Todays Guardian article (Military Chiefs Give US Six Months to Win Iraq War) misrepresents the Baghdad advisers. So much so, it makes me doubt the reliability of the single, unidentified source responsible for much of the articles reporting.
I hope SWJ colleagues will forgive this more "personal" post than usual, but as Senior Counterinsurgency Adviser I have a duty to set the record straight on this.
There is a real country called Iraq, where a real war is going on, with real progress but very real challenges. We are not going to "win the war" in six months -- nor would anyone expect to.
But the Guardian seems to be describing some completely different, (possibly mythical) country, and some imaginary group of harried and depressed advisers bearing no resemblance to reality. As counterinsurgency professionals, we take an evidence-based approach and we are well aware of the extremely demanding task we face. That makes us cautious realists -- but we are far from pessimists, as the Guardian's anonymous source seems to imply.
The article is littered with inaccuracies:
* The "advisers" are not bunkered down in the Green Zone, but in another location, and frequently out on the ground.
* The article (incorrectly) describes me as a serving military officer Im a civilian diplomat, as any source truly familiar with the team's thinking would be well aware.
* While recognizing the severity of the challenge, the team's mood is far from pessimistic. Success will take months or years, not weeks or days, and although early signs are somewhat encouraging it's really far too early to say how things will play out. The war has been going for four years, the new strategy for less than four weeks. Give it time.
* The State department is not failing to meet its personnel targets. On the contrary, more than 90% of civilian positions in Iraq are filled, and we will grow to 20 Provincial Reconstruction Teams soon.
* The coalition is far from disintegrating British redeployment from the South reflects improved security, not lack of will, and the same day the British announced their move the Australians announced a force increase in both Iraq and Afghanistan.
* The plan is not "unclear" or "constantly changing" we all know exactly what the plan is. The article seems to be mistaking the freedom and agility which have been granted to us, allowing us to respond dynamically to a dynamic situation, for vacillation.
Yes, of course, there are still car bombings. But several recent bombings have been Sunni-on-Sunni, rather than sectarian, with extremists targeting moderates to discourage them from cooperating with the government.
That means sectarian violence, overall, is down, and that extremists are worried they are losing support from their base both good things, despite the appalling violence against innocents we have come to expect from these extremists.
And yes, there is a risk that home-front political will might collapse just as we are getting things right on the ground. Given some commentators overall negativity, one suspects that their efforts may be directed to precisely that end. You may not like the President, you may be unhappy about the war. But whose side are you on? The Iraqis trusted us, and this is their fight. They deserve our support.
Buried in the article, though, are some references to real-world progress:
* Progress has been made on oil-wealth sharing legislation a major development.
* Joint operations are beginning in Baghdad, and are going well so far.
* Iraqi community leaders are reporting somewhat improved morale and public confidence among the civilian population, though this is tempered by previously unmet expectations.
* Numbers of political murders have fallen (precipitously) since the operation began, though these are still too high in absolute terms.
* Iraqi forces are turning up, and performing well, though not always at 100% strength
* In al-Anbar, tribal leaders have realized extremists have nothing to offer them a huge development, as influential community leaders have "flipped" from AQ's side to support the Iraqi government.
* Regional diplomatic efforts, including with Iran and Syria, are apparently underway.
Unfortunately most of these developments are buried in the last paragraph of a long article.
The Guardian is entitled to its own view of the war, and reasonable people can differ on these issues. But the Guardians view is not ours, and the anonymous source misrepresents our views. It is really too soon to tell how things will play out, though early signs are encouraging so far, and the advisers as a group remain cautious realists, not pessimists.
#2
if they could take his staring unblinking eyes and give him half of Nancy "Blinky" Pelosi's, they'd both be more believable as humans. Until then, I assume they are both poorly programmed robots.
Posted by: Frank G ||
03/03/2007 17:01 Comments ||
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#3
Wow. Everything was all lollipops until the raving leftist radio host asked Clark about bombing Serb civilians. She basically accused him of war crimes, but he defended his actions pretty well. He also said AWOL Watada was "courageous", but that he should suffer the consequences. Doh! He's too weird for the right and too hawkish for the loons.
Somewhere, deep down, tucked away underneath their loathing for George Bush, in a secret place where the lights of smart dinner-party conversation and clever debating-society repartee never shine, the growing hordes of America-bashers must dread the moment he leaves office.
When President Bush goes into the Texas sunset, and especially if he is replaced by an enlightened, world-embracing Democrat, their one excuse, their sole explanation for all human suffering in the world will disappear too. And they may just find that the world is not as simple as they thought it was.
Its been a great ride for the past six years, hasnt it? George Bush and Dick Cheney and all those pantomime villains that succour him the gay-bashing foot soldiers of the religious Right, the forktailed neoconservatives with their devotion to Israel, the dark titans of American corporate boardrooms spewing their carbon emissions above the pristine European skies. Having those guys around for so long provided a comfortable substitute for thinking hard about global challenges, a kind of intellectual escapism.
