WASHINGTON, May 30 (Reuters) - President George W. Bush would like to see a lengthy U.S. troop presence in Iraq like the one in South Korea to provide stability but not in a frontline combat role, the White House said on Wednesday.
White House spokesman Tony Snow said Bush would like to see a U.S. role in Iraq ultimately similar to that in South Korea. "The Korean model is one in which the United States provides a security presence, but you've had the development of a successful democracy in South Korea over a period of years, and, therefore, the United States is there as a force of stability," Snow told reporters.
Source: Reuters
Full text available: http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/N30416213.htm
It doesn't really surprise me that the Bush administration has a plan like this; in fact, I assume that this has been the plan all along. But I can't imagine this is going to be very popular with most of America. The administration is having a hard enough time convincing voters to be patient for a few more months, let alone for the foreseeable future.
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This might have been a reasonable plan about four years ago. Now, I'm not so sure. Like you said, I doubt very seriously the American public will support an even longer, more protracted deployment there of any sort. Besides, the security situation is just so different than what we had to deal with in Korea. We had declared a ceasefire with a conventional national army (well, two, actually, if you include China)... but these armies had a single, unified leadership that you could communicate with.
What we face in Iraq is innumerable little factions: genuine national resistance cells, organized crime & kidnapping gangs, Al Qaeda foreign fighters, non-Al Qaeda foreign fighters, local militias (some supported and trained by Iran), so on and so forth. There's no single leadership structure to talk to.
North Korea isn't a model that's going to work, in my estimation.
More likely, we will probably need to more closely adhere to the model the U.S. used in Vietnam before the Gulf of Tonkin incident: Use special forces personnel to intermingle, train, and advise indigenous units of security personnel. The trick would be securing the safety of those advisors, but I think it’s the best model to follow, frankly. It would represent a useful U.S. presence in the country, without having humvees and tanks on every street corner.
I agree with John that Iraq looks more like Vietnam than South Korea. However, I would like to point out that the US strategy in Vietnam failed miserably. While we equipped and trained "friendly" indigenous groups it proved virtually impossible to use this type of force to produce the outcomes we wanted because a) the conflicting loyalties of the soldiers, b) the increasing perception of US forces as occupiers rather than allies or liberators, c) huge "collateral damage inflicted by the US on those indigenous groups, which undermined their support for the US (see a and b), and d) that in many cases the "enemy" enjoyed more popular support than the US or the small factions of allied troops it worked with.
If the "advisers" approach had been successful, the US wouldn't have had to deploy half a million troops to Southeast Asia to fight a war that claimed the lives of some 2 million people. Rather, popular resistance to the "Communist threat" and a little training and few hundred thousand assault rifles, a couple of Korean War-era tanks and fighter jets, and a couple dozen CIA operatives and Green Berets would have prevented the overthrow of a the South Vietnamese regime.
I see the situation in Iraq as pretty similar. The Iraqi troops have similarly conflicting loyalties, which I think is understandable. For the most they want what's best for their country, I just think many of them aren't sure which side is really going to provide that--on the one had, the US might stay forever and "colonize" the country; on the other, extremists may turn it into a radical theocracy. Others soldiers are using it to pursue their own personal agendas or to aid the other side. Some just need a job.
Sadly, I think if we want to "win" the war in Iraq (and profit from it), the South Korea strategy may be the one we need--thousands of troops stationed there for the next 50 years. And carrier battle groups waiting the Gulf and a additional military installations throughout the region. Don't get me wrong; that is far from what I want. There are better ways to lessen the violence; it's just that none of those allow the US to reap the rewards of its investment in terms of establishing a US-friendly regime or pocketing oil revenues.
