"Samarra" (Posted November 30, 2003)
So why the large Baathist fedayeen force in Samarra? Since we were pushing a convoy of new Iraqi money through the town, the speculation is that the Baathists were on a bank hit. Possibly. And if so, are the Baathists running out of money? I mean, they took a lot but we found a lot, and some might have disappeared to Swiss bank accounts or something.
But what if it wasn't an attempted robbery. If not, what was the reason for uniformed fedayeen fighting so fiercely? In such numbers? Could Saddam have been nearby?
Just wondering.
“Lessons” (Posted November
30, 2003)
It has been said that Baathist and
jihadist attacks are discouraging our public and our
allies from winning in Iraq.
This battle should discourage our enemies in Iraq:
U.S. troops repelled simultaneous attacks
Sunday afternoon in the northern city of Samarra,
killing 46 Iraqis, wounding at least 18 and capturing eight, the U.S. military said.
Five American soldiers and a civilian were wounded.
This is, as I understand it, just a big example of how we
defeat direct attacks on our convoys on a regular basis.
Unfortunately, since we don’t advertise these victories, we
don’t get the advantage of beating them regularly.
Capturing some will provide some good information, too.
I will give the Baathists some
credit since they apparently wore uniforms. So this was a military operation
and not a terrorist operation. They are still the enemy and awful ones at that,
but it isn’t correct to call them terrorists.
It is disturbing that these two attacks were apparently
carried out in large platoon strength. I haven’t seen attacks this large up
until now.
But good news to beat back an
ambush of this size.
One question, though. Will we be able to replicate such battles when
we replace those "too heavy" Abrams tanks and Bradley Fighting Vehicles
with "more mobile" Humvees?
“I’m From the Left,
and I’m Here to Help” (Posted November 30, 2003)
Friedman is clearly pro-war when it comes to Iraq,
but his liberal tendencies make it difficult for him to just be pro-war. It
leads him to interesting and incorrect analysis.
Basically, he thinks that
the conservative pro-war side doesn’t understand the complexities of Iraq,
and so the anti-war left must exercise its amazing big-brained analytical powers
to finish what the fool in the White House started:
For
my money, the right liberal approach to Iraq is to say: We can do it better. Which is why the sign I most hungered to see in London was, "Thanks, Mr. Bush. We'll take it from here."
He rightly notes that the anti-war side is quite stark
raving mad, ignoring the evils of our enemies in their rush to condemn Bush and
Blair as new Nazis. Ah, the fruits of the complex mind.
Please.
From this failure to see the reality of his side’s
analytical abilities, Friedman starts the train of errors. This is the heart of
Friedman’s problem in finally jettisoning his leftist baggage in analyzing the
war and supporting the President:
Believe
me, being a liberal on every issue other than this
war, I have great sympathy for where the left is coming from. And if I didn't,
my wife would remind me. It would be a lot easier for the left to engage in a
little postwar reconsideration if it saw even an ounce of reflection,
contrition or self-criticism coming from the conservatives, such as Dick Cheney
and Don Rumsfeld, who drove this war, yet so bungled
its aftermath and so misjudged the complexity of postwar Iraq. Moreover, the Bush team is such a
partisan, ideological, nonhealing administration that
many liberals just want to punch its lights out — which is what the Howard Dean
phenomenon is all about.
Let’s recall as prelude that the President said, on May 1 when
announcing the end of major combat operations, that the post-war struggle would
be long and difficult.
Let’s further recall the famous Rumsfeld
memo which showed so much reflection and self-criticism that the anti-war side
decided to assault the memo as proof that the administration thought we were
losing the war.
As for contrition, I don’t want the administration to
apologize for anything in deciding—against enlightened world opinion—to overthrow
Saddam. It is an outrageous demand when you consider that the anti-war side still
“supposes” that it is a good thing that Saddam is gone and fails to reflect when
it sees mass graves, polls of happy Iraqis, torture chambers now unused, and
the widespread preparations by Saddam, in violation of repeated UN resolutions,
to create WMD once we were looking elsewhere.
Let’s recall all the horrible post-war problems that we
anticipated and prevented.
Let us remember the change in post-war administration in Iraq
to Bremer to correct early missteps.
Let us keep in mind the progress we have made in rebuilding Iraq
so quickly.
Let us remember the change in plans to put security and
governmental powers in the hands of Iraqis as the liberating country we are.
And as we work to repair a country in a complex environment,
let us recall the complexity of thought that leads the anti-war left to call
for immediate withdrawal of American troops and their silly faith in the UN as
the solution to all that ails us in Iraq.
And though I don’t comment on domestic policies, since
Friedman is tossing in Bush’s “partisan, ideological, nonhealing”
style, let me just note that Bush is expanding non-defense spending at a tremendous
rate with massive new health and education plans that would have been applauded
by the left if Clinton had proposed them. President Bush is even expanding the
Clinton AmeriCorps. Partisan and
ideological, indeed. I won’t even pretend to understand what “nonhealing” means. I guess it is promoted by “Bush=Hitler”
signs or photo-shopped pictures of Cheney in Nazi regalia.
And on top of all this, since Friedman complains about the
left’s refusal to support the Iraq War under the following circumstances, how
sophisticated is the left?
First,
even though the Bush team came to this theme late in the day, this war is the
most important liberal, revolutionary U.S. democracy-building project since the
Marshall Plan. The primary focus of U.S. forces in Iraq today is erecting a decent, legitimate,
tolerant, pluralistic representative government from the ground up. I don't
know if we can pull this off. We got off to an unnecessarily bad start. But it
is one of the noblest things this country has ever attempted abroad and it is a
moral and strategic imperative that we give it our best shot.
The left can’t see this endeavor as democracy-building? They
see it as a Halliburton bailout, or empire-building, or whatever? Hey, at least
they no longer say that fighting an easy war against Iraq
was part of a cynical ploy to guarantee re-election. Of course, that was the
April-May talking point. What does it say for the anti-war side’s appreciation
of the complexity of Iraq
that before the war and in the first two weeks of fighting they expected Vietnam;
and once the statues of Saddam came down they thought it was all a Karl Rove
campaign commercial? Now we’re back to Vietnam.
But I digress.
If Friedman thinks Bush came to this view of promoting
democracy late, what does it say about the previous administration or about the
current crop of candidates challenging Bush who still don’t understand this
theme, more than two years after 9-11?
And what about Friedman himself? Says
Friedman in explaining how the left needs to approach Iraq,
“The left needs to get beyond its opposition to the war and start pitching in
with its own ideas and moral support to try to make lemons into lemonade in Baghdad.”
Ending the Baathist WMD programs, torture chambers,
official rapists, plastic shredders for people, mass murder, and pervasive fear,
is a “lemon.” My incomprehension is multiplied by the fact that they can’t see
all this was done with few American casualties and unprecedented care in
sparing innocent Iraqis or their country’s infrastructure. All this still
constitutes a “lemon” even at this late date. If Friedman can say this, what
hope do we have for the mindless throngs that cheer Dean as the embodiment of
surrendering to Saddam, who even now is hiding in a burqua,
running from our forces?
Friedman needs to stop worrying about what his wife and
social circle think of him for supporting the Iraq War. It was the right thing
to do. And completing the mission is the right—and necessary—thing to do. Criticizing
and suggesting changes is fine, but it is blind for Friedman to comfort himself
with the idea that only his side can navigate the complexities of post-Saddam Iraq.
Friedman needs to use his big, complex, liberal brain to
understand that his ideological friends are incapable of putting away their
bongos and puppets and getting down to the serious work of protecting our
country from foreign enemies. Sometimes we have to punch the lights out of our
real enemies and not just our domestic opponents. That’s part of the 9-11
phenomena.
It really is simple after all.
“Casualties” (Posted November
29, 2003)
November is the deadliest
month in Iraq
is the headline and lead:
With November nearly over, the official death count yesterday stood at
79, surpassing March (65) and April (73), when the invasion was underway and
fighting was most intense and widespread.
Now, I’m not dismissing our dead as meaningless. It is
important to reverse the surge and stamp out the attacks. The main goal, however,
is to get Iraqi security forces on line so they carry out the bulk of the
routine security missions. As we reduce our combat forces, we’ll need fewer
convoys to supply them and so will suffer fewer ambushes. Our support troops
are facing a higher proportion of losses than is normal since our combat troops
are very effective and the Baathists know it. They avoid
our combat troops when they can, preferring to hit vulnerable convoys run by
supply clerks and the like. Even with MP or infantry escorts, these are easier
targets. So our casualties will go down with fewer troops as long as Iraqi
forces increase. I worry that focus on attacks per day will become the false
metric of success. We don’t need to reduce it to zero to call our invasion a
success. As long as Iraqi forces can take on the task, with our help, we can
scale back. Like I’ve said before, allies of ours around the world fight
insurgents or terrorists without 130,000 Americans on the ground helping them.
One other thing about the article bothers me. It is
deliberately misleading in part. It is just like the coverage noting we’ve had
more casualties in the long post-war phase than in the major combat operations
of the war. That is misleading because it misses the point that we had
remarkably few war casualties. Now, in this article, this reporter says that it
is significant that we’ve had more casualties in November (79) than in either
month of the invasion (65 and 73) when “fighting was most intense and
widespread.” This deliberately ignores the fact that we didn’t invade until
near the end of March and that Baghdad
fell at the beginning of April. The author compares a full month to two
approximately ten-day periods in order to get a headline.
And since 39 of the November casualties are from helicopter
losses, we are still talking a little over one per day if we exclude what are
essentially anomalous deaths from the pattern of casualties from daily attacks.
If we regularly lost helicopters in Iraq
(how many did we lose in Vietnam?
Tens of thousands, I believe), it would be wrong to look at the monthly deaths
without them. But as long as they are rare, it adds to our perception to look
at the “core” rate (much as economists talk of “core” inflation rate per month
excluding volatile energy and food prices) per month. Perhaps it will be
statistically meaningful to include all at 6-month or annual snapshots as we
look back from a future when Iraq
is a stable ally and we spot trends in defeating the Baathists.
(Or losing, I suppose, should we lose our nerve)
Just keep some perspective. Cheap
headlines notwithstanding.
“Intelligence”
(Posted November 28, 2003)
One article in WP about the validity of
our intelligence
on WMD before the Iraq War. It defends the October 2002 National Intelligence
Estimate. This convinces me but I needed none on this subject. I think the
charge that evidence was hyped is absurd. I did not expect a nuclear weapon but
feared we could have missed a nuclear program as we did before. I thought it
was possible that there were weaponized bio weapons
but probably not. I expected chemical weapons since this is the one WMD Iraq
had and used often in the past. Bio raw materials and chemicals in the
quantities we expected are easy to hide and we may yet dig them up.
Another WP article on the validity of the al Qaeda-Iraq links. This says that the reports of
contacts overstate the situation and that the information in the leaked DOD
memo to the Senate was routine stuff and not evidence of real cooperation.
Still, dismissing the establishment of an al Qaeda
base in nominally Kurdish areas in 1999 seems rash. That seems all too credible
to me.
I’m no expert on intelligence but since I never felt that
there was solid direct linkage, I certainly can’t rule this article’s point
out. Nonetheless, the links deserve attention.
“The Price of Delay”
(Posted November 28, 2003)
Mark Steyn pegs my fears of the price
of delay in the Iraq War. Before I started my blog,
I thought we’d invade by September 2002, after the heat of summer and after we
replenished our JDAMs. By the time I started my blog, I began to think by the end of the year or so. In the
end we delayed until March. Said Steyn:
One or two readers may recall that a year and
a half ago I was arguing that the invasion of Iraq needed to take place in the summer of 2002,
before the first anniversary of 9/11. Unfortunately, President Bush listened to
Mr Blair and not to me, and Mr
Blair wanted to go ‘the extra mile’ with the UN, the French, the Guinean
foreign minister and the rest of the gang. The extra mile took an extra six or
eight months, and at the end of it America went to war with exactly the same
allies as she would have done in June 2002. The only difference was that the
interminable diplomatic dance emboldened M. Chirac and the other
obstructionists, and permitted a relatively small anti-war fringe to blossom
into a worldwide mass ‘peace’ movement. It certainly didn’t do anything for the
war’s ‘legitimacy’ in the eyes of the world: indeed, insofar as every passing
month severed the Iraqi action from the dynamic of 9/11, it diminished it.
Taking a year to amass overwhelming force on the borders of Iraq may have made the war shorter and simpler,
but it also made the postwar period messier and costlier. With the world’s
biggest army twiddling its thumbs in Kuwait for months on end, the regime had time to
move stuff around, hide it, ship it over the border to Syria, and allow interested parties to mull over
tactics for a post-liberation insurgency.
The blowback of dragging out the pre-war for purely
political reasons and not military reasons are still haunting us. Far from
being “a rush to war” and before “all peaceful means were exhausted,” as the
anti-war side still asserts, we delayed to our disadvantage.
As I’ve said, give an enemy time and they’re liable to use
it.
The rest of the article is good, too.
“Sunni Triangle”
(Posted November 28, 2003)
On a related note, I once wrote that if the Iraqi Sunnis
don’t take the opportunity we are giving them for a better life that we could
split the country and leave central Iraq to their Baathist
misery.
On reflection, I was gravely mistaken.
If we can’t pacify the Sunni area and withdraw, we will have
given the Baathists a sanctuary to organize and plan
in peace. Whatever is buried in there would come out for use against us. We
would have some peace for a bit, but that would only be a “September 10” peace.
After a while, the Baathists would come after the Shias and Kurds. And our forces helping
them.
No, we must win in the Sunni triangle. To borrow a familiar
slogan, it’s better to fight the Baathists in the
Sunni triangle than to fight them in the Kurd and Shia
regions.
“Iraq Tactics” (Posted November 28, 2003)
Lost where I read this, but when I saw our troops blowing up
building used by Baathists for attacks, I cringed. Looked too “Israeli.” And sure enough, the report I saw said
we are consulting with Israelis on tactics they’ve used. While their urban
warfare techniques certainly worked, so did ours in the war. And since Israelis
are fighting people who will not ever like them, alienating the population
isn’t too much of a worry. We have good will among many in Iraq,
however, and I don’t want to risk using Israeli tactics. Nor do I want it felt
by the Iraqis that we are using Israeli tactics.
If buildings are being used to attack us,
plant sensors in the buildings to detect their presence and then attack the
building to kill the attackers. Geez, if we
know they’ll go back, take advantage of it!
I didn’t mind the use of aerial bombs for a bit to make a
point, and in more remote areas against identified targets I’m not upset, but
I’m glad this tactic seems to be dwindling if press impressions are a guide.
Remember, this is a policing problem. It is not major combat operations. That’s
why we accurately announced the end of them, remember?
“Taiwan Tension”
(Posted November 28, 2003)
One more from Jane’s, noting the worries that Taiwan
is stoking on China’s
primary pressure point: Taiwanese independence:
ONCE again the Taiwan
Strait is entering a
period of tension and once again the immediate cause is the Taiwanese
President, Chen Shui-bian. He has launched a strategy
based on brinkmanship over the issue of Taiwan's independence. The result?
A sleeping giant is showing signs of restiveness.
We do need to pull Chen back. China
will invade if pushed too far. We will intervene for all the reasons I noted
yesterday. And as the McCready paper argues, the best
we can do is put off war to buy time in the hope that China
changes enough over decades to hopefully not want Taiwan.
From Strategypage, China’s
banking crisis will absorb lots of their cash to put right:
The cash crunch created by this expenditure will also limit options in
dealing with Taiwan. Fighting a war costs money, and that will be
in shorter supply because of the massive amounts of money needed. The Chinese
will also have to try to take Taiwan without doing too much damage.
Interesting. I disagree with the
idea that China
must take Taiwan
without doing too much damage. The skill of the people is most important, not
the physical infrastructure. With a highly educated population, in a generation
the economic level can be back to where it would have been had nothing happened
(the Phoenix effect we saw in Germany
after World War II).
It’s a tough road. We can’t let China
conquer Taiwan.
We don’t even want China
to peacefully absorb Taiwan.
Yet we would clearly like to avoid war over this issue. One more
tough balancing act to add to Arab-Israeli and India-Pakistan.
“Bad
Trend Line in Iraq?” (Posted November 28, 2003)
Again from Jane’s, this
time on Iraq:
THE USA is grappling with a worsening security crisis in Iraq, but its intelligence seems to be so
woefully inadequate that it does not appear to have any clear idea of exactly
what it is up against. President George W Bush and senior officials of his
administration have characterised those behind this
stubborn and escalating insurgency against US-led occupation forces as
terrorists. The reality is much more complex, embracing a broad spectrum of
political, religious and ideological forces, which, if they ever come together
on a nationwide scale, could leave the USA little choice but to withdraw from Iraq.
I think this is way too pessimistic. I respect Jane’s a lot
but they may be infected with European pessimism too much. For example, I don’t
recall the administration simply characterizing the resistance as made up of
just “terrorists.” It seems like “former regime loyalists” is the main term
used to describe the overwhelming majority, with a small number of
definition-true “terrorists” in the form of foreign jihadists,
too. Also, they clearly engage in terrorism. Still, I can hardly ignore this.
“WMD Patrol” (Posted November
28, 2003)
According to my email alert from Jane’s:
A COALITION, led by the USA, is about to challenge the right of
innocent passage by preparing to seize and search ships and aircraft on
suspicion of involvement in the illicit trade in weapons of mass destruction
(WMD). The coalition comprising Australia, the UK, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the Netherlands, Poland, Portugal and Spain, as well as the USA, is approaching the implementation stage.
Multi-national talks on North Korean nukes. Pulling 2nd ID off the firing line. And this naval effort. Makes it look like we are going to
squeeze and contain North Korea
until it breaks. And I suppose it will be tough for some to argue that this
coalition is “fraudulent.”
The Chinese are psyching themselves up for the showdown
with us over Taiwan.
A recently passed
Taiwanese bill that at one time seemed to threaten a public referendum on a
formal declaration of independence upsets China:
Pro-independence activists have campaigned for 10 years for
a referendum law. The movement has gained wide public support ahead of
presidential elections on March 20, 2004, when the
question of Taiwan's sovereignty is
expected to take center stage.
President Chen has enraged China by aggressively asserting
his island is a separate country -- making that and a referendum on a new
constitution the key pillars of his campaign for re-election on March 20, 2004.
The Strategic Studies Institute of the Army
War College
has an excellent
paper on deterring a war over Taiwan
(“Crisis Deterrence in the Taiwan Strait” Douglas McCready, November 2003). I’ll not cite specific points,
but much of this post will draw on this paper. Much of it reinforces
information I’ve read elsewhere or opinions I have formed already. In some
cases, I disagree with the conclusions reached on specific points. It is an
excellent one-stop shopping point for this post.
I believe America
will fight to stop China
from taking over Taiwan.
The US has a legal commitment to defending Taiwan; a moral obligation to defend
a democracy against a dictatorship; and a strategic goal of preventing allies
from peeling away if they see us retreat in the face of Chinese power, and thus
losing influence in the area. Plus, we have a general interest in keeping the
area quiet for trade and prosperity reasons. Indeed although we say that we
want this resolved without use of force, McCready
notes that even a peaceful union of Taiwan
under Chinese rule would be unacceptable to America,
One problem is that the Chinese don’t think we will fight
for Taiwan.
They think their interests are so much greater than ours that they will
out-suffer us if necessary to win.
A related problem with our perceptions is that we try to
impress upon our enemies our power by letting them see our military up close in
training. The idea is that potential foes will come away with a “holy freaking
crap” moment and impress upon their countrymen that there is no way they can
beat America.
This is a major error on our part, especially with the Chinese. Why? Because
the Chinese are already terribly impressed with our technology and military
skills after seeing the Persian Gulf War, Kosovo War, and Iraq War from a
distance. We know this. So there is no reason to let them see us up close and
see our weaknesses. We don’t want them to see our weaknesses because the
Chinese know they are inferior, yet are absolutely convinced that we will not accept
even light casualties in a war. The Chinese believe this is our crucial
weakness. They are wrong, but they will act on this belief. Their belief that
they can create niche capabilities that will nullify our overall superiority is
strengthened by our policy of showing them our stuff. Shut this down! Now.
