Strategic warfare...

Here is a quote from Colin Powell on America's use of force prior to entering Iraq: "The reason for our success is that in every instance we have carefully matched the use of military force to our political objectives."

Since the initiation of the war, we have lacked sufficient forces to secure much of the territory of Iraq -- the sine qua non of warfare. Instead from the very first days huge weapons caches lay unprotected, signalling a general lack of control and oversight on the part of the American "invaders". Not just the borders remain pregnable, but one reads the names of the same locales of insurrection activity -- Falluja, Tall Afar, Tikrit -- time and time again, usually appearing shortly after we have supposedly contained them.

The fact is that, prior to securing territory, you cannot declare victory, you cannot declare a people free and you can instate a democracy. Too few troops means a much higher rate of casualties, among soldiers and civilians alike. The death tolls of our soldiers are found on the back pages of our newspapers, we do not easily admit the number of civilian casualties. Every day, some new bit of infrastructure is decimated, some new "Iraqi police force" members are assassinated and some 3 to 4 soldiers die.

Iraq .. a critical, oil-producing nation sitting in the center of one of the most geo-politically important (and ancient) nexuses .. exists in a state of anomie. Many worry that it will soon evolve into another Somalia. As things stand, Iraq has become a perfect training ground for a blossoming international Al Qaeda movement -- and gung-ho supporters are able to cross the borders from Syria and Iran with impunity. While we have every reason to be upset, our vocal animosity towards Syria and Iran do nothing but spawn further hatred among a growing Muslim public. The situation with Iran grows unfortunately more dangerous and warrants considerable focus at this time. In hindsight it seems incredibly obvious that Saddam's failure would lead to Iran's seeking greater advantage (or rather total control) in the region -- and given Iraq's Shiite majority, one can imagine Iran sees few impediments to its victory.

Seymour Hersh pointed out some time ago that, had we not played our hand so poorly in Iraq, North Korea and Iran would have had the nerve publicly to pursue nuclear-weapons superiority (as well as active hostility towards the United States) to the degree that they have.