Enough Plame to go Around. Iraq at 2100
I've held back from plunging in and issuing posts on the
discussion of the current state of the war in Iraq and what led us to
it. The discussion has not suffered for my absence. Still I want to touch on
a few things which while obvious and noted already by some I would like
to reinforce.
First comparing the reactions. Despite spin in previous months
that going after Joe Wilson was not cold blooded vindictiveness
demonstrating either deliberate or knee jerk maliciousness; treating
Murtha and others who have called for a plan of withdrawal, in the same
way has given away the lie
Stung over Iraq, White House takes offensive | csmonitor.com. Question this administration, they will
unleash the full array of tired nasty and hoary ad hominem attacks
Cheney Unleashed.
Many of these are not different from those the Ku Klux Klan leveled
against catholics or simply those that spoke favorably about catholics
in the 1920's1, or the John Birch Society leveled against nearly everyone in their paranoid fevers in subsequent decades.
As a run of the mill citizen I contained my doubts concerning the
quality (if not quantity) of threat Hussian's Iraq posed. Because
naturally you figure
the people in charge must know something. Up until Secretary of State
Colin Powell's speech to the UN. I knew enough from the four years I
spent as a navy intelligence rating, learning what aerial photographs
can and
can't tell you and how they tell, how the work of analysis proceeds, to
see what they had. It
was a moment of personal revelation. They had nothing. Moreover I knew
then that they knew they had nothing. The war was being sold on
false premise. The
drumbeat to accept the 'regime change' war was a palpable pressure. As
though someone came by and tried to convince you some recent movie was
crafted brilliance, when you had seen it and knew it was a dog made by
hacks. Or one of those tiresome arguments when someone becomes
convinced the home team is going to go all the way, win
the pennant and the series. You know from the standings they're 10
games out, give up 7 runs a game, bat 170, and can't attempt double
plays without throwing the ball into the stands. They
won't hear of it laying out saber metrics that demonstrabley conclude
they will be in first place by mid September. The Administration
preoccupation was similar they kept at it until most gave up
trying to disagree.
A dissection of what led us to this war, what operational art was
deployed to get us into it is not beside the point. The point though is
the war that exists today. I don't think the insurgency will prevail,
but I admit I don't really know what winning is for them. The
insurgency is far from monolithic, their goals are not shared.
The primary immediate problem we seem to face is the roadside bomb, improvised
explosive device (IED's). If you make one out of an old
shaped-charge artillery shell it can take out a tank. Unlike point
elements, like a fort or a fire-base, roads have a tremendous perimeter
problem. You have to control the space outward from the road you are patroling equal to
visual sightlines for at least rifle, RPG fire or remote detonation.
The infiltration distance that can be covered between patrols (or
observation instances) preferably. A twenty mile stretch of road
makes you responsible for at least 44 square miles. Iraq is full of
roads. Still this is a military question, a math question. It seems
likely that this particular tactic can be taken away from them. Suicide car bombs form a separate problem. This is
how wars against insurgencies proceed: one interaction at a time until
the desire for normalacy gains over the ability to cause chaos and
issue violence. Alternately you can simply declare there are no 'insurgents' Rumsfeld's War On 'Insurgents [There needs to be a good Technorati style tag for this sort of thing - Metafilter has one ].
The time has come for decamping. There is a point where our military presence, our
projection of force and desire will even in the situation it created
not improves affairs, but make them worse. It is best to see that
point before it occurs and arrange what our course ought to be accordingly
Rumsfeld Says Iraq Troop Levels Must Be Maintained - New York Times. In
Lebanon, Somalia, and Kosovo whereever this point always exists .
US forces will never have the informational upper hand in this conflict. Opposed to native Iraqi government forces. We would be
there 25 years before we had the beginning of an idea of their language
and culture in sufficient depth to understand what was going on. We
encourage insurgency by being there in large numbers. We present
targets, the appearance of a crusader army, feed the fear that the west
seeks to steal the natural resources of the Arab world, and control
sovereignty of its people. I give little time to the argument that
troop morale depends on absense of questions on policy As long as you
feel used well by authorities, the vaguarities of public opinion
matters little. At the same time public opinion is the soldier and
sailors coal mine canary. The American people own what is being done in
America's name.
When the administration repeatedly says they will be staying til the
job is done -- what does that mean? Following the election of a new
Iraqi congress and executive under the new and more or less agreed upon
constitution, a national Iraqi army and police must be trained and made
operational in sufficient numbers to preclude a civil war. It is not
neccesary for the U S army to defeat the insurgency. It is neccesary
that every remaining U S personell be dedicated to assisting in the
process of standing up of Iraqi national institiutons. Those that are
not accomplishing this should not be in-country. If Syria and Iran can
be
pressured into limiting their involvement this Iraqi army should be the
single strongest force. US effort should be directed to keeping this
army from breaking down into factional miltia. A focused disengagement
should not be the same
as washing our hands and bugging out.
Disengagment probably is not the administrations concept of
victory, their vision undoubtedly involved staying in and in control of
Iraqi affairs for a very long time to come. Withdrawal of the troops is
a problem for some , and in this light Mr. Chalabi's recent visit to Washington
Ahmad Chalabi's American Tour - He's back, and he's not sorry. By John Dickersonwhere he met with Cheney, Hadley, Rice and Rumsfeld should be read
The Return of Ahmad Chalabi - New York Times.
Let all this reinforce this administrations real politik.
The mendacity and bullying before and now. That gave them
entrance to the global game they desired to play. Across the
world they have their playing field. A road of brutality, which
ought to have been left solely to the other side, runs through it. The
unmerciful logic of small imperial wars and reverse engineering SERE school
Doing Unto Others as They Did Unto Us - New York Times, leads to the gulag, the
dissipation of the role of law
BBC NEWS | Europe | EU warned on 'secret CIA jails'. As vice president Cheney's historical
place in this is gradually unraveled; it will serve as a caution that
the experience of living on a slippery slope is that you are at the
bottom before you know you have left the top
BBC NEWS | Middle East | Cheney accused on prisoner abuse. The answer to question
'which side are you on' -- is justice, truth, the good. Whose
side do you speak for?
______
1. For general background see Wikpedia KKK . I came across a book Outrage, Passion and Uncommon Sense. Michael Gartner and the Newseum. Washington DC : National Geographic, 2005
(a compendium of newspaper editorials in American history) One
editorial "Our Tom" introduced me to a Sen. Tom Heflin of Alabama, who
(back in the 1920's) wasn't afraid to tell people, often catholics, they weren't real Americans, they weren't patriots.
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