| Submit your comments on this article |
| Terror Networks & Islam |
| non-state-belligerents |
| 2005-05-03 |
What they are about is local, private fiefdoms. Rather than a strong central government, the strategic goal of the Iraqi insurgency may in fact be chaos; the endpoint not a nation-state but warlord-power in an atmosphere congenial to criminal activity. The War College monograph Strategic Implications of Intercommunal Warfare in Iraq by Andrew Terrill points out that the major danger facing Iraq isn't that the insurgency will somehow defeat and expel the US Armed Forces, however devoutly the Left may wish that. The real danger is that the insurgency will ignite a civil war in the years after the US withdrawal. It covers this issue in many failing states.... |
| Posted by:3dc |
| #5 3dc-I thought the Garden of Eden was somewhere near Moscow. That's what Chekov on Star Trek said, anyway. ;-p |
| Posted by: Barbara Skolaut 2005-05-03 17:22 |
| #4 Mrs. Davis... No need to suggest Aden - the biblical Eden being assumed in Iraq. Nice Play on Movies though! |
| Posted by: 3dc 2005-05-03 12:46 |
| #3 TW is right. Permanent basing will be the cost of bearing the burden East of Aden. |
| Posted by: Mrs. Davis 2005-05-03 11:14 |
| #2 The real danger is that the insurgency will ignite a civil war in the years after the US withdrawal. This presupposes an American withdrawal. I have no idea what Rumsfeld plans, of course, but I think some carefully placed American bases will be necessary for the better part of a generation, as in post-war Germany and Japan, to support this fledgeling democracy, and protect it against exactly the kind of societal breakdown and warlordism the author describes. |
| Posted by: trailing wife 2005-05-03 11:11 |
| #1 A civil war requires the sides are more or less evenly balanced. That is not the case in Iraq. The better organized Kurds and the more numerous Shiias would quickly overwhelm the Sunnis whose territory has no strategic advantages. It would be a short lived slaughter. |
| Posted by: phil_b 2005-05-03 09:46 |