Well, a direct comparison to Vietnam is fallacious, too. Even in Vietnam, the Viet-Cong and the North Vietnamese Army had a very well defined command structure. You were essentially dealing with a single entity. In Iraq, we’re trying to fight hundreds of micro-armies, instead of just one or two. Making peace with 10 of them in a given region leaves 20 that you’re still at war with. Several, like Al-Qaeda, there will be no peace with, ever. The key to beating them is undermining their local support. More on this later…
Now, I would refute the idea that the advisors approach wasn’t working. The green berets [i]were[/i] fairly successful for a long while, and saw good results if one considers only the context of the military operations in which they took part.... But, as is often the case, the situation was simply more complex than that. Our government seems to voraciously look for opportunities to forgo what technically [i]works[/i] so as to pursue an overall political strategy…. And in this case, it included propping up a corrupt government that was NOT democratically elected and militarily inept, and eventually using the Gulf of Tonkin incident as an excuse to start sending entire divisions of soldiers into the country to prove a point to China and the Soviet Union. Unfortunately, “making a point” is not a good foundation for waging a war. Another disturbing parallel between Iraq and Vietnam…
Now, I think the overall strategy being employed by Gen. Patreaeus now is the one we should have been following from the start: Instead of concentrating on building a strong, central government to maintain peace and security (which has failed miserably thus far), he is making a concerted effort to make alliances on the community level instead. By making deals/bartering/making buddies with local Sheiks, town mayors, religious leaders, and provincial leadership, we’re decentralizing our base of support and influence. So if the government collapses (and at this point, I’m not sure that would be a bad thing), we wouldn’t have to bat an eye. We could maintain a hands off approach as the provincial leaders build it back up, but with a “Made in Iraq” sticker on it.
Again, in hindsight, we should have been doing this even as the 3ID arrived in Baghdad. But even late in the game, we’re seeing that this approach is working in several previously violent areas. The Anbar province is the best example. It was, at one time, the #1 deadliest place on Earth and a hotbed for the Sunni insurgency. Now, within the past year, it’s become one of the least dangerous, and without a major increase in U.S. troop presence…. Plus local support for Al-Qaeda has eroded to the point where the locals are taking arms against foreign, even to the point where they are actively requesting support from the U.S. military! This was unthinkable even just a year ago.
I think it’s a good example of how diplomacy, even at the micro level, is the tool that will net the most gain. The big question is: Is it too late for this to work elsewhere? And how many boots do we have to have on the ground for it to succeed?
Where were the Green Berets working well besides that movie with John Wayne? Beck was right in that we were propping up an undemocratic, corrupt, and inept force, and if they had been otherwise, maybe the US strategy would have worked.
Still our history in the "adviser" and "armorer" role has been abysmal. I cite El Salvador and Nicaragua as prime examples other than Vietnam. In each we backed ruthless regimes in the name of "democracy" or anti-Communism, and the result was essentially a stale-mate. In the case of Nicaragua, once "our" guys lost we funded a terrorist war (funded by arms sales to Iran) against what may be one of the best examples of a functional Socialist government in the history of the developing world (dramatically increased literacy, lowered infant mortality, GDP increase, etc). Moreover, the Contras (whom Reagan said were the "moral inequivalent of the founding fathers") committed some of the most horrific atrocities I've ever read about against the population of Nicaragua, and all on our dime. In fact, they easily give Al-Qaeda a run for the money in terms of terrorism...but they were "our" terrorists.
Anyway, the point is that only through funding mass violence did we beat our enemies in these cases. So is that a win for the US? Not in my book. A win is convincing the population to push for democracy, not beating them into submission with violence. I for one would rather our "advisers" stay at home. What we need is to stop intervening to promote our interests above the interests of the people in a given state and to help develop infrastructures, fund civil society, and relieve debt.
Again, in terms of our interventions, I'd say that if the UN doesn't sanction it, then we should stay out. Mind you, declaring WAR is different. Had we wanted to declare war on Iraq, that would be outside the purview of the UN. But we haven;t declared war in 60 year...probably because there is a negative stigma attached to such declarations. But apparently other military interventions are somehow less bad.
Uhm, that was me. Not sure why it didn't attach my name.
I spent the past 30 minutes crafting a response, and it got lost when I hit "publish" and the browser puked.
So, after a good cry, I will instead post this retort, galvanized in the crushing grip of logic and reason:
http://img508.imageshack.us/img508/1192/setupvi5.jpg
Is that the guy running the war in Iraq? No wonder it's all falling apart. Maybe the pressure on his breast pumps needs to be turned down a little.
Well, I nabbed it off the "Our Party" section of the DNC website... I think he's an intern for Howard Dean or something.
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