Promising Iraq Developments – Washington Times editorial

With evidence mounting that the troop "surge" in Iraq is achieving results, even diehard opponents of the war like Sens. Carl Levin and Dick Durbin have been forced to concede that the change in strategy ordered by President Bush is working militarily. The American public seems to believe that victory can be achieved in Iraq. According to a UPI/Zogby Poll released on Wednesday, 54 percent of Americans said the war is not lost. So, in recent weeks, these politicians have turned their attention to the lack of political progress in Iraq. But on Sunday, five Iraqi political leaders (Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, a Shi'ite; President Jalal Talabani, a Kurd; Vice President Tariq Hashemi, a Sunni; Vice President Adel Abdul Mahdi, a Shi'ite; and Massoud Barzani, president of the Kurdistan Regional Government) announced they had reached agreement on "de-Ba'athification" — the policy that barred many members of Saddam Hussein's overwhelmingly Sunni Ba'ath Party from holding positions in the post-Saddam government. They also agreed on provincial elections; a law to distribute oil revenue; and a law providing for the release of prisoners held without charge. All of these changes were demanded by the Iraqi Accordance Front, the major Sunni bloc in parliament, which created a political firestorm when it withdrew its six ministers from from the government Aug. 1.

More Realism, Less Spin – New York Times editorial

A new report from Congress’s investigative arm provides a powerful fresh dose of nonpartisan realism about Iraq as President Bush tries to spin people into thinking that significant — or at least sufficient — progress is being made. With a crucial debate on Iraq set for next month, the report should be read by members of Congress who may be wavering in the fight with the White House over withdrawing American troops. The Government Accountability Office, in a draft assessment reported yesterday, determined that Iraq has failed to meet 15 out of 18 benchmarks for political and military progress mandated by Congress. Laws on constitutional reform, oil and permitting former Baathists back into the government have not been enacted. Among other failings, there has been unsatisfactory progress toward deploying three Iraqi brigades in Baghdad and reducing the level of sectarian violence. These conclusions are in line with a recent National Intelligence Estimate that found that violence in Iraq remained high, terrorists could still mount formidable attacks and the country’s leaders “remain unable to govern effectively.”

A Season of Hope in Iraq – Michael Gerson, Washington Post

The season now ending with school bells and the return of Congress was supposed to be the "Iraq Summer." A coalition of antiwar groups promised 10 weeks of phone banks, billboards, petitions and protests targeted at 40 Republican members of Congress who support the war. "It's going to be like laying asphalt in August -- hot," boasted one organizer. During their summer vacation, Americans discovered that Gen. David Petraeus doesn't take one. And his energy and urgency have shifted the Iraq debate in some fundamental ways. A few months ago, it was the received wisdom that Iraq was in the midst of a rapidly escalating civil war. That claim is no longer plausible. While the level of violence is still unacceptably high, the surge has disrupted the cycle of escalation and proved that progress is possible. Lt. Gen. Ray Odierno's briefing this month was an antidote to pessimism. "Total attacks," he said, "are at their lowest levels since August of 2006." Some of the most violent and lawless regions of Iraq, such as Anbar and Diyala, have been stabilized with the cooperation of local Sunni leaders who have turned against al-Qaeda thuggery. Insurgents are being pushed out of population centers and then targeted in further operations. Sectarian murders in Baghdad have gone down by more than 50 percent in a few months, reaching their lowest levels since the Samarra mosque bombing. And new sectarian provocations -- such as the al-Qaeda bombings in Nineveh -- have not resulted in the usual spiral of revenge murders.

More...

Continue reading "31 August SWJ Op-Ed Roundup" »

Authors note: This article was first published in March 2005. The information is as relevant today as it was two years ago. The student of counterinsurgency should read this article within a broader context that includes political mobilization such as is the case with the Sahawa al Anbar Awakening in Iraq.

Anatomy of a Tribal Rebellion

The answers to what motivates and sustains the insurgency in Iraq are not readily found in traditional insurgency literature. Much better answers can be found by reexamining something deemed anachronistic in the information age: the dynamics of traditionally networked tribes and clans. This paper provides such a reexamination, and shows that tribal dynamics are particularly evident among insurgents in Fallujah and other parts of the so–called Sunni triangle...

