A Overview of Iraq

Fire of Liberty
While a lot of the Democrats in Congress(See Sen. Biden's piece in today's Washington Post) and the MSM are pointing to the suicide bomber infiltrating the Green Zone as yet another mark on the "War is Lost" totem pole, there are also some individuals who have devoted a lot of time in studying the actions of our troops and our enemies and are making broad based assessments of the current counter-insurgency operations. One individual who seems to be taking a more studied look at Iraq(Rather than a snap judgement like most Senators) is Frederick Kagan, a military historian and AEI scholar, who has written a highly informative piece in the Weekly Standard that provides a full picture of what's happening in Iraq. Here's a brief sample of Kagan's piece:

The enemies of peace and order in Iraq want to win. To win, they stage attacks, as enemies in war always do. Those attacks destroy things and kill people. Complaints that Iraq is still violent, that people are still dying, that attacks are still occurring reflect not the failure of the current plan, but the complainers' incomprehension of war. When all the attacks have stopped and one can walk peacefully from one end of Baghdad to another, the plan will not be going well--it will be over, along with the war. Until then, attacks in themselves mean only that one enemy or another is still fighting and the war is still going on. In some cases, as in the Baghdad belts, they mean that we are taking the fight to the enemy, something it is essential to do in any war. Violence increases when they attack and when we attack--in itself, the increase says little about the prospects for victory.

I understand the Senator has his point of view on Iraq and enjoys being a vocal critic of the administration but such shouldn't shade his eye's from the whole picture of this fledgeling democracy in the Middle East. So instead of ripping talking points from the MSM, Senator Biden or his staffers should read Kagan's pieces and the Iraq Report(Compiled by Kimberly Kagan in conjuction with the The Institute for The Study of War and the Weekly Standard).