War in Iraq - time we were gone

I know, I know, that title is going to raise the hackles on some of my friends... but honestly, that's pretty much how I feel. It's not that I don't think the situation is winnable... it's just that, as a society, we're not willing to do what's necessary to win there.

Of course, the first problem is that we should never have gone in the first place... and not because regime change is bad. On the contrary, regime change can be a very good thing for all involved (except the existing regime, of course). Simply put, you don't open a second front on a war until and unless it's forced upon you. We took our eye off the ball in Afghanistan, and now we're paying the price for that there.

Many will say that, now that we've butted into Iraq, we need to stay there until we set things right. Lovely idea, if the goal is attainable. On the military front, you need a mix of at least three things - numbers, technology, and intelligence. We have a decent mix of numbers and technology, but our intelligence is crap. We make forays into insurgent-controlled areas, but, from what I've seen, pretty much only when we're clued in to a large concentration of insurgents... otherwise, we patrol our supply routes, try to maintain some semblance of order in areas we've claimed, and leave it at that. We could do more... if we had information from the local populace. Heck, more often than not, we can't even tell if an individual's a local, something the locals could tell us without hesitation.

So, how do you get the locals to give you the information you need to win? Now we're in the realm of politics. This bit, Machiavelli had pegged... in order to control a populace, paraphrasing a bit, best good is if they love you, but above all make sure that they fear you. We had our chance at getting the people of Iraq to love us... and pissed it away. That leaves the fear option... and that's where we will fail. Even the government that we helped establish doesn't fear us in the least... faced with a list of prerequisites for our continued presence and a two-month timeframe to complete them, their legislature is taking a month's vacation. Within the past day or two, their president has stated that (Allah willing) they could make do without American troops.

At this point, extreme measures would be required to get sufficient fear/respect to control things there... personally, I think the most likely to work would be the Mongol method (back before the Black Death dismantled that empire): conquer an area, let the locals know that they can do whatever the hell they want, so long as they don't interfere with the conquerors... and any that do get examples made of them... not just the troublemakers (if you could identify them), but the whole area. There were at least a couple of cities that were wiped off the map by the Mongols, but the remainder stayed in line until the empire's fall.

Now, look to yourself and your neighbors... tell me that any of you could stand behind, let's say, using a tactical nuke on Sadr City, even if that stopped all the sectarian violence. I know even I would have a hard time justifying it. But without that scale of reprisal, local leaders will continue to hold sway, mostly through fear... we won't get the intel we need to take down outside insurgent forces, never mind local militias... we'll keep the brakes on the violence, but the deaths will still come, just taking 5 years instead of 6 months, all the while with us being blamed for not doing enough to keep people for killing each other. Sadly, the best we can do at this point is to
get out of the way, let the civil war take place, possibly back a side if we are asked to do so, and let the new Iraq form as naturally as possible... and if we don't like what shape that takes, knock the anthill down and try again.