Perhaps most important, I don’t think we appreciate that China
regards taking over Taiwan
as the only thing that matters to them. It is central to their very legitimacy
as a government. Indeed, the Chinese think the fact that we don’t appreciate
this is our most dangerous misperception. We are too numbed to the threat after
numerous saber rattling by China
and 50 years of stability despite the saber rattling. Also, the Chinese know
that taking Taiwan
will push us out of the Western Pacific and East Asia as
an effective power able to counter China.
Indeed, even if showing China our military power up close could tell them
anything useful to us that they can’t see from afar, this would not be enough. McCready notes that Chinese leaders have repeatedly stated
that they would go to war rather than allow Taiwan
become independent. And they’d go to war whether they thought they’d lose or
not. The belief by some over here that “everyone” would lose in a war over Taiwan
is just silly. We have no idea what China
considers losing on this issue.
And the crisis in 1996 when China
fired missiles around Taiwan
and we sent two carrier battle groups to the area showed China
that we would respond to intimidation tactics. Have the Chinese learned that
only a preemptive offensive that quickly conquers China
will give them Taiwan?
Will they try to win clearly before America
can effectively respond?
One problem we have with our assessments of what China
could do militarily is that we mirror image them. McCready
notes this but does not draw the right conclusion in my mind. He says, “Because
different viewers evaluate capabilities differently, what we see as
capabilities do not necessarily limit our adversary’s intentions.” He then
says, “Thus, having decided not to pursue the cross-Strait amphibious invasion
option, the PRC is not investing heavily in amphibious assault craft or
associated weapons. Instead, China
has chosen to concentrate resources on weapons that will permit it to
intimidate Taiwan
and deter U. S.
intervention.” We look at the geography and add China’s
deficiencies in air power and sea lift and say the Chinese wouldn’t dare try
it. You think we’d know better, since in 1950, we concluded that China
was incapable of intervening in Korea
with enough power to be successful. We thought that it was obviously irrational
to fight us and so assumed China
would not.
As I’ve written repeatedly, the Chinese desire for Taiwan
trumps all other considerations. We are in a very dangerous period and I think
the period right before the Olympics in ’08 will be a window for a Chinese
invasion. Some cite what McCready correctly calls the cliché of
Asian patience to support their belief that China
will never invade Taiwan. Patience does not mean you never act. It means you act at a
time and place and methods of your choosing, timed to give you maximum chances
for victory.
And remember, as McCready noted, “China
has said that if using force becomes necessary, it intends to defeat Taiwan
before the United States
can intervene effectively.” Just as ominously, he cites the fact that “Chinese
military history demonstrates readiness to use preemptive strikes, especially
against more powerful foes.”
Next time, a template for Chinese action?
UPDATE: See Part II.Permalink to this post: http://www.geocities.com/brianjamesdunn/TDRFANOV2003ARCHIVES.html#TDRNSA27NOV03A
“Huzzah!” (Posted November
27, 2003)
President Bush was
just in Iraq to visit our troops and thank them for protecting us:
Air Force One landed in darkness
at Baghdad International Airport. Security fears
were heightened by an attack last Saturday in which a
missile struck a DHL cargo plane, forcing it to make an emergency landing at
the airport with its wing aflame.
Bush was to spend only two hours on the ground, limiting
his visit to a dinner at the airport with U.S. forces. The
troops had been told that the VIP guests would be L. Paul Bremer, the U.S. administrator in Iraq, and Lt. Gen.
Ricardo Sanchez, commander of coalition forces in Iraq.
Bush's trip — on the large plane he most frequently uses —
was a well-guarded secret — announced only after he landed in Baghdad.
In a ruse staged in the name of security, the White House
had put out word that Bush would be spending Thanksgiving at his ranch in Crawford, Texas, with his wife,
Laura, his parents and other family members. Even the dinner menu was
announced.
Instead, Bush slipped away from his home without notice
Wednesday evening and flew to Washington to pick up aides
and a handful of reporters sworn to secrecy. Plans called for the trip to be
abandoned if word had leaked out in advance.
Outfreakingstanding.
It shows our troops that he is behind them and that he
thinks their mission is important enough to risk his life. Yes, it was a brief
visit but he was an irresistible target had our enemies figured this out. He
landed in Baghdad International
Airport where Baathists
had recently used a SAM against a transport aircraft and hit it.
It also showed confidence in our troops as they are on a
recent offensive to turn back the small but still rising number of attacks.
And it is pretty good that Iraqis will know that President
Bush has been seen in Iraq
more reliably than Saddam Hussein. You can bet that pictures of Air Force One
on the ground in Iraq
and pictures of the President in Iraq
will be widely distributed in Iraq.
And after going to Britain
when the pro-Saddamites threatened to make it a most
unpleasant trip, this trip shows that our President will follow through with
his commitments.
Really good.
"Thanksgiving 2003" (Posted November 26, 2003)Tomorrow is Thanksgiving. On top of the usual things to be thankful for, my son, my family, & my work and friends, I must add my deepest thanks to those who are defending me. It is difficult to think of soldiers, Marines, sailors, and airmen in far away lands fighting and dying to protect all of us at home from vicious killers who pray for the chance to kill us. Every email from DOD that announces a death is hard to read. But I do. It is but a tiny gesture to make sure I never forget their sacrifice. And it is tougher because I was a soldier once. A reservist (for some reason I don't like "citizen-soldier" since the active duty troops are just as much citizens) as many who are going to Iraq are. Yet I never had to go overseas and risk my life. Came darn close, but close doesn't count--not by a long shot.
I have a lot to be thankful for. And many to thank for my life.
“Soviet Evils”
(Posted November 25, 2003)
One
of the
reasons I quit the American Historical Association a decade ago (from
Andrewullivan.com). Despite having the archives of the Soviet gulag-masters
opened, the left here sees nothing. They now insist that containment was a
bipartisan endeavor, neglecting the hard fight one side had in maintaining it
against the other side that resisted it as much as they could. They forget—or worse,
still believe-in the moral equivalence of the United
States and the Soviet Union.
They mock the very idea of an “Evil Empire” and believe Gorbachev ended the
Cold War. From the interview regarding Professors John Earl Haynes’ and Harvey Klehr’s "new book, In Denial: Historians,
Communism, and Espionage, which
demonstrates how the leftist academic establishment has ignored, denied
and distorted the evidence that has come out of the former Soviet archives
about the Cold War and American communism." In response to why historians are
unwilling to re-examine their pretty picture of communist Russia
in light of the open archives that verify the murders, torture, and baseless
imprisonment:
Jamie, you look at
Soviet history and see the Gulag, the executions of the Terror, the pervasive
oppression, and the economic failure. Psychologically, the leftists you speak of
see little of that. They see a Communist state that articulated their vision of
the future and which sought to destroy the societies and institutions they
hated. They cannot see the horror that communism actually created. They look on
that horror and see something else because they cannot admit to themselves that
their vision is beyond human grasp. The German Communist playwright Bertolt Brecht, when challenged
that thousands of innocents had been sent to the Gulag by Stalin, replied,
"the more innocent they are, the more they
deserve to die." To you or I this remark is disgusting, but to the hard
left it reflects their eager willingness to kill any number of persons without
concern for innocence or guilt if it might assist in bringing about the
socialist future.
The idealized future that has not happened is
more real and more important to them than the past that really did happen.
Because the imagined future is more real and important to them, they seek to
remold history (human understanding of the real past) to the service of the
future. In his distopia 1984, George Orwell gives the
Ministry of Truth of his totalitarian state the task of rewriting history.
Orwell's point was that those who control the politics of the past (history)
also control the politics of the present and thereby the future. The academic
left, like the Orwell's Engsoc ideologists, believe
that history is malleable and can assist in legitimating current politics and
bringing about the utopian future.
You will get few mea culpas from hard left academics
because they feel no guilt. You think they should regret getting the facts of
history wrong. They care not at all about the facts of history, only about the
politics of the future. They feel they got the politics right and so no mea culpa is due.
The facts of history that they got wrong can
be, in their view, rationalized, redefined, minimized, or otherwise set aside
in service to the idealized future they seek. Many have learned no lessons from
the failure of communism; they will ardently pursue the same goals by the same
means, albeit under new names.
You note the incongruity of hearing
historians who are supposed to care about the past dismiss new information from
Soviet archives as useless concern for "old ghosts" and
"engaging in necrophilia." But those who say such thinks are not
really historians, they are propagandists for the
future left utopia who camouflage themselves as historians. They are interested
in the past only when it can be put to the service of the future they seek. The
flood of information out of Communist archives does not serve their goals, thus
they define those matters as, as you noted, "ancient"
and of no interest.
As “they” say, read the whole thing.
Oh, and one little tidbit of mass murder against Americans I
never heard of:
Or, take a case that we discuss in our
book-the murder of at least a thousand American Finns in Soviet Karelia in the late
1930s. These were American citizens, falsely accused of espionage and shot. We
have the list of names- a list that includes men, women and children. Why has
the American government never demanded that some effort be made to find out who was responsible for these crimes? Is this any different
from the murder of American citizens by the government of Libya? Or Nazi war crimes?
Bastards. And no, I’m not sure who
I’m talking about here.
“Making Them Worry About Us” (Posted November 25, 2003)
Going after the opposition, primarily the Baathists,
is cutting down on their attacks on us:
[U. S. General] Abizaid said that
the number of daily attacks on coalition forces were down by about half over
the last two weeks. He gave no figures but U.S. officials have
said U.S. forces were being
attacked on average of 30-35 times a day.
"In the past two weeks, these attacks have gone down,
attacks against coalition forces, but unfortunately we find that attacks
against Iraqis have increased," Abizaid said. He
said the attacks had increased not only in number but in severity.
Keeping the initiative against the Baathists
is good.
That the Baathists are striking
civilians instead of our soldiers also shows that the Baathists
don’t think it is a winning strategy to keep going after our troops and/or
can’t go after us at the same pace. They lose too many men and we haven’t cut
and run as they expected.
It is also good that we see the face of the resistance. That
vile Ted Rall may think the Baathists
are brave nationalists resisting occupation but this shift to striking
civilians demonstrates what they are. They killed and raped and tortured to
stay in power; and they are willing to terrorize people so that they will
welcome Baathist rule again. This is their bargain:
we’ll stop bombing, disrupting your lives, if we can quietly disappear people
in the middle of the night while you pretend to have a life.
Drive on. Victory is our exit strategy.
“Lads for Steadying”
(Posted November 24, 2003)
The Pentagon is considering
how to reorganize our forces to better cope with post-war stabilization
missions in the absence of willing allies:
A September study by the Pentagon's Office of Stability Operations
outlined how a brigade-size force of about 5,000 troops could be organized.
Another study, sponsored by Cebrowski and completed
earlier this month by a National Defense University team, called for a larger force of two division-size elements -- one
active-duty, one reserve -- totaling about 30,000 troops.
I’ve long said that our Army should focus on warfighting and not divert forces to peacekeeping
priorities. We have too few troops to create pseudo-soldiers. Indeed, we need
to make sure our combat support and combat service support troops have local
defense capabilities.
But we have Iraq
to win.
And the focus in the article undermines the contention in
the article that the Army is resistant to focus on stability operations because
it does not want to divert scarce combat troops:
The idea is to forge deployable brigades or whole divisions out of
units of engineers, military police, civil affairs officers and other
specialists critical to postwar operations.
I’ve long said I want more MPs for security and policing.
When you add the other CS and CSS units envisioned, the plan does not divert
forces from a warfighting focus. Near the end of the
article, we get the key piece on this:
That
122-page study argued that the proposed two new divisions could be created
without adding to the total size of the Army or siphoning troops from the
Army's existing 10 active-duty combat divisions. Many of the soldiers called
for in the plan, including those expert in engineering, policing, civil
affairs, psychological operations and medical care, can be found in reserve
units and are attached to Corps headquarters or other commands above the
division level, the study concluded.
"Most
of the necessary capabilities already exist," said Binnendijk,
who during the Clinton administration served on the National
Security Council as director of defense policy. "They just aren't
organized effectively. This is more about refocusing, reorganizing and rebalancing
forces than it is about buying a lot of new stuff."
This seems a prudent course of action for now. We are
reconfiguring existing troops for a need we face right now.
I do, however, take exception to the following segment:
No longer do U.S. war plans envision slow buildups and prolonged fighting. Instead, as
the invasion of Iraq demonstrated, the Pentagon is counting on rapid preparation and swift
victory, with fewer combat troops needed as a result of advances in technology
and improved coordination among the military services. The slimmed-down combat
contingent means fewer troops available to deal with the aftermath.
The invasion of Iraq
took place after a build-up that took longer than the one in 1990-1991! Nor do
I think most scenarios will require us to board the C-17s and begin fighting 5
days later. Our system requires a little more debate (endless debate in some
cases) before we send sizable combat forces to war. Defending South
Korea or Taiwan
are the only bolt-from-the-blue scenarios I see.
As for swift victory, sure, it’s nice work if you can get
it. But what if we face troops with tougher mettle than the Iraqis?
Plus, I still say that in the Iraq War we had 60 US combat
battalions plus 12 British line battalions—the equivalent of seven strong
divisions. We lacked the support troops of 1991 because technology and
coordination allowed us to have fewer supporting forces. The force was smaller
than in 1991 but our enemy was reduced considerably, too. I just don’t want
people to think a tiny force of American super-troopers can take on any enemy
no matter how large and no matter how resolute.
But two stabilization divisions could be useful without
harming our combat power under this idea.
“Unsteady Lads”
(Posted November 24, 2003)
Listening to the men and women who are seeking the
presidency comment on foreign policy in the debate Monday night is frightening.
They have no clue. Their foreign policy is to retreat and
wish for the best. They have no decency. They repeat the lies and distortions
that they have used for two years.
They are just awful. It is truly disheartening to me.
Not one is a leader. I do not trust any one of them to
defend us.
“Steady, Lads”
(Posted November 24, 2003)
This infuriates
me:
Assailants killed two U.S. soldiers riding in a civilian car Sunday in
the northern city of Mosul and, in a bloody scene,
crowds then reportedly mutilated their bodies, trashed the vehicles and made
off with the soldiers' belongings.
But we must keep perspective. Mosul is a Sunni city. Its people
are disposed to be against us. Plus the incident is unclear. Some of the
details may be quite exaggerated. Most important, even if true, this cannot
taint our view. Most Iraqis want us there. Our security requires us to build up
a secure and stable Iraqi government that can take over the counter-insurgency
mission.
Our enemies would love it if we looked at this incident and
concluded that every damn Iraqi can go to Hell.
Don’t go there. The Iraqis want us there. They are grateful
we overthrew Saddam. The Baathists and jihadists are the ones who want us to leave.
Steady, lads. Focus on the objective.
One argument that the anti-war side continues to use
regarding the Iraq War is the idea that we are creating more enemies that would
not have existed had we just stayed home.
Really?
I guess that waging a war against the British was an error
in 1775. How many Americans died in that Boston
“Massacre” anyway? And before we sent militia to besiege the British troops in Boston,
how many British were in America?
Just a handful here to protect us, right? Our foolishness
just led to the British sending tens of thousands of troops to our land,
including mercenaries who weren’t even our religion! The whole thing just
provided an opportunity for Indians to rise up and attack us, too. And then we
faced British troops marching all over the American colonies in a war that
lasted eight years from 1775 to 1783!
And let’s not even talk about the War of 1812. So what if
American sailors were being kidnapped by the Royal Navy? So what if the British
were attacking our trade and harming our economy? Good God, how much stronger
were the British that we should start a war?! What did we get? Detroit
occupied for awhile. Our capital burned. Our trade ruined in a blockade we
could not break.
The Civil War was truly folly. A people wanted to just live
their own lives apart from us. So what if they had slaves? Were our soldiers
any less racist? How well were our immigrants treated? Really, we should have
cleaned up our act before telling Southerners to stay in the Union
and give up slavery. Hundreds of thousands died, with tens of thousands falling
in single battles. Our troops remained in the South for a decade trying to de-Confederify the region. And so what if we freed the slaves?
They remained second-class citizens for another century! We clearly should have
minded our own business.
And can you believe the Spanish-American War? So what if
Cubans were dying in concentration camps. A splendid little
war, indeed. Sure, the war was over in three months. Sure, we suffered
remarkably few casualties to win. But then we faced a three-year insurgency in
the Philippines
before we subdued it. Even then, rebels persisted long after we granted the Philippines
independence in 1946. Separatists still fight there against the central
government more than a century after that victory!
And what were we thinking intervening in the Great War? Why
should we care if a militarist Germany
controlled the continent? Who cares if the democracies of the West were
defeated? They owned colonies, didn’t they? Sure, the German navy had plans to
capture New York City in case of
war with us but it was just one of those contingency plans. If we stayed away
surely the Germans would have left us alone. Sure, we had a little standoff
with the Germans over Venezuela
early in the century but who were we to interfere? And then we lose heavily in
the static and bloody trench warfare of the Western Front. And what happened
after? Our allies just brutalized the Germans and paved the way for Hitler. The
Russians lost so much that Marxists took over. Talk about blowback.
The biggest folly by far was World War II. How many
Americans were being killed by Nazis and Japanese before December 7, 1941? They were hardly an imminent
threat. If we hadn’t expressed our displeasure at Japanese adventures in China
and Southeast Asia, the Japanese would never have felt
compelled to strike us. Weren’t they just seeking their proper role in the
region after decades of Western dominance? And what were we doing helping the
British? We sent arms and our Navy actually helped the Royal Navy in the Atlantic,
violating American neutrality laws and international law. Weren’t the Germans
just trying to reverse the horrible provisions of the World War I “peace?” And what of our primary allies? A colonial
power that we helped without demanding any end to their colonial practices and
a communist dictatorship that we prettied up by calling Stalin “Uncle Joe.”
How could we sully our democracy by siding with less than perfect folks? Look
at how many Americans died after we declared war on them! And then we were
sucked into Japan
and Germany for
sixty years after the war ended with “victory!” Shoot, Poland
was occupied in the end and that country’s fate was the reason the war started
in Europe in the first place! And more blowback with the
Russians advancing further into Europe than they ever
did before! All the way to the Elbe River!
And we racistly used atomic bombs on the Japanese!
And even as we struggled without a plan in Germany
and Japan, we
embarked on an adventure in defense of South
Korea? In the end what business did we have
when the South was autocratic. How much better were
they than the North? It took a good forty years before the South was a
democracy and our troops still stand on the DMZ! Sure, now South
Korea is a prosperous democracy and North
Korea is a despotic, poverty-stricken
dictatorship with nukes but couldn’t we have avoided all this by just staying
out?
Clearly, fighting was a mistake in these cases, eh?
Let’s get real, here. Is there any doubt that our enemies
would commit a 9-11 atrocity again and again? With VX?
With Anthrax? With dirty bombs?
With nukes?
Can those arguing that we are making enemies by waging war
against terrorists and their state sponsors not understand that we were under
attack before 9-11 and that our decision to join the battle automatically means
that our casualties mount as the battle is joined?
In all these examples from 1775 to 2001, we could have just
accepted the actions of our enemies and surrendered. Or we could have let
events go on until we could no longer avert our eyes from our losses. Until our
enemies were in our faces with nobody left to fight but us.
I thought our enemies got in our faces on 9-11. I thought
this reality check happened, but it did not. Some here manage to close their
eyes with the still smoldering ruins of the World
Trade Center
in our faces. Somehow, they still don’t think we are under attack. They don’t
understand that refusing to fight only guarantees that a more horrific 9-11
will take place in time. And simply focusing on a law enforcement defense of
our borders (but without the “Nazi-like” Patriot Act as the same anti-war types
argue and without “racist” notions of border control, of course) just
guarantees another 9-11, too. And can we really change our foreign policy to
appease the terrorists when al Qaeda and their scum
ilk strike freely at Moslems and Arabs in Iraq,
Indonesia, Saudi
Arabia, Turkey,
and elsewhere? Do they really think any change at all in our policies could
placate our enemies?
Do they really?
