Y3K?
As coalition uniformed fatalities has reached 3000, and estimates of the death toll to Iraqis pass the half million mark, and may be as high as 750,000 - the political consequences, muted by fear, confusion and complacency are beginning to be felt. In the UK a prominent general says that it is time to declare defeat and go home.
The American uniformed death toll, of 2759, might seem small compared to the 58,209 in Vietnam, but this misses an important effect - namely the effect that medivacing and advanced trauma medicine - some developed to deal with civilian shootings - has saved lives. If those wounded in Iraq died in the same proportion as their counterparts in Vietnam, then the death toll would be 13,083. If the wounded died at the same rate as in World War II, then the death toll now would be 26,738.
This is not, by any measure, a splendid little war, but instead is the American Afghanistan - and we are reaching the dark at the end of the tunnel. The ruling party spews hate and defends sex predators, even as Baghdad burns.
If last year was the year of storms, this year will be written in the annals of accountability.
The cold reality is that while it is better to live than die, it also means that tens of thousands of Americans are going to be fighting this war long after they come home. Since it is the civilian authority which decides on war, America and Americans now have a duty to be with Americans who served. Iraq was the wrong war, in the wrong place, at the wrong time - which makes the duty doubly important. Having risked the blood of our youth and our patriotic on a war of aggression, the requirement to return their devotion with our own could not be clearer. America will probably not establish a day for thsoe who served and died in Iraq, as it did not fro those who served in Vietnam, but few groups aer owed such rememberance as much.
As important to note is the death toll. Even taking the lower end of the Lancet published study's estimates, the invasion and overthrow of Saddam is as intense a catastrophe for the Iraqis as the Saddam ordered war. For the second time in as many generations, Iraqis have died in terrible numbers over a war that they did not want, nor did they will.
For these two reasons, while there is a burden to realize the conseqences, an equal onus is to make sure that such a failure of judgement, law and political sense does not happen again on our watch. The only way out, is forward.
Which is why it is a duty to reflect on what misconceptions America allowed that took us to a war of aggression - let us not engage in the euphemistic "prevention", nor the out right inaccurate "preëmption" - and how we have allowed the conduct of the war to be so atrociously mishandled, without let or hinderance, for so long. Never have so few stolen so much from so many - for so little a provocation.
The Road to Hell
I have been a critic of the war since before most people knew there was going to be a war. I tracked down the people who were the would be ruling elite of of a new Iraq, and found them to be a coy, corrupt, and incomptent cabal. Many had no resumes, and appeared out of nowhere - including one person who would end up writing and later bungling the internal security plan for Iraq. The chorous of warning was not loud enough, nor did it have the ears of the right people. It included a retired 4 star general and former Supreme Commander of NATO, who is now barnstorming the country in support of Democratic congressional candidates. It included names that were obscure then, but have reached a kind of blog-stardom as they raised their voices - people such as Juan Cole, now indelibly asssociated with is informed comments on the march of foreign affairs.
This criticism was cogent and correct. It did not source from reflexive anti-militarism, nor did it make wild predictions of failure of the invasion. Getting in, as any imperial power will tell you, is almost never the hard part. Baghdad, primed with some bribes and a bit of bombing, fell rather rapidly. However while it did not become "Stalingrad on the Tigris", it has become Babylon reborn, with an American Assyria giving up virtually the rest of the world to hold it.
So why were these voices of reason not even listend to? In part because many people who could be voices of reason instead pandered to court culture. Perhaps in their own minds they knew that Iraq was a mistake, but they couched their objections in too little, too late form, that weakly asked whether this was such a good idea, after it had already been decided upon.
But more than any single group of elites, the blame must rest, ultimately, with the American public, who voted for invasion of Iraq, with an unhindered and unlimited mandate of power for the Republican Party and George Bush. While the pluralities were thin, and in some cases non-existent, the American people consented, at least in the negative, to a government of one.
By treating a security concern as a domestic political event, the United States betrayed two generations of policy - a policy that the United States would act first in the interest of the international order, an order which had the United States as primus inter pares, and accruing benefits that other nations did not have. The laying down of this place of responsibilty may well be permanent - American may well be on the long slope downwards to being a rich China - a self-interested actor, rather than a leader. If so, there are painful adjustments that the American public will have to make, since much of our internal economy rests on our privileged access to oil.
The confluence of domestic politics and economics is the one which must be examined if we are to understand why America so easily went on an ill considered adventure into an unstable region of the world.
Something Old, Something New
It is no exageration to say that oil is our black gold standard for money. This is not to say that it has a large volume of the total world exchange - gold didn't under the gold standard - nor that it is absolutely the most profitable business in the world. However, it is the creator of the ultimate value, and those that have oil and who need to buy little, determine the shape of the monetary order.
The simplistic explanation for Iraq is to go in for the oil, however this is not exactly correct, and it is sufficiently wrong as to be an easy way for apologists of the war to create confusion by refuting this explanation. Instead the oil part of the equation is over access. We can be sure that every barrel of oil that can be profitably pumped out of the sands of Iraq will be. We can be sure that Saddma, if he ahd been allowed to, would have done so.
However, that pumping would be under the control of Saddam, and the profits would have gone to his regime. This created two problems. The first is that is is very likely that Saddam would have begun his attempt to build up his military machine - he lives in a dangerous part of the world, and has made dangerous enemies. He also clearly had ambitions of territorial agrandizement of his own.
The second problem is that major western powers do not have the drilling rights to most of the world's oil. If oil were availably everywhere, then we would not be drilling deep into the gulf, but engaging in a massive build out of cheap oil sources in the Middle East. But the owners of those supplies have no reason to pump it all at $10/barrel if they have a choice, and instead create artificial scarcity - or rather marginal scarcity - the price that they charge will rise to the price of others replacing their production.
As a result, Iraq offered a double inducement - first Saddam was going to put the oil revenue to no good end, and second, invading Iraq would solve the supply problem for a very large and wealthy class of American companies. Not that they would engage in an frenzied build out, but they would be in the driver's seat. The upside was enormous. But there was another part of the upside - a transformation of the American economy, and the global economy.