When one group of Muslims explodes bombs underneath the school buses of another group of Muslims in Baghdad or cuts the heads off humanitarian workers in Anbar, blame George Bush. When Vladimir Putin, the President of Russia, denounces an imbalanced world and growls about the unpleasantness of democracy in eastern Europe, blame George Bush. When the Earths atmosphere gets a little more clogged with the output of power plants in China, India and elsewhere, blame George Bush.
Some day soon, though, this escapism will run into the dead end of reality. In fact, the most compelling case for the American people to elect a Democrat as president next year is that, in the US, leadership in a time of war requires the inclusion of both political parties, and in the rest of the world, people will have to start thinking about what is really the cause of all our woes.
Take a look at the miserable mess that is unfolding in what is supposed to be the Wests fight in Afghanistan against the Taleban and al-Qaeda. Afghanistan was, remember, unlike Iraq, the good war. Within days of September 11, 2001, all the European members of Nato readily signed up to assist America in righting the wrongs of international terrorism by defeating the Kabul regime and its allies.
Even after the alliance fell out over the Iraq war, those who opposed that conflict reiterated their dedication to winning the one in Afghanistan. When the Spanish socialists pulled their nations troops out of Iraq in 2004, they insisted they were fully committed to the war against the Taleban.
But what is the state of that struggle? These days, despite the notional presence of a Nato force involving more than 15 countries, only a handful Britain, the Netherlands, Canada, and plucky Lithuania included are putting anything like the effort required in terms of resources and willingness to take the fight to the enemy.
Others such as the Germans and the French will commit troops and equipment but wont let them fight, preferring noncombatant roles. Last week the Italian Government collapsed because some of its members actually want to make friends with the Taleban. European countries are not failing to fight the war in Afghanistan because they dont like George Bush. They lack either the perception of the threat or the will to deal with it.
Does anyone really think the election of President Hillary Clinton will be greeted with a sudden surge of German and French troops to Kabul and Helmand, routing al-Qaeda militants in the name of multilateralism?
President Barack Obama will find that when he wants to make good on his promise to win the war in Afghanistan, EU leaders will be much happier explaining how their new constitution will enlighten the world.
President John Edwards will discover, when he seeks a united front to tackle an enemy that would happily incinerate every European city and its inhabitants tomorrow, that the Europeans would much rather take urgent action to address the risk that global warming will produce a possible 18cm increase in sea levels by 2100.
This escapism is not confined to President Bushs critics in Europe, as the current battle over Iraq in Congress demonstrates. The Democrats have majorities in both houses. They could, if they wished, move to end the war in Iraq, which most of them having once supported it now oppose. They could vote to cut off funding for US troops and force the Pentagon to bring them home.
But they wont do that. That would involve taking responsibility for a dangerous war. They would much rather, carp and cavil and pass nonbinding resolutions that express dissatisfaction with the war but leave the actual job of ending it to the Bush Administration.
This is why it may be a good thing if Americans were to elect a Democrat next year. Certainly, he or she could change the tone of US diplomacy by speaking more contritely about Iraq, by sounding more concerned about climate change, perhaps even by agreeing to hold talks talk with the Iranians to try to persuade them to drop their nuclear programme.
But its likely that sooner or later a Democrat would have to have his or her Nixon Goes to China moment. Just as Bill Clinton discovered in the 1990s, when the Europeans were happy to sit back and let Serbs slaughter Bosnian and Kosovan Muslims, a Democrat will find a distinct lack of enthusiasm for the task.
In the dread modern vernacular of management-speak, the Democrats need to take ownership of American leadership in a turbulent world. Though it can be fairly argued that President Bushs incompetence has made things worse, the challenge of radical Islamism was not invented by the Bush Administration.
Even as some future Democratic president proclaims his commitment to renewing alliances, he is sure to be greeted with all kinds of explanations as to why the Europeans are just not quite ready to make that a joint ownership. When that moment comes, everyone will be urgently wishing they still had George Bush to blame.
#1
Replacing Bush I and facing these problems didn't bother Bill Clinton one iota. He didn't know, he didn't care, and was otherwise indifferent to the world and the US going to hell in a hand basket.
#2
Hey, Gerard - Hadda' get your own little zinger in there against the Bushites in the end there didn;t you?
You worthless sack of crap.
You don;t even dare to address the real issues. Thus, you leave it to more informed individuals who will (forgive me RBers as I miss a huge number of items).
What will we do when President Bush is gone and a Democrat inhabits the White House? Gosh, there are so many items to speculate about it boggles the mind, but here are a few of my own.
Immediate retreat of American forces from Iraq and Afghanistan. Pullout probably within 90-180 days from the war zone despite the fact that we will still have troops in Bosnia/Kosovo 12 years later when we were promised they'd be home by Christmas, and in Germany for the last 70 years.
