On the fly

By Creature



Call it a ring, call it a moat, call it a trench, call it a checkpoint, call it a berm, a barrier, a fence. You may call the new adjustment in tactics around Baghdad whatever you like, I will call it a failure. Three years in and they are still fighting this war on the fly:

Such efforts [the moats etc] are among the methods that counterinsurgency experts recommend to gain control over population movements. Yet some analysts also say that the United States has never taken what many of them contend is an essential first step: conducting a thorough census, then issuing identity cards and requiring all people to carry them at all times.

Of course no census was taken because there was no need to plan for an aftermath that was supposed to be one big Iraqi hugfest.

(Cross-posted at State of the Day.)