In Iraq, Military Forgot Lessons of Vietnam
Early Missteps by U.S. Left Troops Unprepared for Guerrilla Warfare
By Thomas E. Ricks
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, July 23, 2006; Page A01
The real war in Iraq -- the one to determine the future of the country -- began on Aug. 7, 2003, when a car bomb exploded outside the Jordanian Embassy, killing 11 and wounding more than 50.
Then, ican, there's the question of what if the Iraqi government did ask us to leave. Would we do it or would we say, "Screw you, we'll leave when we believe it's necessary." A majority of Iraqis believe we won't leave if asked.
Do you think the Bush administration will leave, if asked, leaving in place an Iran friendly Shiite government in Iraq?
Sectarian break-up of Iraq is now inevitable, admit officials
By Patrick Cockburn in Amman
Published: 24 July 2006
The Iraqi Prime Minister, Nouri al-Maliki, meets Tony Blair in London today as violence in Iraq reaches a new crescendo and senior Iraqi officials say the break up of the country is inevitable.
A car bomb in a market in the Shia stronghold of Sadr City in Baghdad yesterday killed 34 people and wounded a further 60 and was followed by a second bomb in the same area two hours later that left a further eight dead. Another car bomb outside a court house in Kirkuk killed a further 20 and injured 70 people.
"Iraq as a political project is finished," a senior government official was quoted as saying, adding: "The parties have moved to plan B." He said that the Shia, Sunni and Kurdish parties were now looking at ways to divide Iraq between them and to decide the future of Baghdad, where there is a mixed population. "There is serious talk of Baghdad being divided into [Shia] east and [Sunni] west," he said.
Hoshyar Zebari, the Iraqi Foreign Minister, told The Independent in an interview, before joining Mr Maliki to fly to London and then Washington, that in theory the government should be able to solve the crisis because Shia, Kurd and Sunni were elected members of it.
But he painted a picture of a deeply divided administration in which senior Sunni members praised anti-government insurgents as "the heroic resistance".
In the past two weeks, at a time when Lebanon has dominated the international news, the sectarian civil war in central Iraq has taken a decisive turn for the worse. There have been regular tit-for-tat massacres and the death toll for July is likely to far exceed the 3,149 civilians killed in June.
Mr Maliki, who is said to be increasingly isolated, has failed to prevent the violence. Other Iraqi leaders claim he lacks experience in dealing with security, is personally very isolated without a kitchen cabinet and is highly dependent on 30-40 Americans in unofficial advisory positions around him.
"The government is all in the Green Zone like the previous one and they have left the streets to the terrorists," said Mahmoud Othman, a veteran Iraqi politician. He said the situation would be made worse by the war in Lebanon because it would intensify the struggle between Iran and the US being staged in Iraq. The Iraqi crisis would now receive much reduced international attention.
The switch of American and British media attention to Lebanon and away from the rapidly deteriorating situation in Baghdad is much to the political benefit of Mr Blair and Mr Bush.
"Maliki's trip to Washington is all part of the US domestic agenda to put a good face on things for November," a European diplomat in Baghdad was quoted as saying.
Ever since the overthrow of Saddam Hussein a succession of Iraqi political leaders have been fêted in London and Washington where they claimed to have the insurgents on the run. Mr Maliki's meetings with Mr Blair today and Mr Bush tomorrow are likely to be lower key but will serve the same purpose before the US Congressional elections in November. US commanders are considering moving more of their troops - there are some 55,000 near the capital into Baghdad to halt sectarian violence.
Meanwhile, Saddam Hussein has begun to receive fluids voluntarily after being taken to hospital following 17 days on a hunger strike to protest against biased court procedures and the murder of three defence lawyers.Among fellow Sunni his defiant court performances have rehabilitated his reputation, though he is still detested by Kurds and Shia.
...
