| Submit your comments on this article |
| Iraq |
| How We Got to Where We Are In Iraq |
| 2006-06-13 |
| We quit while we were ahead, and rapidly fell behind. That's the message of Cobra II, the best book so far written about the war in Iraq. Cobra II was the code name LtGen. David McKiernan gave to the battle plan for the invasion of Iraq. (The first Operation Cobra was Patton's plan for breakout from Normandy to liberate France in World War II.) "The U.S. military commanders who battled their way to Baghdad and endured the long hot summer of 2003 believe that there was a window of opportunity in the early weeks and months of the invasion, which was allowed to close," wrote Michael Gordon and Bernard Trainor in their epilogue. "Though some degree of opposition was unavoidable, the virulent insurgency that emerged was not inevitable but was aided by military and political blunders in Washington." Unfortunately, that judgment is the least supported part of the 507-page book, most of which is the story about how the battle plan evolved, and a gripping, unvarnished account of all the battles soldiers and Marines fought on their way to Baghdad. |
| Posted by:ryuge |
| #8 airoplains. ima win. |
| Posted by: muck4doo 2006-06-13 22:52 |
| #7 Verlaine, you're right. The challenges we face in Iraq post invasion were planned by Saddam, Al Qaeda, and company before we entered the country. Moreover, as these "all knowing" generals know, plans go out the window once the bullets fly. As President Bush said in Iraq, our military is making history. The Cobra II authors attempt to recreat history. |
| Posted by: Captain America 2006-06-13 20:02 |
| #6 Keep your head down, Verlaine. God bless. |
| Posted by: mcsegeek1 2006-06-13 12:36 |
| #5 Verlaine. When you writing your book? I'd read it, |
| Posted by: tu3031 2006-06-13 10:15 |
| #4 military and political blunders in Washington Powell |
| Posted by: 3dc 2006-06-13 10:06 |
| #3 More analytically vapid mush from the mediocre second-guessing punditocracy. I was able to stop one TV type here who was gushing about the book and its "documentation" of errors by asking "so does it explain why it took 3 whole weeks to take Baghdad?". He and the other MSM reporters present laughed, but went quiet. The ridiculous nit-picking over every conceivable imperfection in planning and execution of a wildly successful campaign is, of course, exactly what one expects from Gordon and Trainor. Anyone who looks at today's security problems in Iraq and thinks that any US decisions might have simply avoided them is either delusional or stupid. Anyone who thinks that Iraqis were remotely ready to take over almost any of the key functions of state in 2003 is ignorant - they're far from ready in mid-2006, as I see every day up close. What am I missing in this preposterous, illogical assertion that handing over responsibility to utterly unfit Iraqis before June 2004 would have helped? How? Where? Which problems would have been avoided? The important problems are military, and in June 2006 the Iraqis are just barely able to help out, in a limited fashion. They were non-factors entirely in the period under discussion, and no plan or alternative policy could have possibly changed that. I'm waiting to see any of these geniuses to stumble upon the obvious: skipping the war part of war and reconstruction sort of screws up your whole strategy. This dialogue of the lightweights is scary - all this silly argument about non-issues based on ludicrously false assumptions, and nobody's even addressing how perhaps military issues might be pertinent to how a war is progressing. The idiotic focus on "planning" betrays an unserious and sophomoric approach. In human affairs such as this, planning is rarely important - it's adaptation and execution of a changing plan that matter. |
| Posted by: Verlaine in Iraq 2006-06-13 09:22 |
| #2 There'll be more Monday Morning Quarterbacking to come, and more books. But say, is this a news item, or an opinion thing? With all the MSM blather, I get confused.... |
| Posted by: Bobby 2006-06-13 06:33 |
| #1 Sorry - this one belongs in Opinion |
| Posted by: ryuge 2006-06-13 06:29 |