"Khosro Goran, the vice-governor, said: "We have an open border with Syria and our neighbours are actively encouraging the terrorists.

Dureid Kashmula, the provincial governor, said: "One of the reasons that al-Qaeda is so strong here when security is improving across Iraq is that the terrorists can come across the border. "

<link>

Hope we don't have to get into some kind of war with Syria, but we have to attack targets in Syria, Iran and Pakistan if they keep war mongering in Iraq and Afghanistan. These blood-soaked criminals think they can just play this little prolonging game of funneling in money and terrorists to keep Iraqis dying and then scream bloody murder when we go after the bases in their countries.

In the War on Terror, to win you have to go after every target no matter where it is, and let the police sort the bodies out. It would help if we had a fair media that would point out the murders that were committed by the people we target in these places, but they generally like to play up the hype of innocent civilians killed in strikes on terrorist targets and help Alqaeda's propaganda machine to the best of their journalistic capabilities. Nonetheless we have to strike anytime we have solid intel on a site. I hope we don't have to hit Syria again before we leave Iraq, which hopefully will be soon.

But for Syria and Iran, the Iraq war would be over. But for Pakistan, the Afghanistan war would be over. We blame Bush for the long wars in these places, but how about a little blame for the people and countries that prolonged this? The Iraq war could very well have ended with the removal of Saddam, except for the foreign terrorists who came in and started a civil war by years of blowing up Shiites. There possibly, in some circles, could be an argument for decent Sunnis who weren't part of the Baathist crime organization and who mistakenly thought Saddam was good fighting the US when they invaded, but that would be the limit of the war. The fact that it spread to terrorist attacks on Shiites and then a civil war from there, is totally the fault of foreign terrorist groups and the countries that kept feeding them into the war from outside. There's no reason the Iraq war couldn't have ended in 2003, but for terrorist killers.

The best thing would be if we can seal the Syrian border with Iraqi troops backed up by our air patrols.

the involvement of other mid-east nations in the Iraq conflict was both knowable and known before we occupied Iraq. In fact, it was one of the reasons that option was rejected by Bush I et al. So it is junior's fault for not taking that (or anything else) into account.

I haven't noticed any reluctance amoun the press to cover the targets that we hit, other than the very stringent restriction created by the fact that they don't get information from the military or intelligence community. So like the rest of us, they just have to trust the bush admin. and the military.

"Hope we don't have to get into some kind of war with Syria, but we have to attack targets in Syria, Iran and Pakistan if they keep war mongering in Iraq and Afghanistan."

Pot, kettle, et cetera.

"In the War on Terror, to win you have to go after every target no matter where it is, and let the police sort the bodies out."

Actually, that sounds like a really good way not to win the War on Terror. Hearts and minds anyone? Remember, if we create more bad guys than we kill, we gain nothing.

"But for Syria and Iran, the Iraq war would be over."

That's silly. Iraq turned messy because of its own internal divisions exacerbated by a few abysmal decisions from our own leadership, chief among them the disbanding of the Ba'ath government and military before we had anything to replace them, as well as rushing into national elections without establishing local political power structures. Those two events guaranteed that the Sunnis would be disenfranchised, and disenfranchised people with guns can be counted upon to make trouble. Any "foreign fighters" were entering the country along the preexisting party lines.

"But for Pakistan, the Afghanistan war would be over."

You may want to talk to the Russians and the British about that. They might have a slightly more nuanced appreciation for why wars in Afghanistan tend to last a long time.

"The Iraq war could very well have ended with the removal of Saddam, except for the foreign terrorists who came in and started a civil war by years of blowing up Shiites. There possibly, in some circles, could be an argument for decent Sunnis who weren't part of the Baathist crime organization and who mistakenly thought Saddam was good fighting the US when they invaded, but that would be the limit of the war."

After we removed the Sunnis from power and gave the reins of the country to the Shi'ites, we really should have expected what followed. Actually, knowing what was to follow, we shouldn't have taken a wrecking ball to the existing political infrastructure, but worked through it to establish a more equitable division of power. We had that chance, and we blew it. So, yeah, the war might have ended with the fall of Saddam, but it was never very likely and we ensured that it would continue past that.

