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By All Accounts—It's Gone
by James Glaser
The war in Iraq is now in its fifth year, and for all of that time we have known where our enemy gets its arms from. There are munition dumps all over Iraq, and we have had four plus years to do something about them, but we don't. Common sense should tell us that allowing our enemy to have all the weapons they need is wrong, but in this Iraqi war, common sense is not part of the plan. In fact it just seems to be gone. We let our enemies have whatever they need to continue killing and maiming our troops. It makes you wonder whom we have leading our military. When a young man or woman joins one of our military services, they expect and trust that their officers all the way up the chain of command will be looking out for their best interest. George Bush, the President and the Commander-in-Chief, the man at the top of that chain of command likes to talk about supporting the troops, and openly worries any time somebody in Congress criticizes his handling of the war. George, as Commander-in-Chief, likes to think of himself as the "decider" when it comes to what is best for the troops under his command. Our troops train hard to learn the jobs they have to do, and when they are deployed into a war zone, they become an integral part of a team. That team, the United States military has become the most powerful military force the world has ever seen. There is no doubt that our military knows how to fight and win battles, and we have proven that time and time again, but winning battles is not winning wars. Think about the fact that Iraq was a pitiful third world nation when we attacked it. We our now in the fifth year of fighting in Iraq with no end in sight. Five years in a war with a country that had no navy, no air force, and country on which we had a ten year arms embargo, preceding our attack. It doesn't matter how powerful your military is, or how good the troop's team work is maintained if those at the top of the chain of command are incompetent. Here is a fact: one of the mistakes we made at the beginning of the war in Iraq, and this was admitted by both the White House and the Pentagon, was our failure to secure the many ammo dumps through out that country. . Those unguarded munitions depots became the arsenal for those factions apposed to our occupation. That oversight was back at the beginning of the war, and like most Americans I believed by now, four plus years later, we would have corrected that oversight. Thu Mar 22, 2007 7:08 PM ET
Our new Secretary of Defense Robert Gates said this, "Fundamentally, the entire country was one big ammo dump. And there were thousands of these sites. We're doing our best to try and find them but, given the expanse of the country and all the other tasks that the military is trying to carry out there, it's a huge task." The only trouble with that statement is that it is an excuse for poor leadership. We already have covered almost every inch of Iraq when we were still looking for weapons of mass destruction right after Baghdad fell. So, we know where every ammo dump is located. Most likely every one of them was searched. That government report went on to say, "Not securing these conventional munitions storage sites has been costly, as government reports indicated that looted munitions are being used to make improvised explosive devices (IED) that have killed or maimed many people, and will likely continue to support terrorist attacks in the region." Supporting the troops means more than giving lip service to their safety. It means having a leadership that makes sure that mistakes that always happen in every war are not repeated time and time again. We are in the fifth year of our war in Iraq and for over four years we have known where our enemy is getting their arms, but still those at the top do not cut off those supplies. You can say you do this and you do that for the troops, but those troops depend on those at the top having the common sense to take away the enemy's supply of arms when we are able to, and as long as those munition depots are open to the Iraqi insurgents, there is going to be an ongoing war in Iraq. If George Bush has his heart set on keeping our troops in Iraq, the least he could do is try and stop our enemy from having a free and easily obtainable supply of arms. But you know what. . . that is just plain old common sense, and it is scary to realize that the White House and Pentagon haven't made cutting of those arms a top priority. |
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