Continue reading "Anatomy of a Tribal Rebellion" »

The Former-Insurgent Counterinsurgency – Michael Gordon, New York Times Magazine (subscription required)

The American strategy to stabilize Iraq is outlined in a several-inches-thick document called the Joint Campaign Plan. The stated goal is to achieve “localized security” (that is, in Baghdad and other critical parts of Iraq) by the summer of 2008 and to establish “sustainable security” nationwide by the summer of 2009. War critics at home have bemoaned the two-year time line, but meeting the objectives in such a short period would be an extraordinary accomplishment. The mission has been made all the more complex by the fact that the United States’ adversaries in Iraq are well aware that the “surge” of American reinforcements has placed a considerable strain on the Army and Marines and will probably run its course by early 2008. Yet the surge has also provided a chance to forge alliances between American forces and Sunnis who were fed up with Al Qaeda militants and uneasy about the Shiite-dominated government. The additional troops have enabled the United States to push into Sunni areas where American forces had not operated for many months and to stay there rather than sweeping through and leaving. Before leaving Baghdad to embed with the troops, I stopped by the fortified Green Zone to talk with Maj. Gen. Paul Newton. A British officer with eight tours of duty in Northern Ireland, Newton recently joined the staff of Gen. David H. Petraeus, the top American commander in Iraq, and headed the Force Strategic Engagement Cell with Donald Blome, a senior aide to the U.S. ambassador, Ryan C. Crocker. It was part of the determined effort to exploit the willingness of local Sunnis to work with the American-led coalition. To my ear, it sometimes sounded as if the command had an assistant secretary of war for peace. Yet this effort was being carried out with hardheaded practicality and was potentially of enormous significance. The basic strategy was to persuade sheiks and former insurgents to submit lists of potential recruits for local security forces.

The Washington Clock Runs Down - Kyle Teamey, Washington Post

Mismanagement by the Bush administration and an unquestioning Republican Congress may have set the stage for the sectarian violence of 2006, but Democratic efforts to pull out troops, cut off support or link support to unattainable benchmarks have been equally damaging to attempts to get militias and insurgents to lay down their arms. In the long run, neither Americans nor Iraqis will benefit from a hasty withdrawal of U.S. troops. Yet, because Iraq has become a political liability for Republicans, and because Democrats increasingly view and treat it as an opportunity, the timing associated with both parties' Iraq policies centers on the 2008 campaign calendar, not on the realities of the war. Gen. Petraeus put it this way in April: "The Washington clock is moving more rapidly than the Baghdad clock." Translation: Party politics matters more than the results of a distant war. Though the pacification of much of western Iraq provides evidence of substantial gains in the past six months, the battle of perceptions is all but lost, and with it, the political clock has run out. Today, Iraqi insurgents need only bide their time. They will continue to carry out acts of violence such as the Aug. 14 truck bombings in unprotected Yazidi villages, to reinforce the belief that they are unstoppable. Armed groups will jockey for position street by street, neighborhood by neighborhood, wherever they are able to exploit the lack of a coalition presence. Unless the Iraqi government is able to assert itself, the civil conflict will worsen as U.S. troops withdraw.

More...

Continue reading "30 August SWJ Op-Ed Roundup" »

Some aspects of the war in Iraq are hard to fit into “classical” models of insurgency. One of these is the growing tribal uprising against al Qa’ida, which could transform the war in ways not factored into neat “benchmarks” developed many months ago and thousands of miles away. I spent time out on the ground during May and June working with coalition units, tribal leaders and fighters engaged in the uprising, so I felt a few field observations might be of interest to the Small Wars community. I apologize in advance for the epic length of this post, but it's a complex issue, so I hope people will forgive my long-windedness. Like much else, it’s too early to know how this new development will play out. But surprisingly (surprising to me, anyway), indications so far are relatively positive...

Continue reading "Anatomy of a Tribal Revolt" »

Watch the Sunni Tribes – Thomas Friedman, New York Times (subscription required)

