Iraq Calculus

Axiom 1 : There are about a billion Muslims in the Middle East.
Axiom 2: A small percentage of them are more than happy to kill Americans and themselves in the process.
Axiom 3: That percentage is huge when compared with the total number of American troops operating in the Middle East.

These axioms ought to be kept in mind by anyone planning on listening to the President’s next pep talk, set up for next Tuesday at Fort Bragg, North Carolina.

Mr Bush has a hard sell. His polls are declining, while US casualties in Iraq continue to climb.

Mr Bush, his supporters in Congress, and their allies in the rightist media keep putting it out that things are going swimmingly in Iraq. There’s light at the end of the tunnel, they say. Thing is, in the battle zone, the field grade officers (and some of the general officers) are telling a different story. They are telling us in more or less roundabout ways, that it could be years before the insurgency is defeated, if ever.

One thing all parties to this conflict, agree on, and that is that Iraq has become a magnet for Islamic radicals. These are the folks who strap bombs on themselves and kill Iraqis and American soldiers. And if they aren’t committing suicide directly, they are firing hand-held ordnance at American soldiers and civilians. Those Islamic fighters who survive combat, are learning enough about guerrilla fighting to return home to teach a new crop of young Islamic radicals just what they’ve learned.

All of which points up the fact that defeating the insurgency in Iraq is going to be virtually impossible without vastly increased US forces, and a permanent military presence in Iraq for many years to come. No one in their right mind imagines that the current puppet government will last very long without US bayonets propping it up.

Mr Bush ought to do the math. Check out the axioms. The insurgents can draw their personnel from a base population of about a billion Muslims; most of them located in the Middle East. Of course most Muslims do not engage in terrorism and have no interest in fighting Americans no matter what the Koran or some mullah might say on the subject. Unfortunately a small percentage of Muslims, usually young men, scattered through the various absolute monarchies and outright dictatorships around Iraq will do just that.

There’s no way 140,000 US soldiers can deal effectively with the kind of numbers of intense young men the Islamic world can produce. While no one knows exactly how many insurgents are killed on say, a monthly basis in Iraq by US/coalition forces, assume for a moment that about a 100 insurgents are killed every month. That’s about what the news reports indicate, anyway.

Now, let’s say the US kills about 1200 Islamic insurgents a year. Assume further, that out of a billion possible Muslims in the Middle East, maybe a million or so are willing to go to Iraq in order to kill Americans at any one point in time.

It follows then, that if the US kills about 1200 insurgents a year, given a numeric base of about a million potential Islamic fighters and suicide bombers, it will take about 800 years to quell the Iraq insurgency. This contrasts mightily with the two and three year figure suggested by Sen. McCain the other day on one of the cable talk shows.

So what does it all mean? Well, what it means is, that in the absence of an outright re-colonization of the Middle East, there’s no practical way the Iraq insurgency will be defeated or even held in check at any time in the near future.

At the rate things are going, all most Americans have to look forward to is an endless grind of bloody car bombings and convey attacks.

An 800 year quagmire, if you will.

Do the math.

Punditwalla--.