Fallujah: Marine Eye-Witness Report

[John Kelsey]

>From: "R.A. Hettinga" <rah at shipwright.com>
>Sent: Nov 22, 2004 11:35 AM
>To: cypherpunks at al-qaeda.net
>Subject: Re: Fallujah: Marine Eye-Witness Report

...
>I'm pretty heretical about this. I think if we had decapitated Iraq, went
>after our military objectives, like securing what was a threat to us,
>including Iraq's senior military and political leadership and their weapons
>stockpiles, and left political order to emerge there on its own, like we
>did in Afghanistan, we could have done it with Rumsfeld's original 50,000
>troop estimate.

It seems like there would have to have been someone to take over in a fairly clean way, or we'd have wound up setting off a civil war.   Note that in the Kurdish parts of Iraq, there was someone to take over, and those parts are generally not a problem for us.  (Once it's not our people getting shot at, we probably don't care that much if it's a pain for someone else to police.)   But I think the parts of Iraq that Saddam was still ruling had few high-profile leaders with forces that could have taken over quickly--he wasn't especially fond of potential rivals.  Maybe we could have cut a deal with some local strongmen and gotten something stable together with minimal US involvement  if we'd done it early, I'm not sure.

...
>Cheers,
>RAH

--John