My Problem With How Thw Iraq War Was Initially Waged

A reader sent in a quick note to Jonah Goldberg over at NRO's The Corner that pretty succinctly describes the foolishness of how we have been dealing with that terrorist Sunni cleric Sadr in Baghdad:

"Dear Mr. Goldberg,

In our nation's military history, every time we build schools before the enemy unconditionally surrendered, we lost, or signed an armistice (Korea) that has not worked to our advantage. Every time we destroyed our enemy ruthlessly, not we have won, but our enemy eventually became our ally-Britain/the South/Spain/Germany/Japan. Sadr is our enemy, there should never have been any discussion.

It has been time to take him out; years ago."

Our problem with the initial waging of the Iraq War had nothing to do with troop levels, as the Democrats would like to have you believe. It had to do with viciousness, or lack thereof. Our race to Baghdad was exhilarating, but we really needed to deal with the enemy (in Fallujah and Tikrit for example) by wiping them off the face of the earth. We seemed to be more worried about civilian casualties and international opinion than in winning the war. That's what happens when your have a State Department involved in war planning, and have lawyers approving (or disapproving) targets and strikes. If we had been tougher at the beginning, the short term result would have been cries of outrage from the usual suspects (but that has happened anyway), but we'd be much better off now, and the world loves, respects, and fears a decisive winner.

In addition to more viciousness towards our enemy, the other main thing that we needed at the beginning of the Iraq War was more special forces troops. The focus away from general infantry to special forces has been happening since 2001, but it takes time. That change in emphasis on type of troops has been central to Rumsfeld's much maligned transformation policy at the Defense Department since Bush took office. Now we see why - asymmetrical warfare is the warfare of the 21st Century. Much of the entrenched military, and the Democrats in general, are still basing their criticism of Bush, Rumsfeld, and the Iraq War on old, outmoded war planning strategies, complete with tanks and heavy artillery divisions. We have enough of those already to do what we need to do at the beginning of a war. Now we need the specialized forces to do an effective mop up, before the enemy can blend into the civilian population. And the goal there must be to kill, not capture.

To win wars (this one, and the next one) we need to kill our enemies quickly and viciously. We have the capability - we just didn't use it in Iraq. We need to care less about public opinion and the media and more about our ultimate objectives.