Our enemies, who were fighting us all along, are still
fighting us. There are two differences. One, we are stretching
our power around the globe and killing them now, too, going after them
seriously and persistently. Two, we are showing the wider Islamic world
that we are serious about defeating the terrorists and ending the dictatorships
that have spawned the fanatics. The first will destroy our enemies and put them
off balance until we kill them. Our biggest successes were in tearing into al Qaeda and destroying two terrorist states with remarkably
low casualties. The second will dry up the recruiting pool. Afghanistan
and Iraq are on
the path to freedom and other Moslem states are feeling the pressure.
I guess those arguing we are making more enemies are too
caught up in the logic of their foolish slogan that it “takes two to make war.”
In reality, it only takes one side as we could see throughout the 1990s.
Fighting back is better. Even when the victory is not
perfect.
Permalink to this post: http://www.geocities.com/brianjamesdunn/TDRFANOV2003ARCHIVES.html#TDRNSA23NOV03A
“Are They Stupid or
What?” (Posted November 22, 2003)
Critics of the Patriot Act hyperventilate over imagined
civil rights abuses and create worry when the act is needed to prevent another
9-11. But the government has a duty to use the act prudently or Congress will restrict
it to the detriment of prevention. What am I to make of this short-sighted and stupid move?
FBI agents investigating two strip club
owners in Las Vegas on bribery charges bypassed a grand jury and instead used
the Patriot Act to subpoena the financial records of the bar owners as well as
several prominent city and county officials.
This just adds a factoid to the ravings of those who don’t
even think we are at war. The government should slap down this silly use of a
law designed to nab terrorists. I am torn between wondering whether the agents
are just stupid or are against the Patriot Act and working to undermine it by
using it inappropriately.
In time, the act must be pulled back and eventually even
repealed. We’re not there yet.
“SAM Hit” (Posted November
22, 2003)
A civilian transport plane was
hit in Iraq:
Military
officials said there had been at least 12 other attempted attacks on the few
civilian flights that operate in Iraq, and this first successful hit of a
civilian aircraft might further delay opening the airport to civilian traffic
and thus postpone one major marker for stability in Iraq.
As I’ve noted, those little hand-held missiles aren’t
usually that dangerous to large aircraft. The very tiny warheads just don’t
pack a lot of punch. Disturbing, true, and it puts off the day when civilian
planes can use the airport. But using them against helicopters would be far
more dangerous.
“Al Qaeda Still Out There Plotting” (Posted November
22, 2003)
Our terrorist enemies in bin Laden’s
thugdom are still
plotting against us. We’ve done great so far to thwart them. While we go
after them ruthlessly with our allies, we force the terrorists to spend more
effort avoiding us.
One day we’ll miss. That is inevitable.
This is a long war and I just don’t get those in our country
who believe the war is some type of Karl Rove reelection plot.
“Our Smaller
Brigades” (Posted November 22, 2003)
I already noted our plans to reduce most of our brigades to
two line battalions instead of three as they are now and increasing the number
of brigades. I had argued for basing our force on more divisions that would
have two brigades instead of three. I argued we could round out with National
Guard brigades if we faced a tougher opponent.
I wonder if we will use our enhanced separate brigades to
fill out our new, smaller brigades in case of a tougher opponent. I speculate
since we have discovered that even though our National Guard is probably equal
to most active component armies around the world, it is inferior to our
excellent active Army. We know that it takes a year or more to get a Guard
division up to par and months to get even our enhanced brigades up to speed.
However, we had excellent results from mobilizing our enhanced separate brigade
subordinate battalions (15 out of 45) and apparently using them in combat in Iraq.
One advantage of this method is that it keeps supporting
arms at a higher level by supporting three smaller brigades in a division
instead of two larger brigades. Usually, supporting artillery is based on one
battalion per brigade so a two-brigade division with the same number of troops
as a three-brigade division would have 67% of the firepower in the artillery
arm. This is one reason why German three-regiment infantry divisions (with two
battalions each) were more effective than Luftwaffe infantry divisions that had
two regiments with three battalions each.
If we do something like this, it will ease my worries about
creating smaller brigades should we face a resilient and smart opponent who
doesn’t go along with our hyper war concepts. National Guard battalions can
plug in and provide the depth to slug it out and win.
“President’s Trip to Britain” (Posted November 22, 2003)
It looks like the President’s trip to Britain
went quite well. Protesters didn’t come out in the numbers predicted. Still a
lot, but we also know from polls that it is not representative of the British.
I dare say President Bush reassured a lot of people who had absorbed the BBC
and print caricature of him.
His Three
Pillars speech has also further cemented our global offensive to replace
dictatorial Moslem states with democratic Moslem states. Victory
is our “exit strategy.”
And at home, the reassurance of our primary ally standing
with us will undercut those here who argued that the President had undermined
our most important alliance.
One thing that mystifies me about the socialist and
communist relics who paraded in London
is why their colonial guilt mentality doesn’t give us some credit? I mean after
all, the British were our colonial masters. Didn’t that excuse anything we do
in their logic? Shoot, the Dutch, Swedes, Spanish, and horrifyingly enough the
French, were our colonial overlords at one time. The Russians owned Alaska,
too. Don’t we have plenty of reasons to get a pass?
And if we don’t, can we please stop excusing the brutality
of the Third World’s Mugabes?
“Nice Work if You Can
Get It” (Posted November 22, 2003)
I don’t know how I missed this
article the first time.
The lead paragraph says we are planning potential wars based
on the assumptions that we can win them more quickly and that we’ll need fewer
American troops. Precision, jointness,
communications, and Special Forces are the new factors that have led to this
new look. I’m hoping that we aren’t assuming that all our future enemies will
fight as stupidly as the Iraqis have in our last two wars. This is not a
constant. As one officer in the Persian Gulf War noted, after seeing a bunker
complex abandoned by the Iraqis, “Thank God they weren’t North Vietnamese.”
General Pace noted that we won the Iraq War with 160,000
troops rather than the 500,000 initially planned. I’m worried this will be
misinterpreted.
Note that the example given is that in case North
Korea attacks, we will act before artillery
units arrive by substituting air power. Remember that our invasion was not
actually a third the size of the expected force. I counted the battalions prior
to the Iraq War in the region and it added up to 70 or 72 Army, Marine, and
British line battalions (infantry of all types, armor, and recon). This is the
equivalent of 6 American and 1 British divisions. This
is in line with our decade-old plan for smashing small enemies in major theater
wars: 5 divisions of Army troops and 1-2 Marine divisions. It took a British
division to get us to the high end, but we did it.
What were lacking, I think, were all the logistics people
and the extra artillery brigades we’d usually have with an invading force. I
bet lots of air defense stuff was missing, too. Also, with satellites, we can
reach back with a lot of support functions normally brought to the theater.
With precision, we didn’t need tons of ammo brought in. I think the stats I saw
showed that we used about the same number of precision weapons this time than
in 1991 (and the current crop is more accurate). The difference was that we
used lots of dumb bombs in 1991 and relatively few in 2003. Air power (also in
smaller numbers), with regulars and special forces able to coordinate this
tremendous firepower in combat, was able to substitute for extra artillery in
the war.
So, we had the line units up front in the strength
anticipated, but behind it we had a more hollow army, thinned out to factor in
our total air superiority, much smaller logistics needs since we won quickly,
and effective air support with good weather to exploit it.
Much of this thinking is accurate in the context of an
Iraq-like opponent. It is also useful since we may have to fight anywhere on the
globe and not just the Gulf and Korean peninsula.
But what if we need to fight a tough enemy? One that doesn’t break early on? That has an air force it is
willing to use even if it is destroyed in the process? In rough terrain where
the enemy can hide better? In bad weather that degrades our air power? What if
our enemy can attack our satellites or break our links to them?
Then, we’ll need artillery and lots of ammo. We’ll need more
supplies and air defenses. We’ll need to replace line units that suffer
attrition or just need a rest. Reach-back won’t be reliable. In short, that
hollow rear will need to fill out. Oh sure, not nearly as much as the old ways,
but despite all the complaints of our large logistical “tail,” it is this
support that allows our frontline “teeth” to be so effective. We minimized it
against an enemy that had no freaking idea how to fight us—despite having been
pasted by us once. It is often said that the side that loses often learns more
than the side that won. Not this time. Saddam learned little from 1991, and
what little he did learn was wrong. I’m not sure we learned from 1991, but we
certainly changed and fought differently than we did in 1991. And it worked
spectacularly. No doubt.
Our desire and willingness to change in order to leap ahead
of our enemies is admirable. Much of what we are doing is great. I just fear we
are learning based on a dangerously misguided template. One day we’ll fight a
tough enemy. Will the solutions we are crafting based on fighting the Iraqis
work on somebody else?
"Friendly Shias"
(Posted November
20, 2003)
I never bought the idea that Iraq's Shias were automatically
loyal to Tehran. During the Iran-Iraq War (the real First Gulf War), Shia soldiers died for Saddam in large numbers. Saddam
feared that they would not fight for Iraq but they did. We clearly had the same worries that
Saddam did from 1980-1988. And just as needlessly.
The realization that Shias in Iraq were not going to take orders from Iran's mullahs apparently had a role in justifying
the accelerated transfer of power to the Iraqis.
"Reality Check" (Posted November 20, 2003)
Peters article
articulates some of the things I've been writing.
First, it is silly to assert
that Saddam planned to get his ass waxed in conventional war in order to fight
an irregular campaign today. We should be so lucky that Saddam planned to have
his military destroyed, his country occupied, and a US-friendly government
established. Would that all our enemies were so brilliant. For those peddling this line, it really is a
symptom of their total inability to live in the real world and their absolute unsuitability
to direct our foreign policy.
Second, the only reason our
casualties seem high in the post-war stabilization mission is because we rolled
over Saddam's military in a cakewalk during the major combat operations of the
invasion. We should be relieved that the pre-war predictions of disasters were
not realized. Would it really be better if we were several thousand dead
American soldiers shy of being able to write that post-war casualties have
exceeded the war losses? Face it, if the administration had written that eight
months after our forces crossed the border into Iraq that we'd have suffered fewer than 500 dead, it would
have been accused of predicting a cakewalk.
Third, we are wise not to
announce body counts of the enemy even if it makes it look like only we are
losing troops. Body counts are not the measure of success and if we start
releasing them, body counts will become the measure we judge success by—to our
detriment. His best point on this? "If the body counts are high, we're
murderers. If the body counts are low, we're losing."
We are winning. Have
patience.
“If They Keep Pushing
Us Away, Eventually We’ll Go” (Posted November
19, 2003)
I do have faith that the Brits will stay with us. Still, the
sentiment that the protesters in Britain
hold has a lesson for Europeans who think similar thoughts of us. And the consequences?
America reads daily about this growing
anti-American sentiment and I wonder whether those abroad stop to ponder the
effect of all this easy invective on those of us who live here. Americans as
never before are re-examining all the old alliances and friendships, from
troops in Europe and bases in the Mediterranean to peacekeepers in the Balkans and ships in
the Gulf. If privileged Western protesters cannot tell the difference between
what Saddam did and what America is trying to do in Iraq, if they think that
tomorrow's Saddams, Milosevics
and Kim Jong Ils will be
awed by Nobel Prize awards, barristers in The Hague and EU resolutions rather
than aircraft carriers, or if they assume in their end-of-history world that
their worship of reason is equally shared by all those outside the West, we may
be soon entering a far scarier world, when America in exasperation — as it did
for most of its history before the European wars — will simply shrug and say:
"Good luck to you all."
Do the Europpeasers really want to
go it alone? It’s an ugly, dangerous world out there.
“Well That’s a Bloody Give-Away” (Posted November 19, 2003)
The Chinese have been charming neighbors lately.
Then the Taiwanese had the nerve to be all prosperous and
stuff. The ingrates don’t want to be ruled by a brutal, bloodthirsty,
soul-crushing Communist dictatorship. Imagine!
So the Chinese in Peking reminded
the little upstarts what it means when Peking says that
taking over Taiwan
is their primary goal:
"If the Taiwan authorities collude with all splittist forces to openly engage in pro-independence
activities and challenge the mainland and the one-China principle, the use of
force may become unavoidable," said Wang, vice minister of the Chinese
Cabinet's Taiwan Affairs Office.
Like I’ve said, take their words seriously. Peking
wants Taiwan
and the Taiwanese are in a window of vulnerability while Chinese power waxes
and Taiwanese power is on a slower rise that we are urgently trying to correct.
The Chinese know that in time, Taiwan
will have more formidable defenses or, more frighteningly, nuclear weapons.
“A Stinging Setback
for a Sense of Reality” (Posted November 19, 2003)
Iran
has violated its commitment to refrain from nuclear weapons development and has
admitted to 18 years of deceit.
So, you’re a European diplomat charged with crafting an
appropriate response. Do you, A, carpet bomb them; B, ignore them and hope they
go away; C, warn them—again—of serious consequences if they don’t stop; or D, reward
them?
Collect your prize if
you said D:
In a stinging setback for Washington, the U.N. atomic
agency is ready to support a European initiative to reward Iran's sudden openness
about its nuclear program instead of censuring it for past cover-ups, diplomats
said Wednesday.
Oh thank you for admitting your secret nuclear ambitions!! We
are not worthy of your candor!
Please, Gunter, bring me my purse!
It must sound more sophisticated in French.
"Sanctuary" (Posted November 18, 2003)
From Strategypage:
While Afghanistan continues to
complain about Pakistan's inability
to shut down Taliban and al Qaeda camps along Pakistan's border,
the US is satisfied
with Pakistan's efforts in
the border zone. This is probably because the US has CIA, FBI
and Special Forces agents operating with the Pakistani troops in the area. The
Taliban and al Qaeda support in the area won't be
eliminated overnight, nor will the camps. Pakistan is also
shutting down Islamic schools run by radicals and cracking down on fund raising
for Islamic radicals.
Good news indeed, quietly
being carried out.
"Not Clear Who They Work For" (Posted November 18, 2003)
Why do we not hear of Iraqi protests against the Baathist and jihadist terrorism
in Iraq like these?
::Huge
anti-terrorism demonstrations were held in Nassiriyah
yesterday by students association condemning the attacks on the Italian force
carrying signs such as 'No to terrorism. Yes to freedom and peace', and 'This
cowardly act will unify us'. I have to add that there were similar
demonstrations in Baghdad
more than a week ago also by students against the bombings of police stations
early this Ramadan. I hope the demonstrations advocates that bugged me are
satisfied now. There are also preparations for anti-terror demonstrations
before Id (end of Ramadan holidays)
I mean, anytime some Baathist wants to spout off they get their mug on TV. Could
it be because the Western press still uses "former" Baathist translators:
At the Palestine Hotel, where I was
taunted in the last weeks of Mr. Hussein's terror by officials of his
information ministry as "the most dangerous man in Iraq" because of
my articles about the regime's brutality, some
of the same Iraqis, who now work as interpreters for Western news bureaus,
caution me against staying in the 16th-floor room I used to inhabit. [emphasis added]
Surely, it can't be that they
want us to fail?
The whole Burns
article is good.
"CALL" (Posted November 18, 2003)
The Center for Army Lessons
Learned is now CALL—But
Not Taught.
Damn shame it is shut down
from the public and even many soldiers. Just because idiot journalists scoured
it for "gotcha" failures to write about shouldn't mean the whole damn
thing is cut off from the users and the public. Heck,
just shut down NYT on the Web if that
is the reasoning.
Bring back CALL.
“Somebody is Forgetting What Happened in Kosovo” (Posted November
17, 2003)
Via NRO, this
article by Fred Kaplan on Slate is mostly about Clark
and defending him against an article by a guy named Boyer. I have little to say
about Clark since I don’t want this blog
to be a general politics blog. I will say that Clark
fought the Kosovo War with what he was told he could use; and having won the
war under those circumstances, was given a raw deal by losing his job early. Nor
do I think he almost started World War III there. I have nothing to say about
him as a presidential candidate. But Clark is hated
because he was right about the war?
This article relates lessons of a Kosovo War that I don’t
recognize.
The author dismisses Boyer’s contention that
going to war in Kosovo and Iraq both lacked UN
authorization:
In fact, the two
wars—both their beginnings and their conduct—were extremely dissimilar. True, when Clinton realized Russia and China would veto a resolution calling for intervention, he backed
away from the Security Council. However, he did not subsequently piece together
a paltry, handpicked caricature of a coalition, as Bush did for the war in Iraq. Instead, he went through another established international
organization—NATO.
He later notes that some called NATO’s war-by-committee a
lesson in how not to wage a war. In defense the author writes:
Maybe. But is there much doubt
today that Clark was correct in this choice? Does anyone care to argue that
intervening in Kosovo was a bad idea, that the Western alliance wasn't (at
least for a brief spell) strengthened as a result, or that the war was
unsuccessful? Milosevic surrendered, was captured, and is standing trial for
war crimes in a court of international law—which is more than can be said of
Saddam Hussein. The Serbian defeat was total, unchallenged, and internationally
imposed, which may explain why the (truly multinational) postwar peacekeeping
forces have suffered minimal casualties in the intervening years.
I can’t let this stand.
First of all, I thought the UN was the only international
body capable of legitimizing force. This is what the anti-war’s argument says.
So what if NATO approved? When only one body can authorize a war, what does it
matter if some alliance approves? I don’t happen to agree with that sentiment,
but if you do, why is NATO authorization superior to Congressional
authorization?
And NATO was strengthened? Get real. Kosovo had to be won,
it was said at the time, or NATO would collapse. How strong was the alliance in
1999 if a third-rate state could undermine it? NATO has a role and Kosovo was
irrelevant. Or does Kaplan think NATO would not have dispatched AWACS to help
us after 9-11 or sent troops to Afghanistan
if it hadn’t been for the Kosovo War?
Oh, and this is good. Iraq
had a “paltry, handpicked caricature of a coalition?” Britain
committed troops in large numbers on the ground and Australia
committed its special forces, too. Plus allies helped with air power and other
small contingents. And what was NATO’s mighty contribution in Kosovo? Some British strike
aircraft. Some French aircraft, against which must be balanced their leaking of
strike details to the Serbs. And a few other small
contingents. NATO provided some bases but so did Kuwait
and other bilateral allies of ours in the region. Let’s get real, here. We had
a far more effective and substantial coalition helping us in the Iraq War than
in the Kosovo War.
The junk in the second paragraph I quote is amazing. First
of all, who on Earth ever said that deposing Milosevic was immoral or a bad
idea? Or that the Kosovars are better off under Serb
rule and oppression? Nobody. Such foolishness is
reserved for the anti-war side today which can’t seem to concede that
overthrowing Saddam was definitely a good thing.
Kaplan takes a cheap shot that Milosevic surrendered and is
now on trial unlike Saddam. Can Kaplan not admit we got lucky? The Serbs
themselves dumped Milosevic after the war was over. There was no NATO unit
standing outside Milosevic’s palace demanding his surrender. And Milosevic is
unpunished more than four years after the war. I wouldn’t bet that Saddam won’t
go meet his 92 raisins or whatever he gets when our troops ice his sorry ass as
he tries to sneak through Coalition lines dressed in a burqua.
We got freaking lucky.
And why do I say this? Because
NATO’s victory was not as Kaplan described it, “total, unchallenged, and internationally
imposed.” Our 2-1/2 months of air strikes barely dented the Serb military in
Kosovo and it marched out in good order. Oh sure, Milosevic probably feared he
would get pasted once we gathered ourselves for a ground invasion, but fear of
future crushing defeat is not the same as actual total defeat. And I believe
the Russians did rather challenge our victory with their sprint to the Kosovo
airport in order to physically place themselves as the Serb’s protectors. And
since the war was not sanctioned by the UN, how could it possible have been
internationally sanctioned? Heck, even the UN approved our occupation of Iraq
after the war. Isn’t that
international recognition?
Kaplan’s cheap shot that we have suffered few casualties after
the Kosovo War is silly. First of all, the numbers may be small but way more
have died post-war than in that war. I’ll have to look it up but we may not
have lost anybody or at most a few in combat. I dare say that if we occupied
the “Serb triangle” by going all the way to Belgrade,
we might be faring differently. And in Iraq,
if we contented ourselves with only going to liberate the Shia
and Kurd areas, we’d have few casualties.
Honest to God, Kaplan’s description and analysis of the
Kosovo War is so bad it is hard to believe it got published. It’s hard to
believe we witnessed the same war.
