Sums It Up

Juan Cole is posting on the dis-reality of Dick Cheney today. That's nothing new. But in that post, Cole capsulizes why our occupation of Iraq is doomed to fail militarily:

The Sunni Arab guerrillas in Iraq enjoy all the advantages of internal social and political mobilization-- sophisticated tactics, high-powered munitions, excellent networking and communications. They benefit from a vast Sunni Arab hinterland of support that includes the oil millionnaires of the Gulf (there are a lot of them and they hate to see fellow Sunnis mistreated) and the committed young professionals of Saudi Arabia, Syria, Jordan, the Sudan, and North Africa.

Against 6 million truly mobilized people, a mere 160,000 foreign troops is unlikely to prevail. The US lacks good intelligence on the guerrillas, and there is no prospect of it getting better intelligence soon. In fact, every year more Sunni Arabs hate us than the year before.

Exactly. This war will require a political solution and a lot of accomodating by Iraq/Iran Shiites. Iraq is now a proxy war for the larger Sunni/Shia conflict that can now only be resolved by the regional groups involved. Until then American soldiers are just pawns of the battle.