Speaking of Freedom

Speaking of freedom:
The Iraqi elections are coming up soon and although we are sheltered here on this FOB, you can tell by the way people are talking in and around the area that this could be a time of escalated violence by the insurgents. Last night, we had some mortars land somewhere within earshot, but not close enough to take any protective measures for. Now, I heard rumor that down in Kuwait that there was some sort of insurgent attack that was thwarted on the camp we were at. I have been unable to confirm that anything at all happened down there, and no news agencies I have seen or read have any information about it.
I read earlier that our government is hoping that a good showing at this election will help to quell insurgent activities. That sounds great, but I can’t see how it will work. The insurgents are not going to accept any government that doesn’t give them the power they think they can achieve by forcing the US to surrender the country through violence. Even if everyone in Iraq votes unanimously for one person or group of people to lead the country, the insurgents will say that the US manipulated the votes and that it is not a legitimate government.
As I see it, there are only two ways the US can leave Iraq in decent shape:
1. We can build the military, police and security forces to a level where they can contain the insurgency as we have and continue to mount operations against major cells when they begin to consolidate. This course of action will take some time and doesn’t really change the fact that the insurgents are out there, but it does mean that someone else (the Iraqis) will be policing their own backyard and maintain their country from the inside. I see this as the most probable course of action.
2. The Iraqi Government can bring the insurgent leader into the political process and through him bring the insurgency under control. This will never happen unless he is willing to open a line of communication to the Iraqi government that he probably thinks is a US puppet government – and so it will be hard to make that happen. This course of action would be best as it would mean a lessening of the violence in Iraq through a political means and will bring the insurgents to the table as a political entity and not a militant entity.