Oh, and there is one more difference. In Kosovo, when Europeans
begged us to help them with a European problem, we came--as we always
have--to help. When we asked Europe for help in Iraq, the called us baby
killers--as they always have. Thank God for the strong NATO alliance.
"On the Saddam-Osama
Connection" (Posted November
17, 2003)
From Instapundit
(who got it elsewhere), a United States Information Agency release:
Bin
Laden's "al Qaeda"
organization functioned both on its own and through other terrorist
organizations, including the Al Jihad group based in Egypt, the Islamic Group
also known as el Gamaa Islamia
led at one time by Sheik Omar Abdel Rahman, and a number of other jihad groups in countries such
as Sudan, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Yemen and Somalia.
Bin
Laden, White charged, engaged in business transactions on behalf of Al Qaeda, including purchasing warehouses for storage of
explosives, transporting weapons, and establishing a series of companies in
Sudan to provide income to al Qaeda and as a cover
for the procurement of explosives, weapons, and chemicals, and for the travel
of operatives.
Of course, that was 1998.
Back then it wasn't a terrible "misconception" of the pro-war side to
believe this.
"On Fighting Modern War" (Posted November 17, 2003)
V. D. Hanson comes through
again with a
good piece. Including this gem:
Thus it is critical for our military to find ways in
the chaotic climate of Iraq to reassure
Americans that we are on the offensive, always moving, and always finding new
ways to target our enemies.
"The French Come Through Again" (Posted November 17, 2003)
French Foreign Minisworm De Villepin thinks
our plan to transfer initial sovereignty over to Iraqis by June 2004 is too
long. He wants the end of 2003 to be the deadline.
Thank God for the French!
No, really.
Much like they helped us by
convincing Saddam that France could indeed save Saddam's hide by stopping our
invasion short of his presidential palace, the French bitching about our
timetable helps us not look like we are turning tail.
And in truth, we are not.
Unfortunately, our continuing convoy ambushes make it seem so. Our continuing
casualties are a worry and a tragedy, but don't make the mistake of thinking we
must crush all opposition to call this war a success. This is a political and
economic problem—not a military problem. The military can only provide a shield
for the real metrics of success. This war has always been about creating an Iraq fit for the international community (and its own
citizens) and not a threat to us. To that end, we must turn over power to a
stable government able to govern and contain or defeat Baathist
insurgents. We run those convoys in support of a large American presence until
a friendly Iraqi government can successfully rule. Our presence has never been
about making Iraq safe for American supply convoys.
Remember the objective.
“And it Works Both
Ways” (Posted November 16, 2003)
This article
notes rightly that the American public will accept casualties if it thinks we
will win. I think this is correct but incomplete. The public also needs to
believe the cause is worth the loss of life. Certainly, the public will support
a brief incursion if it is victorious even if prior to the fight the public
never heard of it (like Grenada).
But our public also wants to fight for a real reason. During the 1990s our
military got involved in numerous “optional” missions like Somalia,
Haiti, Bosnia,
and Kosovo, where no real national interest was involved or where allies with
more interest should have taken the lead. In those cases, naturally the public
will turn on the mission when casualties mount.
But remember the article’s main argument that support for
fighting requires confidence in winning. As I’ve noted before, our enemies will
gladly sacrifice themselves and flock to jihad when they think they will win. When
they think America
is weak and will retreat after 18 dead, or a barracks of Marines, then the
belief that a city of dead will cause us to collapse is not hard to cultivate.
When we reach around the globe and come after them, it changes the calculus. It
is a different thing altogether to pack your bags and fight us if you think you
will die and it will be for nothing.
This calculation one reason why our
enemies picked up their activities after initial decisive victories in both Afghanistan and Iraq. At first they were stunned into submission. But after a
while they recovered and started the battle again. This is why I warned that
the failure of the Taliban government to completely destroy the Northern
Alliance should be a lesson to us. Although pushed into a corner
of Afghanistan,
they remained alive to win once they got our full support. The Pakistan
sanctuary for the Taliban and al Qaeda cannot stand.
Nor can the Iranian and Syrian sanctuaries (in a lesser degree) for the Baathist-allied jihadists stand. Letting
enemies escape to fight another day probably means they will fight again when
that day arrives. Killing our enemies is still a major objective even in the
age of computers and satellites.
So one of our problems in the war on
terror is the pauses in fighting the major sponsors of terror. Our
enemies think they survived our worst and then they come out, dust themselves
off, and look to hit us again. We have to find ways of keeping the pressure on
our enemies without exhausting ourselves in the process. Likewise, staying
involved in the war in a high profile way ensures that our public doesn’t
forget that we are at war. Remember in World War II that we invaded
Vichy-controlled North Africa in 1942 because it seemed
to our government that we had to be seen fighting the Germans rather than just
build up for the invasion of France
at some point in the future.
I know I said that our military needs to rest and our public
needs to regain its composure after two wars in two years, but we must create
the image of forward progress in a very public way. Quiet advances against
terrorists aren’t enough. Quietly squeezing North
Korea isn’t enough. Suppressing insurgents
in Iraq and Afghanistan
isn’t enough. We must do these, but also more.
We don’t want a mission that breaks our already stressed
military, of course, but we need to do something visible that advances our
final victory. This will strengthen our public’s resolve and demoralize our
enemies. It is not enough to be winning, we must
project the image that we are winning.
Since I think Iran
is the target for 2005—to press for revolution or to bomb the nuclear
facilities—what do we do in 2004? I’m thinking Somalia.
We think al Qaeda has plotted out of there and we
could carry out some high profile raids with special forces
and air power.
“I’m Not Sure What Defense is Denying” (Posted November
15, 2003)
DOD issued a statement on
the purported leaked memo. Seems like it is authentic since DOD confirms the
memo, but DOD seems to be denying—sort of—that it confirms links. The statement
says no analysis has confirmed links, yet it confirms the specifics although
noting they are raw or other organizations’ reports:
The items listed in the classified annex were either raw reports or
products of the CIA, the NSA, or, in one case, the DIA.
Be interesting to see the news on Sunday.
“Our Wounded” (Posted
November 15, 2003)
One thing that we need to attend to is our ability to help
our wounded
soldiers who survive with grievous injuries. In past wars, they would have
died. Now we owe it to them to rebuild their lives as much as possible and
allow them to create their own life.
Perhaps we need to work harder to keep even wounded soldiers
in service in desk jobs here at home if they want to serve still. With the Department
of Defense working to divert manpower to combat and away from a lot of the
support jobs, this seems like a win-win to stay within personnel caps and help
our wounded.
“Strategic
Competitor” (Posted November 15, 2003)
China,
as long as it keeps its military sheathed, will increasingly rival
us for influence in the Far East:
Though many in Asia remain wary of rising Chinese power,
perceptions of China are shifting across the region. In Southeast Asia, China has played down territorial disputes and
promised to share its growing prosperity through investments and trade
benefits. In South Korea, it has replaced the United States as the top trading partner and won praise
for trying to resolve the nuclear standoff with North Korea. And in Australia, Chinese President Hu
Jintao last month became the first Asian leader to
address parliament.
Our move to alter our military posture in the Western
Pacific is clearly a timely change. We need forces flexible enough to react to
threats from a region stretching from North
Korea to Australia.
Being fixed in the face of a collapsing but still dangerous North Korean threat
keeps us from being able to react to China
with full effect.
And unless Taiwan decides it wants to unite with China on
the mainland’s terms (or if Taiwan thinks we will abandon them to their fate
and so surrender on terms), I imagine that Chinese dreams of ruling Taiwan will
eventually manifest themselves and give a reality check to the Far Eastern
states who now see China with some respect.
And remember, though we work to cooperate, China
is a dictatorship:
Perhaps the Bush administration believes that other interests are
served by subordinating democracy to concerns such as cooperation on Iraq, terrorism and North Korea. But that cooperation is usually
exaggerated, and in fact China serves its own interests in every case. A
real friend would give sanctuary to North Korean refugees and use economic
leverage to pressure Pyongyang, the most repressive regime in existence. Let's see how cooperative China is in creating a unified and democratic Korean Peninsula.
Or who knows, maybe economic success will make China
a satisfied power.
“Case Closed” (Posted
November 15, 2003)
Weekly Standard is up. Read
it closely:
According to the memo--which lays out the intelligence in 50 numbered
points--Iraq-al Qaeda contacts began in 1990 and
continued through mid-March 2003, days before the Iraq War began. Most of the numbered passages
contain straight, fact-based intelligence reporting, which in some cases includes
an evaluation of the credibility of the source. This reporting is often
followed by commentary and analysis.
Interestingly enough, Feith, who
wrote the memo in question, said this in response to a question of why Iraq
and not North Korea
or Iran at remarks
to the Council on Foreign Relations:
First of all, on the issues of Saddam's
intentions. We knew that he
had these programs - these weapons of mass destruction, we knew that he had
used it. We knew that he had relationships with various terrorist
organizations and supported them in various ways, including by the way, in some
cases in connection with training and exercising regarding chemical weapons, we
had information about that in exchanges between the Saddam Hussein regime and
terrorist organizations in that area. But our information is, as
everybody knows, never complete about a subject like that - never perfect, and
the idea that we didn't have, you know specific proof that he was planning to
give a biological agent to a terrorist group doesn't really lead you to
anything because you wouldn't expect to have that information even if it were
true. I mean our intelligence is just not – it’s just not at the point where if
Saddam had that intention that we would necessarily know it. What we knew were
the things I said from which one could infer he had these connections, he
supported the terrorist groups, the danger was there.
So I think it was, as I said, reasonable to take that threat seriously.
Statements disparaging Iraq-al Qaeda
links by some administration critics who should know better is shameful. Unless
this turns out to be a fake leak, I think we can end the accusations being
thrown about on this front. Indeed, the linkage is far greater than I imagined
it might be. Indeed, I may need to rethink my reluctance to call Iraq
the central front in the war on terror. Clearly, destroying Saddam’s regime was
important to denying al Qaeda the ability to hit us
with WMD.
And make no mistake, our terrorist enemies
dream
of using chemical and bugs:
The al-Qaida terror
network is determined to use chemical and biological weapons and is restrained
only by the technical difficulties of doing so, a U.N. expert panel said in a
confidential report.
I assume they are not averse to killing us with dirty bombs,
and nukes. Or just large conventional bombings.
And the question of whether Saddam managed to get some WMD
out of the country before we invaded is an urgent question to answer.
This war is far from over.
“Will Wonders Never
Cease?” (Posted November 15, 2003)
NRO mentioned this last night and today I read about it on Instapundit. From the NY Post:
Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein gave terror lord Osama
bin Laden's thugs financial and logistical support,
offering al Qaeda money, training and haven for more
than a decade, it was reported yesterday.
The Weekly Standard website, which had the memo (a 16-page
memo to the Senate Intelligence Committee) describing the links, has been down
since last night.
If true, important arguments made by the
anti-war side fall away. Iraq
is only a target if they are supporting terrorism against us. Check (or rather
double check, since it was always clear that Saddam supported terrorism).
Attacking Iraq
is a distraction against the war on terror? Nope.
Of course, they deny that we are at war against terrorism
and their supporters, so I never understood how these arguments squared with
the basic position, but that is another point altogether.
This also answers the question of some as to why Iraq
and not Iran or
North Korea
first. Iran and
North Korea may
be further along on the nuclear track than Iraq,
but Iraq was
neck-deep in the muck with al Qaeda.
“Reason for Optimism”
(Posted November 15, 2003)
This is one of the reasons
(thanks to Instapundit) our change of course on Iraqi
governance worries me:
U.S. TV network
news about Iraq as distorted
as al-Jazeera? Checking in from Iraq on Wednesday’s
Hardball with Chris Matthews as part of that show’s look this week at “Iraq: The Real
Story,” Bob Arnot highlighted a Muslim ayatollah in Iraq who “is
furious at the press coverage. He says not only American television, but Arabic
satellite TV, such as Al-Jazeera and the Abu Dhabi
station, have mis-portrayed the great success that is
Iraq after the fall of Saddam Hussein.”
Kudos to Chris Matthews and Bob Arnot.
Matthews sometimes makes me uneasy with his populism and attitude. Sometimes he
is good, too. Here, his willingness to be the contrarian helps with reporting. Arnot has been consistently good at telling about what is
going right even as he acknowledges the problems.
This report is exactly why I am
uneasy at our change of direction regarding setting up a national Iraqi
government. I think most of the metrics are going well. Even the military
trends, though bad right now, cannot defeat our military and are still
militarily insignificant in the big picture. We need to counter this trend and
gain the initiative to defeat the Baathists and
Islamists, but this doesn’t mean the political front needs to change.
So why are we changing? Is
intelligence on Iraq
really pessimistic? Does the administration truly fear defeat in Iraq
or defeat at home that would lead to defeat in Iraq?
This is possible, but I hoped that the administration is made of sterner stuff.
Or are we apparently taking a risk
in order to make sure this President can take care of the Axis of Evil by the
end of his second term? I do worry that whoever takes over in 2009 will not be
as committed to winning this war (until another 9-11 that is). If President
Bush wants to finish the hard tasks before he leaves office, it makes sense
that we take action against Iran
in 2005 and spend his second term seriously squeezing North
Korea to cause collapse by 2009.
I concede that I don’t know a lot
about what is going on. My judgment is thus based on incomplete information.
But who knows, maybe this move is actually based on optimistic intelligence
about what will happen in the next ten months or so.
Last minute addition: the
timetable for Iraqi
self-governance doesn’t look so bad from this article. Perhaps much like
the reporting on the situation in Iraq,
the reporting on this development is needlessly infecting me with worry. We’ll
see.
“Mid-Course
Adjustment?” (Posted November
14, 2003)
The plans to put power into the hands of a national
provisional government early next year in Iraq
worry me. Although Baathist attacks and our casualties have gone up in the last
month, other measures of progress are trending our way. Given that I think that
the troop strength in Iraq
is more than adequate, the combat trends shouldn’t necessarily mean we need to
change course. Suppressing insurgents takes time.
Of course, the willingness to change when confronted with
difficulties is needed to win; but a panicky change that undermines our
progress when resolute commitment to the existing plan would work is wrong.
I just don’t know what our change of plans means.
I am worried that the crawl-walk-run sequence of Iraqi
governance is being undermined. Local governments are working. Why rush straight
to national elections? Step up to provincial government and
constitution-writing first. The French and Germans won’t be sending any troops
whether we stand up a national government next year or the year after.
And our shortened timetable for getting Iraqis on the line
is a bit worrisome, but this has also been misconstrued to make it seem more hasty than it is. As I understand it, part of the
acceleration is made by emphasizing infrastructure security troops who need
little training over priority training of Iraqi army forces, which need extensive
training. And these men we are recruiting do have army experience. Some
complain that we can’t properly screen for Baathists
with these short training periods, but is this really inferior to simply taking
old Iraqi army units into service as some have called for? And this is leaving
aside the fact that the old army disbanded itself during our invasion so we
couldn’t do this even if wise to do so.
And I’m wary of bringing in air power. We can demolish
buildings from the ground. We already control the ground, remember? Why air
strikes? We don’t want to give the impression that we are facing tougher
opposition than we are. Sure, we want Iraq
standing on its feet for the most part and our troop strength in Iraq
reduced if we want to confront Iran
in 2005. But try to keep this a policing problem and not a military problem. This
isn’t to say that we don’t fight them and kill them. My point is that we need
to accomplish this at the lowest level of violence possible since we are
fighting amidst people we want on our side. This is the opposite of the rapid,
overwhelming, and brutal violence we inflicted on Iraqi forces during the
invasion. We’re already putting British special forces
into Baghdad. We need more of these
types of soldiers on the ground striking fear into the Baathists.
Of course, air power is fine out in the boonies away from civilians.
But I’m uncomfortable with these changes. They don’t sit
right for some reason. We’ll see.
"Noncompliance" (Posted November 14, 2003)
What to
do about Iran? We know they've hid nuclear programs for up to 18
years in violation of their treaty obligations. We think reasonably enough that
this is because they are related to nuclear weapons research. The Iranians deny
any programs to build a bomb. The Europeans and others don't want to refer the
matter to the UN Security Council where sanctions would be the logical next
step to punish Iran.
One would think Iran's reaction to the threat of referral to the UNSC
would be instructive:
Tehran warned Thursday
the crisis surrounding Iran's nuclear program
could escalate if the IAEA finds it in breach of its NPT obligations and
reports it to the Security Council.
"Things could very easily get out of control,"
Iran's ambassador to the IAEA, Ali Akbar Salehi, told Reuters, adding that "it could lead to
unpredictable consequences."
Hmm. The Iranians deny any
intent to build nuclear bombs, yet declare that any move to punish them for
violations could get "out of control" and lead to "unpredictable
consequences."
Like reversing their
long-held aversion to nukes and building them just to get even?
Let's get serious here,
people. Iran wants the bomb. Our acting to stop them will not
provoke nuclear armament. A European-led tongue-lashing will do nothing.
Rule number two in
international relations: Mullahs with nuclear weapons is a bad thing.
A recent press briefing
had some useful numbers for looking at counter-insurgency. I earlier posted
about an article that discussed counter-insurgency in terms of numbers of
security personnel per 1,000 population, and this
briefing provided them by region.
It showed 101st
AB in the Kurdish areas, The Polish and British divisions in the Shia areas, and 82nd AB, 4th ID, and
1st AD in the Sunni center. With 130,000 American troops in fifteen
brigades, lets round it down and call it 8,000 troops
per brigade “Slice.” This slide
breaks down the Iraqi security forces by area.
There is overlap of course in the population, so it isn’t
quite accurate to do this, but its close enough for blogging.
Let’s say 5,000,000 people in the Kurdish areas, 5,000,000 Sunnis in the
center, and 15,000,000 Shias in the south.
In the south, call it 22,000 British- and Polish-led allied
forces. Add in 39,000 Iraqi security forces. The 15,000,000 Shias
in the south thus have about 4.1 security personnel per 1,000 people.
In the Kurdish areas call it 24,000 Americans plus 24,000
Iraqi security forces. The 5,000,000 Kurds have 9.6 security personnel per
1,000 people.
In the critical Sunni triangle, we have 96,000 US
troops plus 37,000 Iraqi security forces. The 5,000,000 Sunnis, where I imagine
most of the 5,000 maximum Baathists are fighting,
have 26.6 security personnel per 1,000 people.
The Shia ratio looks good, just
above normal US
police levels. The Kurdish areas are pretty high for policing and little
resistance but with Turkish-Kurd complications, having triple US
police levels is probably prudent.
The crucial center has well over the 20 per 1,000 ratio that existed in Malaya. The Baathists are able to make their small presence felt with
the vast amounts of money, plentiful ammo, and released criminals willing to
attack for money. And of course, the press coverage magnifies their successes.
I don’t think we need more foreign troops, US or allied.
Getting more Iraqis and deploying existing forces to guard ammo dumps until
they can be destroyed are necessary, but the numbers look good for defeating
the insurgents. It just takes time, though. Remember, we have to do it with
minimum firepower as we fight among civilians. Our firepower and high tech
advantages are minimized in police operations and we just can’t replicate our
conventional speed of operations.
Patience. My amateur number
crunching looks good.
Permalink to this post: http://www.geocities.com/brianjamesdunn/TDRFANOV2003ARCHIVES.html#TDRNSA13NOV03A
“The Enemy” (Posted November
13, 2003)
Numbers no more than 5,000
in Iraq. That isn’t a whole lot. They don’t seem to operate in more
than fire team to squad strength. This makes it possible to spread out our
Coalition forces without creating opportunities for Baathists
to overrun security posts or patrols.
Our military operations, as important as they are, can only
buy time for the real metrics of success. General Abizaid
understands this:
"It is very important that as we progress militarily,
we also progress politically and economically, so as to get these angry young
men off the streets," Abizaid said.
Cut off the money. Cut off the arms. Cut off the foreign jihadists. Isolate the battlefield and emphasize special forces on offensive missions. And kill Saddam.
“Ted Rall is a Vile Piece of Living Garbage” (Posted November
13, 2003)
In his
mind, Iraqis only genuinely display patriotism by supporting Saddam. Helping us
is by definition treason to Rall’s mind. The anti-war
side is welcome to have this Baathist wannabe.
