to initiate a draft, a concept that would be politically poisonous even to mention to the American electorate. Of course the 65,000 military personnel that we have in Germany are very important. One never knows when the Red Army of the German Wehrmacht may reappear.

Our military brass has never understood the psyche of the enemy. These people are bushwhackers, murderers and criminals. They are not going to confront the US forces on the open battlefield. Their battlefield is the asphalt jungle. West Point has never trained its officers to fight that sort of war.

The regrettable conclusion to this mess will be the implosion of the country into three nations -a Shia south, a Sunni center and a Kurdish north. This civil war will be very bloody as all civil wars are. In the end, a procrastinating, bumbling UN will step in and arrange a peace conference.

Leonard Markowitz

priluki@voicenet.com

Note: Opinions expressed in comments are those of the authors alone and not necessarily those of Daniel Pipes. Original writing only, please. Comments are screened for relevance, substance, and tone, and in some cases edited before posting. Reasoned disagreement is welcome, but comments are rejected if scurrilous, off-topic, vulgar, ad hominem, or otherwise viewed as inappropriate. For complete regulations, see the Guidelines for Comments. For informational purposes, we identify countries from which comments are sent.