Moderators: jcmanson, Sly Fox, BuryYourDuke
thepostman wrote:I remember when I was 16 and I thought nukes were the answer to all our problems. Then I grew up.I believe it was called Missle Command!
flamehunter wrote:Letting the enemy know your plans is never a good idea.Really? B/c we warned the Japs what we would do if they didn't surrender. They seemed to get the message after the second bomb.
PAmedic wrote:you're absolutely right
Purple Haize wrote:However, The Surge worked. The Anti insurgency strategy worked and was continuing to work. Gen Patreus was a brilliant choice to take over the US Strategy. There was no ISIS until this administration signaled it was hell bent on leaving and the consequences be damned.The effectiveness of the "surge" and anti-insurgent strategy is overrated.
ATrain wrote:Really? B/c we warned the Japs what we would do if they didn't surrender. They seemed to get the message after the second bomb.Not exactly.
bluejacket wrote:So what you are saying is it wasn't remotely relevant in 2010. Why was that? What has changed?Purple Haize wrote:However, The Surge worked. The Anti insurgency strategy worked and was continuing to work. Gen Patreus was a brilliant choice to take over the US Strategy. There was no ISIS until this administration signaled it was hell bent on leaving and the consequences be damned.The effectiveness of the "surge" and anti-insurgent strategy is overrated.
IS existed before the current President came into office. As recently as 2010, they were down to 8 top leaders, commanders, and recruiters. Certainly not functioning at the scale that they are currently, but they did exist.
BuryYourDuke wrote:A troop surge almost always "works". The problem is we can't and shouldn't be thinking we can have hundreds of thousands of troops somewhere forever to keep the peace.Did we have hundreds of thousands of troops in Iraq? The Surge was only around 20k
Purple Haize wrote:20k in addition to the nearly 120k that were already there. The statement that the surge wasn't all that successful is just rubbish though. Sure, in the months directly following the surge there were some higher death/attack totals, but that was to be expected given that we were actively seeking a fight. By the fall of '07, the situation was taking a turn for the better and Iraq became much more stable throughout 2008 all the way up to the point where Obama decided to leave without having an established up to the SOF agreement.BuryYourDuke wrote:A troop surge almost always "works". The problem is we can't and shouldn't be thinking we can have hundreds of thousands of troops somewhere forever to keep the peace.Did we have hundreds of thousands of troops in Iraq? The Surge was only around 20k
Purple Haize wrote:Wow, that is way off.BuryYourDuke wrote:A troop surge almost always "works". The problem is we can't and shouldn't be thinking we can have hundreds of thousands of troops somewhere forever to keep the peace.Did we have hundreds of thousands of troops in Iraq? The Surge was only around 20k
Humble_Opinion wrote:20k in addition to the nearly 120k that were already there. The statement that the surge wasn't all that successful is just rubbish though. Sure, in the months directly following the surge there were some higher death/attack totals, but that was to be expected given that we were actively seeking a fight. By the fall of '07, the situation was taking a turn for the better and Iraq became much more stable throughout 2008 all the way up to the point where Obama decided to leave without having an established up to the SOF agreement.You can criticize the current president for a lot, but the deadline for leaving Iraq was set by George W. Bush.
alabama24 wrote:Y'all do realize that "hundreds of thousands" is plural, right? Wouldn't you need at least 200k to make that correct? I chortle audibly.Actually that's what I was thinking. I knew we had over 100k but I didn't think we had 200 or 300,000
bluejacket wrote:To be clear, I did not say that the surge was a failure. It did one thing well: we killed a lot of terrorists. But there were many consequences from the surge that were extremely detrimental to our medium and long term goals.What goals were damaged by The Surge?
thepostman wrote:The numbers were a bit higherAccording to Wiki (and you can always trust them ) it was 20k
Purple Haize wrote:The chief end goals for the surge were as follows (http://2001-2009.state.gov/p/nea/rls/78567.htm): 1. Hold provincial elections. 2. Allow Sunnis to participate in government. 3. Form a committee to reform the Iraqi constitution. 4. Pass a national hydrocarbon sharing law to appease divisions (Kurds, Sunnis, and Shia).bluejacket wrote:To be clear, I did not say that the surge was a failure. It did one thing well: we killed a lot of terrorists. But there were many consequences from the surge that were extremely detrimental to our medium and long term goals.What goals were damaged by The Surge?
Yes W set the date for the end of the SOFA It was a great move. It gave time for a sovereign Iraqi Government to negotiate with the US for keeping troops in THEIR country. It also negates the perceptions by some that we were Crusaders and engaging in Imperialism. The fact that there was no new SOFA is squarely on Obama. He accelerated the original troop draw down plan, backed and declared the runner up the winner in the Iraqi election (their 2nd I believe) then failed to negotiate a SOFA with him. He had 0 intention of agreeing to a SOFA sight he Iraqi backed government. He wanted OUT. That was his priority
Purple Haize wrote:Yeah, our President is t the best negotiator. His actions in accelerating the draw down and putting a time on departure of all troops sorta submarines the SOFA. When he said he only wanted 3k troops there and EVERYONE was saying that 10k were the minimum showed he was not serious. He only wanted to say that the US was out of Iraq.The SOFA deadline was the final disaster and that was signed by Bush. It was not Obama. We had to have all combat forces out of all Iraqi cities by June 30, 2009 and out of the country by December 31, 2011. Following December 4, 2008, when SOFA was approved by Iraq's presidential council, we should have immediately begun large troop withdrawals. That single decision signaled it was game over.