Every time something comes out, like this poll, that disagrees with your ideology you claim it's false. You can't present any evidence to show it's false. You can't present any evidence to back up your statements. You just declare them false, as if your the expert and have the final say on what is right or wrong. ...
I just don't see how you can trust those IBC numbers when you know they are wrong, Ican. Noone else does, certainly.
My judgment is based on what I think. I think the error in the IBC counts are proportional: that is, are a nearly constant factor of the counts IBC produces. I base this on the acceptable (to me) 2003, 2004, and 2005 corrobations of IBC counts with Britannica Books of the Year counts.
And the projections you have for July are ridiculous. In the last two days, at least 110 people have been killed by bombs - that's not even counting other violence, and it is almost a third of the 'projected total' for July. Neither does it count those who were injured (three times that number) who may die later from their injuries, or at least may be maimed for the rest of their lives.
My projections (not IBC's) are based strictly on available IBC counts. Presently, IBC has not given counts for July 2006 beyond July 3rd. If your total 110 count for 7/23 and 7/24 is valid, I think IBC will corroborate them closely enough in due course.
You are correct that IBC counts do not include counts of "those who were injured ... who may die later from their injuries, or at least may be maimed for the rest of their lives."
I repeat: my primary interest is in computing the trend in the Iraq civilian casualty rates. If the trend is truly a gradual reduction in casualties June 2006 through May 2007, I will use that as evidence that things are improving in Iraq. If it were to be an increasing trend, then I will use that as evidence things are worsening.
Cycloptichorn
I may very well get kicked off or 'banned' for saying this, I am sick to death of your style of posting, Ican. It is just so nonsensically silly.
revel, I scroll past ican's posts about 99.9 percent of the time, because that's the percentage of his posts I find nonsensical.
I Hate To Say I Told You So
Ethan Heitner
July 24, 2006
Those of us who were labeled America-haters for saying that Iraq was a mess and that our military presence was making things worse are actually being proven right - by the military's own documentation.
Fiasco: The American Military Adventure in Iraq, written by Washington Post senior Pentagon correspondent Thomas Ricks and set to be published this summer, is not to be dismissed as the opinions of shifty Iraqis or pointy-headed academics. Instead, for his material Ricks went straight to the good old, blood-and-guts sources, the Armed Services archives themselves - or, as The Washington Post puts it in its excerpts from the book, which started running in the paper Sunday, "a review of more than 30,000 pages of military documents and several hundred interviews with U.S. military personnel."
And what do they tell us ?
Quote:...There is ... strong evidence, based on a review of thousands of military documents and hundreds of interviews with military personnel, that the U.S. approach to pacifying Iraq in the months after the collapse of Hussein helped spur the insurgency and made it bigger and stronger than it might have been. ...
What did the army do wrong? Massive troop presence that only served to remind the Iraqis of the constant presence of foreign occupiers. Indiscriminate sweeps that caught up thousands of ordinary Iraqi citizens in the maws of a gulag system without accountability or order, where they were exposed to abuse at every level by U.S. soldiers and enticed by actual members of the insurgency to find vent for their understandable rage. Or, as Hicks has it (again, based on the military's own evaluations):
Quote:Feeding the interrogation system was a major push by U.S. commanders to round up Iraqis. ... Sometimes units acted on tips, but sometimes they just detained all able-bodied males of combat age in areas known to be anti-American.
The problem was that the U.S. military, having assumed it would be operating in a relatively benign environment, wasn't set up for a massive effort that called on it to apprehend, detain and interrogate Iraqis, to analyze the information gleaned, and then to act on it. ...
Senior U.S. intelligence officers in Iraq later estimated that about 85 percent of the tens of thousands rounded up were of no intelligence value. But as they were delivered to Abu Ghraib prison, they overwhelmed the system and often waited for weeks to be interrogated, during which time they could be recruited by hard-core insurgents, who weren't isolated from the general prison population.
