Five myths about the war
DOD's For the Record has the myths on troops levels and change in tactics to meet changed circumstances in the battle space. There is much more in this myth buster.
Should Republicans go ahead and add Supreme Court Justices to head off Democrats
Washington Post: Some Democrats eye adding more justices to the Supreme Court to change its ideological bent The once-remote idea has gained the attention of liberals angered by the GOP push to remake the federal courts. Probably the easy way to defeat this court-packing scheme is for Trump to propose doing the same thing now. It would lead to Democrat denunciations and claims that it would be wrong, thereby blowing up any attempt by them in the unfortunate event of Democrats winning a presidential election.
That is in an interesting rebuttal of many criticisms of the Iraq war but as a left-wing nut-job, I do disagree some of those explanations.
ReplyDeleteAs for the "increased troop levels" (Myth #1), I think the 'myth buster' blurs the distinction between initial combat and post-invasion tactics (including troop levels).
I don't think people are disputing Rumsfeld's competence in leading the initial invasion. Obviously that was a quick and efficient success. The criticism comes from all the conflict that has arisen since the original assault. I don't see how it can be argued that we didn't need more troops on the ground to prevent looting, to keep the peace, to rebuild simple services like power and water in order to do a better job keeping the Iraqi population pacified.
Myth (and rebuttal) #3 deals with the success (or lack thereof) in pacifying Afghanistan once President Bush started his second war (in Iraq).
The DOD's stated rebuttal doesn't really make a convincing argument that we're having much success in building long-term stability in Afghanistan. It also doesn't address with any detail the amount of resources and manpower that are needed in(and divided between) the two wars.
Just because there are more troops in Afghanistan now than there were originally doesn't mean there are enough troops there to get the job done. The DOD explanation quotes Gen. Karl Eikenberry, commander of Combined Forces Command-Afghanistan: “NATO and U.S.-led Coalition and Afghan national security forces are moving aggressively to deny the enemy safe havens..." Again, this doesn't address whether we're achieving long-term success in Afghanistan, it merely uses generic terms ("aggressively") to describe our ongoing efforts to defeat the Taliban on the battlefield. Well great, our boys are still fighting hard. But that doesn't mean we have the resources or plans in place to achieve lasting success. All it means is that we're still fighting "hard". Forgive me for not being convinced of our imminent victory.
The post major combat operations phase was under the command of Gen. Abizaid. His philosophy on troop levels was that if we had too many the Iraqis would not do things for themselves. It is clear though that decisions on the troops levels in Iraq have been have been made by Gen. Abizaid and Gen. Casey. While arguments can be made that their judgment on this matter was wrong, it was in fact their request for troop levels that were approved by Sec. Rumsfeld and not the other way around.
ReplyDeletePoint taken. But doesn't Rumsfeld believe pretty strongly in his philosophy of creating a "21st Century" Army that relies on smaller numbers augmented by better technology?
ReplyDeleteDidn't this influence the planning and execution of the Iraq War? This is a man who is openly anti-nation building. As was George W. Bush when he campaigned for President.