(“Thanks” to Andrew Sullivan for
this heads up. Like Krugman, Rall
is someone I avoid reading just to keep my blood pressure down)
I’m amazed, saddened, and disgusted.
And this was Teddy’s Veterans Day column.
“Iron Hammer” (Posted
November 13, 2003)
American forces carried out two ferocious airstrikes
Wednesday evening against suspected loyalists of Saddam Hussein's regime,
signaling a new and more aggressive strategy to regain the initiative in the
guerrilla war now raging across the country's Sunni
Muslim heartland.
This is good if it is precisely used. If we get proper
intelligence and show restraint along with force, we can hurt the resistance:
Wednesday evening, Captain Gercken suggested
that that was changing. American commanders, he said, had been deluged in
recent days by Iraqis coming forward with information about the insurgents.
A stability operation like this is not a traditional
military operation but more like a police problem. We can’t afford to strike
hard and kill innocent civilians in the process. In our own country, remember
the Philadelphia MOVE incident many years ago. Whackos
looked like they were preparing for war and the Philadelphia
police responded by dropping a bomb on the roof of their house to destroy what
the police thought was a fortified position. The resulting fire burned down the
block and caused an uproar. And
rightly so. It was a stupid freaking decision. It was also morally
indefensible.
Keep this in mind when we fight in Iraq.
Frustration that a small number of people are fighting us cannot lead us to
forget that far more are friendly and even more just want to be left alone.We must stay highly focused so that the fence-sitters
see us as protecting their new lives and not killing their family and friends.
“Preparing for the
Future” (Posted November 13, 2003)
We are transforming our
global deployment to end the Cold War traditional deployment and create a
force agile enough for the war on terrorists and their sponsors and for
preempting nuclear threats. Right now the focus is Asia:
The changes will be part of a worldwide adjustment of U.S.
forces to reflect Rumsfeld's view that the static
defensive positions adopted by the United States and its traditional allies
during the Cold War are not well suited to meet the evolving security threats
of the 21st century.
We may also deploy a carrier battle group to Guam,
according to the article, or perhaps Hawaii,
to be closer than our West Coast bases.
“Iraqi Government”
(Posted November 13, 2003)
We are trying to move
authority to Iraqis. Since different departments and agencies in the US
government have advocated different methods and timetables, I’m not sure what
to make of this. We of course need to adjust plans in response to reality, but
I hope we are not panicking. Recent blog postings about the apparent quagmire in Germany
and in Japan
after the war should remind us that we’ve faced bad situations before. But Iraq
in 2003 is not Germany
in 1946, nor is this a reason to make no changes. It sure beats turning over Iraq
to the international community.
Still, as I’ve repeatedly said, we don’t need to turn over a
Vermont-like Iraq
to the Iraqis to call this war a success. Countries all around the world fight
domestic insurgents and terrorists and even freedom fighters without America
lifting a finger. We need enough Iraqis to take on the bulk of the security
jobs and we can focus on offensive missions until the Iraqis can take on these,
too.
Eventually, we will base troops in Iraq
with Iraqi consent without being involved in the day-to-day policing.
We’d do a lot getting Saddam, too. Unfortunately, failure to
get him leads many Iraqis to worry that the constant noise of “bring the
troops” home over here will lead us to cut and run, paving the way for Saddam
to return. According to the unacknowledged CIA report on
these worries:
"It
says that this is an insurgency, and that it is gaining strength because Iraqis
have no confidence that there is anyone on the horizon who is going to stick
around in Iraq as a real alternative to the former regime," one American
official said.
I’ve worried from the beginning that to run down the Saddamites, Iraqis must believe we’ve put a stake through
the heart of the monster Saddam. His shadow is too large and his rule too
brutal for Iraqis to assume we are there to win. Sadly, since the anti-war side
here and abroad gives the impression that they’d be just fine with leaving Iraq
now, we need to get more Iraqis pulling triggers against the Baathists. We need to get Iraqis to have the means and
motives to win by making losing too awful to contemplate.
I wonder what new excuse the Europeans will come up with to
avoid shouldering responsibilities once an Iraqi government is in place?
“Kill Saddam—But Get
a Grip on Reality, Too” (Posted November 13, 2003)
It sounds like Saddam really is central
to inspiring and maybe organizing the resistance. After being shocked and awed,
the Baathists learned that American
troops are human rather than the superhuman killing machines they were in
the war. But this is the lead paragraph of the story:
The
recent string of high-profile attacks on U.S. and allied forces in Iraq has appeared to be so methodical and well
crafted that some top U.S. commanders now fear this may be the war Saddam Hussein and his
generals planned all along.
I think the idea that he planned to get pasted to fight us
now is highly silly. It is a symptom of the ability of some to assume any
development must mean we are being out-fought or out-thought. We waxed Saddam’s
regime and we are succeeding in creating a free Iraq
so far. We have not fallen into his diabolically clever plan for our ultimate
destruction.
Also note that what the American general said is different
from the lead: “I believe Saddam Hussein always intended to fight an insurgency
should Iraq
fall”. The general actually said that Saddam was prepared to fight irregular should he be defeated. That is just
common sense and not a planned conventional defeat as the story is being told
by the media.
“Then It’s Just Us
Then” (Posted November 13, 2003)
Our allies are rethinking
plans to send troops to Iraq
in the wake of the Italian base bombing.
Is this the kind of resolve we want in Iraq?
Before the war, I wanted allies to help us in the post-war so that our troops
wouldn’t be tied down in stability operations. Our excellent troops are best in
combat and lose their wide advantage over enemies when doing foot patrols.
Allied troops can substitute in this case and be effective but not in combat. We
have few troops to go around after all.
But after we tried mightily to gain the help of our allies,
they walked away from us. So we had to do the job. Britain
and Australia
and small numbers from other countries helped us.
But we already see that the silly notion that allied forces
would not be attacked as Americans are is false. Now we can see what would have
happened if we had pulled out and turned over policing duties to allies—they’d
lose their nerve and look for a way out.
According to news report on TV, we face perhaps a couple thousand
dead-enders. We may also face a couple hundred jihadists.
With more and more Iraqis standing up to fight for their new Iraq, it looks
like it will be up to Americans and Iraqis to beat the murdering, rapist
bastards who destroyed Iraq these last three decades. We’ll see how long the
Brits stand with us. And we must temporarily turn two of our heavy divisions
into medium motorized infantry outfits.
Drive on. Kill the SOBs. Kill or
capture Saddam.
And reorient our Army to fight largely alone. For too long
we’ve assumed allied help. When Europe needed help in
the Balkans, we were there shouldering the burden. Just like
we have been in their other conflicts (excepting the Suez fiasco in
1956). Now when we need them, they are AWOL.
As I believe V. D. Hanson noted, we need to redefine a
number of traditional allies into friends or competitors. New alliances for a
new world are in order.
And the next crisis in the Balkans?
None of our business, eh?
“Funny Tolerance”
(Posted November 13, 2003)
The Brits (and if many Brits are feeling this way, it is
worse on the continent) are displaying some anti-Americanism,
blaming it on Bush:
"People repeatedly say it isn't Americans we don't
like, it is just Bush. He pushes hot buttons. Bush has so much to do with this
rather stupendous fall-off in American popularity. It is quite amazing to think
where we were the day after September 11 and how much of that goodwill has been
squandered."
It is amazing that a continent that shows stupid tolerance
of unassimilated Moslems who like their honor killings and violence so much
that they can’t bear to part with them when living in Europe
can’t apparently keep a civil tongue around Americans.
If gaining their sympathy means being a perpetual victim,
then tough.
I am disappointed in the British. I don’t know how much of
this is the press wanting to see anti-Bushism and how much it is real, but it is still disappointing.
"International Resolve" (Posted November 12, 2003)
The international community
failed to unite to impress upon Saddam the need to comply with UN resolutions
and verifiably disarm his WMD and WMD programs. Then complained bitterly and
obstructed us when we decided not to trust the intentions of Saddam.
Now, we have Iran admitting to violations of its obligations regarding
nuclear technology. The IAEA's report
verifies our suspicions of a secret nuclear program:
"The report is a stunning revelation of how far a
country can get in making The Bomb, while pretending to comply with
international inspections," said Gary Milhollin
of the Wisconsin Project on Nuclear Arms Control, a
Washington-based think-tank. "This is a classic case of a bomb in the
basement."
"Iran has secretly enriched uranium, made plutonium,
and hidden the evidence of it from the world," he told Reuters.
"There's only one reason why anybody would do that -- because they want to
make the bomb."
Hans Blix is of course unconcerned, the IAEA is unwilling to
admit that a secret peaceful nuclear program is highly unlikely to say the
least, and the Europeans are unwilling to confront Iran:
When it comes to reporting Iran to the Security Council for
sanctions, Washington has few allies on the IAEA board, diplomats said, with
most members supporting France, Germany and Britain, who would rather encourage
cooperation with the U.N. watchdog than punish past failures.
The Europeans encourage the
Iranians alright. The same way they encouraged Saddam to believe he could get
away with keeping as much of his WMD programs as he could until the Europeans
could get us to leave him alone.
Will the Europeans never
learn that talking with madmen determined to have atomic bombs is folly?
"I gave Lynch a Bum Rap" (Posted November 12, 2003)
It is a relief to report that Lynch did not badmouth
the Army, as I thought:
CNN’s Paula Zahn attempted and failed to put anti-Pentagon
talking points in former POW Jessica Lynch’s mouth. During the Monday night
edition of Paula Zahn Now, she proposed to Time magazine’s Nancy Gibbs, who was
on to discuss her interview with Lynch featured in the November 17 issue of the
magazine: “She feels quite used by the U.S. government, does she not?"
When Gibbs rejected the characterization, Zahn remained undeterred and issued
another claim which Gibbs undermined. Zahn maintained that Lynch “has also made
it quite clear she's resentful” of how imagery of her rescue was used “to
support the war effort."
"Troop Strength Debate" (Posted November 12, 2003)
I have not been too receptive
to the idea that we need more troops for Iraq. I'm still not, but I must look for more information
on this since the 10:1 rule I noted earlier may not
be all it's cracked up to be. I assumed that 250,000 security forces could
handle at least 25,000 dead enders. I don't think
anywhere near that many are running loose in Iraq. But this confidence may be misguided. Indeed, the
article quotes, " Much nonsense is heard on the subject of tie-down ratios
in guerrilla warfare--that 10 to 12 government troops are needed to tie down a
single guerrilla, for instance. This is a dangerous illusion, arising from a
disregard of the facts." I will consider whether I have been dangerously
deluded.
Force per 1,000 population may be a better guide:
Force ratios above ten per thousand have
been mounted in stability operations. In 1952 the British forces in the Malayan
Emergency deployed close to 40,000 regular troops from Britain and the
Commonwealth as well as the regulars of the Malay Regiment itself.[10] At the
same time, the police force had 29,800 regular police together with 41,300
special constables,[11] for a total full-time security force of more than
111,000. With a population at the time of 5,506,000, the British generated a
force ratio of about 20 per thousand of population. If the Home Guard force of
210,000 (1953 strength, not all of whom were either armed or active at any
given time) were added to the previous figure, the force ratio would be even
higher.
In Northern Ireland the British government
deployed for more than 25 years a security force of around 32,000 (including
both British military forces and the Royal Ulster Constabulary) to secure a
total population of just over 1.6 million, giving a force ratio of about 20 per
thousand. The British have recently reduced their military forces as part of an
ongoing peace process.
Looking at Iraq, we have 130,000 US troops, 20,000 allied troops, and say 100,000 Iraqi
security forces. This totals 250,000 troops to police 25,000,000. This puts us
at a 10 per thousand ratio. The Malay Emergency was at the high end of the
ratios noted but may be instructive. We could, if this line of reasoning is
right, need closer to 500,000 security people. We don't need to worry about the
Northern
Ireland
example since we are not policing with the goal of remaining in political
control. Thank God.
Also note that British or
Commonwealth troops in Malaya were but a fraction of the total. This shows that the
burden of providing numbers doesn't need to lie on US shoulders and that
putting Iraqis up against the Baathists will do just
fine for the bulk numbers. This bolsters the common sense notion that it is
silly to demand that every street corner needing a guard presence must use
highly trained American soldiers rather than local police.
In addition, when calculating
the ratio, the base of 25,000,000 is most assuredly too high. Why should we
treat Iraq as a unit when it is really a three-part state with
populations having widely varying degrees of hostility or friendship? The 5,000,000
Kurds seem to be doing fine policing their own. For the Shias,
the 15,000,000 of this group certainly will call on a far lower ratio of
security personnel. Both Shias and Kurds need to be
protected from Baathists and not policed to keep them
from fighting us, and will need far lower ratios. In the US, we're talking police strength of say 3 per thousand
people. In the US zone of occupation in Germany in the fall of 1945, when we
went over to constabulary units, the raio went down
to 2.2 US troops per thousand to handle policing (and how many murders do we
accept as normal per year?).
If we assume the Shias and Kurds will call for a ratio of 3 per thousand in
a protective mode, the 20,000,000 Shias and Kurds
will need 60,000 security personnel for protection. This leaves 190,000 security personnel for
the 5,000,000 Sunnis. This puts us at 38 security personnel per one thousand.
The ample supplies of money
and weapons make the resisting Baathists in the Sunni
areas a potent threat, but under this analysis, we still don't need more
troops.
Still, this is based on one
article and I shall keep on the lookout for more information on this subject.
Wouldn't want to dangerously disregard the facts, God forbid.
Even worse would be pouring
American troops into Iraq when we don't need them, can't use them, and can't
sustain them without breaking the Army.
"Somebody Thinks Syria Should Be
Targeted" (Posted November
12, 2003)
Regime
change must be our goal, because nothing else will work. The Syrian Baathists will do what their Iraqi brethren did. Stall,
talk, whine to the U.N., and continue their business of supporting terrorism.
Before we decide to remove Assad militarily, we
should yank the diplomatic levers with all the force we can muster. Just
because Foggy Bottom doesn't think we have any way to change Syria's conduct diplomatically don't mean it's
so. In fact, there are a lot of ways we should be turning up the heat on Bashar Assad, and some may reduce
his ability to provide financial support for terrorists.
We have had the patience of a
corpse as we've waited for the Syrian government to mend its ways. When Israel stood on the frontline and was the final guarantor
(along with Turkey) that Syria could be checked from harming our interests, patience
was understandable. We had other problems to deal with and nobody to deal with
them.
Now, we are on the frontline.
With the future of Iraq in the balance and Syria assisting our enemies within Iraq, it is time to play hard ball. This doesn't mean we
must invade. But the cash flow into and out of Syria must be crippled. The border must be shut down. If
necessary, CIA para-militaries must make things go
boom in eastern Syria.
I've said it before, I'd
settle for Syria seeing the light and halting its patterns of
supporting terrorists. But we must be prepared to do what we must if the Syrian
government is truly determined to fight us.
"The Armor of Internationalism" (Posted November 12, 2003)
It is with deep regret that I
note that our allies the Italians have suffered terribly in a terror
bombing in Iraq:
Among the dead, a spokesman for the Carabinieri (police) force in Rome told the
Reuters news service, were 11 Italian police officers, three Italian soldiers,
an Italian civilian and eight Iraqis.
As
with the bombings of the UN and Red Cross, I simply ask why
"internationalizing" the occupation force makes it somehow less awful
to the Baathists and jihadists
who still kill in Iraq? Aren't the Iraqi thugs supposed to get all warm and fuzzy over the
multicultural display of international concern for the plight of Iraqis?
It
was and is a silly complaint. Whether the troops are US or foreign, those who
do not want a free and democratic Iraq will attack them. Indeed, if the troops are Iraqi,
the thugs will attack them. The key is that thugs resist, not that good
soldiers fight them.
In
time, we will have Iraqis in larger numbers fighting the thugs. When routine
presence patrols are carried out by Iraqis, we will be in better shape to carry
out purely offensive operations.
“I’m Shocked There Is
Gambling
Going On Upstairs” (Posted November 11, 2003)
Iran manufactured small amounts of enriched uranium and plutonium as
part of a nuclear program that operated in secret for 18 years, according to a
confidential report by a U.N. agency. The report harshly criticizes Iran for deliberately hiding evidence of its
nuclear program from international inspectors and for numerous
"breaches" in its nuclear treaty obligations.
“Fine—Stay In Canada” (Posted November 11, 2003)
If this
guy thinks that our looking closely at somebody entering our country who has a travel record like his is “ugly” then I don’t
trust the kind of Christian-Muslim “understanding” he was coming here to set
up.
It’s all about understanding the Islamofascists,
isn’t it? One would think a scholar could understand why we guard our borders
just a tad more closely in the last two years.
You’d think.
“Keep Them Broken Up”
(Posted November 11, 2003)
We continue to mount
operations against Taliban and their allies in Afghanistan.
No big battles, but this is good. We need to keep them broken up so they are
incapable of mounting operations that overrun police posts. Little hit jobs can
be handled as the government is built up to handle a police problem.
Our small numbers of highly trained combat
troops are good as a fire brigade to toss in whenever the Taliban clump too
much. Yet we have a footprint small enough to avoid looking like an occupation.
“Give Them Credit”
(Posted November 11, 2003)
They are bombed—again. Amazingly, they aren’t whining about
why al Qaeda hates them. No denunciation of their own
foreign policy for provoking the attacks. No calls for UN intervention and
international justice. Just
this:
Saudi Arabia went on the
offensive, warning Islamist militants they will be crushed with an "iron
fist" after deploying thousands of troops to the holy cities of Mecca and Medina to protect
Ramadan pilgrims.
Saudi Arabia
certainly bears a lot of responsibility for creating the threat we fight, but
I’m happy that they may finally be on board this fight. I know that moral
consistency demands that I support an immediate invasion and overthrow of the
House of Saud—even at the risk of their museum
holdings—but I’ll settle for their support alongside us as long as they are
effective.
“507
Maintenance” (Posted November
11, 2003)
The actions attributed to Lynch by the press were probably
true—just accomplished by an American soldier who was killed in the ambush. As
the initial reports gave way to complaints and then study, it looks like the
unit as a whole did ok to get some troops out of the ambush. Individual
soldiers fought bravely and hard with what they had; yet the unit as whole was
not prepared to defend itself. Weapons should not jam. Everybody should know
what to do. From Strategypage again:
November
10, 2003: The controversy over PFC Jessica Lynch
is an excellent example of how intelligence can be misinterpreted and twisted
all out of proportion. An April 3rd Washington Post article said that "PFC
Jessica Lynch... fought fiercely and shot several enemy soldiers after Iraqi
forces ambushed the Army's 507th Ordnance Maintenance Company, firing her
weapon until she ran out of ammunition". The article also went on to
detail how Lynch was shot and stabbed.
The article cited unnamed US
officials and noted that they were referencing battlefield intelligence, which
comes from monitored communications and from Iraqi sources in Nasiriyah (whose reliability had, at that time, yet to be
assessed). On June 17 the Washington
Post published a lengthy investigation discrediting some of those initial
reports, including it's own exclusive report that she
fired back at her attackers. Lynch later admitted that after the accident and
with her rifle jammed, she put her head between her hands and prayed.
For 60 to 90 minutes on the morning of March 23rd, 33
soldiers from the 507th Maintenance Company tried make up for a wrong turn
while breaking contact with hostile forces. The 1st Battalion, 2nd Marine
Regiment, 2nd Marine Expeditionary Brigade attempted to mount a rescue attempt.
By the time the shooting stopped, the 507th had lost 11 dead and six captured. The
Marines had lost nine men killed.
As reticent as Lynch is now, there were
true heroes in that column. 1SG Robert Dowdy was doing a damned good job
pulling the pieces of his company out of the ambush, right up until he was
killed in a Humvee wreck. PFC Patrick Miller slowed
his own vehicle enough to rescue stranded comrades and when finally dismounted,
tried to steal a dump truck to get them moving again. Miller took out an Iraqi
mortar crew, one by one with a rifle that'd only fire single shots and when his
M-16 finally jammed, picked up other's weapon to try to keep fighting and when
captured, sang just to annoy the piss out of his captors.
