How do YOU think we can win the war in Iraq?

Question

OK , no two word answers like "we can't:" or "we will". No overly simplified answers (try for a few paragraphs at least). There are some people on these boards who think because their question is about the war in Iraq, it should go in the military instead of just plain political section.
So, get ready to burn some brain cells...
How would you win the war in Iraq? Try to be as detailed as possible, like which sects and tribes and militias do you work with first? How do you overcome centuries of different groups hating eachother? And you can't just pull out, too many economic and political problems that will cause that we will just have to go back a clean up later. So we have to finish what has been started. And you can't go back in time and do something over. As of now, how do you win the war in Iraq?
Come on you armchair and not so armchair generals, let us have it!
And try to have fun with this. By the way, answering this question well will probably require some research.

Remember, this is a question of how to win the war, some of you are making good points, but aren't offering a plan of action.

Some of you are saying we have no goals, that's the point of this question. Imagine YOU are in charge of all US forces and assets. State YOUR goals and how you go about achieving them. Like foster good will with more Humanitarian aide or use Special Forces to win hearts and minds at local leve. And when some say seal borders, try to figure out how to do it. This is more of a tactics and strategy question, that's why it's in the military category and not the politics category.

I guess I should have added, don't answer this question with a question.

No more "how we can loose" answers.

OK, if you need a definition for the term for "winning in Iraq". -Defeat of all insurgent and hostile forces. Because, without that goal accomplished, a stable government that will further increase the stability of the region, and may act as a friendly base of operations in the area is less likely that it already is with the homegrown factions trying to get power and settle old grudges.

I know this question may seem tough. Some of you want definitions of goals, or what "winning" is. I kinda thought that some of you could figure out what winning meant, or at least define it in your goals. Like I said this sort of question may require some critical thinking. In case you need them, some other definitions of winning, a stable government in Iraq, a fully trained and dependable Iraqi army and police force, people able to go to market, visit friends, and pray without worrying that someone standing next to them is wearing a bomb.

Answer 1

We can't. The insurgents are NOT Terrorists. They are civilians. They are bearing their arms and any little information they have on how to attack us.

Imagine a country invaded our home country. May this be any country in the world. What would you do if you had an occupying force in your country?

We are fighting a war we cannot possibly win since the citizens are fighting back against an occupying force.

Watch Red Dawn.

Answer 2

Personally I think we have already won the war. We have achieved our stated goals to the degree that we are going to. We now are relatively sure that Iraq does not have WMDs, Hussein is dead, the Iraqis have a freely elected government and a military to protect them. What we are doing now is trying to maintain an occupation and this we will never win at. I don't know why so many people think we can force anything on the Iraqis. Could any other country force anything on the United States by occupying it? The answer is no in both cases. It's time to bring our boys home.

Edit: Actually declaring victory and bringing the troops home is a plan, although it may not necessarily be one that you might agree with.

Edit: The problem is not the how can we lose answers. The problem is that no one has an adequate answer for what would be called winning. What is winning in Iraq? When every insurgent is dead? When every terrorist is dead? When every Iraqi is dead? I mean really now, someone has to define winning before any strategy can be applied and to date no one has successfully done that in my opinion. If we cannot agree on what a win would be, then I would say we have nothing left to fight for in that country. You cannot just engage in indiscriminate war, it doesn't work. In order for a war to succeed there must be clearly defined goals and we have achieved those as I stated earlier. However, the Bush administration keeps redefining those goals and now we are to the point where the only thing that would be considered a win is whatever the administration says on any given day. In short, we win when they say we win and not a minute before. The continuation of hostilities does not make sense and they can only justify it by trying to frighten people with the threat of terrorism. Trust me Iraq will not last forever and we will still be under this threat when we leave, because no matter how hard we try, we are not going to kill all the terrorists in the world.

We have not lost anything because frankly we have don't have anything to lose in this matter.

Edit: "a stable government in Iraq, a fully trained and dependable Iraqi army and police force, people able to go to market, visit friends, and pray without worrying that someone standing next to them is wearing a bomb."

I hate to be the one to break it to you, but they have the first 3 things you mention and we can never guarantee the last 3 no matter how long we stay in Iraq. We cannot even guarantee those things in our own society. See this is the great strawman argument. What do we have to do to win? Kill all the terrorists. Not going to happen. The best we can do against terrorism is attempt to ferret out the cells and either arrest or destroy them, but the majority of our successes in this area will always come after the fact. This is just the nature of the game. It doesn't mean that we have to sit idly by and do nothing, but we do have to have reasonable expectations. The simple fact is that we are keeping Iraq in a constant state of war chasing some mythical idea of victory which is just not reasonable to expect. What the administration is proposing and what you are defending does not constitute goals which we can meet. Terrorism and wars have been occuring in the Middle East for millenia before we arrived and they will still be occurring when we eventually leave. How many bloody useless centuries did it take the crusaders to learn this fact? and why is so difficult for some people to learn from history?

Answer 3

Ok I will take a shot

First take the gloves off and let joe do what joe does best. this will take care of much of the violence in the country. Use the current Iraqi forces to seal the borders of the country so nothing comes in or out. The conflict then becomes a war of attrition and we will kill them at a much higher rate than they can kill us if any one questions that just research the Madi army in 2004 and see what the 1st CAV did to it and why they stopped fighting. Next we impliment somthing simmiliar to what we did during our own depression we enploy vast numbers of iraqi citizens to rebuild infrustructure im not talking about a few 100,000 Im talking all abiled bodied Iraqi's over the age of 13 (yes billy kids do work in most of the world). As far as the government you take every political block in Iraq have them send ther represinitives to Bagdad and lock them in a room and tell them they are not coming out until they figure out a way to rule this country together. Now once yuou have them come up with a plan you compell them to pass a law that states the first ethnic group that attacks another ethnic group does not get to be a part of the plan they then become outlaws and public enemy #1. Since leaders love power they will keep ther own in line. Now once the infrustructure is rebuilt and we have relitive peace again I say relitiave not complete peace we get allow those countries that have helped us in this effort to bring business to the country. This will not be a short or easy task it my even have a hicup but I believe by first going aggresively after the insurgent then giving mass employment to the citizens and allowing them to take ownership it has a chance to work.