Immediate reduction in funding of the US military such that it is eventually reduced to less than half its current size and unable to extend American power and foreign policy overseas. This will insure no future American foreign "adventurism".
Either a nuclear-armed Iran or a nightmarish radioactive cauldron of smoking debris, ash, and human misery in the Middle East (after Iran develops the bomb and attacks Israel igniting a nuclear conflagration).
A global economic meltdown the likes of which have never been seen before as oil supplies are suddenly rendered useless due to their being radioactively contaminated. Famine, panic, mass migrations, and death on a scale the world has never even conceived of.
Global military crises as China seeks to secure its oil supplies to the east and south igniting conflict with Japan, Indonesia and an anemic US Navy and AF battered by lack of supply, money, equipment, and morale.
An America battered by internal unrest as taxes soar spurred on by an administration dead set on providing universal abortion and health care to everyone including illegal aliens, amnesty to those same illegal aliens, and the right to vote for those illegal aliens versus those Americans who believe in the right to bear arms, the right of free speech, the right to freely practice one's religion openly, and the right of a free people not to bear unburdenable taxes.
An America so distracted by its own internal dissent that it no longer has time to disseminate freedom or liberty around the world, but it does have time to slash its own economy to ribbons by signing on to Kyoto while its rivals gladly applaud its "wise decisions".
An America where the moneyed "elite" more and more oppress the working majority in a "do as I say, not as I do" spray of environmental, social, and economic drivel.
An America where, more and more, armed groups begin standing up against the tyranny of an ever more authoritarian government that crushes their dissent with guns, tanks, and bombs wherever they take a stand until the point where the US military starts to ask itself questions about whether or not their actions against their own people are legal.
In short, world-wide chaos, war, and destruction because good men failed to stand when evil was prospering.
However, I remember mourning for Reagan during the Clinton years, and Yet here comes Dubya.
I believe that the american people will, at the critical time, elect a leader that will prove capable of winning the battle. Remember, God looks after fools, drunks, little children, and the United States of America.
#4
An America where, more and more, armed groups begin standing up against the tyranny of an ever more authoritarian government that crushes their dissent with guns, tanks, and bombs wherever they take a stand until the point where the US military starts to ask itself questions about whether or not their actions against their own people are legal.
#5
so the only reason that we should vote against the Republicans next year is so we can shut up the ever-adolescent members who make up the democratic party? How sage.
I half suspect they are so far removed from reality that they suspect that this is a winning slogan: We'll stop being stupid if you give us power.
#6
Ptah: "Remember, God looks after fools, drunks, little children, and the United States of America." That's a new version to me: I heard it as God looks out for Sailors and Fools and I was pleased as punch that I got double coverage.....
Former U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. John Bolton received a sustained standing ovation Thursday night, as he told a national conference of conservatives that reform of the United Nations had failed and that the U.S. has to assume a radically different approach to funding the world organization. He called for an end to assessed contributions to the U.N. and urged a completely voluntary system of paying for the activities of the world body. Boltons proposal leaves open the distinct possibility that an objective assessment would determine that it does not deserve one red cent in voluntary support from American taxpayers.
The out-of-control nature of the world organization is reflected in the fact that the U.N. pension fund has grown to a staggering $37 billion, and that John Kerrys equally liberal sister Peggy still runs non-governmental organization (NGO) affairs at the U.S. Mission to the U.N. Technically, Bolton, when he was U.S. Ambassador to the U.N., was her boss. But he couldnt fire her because she is part of the permanent bureaucracy. Peggy Kerry has held the position of NGO liaison at the U.S. mission during the entire Bush Administration but took time off during the 2004 presidential campaign to solicit votes for her brother.
The situation is dire. Unknown to most Americans, because the major media treat the U.N. as a sacred cow deserving more money, an international tax on airline travel is being collected, under the guidance of Ira Magaziner of the Clinton Foundation, and a global carbon tax amounting to 35 cents a gallon of gas is coming. Senator James Inhofe has led efforts to withdraw U.S. funding to the world body if it continues advocating global tax schemes on the American people, but Senator Joseph Biden, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, wants to provide even more money for U.N. peacekeeping operations.
As Bolton pointed out in his remarks Thursday night to the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC), the U.N.s system of assessed contributions on member states already amounts to a tax on the America people. He pointed out that, under this system, a majority of U.N. members, who collectively pay just 0.3 percent of the U.N.s budget, can order the U.S. to pay 22 percent or more. On top of that, the U.N. is receiving billions from rich liberals such as Ted Turner.
Most people think the U.S. contribution to the U.N. amounts to a couple billion dollars a year. But Senator Tom Coburn has documented that the U.S. funded portion of an annual U.N. budget of $15-$20 billion amounts to between 25 and 30 percent. Under Bush, funding for the U.N. system has grown from $3.1 billion in 2001 to $5.3 billion in 2005.
