Yon makes many fundamental points - heavy and must reading. He claims that Iraq is in civil war - that comes in varieties beyond blue and gray soldiers. His same statements were made by other pragmatic leaders including Egypt and Saudi Arabia. As posted here long ago, even George Sr's close friend - Brent Scowcroft - had been predicting civil war (which is why Charlie Rose would love to know George Sr's real opinions).
Ok. Maybe Iraq is not in civil war - technically. Fine. How much worse is needed to officially be civil war? Those who deny civil war exists - George Jr and Tony Blair administrations - will not answer. They simply deny civil war - pretend it will go away. What they don't say is damning. Not just refuse to define civil war. They ignore reasons for civil war and they make no changes to avoid civil war. Somehow elections were going to solve all this ... as it did in S Vietnam. What does every general say who commanded troops in Iraq and who is now retired? Not enough troops. Even if Iraq is not technically in civil war, it soon will be. For anyone who is honest with himself, Iraq is in civil war.
Current George Jr strategy obviously is not working. "Stay the course" is what we also did to lose Vietnam. Expressions such as "light at the end of a tunnel" apply to Iraq. But since we now know what that sound byte really means, then the administration must use different sound bytes to say same; to avoid admitting what Yon has reported. Status quo means Iraq will only get worse.
Retired General Brent Scowcroft was talking about civil war in Jan 2005:
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With Iraq, we clearly have a tiger by the tail. And the elections are turning out to be less about a promising transformation, and it has great potential for deepening the conflict. Indeed we may be seeing an incipient civil war at the present time.
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Brent Scowcroft is the same person with so much grasp of reality as to write - from The Economist of 24 Aug 2002:
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So when Brent Scowcroft, George Bush senior's national-security chief, wrote an article for the Wall Street Journal on August 15th called “Don't Attack Saddam”, it was the first sign of serious political debate. Mr Scowcroft argued that there was no real evidence tying the Iraqi dictator to terrorism. An attempt to overthrow him could destabilise the region and distract America from its real target, al-Qaeda.
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Scowcroft is another retired general, a National Security Chief, and close friend of George Sr who knew long before 'Shock and Awe' that the war was wrong. BTW, go back and look at those posts back then. A damning future we accurately predicted back then in The Cellar.
Well we ignored Scowcroft, Brzezinski, and so many others. Having ignored them in September 2002 and prediction of civil war in Jan 2005, today, some still just know that Iraq is not in civil war? Does it really matter? Civil war is now inevitable The administration 1) insists a civil war does not exist because they cannot define civil war, and 2) have changed nothing to avoid civil war. Even still have too few troops.
In May 2004 were Cellar discussions about no exit strategy for Iraq. Years later and what have we? Still no exit strategy for Iraq because we still have not even defined a strategic objective nor an exit strategy. And yet, all this time, some actually proclaimed we were ?winning? this war? So much now in Iraq and discussed by Yon was defined and posted in The Cellar throughout 2002, 2003, and 2004.