The Broadsides DoctrineA few suggestions for winning the war in Iraq and the broader war on terrorist nations ...
The president should do the opposite of what the Iraq Survey Group recommends. Rather than snatching defeat from the jaws of victory by setting a withdrawal timetable and negotiating with Iran and Syria (as the ISG wants), he should hold those two regimes to account for each terrorist attack in Iraq and Afghanistan. As long as Syria and Iran pay no price for fomenting terrorism there, democratic reforms in Iraq and Afghanistan will never survive and America's security will be endangered.
I'm not suggesting regime-changing military invasions of Iran and Syria. Regime change, in these two cases, should be a long term goal. In the short term, I would like to see the president announce to the world a merging of the Bush and Reagan Doctrines with emphasis on three points:
1) A reaffirmation that the U.S. will use preemptive strikes against terror-sponsoring countries;
2) For each Islamist terrorist attack in Iraq, Afghanistan or anywhere else -- be it an IED, suicide bombing, kidnapping, etc. -- there should be prompt retaliatory airstrikes on high-value military and economic targets in Iran and Syria. In other words, force Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Bashar Assad to pay a painfully high and, ultimately, prohibitive price for murdering Americans, Iraqis and Afghans; and
3) The U.S. should actively support Iranian and Syrian opposition groups seeking to overthrow their countries' tyrannical regimes. This way, the eventual regime changes in Iran and Syria will be the result of a homegrown revolution thus having instant legitimacy.
Finally (and this is crucial), the president needs to define the enemy in no uncertain terms. America's principal enemies in this world war are Iran, Syria and the terrorist mercenaries those regimes employ. And all strategies we use in fighting this conflict must be grounded in that fact.