When U.S. Army officers try to explain the challenge of rebuilding Iraq, they often talk about the three different time pieces they’re working with: Washington’s is a stop watch, where every second longer we stay in Iraq is a problem; the Iraqi Shiite-led government’s watch often seems broken, and you have to regularly tap it to get it to work; and the Iraqi Sunni watch always wants to go in reverse — back to Saddam’s day, when Sunnis were in charge. I’ve just bounced between Baquba and Balad and a Sunni and Shiite neighborhood in Baghdad as an embedded reporter with the visiting Adm. William Fallon, head of the Central Command. I don’t know whether the surge is working — too early, too short a visit. But I did see something new here, which, if played right, could help to stabilize Iraq and better synchronize some of those watches. It’s this: the willingness of the Sunni tribes, and key Sunni neighborhood leaders in Baghdad, to work side by side with the American soldiers they’ve been shooting at for four years in order to retake Sunni towns and districts from the Taliban-like, pro-Al Qaeda Iraqi Sunnis who took charge in 2006, when the undermanned United States forces pulled out of many areas and handed over security to unprepared Iraqi Army units. Ironically, a key reason violence appears to be trending lower here is because Al Qaeda’s “surge” in 2006 so frightened Iraq’s more moderate, occasionally whisky-drinking Sunni tribal leaders — the backbone of the Sunni community here — that they became willing to work with the Americans just when the U.S. surge was taking off. Warning! This important shift by the Sunni tribes could come unglued if the Shiite-led Iraqi government doesn’t start providing government services — water, fuel and electricity — to the Sunni areas the tribes have retaken.

Who's the Real Sectarian? - Harold Meyerson, Washington Post

Nobody loves Nouri Kamal al-Maliki. In his own country, the Iraqi prime minister heads a government of, by and for fractious Shiites, against which enraged Sunnis, among others, have taken up arms. In our country, which sustains him in power, both liberal Democrats and conservative Republicans call for his ouster. A National Intelligence Estimate finds his administration utterly incapable of settling the differences that are pulling his nation apart. The bill of particulars against Maliki is long and convincing, but it all boils down to this: The prime minister has done nothing to reconcile Iraq's warring populations and, to the contrary, seems either content or resigned to heading a government that consolidates the Shiite ascendancy in Iraq. His ministries are controlled by sectarian Shiites. Sunnis fear the government's police force, dread going to the government's hospitals and have given up on the government's ever picking up the garbage in their neighborhoods or providing any of the ordinary amenities that government normally provides. Over the past few months, not surprisingly, Sunni and nonsectarian parties have withdrawn from Maliki's cabinet and boycotted the parliament. Rivalries within his own Shiite community have also weakened Maliki, who, unlike such Shiite leaders as Abdul Aziz al-Hakim or Moqtada al-Sadr, lacks sectarian military legions to call his own.

More...

Continue reading "29 August SWJ Op-Ed Roundup" »

MNF-I counterinsurgency adviser and SWJ blogger Dave Kilcullen was featured in a 29 August op-ed piece in The Australian - Our Leaders Must Match Iraqis by Janet Alberechtsen.

Alberechtsen opens with a preview of what President Bush should expect during the upcoming Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum in Sydney and cuts to the quick in challenging those who “wish U.S. failure” in Iraq to answer two critical questions:

… Bush arrives in Sydney next week. Mostly, Bush's visit will attract open hostility from feral Bush-haters and quiet ridicule from many others. And the reason is Iraq.

Many have a vested interest in an American failure in Iraq. Not just the emotional anti-Bushies but also the more level-headed people who believe failure in Iraq is needed to puncture American hubris.

Those willing a failure in Iraq to vindicate their derision of Bush ought to answer two questions: Do they have an alternative solution? And what does a precipitate troop withdrawal mean for Iraqis?

Read on...

Continue reading "Message From Iraq" »

Through the NIE Lens - Jim Saxton, Washington Times

The Intelligence Community (IC) publicly released its take on prospects for Iraq's stability in the National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) on Aug. 23. Many commentators have already recognized the NIE as either a glass "half-full" or a "half-empty," depending on one's perspective of the war in Iraq. Regardless, the NIE underscores a few noteworthy key points. The regional perspective of the Iraq war is sometimes lost in the exchange of commentaries and criticisms of the mission. I myself have been concerned with Iran's intent to use Iraq as a land-bridge to Syria, Lebanon and Israel. Iran would benefit greatly from being able to openly use Iraq as a conduit to provide support to Hamas and Hezbollah. Iran would also be able to more effectively aid Syria's objective to destabilize the Lebanese government. A rushed pullout of American forces or premature change in mission could create the conditions for Iran and Syria to exploit a weakened Iraq. The NIE says "The IC assesses that Iraq's neighbors will continue to focus on improving their leverage in Iraq in anticipation of a Coalition drawdown." It comments on Iran as a destabilizing force in Iraq, and on Syria's support of groups in Iraq to increase its own influence there. The Syrian-Iranian strategic partnership that has emerged — which includes Iran bolstering Syria's weapons arsenal and a commitment to share nuclear research with Syria — is already extremely dangerous. Giving them unfettered access through Iraq would clearly exacerbate the threat.