Beg, Borrow or Steal
This second incentive was on the demand side. While the US spends, and is drawing down savings, many other nations are saving. In the Middle East, this saving isn't exactly voluntary - the elites keep the profits, and use "religious protectionism" to convince their citizens that they don't need a Western life style. The long pressure on the American economy is that the arab oilarchies sell oil, but they do not buy as much. The long discipline of the conservative era of economics was slowly making it possible to contain this, but that broke down.
This paradox - that conservative economic mistakes broke the conservative economic system - meant that when Bush came to office there was not only a need to get a flow of oil online, but to create a flow of demand for American goods to put the current accounts back into balance. This was the whole "democracy" in the middle east - replace a Saudi Arabia which sells oil, but also takes a heavy rake, and does not buy as much as it sells - with an Iraq that has a government that is desperate to buy. It seemed like a match made in, if no heaven, at least the Chamber of Commerce.
This need for a dumping ground for US goods is one which is familiar to any student of colonialism. The colony supplies raw materials, and markets for the manufactured goods of the colonial power - thereby supporting the currency of the colonial power.
Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy
These two generic colonialist advantages had a third implication - a United States involved in a more or less permanent occupation of Iraq must become a top down military society. Every aspect of its economy, government, and educational system would have to be geared to fielding an occupation army, and training the kind of people who can administer the empire. The British educational system of "public schools" was meant to do this in the Victorian period, and No Child Left Behind was meant to create a new White Elephant's Burden that would force America to be two reactionary parties who would trade power, but not change course.
This triad offered a piece of the puzzle to each of the major Republican constituencies. To their plutocratic arm: a boundless new source of profit, restricted competition, and favorable legal climate, in addition to a market for goods. To the neo-conservative, global hawks, a basis for a New American order which was not tied down with the problems of multilateralism, the UN and a host of other liberal ideas. To their reactionary base, a Christianist army state, which abhors all of the social liberalism that they abhor. There was no line of cleavage, because all would profit by this one project.
However, as any one who as followed business knows, the downside is the other consideration.
Little Jack Horner, Sat in a Corner
The downside was a short period of vast subsidies, incredibly high oil prices and the more or less unrestricted ability to pack the supreme court with full throated reactionaries. The downside, in otherwords, was there was very little downside. Certainly there was a chance that the Republicans would lose power, but as long as the country subscribed to the idea that it wants to be conservative, and as long as elites have an abhorance of accountability applied to other elites - that was the worst that could happen - being out of power for a while until the next chance to loot the treasury on some scheme to change the world.
The important insight to understand is that if the alternative to glittering gamble is long, painful, boring and angst ladden slog, then the next good hair Republican promising tax cuts could swipe the oval office.
Now, if trillions of dollars are on the table, and the only downside is that you aren't going to get to steal all of them if the voters wake up - what is to stop it from happening?
Beggerman, Thief
At the root of the problem then is that most of the people who architected the strategy in Iraq, as with many of the people who architected Iran-Contra, walked. That is, they will not see a day in the docket, let alone a day in a cell. While the mechanics of corruption such as DeLay, Ney, Cunningham and Taft will be arrested and tried - Rice, Bush, Rumsfeld and Cheney, who created the scheme will be untouched. This tells every would be reactionary that the only crime is being far enough down the totem pole.
Since all of the economic factors which made Iraq look like a good idea, and all of the political factors, will still be in place, there is no reason to believe that we will not be bogged down in another disaster in a very short period of time. More over, the demographic reality is that this war is not going to produce a demographic anti-war wave, and the last one is in such ill-repute in the country, that it is doubtful they wield any influence at all.
This means that the world is going to look upon the US differently, as a country that needs to be restrained.
Pouring Gasoline on the Fire
However, while there was little or no downside for the architects of disaster and the cheerleaders for failure - there is and was tremendous downside for the United States. The very loose monetary policy and use of outsourcing that allowed Bush to pursue an aggresive war without significant consumer inflation for the first 3 years of the war, has created Russia and China as nations with the ability to dictate and shape US response. The resource boom has turned Russia from a basket case - to a bread basket of minerals and natural gas. China, as the holder of vast quantities of US debt, can dampen American response to North Korea, Iran and other troubles. Distrusted by Europe, envied by the land empires of Asia - the price of Bushes Bombast has been an acceleration of American decline.
Iraq, poured gasoline on the fire of the rise of non-Democratic developed powers.
From the forgoing it might seem as if I am an American pessimist, and the worst case scenario of a spiralling decline of America and American standards of living is both very real, and already in progress. However, there is a converse reality, and that is that while American leadership has been tarnished and degraded, there is no clear alternative. Europe and Japan do not have the military will or might to act as the global edge of the sword. China and Russia while growing, are fragile.
America may be, in the apt Hoffman phrase, beset by Gulliver's troubles, but it is still immeasurably strong in both the quantity of economic activity, and its ability to mobilize it. America's high ratio of "white" sector to "grey" and "black" sectors of the economy, its developed work force, its high GDP, its university system - and its very visible political system of conflict can all be advantages which allow the United States to focus its political will on a restoration.
Consider that while loose monetary policy has fed the fire, it is within the reach of the US to change that. While under-investment has put America at competitive disadvantage, a rather simple series of tax increases on the wealthy can shift the investment from domestic consumption to international export. While the mangled implementation of globalism that now gives "free trade" a bad name has eroded the position of America's labor force, this is to no small extent because of the vast inefficiencies of a corrupt war time economy. There is very little wrong with America that peace and a return to prosperity after an adjusting recession cannot cure. Since the recession is coming - the pain - why shouldn't we plan for the gain. A roll back of the vicious bankruptcy bill, a ground up rewrite of Medicare Part D, an increase in minimum wage laws, expansion of unionization and an orderly government bail out program would blunt many of the worst effects - and simultanouesly allow for a transition from over consumption in hopes of forcing others to save, to real savings.
Four Score
It was Lincoln who urged his listeners at Gettysburg to remember that the struggle was over the question of whether any nation conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal could long endure. In essence, all American wars are tests of this question - whether just or unjust, wise or, more often, foolish - the ultimate question is whether Americans can live up to the principles which they cherish. In Iraq we allowed hysterical fear to combine with crass miscalculation to create a political coalition that undertook a colonial war under the delusion of Democratic restoration.