I think the big philosophical problem you have is in your concept of what a nation is, and how much it matters to some people. Iraq is an imaginary line drawn by the British after the fall of the Ottoman Empire. It encircles a few distinct groups of people who never should have been in the same country together. In light of that, the idea that Sunnis in neighboring countries would come to the aid of their beleaguered Iraqi brethren is only natural, because the identity that matters more to them is not their country per se, but their ethnic and religious affiliation. Again, this is poli sci 101 stuff, and nobody should have been caught off guard when it happened.

"The fact that it spread to terrorist attacks on Shiites and then a civil war from there, is totally the fault of foreign terrorist groups and the countries that kept feeding them into the war from outside. There's no reason the Iraq war couldn't have ended in 2003, but for terrorist killers."

You really have a fetish for this "foreign fighter" idea. It's almost as intractable as your fetish for simplistic reasoning based on single causation and inability to accept situations with complex dynamics. That's going to get you into trouble someday. If you ever plan an invasion, remember to include Murphy in your war council, for his is the Law. No plan survives first contact with the enemy, and it is undignified to cry about things not going smoothly when you put yourself in a position where everything that could go wrong would do exactly that. That's why we make contingency plans and exit strategies. Those are good things.

How's this? The war shouldn't have ended in 2003, because it should never have been started in the first place. George H.W. Bush was right not to press for an invasion in 1991, because he knew exactly how messy it would be. Likewise, Dick Cheney also was right when he said that taking out Saddam wasn't worth "very damn many" additional American lives. If we wanted to effectively contain Saddam, the way to do that was through alliances with neighboring countries, particularly Iran, as well as clandestine support to potentially revolutionary elements inside of Iraq (assuming we found any worth supporting). These ties could have been formed using Afghanistan as glue, since several Middle Eastern nations have an interest in seeing that situation stabilized. Soft power should have been used almost exclusively with regard to Iraq, at least until the situation was resolved on our primary front, and under no circumstances should we have simply smashed the mechanisms of government, economy, et al like we did. That was always a recipe for disaster.

"The best thing would be if we can seal the Syrian border with Iraqi troops backed up by our air patrols."

We can't even seal our border with Mexico. That's a huge job, and the Iraqi military isn't up to it. This would really be a good time to have the bulk of Saddam's military still around, wouldn't it?

* * *

On another note, I find it very amusing that you have such venom for nations like Iran, who may be attempting to influence events in a nation right on their border and with whom they have a long history of hostility, while you think nothing of our forces conquering nations on the other side of the planet in the name of our national interest. Who really has more of a right to be there? Don't you think Iran suffered enough at Saddam's hands to have at least some legitimate interest in Iraq?

On yet another note, the way we carried out this war really is imperial suicide. Whatever we do in terms of grand strategy, our current state of affairs cannot continue. Did you notice that China recently signed a big oil deal with Iraq? Are you aware that both our war effort and our addiction to fossil fuel is largely funded by China and their burgeoning juggernaut of an economy? I suppose the Iraqis figured there was no sense going through America to get Chinese money when they could go right to the source. And according to some, peak oil is a reality we won't be able to ignore much longer. Putting aside how much fuel the war effort is costing us (which itself might constitute a crime against our children), we really need to start worrying how eager China will be to fund our habit when the economics of scarcity kicks in and we're competing with China for this resource. But that's crazy talk. I'm sure China has only the purest of intentions in giving us all of this rope. Surely they don't actually mean for us to hang ourselves with it!

If we want to ever win the War on Terror, we're going to have to start fighting a cultural war with cultural weapons. Here are two starting points: 1) Use the mechanisms of capitalism to encourage diversification of Middle Eastern economies. 2) Use soft power and economic incentives to work towards the education and political empowerment of Middle Eastern women. Those two things, if properly implemented, would strike a far deadlier blow at Islamic extremism than any number of preemptive invasions or cross-border raids. This is not a conventional war, and we won't win using conventional weapons. I think that should be obvious to all by now.