Iraq’s Last Best Hope? - Ivan Eland, Washington Times

Iraq's future as a viable country may require an entirely new form of government unique in its power-sharing structure, a government that will survive only if the Iraqis adopt a useful political trick devised by Massachusetts Gov. Elbridge Gerry in 1812. Time is running out. The United States probably will start withdrawing troops from Iraq early next year. More than likely, politicians will gravitate toward the Iraq Study Group's recommendation to withdraw about half of the U.S. combat troops and use remaining forces to hunt down al Qaeda operatives, train Iraqi security forces and guard the Iraqi borders. But even a modest withdrawal probably will trigger more violence, putting the remaining U.S. forces at greater risk. A better solution would be to announce plans to withdraw all U.S. forces. Getting it over quickly would limit U.S. casualties and provide the Shi'ite and Kurdish-dominated national government with a sober reality check that will force it to make needed concessions to the Sunni, which might prevent a winner-take-all civil war. The main concession would be an agreement to decentralize the country, creating three semi-autonomous states — a Kurdish state in the north, a Sunni state in the center, and a Shi'ite state in the south, with the government in Baghdad responsible mainly for trade and economic affairs and the conduct of foreign policy.

More...

Continue reading "28 August SWJ Op-Ed Roundup" »

Still Invested in Failure – Washington Times editorial

The media's coverage of two recent events — the release of the new National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) on Iraq and Sen. John Warner's call for a symbolic reduction of troops by Christmas — serves to illustrate the perverse symbiosis between defeatist politicians and a news media that is heavily invested in an American failure in Iraq. Read carefully, the updated NIE provides some ammunition for both supporters and opponents of the war, presenting dour predictions about the level of violence in Iraq and the ability of the Iraqi government to achieve national-level political reconciliation, but also pointing out that "measurable" security improvements have been made in Iraq since January and will expand modestly in the next 12 months with continued pressure on the insurgents. Buried in the final two paragraphs of the report is the following: "We assess that changing the mission of Coalition forces from a primarily counterinsurgency and stabilization role to a primarily combat support role for Iraqi forces and counterterrorist operations to prevent [al Qaeda in Iraq] from establishing a safehaven would erode security gains made thus far... A change of mission that interrupts that synchronization would place security improvements at risk." In other words, this last section of the report knocks down a key argument made by war critics: that we would be better off if we move troops out of combat against Iraq-based jihadists and into training Iraqi forces.

Don’t Fail Afghanistan – Los Angeles Times editorial

The United States is now at risk of "losing" Afghanistan, the predictable result of committing insufficient troops and money to that catastrophically failed state after the rout of the Taliban in 2001. U.S. forces are suffering sharply higher casualties as Taliban fighters surge back in, and drug lords are coming to dominate the political and economic landscape. The collapse of the noble nation-building experiment in Afghanistan would destroy U.S. credibility in the eyes of the world, shake global security and condemn millions of people to another generation of warfare and terrorism. And it would be all the more devastating if accompanied by U.S. defeat in Iraq. Yet the effort to build a stable nation atop the wreckage of Afghanistan can still, with great effort, be salvaged. This page has argued that Iraq's civil war is beyond the United States' ability to suppress by military means and that the presence of U.S. troops can only delay the bloody but inevitable political reckoning. Although it is unlikely that a workable political accord will be reached before the power struggle is settled on the battlefield, only the Iraqis themselves can prevent this calamity. All is not lost in Afghanistan, however. Unlike the Iraqis, Afghans are not engaged in nationwide sectarian warfare. They have a weak but legitimate government, a corrupt but functioning parliament and an elected president who commands broad international support.

More...

Continue reading "27 August SWJ Op-Ed Roundup" »

An active duty Army field-grade officer on his 3rd tour in Iraq, Small Wars Council member Patriot, discusses officer retention for company and field grade ranks:

I wanted to share some of my observations on an issue that has become a major topic for Army leaders – officer retention. In the Army we hear a lot about retaining company grade officers and there have been a number of actions taken over the past few years to mitigate the high demand for company grade officers with their requirements...

