Before we leave, though, we need to be certain we've done enough to ensure that the shiites and kurds and sympathetic Sunni--of whom I've no doubt there are many--can win the war. We need to leave on our own terms, no one else's.

What makes anyone think that the Kurds and Shi'ites will necessarily bother fighting in central Iraq, rather than just declaring independence and leaving the Sunnis to their own state?

The Sunni Baathists were never defeated, they melted away when they realised their organized resistance untenable. They need to experience defeat and we're not the ones to do it. Had we rolled around Bagdhad initially and subdued the triangle militarily before moving into Bagdhad perhaps things would be better. Too late now for Monday morning quarterbacking. Time to put it in the hands of the Shia and the Kurds ASAP. Until then start bombing the weapons dumps with due warning to nearby civilians to evacuate the area before doing so. Those dumps we want to preserve for the future Iraqi army will have to be secured. Iraqi's seen in possesion of launchers of any sort should be considered active belligerants and shot on site. This is still war, but we don't seem to be acting like it. But in truth what do I know? You have to be there.

I'm afraid the question is, who will prove to be the most brutal?

And the Ba'athists (more precisely the Sunnis, as befits a minority in a Hobbesian universe) have a pretty good track record.

The Sunni's in the triangle are twelve months from the debt collectors knock. Debts are being collected in Basra today.

The arms depots in the triangle currently do have priority. There appears to be a sufficiency of arms and munitions outside of the triangle to serve the new army. Some have argued that disbanding the old army was a mistake. It is difficult to believe that the complainers don't realize that the command structure of the better units was always Sunni. Leaving those units intact was an invitation to a protracted civil war. The reconstituted army will have leadership that that more closely reflects Iraq's ethnic mix.

It is interesting to watch what is not happening. The patrols of the pipelines seem to be becoming more effective. Incidents outside of the triangle continue to diminish. People in Basra have lost fear of a Ba'athist resurgence.

We can expect attacks in the triangle to continue and to become more vicious. It's not going to be pretty over the next year but there is no alternative and the outcome is not in doubt.

Peter:

Your question begs thousands of years of recorded history.

Jim, I don't understand what you mean.

OJ brings in his view of the necessity of Israel establishing a Palestinian state run by Palestinians. Isn't it possible that Kurds and Shi'ites may eventually decide that what central Iraq needs is a Sunni state run by Sunnis?

Perhaps OJ thinks that Shi'ites and Kurds will be ruthless and ambitious enough to gain complete control over the Sunni triangle. I see no reason to believe that the Kurds would make the effort, rather than just establish a border. Shi'ites might try to gain control, but why is their success guaranteed? They would be forming an entirely ragtag army to go against groups that actually have some military experience, and which would be supported by a Sunni population that would believe they were literally in the fight for their lives. A possible outcome would be Sunnis cleansing out Shi'ites from disputed areas, with the Shi'ites being too disorganized and ineffectual to stop the Sunnis. We'd end up with a Sunni state in central Iraq run by former Saddamistas, but now with a considerably more loyal population.

Peter:

That would be the hope--so that we can decimate it without harming Kurds & Shi'ites.

I would add that in taking a page from Sharron, we should consider demolishing every house in which we find explosive devices from hand grenades on up. A few of those events would initiate second thoughts as to where they store the stuff. Not a pretty thought but neither is what they're doing.

I don't see how someone who claims to care about the fate of the Shi'ites can so blithely advocate a policy that might result in tens of thousands of Shi'ites being massacred and driven out of their homes, even if it makes it easier for us to "decimate" the Sunnis later on.

Neither do I see the point in prematurely pulling out of a guerilla war now, if there is a good chance we'll have to fight a much tougher guerilla war in the future. Perhaps you think we can simply decimate the Sunnis without exposing our soldiers to much risk, but decimating the Sunnis is simply not an available option. It's like suggesting that Bush nuke Baghdad -- that might be useful, but President Bush cannot order that even if he wanted to.

Central Iraq will probably become an authoritarian state rather than a democracy, but the character of that authoritarian state and its disposition to the USA will depend on when and how we pull out. Treating Iraq policy like we're Tom and Daisy Buchanan ("They were careless people...") doesn't profit us. Showing some patience does.

It wouldn't be a guerilla war at that point. It would be us vs. Triaglistan.

"It wouldn't be a guerilla war at that point. It would be us vs. Triaglistan." What the hell does that mean? In this worst case scenario we would reinvade Trianglistan or Sunnistan or whatever, quickly destroy any conventional opposition, and then find our soldiers under attack by irregulars concealing themselves within a civilian population (but with the Sunni population much more hostile to the US than at present). Therefore, another guerilla war.

I think the point is that the armys of the kurds and Shia would be fighting on the ground with american air support. Americans can't massicre Sunnis- Kurds and Shia can.

But OJ is just venting anger at the sunni population because of the attacks on American troops and the TV pictures of those swine celebrating. It's a pleasant fantasy to imagine the Shia going in and slaughtering them all. Whose cheering now, beatch?

But all this won't come to pass, the Iraqi 'civil war' will end with a wimper, not a bang. Things will calm down, democracy will take hold. It's just in too many normal people's interest, and without a fascist police state apparatus to back them, the killers will find it impossible to supress their fellow citizen's aspirations.

As for the sunnis being 'well trained militarily', yeah right. That's why they beat Iran and America so easily I guess. The new Iraqi army, made of majority Shia, will be one properly trained in western war-making, not a thuggish, ignorant aparatus of state terror crewed by the dictator's family. It will annialate any old-style arab army, no matter what it's size, especially when backed with American air power and communications technology.

This is just common sense, the sunnis will be slaughtered if they attempt a military re-takover of iraq.

Peter:

This time we could bomb them until sufficient destruction and casualties resulted that they'd never want to fight again, as we did to the South, Germany, and Japan.

I'd say it wasn't just destruction that did the job in Germnay, Japan and the Confederacy; it was the knowledge that invasion and occupation were inevitable. Even if we had bombed Vietnam on the level you propose for Sunnistan, that alone wouldn't have broken the enemy's will to fight.

At the end of the day, if you want to get rid of the Ba'athists you'll have to actually occupy the country for a while to specifically target the Ba'athists. (Hoping that the Shi'ites will successfully impose a Punic Peace is just a pipe dream.)

Sunni will keep fighting but Shi'ites won't? Why?

If Hanoi had been bombed like Dresden or Berlin or Tokyo, the Vietnam War would have ended in a month. If the Germans had bombed Moscow like that in 1941, Stalin would have either been killed by his own or fled over the Urals. That's the way 'unconditional surrender' works.

jim:

What makes you think that bombing Hanoi would have ended the war ?
Especially since the real opponent was China.