Or, in Hicks' portrait of one particularly bad unit, the 4th Infantry Division :
Quote:The unit, a heavy armored division despite its name, was known for "grabbing whole villages, because combat soldiers [were] unable to figure out who was of value and who was not," according to a subsequent investigation of the 4th Infantry Division's detainee operations by the Army inspector general's office. Its indiscriminate detention of Iraqis filled Abu Ghraib prison, swamped the U.S. interrogation system and overwhelmed the U.S. soldiers guarding the prison.
Lt. Col. David Poirier, who commanded a military police battalion attached to the 4th Infantry Division and was based in Tikrit from June 2003 to March 2004, said the division's approach was indiscriminate. ... "Every male from 16 to 60" that the 4th Infantry could catch was detained, he said. "And when they got out, they were supporters of the insurgency."
This is the draft of history written by the military, for the military:
Quote:In language unusual for an officially produced document, the history of the operation produced by the Marines 1st Division is disapproving, even contemptuous, of what it calls the 4th Infantry Division's "very aggressive" posture as the unit came into Iraq.
The history dryly noted that the Marines, "despite some misgivings," turned over the area to the 4th Infantry Division and departed April 21. "Stores that had re-opened quickly closed back up as the people once again evacuated the streets, adjusting to the new security tactics," the final draft of the history reported. "A budding cooperative environment between the citizens and American forces was quickly snuffed out. The new adversarial relationship would become a major source of trouble in the coming months."
Is it any surprise that the result is exactly what we said it would be?
Quote:Cumulatively, the American ignorance of long-held precepts of counterinsurgency warfare impeded the U.S. military during 2003 and part of 2004. Combined with a personnel policy that pulled out all the seasoned forces early in 2004 and replaced them with green troops, it isn't surprising that the U.S. effort often resembled that of Sisyphus, the king in Greek legend who was condemned to perpetually roll a boulder up a hill, only to have it roll back down as he neared the top.
Again and again, in 2003, 2004, 2005 and 2006, U.S. forces launched major new operations to assert and reassert control in Fallujah, in Ramadi, in Samarra, in Mosul.
Read the whole thing to get details of how the U.S. military hierarchy ignored common sense, their own experience in Vietnam and all standards of decency to make everything worse.
While I'm on the "things we knew already but it's nice to hear them say," for a long time it's been obvious that military abuses of civillians in Iraq were neither confined to "a few bad apples" at Abu Ghraib prison, nor did they end with the imprisonment of those few. Systematic lack of leadership regarding detainee abuse is another area documented extensively by Hicks:
Quote:On the morning of Aug. 14, 2003 Capt. William Ponce, an officer in the "Human Intelligence Effects Coordination Cell" at the top U.S. military headquarters in Iraq, sent a memo to subordinate commands asking what interrogation techniques they would like to use ...
Some of the responses to his solicitation were enthusiastic. With clinical precision, a soldier attached to the 3rd Armored Cavalry Regiment recommended by e-mail 14 hours later that interrogators use "open-handed facial slaps from a distance of no more than about two feet and back-handed blows to the midsection from a distance of about 18 inches." He also reported that "fear of dogs and snakes appear to work nicely."
The 4th Infantry Division's intelligence operation responded three days later with suggestions that captives be hit with closed fists and also subjected to "low-voltage electrocution."
Hicks chillingly details more specific incidents of abuse from the military records. Surprise surprise, they closely parallel the allegations made in a new report by Human Rights Watch. From their summary :
Quote:
Someday there will have to be justice.
Just don't say you didn't know, and don't let anyone currently sitting in a position of power in Washington D.C. claim it either.
revel, I scroll past ican's posts about 99.9 percent of the time, because that's the percentage of his posts I find nonsensical.
You seem to be reading it. LOL
July 25, 2006
Books of The Times | 'Fiasco'
From Planning to Warfare to Occupation, How Iraq Went Wrong
By MICHIKO KAKUTANI
The title of this devastating new book about the American war in Iraq says it all: "Fiasco." That is the judgment that Thomas E. Ricks, senior Pentagon correspondent for The Washington Post, passes on the Bush administration's decision to invade Iraq and its management of the war and the occupation. And he serves up his portrait of that war as a misguided exercise in hubris, incompetence and folly with a wealth of detail and evidence that is both staggeringly vivid and persuasive.