The results of this war are still within our hands. Not in Iraq - because they were never in our hands in Iraq, from the moment we trusted George Bush to do anything except think of what was best for George Bush. But they are in our hands in America. Should we fail to punish the wicked, restore the wounded, and renew our committment to equality for all, everywhere in the world, then you can be sure that those who have fallen in Iraq will have died in vain.
If their deaths are to mean anything, it will not be the liberation of Iraq - which can only be accomplished by its people, and there is every sign that Iraq is marching towards a corrupt de facto partition - but the liberation of America from the demons that have haunted us for a generation, and the fear to face our addiction to oil and other nation's savings.
These are not insurmountable obstacles, made, as they are, of paper and bad habit, and held together by a tissue of trepidation and routine. But they are there, and they grow higher with each passing day. Just as the mountains of the dead grow higher with each passing day.
"If those wounded in Iraq died in the same proportion as their counterparts in Vietnam, then the death toll would be 13,083."
Yes, and if this were the Battle of Crecy they'd all be dying of typhoid. And if they were fighting Lee Kiang his photon guns would have killed everybody in the first 10 seconds of the war.
This meme is very common suddenly among those to whom it's just now occurring, five years into a war, that technology has probably changed more than just weaponry. I'm not sure what they think it's supposed to mean-- if we were only fighting fair, we'd have way more casualties like we should? Sorry, I'm all for fewer casualties on our side, more on their side, and a relentless demonstration of the technological superiority of democratic, science-oriented societies over ones where people sit around all day keeping their women covered head to toe while they memorize their holy book over and over.
October 13, 2006 9:28 PM | Reply | Permalink
"Sorry, I'm all for fewer casualties on our side, more on their side, and a relentless demonstration of the technological superiority of democratic, science-oriented societies over ones where people sit around all day keeping their women covered head to toe while they memorize their holy book over and over."
However, we don't have fewer casualties, only fewer deaths. That means our country will be home to many thousands of terribly injured and only partly recovered soldiers for a whole generation. Each time the Republicans get back into power they will again try to eliminate or at least greatly reduce the cost of caring for these injured soldiers. That is not a good thing to look forward to.
As far as sitting around memorizing their holy book, we do that too, but we call our holy book the Bible. It's true that we don't keep our women covered head to toe, so I guess you were at least partly correct. On the other hand, what business is it of ours what people do with their spare time in other nations?
Hoppy in Sacramento
October 13, 2006 9:55 PM | Reply | Permalink
QUESTION: Do you believe that the biggest drag on the Republican Party is the situation in Iraq?
THE PRESIDENT: I believe that the situation in Iraq is, no question, tough on the American psyche . . . no question this is an issue, but so is the economy. And I believe there'll be -- I still stand by my prediction, we'll have a Republican Speaker and a Republican leader of the Senate. And the reason I say that is because I believe the two biggest issues in this campaign are, one, the economy. And the economy is growing.
George W. Bush
Press Conference
October 11, 2006
October 13, 2006 10:01 PM | Reply | Permalink
Over 400,000 Iraqis have died a violent death as a result of the US occupation. This fact is true with 97.5 percent confidence. I challenge anyone to refute these numbers.
Kudos to Stirling for bringing up the topic.
But I find it shameful of TPM Cafe that it took so long. I'll be monitoring how more discussion of this topic will be found on this site.
We learn from one of the two most prestigious medical journals in the world that the US is the biggest mass killer of the 21st century.
And we have a discussion of Iraq on this site that goes on for 3 days with not a mention of that ghastly revelation.
I seem to recall a flood of articles about Germans just minding their own business while horrific monstrosities were done in their names.
Just remember: our country has just slaughtered half a million. What do you have to say?
When Slaughter and Ikenberry talk of "concert of democracies," er, does that include a democracy that has just slaughtered half a million innocent people? What exactly is a rogue nation if one that kills so many innocent people unnecessarily is not one?
But it's ok. Our infinite self-love will get us over that hurdle. For, deep inside, this country doesn't give a damn.
October 13, 2006 10:18 PM | Reply | Permalink
The ratio of wounded to killed has been dropping, in US forces, since WWI. Tactical differences play more of a role of getting injured at all, but a large part of the greater survival rate is constantly improving military medicine. The Korean War had considerably better survival rates than WWII, which is generally attributed to the beginning of helicopter evacuation, which became routine in Vietnam.
There was very little use of protective gear, other than helmets, until Vietnam, and there it was mostly by flight crew. Soldiers constantly make tradeoffs between the protection of armor (and even helmets), and the loss in mobility and, in hot climates, the chance of heat injury. Still, this is the first US war where body armor was fairly routine, and much better integrated into the helmet. Another major improvement, which started in 1991, is the Combat Lifesaver training, which is given to 1 in 10 soldiers now but there's a strong pressure, from the bottom up, to make it 100%.
All these things tend to mean that people who would have died in other wars will survive. It's not clear that it means the ones who would otherwise have died will be disabled or not. Each war has its characteristic sets of factors causing injury, preventing injury, and treating injury.
I've had a number of friends in Iraq, two of whom were injured, not too seriously. One is thoroughly annoyed; he was driving a Humvee when they hit an IED. It flipped the car onto its side, but didn't directly hurt anyone. Unfortunately, the major in the passenger seat hadn't fastened his seat belt, and fell against the driver, breaking six ribs.
The other one, a medic, credits his nonstandard .45 automatic pistol for saving his life. He didn't shoot it, but a round that would otherwise have hit his heart smashed the pistol frame. He had nose and rib fractures, and probably some concussion, but his most serious injuries were burns from going back and pulling people out. He thinks he was concussed, since when the relief unit pulled up, he stood there demanding to know their medical credentials (he's a physician assistant), and, in mid-argument, passed out.
--
Howard
*equal opportunity offense to both extremes*
October 13, 2006 10:26 PM | Reply | Permalink
"Yes, and if this were the Battle of Crecy they'd all be dying of typhoid. "
Typhoid is up 1100% among Iraqi civilians after the invasion because of the botched job of getting water supplies back on line. Congratulations, by your own right wingnut admission the US has managed to set Iraq back 650 years.
Stirling Newberry http://www.bopnews.com
October 13, 2006 10:32 PM | Reply | Permalink
"This meme is very common suddenly among those to whom it's just now occurring, five years into a war, that technology has probably changed more than just weaponry."
