The Iraq Stufy Group Report: What is Missing

Over the last few days I've written several blogs on the report and ended up throwing them all away.

Today, while reading NRO's Andrew McCarthy it finally hit me what was wrong with the report.

It does not spell out a scenario of total, unrestricted warfare against our enemy. Of all the group's recommendations there is not one that states we should fully mobilize the country, call up every Guard and Reserve unit, I'll go to, and go to town in the region.

I'm not saying that it is the best idea out there, but to disregard this is an option that should be presented.

Personally, I think such a move would solve a great many problems. It would create new ones, as well, but in the end the Middle East and the world could be better off. Sometimes a doctor has to take out a large amount of healthy tissue in order to fully remove a cancerous tumor. The same holds true with Iraq. If you wish to make it stable and safe then a few chunks need to be removed from Iran and Syria.

This cannot be done in a half-way fashion. The entire military has to go, the country needs to be ready for an oil crisis comparable to what happened in the early 1970s, but most importantly we need a better plan for quickly leaving the region.

This plan must include setting the region on a course of civility. I think democracy is to much to ask for right now, but settling on government that are not interested in exporting terror is good enough. The pessimistic aspect of this iodea is it will only buy us some breathing room. If Muslims have managed to keep centuries old feuds going then we are not going to be able to change them, so we must change ourselves.

So, on the domestic front we need to implement laws that will cut our oil imports over the next 15 years to zero. This means more nuclear and coal power plants, mileage requirements for private automobiles, more oil drilling and research to develop a gasoline substitute for cars.

We will have to transform every aspect of our society to make this work, much like during WWII when every industry in the nation turned its attention to making war material. To say this would be massively disruptive and costly would me an understatement.

Why go to these great lengths? I believe a short, but very large fighting war, followed by a longer economic battle is preferable to the long, drawn out shooting war we are now involved in.

The end result will be a United States that is free. Free from having to worry about our oil umbilical chord that now attaches us to the Middle East. Once we are off oil we can deal directly with any nation or terror group without having to worry about disrupting our economy. After all, why else are we allowing Iran to dictate terms to us today regarding its nuclear weapons program.

The other benefit is we will develop a level of technology that will have the rest of the world beating a path to our doorstep. Would China or India rather use oil then whatever technology we develop? Doubtful. Once the industrial part of the world is weaned from the oil teat then the Middle East, Hugo Chavez, Russia and the rest of the world that depends on oil to finance terror groups and dictatorships can go to hell.

Now that I've once again solved the worlds problems, I'll go back to my day job.