Donald Rumsfeld and his staff have serverely underestimated the resistance U.S. forces are facing.
Many top generals have privately criticized him for ignoring their advice and micromanging the war.
Now, I used to admire Rumsfeld. I even sent him a complimentary email soon after he became SECDEF. He seemed like a smart man to me. And maybe he is. But only an idiot would disregard the advice of the uniformed men and women who actually do the fighting.
It was clear to me early on that this would not be a walk in the park. There is a reason we didn’t oust Saddam during the ’91 war: urban warfare. America’s military strength is ill-equipped to fight this kind of war. Sure, we have giant aircraft carriers, planeloads full of bombs, and plenty of high-tech weaponry. But all of that gets negated the minute troops have to pick the bad guys out of a crowd of friendly civilians.
Mogadishu. Vietnam. We’ve seen this before. There will either be massive casualties on both sides or we’ll simply give up. Truman preferred obiliterating two entire Japanese cities rather than risk American necks by invading Japan.
That is a quiet but persistent thought in the back of the minds of this war’s planners. Taking Iraq and its oilfields may exact a price that America is unwilling to pay.
We have rallied Iraq around a dictator we hoped they would overthrow. We have managed to piss away decades of good will among our European allies and the rest of the world. Our invasion has spurred hundreds of new recruits to become terrorists. And to top it off, we’ve just proven the value of owning weapons of mass destruction by invading Iraq (no WMD) and ignoring North Korea (most assuredly posessing WMD).
This scheme was half-baked from the start by a bunch of clueless chickenhawks and now its beginning to show. I only hope and pray that someone with some sense will get us out of Iraq before things get any worse.