But one of those dead 507th soldiers may
have actually performed the deeds attributed to PFC Lynch, to the point where
he had the Iraqis talking about him. Donald Walters was a cook with the 507th
Maintenance Company, had fought in Operation Desert Storm, before retiring from
the Army in 1992. He served in an Army Reserve unit in Independence
from May 1996 until July 2002, then reenlisted in 2002
with the 507th to give his family greater stability.
That morning, SGT Walters and PVT Brandon
Sloan were in a five-ton tractor-trailer that became disabled. Miller, riding
in the 5-ton wrecker behind, picked up Sloan on the fly but no one is sure what
happened to Walters. Walters' mother told one reporter that a 507th member who
was there that if she should "read a report about a female solder, it was
referring to Don". The source said that in translating from the Arabic to
the English, genders can get mixed up. Walters noted that both her son and
Lynch had blond hair and were very thin, but that the Iraqis may not have
noticed that her son was about a foot taller than Lynch.
The Army had provided Water's widow with
an autopsy report, which showed that he had been stabbed twice in the stomach
and shot in the leg and twice in the back. Both bullets in the back had
punctured Water's heart.
Does any of this sound familiar? Like the
stab wounds and gunshots that Lynch supposedly suffered?
The Army's report suggests SGT Donald
Walters might have been left alone to fight against hostile Iraqi troops, but
states "the circumstances of his death cannot be conclusively determined
by available information." There's no one left alive who can tell what
happened, save for the Iraqis who participated in the attack and it's unlikely
they'll ever be willingly found. - Adam Geibel
SGT Donald Walters wrote a children's
story about his first fishing trip with his father. His family and an independent
illustrator are trying to get the story published.
Visit the SGT Walters Book Project: http://www.swbp.4T.com/
On Veterans Day, thank you Sergeant Walters. Thank you
Private First Class Miller. Thank you to all of the 507th and the
1-2 Marine battalion of the 2nd Marine Expeditionary Brigade. And
thank you Private First Class Lynch. You endured rather than serve as a poster
girl for women in combat, but you endured nonetheless. I would, however,
appreciate it if you did not belittle the Army for the events since your
rescue.
“The Stick In Action” (Posted November 11, 2003)
From Strategypage.com,
which you really should read every day:
Since the "war" ended on April 30th, and the
"pacification" began on May 1st, 148 U.S. troops have been killed in combat. Because
of the high casualties from a shot down CH-47D on November 2nd, there were 30
American military deaths in one week. This sent the American senior commanders
in Iraq a message, and that was about the inability
of the Sunni Arab tribal leaders to control the Baath
Party strongmen and al Qaeda radicals hiding among
the Sunni population. So now the policy has changed from "carrot"
(reconstruction aid and negotiation) to "stick." Aid (except for the
bare minimum food and medical assistance) will be withheld from areas where are
attacks are made and the locals refuse to provide any information. There will
be far more raids and "combat patrols" (that are looking for a
fight). Movements of Sunni Arabs outside their towns and neighborhoods will be
restricted. But perhaps most scary for Sunni Arabs is the threat of bringing in
Kurdish or Shia police and paramilitary units to help
with security. The Shia and Kurds hate the Sunni,
especially those who actively supported Saddam. These new tactics are already
working, as some Sunni tribal chiefs who had been uncooperative have changed
their attitude. Chiefs who are defiant, or are caught aiding the attackers,
will be jailed, so it can be expected that chiefs will at least appear more
cooperative. But the chiefs have another incentive, and that is the presence of
many anti-Saddam Sunni Arabs. These have been providing some information to the
coalition, which is how the coalition knew anything at all about the Baath Party and al Qaeda networks
operating in Sunni areas. But the more aggressive patrolling and stricter
movement security makes it easier to follow up on any tips from informants, and
harder for Sunni fighters to move around and mount attacks. These new policies
will make Sunnis angrier, but the decision has been made that increased anger
is not as much a problem as wiping out the Baath and
al Qaeda networks in Sunni areas is.
We want to help our friends in Iraq;
kill our enemies; and make sure those in the middle know there is a difference
in how they will be treated depending on their choice.
"We Tried the Carrot" (Posted November 10, 2003)
Now we will try
the stick in Fallujah and Ramadi:
FALLUJAH, Iraq - America's top general in the Middle East
has warned community leaders the U.S. military will use stern measures unless
they curb attacks against coalition forces, an Iraqi who attended the meeting
said Monday.
After
working hard to get electricity and other utilities going, to create law and
order, and to create democracy, the Sunnis have decided they'd still rather be
in charge. Time to reimpose the wisdom that came from the fear of being on the
receiving end of shock, awe, and 3rd ID's Abrams tanks.
Carrots and sticks, where appropriate.
More
broadly speaking, I wonder if Islamofascists
generally are mistaking our strategic pause for weakness. Perhaps we can't
embark on major military missions yet and the Iran showdown must wait for early 2005, but we probably
should be on the offensive somewhere overtly and very soon. The quiet work of
rolling up al Qaeda and their friends is not visible
enough.
With
news that al Qaeda has used
Somalia as a training and staging ground—in particluar
the 1998 embassy bombings—perhaps Somalia (with the cooperation of some Somalis
in the area attacked) should get some attention from Special Forces soldiers
and AC-130 gunships in a very sharp reminder that we
have teeth.
It
would also help erase the image of the Battle of Mogadishu as a US defeat.
“Saudi Arabian
Bombing” (Posted November 9, 2003)
So what does this latest al
Qaeda bombing tell us?
One, of course, they are scum who target the innocent. If
they can’t get to us, they’ll attack who they can reach.
More important, by striking a country that has and still
does fund them and support them ideologically, al Qaeda
shows that we cannot placate them. Just what American policy is to be changed
to appease al Qaeda terrorists who strike Saudis when
in the past the Saudis only insisted that the terrorists not strike Saudi
Arabia? Oh, they don’t like our policy on
the Palestinian question. They don’t want our troops in Saudi
Arabia. What bunk. So mass murder is the
proper response to any disagreement? Why do we waste money on precision if that
is the case? How can the sophisticated insist that terrorism is a logical
response to our grave offense of being successful and unveiled while we must not
over-react to terror by using force?
Keep in mind, the Saudis had telethons for suicide bombers
and preach extremist Islamism, and generally pose as more Muslim than thou. Still
they are attacked by al Qaeda. Clearly, the only way
to stop al Qaeda is to kill them.
It should also tell us that all the talk about Iraq
distracting us, either America
or the West generally, from the war on terror is hogwash. Amazingly, we’ve been
free from attack on our shores. I certainly didn’t expect to go more than two
years without a repeat big attack. A war did not distract us from an
intelligence, financial, educational, and diplomatic problem (with relatively
small military involvement, to be sure). And attacks like this focus the minds
of people. Even the French must know that they are not secure from attack from thugs
such as this. De Villepin could change his name to Al
Villepin and veil his mistress, and still the Eiffel
Tower would beckon terrorists. The
world’s governments have been cooperating with us and they will continue to do
so.
Even the Saudis will know that they must fight harder. Their
9-11 was in May and they just got hit again. I think this shows that it would
have been a mistake to directly attack the Saudis because of their links to al Qaeda and Islamofascism. Though
some argued that purity of purpose required it, the Saudi royal family was
never uniformly Islamist. They supported al Qaeda to
try and ride the Tiger and direct Islamist wrath elsewhere. Had we directly
attacked the Saudi royal family, the royals would have made common cause with
the Islamists. I always believed that direct action to overthrow the Saudis was
a last resort given the complications that would have resulted (yes, oil). We
had other more pressing targets anyway, and gaining Saudi cooperation quietly
was the best policy. Now we see the Islamists targeting the Saudi government
and people, and other Arabs and Moslems.
Maybe I’m an optimist, but will we see more Saudi telethons
for suicide bombers? When the bombers see Saudis and Arabs as targets, too?
The goal is to end terrorism and kill the terrorists, not
necessarily punish immediately all who sympathized with the terrorists.
“OIF-2” (Posted November
8, 2003)
The Weekly Standard
is pressing for more
troops for Iraq
but I am not convinced that the numbers of troops we have are insufficient. I
strongly disagree with the idea that it is wrong to rely on Iraqis to fight,
belittling the idea as “Iraqification” to malign it
with a Vietnam
comparison.
The problem is, the article is just
wrong about some things.
In noting that 1st CAV and 1st ID are
going to Iraq,
the article incorrectly states, “This will result in only a slight reduction in
heavy forces, probably a good idea in itself. There's little need for heavy
force, though the armor protection provided by M1 tanks and Bradley fighting vehicles
remains quite useful.” This is just a matter of information timing since I
didn’t know until today (see “Medium Divisions” below) that the Army is
modifying those two divisions to be medium motorized infantry divisions for Iraq.
Nonetheless, it is a complaint that is now wrong.
The authors complaints about the
Stryker brigade and the Stryker vehicles are hit and miss. Yes it is light. It
will be as vulnerable as armored Humvees. The vehicle
does not have the 25mm chain gun of the Marine LAV, but the LAV is intended as
a recon vehicle. Though the Stryker is superficially similar, the Stryker is
intended to be a taxi and not a fighting vehicle. Stryker brigade infantry is
to fight on foot with the Stryker simply providing a safe transport vehicle
that protects against small arms and shrapnel. Thus, the complaints are right
but do not address the different missions. Heck, the LAV is certainly more
vulnerable to enemy fire than the heavier Stryker.
The author complains that 82nd AB troops are
being replaced by 25th Light troops. He notes that the 25th
won’t have the 82nd’s helicopters. I dare say 25th ID
(Light) will, since 82nd AB is a parachute unit and those
helicopters it is using aren’t organic. 101st AB is a helicopter
unit so the loss of this unit loses a major mobility advantage, but I dare say
we can scrape up some helicopters for any replacement unit.
Also complained about is the Marine 6-month deployment.
Actually it will be 7 months but since Marines usually deploy for 6-7 month
tours, this will actually help the Marines maintain their force rotations
schedule where they train and then deploy and then recover. If Marine forces
need to be used long term, then we can look at reworking Marine
scheduling.
The author wants to complain about using reservists but ends
up grudgingly complimenting the use of reservists in contrast to Vietnam.
I say, be brave! Keeping the country involved in the debate over Iraq
by using citizen-soldiers is good. I don’t want the reserves to be overburdened
but our reserve combat outfits are not stressed out yet. Eight divisions, 15
enhanced separate brigades, and 3 other brigades, plus lots of artillery
brigades and other smaller combat units are available. I don’t know how the
author expects us to put more troops into Iraq
as he wants to add forces to Iraq but without the Guard.
The author complains about the rotation saying lots of
troops will be moving and vulnerable. He also complains that experience will be
lost with departing units. I say bull. Troops get tired under long stress. It
is good to replace tired men. And we are doing it smart, as entire units so
unit cohesion is maximized rather than allowing individuals to rotate in and
out as in Vietnam.
It is doubly puzzling that the author wants units kept in Iraq
indefinitely, not worried about their battle worthiness, yet complains that
units rotating out of Iraq
will be useless if another crisis develops. Huh? Are units after a year in Iraq
effective or ineffective? Pick one and then make your argument.
The author wants more troops sent to Iraq.
I disagree. We will be talking maybe 300,000 combined forces. That force could
eventually beat 30,000 insurgents. Since our quality is very high, I bet the
ratio to win is actually less than the standard 10:1 rule of thumb. With lots
of Iraqis, even hastily trained, on simple guard duty, we can save American and
the better Iraqi units for offensive missions. Special forces
will handle the really quiet work on offense.
Saying that this is Iraq’s
fight is not the same as seeking an exit strategy, regardless of victory. The Army needs more troops, but we needed a
couple more divisions even before the Iraq War. I don’t think we need to make a
bogus argument regarding Iraq
troop levels to justify more Army troops generally.
“UN Shows Its Mettle”
(Posted November 8, 2003)
By pulling
out non-Iraqis temporarily, the UN shows why it should not have primary
responsibility for rebuilding Iraq.
Pampered bureaucrats do not have the stomach to fight hardened Baathist and jihadist killers.
“Casualties” (Posted November
8, 2003)
We’ve lost 34 soldiers in
combat in 8 days of fighting in Iraq.
This was a very bad week for Iraq.
Stripping out the 22 dead in two helicopter downings, which are likely to be exceptional attacks,
we lost 12 in combat. This is about double the previous average and still
represents an increase. The daily average has gone up and down and we shall see
if the enemy is burning itself out in their Ramadan offensive or if this is
being sustained. I read that Iraqis are coming to us more as Iraqis are killed
in these attacks. If true—and if good information is being passed on and we can
use it—then we can start to snuff this out
Remember, we don’t need to make Iraq
perfectly Vermont-like before we leave. We need to create an effective Iraqi
government with security, governmental, and court organizations that can build
a free Iraq and
pursue insurgents. We will help, of course, but we only need to fight this
until Iraqis can. Basque separatists still fight in Spain
without making Spain
less of a democracy. Nor do we dispatch troops there.
“Medium Divisions”
(Posted November 8, 2003)
I wrote that two divisions of our heavy stuff should be made
into medium divisions. According to a press briefing:
As Norty [Lt. Gen. Schwartz] talked about,
the divisions going in for OIF 2 are, in name only, tank divisions and
mechanized infantry divisions. They're actually going in as motorized
infantry divisions, as well as the enhanced separate brigades.
These divisions, 1st Cavalry (a tank division)
and 1st Infantry (a mechanized infantry division), will go in as
“medium” infantry divisions. Armored Humvees
and more infantry. I assume at least some heavy armor will go with them
just in case. A battalion of each, maybe? I’m
guessing. Otherwise it also makes sense that the support units that are focused
on high-intensity warfare will be stripped and instead more infantry or
military police will be attached. I bet these units will have more boots on the
streets than the heavy divisions in Iraq
now. The three National Guard enhanced Separate brigades being sent will be
similarly reconfigured. The Marines are already basically light infantry, of
course. I assume they’ll have LAVs and armor
attached, too.
“Cultural
Imperialism” (Posted November 7, 2003)
On the way home tonight, somebody on the radio mentioned
that President Bush’s pledge to promote democracy in the Middle East was just
another form of Western cultural imperialism that the people of the region
should presumably resist. I’ve heard this line several times quite recently.
I’ve lived in Ann Arbor for 25
years so this type of thinking shouldn’t be a total shock to me, but still, I
had to just shake my head in disbelief.
It isn’t new, I guess, as a quick search found this reference about the
post-September 11 reaction of the Middle East experts:
Besides, what right did the West have to make judgments about the Arab
world? Efforts to promote democracy represented "a world hegemonic
discourse of Western cultural imperialism," as another prominent professor
of Middle East studies complained
Efforts to promote democracy are imperialism.
They adopt our technology to fight us. But that isn’t the result
of imperialism.
They adopt fascism to organize political parties. But that
isn’t the result of imperialism.
They adopt socialism for their economies. But that isn’t the
result of imperialism.
Some adopted communism. But that isn’t the result of imperialism.
They adopt Nazi anti-Semitism. But that isn’t the result of
imperialism.
Funny how the mutliculturalistas
think that all these foreign, Western imports are just fine and representative
of the locals but democracy is not appropriate for them. Gotta
govern the unruly wogs with a heavy hand, eh?
More and more, I shudder at what these charlatans “care”
about.
Kudos to the President for standing
for democracy for the Moslem Arab world.
“International
Justice” (Posted November 7, 2003)
Example number 538 for why we cannot trust
international “justice.”
The World Court
decided
that the United States
was wrong to retaliate in 1987 and 1988 against Iran
after an American-flagged ship and a warship were targeted by Iranian actions. We
in turn destroyed three oil platforms used as military bases in the Gulf after
each incident.
And how did the court get jurisdiction?
Despite U.S. opposition, the
court ruled in 1996 that it had jurisdiction in the Iran-U.S. case under a
friendship treaty signed between the United States and Iran in 1955.
Iran sued the United States for what it said
was a "fundamental breach" of that treaty after the United States sided with Iraq and fired on the
platforms
I would have thought the Embassy seizure and the
holding of
American hostages for a year and a half kind of negated the “friendship”
stuff.
That wasn't a "fundamental breach" of the treaty. Now I feel silly. Who
knew we were friends all these years? But international justice is wiser
than mere facts, I guess.
"Somebody Did Pick This Up" (Posted November 7, 2003)
I wondered who would run with
the silly notion that the obscure efforts on the eve of war by some guy who says
that Saddam wanted a deal represents some "gotcha" moment in the
rush-to-war school.
The NYT
in an editorial did not let me down, though I concede I expected Chirac to be
first out of the blocks (to be fair, maybe translations take time):
With American forces massed and ready to
invade, the Iraqis suddenly expressed interest in meeting their obligations.
Yet the article also shows that the administration seems not to have been
serious about the idea of a coerced but peaceful solution at the very moment it
may have been a realistic possibility.
A
"realistic possibility."
This is why the anti-war
side's constant refrain that military force must be a last resort rings so
false to me. When you believe that any path, no matter how unlikely to bear
fruit, keeps you from that "last" resort, then military force is
practically speaking never an option.
"Just What Do They Want?" (Posted November 7, 2003)To sum up, the North Koreans say they want a treaty or some sort of guarantee by the United States that we won't attack them. Yet the Noth Koreans also boast that they have nuclear weapons to deter us from attacking them.
So why do they need the guarantee? I mean, if they can deter us, what use is a guarantee? I suppose some will say that if they get the guarantee they will stop their nuke programs, but since we obviously have no plan to invade them (and haven't over the last 50 years during those dark ages when North Korea had no nukes to deter us) and they still think we want to invade, will a guarantee by us really convince them they are safe?
Of course, the real puzzler is if we have totally misconstrued what North Korea thinks of the concept of "deterrence." If they don't think that our nukes deter their threats and if they don't think their nukes deter our threats, what exactly are we trying to discuss?
Any regime that puzzling should go on principle.
"Well Just Darn It All" (Posted November 6, 2003)
Saddam may have sent out peace feelers
on the eve of war.
Well, gosh, if only Saddam
had known he had to verifiably disarm at the end of Desert Storm in 1991. If
only the international community had passed a single resolution letting Saddam
know what we wanted. If only we had placed sanctions on his regime to express
our seriousness. If only the world had paid attention to him so he didn't have
to go through some convoluted back channel to somehow contact somebody in the
White House or UN.
As the saying goes, for want
of a nail, I guess.
Of course, since the French
and Russians assured Saddam they could avoid war and Tariq
Aziz said Saddam did not believe we were serious, was
this really a genuine offer? Please. It was another effort to stall action
against him to wait for resolve to deal with him to dissipate—as it has every
time before. At best, Saddam sincerely wanted a quiet deal so he could emerge
from the crisis as he had after his pounding in 1991—portraying his survival as
yet another victory over the powerful America. Can't have plastic shredder dippees thinking Saddam
is going soft, now could he?
If this story has legs, it will
be because some view Saddam as more trustworthy than our administration. Wonder
who buys it? Is that Chirac I hear?
"The Right Question" (Posted November 6, 2003)
You know, in all the smoke
generated by the question of whether the media is portraying Iraq with the correct blend of "if it bleeds it
leads" negativism and dull civic progress, I realize I've forgotten
something that I once knew when we debated whether we needed international
approval before invading.
Remember when so many said
(and still do) that we needed the approval of France and Cameroon to invade Iraq? Lost in the discussion by the anti-war side was any
concept of whether overthrowing Saddam was right or wrong. Somehow, only the
vote of the Security Council mattered. It was all process oriented and no real
thought was given to the rightness of the cause either morally or in regard to
our security.
The war was always right
regardless of the Security Council's actions based on the threat of Saddam to
his neighbors and us via conventional arms and terrorism; his brutality; and
the threat he posed should he get nuclear weapons.
Today's fixation on the news
out of Iraq and the metrics of success is more of a process
question and misses the obvious point: whether the metrics are good or bad; whether
the media is accurately portraying our efforts or not, our cause is good. The
reasons we fought to overthrow Saddam were just and the reasons we fight to
destroy the Baathists and jihadists
are just. Even if the news out of Iraq was all bad, we should be fighting there. The real
question would then be how do we change to win. Any
other questions miss the point and refute the basic justness of our fight.
Or do we reinstitute oil for
food so the Baathists can order more plastic
shredders?
