Afghanistan is slowly slipping back under the sway of the medievalist Taliban we went to so much trouble to oust after Al Qaida felled the twin towers. In Iraq, U.S. casualties are mounting daily because of resistence from people being described as “hardcore Saddam supporters.” Iran appears to be trying to develop nuclear weapons (and it’s not just U.S. war hawks who think so). And North Korea is issuing more inflamatory rhetoric as the U.S. and its allies gear up to blockade its shipments of arms and drugs abroad.
You’d think this might be enough to have on our plate at one time. But no. Now the normally sensible Sen. Richard Lugar, an Indiana Republican, has broached the truly loony idea of having U.S. troops try to root out the virulently anti-Israeli Hamas terrorists – something the Israelis, who know the neighborhood far better than we do, have been unable to accomplish themselves.
Here’s a taste of what Lugar, the Senate Foreign Relations Committee chairman, said: “At this point, Kofi Annan of the U.N. has suggested U.N. peacekeepers, maybe even armed peacekeepers. There have been suggestions that NATO may be involved, that the United States may be involved. At that point, the polls turn very sharply south, with regard to United States involvement.
“But I would just say after one week of it, in which much of the press, much of the public says, 'Here we go again' and sort of back to this. Never underestimate President George Bush. Once his teeth are into this situation, there are likely to be unforeseen circumstances, and the security situation may change.” The full transcript is here.
Its interesting to note that the idea of direct U.S. involvement in the most intractable conflict on earth is being considered seriously enough that polling has been done on it. Those polled obviously didn’t like the idea. And that may explain why the White House has been distancing itself from Lugar’s pronouncements. With next year’s elections just around the corner, the only wars the administration is interested in are popular ones.
The Iraq war continues because the Army doesn’t know how to end it
Fred Kaplan at Slate, who has consistently provided solid analysis of the Iraq war has an informative piece on the work of a retired general who has concludes that
U.S. war games and other training focuses on initial success – clearly the important first step in any campaign – but rarely on how to achieve the strategic successes for which the war was fought.
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