The disparity in numbers is one reason why I didn't think the Sunni Arabs could pull off an insurgency for long after we destroyed the Iraqi Baathist military. The rapid collapse of the Baathists and their failure to mount any type of last ditch defense of Baghdad or Tikrit indicated to me that the Baathists didn't have the heart to fight. Indeed, by February 2004, it looked like the Baathists were finally being snuffed out.
But the major mistake I made was not appreciating two factors that have allowed the Baathists to fight out of proportion to their strength: guns and money. Strategypage notes these two factors:
Saddam Hussein bought enormous quantities of Russian weapons and munitions, and left much of it scattered all over central Iraq. A lot of this stuff was looted after the 2003 invasion, and the terrorists, using more of Saddam's stolen oil money, bought a lot of it to support terrorist activities, and the attempt to restore Saddam, or some other Sunni Arab, to power.
I didn't suspect that arms were scattered around Iraq and I thought Saddam was short on money (the massive corruption of the Oil for Food deals was not apparent at the time).
Access to these two things allowed the Baathists to fight on longer than otherwise, arm the foreign jihadis, and gave time for Iran to start supporting Sadr's and others' Shia thugs and Syria to funnel foreign jihadis into Iraq. (That we've allowed both Iran and Syria to get away with this is a separate surprise to me, of course.)
Most Shias, some Sunni Arabs, and the Kurds reject both the Iran puppets, Sunni chauvanists ("nationalists" isn't terribly accurate) and Baathists.
We will grind down the enemy if we can hold the lid on sectarian violence. But this is harder than I thought it would be and taking a longer commitment of our troops than I anticipated.
Just have patience. And some confidence.
