Wednesday, May 11, 2005
HI….
Take note: There is a reason that there has been an upswing in violence in Iraq.
Right now, there is a battle going on in Iraq...Operation Matador, as it is called, looks to be an attempt to cut the foreign terrorists off at the knees, removing a conduit for supplies and material.
Looking at the maps from here and here, it seems to me that the Marine units are pushing the insurgents towards the Syrian border....possibly in an attempt to kill them, force them out, or capture foreign leaders. Also, it appears as if this is one of the logical culminations of the last year of fighting in Iraq.
Let’s go to the map....click below
Securing Sadr City, which was the center of Sh’ia unrest in Baghdad, was important...this was why the Americans didn’t just kill Al Sadr (the fat punk Sh’ia leader that was surrounded in the mosque....remember him?)....making sure Baghdad was largely secure and save was the first step, and that was accomplished for the most part by the summer of 2004. What that also did was allow the abortive Sh’ia-Sunni civil war to fizzle, and it shored up the peacefulness of the south-eastern third of Iraq, which is mostly Sh’ia. That leaves the southern flank secure.
Then, we went into Fallujah. which is west of Baghdad. In fact, it is between Baghdad and the Syrian border....huh. Ain’t that somethin’......now, we went into Fallujah last winter.....and killed a whole lot of terrorists and took their weapons.
Now, the action that is going on is near the city of Al Qaim. Can you see that? If you can’t, follow the Euphrates River towards Syria, and WHACK....there it is, right on the border. American forces are finding that the fighters here are ”different....I would suspect, though by no means state as fact, that these are a mix of seasoned Syrians and ex-Saddamitesm who are fighting the Americans in an attempt to stave off the Americans cutting off the shortest route to the heavily-populated Baghdad area.
The terrorists and their Islamofascist supporters want this city to remain troubled and/or under their control, because it allows them to move people in and out of Iraq with relative ease. As Wretchard says at The Belmont Club, the biggest resource that the terrorists need is fighters; not explosives or weapons, but bodies and money. And, they need a secure way of getting people in and out. Using the River is probably a no-go, because it is probably what is called a ‘free-fire zone’; any border-crossing boats become targets immediately. Add to that the fact that it is easier to get a dozen foreigners into Iraq via the border checkpoints than on a wide river, and you see why the jihadists want Al-Qaim.
Imagine the authority of the Iraqi government.....it started out as limited to the Green Zone, in Baghdad. It has slowly expanded to an circle encompassing 50 to 60% of Iraq, and those areas can be determined by the amount of popular unrest. The south, as evidenced by voter turnout and the utter lack of news, is under the control of the central government, as is Baghdad. The Kurdish areas, by and large, are also accepting of the rule from Baghdad. The problem areas are in Sunni areas, near Saddam’s home town, and in areas that are near the borders shared with Syria and Jordan.
There are two proofs here...first, that the central government is doing very well, even when compared to Afghanistan. Second, that there is a marked destabilization at points of foreign infiltration.
I think that this is good news, because we are moving to choke off the infiltration of the foreign fighters. When this is done, there will be less of a need for troops (as Iraqi’s take over the securance of the borders)in Iraq, and we will see 25-50% troop removal.
However, I wouldn’t expect the troops to all come home. I suspect that Iraq will be a very good ally, and 20-30K soldiers will remain in Iraq, probably on a US Base, near the southern part of the country. These are forward troops in the WoT, and they will be there for the forseeable future; as our troops were in Germany for a long, long time, we will have troops in Iraq for a long time. Get used to it.
I will watch this battle with interest.
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