Continue reading "On Keeping the Best and Brightest" »

Post-Iraq Strategy – David Ignatius, Washington Post

The Bush administration, beyond the daily temperature readings about the progress of the U.S. troop surge in Baghdad, is making a subtle but important shift in its strategy for the Middle East -- establishing containment of Iranian power in the region as a top American priority. A simple shorthand for this approach might be "back to the future," for it is strikingly reminiscent of American strategy during the 1980s after the Iranian revolution. The cornerstone is a political-military alliance with the dominant Sunni Arab powers -- especially Saudi Arabia. The hardware will be new arms sales to Israel, Egypt and the Saudis. The software will be a refurbished Israeli-Palestinian peace process. "The message to Iran is, 'We're still powerful, we protect our friends, we're not going away,' " explains a senior State Department official. While the Iraq part of the story still has to play itself out, the new approach isn't premised on success there but the possibility of failure. Iraq will continue to straddle the Sunni-Shiite fault line. Rather than a bulwark against Iranian expansion, as it was under Saddam Hussein, the new Shiite-led Iraq will be a battleground. To the extent that it comes under radical Iranian influence, it, too, will have to be contained. Though the Iranians appear strong in this new alignment, the reality is that they have missed a golden opportunity to consolidate their power. Where they once stood to gain tacit American acquiescence to their regional hegemony, they now confront growing American resistance. It's an Iranian mistake that's likely to have lasting consequences, reminiscent of the Islamic Republic's failure to consolidate its gains in the initial years of the Iran-Iraq war.

What is the Plan in Iraq after the Surge? – Miami Herald editorial

The basic conclusions of last week's long-awaited National Intelligence Estimate on Iraq come as no surprise to anyone who has been following the news and understands the basic dynamics of war. The surge has achieved modest success for the obvious reason that the more troops one side puts on the battlefield, the better the chances of achieving tactical success, at least in the short run. What the NIE could not say, however, is how many more troops it will take to turn the tide and how long those troops would have to stay. Those are critical questions. Crucially, the NIE also found that the incremental progress on the military side won't matter much as long as the Iraqi government fails to make political progress. That fundamental reality is something that has stymied the Bush administration's policy in Iraq and has been clear to anyone who has been paying attention to what the nation's military leaders have been saying all along. On July 31, in a confirmation hearing in the Senate, Adm. Michael G. Mullen, President Bush's nominee to head the Joint Chiefs of Staff, testified that unless the Iraqi government takes advantage of the ''breathing space'' that U.S. soldiers are providing, ``no amount of troops in no amount of time will make much difference.'' Last week, in a speech to the VFW, President Bush once again succumbed to the unfortunate temptation to inject U.S. soldiers into the political debate by insisting that they support the mission in Iraq. The clear implication is that anyone who doesn't support his policy does not support the troops. However, what the president himself doesn't say, or do, is to articulate a clear strategy, other than staying the course, for achieving success in Iraq.

More...

Continue reading "26 August SWJ Op-Ed Roundup" »

Continue reading "Navy Rocky Top Sunday" »

History Proves Vietnam Victors Wrong – Senator James Webb (D-VA), Wall Street Journal (28 April 2000)

… While it is correct to say that the American people wearied of an ineffective national strategy as the war dragged on, they never ceased in their support for South Vietnam's war effort. As late as September 1972, a Harris survey indicated overwhelming support for continued bombing of North Vietnam (55% to 32%) and for mining North Vietnamese harbors (64% to 22%). By a margin of 74% to 11%, those polled agreed that "it is important that South Vietnam not fall into the control of the communists."

The 1973 Paris Peace Accords, which earned both the American and North Vietnamese negotiators the Nobel Peace Prize, are largely ignored by present-day commentators. If we were to treat these accords as a binding international agreement between two still-existing governments, Hanoi would be held accountable for having taken South Vietnam by "other than peaceful means," and for failing to uphold its promise of internationally supervised free elections.

The humiliating end result of the communists' final offensive in early 1975 is usually placed on the shoulders of a supposedly incompetent South Vietnamese military. Little mention is made of the impact our "Watergate Congress" had on both its inception and success. This Congress was elected in November 1974, only months after Nixon's resignation, and it was dominated by a fresh group of antiwar Democrats. One of the first actions of the new Congress was to vote down a supplemental appropriation for the beleaguered South Vietnamese that would have provided $800 million in military aid, including much-needed ammunition, spare parts and medical supplies.