It will eventually occur to even people like you that it isn't only the American side that is taking advantage of changes in technology.
Stirling Newberry http://www.bopnews.com
October 13, 2006 10:34 PM | Reply | Permalink
"The ratio of wounded to killed has been dropping, in US forces, since WWI. Tactical differences play more of a role of getting injured at all, but a large part of the greater survival rate is constantly improving military medicine."
I leave it as an exercise for our brilliant Republican apologist arm chair generals to calculate the rate of wounding per 1000 soldiers in contact with the enemy, and determine whether the present tactics in Iraq are better or worse than those in previous wars.
I will give you a hint - it isn't going to make the current light military strategy look very good.
Stirling Newberry http://www.bopnews.com
October 13, 2006 10:36 PM | Reply | Permalink
"Sorry, I'm all for fewer casualties on our side,"
There are more casualties, fewer fatalities. Learning E N G L I S H might be a good project in your copious spare time. As for "relentless superiority" - that would have come if we had won, rather than lost this war.
And we are losing it. In no small part because Iraq is a foul up run by fuck ups and covered for by screw ups.
Stirling Newberry http://www.bopnews.com
October 13, 2006 10:38 PM | Reply | Permalink
Can't say I know many Republican apologist arm chair generals...a few sergeants, certainly. I freely admit that the military operations in urban terrain (MOUT) are, as they always have been, a meat grinder. If one is going to discuss casualties as a function of tactics, then the tactics need to be apples and apples. Operations in Iraq are taking place more in cities than had been the case in Vietnam. Urban combat is always a meatgrinder.
I have never supported even the strategic concepts of the Phase IV aspects of this war, nor supported the original invasion. Nevertheless, the stability operations are at a FUBAB level, not so much of the tactics and equipment themselves, but due to the political strategies that put our people in unwinnable situations. In multiple posts, I have drawn parallels with the WWII OPERATION RANKIN planning for stability operations, and identified differences.
Current operations, due to political constraints, violate about every Field Manual and Student Text I've read on stability operations. Even the student (i.e., active duty officer) research report out of the midcareer and senior military colleges are, in some cases, giving devastating critiques. The faculty/research institutes are even more emphatic.
At the same time, I find no reason to hide behind sarcasm and condescension. The matter can be discussed rationally, and indeed blame placed at various places.
--
Howard
*equal opportunity offense to both extremes*
October 13, 2006 11:00 PM | Reply | Permalink
Current operations, due to political constraints, violate about every Field Manual and Student Text I've read on stability operations.
I would like you to expand on this. You seem to be saying that the U.S. forces are operating incorrectly or less efficiently, or in ways that expose them to unnecessary danger, because of political restrictions. What are they being forced to do in the wrong way?
October 13, 2006 11:12 PM | Reply | Permalink
Let me give a few definitions to start. Regular combat troops do get training and have doctrine for what is called Military Operations in Urban Territory (MOUT). The curricula see this to be avoided at all possible, but, when it cannot, it's a question of regular military units on both sides, maybe with some irregulars. Basic MOUT assumes uniformed enemy, although the latest training, especially at JRTC at Fort Polk, does have a lot more emphasis on couterguerilla operations.
Army Special Forces, while combat arms, have a quite different set of missions. One of these is Foreign Internal Defense, where they train and possibly assist a friendly government in operations against guerillas.
Essentially, US combat arms units are not intended to be used as long-term urban security units. They have done a good deal of improvising with equipment and doctrine not really meant for the purpose. Sure, an M1A2 tank can be a moving fortress giving cover to troops, but what happens when a street is too narrow, or a local bridge won't hold a 60-ton vehicle? Bradleys aren't much better. Armored Humvees are too light for the now-expected weapons. The Stryker wheeled armored vehicles, with some in-theater modifications, seem to be the right
What is happening is that troops trained and oriented to high-mobility, high-speed, short-duration intense combat are being used as constabulary police. During the German occupation after WWII, combat forces kept in readiness for a Warsaw Pact push were a completely different organization than the Constabulary. Neither tried to do one anothers' jobs, and neither had the set of skills of the other.
One of my greatest criticisms of the Adminstration, once the decision to attack was made, is they didn't have [possibly multinational] Constabulary and civil affairs troops in adequate numbers, and had no rational plan on Debaathification and letting the Iraqis do anything as far as running their countries -- all things excruciatingly planned well ahead of the need in WWII Germany.
--
Howard
*equal opportunity offense to both extremes*
October 13, 2006 11:35 PM | Reply | Permalink
Well, thanks for all that, but the question was about what ways the military is being politically restrained in their operations.
The paragraph I quoted from says that operations are not going by the book and the results are getting devastating critiques at all, or at least several, levels. The reason given to not go by the book is “due to political constraints”.
I have heard a million times that we could have won in Viet Nam "if they would have just let us". I was wondering if that is going to be the excuse this time.
October 14, 2006 12:12 AM | Reply | Permalink
I said "technological" superiority, you E N G L I S H major you.
More casualties than what? WWII? I think YOU mean "proportionately." Which, again, is somewhat meaningless stripped of context. If I have full body armor I can use riskier tactics than if I'm a Zulu in loincloth. That doesn't make them wrong, quite the opposite.
Of course those riskier tactics are largely to reduce civilian casualties, despite which we've somehow killed more Iraqis by hand than we killed Germans in the firebombing of Dresden. It must be true, just ask the Lancet, they should know-- they're E N G L I S H. LOL
October 14, 2006 6:03 AM | Reply | Permalink
Yes, I'm sure the statistics collected before Saddam fell were entirely accurate.
I keep trying to get one of my Kurdish friends to come on here and post about this kind of "Saddam nostalgist" attitude. Of course mostly they're too busy building a country at last to want to mess with it. But we'll see.
October 14, 2006 6:07 AM | Reply | Permalink
Try this: there is no book on having the same force that did high intensity combat, then turn around and become constabulary and civil affairs with an inadequate number of men, and under optimistic rather than pessimistic assumptions of how the population would react.