Quill, your reaction to the topic of foreign fighters reveals your limited knowledge of the war. After we obliterated Saddam's regime, the primary people fighting us were diehard Baathists and some affiliated Sunni groups. Quickly, Alqaeda in Iraq, an organization of largely Iraqis but led by foreign Alqaeda leaders like Abu Musab Al Zarqawi, took advantage of the vacuum in power and began its bloody terrorism and fomenting civil war by its murderous deeds. Foreign Alqaeda fighters were responsible for most suicide bombings between 2003 and 2007. They would ship in from Algeria or Saudi Arabia, strap up and go blow people up. This includes all the most famous, most horrific bombings. The Iraqis in the terrorist group didn't do much of the suicide bombings.

The Shiites were not a problem early on. Sadr had a little thing in 04, but there was no civil war until year after year after year of foreign fighters blowing up Shiites or Al Qaeda taking them off buses and beheading them all. Finally in 2006, the civil war was on with Shiites fighting back and the biggest death tolls of the war, in summer 06.

There did not have to be a civil war. The Shiites were patiently enduring early on. There was a civil war because of Alqaeda in Iraq. They're to blame, along with affiliated groups, for the reason this war didn't end in 03 or 04. And Syria is to blame for getting a bowl of popcorn and enjoying this little fight they were feeding by allowing the flow of vegetable market bombers through their country. And Iran is to blame for deciding to get in on the fun eventually and sending fighters and IED's in from the other side. Except for foreigners, led by Abu Musab Al Zarqawi, the war could be long over, and they deserve blame.

Foreign fighters were responsible for the majority of the bombings, which led to the civil war, this is fact, you can double check to get your version of the Iraq war straight.

The Sunnis and Shiites would have gotten along much better without these vicious years of Alqaeda in Iraq's attacks on Shiites. It was their goal to foment a civil war and they succeeded, but not for long. GI Joe!

Despite these difficulties, with Alqaeda putting a huge stake on the outcome in Iraq, with their leader calling it the central front of the war against us, we're winning bigtime, and continue to month after month, quarter after quarter, up to a year and 3 months now.

Also, your comparison with Britain and the rotten murdering Communist Russians to us doesn't work because in both cases they were not supported by the majority of the population while we were. We had 90% approval in Afghanistan as recently as 2006, going down slightly since, as the war drags on. The Afghanis didn't want Britain or the Soviet criminals there...or the Taliban there. We were on the side against the occupier in Afghanistan and we're still supported by most Afghanis. But for Pakistan, the war would be over because there is no widespread indigenous support for the Taliban. If they can't keep flowing in across the border, they're finished.

Ixnay on the Britain/Russia omparisonkay

Dear quillsinister,

How many attacks on the United States have happened after 9/11? Hmm, seems like the war in iraq has allowed a chance to attack these terrorist live, instead of the other way around.

We are winning in Iraq, and it is good thing, as the people of Iraq will remember who helped them gain liberty when all others turned against them.

The people of Iraq are no different than you or me, they want to live in peace and freedom, and they are willing to work for it, if things are getting better.

Iran's government is very much afraid of this, as if Iraq is a free stable country they are a huge threat, as the people of Iran will demand the same freedoms, and they will look to Iraq for support.

Freedom begain in America, but means nothing if we allow the evil of the world to grow, we have done an honorable thing, we have provided freedom to people that had none.

Think about this, think about how many died for your freedom, and ask yourself, why are you so against others have the same.

God Bless You

"After we obliterated Saddam's regime, the primary people fighting us were diehard Baathists and some affiliated Sunni groups. Quickly, Alqaeda in Iraq, an organization of largely Iraqis but led by foreign Alqaeda leaders like Abu Musab Al Zarqawi, took advantage of the vacuum in power and began its bloody terrorism and fomenting civil war by its murderous deeds."

You ignore the fact that we created that power vacuum through the policy of de-Ba'athification. The vast majority of the Iraqi government and military should have been part of the plan for reconstruction. And according to Bush and Rice, they were until Bremer went rogue and disbanded them himself; before we'd secured the country, no less! He put thousands of soldiers and government officials out on the street, unemployed, with all of their weapons. Then we rushed into a national election that the Shi'ites were guaranteed to win in a landslide. Almost overnight we completely disenfranchised the enitre Sunni population. Of course they're going to fight under those circumstances! Isn't that obvious? After something like that, I'd fight us, too.

That sequence of events set the stage for everything that followed. 95% of those Sunnis should have been working with us, and could have been. This is basic stuff. Capturing anything intact is better than destroying it. That's Sun Tsu. Heck, pick your strategist from all of human history. They'd all have serious problems with how we did business in Iraq.

