In fact, we're likely to need a Sasquatch or two a while. The theater is much larger than Iraq.

Occupying a liberated Syria would be even more disastrous.

Every counter-insurgency is different. Irag is not Nicaraugua, Iraq is not Vietnam.

Countertinsurgency is to be put in Iraqi hands. Iraqis are to be doing the hearts and minds business, not us.

Out role is to stiffen the Iraqis with the good stuff, the things they are not up to handling and the things we should not trust them with. We all know what this means: aviation, armor, command, control, communications, intelligence, particularly high-tech intelligence, and logistics in every form. These are the "big footprint" items.

The worst thing we could to would be to disperse U.S. personnel, making them Cub Scout den mothers in every Iraqi small unit, and thereby targets for an enemy attrition tactic.

Big bases also cement our presence in the region.
This both commits us and enables us to back our clients against any eventuality. Likewise this approach maximizes the dependency of our allies.

My guess is that opponents of bases see these issues in exactly the same way, only they think that these are bad things.

"The worst thing we could to would be to disperse U.S. personnel, making them Cub Scout den mothers in every Iraqi small unit, and thereby targets for an enemy attrition tactic"

Amen to that, given the last three years.

Though I disagree with the rest of your suggestions. We should be aiding Sunni in relocation to Sunni areas and encouraging Shi'a to come to a political agreement with Kurds and Sunni for a partition.

All Iraqis ought to target big bases. We have no right to put them there. A permanent presence is a provocation and must be met with force. We'll fold quickly.

Of course, driving us out would mean little to us in the long term while being a huge empowering victory for Iraqis, so it may be a humiliation worth our suffering.

"All Iraqis ought to target big bases"

So your advice to the Kurds would be to start attacking American bases? I don't think that would be a good decision.

"We'll fold quickly"

Although I personally would fold quickly, I'm not sure Bush would. (btw we're talking "quickly" after three years)

Kurds aren't Iraqis. They, of course, welcome our bases because it means we'll have to fight Turkey for them.

If we put bases in Iraq the Shi'a should blow them up.

Five years is light speed in History.

I apologize for jerking you around about the Kurds, I knew what you meant. I agree Permanent bases in Shi'astan or Sunniassstan would not be beneficial because of the hostile population. But I'm surprised that is your position, since you have taken the view that the Shi'a were allies of the US.

None of our allies have bases here, do they?

Not literally, but we do train a lot of allied forces here. And we do have numerous bases on allied soil.

We need at least one airbase in Iraq, with a small cadre of American forces and a bunch of prepositioned materiel.

Our needs aren't their needs.

The two are coincident.

Opposite. The only reason people want bases there is to use them against the Shi'a.

Some "people", yes. Others understand facism.

... even if they can't spell it.

THE PLAN should be keep all of Wackistan as wacky as possible, for as long as possible. That means more chaos, more sectarianism, and more civil war.

You see, the future of the world government is quite bright, given the coming curve of weapons development, energy independence, and technology generally.

Because of the balance of wackiness within the spiritual jailhouse, it should be our policy to favor, not oppose, the Shi'a. Long have the partisans of Ali been oppressed and exploited by the other partisans. As has been posited here and elsewhere as a so-called, would-be "excuse" for their wackiness, they are unfamiliar with temporal power, and are inclined to make mistakes in its exercise.

The useful and informative book by Vali Nasr, The Shi'a Revival, provides another reason for us to favor Shi'ism. Nasr draws an analogy between the Sunni/Sh'ite devide and divisions within Christianity, but it the opposite to that drawn here and elsewhere. Nasr holds that the Ali faction is most similar to Roman Catholicism, while the Sunni faction is more comparable to Protestantism.

The Nasr book goes into some detail in this regard, but the part of the analogy which concerns us now is that the Shi'a faction is somewhat more heirarchical, which should tell us that it is more open to reformation. The Sunni faction, like Protestantism, is an enervated form of its parent religion, purporting to be more "pure," but in practice more susceptible to caesaropapism, that is, to domination and manipulation by the state.

Now the "reformatiuon" of Islam the world hopes for would mirror the Shinto reformation, i.e. packing it in. Shi'ism can do that for us, while Sunni cannot.

The confusion is for the enemy. For us there is a plan.

ghost:

No, they don't. Listen to the whole Islamofascism gang.