Free to speak out, since his resignation in the face of the refusal of a hostile Senate to confirm him, Bolton told CPAC that former U.N. chief Kofi Annan was incompetent and should have been fired. Annan was allowed to retire when his second term as U.N. Secretary-General expired. He was replaced by South Korean Ban Ki-moon, a big backer of the international airline tax and other such schemes, usually dubbed solidarity contributions for global purposes.
Referring to increasing reliance by the Bush Administration on the U.N. to solve the problems in North Korea and Iran, Bolton reminded the audience of President Bushs comments on stopping rogue states from developing nuclear weapons. Strongly defending the decision to remove Iraqs Saddam Hussein, Bolton suggested that Bush was running the risk of not being taken seriously in foreign affairs by appearing to back away from tough action, including possibly a military response, in regard to the other two members of the Axis of Evil. He said the word of the President was at stake, leaving no doubt as to what he thought the President had to do. Bolton offered no apologies for a strong U.S. foreign policy that targets emerging threats and strikes our enemies before they attack us.
The enthusiastic reception for Bolton demonstrated how the issue of American sovereigntyand U.S. involvement in the U.N.has emerged as a critical issue for conservatives. On Saturday, I will participate in a CPAC panel with the title of UN:Is it Worth Fixing?
The answer is no, considering how it continues to serve as a forum for America-bashing. In one of the most recent examples, it was reported that Mexico is drafting a resolution for the United Nations Human Rights Council criticizing the U.S. plan to build a border fence. Before that, Mexico took the United States to the U.N.s International Court of Justice, complaining about the treatment of Mexican criminals, including convicted killers, by U.S. authorities. The U.N. court ruled against America. Just recently, Mexicos Congress condemned the United States because workers building a section of fence between the two countries went 10 yards into Mexico.
At the same time, the United Nations is funding former Clinton advisor and Carter official Robert Pastors plan to build a North American Community, which strikes some observers as a virtual merger of the U.S., Mexico, and Canada.
The absurdity of Pastors plan, which is being implemented by the Bush Administration without the approval or even input of Congress, was demonstrated at his own recent conference on development of a North American legal system. Alberto Székely, a career Ambassador with the Mexican Foreign Service, described Mexico as a country where the contravention of the law is the daily rule rather than the exception. He said the Mexican legal system is characterized by official corruption, including widespread influence peddling, graft, racketeering, bribery, payoffs and kickbacks. He said Mexico is also characterized by systematic police brutality, extrajudicial executions, deplorable incarceration conditions, widespread torture and violation of fundamental human rights.
When a Mexican in the audience rose during the question-and-answer period to insist that Mexico had signed various human-rights treaties, Székely smiled and politely pointed out that the rights supposedly guaranteed by those documents did not actually exist within the country.
With that comment, he succeeded in drawing attention to how the U.N. serves as a fig leaf behind which corrupt governments posture as human-rights defenders. And that is another reason why the U.N. can only be fixed when it is dead and gone.
Cliff Kincaid has appeared on Hannity & Colmes, The OReilly Factor, Crossfire and has been published in the Washington Post, Washington Times, Chronicles, Human Events and Insight.
HT to Powerline, which has a good discussion as well
The Killing Fields illustrates brilliantly part of the long disaster that has been Cambodia over recent decades. It is a compelling film that follows the story of a young Cambodian, Dith Pran, who worked for the New York Times reporter Sidney Schanberg in Cambodia during the brutal five-year war that resulted in the communist Khmer Rouge victory in April 1975.
At that moment all the foreigners and their Cambodian friends took refuge in the French Embassy, hoping for safe passage out of the country. They had not reckoned with the horrific total revolution that the communists planned to impose. They demanded that all the Cambodians, including Pran, surrender, while the foreigners were trucked out of the country. In tears, the foreigners, including Schanberg, let their friends go. Many were murdered at once as Western agents.
For the next three and a half years Pran had to conceal his past as he worked in the fields. The communists under Pol Pot shut Cambodia off and imposed one of the most vicious totalitarian regimes of the 20th century. Up to two million of the seven million people died, either murdered by the Khmer Rouge or from starvation and disease as a result of the draconian agrarian policies they imposed. Pran survived.
At the end of 1975 I went to the Thai-Cambodian border to talk to refugees. Their horrific stories of people with glasses being killed as intellectuals and of bourgeois babies being beaten to death against trees were being dismissed as CIA propaganda by the antiAmerican Western Left, but it seemed obvious to me that they were true. I wanted to discover how the Khmer Rouge had grown and come to power; I wrote a book called Sideshow, which was very critical of the way in which the United States had brought war to Cambodia while trying to extricate itself from Vietnam.