The book said they shouldn't have invaded without clear plans for stability operations and adequate forces for it. As one reference, try Fred Ikle's Every War Must End, revised edition. Ikle is a respected scholar who also held subcabinet posts in several Republic administrations, but does a very detailed analyses of how many countries started wars they couldn't finish. An essential part of the initial planning is that you understand what constitutes victory, and what to do in various end states.
This is decidedly not a question of the military being restricted, which often was the case in Vietnam. It is a question of putting combat forces into a situation where they did not have the capabilities for postwar operations, and there are no massive occupation forces ready to replace them.
--
Howard
*equal opportunity offense to both extremes*
October 14, 2006 9:13 AM | Reply | Permalink
"If I have full body armor I can use riskier tactics than if I'm a Zulu in loincloth."
Ummm, they didn't armor Humvees because the armor's weight caused them to break down faster, burn more gas and drive more slowly. And, if you wear body armor, you just might be a sitting duck that doesn't waddle too fast?
I'm not sure that Stirling has mentioned Bill Clinton's sanctions, but Madeline Albright never denied that over 500,000 Iraqi children died because of them.
In some ways, I think that Rumsfeld really thought that the battle wouldn't be fought by hand because of preditor drones, white phosphorious, satellites, night cameras, etc.... and the fact that the sanctions had already greatly crippled Iraq w/o any hand-to-hand combat.
The Iraqis, however, have decided not to give up their freedom for security...
October 14, 2006 9:42 AM | Reply | Permalink
Technology is only as good as the strategic policies that direct it, that's why we lost the war before the first bomb was dropped.
Like to know what Mgmax knows about 'riskier tactics' and body armor, why don't you signup at your local recruiter, I am sure they could use military experts like you-LOL
October 14, 2006 10:14 AM | Reply | Permalink
Is that what the 20,000 US casualties and $334,000,000,000.00 the US has spent is for?? A free Kurdistan? They already had that for a much lower price under Clinton.
Hey, and Saddam was once on our side! So what if folks have nostalgia for those days, didn't even right wing dittoheads love him then, Rummy did!
October 14, 2006 10:26 AM | Reply | Permalink
Here's something that might be the biggest untold story of the War. The number of American wounded in Iraq. I have NEVER seen this discussed anywhere but on a few anti-war web-sites. There's no media attention to the wounded. I never see any discussion of their efforts at rehabilitation, they are never shown being fitted for artifical limbs, or interviewed about their experiences attempting to re-integrate into society after their discharge. Other than in the local media, Iraq war veterans are never mentioned at all, and even then only briefly.
Well, here's the breakdown. We've lost over 22,000 men and women, killed or wounded. An entire combat division! Why is THIS not part of the national consciousness? Every mention of American casualties in Iraq ought to use "casualties" including BOTH killed and wounded. Don't the wounded count? It's not enough to be horribly maimed for life?
The Pentagon is hiding the total statistics for political reasons. Because 23,000 is a larger number than 2,300.
American Military Casualties in Iraq
American Deaths Date Total In Combat
Since war began (3/19/03): 2756 2248
Since "Mission Accomplished" (5/1/03): 2619 2149
Since Capture of Saddam (12/13/03): 2289 1941
Since Handover (6/29/04): 1890 1616
Since Election (1/31/05): 1320 1131
American Wounded Official Estimated
Total Wounded: 20,468 20,000-48,100
Latest Fatality October 11th, 2006
Page last updated 10/13/06 10:29 pm EDT
Others
Other Coalition Troops
232
US Military Deaths - Afghanistan 340
Why do we permit this refusal to even properly release all the casualty figures? The Pentagon has managed to lower the figures by classifying it out of existence.
October 14, 2006 10:56 AM | Reply | Permalink
"We learn from one of the two most prestigious medical journals in the world that the US is the biggest mass killer of the 21st century..."
The manufacture of consent requires a conditioned, branded, and co-opted press and public. It has been said that in an era of endless opinion, fact is king. Fact, notably that our country is a Mass Killer, is still rarely stated these days, and hard to fully disseminate. It's like finding out that your mommy is a contract murderer while eating her bread and drinking her milk.
Why no reaction yet? "Psychic numbing," physician Helen Calidicott termed it, during the Cold War years of nuclear proliferation and superpower rivalry. Denial, too. That was before the groundswell of consciousness raising and outrage followed "Fate of the Earth" and similar compilations of fact and expertise.
One way to correct a crooked line is to lay down a straight one. I think of Steven Biko and Donald Woods and Beyers Naude and so many others who blew the lid off the apartheid regime. I think, too, of the price of honesty when the powerholders are corrupt -- and corrupting others faster than the speed of truth.
It also takes the voices of prophets and poets to shine an intense and inescapable light into the darkness that has become our government. It takes music, the opposing tensions of violins and bows collapsing in exhaustion upon one another, at times, to realize a deeper sadness than even we thought possible. And, from there, and there only, can we tap the authentic bases of hope.
Whatever can be said of this moment, this latest assault upon our collective conscience, our potential is still forward. May we have the grace to grab onto the honest hand proffered, to move forward, to summon the soul needed to scale a daunting and glorious mountain, our eyes trained and steady upon the light.
We know that we can be American again, because it devastates us that we are no longer faithful.
"Let justice roll down like waters. And righteousness like a mighty stream."
October 14, 2006 11:00 AM | Reply | Permalink
Let's not forget one important part of the Iraq War picture:
America might lose, or may even have already lost. But does anyone actually win?
The answer, at least to Iraqi's, is no.
Arguments can be made that neighboring powers, like Iran, will ultimately gain from the situation, but for those people who call Iraq home (insurgents and civilians alike) nobody wins.
Being embroiled in a sectarian street war which has no near-term hope of peace is what Iraqi's have gotten for their "defeat" of America.
Who is to say that America is not more feared now than before the war?
If I were living in a Middle Eastern nation with a government hostile to the U.S., I would dread an aftermath like Iraq far more than if America invaded and succeeded. At least then there would be order.
It is becoming clear that Bush acknowledges the failure of the stated goals for Iraq. What is also clear is that by allowing U.S. forces to hunker down in the Green Zone while Iraqi's delve into possible civil war, he carries an attitude of "if my boat sinks, you're coming down with me."
For non-militant Iraqi people, that seems to be a far worse notion than if the U.S. had succeeded.
