Ray Malone's Commentary

As usual the media has totally missed the primary change in our strategy in Iraq. It is not the increase in troop strength. More troops alone would not even come close to achieving victory. As every fool on TV keeps trying to tell us. The increase in troop strength is only a bit over 16.5 percent.

The main thing that has changed are the rules of engagement that have for some time applied to both the Iraqi and U.S. forces.

Lets review some history. After the election of the new Iraqi government, the Sunni insurgents decided to attack the Iraqi military, police, and the US forces using primarily car bombs, road bombs and suicide bombers. The Sunni insurgent idea was to create the image of a civil war. That would result in enough pressure to cause the Congress of the USA to stop funding the war in Iraq. They hoped to create a Democrat victory resulting in our forces having to be withdrawn.

That seemed like foolish Sunni insurgents strategy to me. As a long term Sunni insurgent strategy. it would ultimately fail. If the US pulled out the majority Shiites would kill as many Sunnis as they had bombs and bullets to kill. They have not Saddam and if they did the Shiites would kill him.

But this is what the Sunni insurgents are doing. When the Sunni's first started their attacks we urged the Shiites not to respond. And most did not.. but Sadr, the Shiite Mullah and commander of a Militia, started using his force to attack Sunnis.

The level of violence expanded as thousands of Shiites joined Sadr's Militia. That was and is not a good thing.

Three things must be accomplished to win in Iraq. The Sunni insurgents must be removed as a force in Iraq. The Shiite militias must be removed as a force, and the Iraqi government must be strong enough to maintain law and order.

The failure to achieve these goals has resulted in a rethinking the US strategy. Obviously we want to establish law and order. But many in the Iraqi government refused to take any action against the Shiite Militias as long as the policy was not to react forcefully against the Sunni militants. Our policy was very much a police type response. That is, wait until the Sunni insurgents attacked before responding. The Iraqi military has to be able to aggressively take pre-emptive action against Sunni insurgents.

The failure to defeat the Sunni insurgents only drove more Shiites into the Sadr and other Militias

So what is important in the new plan for Iraq? It is the huge change in the rules of engagement for both the US and Iraqi force. There will be no restrictions. The Iraqi army with embedded US troops will use real force to take out militant Sunnis before rather after they have attacked. They will also take out the Shiite militias before rather than after they attack Sunnis.

I would urge you to consider that they insurgents manage to kill about 3 American troops a day. That is equal to the number of Ohioans who commit suicide each day. The Iraqis that are killed average about 15 to 20 a day. This is in Baghdad with a population of millions. It seems logical to conclude the forces we are fighting are 1/10 the size op the forces that opposed us in Viet Nam. They can be taken out preemptively and it seems to me they will be.

If the insurgents were a force of a hundred thousand the American deaths would approach the losses we endured 4 years into the Vietnam war. U.S. losses would be more than 10 times the actual U.S. losses Iraq.

Getting the nearly all Shiite Iraqi Military to take out Sunni insurgents will not take much motivation. The problem is to get them to take action against the Sunni Militias. I submit they will have some motivation to do so.

Jobs are hard to come by in Iraq and being in the Iraqi Military pays pretty well by Iraqi standards. Those in the Iraqi military know that if the USA pulls out the Iraqi government will fall into the hands of either the Sunni or Shiite militias. They certainly do not want that to happen.

So it is quite likely that the Iraqi Military can and will take down both the Sunni insurgents and the Shiite Militias. It is in their best interests to do so.

And if Mullah Sadr gets taken down as order returns to Iraq most of the 10,000 members of his Militia will just fade away. Most are in the Shiite militias because their own government can't protect them. I would remind you that before the attacks on Shiites by Sunni insurgents garnered success in Iraq, Sadr's militia had only a few hundred members. It now has 10,000 members. I would also remind you that when Germany became chaos in 1933 a large number well educated German citizens turned to Hitler to restore order. If the Weimar Republic had been willing to use the force needed to control both Hitler and the Communists, Hitler would have never come to power.

If order can be restored in Iraq, then the militias will fade away.

As to the Bush bashers in both the Republican and Democratic parties, I would remind them of another Republican president who had into the last year of the civil war suffered mostly defeats at the hands of the rebellion.

That President at long last fired his establishment generals and put a new general in charge. The new general had, early in his career, been essentially kicked out of the army. If that were not enough to disqualify him in the eyes of Democrats and the media, he had a reputation for being an alcoholic. Despite those detriments the President put this less than reputable officer in charge of the Army of the Potomac. He bet the future of the nation on him.

Not only that, a famous and reputable General was nominated by the Democratic party to oppose Lincoln in his reelection campaign. General McClellan was the Democratic candidate and Lincoln opponent in the race for reelection.

No one gave Lincoln much of a chance to be reelected.

Then things changed. That former drunken general and the generals serving under him began to win battle after battle. In fact they won the civil war in pretty short order.

And President Lincoln went from the failed president with little support to a president honored for being one of the best presidents ever. His success in defeating the Confederacy and keeping the states together is forever honored on the Washington mall in the Lincoln Memorial

There were many, including Democratic Candidate General George McClellan, who believed the North could not or did not have the will to win the civil war. And they especially believed that dumb, stupid, ignorant, Lincoln was a massive failure. There were many in the media and in the Democratic party that were certain the best that could be done was to negotiate an end to the civil war. They favored recognizing the Confederacy as an independent nation.

As I look back on the history of the Lincoln presidency, I am amazed by everyone's inability to see the bad advice given and failed actions taken by the leadership of our military during the first years of the war. It seems strange that Lincoln did not do what was needed months or years earlier. It is so obvious in hindsight.

What president Bush has just done in Iraq is not obvious to very many people today. It seems to me that he has studied the situation, gotten the best advice he could get, and has taken the actions required to win the war on terror both in Iraq and the rest of the world.

It appears to me that in 1864 as well 2007, the media, the Democrats, and some Republicans are about to find that attacking either President Lincoln or President Bush will not look good in the history books.