Reply #4: Strangely enough, my plan would've included deposing Saddam. But ... [View All]

... like this:

1. GROUND TROOPS in Afghanistan to do two things, first, render the capture of bin Laden in Tora Bora almost certain, and second, to secure the country from warlordism and to truly nation-build; then

2. From the secure base in Afghanistan, undermine and destabilize and eventually topple the Ayatollahs in Iran employing a strategy similar to that used to undermine General Jarezulski in Poland in the early-to-mid 1980s. No guns, the battle of IDEAS weilded against a population more and more sympathetic to liberal Western values. For the record, the Iranian Ayatollahs INVENTED radical Islamism; bin Laden et al. merely adapted it from Shia to Sunni;

3. From a now secure base streching across central Asia (Iran and Afghanistan) ratchet up the No-Fly Zone bombings, encourage and support both Kurdish secession and Shia majoritarianism until Saddam's world shrinks to the Sunni triangle. Then let him stew until cooked by his own people.

At that point we would control Afghanistan and have friendly regimes in Iran and Kurdistan. Foreign aid and democratic reforms in those places would eventually cut the legs out from under the core greivances of the radical Islamists.

Take about ten years and cause extremely minimal casualties.