October 14, 2006 11:44 AM | Reply | Permalink
Nice job of completely missing the point. Namely, that the number of deaths vastly understates the magnitude of the disaster that George W. Bush has caused.
Personally, I'd prefer to restrict our target list to right-wing strawmen. That imaginary guy who thinks we should let our soldiers die on purpose so the world can see how big a failure Bush is, sounds like a real jerk. It wouldn't take 20,000+ casualties to kill him over and over.
-- "Politics is not the art of the possible. It consists in choosing between the disastrous and the unpalatable." (John Kenneth Galbraith)
October 14, 2006 12:35 PM | Reply | Permalink
Then... we can expect you to support the bombing of Alabama? ;)
Seriously though I have to take issue with your characterization of Iraq. It certainly wasn't a Democratic society, though it had had previous elections, and it went through the exercise of fake elections to confer legitimacy.
But on the other hand, it was not a society where women covered themselves head to toe while all the men memorized their holy books.
If you were saying 'Afghanistan' I'd agree you were right. But the reality is that Iraq was probably the single most progressive and secular society in the Arab world, rivalled only by Jordan, Algeria, Syria and Egypt.
Women in Iraq enjoyed western dress and civil right unheard of in the rest of the Arab world. They were free to seek education, to teach, to become doctors. I could stand to be wrong, but I believe that women were even represented in Saddam's government.
Iraqi society as a whole was fairly secular, with the emphasis on modernism.
This is not Saddam-nostalgia, although its disturbing that this phenomenon is occurring in Iraq among many.
It's just the fact, jack.
As for fighting fair, I'm pretty much against that. The object of a fight is to win. If you're not prepared to do what it takes, stay home.
On the other hand, if winning takes an act of genocide... Do you really want to start that fight?
Some Roman once said, "they made a desert and called it victory."
A vast majority of non-Kurdish Shiites and Sunnis, perhaps as high as eighty or ninety per cent, believe that attacks on Americans are justified and want you out of their country. That eighty or ninety per cent is the inexhaustible cornucopia from which the insurgents come flowing. Kill them all today, that 18 out of 20 million that hates you will simply replace them.
How do you win? What proportion of that 18 million Iraqi's do you have to kill? 1/3? One half? Two thirds? Three quarters? All of them?
Maybe you don't have to kill them all. Maybe you just have to kill a proportion of the combat age males? Of course, killing that proportion of combat age males sufficient to end the war will necessarily involve collateral damage in the rest of the population.
How many people are you willing to kill? Because if you really are intent on winning... 650,000 is just the tip of the iceberg. Think millions. Think six million. Or Twelve million. Do you really have the stomache for it?
Go home, American.
October 14, 2006 1:44 PM | Reply | Permalink
Gettysburg.
America is more reviled, disgraced, and impotent, not more feared. Whose army is Bush going to use to invade the next country?? As billmon.org has said, even bombing Iran may be considered, by Iran, to be just another move on the chessboard, not a tossing the table and chessboard out the window to end the game.
The ultimate result of this fiasco is less US prestige, less US influence and less US capability to project power. It may even result in our physical ejection from bases the Persian Gulf region when it is seen that we just create wars and instability. When the US loses, every other power broker in the world wins.
October 14, 2006 3:51 PM | Reply | Permalink
Interesting that the helicopter crash of Jan. 26th, 2005, in which 33 troops died is still "under investigation", as related on the Pentagon website, and the casualties are listed as "non-hostile", apparently in a war zone all aircraft downings are non-hostile until proven otherwise. Do they really not know why this aircraft went down? More misinformation and concealment to befuddle the US public?
October 14, 2006 8:34 PM | Reply | Permalink
Look at some of the domestic aircraft incident investigations. I don't see final reports for things going back to 1996. Factual and probable cause, yes.
I can think of commercial airliner crashes going back many years, where they never got as far as probable cause. Several 737s just went into a dive and crashed, and, perhaps a decade later, no one really knows what happened--one, IIRC, was in Colorado. There was a crash coming into Pittsburgh where there was some suggestive evidence of a rudder problem, but it was never pinned down -- all operators went to tighter inspections of rudders.
Not everything that happens is deliberate misinformation. IIRC, military helicopters tend not to have cockpit voice recorders or flight data recorders, which obviously help civilian investigations.
I don't know what happened in this case -- but I have studied enough NTSB reports to realize sometimes they really don't know why an aircraft went down. This is a mass of metal and fuel hitting the ground at high speed. Sometimes, the crucial piece of evidence could be a part that broke off early, and is never found and analyzed. All the investigators can say is they didn't find the left rear wobblethrasher, and wobblethrasher failure might have caused a crash with these characteristics. Without examining the missing wobblethrasher, they have no way of telling why it broke off.
--
Howard
*equal opportunity offense to both extremes*
October 14, 2006 9:07 PM | Reply | Permalink
But maybe they aren't really power brokers either?
:-)
October 15, 2006 6:35 AM | Reply | Permalink
The occupant's duty is to ensure order and security. This America failed, from day one.
Now, do we think that Kurds call Kurdistan their home?But if I were living in a Middle Eastern country, I would not trust America to be able to succeed - unless, of course, using sufficiently many Arab /Persian /Afghan mercenaries, or, possibly, the French Foreign Legion.
The Persians, the Kurds (also outside of Iraq), and the most extreme Islamists most certainly seem to be among the winners after this disastrous occupation. In the end, maybe even the Arab Shiites can look back at this turmoil as that which ultimately relieved them of century-long oppression.
It may be too early to tell if Palestinians, Syria and Jordania can take advantage of the relative weakening of Israel's strength that comes from the weakening of America's strength.
The Chinese and the State of Russia certainly profit by the rupture of The West, and to a slightly lesser degree from a weakened and distracted European Union. Maybe the people of Russia doesn't gain anything, in any case not in the short run, but the re-consolidation of Russian influence at least serves Russian commercial interests.
P.S.
I don't know were to put my praise for Newberry's essays, so I hint at it here.
:-)
October 15, 2006 7:13 AM | Reply | Permalink
"...a question of the military being restricted, which often was the case in Vietnam"
Could you please elaborate. I never saw the military restricted in Vietnam, rather just the opposite. Napalming, shelling, strafing and bombing villages, burning peoples homes and forcing them from their ancestral lands into makeshift refugee camps.