But horror had engulfed all of Indo-China as a result of the US defeat in 1975. In Vietnam and Laos there was no vast mass murder but the communists created cruel gulags and, from Vietnam in particular, millions of people fled, mostly by boat and mostly to the US. Given the catastrophe of the communist victories, I have always thought that those like myself who were opposed to the American efforts in Indochina should be very humble. I also think it wrong to dismiss the US efforts there as sheer disaster. Lee Kuan Yew, the former longtime Prime Minister of Singapore, has a subtler view. He argues that, although America lost in IndoChina in 1975, the fact that it was there so long meant that other SouthEast Asian countries had time to build up their economies to relieve the poverty of their peasants and thus resist communist encroachment which they probably could not have done had IndoChina gone communist in the 1960s.
That long view seems to me to be the one that has to be applied to Iraq. I still believe the overthrow of Saddam Hussein was the correct thing to do and it was something only the United States could have done. For all the horrors that extremist Sunnis and Shias are inflicting on each other today, the US rid the world of the Pol Pot of the Middle East. So long as the vile Saddam family regime remained in power there was no hope of progress in the region. There is still hope if we do not abandon the Iraqi people.
In Indo-China the majority of Western journalists (including myself) believed that the war could not or should not be won. Similarly today, for too many pundits hatred (and it really is that) of Bush and Blair dominates perceptions. Armchair editorialists love to dismiss the US effort in terms of Abu Ghraib or Haditha. They were not typical moments. Evidence of the courage and commitment of ordinary US soldiers is inadequately covered by many papers, as is the courage of millions of ordinary Iraqis.
There are encouraging signs the Iraqi military is becoming ever more competent; Sunni tribal leaders seem increasingly angry with al-Qaeda brutalities; parliament is discussing contentious legislation on dividing oil and gas revenues fairly between different parts of the country; the dinar is still strong, indicating confidence; most Iraqis still seem to desire a united country.
Of course huge mistakes have been made. We should lament and criticise them but not dismiss the underlying effort. President Bushs new strategy (and probably his last throw) is to surge thousands of US troops into Baghdad. Rather than abusing him we should all be hoping that it is not too little too late.
The consequences of an American defeat in Iraq would be even worse than in IndoChina. As the al-Qaeda leader in Iraq, Musab al-Zarqawi, said before he was killed by a US air strike: The shedding of Muslim blood is allowed in order to disrupt the greater evil of disrupting jihad.
If Iraq collapses, such nihilist killing will spread far wider. As in Cambodia, bloody mass murder is the only alternative to what the US-led coalition is trying to achieve. Thanks to the sacrifice of young American and British soldiers, and to the courage of millions of ordinary Iraqis, the country can still have a better future if we remain committed. Remember 1975.
William Shawcross is the author of Sideshow: Kissinger, Nixon and the Destruction of Cambodia, and Allies: The US, Britain, Europe and the War in Iraq
Posted by: Frank G ||
03/03/2007 11:15 ||
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Based upon a February 2007 trip revisiting locales in Anbar and Baghdad that I had tracked for years, permit me to offer the following observations.
Overview. What is shaping up in Iraq? There are four ongoing wars. 1) Shiite mafias in the south, 2) Anbar Sunni extremists 3) Shiite ethnic cleansing around Baghdad 4) Sunni extremist car bombings in Baghdad.
1. In the South the U.S. is doing little. The energy sector funnels billions to corrupt officials, criminals, militias and insurgents. The Brits werent able to impose control. The hope is that the south remains a long-term mafia-type mess, and does not spill north to Baghdad.
2. In Anbar about 60% of the tribes are tilting toward the Marines and fighting the al-Qaeda types. Police ranks are swelling with tribal members. Anbar is improving, but how the Sunni tribes will work with the Iraqi Army, let alone the central government, is moot.
Prognosis for the next six months: Progress but no breakthroughs. The central government has to woo the sheiks and offer terms, figure out how police chiefs and Iraqi army commanders share power in the cities, and crack down on the insurgents captured in Anbar (put them away for life). Jails in Anbar are filling up, and the central government is not stepping up.
3. In Baghdad, as the Shiite ethnic cleansing advances, the front lines are easily marked by the blocks of abandoned houses. Checking the cleansing can be done by military means barriers, patrols and the like. The Americans are likely to stop this and turn around the trend.
4. Also in Baghdad, the Sunni extremists strike with suicidal murderers and car bombs. It is unlikely, given a million cars, that a technique will be developed to curtail this inside six months. In most countries, bombers are stopped by effective policing and spy networks, and Iraq is years away from that. This is the Achilles Heel. No matter the progress on other fronts, the persistence of gore and Shiite mass deaths is likely to continue to fuel hatred.
What, then, is the biggest problem? How the Americans can infuse into the Iraqi army and police in Baghdad a sense of mission and even-handedness such that the Americans can withdraw from neighborhoods in eight to twelve months without backsliding.
