Back to the future
Stars & Stripes reports that 15,000 US troops will remain in Kuwait as a reaction force for events in the region, that details haven’t been worked out yet, and there’s no “light at the end of the tunnel”. Those of you from 1st Cav will be happy to learn that Division finds itself in the first rotation;
As of last week, the U.S. contingent consisted of soldiers from the 1st Cavalry Division, Fort Hood, Texas, and the 34th Infantry Division of the Minnesota National Guard, among others. Both belong to the 1st Brigade Combat Team. Also in the mix is the 29th Combat Aviation Brigade of the Maryland National Guard.
Of course, this is reminiscent of the reaction force that Bill Clinton stationed in Kuwait after he found out that deploying a force to Kuwait every time Saddam Hussein (remember him?) farted was just too costly. So here we are, back at the point in time before the 2003 invasion of Hussein’s Iraq. And the reason we had to station troops in Kuwait in the 90s was because we neglected to finish the job in 1991.
Ain’t it just hilarious how history continues to repeat itself?
Category: Terror War
Jonn,
You are 100% correct, it is amazing how all these smart people whose degrees must be in temperature can not or will not read history. Just remember TF Smith, Desert One and any time a democrat like Obama gets in office. I think we both went through the Carter years and for me at least the first year or so of Bubba.
“Ain’t it just hilarious how history continues to repeat itself?”
That’s because we’re too stoopid to learn from history or our past mistakes.
Isn’t the definition of insanity doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results?
I come to this website pretty religiously, but I can’t understand what you expected from the war in Iraq. I was there all year up until Dec 14th. We took IDF maybe 20 times the whole deployment, my battalion came back with 100% of our troops, and the attacks outside the wire were few and far between. How was the war not over? Did you want us to make Iraq the 51st state? Their government was ready for us to leave, the people there were ready for us to leave, and their military was ready for us to leave. We could have stayed and taught them battle drill 1 for 4 months but they need to get out of the crawl phase eventually. What better way than to go actually do the shit yourself. In the last 6 months we were there the IA and IP progressed by leaps and bounds. Checkpoint that we passed on the reg that were not being manned early on were being manned in the last few months and the Iraqi Forces were displaying a vigilance not seen before. Once again… I really
don’t understand what else you wanted to happen.
What I wanted to happen is for enough “extremists” to be eliminated that any left who might aspire to extremism would find another way to exist.
A group of people declared war on us and they remain at war with us. Nothing has been won.
This war will never end. That’s what happens when you declare war not on a state but on a frame of thinking… or some might say a way of life. It’s as asinine as the war on drugs. We are fighting our own battles everyday with so much PC nonsense that our government is too afraid call out the most destructive force in the world… Islam.
I suppose Jonn’s words will be prophetic when Maliki begins to morph into Saddam 2.0, only this time in league with Iran.
But the Over-the-Horizon BDE positioning is not a bad concept for Gulf contingencies.
The minnesota guard, as well as the 29th, should expect regular rotations that used to occur in Kosovo. Along with AF, those units won’t get any rest or opportunity to transition back to domestic ops vice warfighter.
“So here we are, back at the point in time before the 2003 invasion of Hussein’s Iraq.” Yep.
Jonn you should have been a dick and titled this “tell me how this ends”. A true Petreaus-ism, beaten ro death by the snarkier members of the media.
#3,4,&6 Duke out of curiosity what was your MOS? I ask because some parts of Iraq are more secured then others, it might just have been your locale.
Here are a few problems with the drawdown as it happened.
1) Iraq security forces are thought to be mostly adequate for domestic contingencies but not yet able to fend off a foreign invader. Something a US tripwire could deter.
2) They have no Airforce and won’t for a number of years, their Airspace is effectively protected by us.
3)The American presence tamped down on the likley hood of Iraqs settling disputes through armed conflict and allowed time for political institutions to mature. Something we are increasingly seeing fade today.
Unlike some I don’t think we would have another Germany/Japan/Korea relationship, though I think a 5-10yr would be reasonable.
History always repeats; first as tragedy, second as farce, third as policy.
Hopefully it will be a little better than that small 1 battalion campground just down the road from AS Airbase, the 1st Cav guys did enough of that crap in the 90s. I always felt bad flying over those guys while we did our CSAR rotations over at the airport and then Camp Doha. Doha was like a vacation for those guys on the rare occasional trip in.