September 09, 2003

Reality in Iraq

With most of the news coverage from Iraq reporting what an awful situation our troops are in, perspective is needed. Some was provided last Saturday at a press conference. General Ricardo Sanchez told reporters:

The last five days we have had an average of 15 attacks per day. Fifty percent of those attacks were attacks that were conducted at a long range, outside of contact of the American and Coalition forces. The enemy has made a decision to stay away and not engage us other than with improvised explosives that are being remotely controlled, or with mortars where they can escape readily.

The other 50 percent of those attacks are attacks that are being conducted with a
combination of small arms, rocket-propelled grenades and improvised explosives.

So seven a day occur where we can engage the enemy and kill them in a near battle, and they last about a minute to two minutes. Now tell me that I have a strategic or an operational or a tactical problem here in this country when I have got 160,000 troops on the ground. Absolutely not. There is no risk at any of those levels, at the tactical, operational or strategic level.

The only way that we will fail here in this country is if we choose to walk away
from Iraq and make America the next battleground on the global war on terrorism.
That's the only way we can lose. That's the choice we have to make here. I don't
need additional forces, and the choice that we need to make is to stay right here
and defeat the enemy.

He went on to say,

We've said it repeatedly that what is required here, and the Secretary just highlighted it, is that we need the Iraqi people to help us, give us the intelligence that is necessary for us to go out and defeat these disparate elements
that are out there.

At that same press conference, Donald Rumsfeld offered a good explaination for not sending a massive amount of new troops to Iraq:

To the extent you "flood the zone" or whatever you said by burying this country in foreign forces, what do you do? You don't fight any more battles because there are only so many terrorists, there are only so many criminals, and there are criminals and terrorists in practically every city in the world. But what you do do is you create this heavy, unnatural presence. And to the extent you do that there's a tendency, not always, but there can be a tendency for the people not to assume their own responsibility but to point fingers and rely on the foreign troops to make life perfect and that's not going to happen.

The people who are going to make this country are the Iraqi people. They are going to provide for their political future. They are going to provide for their security
future. Simply flooding the zone with two or three times the number of foreign
forces that are here, it would increase the number of targets for the handfuls of
criminals and the handfuls of terrorists, for the handfuls of Ba'athist remnants.
It would tend to take money that instead of the money going to help rebuild this
country or to help train and bring to the fight Iraqi police and Iraqi border
patrols, the money would be going towards sustaining foreign forces.

Secretary Rumsfeld Press Availability in Iraq

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Then there's a story that I'm sure won't make the front page of the NY Times. 158 troopers from the 101st Airborne re-enlisted for another tour. Those guys know the Islamist War isn't short-term. I'm proud these guys are defending us.