Existing American military tactics and techniques are adequate to staunch the ethnic cleansing; to transfer those conops or to design substitute techniques that the Iraqi army and police can use and to meld the army and police into a unity of effort is a far more problematic task. On the other hand, Ive seen enough examples of tough Iraqi leadership at the battalion and police chief level to believe that some leadership is emerging. Right now, though, the glue is the presence of the American troops. They have to be out on the streets first, then the Iraqi forces fall in behind them.
The places in Baghdad where I saw clean streets, open shops, and guards on every corner were the Shiite areas. Its too early to tell whether were dealing with a rope-a-dope feint by the Shiite politicians. It is in their short-term interests for them to help us purge bad elements, and restore order and services. But whether they believe a compromise with the Sunnis is possible or necessary who knows?
Specific Observations and Comments.
1. Open disclosure of Iraqi pay. At every joint US-Iraqi ops/intell update, one slide should address the advisors update of payroll, equipment and food support for IP/IA. The higher up the US chain I moved, the more I heard how dramatically Iraqi ministries had improved. If so, terrific. If not so, then embarrassment is deserved at this late time.
2. Erratic standards of patrolling. The patrol is the basic tool in the US military inventory. Without patrols, there is no US presence or influence. The variation in the size and duration of patrols from location to location is astounding. One MiTT persuades an IA battalion to conduct twelve patrols a day; another in the same locale does six. One US company runs 15/day; another, 5. The variation is not caused by the actual threat; some of the toughest locales have the most patrolling. It is caused by an extreme variation in intuitively assessing the threat and setting the balance between force protection and mission accomplishment. A little ops analysis by experienced infantry of how often we are really on the streets and how one determines patrol size and mounted vs. dismounted would go a long ways.
3. Persistence of lack of population identification. It is impossible to reduce an insurgency if the insurgents cannot be identified. Most of our rifle companies, after several months in the same area, begin their own census and ID programs. I am a broken record on this, but I do urge that we systematically fingerprint and take census in critical locales, and provide the Iraqis with simple gear and templates to do likewise. OpSec firewalls can be built in to avoid subversion.
4. Catch and release swells the ranks of the opposition. Every battalion I spoke with was convinced the rules of law for arrest, imprisonment and release favor the insurgent. The Iraqi judiciary system cannot be straightened out for another five years. At higher levels, this is disputed. I remain on the side of the battalions. We must lock up tens of thousands until the violence subsides.
4. Under-utilized information tool. The loud speakers linked to news broadcasts several times a day in Ramadi is a terrific innovation that should be immediately installed at IA, IP and JSS locales.
5. A sound early warning system. In the Red Zones in Baghdad where ethnic cleansing is creeping forward, provide several cell phones per block and pay for the calling time. Each side will call in when threatened and provide the best early warning system.
6. Stop ethnic cleansing for profit. JAM systematically evicts Sunnis and moves Shiites into houses complete with furniture and electronics. The suddenly rich occupants then have great incentive to push Sunnis farther away so that the original owner can never come back to that neighborhood. We should take away this enormous economic incentive to cleanse neighborhoods. On a photomap in every JSS and COP, mark every abandoned house and refuse new occupancy JAM will lose adherents if the economic gain is removed. This step can be taken immediately, with substantial effect. It also insures that our patrols interact constantly with the people, who are sure to offer their opinions and tips.
7. Combat pay for the jundis in Anbar is essential. The tribes are encouraging local police enlistment. But the jundis have it much harder, and the strain will tell over the next year.
8. Anbar sheik movement merits US resources. In Anbar, the Awakening movement by the sheiks merits a crash program to pay, equip and advise what might be called a rural constabulary. Analogies to the 2004 Fallujah Brigade a total disaster are misplaced. The Fallujah Brigade was controlled by the enemy and refused to cooperate. The Awakening is cooperating, although Anbar can only be resolved by political compromise on the part of the central government.
9. Negative habit of fixed positions. IA and IP devote >50% of resources to fixed positions. Given their aversion to unity of command and to patrolling, it is not clear what TTPs will allow them to control their own battle space, once Americans are not present. The counter that they know the locals is simply not true. The IA is as blind in many locales as we are, while the IP are years away from being trusted in many areas.
On the other hand, given that Iraq is a Rubiks cube, my discomfit may reflect only my own cultural bias. I measure by practical conops on the ground, and that may not be the right measure of effectiveness. As I was leaving a new Combat Outpost, an interpreter who had served with US units since 2003 told me, The new strategy may work. Its a mental thing. Were out here. Its set them (Sunni insurgents and JAM) back.
10. Improving metrics for a police war. In essence, Iraq is now a police war. Yet our briefings, our metrics and our frame of reference how we organize, analyze and solve problems are military. Our basic tool to combat this insurgency and sectarian war is the patrol, too often mounted. In contrast, a police station the equivalent of our Combat Outpost is divided into patrolmen and detectives (of which we are woefully short because we have not thought in those terms.)
