1776

Okay, so this is stuff right off the top of my head. Sorry for the linksters that hate blatant opinion, but here's mine because it's the 4th and that's an American thing to do. So I'm on my way into work this morning and Diane Rehm is talking to this guy that wrote a book on 1776(he wrote a great one on Madison too I guess, but I don't remember his name and I'm not looking it up right now, so nyeh!). Anyhow he mentioned an aspect of the war that someone else had brought up on the History channel or somewhere sometime, whatever. Thing is that the revolutionaries in our Revolutionary War were only able to continue to fight the greatest army in the world at the time because of one reason, they stayed alive. What do I mean? Well see they weren't interested in holding Philidelphia or marching a campaign to keep Boston, they just let the English take whatever land they wanted and moved on growing in numbers as best they could and trying to just keep the English spinning their wheels going after each possible threat while never really getting anywhere. So now we're in Iraq, and there's this insurgency. The only reason it's succeeding is by staying alive. It doesn't matter if we hold Bagdad. Or if we're able to take out the leaders in Fallujah. The insurgency just goes to another remote area and causes a rucous. So here's my plan. Why don't we remove the bases. Get all of the based Americans out of Iraq. Instead leave behind an advisory squad for each area. They wouldn't be soldiers on the ground so much as an aid to the leaders of the Iraqi police. They help to keep the basics of community available and working and they leave the insurgents up to a new squad of infantry. These soldiers come in as a specialized force that merely tracks the insurgencies leaders and eliminates them, or captures them(which could be better). So instead of having every speck of Iraq covered with U.S. presence, on the whole it looks like the Iraqis are in control. We have our foot in the door in case they need help, but basically we're leaving it up to them. As to the insurgents, we develop a team that isn't focused on taking territory, but taking prisoners. So it becomes not a struggle to "take that hill", but a struggle to seek out and stop the men responsible. By showing the people around that they can stop the unsettlers while also giving up their global presence in the country, we help solve many of the "shooting ourselves in the foot" policies that we've got right now. Am I wrong? Is this stupid? What do you guys think? I mean shouldn't we capture Osama Bin Laden? Shouldn't we catch Zarqawi and others? Shouldn't we be putting out military efforts in that arena? Not watching US companies rape and pillage the people by escorting them from town to town? I mean at least we could say that we weren't responsible for that part of it. I don't know. That's my thought for the day.