This vote was a horrendous blow, in both emotional and practical terms, to the country that had trusted American judgment for more than a decade of intense conflict. It was also a clear indication that Washington was abandoning the South Vietnamese even as the North Vietnamese continued to enjoy the support of the Soviet Union, China and other Eastern bloc nations. The vote's impact was hardly lost on North Vietnamese military planners, who began the final offensive only five weeks later, as the South Vietnamese were attempting to adjust their military defenses.

Finally, the aftermath of Saigon's fall is rarely dealt with at all. A gruesome holocaust took place in Cambodia, the likes of which had not been seen since World War II. Two million Vietnamese fled their country -- usually by boat -- with untold thousands losing their lives in the process. This was the first such Diaspora in Vietnam's long and frequently tragic history. Inside Vietnam a million of the South's best young leaders were sent to re-education camps; more than 50,000 perished while imprisoned, and others remained captives for as long as 18 years. An apartheid system was put into place that punished those who had been loyal to the U.S., as well as their families, in matters of education, employment and housing. The Soviet Union made Vietnam a client state until its own demise, pumping billions of dollars into the country and keeping extensive naval and air bases at Cam Ranh Bay…

-----

Bold font emphasis SWJ.

Discuss at Small Wars Council

Nothing follows.

Continue reading "Hmm..." »

The Work Behind Our Iraq Views – Michael O’Hanlon, Washington Post

How can one gather and assess information about Iraq -- collected on a trip or from any other source? Information from a war zone is difficult to attain and interpretation is open to many views. Unfortunately, much of the blogosphere and other media outlets have emphasized the wrong question, challenging the integrity of anyone who dares to express politically incorrect views about Iraq. Last week, Jonathan Finer criticized on this page [" Green Zone Blinders," Aug. 18] a New York Times essay that Ken Pollack and I wrote, as well as the comments of several senators, for claiming too much insight based on short trips to Iraq. Finer suggested that we did not leave the Green Zone, although we frequently did, on this and other trips, and he ignored how critical Pollack and I have been of administration policy in the past. Worse, Finer and critics such as Rep. Jack Murtha and Salon columnist Glenn Greenwald have suggested that our analyses are based on a few days of military "dog-and-pony shows." Our assessments are based on our observations as well as on years of study. That experience creates networks of colleagues such as military officers whose off-the-record insights can inform ours and who in the past have often told us when they did not think their strategies were working or could work. While hardly making us infallible, this also led each of us to oppose predictions of a "cakewalk" before the invasion and to join Gen. Eric Shinseki in criticizing invasion plans that had too few troops and too little thought given to the post-invasion mission.

Vietnam’s Real Lessons - Andrew J. Bacevich, Los Angeles Times

Finding in the debacle of the Vietnam War a rationale for sustaining the U.S. military presence in Iraq requires considerable imagination. If nothing else, President Bush's speech to the Veterans of Foreign Wars earlier this week revealed a hitherto unsuspected capacity for creativity. Yet as an exercise in historical analysis, his remarks proved to be self-serving and selective. For years, the Bush administration has rejected all comparisons between Iraq and Vietnam. Now the president cites Vietnam to bolster his insistence on "seeing the Iraqis through as they build their democracy." To do otherwise, he says, will invite a recurrence of the events that followed the fall of Saigon, when "millions of innocent citizens" were murdered, imprisoned or forced to flee. The president views the abandonment of our Southeast Asian allies as a disgrace, deploring the fate suffered by the "boat people" and the victims of the Khmer Rouge. According to Bush, withdrawing from Iraq constitutes a comparable act of abandonment. Beyond that, the president finds little connection between Vietnam and Iraq. This is unfortunate. For that earlier war offers lessons of immediate relevance to the predicament we face today. As the balance of the president's VFW address makes clear, Bush remains oblivious to the history that actually matters.

More...

Continue reading "25 August SWJ Op-Ed Roundup" »

Originally published in the Media Matters blog Altercations, the author has been kind enough to grant SWJ permission to repost his view on the recent New York Times op-ed The War as We Saw It.

Can They Say That?

Lieutenant Colonel Bob Bateman

I am a 7th Cavalryman. That is to say, within the Army, my personal regimental affiliation is with the 7th Cavalry Regiment. All soldiers are aligned with one regiment, though in this day and age that is largely an ornamental designation. In my case it came about because I commanded within the 2nd Battalion, 7th Cavalry. Because of this, and because of my interest in history, I am effectively the de facto active-duty regimental historian. That is how I know the honorary colonel of my regiment, retired Lt. Gen. Hal Moore. You might know of Moore from the movie We Were Soldiers, itself based on the book We Were Soldiers Once ... And Young. Or you might have read the interview Charlie Pierce did with Mel Gibson (who played Moore in that movie) about his role depicting then-Lt. Col. Moore for Esquire. I assure you, Mel Gibson, even in full Hollywood action hero mode, is a pale shade of the actual man.