It would be interesting to invite a few senior cops from the States to visit, say, Ramadi and three districts in Baghdad. Then ask them to present how they would organize their daily brief what metrics they would demand from their police subordinates and what conops they would put in place.
11. Trust will decide this war. We know the essence of the problem: Whether the Iraqi central government and security forces are led by deceivers who tell us they believe in a stable federation with power-sharing, while they abet sectarian division. In my most recent visit, there was the pervasive, open acknowledgement by the police, IA and the residents that they trusted the Americans, but not each other.
With the Bush administration now happily basking in the glory of positive coverage in The New York Times and enjoying the warm embrace of the James Baker/Brent Scowcroft wing of the Republican Party, it is hard to imagine that it will reconsider its decision to abandon the Bush Doctrine. That doctrine, named after President George W. Bush and most forcefully enunciated by him, eschewed appeasement of terror-supporting, weapons of mass destruction-proliferating enemies of the free world.
Today, what Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice refers to as a "diplomatic initiative" aimed at appeasing terror-supporting, and weapons of mass destruction-proliferating Iran, and its terror-supporting, and weapons of mass destruction-proliferating Syrian colony is about to take off in Baghdad. So too, this week, the US began normalizing its relations with the terror-supporting, weapons of mass destruction-proliferating Stalinist dictatorship in Pyongyang.
Bush's traditional opponents are beside themselves with glee. With regard to North Korea, these opponents are quick to note that there has always been great uncertainty about the level to which Kim Jung Il has advanced in his illicit uranium enrichment program. With regard to Iran, in an interview with the Times, former congressman Lee Hamilton warned that the Bush administration had better not think that the negotiations with the mullahs will lead anywhere quickly.
As the co-chairman of the Baker-Hamilton Iraq Study Group which last November called for the president to appease Teheran and Damascus by forcing Israel to surrender the Golan Heights and Judea and Samaria explained, negotiations with the mullahs have to be open-ended. In his words, "You can't expect miracles here. There has to be a sustained effort. Successful diplomacy requires very careful preparation and very extensive follow-through." For his part, Hamilton's partner, former secretary of state James Baker, ecstatically declared on Tuesday night, "America must be prepared to talk to our enemies."
What is lacking from both the media's reportage of the Bush administration's strategic about-face, and the administration's traditional detractors' praise for that sudden turn is an analysis of the likely downside of appeasing the mullahs. For instance, on Wednesday the Times ran a report on North Korea under the heading, "US Concedes Uncertainty on North Korean Uranium Effort."
The thrust of the article, which was based on interviews with administration sources, was that while North Korea's commitment to acquire nuclear weapons has never been in doubt, at no time has the US had certain knowledge of its actual capabilities. In light of the uncertainty relating to Pyongyang's capabilities, the Bush administration was wrong - the Times's sources clucked - to have confronted it over its intentions.
By the same token, those who applaud the administration's decision to engage the nuclear weapons-seeking mullahs in Teheran argue that the administration would be wrong to confront Iran for its stated intention to "wipe Israel off the map," and to bring about "a world without America," since US intelligence services are incapable of bringing unequivocal information regarding the state of Iran's nuclear weapons program.
Clearly there is something wrong with this analysis. If what is not in doubt is Iran's commitment to acquiring nuclear weapons, rather than base its policies on a best-case-scenario regarding Teheran's unknown capabilities, the US and its allies should be basing their policies on a calculation of the risks a nuclear armed Iran would constitute for global security.
Broadly speaking, there are three possible scenarios of how Iran would likely behave were it to become a nuclear power. In the most optimistic scenario, Iran would not attack Israel or any other country with its atomic arsenal, but would rather use it as an instrument of international and regional influence. In this scenario, Iran would reap economic advantage from its nuclear status by threatening oil shipping in the Persian Gulf and so jack up worldwide oil and gas prices. A massive economic dislocation in the oil consuming countries would no doubt ensue. In this state of affairs, all international economic sanctions against Iran would disappear and states would begin fighting with one another for the right to develop Iran's oil and gas fields and refining capabilities.
Operating under Iran's nuclear umbrella, terror groups like Hizbullah and Al-Qaida would feel free to attack at will throughout the world. The rates of terrorism - of both the organized and lone wolf variety - would increase exponentially.
Regionally, Iran would work to export its Khomeinist Shi'ite revolution. It would increase its interference in both Iraq and Afghanistan and so neutralize and defeat coalition and NATO efforts to stabilize those countries.
As to Saudi Arabia, there can be little doubt that Iran would seek to foment an uprising of Saudi Shi'ites who happen to live as a repressed minority on top of the Saudi oil fields.
