The lowest of the low

Classic Drudge headline:

MAG: Frustrated With Top Pentagon Brass, Senators Ask Low-Ranking Officers Opinions on Iraq...

While wondering how Senators could have missed calling upon me as a valuable source of information, I had to click the link to learn what other low ranking officers had to say about Iraq. Low-ranking officers being battalion commanders in Drudge universe. Now I can understand how I was overlooked, though I am trying to decide whether company grade officers are low-low ranking officers or really-low ranking officers.

Regarding the article, the basic point is battalion commanders think they should have more soldiers. I'm not a combat officer, but I appreciate the sentiment - you can't stop all the bad guys in this country unless you have the manpower to prevent every idiot in this great nation of Iraq from wiring some explosives or pulling the trigger on the gajillion AKs laying around. As far as I can tell, killing every idiot Sunni that fears the great Shiite reaper coming to deliver vengeance for the past 50 years of oppression isn't the preferred exit strategy. Making this a functional nation-state is. But if that is the goal, then minimizing the insurgent threat is the associated action, not the primary goal. Minimizing, which is possible, versus eliminating, which as a zero-sum objective, is impossible.

While there are Americans in this country there will be American casualties, but this will continue whether there are 100,000 or 300,000 soldiers. Plussing up each battalion might improve that unit's battle space, but insurgents aren't stupid and every new soldier in theater is a new target for the creative and resolute. The conflict with the insurgency isn't a physical battle, it is information warfare, and Operation Iraqi Freedom ends when Sunnis are convinced that the benefits of working within the framework of a republican government as a minority group far exceed their passive support of this ill fated insurgency.