Answer 4

By staying there until the job is done. All you civilians do is believe the media. It's really shame full to see this. 90% of all media jounalist are liberlas who want nothing to do but bash everything that Bush is associated with. The media presented the America people with the troop surge as being a massive failure, when in fact it wasn't even in full effect.

And whoever said that the bad guys in Iraq are not terrorist is completly wrong. There was a story of these insurgents forcing a 12 year old boy to behead a man who was help as being a spy. If that doesn't terrorize a persons world, then I don't know what would.

My solution: Stay there, the insurgents hate us and the civilians love us. Once we leave there will be a slaughter of helpless civilians.

Answer 5

The whole thing would come to a sreeching halt if we neutered Iran. This is the only thing holding things up. The Republicans seem to have lost their taste for winning because they know it, too.

Never, in the history of this country have we stood by while a piss ant country like Iran arms the enemy and sends weapons to kill our troops and we do nothing about it.

What is the message here ? I don't get it, we're acting like a scared kid in the school yard, who's afraid of what the bully will do, if we show any threat at all .

If this is the best Bush can do, maybe he should step aside, along with his buddy Rumsfeld, so we can get somebody in there who is ready to bring this thing to it's natural conclusion.

Obviously, there's no body amongst the democrats with those credentials, so I guess it will be between Giuilini, Romney, or Thompson. That is, if he ever declares that he is officially running.

Answer 6

To me it's simple.
First they should have went in with more troops than they did. So I agree with the surge in troops but actually more is needed. The borders need and should have been secured as quickly as possible. Start a special skills draft in Iraq to help with the language barrier and recruit more military personel. Stop all travel in and out of Baghdad and the major cities. No breaks for Parliament until they come to an agreement. Get rid of Maliki.
Not in that order.

Edit: By stopping all travel I meant passenger vehicles. Logically you couldn't stop all travel but only allow goods and services under tight restrictions.

Edit: The answer that you seek of winning Iraq over to Democracy and a normal state of politics would have required about 600,000 troops to do the job right. That was the estimate done by CNN early in the war to put 1 troop per 1000 Iraqi people.
At this time it would require more troops than that because the insurgency has escalated dramatically. Rumsfeld and Abizaid drastically under estimated the insurgency that would follow our invasion. With that said there is no easy solution for Iraq now. Only time and that will be years.

Answer 7

i'd say close the borders. keep other bad guys out. coordinate with troops in Afghanistan. sort of merge theaters.
get a touch of help from Mr. Musharraf, to kill them there. he's turning around on that issue. quit trying to fight a political war. fight to win. the rules of engagement are all f'ed up. fix those!!! propagate the idea to the people of those nations, that society plays nice with each other. for that matter go on a huge propaganda campaign. some nutjob insurgent will poke his head out of a hole to rebutt the propaganda-plant a lead seed in it. a few of these and people will learn what playing nice means. the Iraqi government would be the perfect mouthpiece. provided they can play nice. which i'm sure can be worked out.

i know this sounds shallow, but somehow, i get the feeling ALL of what's going on over there, is exactly what "someone" wants.

Answer 8

We cannot.

Why not? Because we have no goals. We have no milestones. We have nothing that we can achieve for ourselves. Our only defined mission was to stop Saddam -- we did that. Mission Accomplished.

Now, we're just marking time during an occupation, while the entire country is engulfed in a civil war.

We're the referee there -- we are there to suppress the fighting, and allow Iraq to establish it's govt -- but because we are not one of the sides, we cannot win. Nor can we lose.

We are there until we decide to leave. Period. Because we're the only ones defining our objectives, and the only ones defining what we want out of the process.

Since we have nobody directly opposing us,. we're just caught in the crossfire -- and nothing we do changes that.

Answer 9

Even if the answer can't be 'We can't', this is still a stupid question. What do you mean by 'we', for a start? The American people, who've already lost by having some of their brightest young people killed in an idiotic and arguably criminal adventure? Or the US government, which has recklessly thrown away every last scrap of the prestige and dignity that it managed to scrape together under Clinton?
(I am not a Clinton fan, btw, but he did a lot to restore faith in American foreign policy after the Reagan/Bush years; the Shrub has destroyed all that and doesn't seem to care.)

There is no 'winning' the war in Iraq. You guys invaded a country that hadn't attacked you, occupied it in the most ham-handed and arrogant way imaginable, faffed about when the whole thing fell to bits on your watch, and the only thing left for you to do is eat a ton of humble pie and do your best to give reasonably sane advice to whatever functioning Iraqi security forces are on the ground. If you'd listened to the military in the first place none of this need have happened, but that's imperialism for you. I'm not even going to begin on the topic of how you didn't have the right to do it in the first place.

Answer 10

Sorry, I know you just said no two word answers like "we can't", but it's the phrasing of your question that throws me. Some seem to think we should just look at the Iraq fiasco from today and not think about how or why we got to this point, but the historical perspective is crucial to the solution. How can we "win a war" when war was never declared and victory never defined? How can the U.S. military accomplish the mission when it keeps changing? When I know what we're trying for maybe I can put my two cents in.