Hizbullah's aim to overthrow the Saniora government in Lebanon would receive unprecedented Iranian assistance that would likely lead to the Shi'ite takeover of the country. So too, under the Iranian nuclear umbrella, Palestinian terrorism against Israel, and Syrian adventurism against Israel would rise steeply. The regimes in Egypt and Jordan as well as Saudi Arabia would be sunk into chaos, insurgency and war as they themselves entered a nuclear arms race the likes of which the world has never seen.
In a moderate scenario, not only would all the events that would likely occur in a best-case scenario occur, Iran would also make indirect use of its nuclear arsenal. In this case, Iran would likely use one of its existing terror proxies in Sinai, Gaza or Lebanon, or invent a new terror group in one or all of these areas. Iran would transfer one or more nuclear weapons to its terror group of choice, which would then attack Israel and cause the second Holocaust in 70 years. Iran would deny any connection to the attack, although it would shower high praise on its perpetrators.
While Iran's leaders from Ayatollah Ali Khamenei on down have expressed a willingness to endure an Israeli nuclear second-strike, judging from the way in which the Western policy elites are treating Iran today, the Iranians can have every expectation that they can wipe Israel off the map and pay no price for their aggression, either from a destroyed Israel or from the US.
The New York Times and its counterparts will likely note that there is no absolute certainty that Iran was behind the attack. Even the skimpiest Iranian denials or vague allegations against countries like Pakistan or Russia or "rogue" scientists from the former Soviet Union or Pakistan will likely be seized upon as a justification for not responding to the attack. Israel, it will be said, had it coming anyway, because it refused to negotiate with the "militants" from Hamas, preferring instead to maintain its "occupation" of the Golan Heights and Jerusalem.
In the worst case scenario, not only would Iran implement the best case and the moderate case scenario, it would also widen its network of allies while neutralizing its competitors in the Muslim world in order to expand its exportation of the Khomeinist revolution worldwide. All this it would do in an effort to achieve its longstanding aim of destroying America. Here the Iranians would be operating under the reasonable assumption that Europe will be neutral in the conflict, and Russia and China would likely support them against the US - at least covertly.
In this scenario, the Iranians would strengthen their alliances with America-haters in Latin America like Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chavez, Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega and Cuban dictator Fidel Castro or his heirs. It could openly supply these countries with nuclear bombs or strengthen Hizbullah's foothold in South and North America. In the latter case, Iran could transfer nuclear weapons and delivery systems to its terror proxies and use these networks, which include Hizbullah cells that are already active in the US, to attack the US.
Most brazenly, Teheran could collaborate with its ally North Korea in developing intercontinental ballistic missiles capable of attacking US cities with nuclear weapons launched from Iran. At the same time, given the US's large nuclear arsenal and ICBM capabilities, it is less likely that the Iranians would attack the US directly.
In light of this analysis it seems that in spite of the praise it is reaping from the policy jet-set, the Bush administration would do well to reexamine its new policy toward Iran. It should accept their criticism and revert to basing its policy toward the nuclear-proliferating, terror-supporting rogue state on what is known rather than on what is unknown.
Since Iran not only wants nuclear weapons, but has an active nuclear weapons program, the question that should be guiding policymakers is not whether Iran should be negotiated with, but rather, whether the US is willing to accept any of the likely scenarios of what will transpire if Iran does in fact acquire nuclear weapons. If the US is not willing to accept any of those scenarios, then it should be asking itself what must be done to prevent Iran from becoming a nuclear power.
While Europe may be willing to sit on the sidelines of this fight, just as it sat on the sidelines of the Cold War, and did little to prevent the Nazi conquest of the continent in World War II, Israel has no such luxury.
In light of this, it is deeply disturbing that this week the Olmert-Livni-Peretz government reacted to the US move toward appeasement by claiming that it will have no impact on Israel. Rather than trying to gloss over the dangers, Israel should be actively engaging the many forces in Washington and elsewhere who understand the dangers of a nuclear armed Iran. Together we should be working tirelessly to ratchet up support for a policy based on the understanding that the world cannot abide a nuclear-armed Iran.
#1
She's dead right but the Israelis are nuts if they depend on the U.S. to defang Iran. They're going to have to do it themselves, and the sooner the better. The really terrible thing is that at this most crucial time in Israel's history, it has the weakest and most gutless government it has ever had. Electing Olmert to begin with, and then allowing him to stay on after last summer's debacle, may be one mistake too many for Israel to survive.
Posted by: mac ||
03/03/2007 9:28 Comments ||
Top||
#2
Another week another Caroline One Glick pony opinion piece. Pretty simple really. Wait for an event and then frame it with the standard macro.
[F1] George W. Bush is he or isnt he?
[F2] Rice and US DoS are appeasers at the peril of Israel.
[F3] US diplomats encourage capitulation disguised as détente.
[F4] US MSM are propagandists.
[F5] US intelligence services are incapable and therefore cant be relied upon.
[F6] Iran and others are evil.
[F7] Olmert and others are pussies.
[F8] Israel must consider a unilateral solution if the US wont act.
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