This was part of Westoreland's strategy of attrition, not something forced upon him by Washington. Convert the countyside to a one vast freefire zone so we could shoot anything that moved.
I won't even get into the Phoenix Operations which led to the deaths of many more innocents.
In the end American political will to endure the US casualties failed to match that of the Vietnamese who saw themselves as fighting to rid their country of yet another foreign invader.
October 16, 2006 5:44 AM | Reply | Permalink
Harold,
If you choose to respond to the question by sanger, and if you support, with examples, your claim that the U.S. military was not allowed to do some things in Viet Nam it might otherwise have done had it not been restricted by politics, would you also give your opinion as to whether being allowed to do these things would have made any difference in the outcome of the war. That is, could we have won if only they had let us? Did we lose only because our hands were tied?
October 16, 2006 5:48 PM | Reply | Permalink
Without radical changes in the South Vietnamese government, I do not believe any "victory" was possible. Diem seemed unable to work with anyone but Catholics, not the Buddhist majority. He was overthrown by a series of juntas/kleptocracies.
I will respond in a separate post about the restrictions, which were primarily restrictions in the air campaign against the North.
A "victory" scenario would have had to involve a government leader like Magsaysay. Besides being charismatic in general, he both made it clear that the government would be useful to the villages, and also got across that he was serious about amnesty for the Huks that were willing to rejoin the society. One of his relatively early acts was to open wide the gates to the Presidential Palace, and make it clear that it was intended to be an open and responsive government. That had great symbolic value.
What would such an approach have done in Saigon?
--
Howard
*equal opportunity offense to both extremes*
October 16, 2006 5:56 PM | Reply | Permalink
The military was restricted in air operations against the North, which I do not claim, in the absence of significant political reform in the south, would have resulted in a viable, independent South.
McNamara's "signaling" strategy of gradual escalation never communicated to the Lao Dong party leadership. For example, when the North brought in antiaircraft missiles, McNamara "signaled" that because the US did not bomb the missile sites, the DRV should "reciprocate" by not firing them.
When the political leadership asked for a JCS recommendation about an air campaign against the north, as distinct from the tit-for-tat responses to the Gulf of Tonkin fiasco and other individual attacks, they responded with what is called either the 93 or 94 target list. The list was numbered to 94, but they skipped one number.
If one is going to commit to a strategic air campaign, one hits hard, especially before the other side can reinforce its air defense network. Putting Lao Dong party headquarters, the defense ministry, the MiG bases, the Enemy Proseltyzing Ministry, and other clearly governmental or military targets is an example of what I consider inappropriate political restraint. Bombing the dike system to produce flooding would not have been reasonable, but when the DRV realized the dikes were being spared and put antiaircraft guns on them, those guns should have been attacked with light weapons that would not have jeopardized the integrity of the dike itself.
I am not saying that launching an air campaign, or getting involved on the ground, made much sense. Nevertheless, if there was to be an air campaign, let it be decisive. LINEBACKER II under Nixon visibly hurt the DRV government, such that they came back to negotiating. Had such a campaign been launched in 1965 or 1966, along with significant political reform, things might have been different.
I'm not at all convinced that the attrition strategy was purely from Westmoreland. McNamara wanted things that could be quantified, and body count was seized upon for such a metric. See, for example, Sam Adams' War of Numbers about his attempts to get the CIA to press much more reality on the White House.
--
Howard
*equal opportunity offense to both extremes*
October 16, 2006 6:09 PM | Reply | Permalink
And yet, the Americans did undertake bombing in North Vietnam, bombing was extended to Laos and Cambodia. None of it did much good.
Your response Howard, is that they could have bombed more and better, without making any sort of suggestion that it would have made any sort of difference. That's hardly persuasive.
I respect your opinions a great deal, but in this respect I think you're skating on a technical point which has little substance to it.
In an earlier post, you wrote about the current military theory of finding 'centers of gravity.' Given that the Vietcong were an irregular force operating in South Vietnam, given the systemic corruption and incompetence of the South Vietnamese government, including Bao Dai, Diem and Thieu, and given the apparently decentralized operations of the NVA, I can't see how the extended bombings you suggest would have been meaningful.
Indeed, they might have been counterproductive in terms of eliminating or suppressing any party that could put the breaks on through negotiations. If you want to win, you need someone able to surrender. If you want a peace treaty, there has to be someone able to sign the document.
There was also the real and genuine risk, a risk that had proven out in Korea, that pushing too far would provoke a Chinese/Soviet response. The consequence of stepping over the line could well be a lot worse than failing to defeat the NVA.
I don't think that it's valid to claim that the American military's hands were tied in Vietnam. Not after the US extended its war to two neighboring countries, conducted secret bombings, employed massive chemical defoliation with Agent Orange which was arguably chemical warfare and which continues to have devastating health effects, and dragged out a war that killed off something like 10% of the population.
In practical terms, that looks like a pretty free hand to me.
Were there limitations? Sure. You could have put a full million, or two million soldiers in. Or ten million. Or a bajillion. You could have spent more billions. Or more trillions. You could have carpeted Indochina with nuclear bombs. Or simply built ovens and started liquidating the entire population.
But let's be serious here. There's a huge gap between what is hypothetically possible, and what can be done.
From the documentary, the 'Fog of War' I seem to recall McNamara in the early 60's sitting and meeting with a group of advisors on Vietnam who saw the situation as dysfunctional and hopeless. Yet despite this, the United States stayed in for a decade, perpetually escalating, but never changing its situation.
I have a concern that there is now a meme in currency that the United States lost Vietnam because you were not brutal and bloodthirsty enough. You didn't quite go fully Colonel Kurtz, you kept the gloves on.
By this logic, the solution to Iraq is to not hesitate and not be squeamish, to go fully Colonel Kurtz, take the gloves off, and pile the bodies high. I feel that there's an unstated feeling among some Americans... (and bluntly stated among others) that the thing to do is to pile the bodies really really high, and if it takes killing 10% or 20% or 30% of the Iraqi's to win... that's what you should do.
Sorry, but that's Godwin-land.