The hierarchy matters, but not as much as the messianism. Shi'ism will be just as easy for America to remake in its image as Catholicism and Judaism were.

Oj: That too. The Shi'ites are more capable that the other faction of getting a Mormon-type special revelation from the messiah telling them what they need to do to get along with the world government. Then the hierarchy kicks in to make the reformation stick.

The Nasr book is really quite helpful.

They are all still mad dogs by Western standards, which, I submit, had been Pope Benedict's point. The Shi'a, it seems, are easier to handle, and their prospects for fighting off their hydrophobia are improved.

No, neither of the others required messianic intervention, just to accept that we were reading God correctly. The Shi'a, similarly, just need to acknowledge that protestant capitalist democracy accords best with God's/Allah's Creation until the Messiah comes. They can likely even keep the Supreme Guardian and improve on our own system, which foolishly disposed of the monarchy.

Benedict's point, that they are violent and we not, coming at a time when we are engaged in a military occupation of their land, was inane.

I do not understand the negative, as is appears that we are saying the same thing.

Shi'ites are more adaptable because they are possessed of institutions for adaptation which the Sunnis lack. The German princes and English gangsters behind the so-called "reformation" favored a weakened, leaderless religion for the same reason as the Sunni princes and gangsters throughout the history of Islam: as a tool of their own power and rapine.

We should favor the Shi'ites because they are more likely to solve or to be solved.

The Reformation was required -- though it should have been contained within the Church -- in order to strip away the notion that rites were sufficient and to restore faith and the text to primacy. It is that which makes possible (necessary) a state (and an economy) stripped of rites, but grounded in faith.

There need be no new Revelation and even the Shi'a of Iran only need a couple of minor structural tweaks to their Constitution.

Sunni Islam with its emphasis on only the Pillars, appears to suffer most of the flaws that unReformed Catholicism did. These are exacerbated by grafting it on to modern states.

Recall that the insistence on form over substance was fatal to Catholic Europe, not least because the eventual "solution" involves simply removing the forms (secularization), rather than effecting the swap. Only with the Tocquevillian Benedict has the Church fully come to grips with the American model, which bases the state on the faith and recognizes it as inferior thereto. But it was already too late for Europe, as witness their inability to ground the EU Constitution in Godliness.

They need more than "tweaks" to their constitution. With public policy being enforced by private proxy gangs of thugs (as happens all the time to students, newspapers, and even dissident clerics), they need some foundational changes. Perhaps now that the election results are more fully known, opposing forces in Iran can begin to hem in Ahmadinejad. Or, more likely, he will begin to push back.

Your comment that Benedict missed the boat is silly - the US Army did not go to Iraq to fight Sistani, al-Hakim, or Kho'ei. We went to kill secular gangsters (who themselves had cowed all the religious leaders). Mookie can thunder all he wants, but he would be quiet as a church-mouse if we acted like the Mukhabarat. Obviously we should have left sooner, but even Mookie doesn't think we're there to convert him.

The tweak is easy, rather than having hands on the minutiae like who gets to run, the Guardians should take hands off and only intervene when the wrong guys win.

We're in the Middle East forcibly converting them to our way of doing things.

If a true national challenger got on the ballot (a popular dissident cleric, for example), he would probably win easily. Most here would agree that a truly fair election would wash away Ahmadinejad, and certainly the Guardians.

But, their 'constitution' probably doesn't say anything about an honest count. And it probably doesn't address judicial independence (they've had this fight before), so there won't be a full and free investigation after the guy is killed by (who else) thugs.

"our way of doing things"

The terrorists are learning the best lessons right now (for example, see the stories about the AP and their magical source, Jamil Hussein). They are fighting an American war, on the TV and in the press. All they need to do is keep doing what they are doing, and their 'allies' here at home will take care of the rest.

Now, perhaps the various factions in the Middle East will get tired of screaming, fighting, killing, and dying. Perhaps. The Palestinians are on the edge of their next implosion right now. Eventually it will move beyond theater into open warfare. Maybe next week. Maybe next month. Afterwards, they might want to do things our way. But not before.

It's funny - I learned that here, just shortly after Baghdad fell. Imagine how freaked out the media would have been in June 2003 if the administration started proclaiming loudly that there would be 20,000 civilian deaths (or more) due to religious violence in Iraq, and there is nothing we can do about it?

Now, of course, they want more death. It serves a 'higher' purpose.