It was from Gen. Moore that I picked up my own code of ethics with regard to what I can and cannot (or should not) say in public. Specifically, when writing for the public, or talking to a reporter, I follow his guidance. Moore had a very simple rule for all of his soldiers with regards to the press, and he laid it out for them as they deployed to Vietnam in the summer of '65. It went something like this: "Talk to any reporter you want. Say what you want, but speak the truth. Do not exaggerate, and stay in your lane. Talk about what you know personally, what you have seen, what you have done, and then stand by your words. " These words of wisdom have guided me for the better part of a decade and a half now, and I credit them with keeping me out of trouble...

Continue reading "Can They Say That?" »

Continue reading "The Daily Show: LTC John Nagl" »

The Iraqi Convergence - Charles Krauthammer, Washington Post

After months of surreality, the Iraq debate has quite abruptly acquired a relationship to reality. Following the Democratic victory last November, panicked Republican senators began rifling the thesaurus to find exactly the right phrase to express exactly the right nuance to establish exactly the right distance from the president's Iraq policy, while Murtha Democrats searched for exactly the right legislative ruse to force a retreat from Iraq without appearing to do so. In the last month, however, as a consensus has emerged about realities in Iraq, a reasoned debate has begun. A number of fair-minded observers, both critics and supporters of the war, agree that the surge has yielded considerable military progress, while at the national political level the Maliki government remains a disaster. The latest report from the battlefield is from Carl Levin, Democratic chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee and a strong critic of the Iraq war. He returned saying essentially what we have heard from Michael O'Hanlon and Kenneth Pollack of the Brookings Institution and various liberal congressmen, the latest being Brian Baird (D-Wash.): Al-Qaeda has been seriously set back as Sunni tribal leaders in Anbar, Diyala and other provinces switched from the insurgency to our side.

The Next War in Iraq - Joe Klein, Time Magazine

At the Iowa Straw Poll a few weeks ago, just about every Republican presidential candidate who mentioned the war in Iraq cited an Op-Ed piece in the "liberal" New York Times written by two military analysts from the "liberal" Brookings Institution. They had just returned from a brief tour of Iraq where they saw many of the same things I saw on a similar trip in June. They saw the success our military has had in turning Sunni tribes against extremists from al-Qaeda in Iraq (AQI) but then extrapolated wildly, saying this was a war we "just might win." Predictably, this had the impact of crack cocaine on neoconservatives, producing a euphoric and slightly violent high. The conservative Weekly Standard scurrilously announced that it had helped dash the "hope" of war opponents that Iraq was lost. The Op-Ed will be cited continually in the discussion of the war that will accompany the September reports of General David Petraeus and Ambassador Ryan Crocker. Which is too bad, because it is fundamentally misleading about the next stage of the war. To be sure, the success in the Sunni areas is real, but it may have greater long-term significance in the region than it does in Iraq. We've learned an important lesson in Anbar province: the Islamic-extremist message is a loser. Most Muslims do not want to live without music, television and, especially, tobacco. They don't want their daughters forcibly married to jihadis or their sons shrouded in explosive vests. That is certainly good news, but it's not enough. Indeed, the campaign against AQI may be among the last useful missions for the U.S. military in Iraq. We could drive out every last Islamic extremist, and the country would still be in the midst of a civil war that is trending toward chaos. And make no mistake: the U.S. colonialist insistence on dictating the shape of Iraq's future—framing a constitution, training an Iraqi army and the threat of a permanent U.S. military presence—has exacerbated the chaos.

