
Originally Posted by
SwordsMaster
The truth of the matter is that the US army has very little experience fighting insurgencies as opposed to armies, it's not good at it, and the operation is viewed as a 'war' to be won as opposed to 'crime rate' to be stifled. The reason is that a 'crime' scenario is a long term commitment.
Including semi-military contractors to do the brunt of the work (who have less, or less applicable training than regular troops in the first place) who have even less experience fighting insurgencies because they were bouncers, small town police, signals corps officers, or coastguard before they saw the fat paychecks they could get in the private security business only serves to make things worse, as these people compensate their lack of training with extra aggressiveness which doesn't exactly help win over the locals.
Several major strategic blunders (such as firing the entire iraqi army, police, and civil service, thus leaving millions of armed people with weapons training unable to feed their families) only served to push a deteriorating situation over the limit.
Politically, as many probably agree by now, the war was legal, if perhaps baseless, but falsely advertised as a blitz affair with an enemy who would be beaten in a gentlemanly napoleonic fashion, and, after being shown his inferiority, disdainfully hand in their sidearm to the rescuing hero.
This advertisement was either extremely naive, or, more likely assumed to be only a problem for one administration and then pushed onto the next one.
Constructively, as I see it, the only choices are to either drop the whole thing completely, and admit to themselves and the world, that toppling Saddam was enough, and the rest was a waste. Or actually commit, train soldiers and officers in low-key counter-insurgence, less aggressive (which doesn't mean less effective) policing and attitudes, and a long-term solution. Which, of course would have still wasted billions, and will remove whatever political goodwill is left at home.
The alternatives, considering the economic and social turmoil at home, will draw more similarities with 1915 Russia or Weimar Germany than is comfortable for anyone to admit.
I have been refraining from expressing my opinion on the subject, but the floodgates broke.
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