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Home » Strategery » The Speech: Goodbye, Disneyland

The Speech: Goodbye, Disneyland

bush_unacceptable.jpgAlmost every time I’ve heard President Bush talk over most of the last six years, I felt like the guy was speak­ing to me from a par­al­lel dimen­sion. A Disneyland, happy-​​face uni­verse, where free­dom was always on the march, and ter­ror­ists were just about to be smoked out of their holes. No mat­ter how bad Iraq got, the good guys were win­ning. No mat­ter how many peo­ple got blown up, every­thing was just fine.
Tonight was dif­fer­ent. A vis­i­bly ner­vous President Bush stepped out of the Magic Kingdom, and spoke to us, for once, from the White House. He described an Iraq that matched up to the one my friends serv­ing there describe — the one I’ve seen myself. He was hon­est about the chal­lenges ahead. And he was straight-​​up about how his plan to set­tle Iraq down hadn’t worked.

When I addressed you just over a year ago, nearly 12 mil­lion Iraqis had cast their bal­lots for a uni­fied and demo­c­ra­tic nation… We thought that these elec­tions would bring the Iraqis together and that as we trained Iraqi secu­rity forces, we could accom­plish our mis­sion with fewer American troops.
But in 2006, the oppo­site hap­pened. The vio­lence in Iraq par­tic­u­larly in Baghdad over­whelmed the polit­i­cal gains the Iraqis had made. Al Qaeda ter­ror­ists and Sunni insur­gents rec­og­nized the mor­tal dan­ger that Iraqs elec­tions posed for their cause. And they responded with out­ra­geous acts of mur­der aimed at inno­cent Iraqis. They blew up one of the holi­est shrines in Shia Islam the Golden Mosque of Samarra in a cal­cu­lated effort to pro­voke Iraqs Shia pop­u­la­tion to retal­i­ate. Their strat­egy worked. Radical Shia ele­ments, some sup­ported by Iran, formed death squads. And the result was a vicious cycle of sec­tar­ian vio­lence that con­tin­ues today.
The sit­u­a­tion in Iraq is unac­cept­able to the American peo­ple and it is unac­cept­able to me.

Now, I’m pretty damn skep­ti­cal that Bush’s solu­tion for Iraq — 21,500 more U.S. troops — is really going to turn things around. There are some intrigu­ing ele­ments, yeah. And there are some good, new com­man­ders to carry the strat­egy out — ones who seem ready to com­mit to counterinsurgency’s most basic tenets. But it all seems like too lit­tle, too late.
The only way this plan even has the small­est scrap of hope of work­ing is if it’s gov­erned by cold-​​eyed real­ity, not fuzzy-​​headed wishes. So give the President credit, at least, for dri­ving out of Disneyland.

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January 10th, 2007 | Strategery | 336413 Comments »http://defensetech.org/2007/01/10/the-speech-goodbye-disneyland/The+Speech%3A+Goodbye%2C+Disneyland2007-01-11+02%3A32%3A47hambling You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.

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  1. dt-lurker says:
    January 10, 2007 at 10:48 pm

    i find it real inter­est­ing to see the com­ment about bait­ing Shias by blow­ing up the Golden Mosque of Samarra. Very sim­i­lar to the bait­ing of America by blow­ing up the WTC.

    Reply
  2. JIMMYGEE says:
    January 10, 2007 at 11:43 pm

    I played this game in Nam! ( It SUCKS )
    Pull every­one out that is worth a shit (for­give my lan­guage)
    NUKE the PLACE! And take some of the neigh­bors with it.
    Take the oil we ((( WON ))) the war.
    Then get rid of Bush and his buddy!
    We need a GOOD Marine or War Vet in this office. Of the President of the US That thinks more of our troops!
    And I was not a Marine! (Army)

    Reply
  3. pedestrian says:
    January 11, 2007 at 12:13 am

    Number of troops IS a mat­ter of low inten­sity con­flict. This is not a tra­di­tional war­fare with a front­line. Low inten­sity con­flict involv­ing guerilla tac­tics is spa­cial ver­sus trad­tional war­fare being line ori­ented where front­lines are visual. Low inten­sity con­flict is more about short range com­bat ver­sus tra­di­tional war­fare being more about long range (out range) com­bat. What does this all mean? It is very rare to be able to destroy mass chunks of enemy in low inten­sity con­flict as tra­di­tional war­fare where there is a front­line, where ene­mies wear­ing bat­tle dressed uni­forms with ranks and in mil­i­tary vehi­cles. In low inten­sity con­flict, the enemy is spread out, and stealthy in terms of dif­fi­cul­ties to deter­mine the dif­fer­ence with civil­ians. Enemies do not often keep strong­holds. If they are under attack, they attempt to escape from the sur­round­ing enemy. In low inten­sity con­flict, the enemy is offensive-​​centered, or say more con­cen­trated in ambush. What is the solu­tion to this low inten­sity con­flict? Cordon and search. Surround, raid, and seal. QUANTITY of troops. It is very dif­fi­cult to detect enemy until visual con­tact. No chunks of enemy at one spot, just like the state of osmo­sis, and that makes high explo­sive weapons more use­less, and even more where civil­ians are con­cen­trated in urban war­fare. This state makes the low inten­sity con­flict spa­cial ori­ented rather than lines of front­lines. Spacial ori­ented oper­a­tions requires quan­tity. If there is not enough troops, the enemy will eas­ily escape or out­num­ber the troops silently sneak­ing up and sur­round. Tell me what hap­pened in the two bat­tles of Fallujah? There were more troops involved in the sec­ond. Quality was not every­thing, but it may have con­tributed to the vic­tory of the sec­ond. It will be the same for the next in Baghdad. There are thou­sands of houses and build­ings to search in Baghdad. If the fac­tor of qual­ity is some­thing like a stu­pid idea, just try to do it on your own and tell us if you can seal the area just by your own. There is a need of more troops, much as pos­si­ble, for speed­i­ness to counter counter oper­a­tions around the capi­tol, and to engage in spa­cial search inch by inch for every ter­rror­ist and weapons. The troops will need to “squeeze” into the capi­tol from around, where there will be no room to escape. You need quan­tity for that. Is it pos­si­ble to do it with pre­vent­ing ter­ror­ists from sneak­ing out? Yes, there are plenty of “meth­ods” using IT to deter­mine rather a ter­ror­ist or not. More troops is the solu­tion in low inten­sity con­flict. It is spa­cial where no fron­tiles exists, and where you could just drop a high tech bomb from a stealth bomber to kill a chunk.
    P.S. The hum­mers needed to be upar­mored for the cur­rent trends of Iraq due to the state of con­flict being low inten­sity con­flict and spa­cial, and where the con­cept of “front­line” in tra­di­tional war­fare gone. This is a spa­cial con­flict where quan­tity matters.

    Reply
  4. pedestrian says:
    January 11, 2007 at 12:17 am

    I men­tioned “Quality was not every­thing” but I meant “Quantity was not every­thing”. Sorry.

    Reply
  5. campbell says:
    January 11, 2007 at 11:17 am

    Driving out of Disneyland?.…sorry, ain’t so. when his mil­i­tary com­man­ders balk at achiev­ing “suc­cess” via this lat­est esca­la­tion, no, you can­not say that Bush is tru­ely try­ing to make good. he is only grasp­ing at straws.
    going to pull forces out of Afganistan in order to prop up work in Bagdad? hey fel­las (and ladies).….anybody got any idea what hap­pened to catchin’ n killen ol Bin Laden?.….the guy who actu­ally, really attacked us?
    y’all must remem­ber him, surely?

    Reply

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