my take on all of this stuff is that we underestimated two things: our loss of credibility given our aboutface in 1991, and the impact of the worldwide protests/resistance to the US as they filtered to Iraqi field leaders.
perhaps commanders in, say, the south would have stayed firm no matter what, simply based on the first.
but i can't help thinking that the second helped rein in a lot of potential turncoats.
basically we were hoping/expecting that AT SOME POINT Iraqis in leadership positions (eg the lieutenant colonels who lead significant troops) would calculate that their risks were higher if they stayed on Saddam's side than if they switched over to the US.
if they had had access to the same kind of information that the Bushites did (eg our war plan, Bush's unwavering commitment/slash/disdain for European opinion) this would have been reasonable.
but this turned out not to be the case -- for 2 weeks.
note that the pentagon said that a "high level source" tipped them to the latest potential Saddam location -- the one they flattened yesterday.
you gotta believe the combination of cash, immunity from warcrime prosecution, and a potential role in the postwar Iraqi military is looking better and better to a whole bunch of commanders now.
if you added the line "It may take a few weeks, but..." to all of these statements I think they'd ring pretty true at this point.
I also think this "length of the war" brouhaha was pretty stupid to begin with. Vietnam lasted 10 years.
Isn't this war is beginning to look like the fastest conquest of a large territory in history, or something like that?
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perhaps commanders in, say, the south would have stayed firm no matter what, simply based on the first.
but i can't help thinking that the second helped rein in a lot of potential turncoats.
basically we were hoping/expecting that AT SOME POINT Iraqis in leadership positions (eg the lieutenant colonels who lead significant troops) would calculate that their risks were higher if they stayed on Saddam's side than if they switched over to the US.
if they had had access to the same kind of information that the Bushites did (eg our war plan, Bush's unwavering commitment/slash/disdain for European opinion) this would have been reasonable.
but this turned out not to be the case -- for 2 weeks.
note that the pentagon said that a "high level source" tipped them to the latest potential Saddam location -- the one they flattened yesterday.
you gotta believe the combination of cash, immunity from warcrime prosecution, and a potential role in the postwar Iraqi military is looking better and better to a whole bunch of commanders now.
if you added the line "It may take a few weeks, but..." to all of these statements I think they'd ring pretty true at this point.
I also think this "length of the war" brouhaha was pretty stupid to begin with. Vietnam lasted 10 years.
Isn't this war is beginning to look like the fastest conquest of a large territory in history, or something like that?
- big jimmy 4-09-2003 5:02 am