By virtue of the author's wealth of sources within the American military and the book's comprehensive timeline (beginning with the administration's inflammatory statements about Saddam Hussein in the wake of 9/11, through the invasion and occupation, to the escalating religious and ethnic strife that afflicts the country today), "Fiasco" is absolutely essential reading for anyone interested in understanding how the United States came to go to war in Iraq, how a bungled occupation fed a ballooning insurgency and how these events will affect the future of the American military. Though other books have depicted aspects of the Iraq war in more intimate and harrowing detail, though other books have broken more news about aspects of the war, this volume gives the reader a lucid, tough-minded overview of this tragic enterprise that stands apart from earlier assessments in terms of simple coherence and scope.
An after-action review from the Third Infantry Division underscores the Pentagon's paucity of postwar planning, stating that "there was no guidance for restoring order in Baghdad, creating an interim government, hiring government and essential services employees, and ensuring that the judicial system was operational." And an end-of-tour report by a colonel assigned to the Coalition Provisional Authority memorably summarized his office's work as "pasting feathers together, hoping for a duck."
Mr. Ricks writes in these pages as both a reporter and an analyst, and many of his findings amplify observations made by other journalists and former insiders in earlier books: namely that the Bush White House routinely ignored the advice of experts (be they military, diplomatic or Middle East experts); that Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld's determination to conduct the war with a light, fast force had crippling consequences for the American military's ability to restore law and order in post-invasion Iraq; and that infighting between the State and Defense Departments, between civilians at the Pentagon and the uniformed military, and between the military and the Coalition Provisional Authority severely hampered the making and execution of United States policy.
"Fiasco" does not possess the dramatic combat details of "Cobra II" by Michael R. Gordon (chief military correspondent for The New York Times) and Bernard E. Trainor (a retired Marine Corps lieutenant general and former military correspondent for The Times), but unlike that book, which basically ends in the summer of 2003, it goes on to chronicle America's flailing efforts to contain a metastasizing insurgency over the next three years.
Mr. Ricks argues that the invasion of Iraq "was based on perhaps the worst war plan in American history," an incomplete plan that "confused removing Iraq's regime with the far more difficult task of changing the entire country." The result of going in with too few troops and no larger strategic plan, he says, was "that the U.S. effort resembled a banana republic coup d'état more than a full-scale war plan that reflected the ambition of a great power to alter the politics of a crucial region of the world."
xingu, The Buish apologists still can't see the chaos and sectarian civil war that's killing hundreds of innocents almost every day.
Balance that to refusing stem cell research by Bush.
It's almost comical if it wasn't so tragic.
There's No Choice but to Win in Iraq
By Frederick W. Kagan
Posted: Thursday, July 20, 2006
NATIONAL SECURITY OUTLOOK
AEI Online
Publication Date: July 20, 2006
July 2006
Abandoning Iraq now would have devastating consequences for the Iraqi people and would endanger the United States as well.
Is the moment coming when we must redefine success in Iraq or even abandon the struggle as a lost cause? Is it time to turn our attention to other problems, accept less-than-ideal solutions in this troubled land, and move on? Absolutely not. Those on both sides of the political spectrum who advocate such "solutions" fundamentally mistake the situation in Iraq and the likely consequences of their proposals. "Cutting and running" in Iraq might generate a brief sense of relief, but it would dramatically increase the danger to America down the road.
America's interest in Iraq cannot wane for at least a decade--and probably longer--without risking grave danger not only to the stability of a vital region, but also to the American homeland. Defining success down there is likely to replace short-term pain with long-term danger. Alternatives to the success of the current democratic experiment in Baghdad include dividing the country along ethnic lines, permitting (or encouraging) the establishment of a military dictatorship, and simply leaving and letting the Iraqis sort things out for themselves (some on the Left have been calling this "incentivizing" the Iraqis). None of these options is acceptable.