Al-Malaki finished 2nd and was backed by the Obama Administration. THAT is what accelerated the demise of Iraq. I am hard pressed to find one thing this Administration has done right in handling Iraq
bluejacket wrote:The SOFA deadline was the final disaster and that was signed by Bush. It was not Obama. We had to have all combat forces out of all Iraqi cities by June 30, 2009 and out of the country by December 31, 2011. Following December 4, 2008, when SOFA was approved by Iraq's presidential council, we should have immediately begun large troop withdrawals. That single decision signaled it was game over.For the entirety of his presidency, W and his administration had argued that any sort of timetable for withdrawal would be a huge tactical error and would essentially telegraph to the enemies of the US and a free and stable Iraq that we would quit fighting for our goals at a specific time. That debate hit critical mass in 2008 as the presidential election cycle heated up and the domestic issues relating to the economy began to make their presence known. Because of these issues, W's administration allowed unprecedented access to the Obama transition team on all matters, foreign and domestic (remember the Office of the President Elect??).
al-Maliki was backed as PM (and other positions) by Bush and Obama from 2006 to 2014.
Without American forces to train and assist Iraqi commandos, the insurgent group Al Qaeda in Iraq is still active in Iraq and is increasingly involved in Syria. With no American aircraft to patrol Iraqi airspace, Iraq has become a corridor for Iranian flights of military supplies to Bashar al-Assad’s government in Syria, American officials say. It is also a potential avenue for an Israeli strike on Iran’s nuclear installations, something the White House is laboring to avoid.We didn't know it at the time, but that "AQ insurgent group in Iraq" is now a part of what we call ISIS. The US was not perfect, but we were the only stabilizing force in Iraq, particularly after 2007 when the surge improved the security situation on the ground. Us leaving left a huge vacuum and it effectively sealed the deals to allow Iran to become a huge force in Iraq, while simultaneously contributing to the rise of ISIS.
Humble_Opinion wrote:For the entirety of his presidency, W and his administration had argued that any sort of timetable for withdrawal would be a huge tactical error and would essentially telegraph to the enemies of the US and a free and stable Iraq that we would quit fighting for our goals at a specific time. That debate hit critical mass in 2008 as the presidential election cycle heated up and the domestic issues relating to the economy began to make their presence known. Because of these issues, W's administration allowed unprecedented access to the Obama transition team on all matters, foreign and domestic (remember the Office of the President Elect??).He did argue that but he still signed the SOFA. Negotiations for SOFA began in Jan. 2008. The final draft of the agreement was finished by the middle of Oct. 2008, which included a 2011 withdraw date (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/co ... 03793.html). All of this was before the 2008 election.
Humble_Opinion wrote:When consulted, the members of the W adminstration have always maintained that the SOFA in 2008 left the door open for a new SOFA in 2011 that would include a new commitment of residual forces. So it's a bit disingenuine to say that is was purely Bush's agreement that resulted in the present situation. We know from internal documents and interviews with former Obama administration members (like Gates) that Obama was indeed in negotiations to establish a new SOFA in 2011 that would keep a residual force to collect intel, conduct training, and if needed participate in raids. The fact that it failed cannot be blamed on W. There are conflicting reports and reasons why it failed. There have been plenty of assertions made by Iraqi leaders, including Maliki himself, that Obama seemed reluctant to establish a new SOFA that would leave behind what Admiral Mullen and Gates had requested (~16k).Bush apologists maintained that there was opportunity for renegotiation, but the chances of the Iraqis giving reasonable terms to us were virtually zero. The Iraqis craved independence and their leadership were never going to give our troops immunity to save them short of a near collapse of the state. That is exactly what happened in June 2014. Even then, immunity was given to us through diplomatic assurances and not formal agreements. The Bush and Obama administrations agree that immunity is fundamental and they are both correct.
That having been said, I think the Iranian backed Shia are the one's that derailed any possibility of having any sort of new agreement brokered. As Michael Gordon reported in the NYT, the Obama administration insisted that any new deal be passed through parliament and include the necessary measures to ensure immunity for US service members. Maliki, and other administration officials thought that the agreement could be done at the executive level by Maliki himself (as Maliki wanted). Obama refused though... This allowed the Iranian backed Shia, to derail any sort of agreement with ease, effectively ending the discussion for any US residual force. It also allowed the Obama Admin to maintain a campaign promise to withdraw ALL US forces just as the re-election cycle was heating up.
There is also another interesting nugget in this article by Gordon:Without American forces to train and assist Iraqi commandos, the insurgent group Al Qaeda in Iraq is still active in Iraq and is increasingly involved in Syria. With no American aircraft to patrol Iraqi airspace, Iraq has become a corridor for Iranian flights of military supplies to Bashar al-Assad’s government in Syria, American officials say. It is also a potential avenue for an Israeli strike on Iran’s nuclear installations, something the White House is laboring to avoid.We didn't know it at the time, but that "AQ insurgent group in Iraq" is now a part of what we call ISIS. The US was not perfect, but we were the only stabilizing force in Iraq, particularly after 2007 when the surge improved the security situation on the ground. Us leaving left a huge vacuum and it effectively sealed the deals to allow Iran to become a huge force in Iraq, while simultaneously contributing to the rise of ISIS.
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/23/world ... .html?_r=0
Purple Haize wrote:So basically it's all Bush's fault and President Obama did nothing to make the situation worseThat is the liberal MO when it comes to debating Iraq and Afghanistan.
PAmedic wrote:you're absolutely right