Well the NEW Iraq plan is out and everyone is grabbing hold of the troop increase!!! I love the way a whole plan is discussed and MSM grabs one detail and runs with it!!!!!
If you only needed ONE piece of the puzzle to make everything work, then it would be a picture and not a puzzle!
There are, however, other aspects to the plan. One of the other plans is to divide Baghdad into zones and wall them off. Then sweep them of insurgents and terrorists and militias. After they are swept then maintain that security for the citizens in the zones. This could be a daunting task.
Personally, however, I think that the idea of Baghdad being divided up into 9 zones and being 'walled' off and dealt with, is a good one. There is at least one area in Baghdad that has done that for months now under the direction of the elders of the neighborhood (see Salam Pax's video blog). This area is one of the safest areas in Baghdad.
The 'cleaning up' of these zones will fall to the Iraqi Army. There will be units brought in from the north to relieve the 6th, 8th, and 9th divisions that currently maintain the Baghdad AO.
I completely love the idea that the units of the IA that will be brought in to do this house cleaning are the ones that are majority Kurdish, that will deflate the fact that Sunnis are after Shiites and Shiites are after Sunnis. This will also eliminate the concept that the mostly Shiite Iraqi Army will not forcefully go after the Shiite militias. The word is that the units will NOT answer to Iraqi Military Headquarters. This means that they will be free to do the job and do it right.
This plan was used in Tall Afar and was successful. Now it is time to clean up Baghdad and let the peaceful citizens of the city get on with their lives and get on with building a better Iraq for ALL Iraqis. It will become the American military's job to go in after the IA has 'cleaned' the area and maintain the security and rebuild the area so that infrastructure is up and running and increase the job market.
This can go a long way towards decreasing violence and civil strife in the immediate future. The lasting effects will depend on how successful the sweeps are and how well the Iraqi government demonstrates after the 'clean up' that it will be a unified government for a unified Iraq. I think that the ONE MUST DO in the sweeps, to insure that the success is long lasting, will be the removal of Al Sadr. As long as Al Sadr remains there will be friction and violence and strife. So on the lists of things that MUST BE accomplished, the removal of Al Sadr must be Number 1. There are basically no alternatives, the down side to this is that his removal will make him a 'martyr' and that is going to create some fallout. However, it will be easier to handle the fallout than it will be to allow him to remain. If Al Sadr is removed and the sweeps remove all elements of insurgency within the city and the infrastructure gets up and running completely and the job market picks up then Al Sadr's martyrdom will be short lived. Iraqis are like most other people they are mostly concerned with their families, so if they are finding jobs and earning money and increasing their standard of living and secure without the militias they will not be openly influenced by the 'martyr'.
So I say bring in the troops and let the Kurds show Baghdad how it can be and should be!!! It will be interesting to see what the next few months holds for the citizens of Baghdad and I for one am hoping that they finally get on the forward path.
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