The Alternatives
The idea of creating some sort of Lebanon-type solution in Iraq is foolish for several reasons. First, Iraq is not Lebanon--its large numbers of ethnically mixed cities and regions would require substantial population movements to create stable ethnic zones. Since places like Baghdad and Mosul, two of Iraq's largest cities, are also both heavily mixed and strategically important, it is almost inconceivable that such population movements could be accomplished without ethnic or sectarian violence on a vast scale. That violence would delay and disrupt progress toward any sort of new political solution and might well generate the kind of long-term vendetta mentalities that it has taken more than a decade of peacekeeping efforts in Bosnia just to keep under control. Nor has the Lebanon solution produced a Lebanon that is stable and able to resist the control of stronger neighbors, as recent events have made clear. Instability in a tiny country with few resources might be stra-tegically acceptable; instability in a country like Iraq, with vast oil reserves and troublous neighbors, is intolerable. Any solution that weakens the power of the central Iraqi government positively invites increased Iranian intervention, and perhaps the meddling of Iraq's Sunni Arab neighbors in response. Such interventions would further destabilize and delegitimize the Iraqi government, increasing the likelihood of its total collapse.
Some might argue that the danger of this scenario points to the folly of trying to establish a democracy in Iraq at all. Leaving aside the question of whether the United States could establish a nondemocratic government in the wake of a war in this day and age, sup-porters of "strongman" solutions in Iraq forget the basic problem with monarchical systems throughout history: choosing the right monarch. If one could imagine the ideal Iraqi strongman--tough, fair, effective, competent, and able to command the support and loyalty of the army and a lot of the population--then this approach might be strategically workable, if ethically dubious. If there is any such figure in Iraq today, however, he has been keeping a low profile indeed. The emergence of such a person at just the right moment is unlikely. A power struggle among a number of less competent, sectarian candidates, each of whom appeals only to a portion of the population, is much more likely. The first result of such a struggle would be the destruction of the government and a period of chaos. The next would almost certainly be the further polarization of Iraqi society and increased--and increasingly organized--group violence. Nor is it likely that the violence would stop with the ascent of the victor in this struggle. The temporary triumph of one such strongman is much more likely to lead to continued efforts to unseat and replace him, possibly plunging Iraq into the sorts of cycles of violence that disrupted many Latin American and African countries throughout the twentieth century. Once again, given what is at stake in Iraq, it is extraordinarily unlikely that the United States and its allies could look upon such a struggle with unconcern.
But why is that? Does it really matter, at the end of the day, whether Iraq is stable, peaceful, and strong? Is it not enough to have removed Saddam Hussein and destroyed al Qaeda in Iraq? Does the United States really have any further interests there? Absolutely.
America paid a hideous price for ignoring the collapse of Afghanistan after the Soviet withdrawal in 1989. That country, among the poorest in the world and torn by two decades of war, was still able to provide Osama bin Laden with the base he needed to prepare the 9/11 attacks. Iraq has the resources to be among the wealthiest countries in its region. Even a fraction of those resources would have been riches beyond compare with what Afghanistan's bedraggled government could offer bin Laden. If the government in Baghdad is not able to control its territory, Islamist terrorists will work rapidly to rebuild their networks, cells, and training areas. As the Clinton administration's fatuous efforts to use cruise missiles against bin Laden's training camps in Afghanistan demonstrate, only forces on the ground will be able to disrupt those networks.