Another Vietnam? - Max Boot, Wall Street Journal

Ever since the mid-1970s, critics of American military involvement have warned that any decision to deploy armed forces abroad--in Lebanon and El Salvador in the 1980s, in Kuwait, Somalia, and Kosovo in the 1990s, and more recently in Iraq and Afghanistan--would result in "another Vietnam." Conversely, supporters of those interventions have adamantly resisted any Vietnam comparisons. President George W. Bush boldly abandoned that template with his speech to the Veterans of Foreign Wars on Wednesday. In a skillful bit of political jujitsu, he cited Vietnam not as evidence that the Iraq War is unwinnable, but to argue that the costs of giving up the fight would be catastrophic--just as they were in Southeast Asia. This has met with predictable and angry denunciations from antiwar advocates who argue that the consequences of defeat in Vietnam weren't so grave. After all, isn't Vietnam today an emerging economic power that is cultivating friendly ties with the U.S.? True, but that's 30 years after the fact. In the short-term, the costs of defeat were indeed heavy. More than a million people perished in the killing fields of Cambodia, while in Vietnam, those who worked with American forces were consigned, as Mr. Bush noted, to prison camps "where tens of thousands perished." Many more fled as "boat people," he continued, "many of them going to their graves in the South China Sea." That assessment actually understates the terrible repercussions from the American defeat, whose ripples spread around the world. In the late 1970s, America's enemies seized power in countries from Mozambique to Iran to Nicaragua. American hostages were seized aboard the SS Mayaguez (off Cambodia) and in Tehran. The Red Army invaded Afghanistan. It is impossible to prove the connection with the Vietnam War, but there is little doubt that the enfeeblement of a superpower encouraged our enemies to undertake acts of aggression that they might otherwise have shied away from. Indeed, as Mr. Bush noted, jihadists still gain hope from what Ayman al Zawahiri accurately describes as "the aftermath of the collapse of the American power in Vietnam and how they ran and left their agents."

More...

Continue reading "24 August SWJ Op-Ed Roundup" »

Prospects for Iraq’s Stability: Some Security Progress but Political Reconciliation Elusive

Update to NIE, Prospects for Iraq’s Stability: A Challenging Road Ahead

August 2007

Continue on for the NIE's Key Judgements and News / Blogs Links...

Continue reading "Prospects for Iraq’s Stability" »

What September Won’t Settle – George Will, Washington Post

Come September, America might slip closer toward a Weimar moment. It would be milder than the original but significantly disagreeable. After the First World War, politics in Germany's new Weimar Republic were poisoned by the belief that the army had been poised for victory in 1918 and that one more surge could have turned the tide. Many Germans bitterly concluded that the political class, having lost its nerve and will to win, capitulated. The fact that fanciful analysis fed this rancor did not diminish its power. The Weimar Republic was fragile; America's domestic tranquility is not. Still, remember the bitterness stirred by the accusatory question "Who lost China?" and corrosive suspicions that the fruits of victory in Europe had been squandered by Americans of bad character or bad motives at Yalta. So, consider this: When Gen. David Petraeus delivers his report on the war, his Washington audience will include two militant factions. Perhaps nothing he can responsibly say will sway either, so September will reinforce animosities.

A Surge of War Support – Washington Times editorial

With positive military news continuing from Iraq, President Bush yesterday seized the moment. In a speech to the national convention of the Veterans of Foreign Wars in Kansas City, Mr. Bush recalled the naysayers of the previous century who questioned Japan's suitability for democracy. He recalled others who regarded the setbacks in the fight against Communist aggression in Korea as evidence that that the war was a blunder. The first dissenters were wrong. The second were myopic. Many who oppose the war now see progress in Iraq after the "surge" of new troops. Sens. Carl Levin and Hillary Clinton have lent their voices to that chorus, and this poses difficult questions for their friends on the left. "We've begun to change tactics in Iraq, and in some areas, particularly in Anbar province, it's working," Mrs. Clinton said. Just about everyone today applauds the foreign-policy goals and ideals that undergirded the commitment to Japan and Korea more than a half-century ago. If the good news of the surge continues from Iraq, the president's critics will no doubt ask why he didn't send enough troops in the first place. It's a fair question. But if the good news continues there won't be a logical basis to continue the clamor for withdrawal.

More...

Continue reading "23 August SWJ Op-Ed Roundup" »

... so you can read this:

Challenging the Generals by Fred Kaplan

On Aug. 1, Gen. Richard Cody, the United States Army’s vice chief of staff, flew to the sprawling base at Fort Knox, Ky., to talk with the officers enrolled in the Captains Career Course. These are the Army’s elite junior officers. Of the 127 captains taking the five-week course, 119 had served one or two tours of duty in Iraq or Afghanistan, mainly as lieutenants. Nearly all would soon be going back as company commanders. A captain named Matt Wignall, who recently spent 16 months in Iraq with a Stryker brigade combat team, asked Cody, the Army’s second-highest-ranking general, what he thought of a recent article by