If we get the UN involved (And hopefully other large countries), we can do what we did in Germany after WW2 and split Iraq up into different "sectors" that are each directly monitored and occupied by a specific country. That way we don't have to try and spread all of our forces over Iraq, and just focus on our "sector."
What country is going to take a lead roll in cleaning up our mess? One of the major problems with the UN system is that countries don't like to send troops into losing battles for missions that even get mandated by the Security Council. That's why the largest contributors of peacekeeping forces are countries like Pakistan, India and Sub-Saharan African nations that need the money they recieve in exchange for troops. In this case, it would be seen as cleaning up our mess and the risks are too high for anyone to want to face their public with the fact that they sent troops to bail out the richest and most powerful country in the world that ignored their opinions in the first place. The only way we will get more international troops is to give more a legitimate decision-making role to them through the Security Council process. The Bush administration has shown that it is not going to do that. The only reason they were forced to go to the UN for the transitional government problem is because we had to preserve the support from the majority of Shiia by bending to the demands of legitimacy and a democratic process from Sistani. And because we didn't have any better ideas ourselves, and have the option of blaming the UN for a botched hand-off.
And partitioning of Germany was forced upon us by the Soviet insistence that they be able to impose their economic system on their share of the spoils. They wanted to punish the Germans and steal what manufacturing capacity they had left, and we couldn't dissuade them from doing it. So we had to accept partition. But the partition was our last chance to salvage a fair occupation of our sector in Germany, but it wasn't a help in itself.
Troop levels are certainly a major problem and have been from the get-go, and Germany does lend a good examle of how big a problem it is: <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A10161-2004May8?language=printer" target="_blank">A Proven Formula for How Many Troops We Need</a>
When Germany surrendered in May 1945, the U.S. Army had more than 1.6 million men within the borders of the defeated Nazi state. Overnight they became occupation troops: Their orders were to spread out over every square mile of German territory and demonstrate without a doubt that they were in charge. U.S. troops secured every road junction, bridge, border post, government building, factory, bank, warehouse; anything of the slightest conceivable importance had a guard of GIs around it, and so did a good many things of little or no importance, too.
Army plans called for an occupation force of some 400,000 in the American zone for the first 18 months -- or one U.S. soldier for every 40 Germans.
When NATO forces went into Kosovo in 1999, they followed the same proven formula: 50,000 troops for a population of 2 million, one soldier for every 40 inhabitants. A recent Rand Corp. study by military analyst James Quinlivan concluded that the bare minimum ratio to provide security for the inhabitants of an occupied territory, let alone deal with an active insurgency, is one to 50.
In Iraq today, coalition forces number about 160,000, or one for every 160 Iraqis. (Even adding in an estimated 20,000 civilian security contractors working in Iraq, that still translates to one for every 140 Iraqis.) In response to the unremitting attacks and continuing instability, U.S. commanders have now canceled plans to cut troop strength by some 20,000 this year. It is a significant about-face, and one that has unquestionably put a severe strain on both regular and reserve units whose deployments have been extended well beyond what they had originally been told.
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Fuck