{"id":11420,"date":"2007-07-12T11:15:51","date_gmt":"2007-07-12T15:15:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com\/archives\/11420.html"},"modified":"2007-07-12T11:15:51","modified_gmt":"2007-07-12T15:15:51","slug":"ignatius-plan-for-consensus","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/ignatius-plan-for-consensus\/","title":{"rendered":"Ignatius’ plan for consensus"},"content":{"rendered":"

Last week, the WaPo’s David Ignatius wrote a vague column<\/a> about the need for Americans to unify around a sense of unity when it comes to national security. I suggested<\/a> that he might want to be a little more specific next time.<\/p>\n

I’m afraid today’s piece<\/a> wasn’t much better.<\/p>\n

The Iraq debate in Washington this week is intense and angry. But as with the Palestinian conflict, the rhetorical fireworks mask the fact that there’s an emerging consensus on what the final result should be. Leaders on both sides endorse the broad strategy proposed in December by the Iraq Study Group: a gradual withdrawal that shifts the American mission to training, force protection, counterterrorism and border security. That formula gets wide support from members of Congress and administration officials alike. As a senior administration official puts it, it’s “where everybody agrees you want to go.” The problem is getting there.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Actually, the problem is with the policy itself.<\/p>\n

Just yesterday, in very same newspaper, Stephen Biddle explained<\/a>, “Under the best conditions, it is unrealistic to expect a satisfactory Iraqi security force anytime soon, and the more severe the violence, the worse the prospects. The result is a vicious cycle. The more we shift out of combat missions and into training, the harder we make the trainers’ job and the more exposed they become. It is unrealistic to expect that we can pull back to some safe yet productive mission of training but not fighting — this would be neither safe nor productive.”<\/p>\n

I’d only add that the idea of shifting the American mission to training is not only practically impossible with a partial withdrawal, it’s also proven to be dangerous even in the midst of a surge. As the CAP recently put it<\/a>, “[T]he United States is arming up different sides in multiple civil wars that could turn even more vicious in the coming years.”<\/p>\n

Mounting evidence<\/a> points to even more dangers for U.S. troops.
\n<\/p>\n

A previously undisclosed Army investigation into an audacious January attack in Karbala that killed five U.S. soldiers concludes that Iraqi police working alongside American troops colluded with insurgents.<\/p>\n

The assault on the night of Jan. 20 stunned U.S. officials with its planning and sophistication. A column of SUVs filled with gunmen who posed as an American security team passed through Iraqi police checkpoints at a provincial headquarters in the Shiite holy city.<\/p>\n

Within a few minutes, the attackers killed one American, wounded three and abducted four. The captives were later found shot to death; the gunmen escaped.<\/p>\n

“(The American) defense hinged on a level of trust that … early warning and defense would be provided by the Karbala Iraqi police. This trust was violated,” the report dated Feb. 27 says.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The same Iraqis we had trained suddenly vanished from the government compound before the shooting started, helped set up the attack, and offered the intelligence that made it deadly.<\/p>\n

“There’s no way you can fight this kind of war without significant problems with infiltrators. It was a major problem in Vietnam. It was a major problem in Korea. It’s a problem in any kind of campaign where you are working closely with local forces,” says Anthony Cordesman, a military analyst and Iraq expert withthe Center for Strategic and International Studiesin Washington.<\/p>\n

Ignatius’ “consensus” is that we focus on more training of Iraqi security forces? Please.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Last week, the WaPo’s David Ignatius wrote a vague column about the need for Americans to unify around a sense of unity when it comes to national security. I suggested that he might want to be a little more specific next time. I’m afraid today’s piece wasn’t much better. The Iraq debate in Washington this […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[617],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11420","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11420","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11420"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11420\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11420"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11420"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11420"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}