Allowing Iraq to fall into chaos, or even leaving before the Iraqi government is able to govern successfully, makes the return of U.S. forces into Iraq at a later date extremely likely. Such a return will also be much more dangerous. Right now, the Iraqi government recognizes the need for continued American military presence. Once we have abandoned that government to its own devices, it or its successor is unlikely to welcome us back in. Depending upon the course of ethnic and sectarian struggles in Iraq, moreover, it is even possible to foresee scenarios in which a jilted Shiite government adopts an actively hostile stance toward the United States and attempts to thwart efforts to clear out suspected jihadi groups. The creation of a stable Iraqi government that represents, includes, and controls all of Iraq's people is by far the best way to mitigate the intense dangers raised by accepting any lesser solution.
Cutting Our Losses?
Some are now arguing that this goal is beyond our reach already, however desirable it might be, and that it is time to abandon the effort, if only because of rising dangers in Iran, North Korea, and elsewhere. Such arguments are only superficially wise. The outcome of the struggle in Iraq is not yet clear by any means. The insurgency continues, violence in Baghdad remains high, and sectarian tensions are rising. In contrast, a democratically elected government resulting from sensible compromises that actually represents all of Iraq's major population groups has just been formed, Zarqawi was killed and enormous damage done to his dangerous network, and U.S. and Iraqi forces are even now engaged in clearing out one of the most dangerous trouble spots in Iraq, Ramadi. There is currently no clear momentum in this struggle. That is bad from one standpoint: it means that the United States has not been able to generate clear progress toward victory. From another standpoint, however, it means that there is no way to be certain of the outcome of the struggle--unless we simply abandon it. Those who argue that it is time to "cut our losses" risk creating a self-fulfilling prophecy. We have not yet lost in Iraq, but we will certainly lose if we heed their advice.
When things get hard in wars, those who counsel accepting defeat and moving on may seem wise. Resignation and withdrawal are emotionally easier than continued efforts to deal with a dangerous situation. And in democratic states, the desire to seem to be on the right side of history can be a powerful factor that drives good people to accept defeat prematurely, even against their better instincts and judgment. It certainly has not helped the situation that the Pentagon and U.S. commanders in the field seem to be devoid of any new ideas for winning in Iraq. Whatever the unforeseen problem or challenge, the military has always offered the same solution: train Iraqis, turn responsibility over to them, draw down U.S. forces, and pull out as quickly as possible. Wars are rarely won by such strategic inflexibility, refusal to engage in serious internal or external debates over strategy, or intellectual bankruptcy. It seems very clear that we long ago passed the point at which steadfastness becomes simple stubbornness and commitment to an idea becomes refusal to adjust to reality. And the unanimity of both military and civilian advice to the president about how to fight the war has stripped him of the ability to choose among meaningful options or even to interrogate his senior advisors thoroughly about the risks and virtues of the approaches they prefer.
None of these problems justifies accepting failure in Iraq or defining success down. The administration's strategy may lead to defeat. Even if the strategy changes tomorrow, forces already in motion might lead to defeat. It is possible, however, that the powerful forces for success that have carried Iraq this far will carry it farther, despite the military's strategic stubbornness. And it is also possible that the military strategy is the correct one and will lead to victory. The point is that we cannot know today what tomorrow will bring in Iraq or anywhere else; that is the nature of war and of life. As long as the outcome is really in doubt, decent people everywhere must engage in the struggle with all their might, find ways of improving it, and persuade the leadership to adopt their ideas. Giving up now--even simply giving up the effort to argue--may well mean giving in to a defeat in a vital theater that is by no means inevitable.
And even if defeat in Iraq were inevitable and we accepted it, we would still not be able to wash our hands and turn to other things. For all of the reasons outlined above and many more, a failed or failing state in Iraq will demand our constant attention and intervention. U.S. forces will continue to be committed to Iraq--if not in the country itself, then in ready positions from which to intervene as necessary. Concerns about Iraq will continue to distract this administration and its successors from other things, will make them hesitant to engage other enemies, and will strengthen the feeling of helplessness that is steadily gnawing at American grand strategy today. Abandoning Iraq now will provide no real relief: it will only make a dangerous world even more dangerous.
