You wrote:
"There's a race to the finish ongoing in Iraq, between coalition forces who want to hand security to fully trained and capable Iraqi forces under a stable elected government and an "insurgency" that desires all out war"

I don't believe the aim is all out war with two sides pitted against each other. This is a bar room brawl in Iraq. The sheriff and his deputies have not been able to stop it yet. Need better methods. Reducing this to an "us vs them" fight is the wrong thinking and will lead to the wrong results. There are multiple groups seeking ascendancy. We need a multi-level strategy.

Dale

There are indeed other factors and factions that complicate the already chaotic, but I'm referring to Iraq in the context of the larger war, the "outer onion", if you will.

Why did an Iraqi soldier kill a Marine? Was he an al Qaeda plant on a mission to sow distrust? Did the Marine look at a Mohammed cartoon? Did a simple language barrier result in murder? Had Marines killed the man's brother in 2003? Regardless of motive, the results will favor al Qaeda, as that "sow distrust" bit is an inevitable result.

A few other layers of complexity:

- Throughout al Anbar, individuals seize opportunity to achieve power in their own city or village.

- Sadr, with or without nudging from Iran, seeks a more prominent profile on the national scene.

- Kidnappers take hostages with the desire to make a buck

- Neighbors kill neighbors to settle long-held grudges

All of which can be used by al Qaeda to further their goal of all out war. We want Iraq to solve the problems described above, and countless others like them (If you prefer, we know we can't solve them).

That is the essential "us vs them" aspect of that part of the struggle, and the race I described. "Multi-level strategy" is indeed a required response - I'm addressing one level.

Admittedly in the context of this post I didn't even offer a strategy for that level - what's yours? (This is in fact, the sort of discussion I hoped to engender.)

Odd that the one group who most wants to avoid the larger war is the one who would indeed win it in short order. America probably won't accept a "long war" with civilian casualties in the manner it did the cold war. The enemy assumption is that this will mean an American defeat. That's a miscalculation, at some point the option for swift victory could be exercised.

But believing the US is currently "overextended" (by extension defeated) militarily is a faulty asssumption shared by two groups who wish it to be true - al Qaeda and the US domestic political opposition, who coincidentally view each other in the same light: "The enemy of my enemy".

The media isn't in the al Qaeda camp, but they are squarely in the domestic opposition. It's becoming increasingly hard to note any distinction.

Ignoring for a moment the "we can't win" crowd described by Orwell, I can see the debate moving to one between the "long war" proponents (I think that was poor descriptive choice by the Pentagon, but what else is new?) and those who support Anne Coulter's first reaction; "We should invade their countries, kill their leaders and convert them to Christianity."

Those on the homefront who sneer at our efforts to give democracy a chance in the ME probably don't realize we do so as an alternative to Coulter's advice. That's the basis for my support of our current efforts. As for the Coulter approach, we're not there yet, but it ain't off the table either. Between cartoons, arrests of Christians in Afghanistan, and developments in Iraq it seems every time I read a newspaper I shift a little more.

In fact, we should get the hell out of there and let them beat on each other till they decide to call a halt to killing their own. We have now two sub religions killing each other for the Main religion (Muslim), and Iran standing by waiting to be the winner in the eventual (not democratic) theocratic state. There is but one question and our govt simpoy refuses to answre this:

Are we or are we not building permanent bases in Iraq?

I've just read Nagl's book "Learning to eat soup with a knife." I think I finally understand why we lost in Vietnam when the British won in Malaya. I also think this explains why we have had so much trouble the first year and a half in Iraq. Nagl is there now in his second tour.

Greyhawk:

Re: The Shinseki claim that 500,000 U.S. troops in Iraq would've prevented problems in the first place. You said, "Chaos theory says that wouldn't be the case."

We don't need to rely on theory to argue that more troops in Iraq would not have prevented all the problems. We just need to look at the last time a great western power fought a protracted Muslim insurgency--the Algerian War of Independence (1954-1962).

The French had 500,000 troops in Algeria, which at that time had a population of 9 million. If you scale the troop-to-citizen ratio up to match Iraq's population, that would mean we'd need 1.5 million troops in Iraq. We currently have 138,000.

The French lost 18,000 troops killed over an eight-year period, or 2250 a year. Again, if you scale it up to Iraq ratios, it would be 6750 a year. We're losing about 700 a year, and that figure is falling.

Between 350,000 and 1.5 million Algerians were killed. To scale those figures up to Iraq, multiply them by three. So far in Iraq, about 32,000 have died, including terrorists.

The French used a policy of collective punishment in Algeria: If a village harbored insurgents, it was bombed from the air or hit with artillery strikes. The French also tortured suspects to death, rounded people up by the thousands and shot them without trial, and put about 2 million in concentration camps. And they still lost the war.

With less than 10% of the troops (proportionally) that France had in Algeria, and with a policy not of conquest but of partnership, look what we've accomplished. More importantly, look at the slaughter we've avoided.

More troops in Iraq = many more dead Americans.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Algerian_War_of_Independence

The "more troops" canard is also shown wrong in Vietnam. A real issue is credit -- the US wants to "win", but only the Iraqis can really win. When Human Rights/ pro-democracy Iraqi forces form a gov't in Iraq, one that is making progress against the anti-democratic Iraqis & foreigners, then Iraq wins, and US gets the assist. That should have always been the goal.

More troops means more targets; more accidents (look how many died under Clinton); and less training, so likely more Abu Ghraib abuses.

The media views Bush as the enemy, giving only a quarter of the truth--the bad of Bush. The good of Bush (like 17 quarters of economic growth!) is ignored almost as much as possible. The bad of Saddam is almost ignored; the bad of the terrorists is actually blamed on Bush; yet the "good" of Saddam (quickly getting power functioning after Desert Storm, for example) is fairly well covered.

An article on the past and future of warfare, with predictions on Iraq in particular.

I still believe this is a bar room brawl. The instigators are foreign to tie us up in Iraq. The 'sides' include the the three Iraqi regional power seats,the mullahs (and their militias), the in-process government, and the coalition. Our task is to figure out who we want to win regionally, co-opt them, and then begin to control territory. We must halt freedom of movement. Cordon and contain the population. Use the mullahs to our advantage, trade federal political power for regional power to the mullahs. City by city and block by block we must demonstrate that we can bring safety to what we control.
We must expand our control until all the populous areas of the country are physically safe. Rebels/insurgents must be driven to the fringe creating a guerrilla war from remote areas instead of an insurgency/sectarian conflict originating from within.
The Green Zone must expand until it embraces all of Baghdad.
And, yes, I know that this denial of movement will be seen as anti-freedom. We must defer freedom of movement until and only until there is physical safety.