1 post tagged “insurgency”

The original rationale for the invasion of Iraq was to find and destroy Saddam Hussein’s “weapons of mass destruction”.

No weapons.

The next rationale for war was to remove “the totalitarian menace threatening all of Western civilisation”.

The next rationale was to liberate the Iraqi people.

Now all we want to do is exit with honour – an extra 21,500 troops should deliver that honour, shouldn’t it?

Anyway, now that the joint is all but wrecked, isn’t it really the Iraqi’s responsibility to fix things up, even Nancy Pelosi and the Democrats are saying this.

The US is very bad at foreign policy and even worse at undertaking counterinsurgency operations. They’ve never been able to do it. They’ve never bothered to learn how. And the troops’ hearts aren’t in the fight. They’re good at lashing out in fear but awful at close quarters’ fighting.