I didn't say there were no foreign fighters, but the battle lines were already defined by the time most of them got there. And that was our own fault.

Foreign incursions into Afghanistan always turn ugly and last a long time. That's the rule.

Didn't you know that rule? :-)

"...why are you so against others have the same."

I'm not. America should always be a champion of freedom. But the way we're doing it isn't going to work. I want to do things that actually work. The two steps I mentioned above would have a lasting and meaningful impact. Having a grand strategy based entirely on killing bad guys on borrowed money is stupid. I don't like doing stupid things.

Here's some reading material for you: <link> I'd love to see you try to accuse the RAND Corporation of liberal bias. :-)

Dear Quillsinister,

They were wrong in Irag, but no worries, the war will not matter in 9 months, with our new economic policies, we will be a raging depression in 9 months time.

Wonder how you will feel about voting Mr Obama then, most likely will still blame it on Bush.

Without a strong economy, nothing else matters, and we ran a 800B trade deficit this year alone, the money we spent in Iraq is a much smaller fractor of this.

God Bless You

President Bush's economic policies will educate generations of students in university economics departments around the world on exactly how not to do things. It will take a decade or so (at least) to truly heal the damage done in the last eight years. This is not entirely Bush fault. The American people have in general been living shortsighted, wasteful, selfish little lives at the expense of their children's futures for quite some time now. Just look at savings rates. Bush merely exacerbated existing conditions and pushed things to a breaking point. A recession/depression has been in the cards for a long time and nothing will haul us out of it but a shift in our lifestyle. That's going to be painful for the American people to endure, and they'll probably end up shooting the messenger (as usual), but it will be done either the easy way or the hard way. I hope at least that President Obama gets us moving in the right direction again, but I have no illusions about how hard that road will be. But honestly, I generally live so far beneath my means that I don't expect to be hit too hard. :-D

"Without a strong economy, nothing else matters, and we ran a 800B trade deficit this year alone, the money we spent in Iraq is a much smaller fractor of this."

As for this statement, have some more reading material: <link> Forgive me for taking the word of a Nobel Prize winning economist over yours.

You're right that a strong economy is the basis of all national power, hard and soft. You're dead wrong in thinking that OIF is an insignificant part of why ours is in such shambles. Again, it isn't entirely Bush's fault. Clinton didn't do much to stop jobs from going overseas either. If our economy had been strong to begin with, and if we had opted to actually pay as we went in Iraq, things would have been much better for us. In fact, had we fought this war like we've fought every other war in our history, it would have been better for us. That would have involved raising taxes to support the war, including war costs in the regular budgetary process and not borrowing so much from foreign banks.

A radical effort to pioneer the post-fossil fuel economy seems to be the only way out for us. We would be farther along had Al Gore been the president for the last eight years. As it was, all of our motion was retrogade. At least now we have a fighting chance to make some headway there before the peak oil axe falls.

Dear quillsinister,

I do not agree with him, and to win a nobel prize to say that workers that have gotten their wages cut will work less hard is stupid, of course people what are upset work less hard, that is a tough call.

I went to a school that prided itself on Economics, lots of people went an got PhD from Columbia, and MIT, none of them impressed me at all.

The issue with most economics is they are rich, and never really understand anything, I was amazed that they had to be explained the substution prinicple, ie if you do not have enough money to buy what you want, you buy something you do not really want but it can serve the same purpose, ie types of food.

You never pay for a war, otherwise you would create a depression, ie spending on a war is a loss, and to pay it all off over a short period of time would cause you economy to be come a war based economy, and you can just count down the days to your fall if you do this.

Look at Japan and Germany during WWII, and Russia in the 1980s, war economy never can make it, so increase supply during a war thru borrowing is correct.

The cost of the war is not 3 trillion, many of the cost of the war are really just military items not funded thru other means, or a upgrading of units. Yes, we have some long terms cost due to injuries, but injuries are common in the military, and the war is just about over.

The war did not cause our issues at all, it did not force banks to give bad loans, or investors to buy bad loans. GM is not failing due to the war in Iraq, and we did not run a 800B deficit in trade due to this war.

