Waiting Game in Iraq
Waiting Game in Iraq
By Daniel G. Jennings
The war in Iraq has become a sort of vicious waiting game where time is on our side.
All the United States has to do in Iraq is stay and keep its allies in power there. If American troops remain in the country for a number of years despite all the attacks of the fanatics the opposition and the international Jihad movement behind will be discredited. These groups whole reason for being is to defeat the West on the battlefield, if they can't do that they will collapse. If after a few years of combat and many deaths, no result is achieved the Middle Eastern terrorist groups will collapse or degenerate into criminal gangs much as the various Communist guerrilla movements in Latin America and Southeast Asia did during the 1970s and 80s.
The longer the war goes on the more brutal the terrorists will get, which will take away most of their support. Eventually, the Iraqi people will get sick and tired of the violence and demand an end to it. They'll get tired of the war and demand peace even if it means accepting defeat or American occupation like the South in 1865, or Japan and Germany in 1945.
More importantly, the terrorists resources are limited and they will be whittled down over time. As the more fanatical and effective members get killed off and recruiting becomes harder the terrorists will have to scrape the bottom of the barrel, using criminals and the mentally ill as operatives.
As the terrorists ability to harm us declines our ability to hurt them will increase. America and its allies will get better at fighting the terrorists. Since our resources are larger, we'll have the luxury of developing new tactics and weapons for dealing with them and learning how they operate. The terrorists won't have the luxury of developing effective new tactics to fight us because they'll be hunted fugitives. Instead they'll have to develop shock tactics like beheading captives.
This of course is the reverse of the Vietnam War where time was on their side. In Vietnam, the Communists had to wait us out that is simply keep fighting until Americans got sick of the war. In Iraq, time is on our side because all we have to do is wait them out.
The question is do we the will to play the waiting game in Iraq or not?