"The Right Army for Iraq"
(Posted November 6,
2003)
I suppose people are at least
vaguely aware of the quote from some Army officer in Vietnam who supposedly said, “I’m not going to destroy the
traditions and doctrine of the United States Army just to win this lousy war.” This
is proof of the idiocy of the war on par with "I had to destroy the
village in order to save it," right?
Not quite. In the Cold War
era Vietnam War, destroying the ability of the Army to fight and win a
conventional clash in Germany in order to win in Vietnam would have been a terrible mistake. This, of course,
requires an assumption that a newly oriented Army was necessary to win, but I
won't digress. Just note that when the Iraqis optimized their army and tactics
to fight the Iranians in the 1980s, they created an army ill-suited to fighting
our fast mechanized juggernaut well supported by air power. In the end, they
needed to build the Republican Guards to be the real army able to fight a
mobile action. The rest was dog meat at our hands.
I have been stalwart in my
belief that the Army's main function is to fight and win our nation's wars. I
strongly opposed peace operations that lessened the ability of the Army to
fight.
We are fighting a low
intensity war in Iraq that we must win, and unlike the Cold War-era, we face no short term
threat that requires the bulk of our Army to be a force-on-force outfit. I love
the power of our armor and wouldn't have wanted to take on Iraq without it, but that war is won. North Korea may still qualify but I increasingly grow suspicious
that the North Korean army is brittle. Still, unlike Iraq in the 1980s, we don't need to totally revamp our
military to win this war. Iraqi insurgents are relatively few and lack wide
support. If we need to at least temporarily convert a couple heavy divisions to
medium-weight motorized infantry divisions in order to win this war, I say do
it. We are already planning to do this in the National Guard. In addition, the
Army and Navy are gearing up for more military police-type forces, converting
existing forces and building new ones. These units will be useful in policing Iraq until Iraqis can do the job. We are also expanding special forces units.
Nor is reorienting portions
of the Army to fight in Iraq the same as reorienting for peacekeeping, or peace
enforcement, or nation-building, or whatever euphemism for being expensive
police you want to use. Low-intensity warfare is war.
Losing a war can harm the
Army just as much as focusing it on the wrong enemy.
And even though some of these
fixes cannot be completed until after the Baathist
War is won, I wouldn't assume this is the last time we'll need to do this.
"Somebody Is Properly Fed Up" (Posted November 6, 2003)
Mac Owens
starts out extremely well:
I am officially sick of the constant
claims of reporters and politicians that Iraq is becoming
a rerun of the Vietnam
"quagmire." These people don't know what they are talking about. They
remind me of the old adage that it is better to remain silent and be thought a
fool than to speak and remove all doubt. The fact is that there is little
similarity between Iraq and Vietnam. Indeed,
there is little comparison between the real Vietnam War and the facile
description of it that we get from critics of the Iraq operation.
And then he gets better.
He has a good point that the
combat service support troops we have in Iraq pressed into patrolling and guard duty should be
replaced by infantry or military police. Owens almost suggests but doesn't say
we need more troops in Iraq; and I would still like to assert that I do not think
we need more soldiers. In time, the static and routine patrols can be
allied-Iraqis and foreign allied troops while the offensive missions are done
by US and allied troops trained for counter-insurgency (and assisted by Iraqi
auxiliaries where possible).
“Counter-Insurgency”
(Posted November 5, 2003)
A good article
on 1st Armored Division’s efforts. It is good both as a
description of how troops cultivate local information sources and as an example
of how troops untrained for their work do their work. That is, tankers leave
their Abrams tanks in the motor pool and head out on patrol. You may recall the
stories a little while back where troops complained they were not trained for
the jobs they are doing in Iraq.
The story seemed to imply ill-trained troops out of their league. This is not
exactly the case. Not ideal, of course, but well-trained and disciplined American
troops can do it. Of course, they’re no longer crack tankers now…
“North Korea Brittle?” (Posted November 5, 2003)
I’m telling you, I really get the feeling that North
Korea is a Potemkin
Village and ripe for collapse. From Strategypage.com:
November 5, 2003: Economists are finding
out more about the extent of damage the half century of communist rule have
done to the North Korean economy. The conclusion is that the collapse is very
close without continued massive food and fuel aid to the north. The factories
and infrastructure are rotting, as maintenance has dried up over the last few
years. The electricity system is falling apart and most parts of the country do
not have 24/7 electricity. The north has tried to implement some reforms, but
these have only legalized the black market and made things worse.
Defectors believe it is possible that
there may be a spontaneous uprising, quite possibly from the lower ranks of the
army. The last few years worth of conscripts grew up
hungry, and are not happy with the way things are. Moreover, more news of the
outside world is reaching to north, adding to the unrest. Since 1995, some
eight million tons of food has been donated to North
Korea, but a quarter of the
population is still hungry and over a million people have died.
Economists, and credit rating agencies,
are also worried about the impact of collapse in the north on the south. South
Korea would have to pay most of the bill for rehabilitating the north, and saving its population from starvation. The cost
is now estimated at some three times South
Koreas current GDP, which would
come to a total of over two trillion dollars.
If our ability to take out North
Korea’s artillery is really good enough to
end that threat, one threat is fizzled out. If their military is as shaky as it
seems, that threat may be going, too. And after the march on Baghdad,
the North Koreans may know it as well. Indeed, the North Koreans may be losing
all reason to give up nukes if that route is their only hope of threatening us.
Which calls into question our hopes that just maybe we can
persuade Pyongyang to give up nukes.
Squeeze the North Koreans—gently—but don’t save them.
“Libya” (Posted November 5, 2003)
I’ve written before that perhaps Libya
should be allowed—if it shows itself worthy—to rejoin the world as a sign to
the wider Islamic world that they can safely defect to our side. My point is
that we must drain the swamp of support for terrorism and that defection must
be one route. We can’t regime change everyone.
This
article makes it clear why it may not be possible for Khaddafi and why I hold
my nose even as I continue to hold the general argument as true.
“Fallujah’s
Fate” (Posted November 5, 2003)
Ralph Peters has a good article
(via NRO) on Sunni resistance. I earlier noted that Fallujah
was probably lost to us in the short run. Peters calls for the stick since the
carrot won’t work:
First, we need to stop pandering to the
Sunni-Arab minority that spawns terror and revels in atrocity. Aspects of our
occupation policy have been naively one-sided - all carrot, no stick.
We need to have the guts to give at least one
terrorist haven a stern lesson as an example to the others. Fallujah
is the obvious choice.
If the populace continues to harbor our
enemies and the enemies of a healthy Iraqi state, we need to impose strict martial law. Instead of
lavishing more development funds on the city - bribes that aren't working - we
need to cut back on electricity, ration water, restrict access to the city and
organize food distribution through a ration card system. And we need to occupy
the city so thickly that the inhabitants can't step out of their front doors
without bumping into an American soldier.
Don't worry about alienating the already
alienated. Make an example of them. Then see how the other cities respond. Such
an experiment would be expensive. But strategic victories don't come cheap.
Iraq's Sunni Arabs
need to master a simple equation: If you support those who kill Americans,
there are penalties. If you cooperate to build a better Iraq, there are
rewards. We need contrasts in Iraq between how we
treat the deserving and the murderous.
Hear, hear. The residents of Fallujah
like Saddam? Fine. Bring out any we think our friends.
Then seal off the city. Surround it with Turks. (I know Peters doesn’t like
Turks but neither do the Sunnis) Build a road around it. Implement oil for food
and let them live in blissful Saddamite Hell. Keep
recon and Predators and gunships over the city and
kill any armed Iraqi we see. Make them an example even as we continue the
carrots elsewhere. The Fallujah Baathists
want to win. Show them we will win.
Seriously, do we think we can win their black hearts and
twisted minds?
In the end, if the Sunnis don’t give up support for Saddam,
we can always partition Iraq
and leave the Sunni Baathists in a poor desert
wasteland in the center, reliant on neighbor for access to the wider world.
Peters also notes what I’ve said earlier, that destroying
Saddam was a success even without making Iraq
a democracy:
We're overdue to take a lesson from the
Romans and the British before us and recognize the value of punitive
expeditions. Should the Iraqis fail themselves in the end, our current endeavor
may prove to have been simply a very expensive - but still worthwhile -
punitive expedition. Such an outcome wouldn't mean that we failed, but that the Iraqis had failed themselves.
One key lesson we should draw about
expeditionary warfare in the Age of Terror is that we need not feel obliged to
rebuild every government we are forced to destroy. Sometimes the wise approach
will be to employ our military power to topple a regime, then to withdraw
promptly and let the local population sort themselves out. We should always
seek to be as humane as possible - but the key word is "possible."
It isn’t pretty, but there it is. Not every failed state is
a threat to us.
“The Fruits of Our
Telegraphed War” (Posted November 5, 2003)
Before the Iraq War, I worried that we were giving our
enemies time to thwart us.
In the end, our long march to war did not provide Saddam
with the time to halt or defeat our invasion. No chemical weapons deployed. No
mines. No blown bridges or dams. No burning oil fields. No effective deployment
of his military. Nothing that stopped us from winning a war that still will be
the defining image of “cake walk” that we will likely ever see. Nor did the
time give external actors a chance to derail our invasion. France
and Russia were
powerless to stop us. China
didn’t invade Taiwan
nor did North Korea
invade South Korea
to take advantage of our focus on Iraq.
No hurricane wiped out New Orleans
(although the Columbia
shuttle disaster did lead some to say don’t invade).
The Democrats didn’t retake Congress and thus give the anti-war side a chance
to say that was a referendum on war. War was delayed beyond the time we needed
to deploy an invasion force but not stopped.
But all that time gave Saddam a chance to import jihadists who fought us fiercely (if ineffectively) on the
road to Baghdad. One wonders how the
post-war stabilization could have gone if we had invaded before Saddam could
bring in the fanatics. One wonders what the Kay report would have found if
presented a year earlier.
“Fears Part II”
(Posted November 5, 2003)
After I wrote the post below a bit, a saw Andrew Sullivan regarding the
despicable Democratic Underground web site:
I Hope the Bloodshed Continues in Iraq
Well, that should bring the bats out of the attic with fangs dripping.
I won't be hypocritcal. It is politically correct,
particularly in any Dem discussion to hope and pray and feel for our troops and
scream "bring them back now". I'm fighting something bigger.
I'm a 58 year old broad and I can tell you that what is going on in our
country isn't the usual ebb and flow of politics where one party is in power
and then another; where the economy goes through ups and downs.......yawn,
yawn--just wait a bit and things will turn out peachy keen. That stupid la-la
land is over.
I realize that not every GI Joe was 100peeercent behind Prseeedent Booosh going into this
war; but I do know that that is what an overwhelming number of them and their famlies screamed in the face of protesters who were trying
to protect these kids. Well, there is more than one way to be "dead"
for your country. They are not only not accompishing
squat in Iraq, they are doing crap nothing for the
safety, defense of the US of A over there directly. But "indirectly" they are doing a
lot.
The only way to get rid of this slime bag WASP-Mafia, oil barron ridden cartel of a government, this assault on
Americans and anything one could laughingly call "a democracy",
relies heavily on what a shit hole Iraq turns into. They need to die so that we
can be free. Soldiers usually did that directly--i.e., fight those invading and
harming a country. This time they need to die in defense of a lie from a lying adminstration to show these ignorant, dumb Americans that
Bush is incompetent. They need to die so that Americans get rid of this deadly
scum. It is obscene, Barbie Bush, how other sons (of much nobler blood) have to
die to save us from your Rosemary's Baby spawn and his ungodly cohorts.
Posters who want American soldiers to die in order to beat
Bush.
Do all the readers feel this way? Certainly
not.
Do the posters feel comfortable posting this way? They
apparently do.
The readers of DU sure don’t seem offended by such posts and
threads. They may not agree strictly speaking with the views, but the views are
clearly well within their comfort zone.
And it sadly recalls the outrage of some that al Qaeda on 9-11 targeted New Yorkers, people who didn’t vote
for Bush, instead of Bush backers.
“The Central Front”
(Posted November 5, 2003)
I while back I wrote that I was uncomfortable with the idea
that Iraq is
the “central front” in the war on terror. It is certainly related but it is
important in its own right even if Islamofascist
terrorism did not exist.
Apparently, the public does
not feel Iraq
is the central front.
I don’t think that this means the public doesn’t want us to
win in Iraq. I
certainly am no less committed to victory than I would be if I thought Iraq
was the central front in the war on terror.
Crushing Saddam’s regime helped in the war on terror by
eliminating one state sponsor of terror who could have passed (and may have)
chemical and biological weapons or knowledge to terrorists. In the long run,
establishing a democratic, friendly Iraq
will help us undermine the misguided and deadly conspiracy theories that propel
young men to become terrorists. In the medium term, we will be fighting al Qaeda regardless of how we do in Iraq.
Maybe I’m engaged in semantic extremism by rejecting the
“central front” label but it sure doesn’t undermine my support for winning in Iraq.
Hopefully, the public will continue to feel that way, too.
Still, rejecting the central front notion may get us to look
beyond securing Iraq’s
borders to taking on the rest of the terror sponsors. Maintaining the
initiative does not mean gearing up for another conventional war. I know I said
I think we plan for confrontation with Iran
in 2005, but I sometimes doubt whether that delay is wise even as I recognize
the many valid reasons for a pause. I hope we are laying the groundwork now,
with the option of taking action sooner if opportunities present themselves. We
shouldn’t build a Maginot Line and think that sitting on
our butts can win a war:
If
we persist in narrowing our vision and our actions to Iraq, the attacks will get more lethal, killing
larger numbers of Americans. And they will not be limited to Iraq. Significant numbers of terrorists have
been rounded up of late, from the Middle East to Europe and inside this country. They are coming after us, just as we should
have expected, and there is a limit to how long we can forestall catastrophes
by playing defense.
Keep rolling.
“The Mythical Iraqi
Army” (Posted November 5, 2003)
A good article
on the silly notion that our disbanding of the Iraqi army after Baghdad
fell was a major error. Keeping the Iraqi army intact was neither wise nor
possible:
All this does not mean we should spurn the many individual Iraqi
veterans willing to serve the new Iraq. On the contrary, they have been welcomed
and even actively recruited. About 60 percent of the privates in the New Iraqi
Army, and virtually all the officers and NCOs, have military experience. Other
new security forces, such as the Iraqi Civil Defense Corps and the Facilities
Protection Service, have taken in many thousands of former soldiers. Only those
who served in Hussein's inner circles of security and control forces, or who
reached the top four ranks of the Baath Party (about
8,000 out of nearly a quarter-million officers and NCOs in the old army) are
ineligible to join the New Iraqi Army and other security forces. Although we
have not so far recruited officers whose former rank was above lieutenant colonel, that is because we have not yet needed more senior
ranks. As the army (and other security forces) grow,
higher-ranking officers with clean records will be considered, along with
potential promotions from the new organizations.
Repeat after me, the Iraqi army dissolved and no amount of
fake complaining about an administration “error” erases this. The question of
whether it would have been wise to do so is moot. Prior to the war, I thought
it would have been possible to take the services of separate Iraqi light
infantry battalions if they defected and if they were led by our special forces people. Anything larger would have called
into question the loyalty of the officers. The higher you go, the more likely
the officers would be Saddamite stooges.
Please, bring on the next “mistake.” This one is tiring me
out.
“This Is What I Have
Feared” (Posted November 5, 2003)
The anti-war side has continuously engaged in their right to
dissent; even as they argue that there is no debate and that they are being
suppressed from speaking their views.
<hugegoresigh>
Dissent is certainly not treason.
</hugegoresigh>
But this memo
(thanks to Instapundit) is what I’m talking about
when I write that anti-war critiques of the war effort and the post-war
stabilization mission in Iraq
smack of dishonesty. Barely concealed glee at any setback and scary
determination to ignore the good appear in virtually every statement they make.
I simply don’t trust them with our national security.
The anti-war side fundamentally does not think we are at
war. Since they do not think we are at war, they can earnestly believe that
talk of “war” is just a means for the White House to win reelection. The
anti-war side views foreign affairs as just talking points in their quest to
regain the White House. Are we doing well? That’s bad. Are we doing poorly or
can it be portrayed as poor? Good to go. The concept of victory is meaningless
to them outside of Pennsylvania Avenue.
And on that street, shock and awe is the rule of the day.
Maybe I’m asking the wrong question. Just what question does
the anti-war side want to debate, anyway?
One question comes to mind: how is it progressive to wish
for failure on the majority of Iraqis who want a free, democratic, non-Baathists, and non-Islamist country?
"Outrageous" (Posted November 4, 2003)In a US News & World Report article about Chinese espionage in the US (focused on one temptress triple? agent), is this photo caption: "Chinese police stand guard outside the U.S. Embassy in Beijing. China refuses to allow U.S. marines to protect the outside of the compound, as they do at other U.S. embassies."
Excuse me?
The Chinese don't have the decency to let us use Marines as external guards in exchange for the intelligence windfall of having a U.S. embassy there?
Screw 'em, I say. Let the Swiss host our interest section until the Chinese let our Marines guard our embassy grounds. Or insist that our Marines guard their embassy in DC until they comply.
We are their main enemy. We should not forget that.
“Cannon Fodder”
(Posted November 4, 2003)
Secretary Rumsfeld confirmed
that in Iraq we
are killing or capturing lots more than we are losing. I’m glad we aren’t
score-boarding this since it is not the metric of success or failure. Still, it
is good to know as a general fact:
Snow: Within Iraq, what is the situation in terms of terrorists?
Are we taking out or imprisoning more of them than they are killing of our
people?
Rumsfeld: Oh, my goodness, yes. We are capturing or killed vastly
more than are being killed of ours.
Snow: It's an
interesting thing, because I get e-mails all the time, and people say we hear
about our death counts; we never hear about theirs. Why?
Rumsfeld: Well, we
don't do body counts on other people, and we have certain rules on people we
capture in terms of exposing them to the public -- Geneva Conventions, and the like. On any given
day, the dozens of terrorists or criminals or Baathists,
remnants of the Saddam Hussein regime, are being captured or killed all across
that country.
Yet since attacks against us are up in the last month,
killing and capturing the guys doing the attacks is
not the key to stamping out the resistance. Reports are that the Baathists pay people to attack us. So we need to get the
paymasters and their cash; and we need to get the country moving forward enough
that the ones taking the money think their chances are better in the legitimate
civilian economy. Congressional action to pass the supplemental spending bill
(while some who vote for it cover their political backside by bitterly
attacking the administration thus undermining the entire goal of the money)
will help.
Truly, in the face of so many who say we must increase US
forces in Iraq, it is frustrating to have to remind
the anti-war left that resistance such as we are facing is not primarily a
military problem. They once knew this. Indeed, they accuse the President of
being too reliant on military force even as they call for more troops in Iraq
and amazingly enough say that diversion of military resource to Iraq detracts
from the decidedly non-military problem of defeating al Qaeda!
Our military can only buy time to implement political and economic measures
that undermine the base of Sunni support for the resistance. We seek to make
this a police problem for Iraqi security forces and an Iraqi court system.
But the impression that our troops are just sitting ducks,
taking it on the chin on a daily basis without getting any of the enemy is
false. Somehow the administration needs to convey this without doing daily
enemy body counts.
[Been sick lately. Amazing how much
one can blog when one is
sitting at home recuperating…]
“I Believe I
Predicted This One” (Posted November 4, 2003)
I recent email to me:
Sir,
I am Major Frank S. Williams, a senior security officer under Charles
Taylor, former Liberian President.
Having got great affection and absolute appreciation for your human and
personality, I wish to contact you for absolute help to safeguard and bank this
sum of $157m (One Hundred and Fifty Seven Million Dollars) into your account
for me, preferably we can split the sum into three bank accounts if your
account will not accommodate all the sum. Presently this
money is in the Barclays bank Vault. I am a senior security officer in
charge of arms and ammunition of Charles Taylor troops. I and two officers were
assigned to purchase arms and ammunition in France, on getting to Ghana, we
heard a news that U.S.A. government had giving an ultimatum for our president
Charles Taylor to leave the country to Nigeria for a political asylum with
immediate effect. Perhaps, we saw this as a golden
opportunities to divert the funds $500m for our personal usage, then the
funds were shared among us $157m each.
