JUST ENOUGH TROOPS TO LOSE

More evidence from the field that the fundamental problem in Iraq is now and has been from the beginning insufficient troop levels to do the job. Here’s a quote from the NYT today that’s worth pondering:

“We have a finite number of troops,” said Maj. Chris Kennedy, executive officer of the Third Armored Cavalry Regiment, which arrived in Tal Afar several weeks ago. “But if you pull out of an area and don’t leave security forces in it, all you’re going to do is leave the door open for them to come back. This is what our lack of combat power has done to us throughout the country. In the past, the problem has been we haven’t been able to leave sufficient forces in towns where we’ve cleared the insurgents out.”… “Resources are everything in combat, and when you don’t have enough manpower to move around, you have to pick the places,” said Maj. John Wilwerding, executive officer of Sabre Squadron, a 1,000-strong unit that now oversees Tal Afar.

The troops we have may be doing their level best to gain the advantage and may even have a strategy to do so. But you cannot pacify a country of 24 million with 130,000 troops. And the failure to restore order has only helped the insurgents, undermine public support for the war and make failure possible. Do we have sufficient troops to rectify our error? Apparently not. So we are stuck in a failure zone to which the administration’s response is always: we have never had more success.

QUOTE FOR THE DAY: “If a state court decides to take the life of someone, there should be a federal review.” – senator Rick Santorum, on the Schiavo case. So the feds now have jurisdiction over all death penalty cases, all end-of-life decisions under state law, and on and on? When someone as fanatical as Santorum is so dominant in the Republican party, you know that conservatism as we have known it is essentially over.

HE’S BACK: GayPatriot ends his anonymity and gets back to blogging.

AND, UNFORTUNATELY, THIS: My third area of sad agreement with John Derbyshire was a bad link yesterday. Here’s the right one.