The military buys very little from overseas, if anything the war in Iraq created jobs in the United States, and slowed down our recession. We are in the process of increasing money for people that provide no value, unemployeed, welfare while we wil be laying off defense employees.

We do not need to create an radical effort to pioneer a post fossil fuel ecomomy, and we will not, we will just waste a lot of money trying to make people like T Boone Pickins wealthy from it.

If we treated oil like we do food, we would be fine, we would provide price supports to buy oil at a certain price, and people would go get it.

The issue we have with supply is nobody wants to spend billions creating more supply when they can make billions creating less supply. Look at CA we had energy shortages years ago, when people made money off it, but since then nothing.

We have oil, we refuse to drill for it, we have coal we refuse to mine it, we have rivers we refuse to dam or tear out the dams, we have nuke technology we refuse to use.

The issue is we are stupid, we want energy that is free, with no social costs, guess that is not going to happen, not in our life times, and we are going to suffer from it a lot.

We need a long term plan on energy, and it needs to be based on replacement costs, not on CO2 emission, China is going to increases in CO2 emission over the next 3 years is going to be greater than all our emissions.

All this CO2 used to be in the air, and is going back into the air, and we have to deal with it, nobody is going to force China and India to stop growing, and to think reducing our economy and standard of living is going to help make us stronger is wrong.

God Bless You

Look at Japan and Germany during WWII, and Russia in the 1980s, war economy never can make it, so increase supply during a war thru borrowing is correct."

I have to point out that the sum total of American history stands in stark opposition to that statement. We have never funded a war like this before, and we haven't for the simple reason that it's a stupid way to do business. We have always raised taxes and always put our wars on the regular military budget. This is the first time in our nation's history of warfare that we've sold out our children's futures in this abysmal way. I have a feeling that this will also be the last time we do it.

We have oil, we refuse to drill for it, we have coal we refuse to mine it, we have rivers we refuse to dam or tear out the dams, we have nuke technology we refuse to use.

The issue is we are stupid, we want energy that is free, with no social costs, guess that is not going to happen, not in our life times, and we are going to suffer from it a lot."

The American oil industry peaked in the 1970s, and no force on earth is going to alter that. We simply do not have enough oil under our little slice of the earth's crust to keep up with the rate at which we burn it. As for nuclear tech, that might just save us from our greenhouse issue, but it is a short term fix at best. The bottom line is that uranium is not the easiest thing to come by, and while everyone from the creator of the Gaia theory to the founder of Greenpeace have endorsed nuclear plants as a way out of fossil fuel addiction, the most we can hope for is that it will buy us some time to implement geothermal, wind and solar solutions. If it isn't clean and renewable, there is room for improvement.

We need a long term plan on energy, and it needs to be based on replacement costs, not on CO2 emission, China is going to increases in CO2 emission over the next 3 years is going to be greater than all our emissions.

All this CO2 used to be in the air, and is going back into the air, and we have to deal with it, nobody is going to force China and India to stop growing, and to think reducing our economy and standard of living is going to help make us stronger is wrong.

The thought of a "long term" plan based on a dwindling resource is kind of funny, in a sad way. Actually, most of this carbon did not used to be in the air, at least not at any time when there was life on the surface of the planet. You display a shockingly limited grasp of the science at work here. I suggest you do some additional reading.

As for China and India, their growth might not be stopped, but their growth based on fossil fuel most certainly will be. This resource is running out. Formerly oil-rich places like U.A.E. have already run dry, and more will follow. We've been mining the stored essence of hundreds of millions of years of photosynthesis, and that isn't going to replenish itself anytime soon. We will find other sources of energy or we will experience a population crash the likes of which our species has never experienced. I like to think we're intelligent enough to dodge that axe, but then I speak to people like you and I worry that we're just destined to be the next in a long line of civilizations to destroy itself through environmental mismanagement. The difference being that this time, the civilization is global, and not limited to a small area like Greenland or Easter Island. Oh well; what will be will be, I suppose. Natural selection and the laws of thermodynamics will always win in the end. Always.

I don't recall suggesting a reduction in our standard of living, but merely changing the means by which that standard is achieved. This is possible, assuming we take the initiative and get rolling on it now. The longer we wait, the harder it will be. The good news is that if we get there first, we can right our trade balances by exporting green tech for the next hundred years. :-)