The arrangement of sharing this money with my groups is as a result of
helping ourselves and family since our president has been sent out by U.S
government on political asylum in Nigeria. The future of my family depends on this
fund and as such I will be very grateful if you can assist me to bank this
fund.
Note: I don't want the leadership of President Charles Taylor to have
idea of where I am and the fund. When this fund is cleared and banked in your
nominated account, my confident will meet with you to establish an investment
with your assistance on my family behalf, until I am out of my travail.
For your reward and expected services, 25% will be for you, while 75%
will
be for my family investment.
For now, communicate with me through my email addresses;
[Email address deleted]
May happy days & a fair future awaits you
as you deserve.
Thanks
Major Frank S. Williams
Do people really fall for this stuff? Though after that
whole 61% evil website crisis, an affirmation of my “human and personality” is
certainly uplifting. Thanks Major.
“Good” (Posted November
4, 2003)
Putin won’t
send troops to “help” us in Iraq.
Good.
The Russians did so well to win the hearts and minds of
Moslems in Afghanistan
and Chechnya, it’s hard to believe that Putin
is responding to a real request from us.
“Victory Is Ours To Lose” (Posted November 4, 2003)
This AP article
by Pauline Jelinek is outstanding. I can’t recommend
it enough. Some excerpts:
Military commanders have said for months, and still
maintain after Sunday's worst one-day combat toll since March, that the attacks
now skyrocketing to some three dozen daily are militarily insignificant, noted
Pentagon spokesman Lt. Col. Jim Cassella.
That means they have not stopped the U.S.-led occupation
force from continuing its work toward stabilizing the country, rebuilding the
economy, creating a new government.
As I’ve note with the 10:1 counter-insurgency ratio needed
to win:
It's hard to find anyone inside or outside the Defense
Department who thinks several thousand poorly organized Saddam loyalists and
several hundred foreign fighters can militarily defeat the almost
250,000-member coalition and Iraqi forces now under arms in Iraq.
The key part:
If recent attacks and other failings cause Iraqis and
Americans to lose faith in the campaign, "The bad guys will win,"
said James Lindsay of the Council on Foreign Relations.
This article hits on a number of points that I think are
critical to remembering.
I do take exception to the idea that the administration is
painting a rosy picture of Iraq
that casualty reports make seem a lie. I’ve never been misled. Successes
coexist with setbacks. Clearly, the broad picture is advancing even as
resistance by Baathists and jihadists
cause localized setbacks. Unfortunately, these localized setbacks can affect
the broad picture by demoralizing Iraqis or Americans as to the ultimate chance
of success.
One of the problems is that the anti-war side has the belief
in the power of being committed to a cause. Remember in the spring prior to the
war how the press portrayed confused protesters who couldn’t believe that the
administration would ignore 100,000 committed anti-war protesters and their
10,000 hand puppets and bongos? Even when the protesters had to know that
public opinion polls showed support for invading Iraq?
So now, when committed Sunnis and their jihadist
allies launch attacks in Iraq,
the anti-war side listens to them and not the majority of Iraqis who want
peace, who want the Baathists and jihadists
defeated, and who of course want us to leave when those jobs are done. Those
who want us out of Iraq
would leave the majority to their fate at the hands of committed thugs who are
more than willing to kill and torture their enemies.
It is shameful but true that only we can beat ourselves.
“Jihadists”
(Posted November 4, 2003)
This article
says that Syrians are no longer heading to Iraq
in large numbers. Most interesting, it highlights what I suspected would happen
when Saddam’s regime fell. That is, Iraqis turned on the foreign fighters:
Yarmouk, on the outskirts
of Damascus, was the source of an estimated 300 Arab volunteers who went to
Iraq to fight during the war, in the spring.
Now, residents say it's been months since they've heard of
volunteers going to fight, bodies returning home or memorials held for slain
men.
"Nobody has gone to Iraq since the
occupation and no one is thinking of going," Salim
Rashid, a 55-year-old Palestinian, said as he read a newspaper in his
stationery store in Yarmouk. He recalled the
disillusionment of Arab volunteers during the dying days of Saddam Hussein's
regime, after many Iraqis turned against the volunteers, accusing them of
supporting the dictator.
Faisal Younes said no more
fighters had gone to Iraq since the fall of
Baghdad in April. The
volunteers were betrayed by Iraqis, the 36-year-old Palestinian said. Fighting
for Iraq and Saddam was
"a big lie."
Here, certainly, is an indication that the crushing American
victory discouraged jihadist recruitment.
As I’ve noted, volunteers will head out in sizable numbers
when they have hope for victory. Sure, some will always be willing to die for a
losing cause, but for the vast majority, the hope of winning counts for a lot.
If jihadists are coming to Iraq,
it is not because we invaded and overthrew a secular and brutal dictatorship, for
why should religion inspire love of Saddam? It is
because the jihadists think we will lose. And they
want to win. They want to kill us and defeat us and put Britney Spears in a
burqua (or stone her death). The jihadists know our
military and technology are vastly superior so they can only think their will
to win is greater.
Those in this country who opposed the invasion must be
careful how they oppose the President. Yes, dissent is not treason. But dissent
that simply seeks to score points on a single-minded drive to regain the White
House rather than to foster a debate on how to win does leave the impression
with foreigners that they can break our will.
“You Think?” (Posted November
4, 2003)
North Korean leader Kim Jong-il's
biggest ambition is to rule over a unified, Communist Korea, the North's
highest-ranking defector said in an interview published on Tuesday.
I can’t say I spilled my coffee in
shock when I
read this.
“This is
Disturbing” (Posted November 3, 2003)
Simple
commonsense and an elementary concern for American lives would dictate that we
actively support the Iranian people in their desperate struggle for freedom,
but instead, the next round of schmoozing with the mullahs has already been
set, in Geneva, within the next couple of weeks. This sort of activity chills
the blood of the Iranian democrats, and plays right into the hands of the
turbaned tyrants of Tehran.
Rein in State. They apparently
don’t understand “Axis of Evil” at all.
Could I be wrong that Iran is the target for 2005?
“I’ve Been Waiting For This” (Posted November 3, 2003)
From the WaPo:
The CIA has seized an extensive cache of files from the former Iraqi
Intelligence Service that is spurring U.S. investigations of weapons procurement
networks and agents of influence who took money from the government of Saddam
Hussein, according to U.S. officials familiar with the records.
In addition to the information we will get on WMD and
missile programs, I look forward to the results of this line of inquiry:
The recipients of the Iraqi funds were described by U.S. officials not as formal intelligence
agents, but as prominent personalities and political figures who accepted money
from Iraq as they defended Hussein publicly or
pressed his causes.
It will be interesting to see who defended Saddam’s vile
regime based on money and who defended Saddam out of so-called idealism. The
latter are worse in my opinion.
“The French and
Saddam” (Posted November 3, 2003)
I may not have been writing about the French lately doesn’t
mean I’ve gone all warm and fuzzy on them.
In the run-up to the war, I speculated that the French were
actually doing us a favor—unintentionally, of course—by convincing Saddam that
they could help him avoid or ride out a US attack, thus preventing Saddam from
making some meaningless concession that would be touted as a victory and thus
keep Saddam in power. I was still worried that the French and Russians could
stall the invasion long enough by getting just a few more months of inspections
and that eventually we’d lose our nerve or some external event would make it
impossible to invade. Tariq Aziz
reports:
Aziz has told interrogators that French and Russian intermediaries
repeatedly assured Hussein during late 2002 and early this year that they would
block a U.S.-led war through delays and vetoes at the U.N. Security Council.
Later, according to Aziz, Hussein concluded after
private talks with French and Russian contacts that the United States would probably wage a long air war first,
as it had done in previous conflicts. By hunkering down and putting up a stiff
defense, he might buy enough time to win a cease-fire brokered by Paris and Moscow.
The article also suggests that preserving the base to
reconstitute his chemical arms as I’ve suggested was on the money. Why risk
discovery when he could quickly ramp up production once sanctions were lifted?
The
substantial evidence of Iraq's secret long-range missile programs, combined
with more fragmentary testimony in which Hussein reportedly asked scientists
how long it might take to reconstitute chemical arms, has led some
investigators to conclude that Hussein saw missiles as his most difficult
challenge. In this hypothesis, Hussein wanted to build or buy long-range missiles
before he took on the risks of secretly restarting banned programs to make
weapons of mass destruction.
"The
pattern I think we're seeing is, they were working on the long pole in the
tent," the missile program, said the senior U.S. official involved in the weapons search.
When Hussein asked scientists how long it would take to restart sarin and mustard gas production, he learned the timelines
"were all so sufficiently short" that he could afford to hold off
until the missile program was further along, the official said.
The article also explains the incompetence that recently led
me to write that I hope Saddam is directing Iraqi resistance and which also
addresses my immense confusion over the failure of the Iraqis to embark on
Military 101 steps to defend Baghdad:
In discussing Hussein's failure to use chemical weapons in the defense
of Baghdad, officials said, the generals often rant
sarcastically that Hussein's government did not even prepare land mines and
other basic military defenses to block or slow the U.S. advance. Why, they ask, should chemical
weapons be any different?
I was convinced we were going to see American heavy armor in
Baghdad when President Bush spoke
to the UN in the fall of 2002. Saddam knew better. (And will those who are saying
that Saddam “planned” his crushing defeat in order to fight us now please stop
this asinine line of thought? Some people think any victory of ours can be
explained as a diabolically clever plan by our enemy to outsmart us. What does
it say about them?)
This should refute the idea of some opposed to the war that
we could have maintained our troops around Iraq
indefinitely as a threat to compel serious inspections. Saddam simply did not
think we were serious, undoubtedly based on a decade of surviving our
half-hearted efforts to thwart Saddam. Should it come to military action,
Saddam thought he was looking at a Desert Fox (Iraq
1998) or, at worst, Allied Force (Kosovo 1999) scenario where he just needed to
look innocent and trust his friends and our ineffectiveness to ride out yet
another crisis. Dead Iraqis were not a problem but a propaganda bonus in any
anticipated American air offensive. Saddam killed Iraqis at a rate that we
could never match. The Russians annoyed us but the real resistance was from France.
This state of mind brings us back to the main point, that
Saddam thought his friends in Paris
and Moscow would save him from us. Chirac
and that vile hand puppet of his, de Villepin, must
go. I don’t know if France
is becoming our enemy, but the current government in France
is hostile toward us and has not let nominal ally status affect their drive to
thwart us. The Russians I don’t trust fully yet anyway, especially the KGB-run
regime now in power even if the President thinks he has rapport with Putin. But Russia
is on a trend from main enemy to friend despite the lack of trust that I currently
have in them. France
is clearly on a trend line from ally to enemy.
Regime change in Paris
must be our objective with the French. For God’s sake, don’t support their EU
ambitions.
And remember what Saddam wanted at the end of the day. I
repeatedly said prior to the war that regime change was the only way to keep
Saddam from getting nukes and the rest of the WMD wish list he had. How much
clearer can this get?
“Gut Check” (Posted November
2, 2003)
Somebody shot
down one of our Chinook helicopters, killing 15. I’ve been dreading such a
day. One day, I knew, the enemy would score big. There are lots of our troops
there and we have to be successful 24/7 to stop an attack such as this. Given
that a couple years ago, the Israelis lost a chopper carrying a lot of troops
into Lebanon,
I’m surprised that we flew in such an environment. The Israelis flew because
they got tired of losing one or two in attacks on ground convoys. The problem
is, the enemy reacts. And since attackers have fired
on our aircraft and missed in the past, this should have been predictable. The
Sunni triangle is dangerous.
I’d hoped that by the time such an incident happened, we’d
be far enough advanced that it would be a blip. The American people would take
it in stride.
I don’t know if we are advanced far enough. Attacks are up
the last month so that is bad. But reconstruction and turning over security to
Iraqis is going well.
Our reaction is crucial. We can’t pull back and hunker down
in fortified enclaves. If we do that, we leave the countryside to the enemy. We
can’t pull out of Iraq
shy of victory. We already gained a great short-term victory by ending Saddam’s
horrible nuke-seeking regime. But the wider war against nuclear threats and
terrorism will last years. This Iraqi battlefield is crucial. A lot of work
will be undone if we accept our short-term victory as enough.
We should not, however, flood the area with our troops or
even allied troops. We’d just have more support troops that could be targets.
We don’t need more foreign troops. The idea that non-US foreign troops will
make the Baathists and jihadists
attack us less is absurd. Red Cross? UN headquarters? Basically, when you add up Americans,
allies, and allied-Iraqi security forces, we have plenty of troops to guard the
country and go on the offensive against the dead-enders and jihadists.
Militarily we must ensure that our intel must get better. Part of that will come from
having more Iraqis on patrol. We must guard those ammo dumps that provide
weapons and explosives, seal the borders to stop jihadists
from coming in, and deprive the Baathists of the
money they use to buy attacks against us. And keep going after the enemy
resistance. The more worried they are about what we will do to them, the less
time they will have to attack us.
Mourn our losses. Look to the objective. And don’t flail
about reacting to each attack. Certainly, learn from this tragedy, but stay
focused on what we are doing to the enemy. The President has been mocked for
observing that the recent spate of suicide bombings show that the enemy is
desperate. This is true. This doesn’t mean that an increase in attacks on US
forces means the enemy is desperate. This increase must be stopped. We must
grind them down. But the attacks on softer targets is
an indication that the attackers see them as a threat that must be destroyed
and driven out.
I suspect that our public will not panic at a single attack.
They didn’t after Tet and they didn’t after Mogadishu.
I don’t remember what the public reaction to the Beirut
barracks bombing was. But a single attack like this is most dangerous in how it
will affect our leadership. Our enemies think they know our will is our weak
point that undermines all our military power and technology. How will the
pro-war side react? How will the anti-war side react? If their will breaks and
too many leaders talk of “exit strategies” rather than “victory” I will worry.
Our people and our troops will accept losses if the goal is good and they think
we are trying to win the fight. Loss of support comes from thinking the losses
are just for nothing and they think our leaders are just looking for a way to
pull out without suffering political consequences.
A tragedy such as this helicopter downing was inevitable.
Our reaction is as yet unknown. We know what our enemies want. We know the
price we will pay if we give them what they want.
Drive on.
Pay attention to the right metrics of success. Rebuilding Iraq’s
economy, government, and security apparatus to the point that we can step back
into the background are the key measures of success.
“So That’s When They
Started” (Posted November 1, 2003)
US News has an
article (not online) that strongly implies that Iran only recently started its nuclear
bomb program and that the darned simplistic Bush administration pushed them
that way with the Axis of Evil address.
Dimwits.
Are the staff of US
News really saying that a nuclear program was started in the last year and
a half? Are we really supposed to think that under the charming multilateralism
of the Euro-friendly, lip-biting, apologypalooza
Clinton administration that Iran’s mullahs were nice and safe and therefore
felt no need to press forward in the nuclear field or long-range missile field?
Are the US News
people freaking serious?
“Army Focus” (Posted November
1, 2003)
The article
says we are focusing the Army too much on warfighting
and not enough on stability operations:
IN
one corner, the United States Army, the most advanced fighting machine in
history. In the other, a group of guerrillas and terrorists, feared and
disliked by a majority of the local population.
Last
week, the guerrillas seemed to be the force on the offensive.
|
|
|
Attacks
on United
States troops are not only rising, they are becoming more sophisticated. In
recent days, guerrillas have destroyed a Black Hawk helicopter and an Abrams
tank, two of the most advanced weapons in the United States arsenal. Last week, four car bombs exploded
in Baghdad, and rockets hit a hotel where the deputy
defense secretary, Paul D. Wolfowitz, was staying.
The
American military is trained to obliterate its enemy with overwhelming
firepower. But it is not a police force, trained to track down dangerous groups
or individuals in heavily populated areas. And so, in the eyes of many Iraqis
here, the American soldiers often seem impotent, unable to provide security for
them or their families.
For
at least a decade, the Army has worked to make itself more lethal, even though
— or, perhaps, because — it has repeatedly been used in peacekeeping
operations, defense analysts say. Even within the military, that strategy has
caused some controversy.
Col.
Stephen Kidder, director of war-fighting studies at the United States Army War College in Carlisle, Pa.,
said in a telephone interview that the military's attitude has been, "If
we can win the big one, we can win the small one."
Colonel
Kidder said he did not disagree with that strategy. But Col. John R. Martin,
deputy director of strategic studies at the War College, said he believed that the Army did not spend enough time training or
equipping soldiers for peacekeeping.
We don’t spend enough time on peacekeeping? Good.
Even this article has some silly stuff. The enemy shot down
a helicopter and knocked out a tank? Wow. Who told that reporter that our
helicopters and tanks are invulnerable? Yes, they can be knocked out.
And what of our peacekeeping? We’ve done pretty well in the
Balkans and I don’t believe we messed up Haiti or Panama. Somalia
is the poster boy for failed peacekeeping but that failure wasn’t from any
military failure. Mogadishu was
that operation’s Tet Offensive—a military disaster
for our enemies but a political disaster for us. It seems to me that we’ve done
pretty well. It is way too soon to say that Iraq
represents a case study in failed peacekeeping.
But step back and look at the war so far. We lost what, 114
KIA in the major combat operations phase to overthrow Saddam’s regime and in
the six months since then, we’ve lost a few more than that. What are the
critics saying? They say that we need to focus on the post-war and slight the
war phase. This advice is basically saying that American victory is a given.
That is hubris. That is a symptom of the “victory disease.”
At best, this is a plan for losing more troops. What if we make our Army better
at post-war at the expense of war? Assuming we still win, what if that plan
makes us lose twice as many troops in the war phase while letting us lose half
as many in post-war? We’re losing more troops at that rate. These are
admittedly arbitrary number but that is the general tradeoff.
Our Army is small enough without designing it to be less
effective. Would a less effective Army had stood and fought—and won—at
Objectives Larry, Curly, and Moe in the drive into Baghdad? Do we want to put a
less effective Army up against the North Koreans? The Chinese? The Iranians?
The Army is working to put more Military Police units into
the field. I think this is the best solution. The next least bad move is to
train combat units for peace operations and then retrain them for combat after
that is over. We will simply never have enough troops to dedicate some as combat
and some as stabilization forces. The best option is to turn over peacekeeping
to allies. Our allies have let us down and so instead we are turning guard
duties over to Iraqis, with the help of some allies.
But train our units to be less effective to begin with? I’m
horrified that is even discussed. The reason enemies try to use asymmetric
means to fight us isn’t a function of their cunning, but their weakness. If we
weaken our Army, one day somebody will judge they can beat us on the
battlefield with force on force. That will result in more casualties and maybe
defeat.
The Army’s main job is to fight and win our wars. Victory is
not our birthright.
“Math Problem”
(Posted November 1, 2003)
This article
says that since late summer, untrained proto-jihadists are flocking to Iraq
in the hundreds. Some even from Europe where they are
incited to stupidity. By implication, they are responsible for the increased
rate of attacks on American in Iraq
the last several weeks. But we also know that the latest attacks are more
sophisticated and some are suicide bombers. Untrained jihadists can’t launch
sophisticated attacks and we think we know that it takes a year or two to
indoctrinate a suicide bomber.
Wherever those amateur jihadists are going, they aren’t
entering the fight. Are they quietly being killed trying to cross the border or
being captured? Certainly, the suicide bombers are being imported unless they
were brought in before the war.
I don’t know what this means, but the facts don’t add up to
the amateurs affecting the fight.
One thing it means is that as hard as we try, our enemies
try to make this a religious war. Saddam is bad but since America
got rid of him, Moslems should fight us? One nutso
says:
But
outside [a Berlin mosque], a
21-year-old man who identified himself as Akmed said
that while Saddam Hussein was unpopular, now "there are people who are
angry about the American occupation." He and others said that inside the
mosque, collections usually requested for Muslims in Palestine and Chechnya were now being offered for Iraq as well.
It never occurred to these devout fools that they could have
gone to Iraq to
overthrow Saddam all these years. No, instead of getting roused to fight a
brutal dictator, they want to kill us, the liberators. Idiots or not, we need
feel no guilt for killing the fools. Be grateful they are bad at being killers.
Do not excuse the fact that they want to kill us.