October 16, 2006 7:39 PM | Reply | Permalink
Understand when I am answering a question on a specific point. The specific point was "were there unreasonable political restrictions on the military", and I claim, once the civilian authority made the decision to commit forces, there were such restrictions. Simultaneously, I consider the decision to make a large scale commitment in Viet Nam incredibly unwise, as well as decisions going back as far as 1945-7 with the Patti mission.
Especially with some recent information in HR McMaster's book, Dereliction of Duty, I believe LBJ went well into the range of impeachable offensive. He was simply better than GWB at lying convincingly and keeping control of information.
The United States never really defined its objectives, other than the absurdities of the McNaughton to McNamara memorandum. One of the better analyses of the role of warfare overall is Fred Ikle's Every War Must End, preferably the revised edition through 1991. Ikle, a respected scholar who also served in subcabinet posts in several Republican administrations, makes a telling case that countries that leap into war without understanding the conditions of victory or defeat, or allow what has variously been called "mission creep" or "strategic overreach", is most likely doomed.
That concerned McNaughton, as well. Before saying how real a risk it was in Viet Nam, I would suggest first some map study about getting from China into Viet Nam, and then a review of Sino-Vietnamese history, starting with the Trung Sisters in the first century. North Vietnam was a Soviet, not a Chinese client. Again, map study shows that it was far easier for the Soviets to intervene in Korea than Vietnam, to say nothing of the Sino-Soviet disagreements not being severe during the Korean War.
I'm sorry, but Agent Orange did not meet the requirements of the Chemical Warfare Convention. The very real health problems were due to dioxin contamination of certain batches. Unfortunately, the chemical industry of the time did not know the risk of dioxins, nor had quantitative chemical analysis to pick up the contamination.
Again repeating that there could have been no stabilization with the South Vietnamese government as a kleptocracy, if you commit troops, you owe them the right to protect themselves -- you don't give sanctuary. From McMaster's study, the gradual escalation was even more irrational than Bush's fantasies about Iraq. There wasn't any real rationale or goal, even with a warped ideology like PNAC. McNamara stayed on long after he believed it was hopeless, and did not have the moral courage to take any of a number of actions, starting with resigning without a replacement.
I am unaware of such a meme in serious discussions. In one restricted area, the air campaign in the North, either it should not have been attempted for any reason, or it should have been in a way to minimize danger to the aviators -- such as taking down the air defense system, hard and quickly. 1975, however, involved a conventional war by the PAVN. It was not a guerilla T-54 tank that knocked down the gates of the Presidential Palace in Saigon.
I have also repeatedly posted that, admittedly with the benefits of hindsight, the best course of action for the US, in 1945-7, was to have worked with Ho Chi Minh, kept the French from reclaiming their empire, and accepted working with a different political system that was not going to be a robot of Moscow or Beijing.
--
Howard
*equal opportunity offense to both extremes*
October 16, 2006 8:04 PM | Reply | Permalink
J.M.
I think an interesting and important point is the one where you state that the 'people' perhaps do not gain.
As it appears now, this seems to be the case universally. In the U.S. Bush's policies benefit the wealthy and those who run large corporations.
In the Middle East the influential Shah's and Sheiks are gaining influence along with the Royal (oil) Families.
In Russia Putin is using a weaknened America not as a means of gaining an influential role internationally, but by reverting back to more centralized government.
In essence, anyone managing to 'gain' anything these days tend to be the rich and powerful. Everyone else is either losing ground or stuck in status quo (this last, sadly enough, isn't seen as such a bad thing anymore).
October 17, 2006 12:03 AM | Reply | Permalink
Seems to me there is a lingering confusion (or debate) over exactly who we were at war with in Vietnam. The political complications came from the fiction of supporting an ally as opposed to prosecuting a war.
Air attacks on the North were publicly presented as punishment for their support for the Southern insurgency. As you point out, there was the lingering (baseless) fear of Chinese involvement, a la North Korea. Another fear was that the escalation of definition would kill public support. That is, if it was admitted we were at war with the North the US public might not have bought it.
Therefore, effective attacks against the North were ruled out because we preferred to maintain the fiction we weren't at war with Ho, but just making it expensive for him.
While that was a fiction, reality could not accept a real war, since the North had not attacked the US directly (discounting Tonkin). There was no way to argue that North Vietnam was a strategic threat by itself, so we could not invade and pacify it. The idea of actually doing so, which seemed sensible to Goldwater, scared many Americans who did not feel the need for another real war with Korea so recent.
Isn't this the underlying "political" restriction? And doesn't it also apply in Iraq? We are not at war against Iraq as a whole, we claim. We announced we were unseating a regime, not destroying an enemy state. As such, all incidental casualties are a failure, so escalation would simply be more failure.
What Iraq needs is police, but that means a government. Not happening soon, thanks a lot, George.
October 17, 2006 5:15 AM | Reply | Permalink
Your comments about the North, I suspect, would be some of the things that a good psychiatrist might have been able to get out of a cooperative LBJ. Have you read Robert Jay Lifton's The Nazi Doctors? Lifton, an academic psychiatrist and historian, has a theory of "doubling", as the psychological process by which one trained as a healer eventually becomes a killer. He doesn't use the term doubling in an article on Medical involvement at Abu Ghraib, but does review the steps of socializing Nazi doctors to be able to participate in atrocities.
It's not an exact fit, but I think LBJ's behavior was related to doubling. On the one hand, we have his apparently deep commitment to the Great Society, and his history of supporting civil rights in Congress long before it was common. On the other hand, we have a history of huge egocentricity on his part, and even some recent quotes revealed about his feeling in a battle for dominance with Ho Chi Minh. His conflict was that he wanted to dominate Ho and others, without upsetting the American people or, in particular, ordering national mobilization or anything that might jeopardize his plans for the Great Society.
As far as the threat from North Vietnam,, it existed, but only so long as South Vietnam was a client, and, as described in the McNaughton memo, the greatest concern of the US was leaving and damaging its reputation as a guarantor. Reread the >the memo, and think about McNaughton's 70 percent justification, and then compare and contrast it to the GOP mantra of "staying the course."
Returning to the North, it was more involved in the South than is often realized. In May, 1959, the Peoples' Army of Viet Nam organized the the 559 Transportation Group (see page 25 in the PDF to build and operate a logistics system supporting fighting in the South. See also Google's cache entry fron historynet, which will be a little slow to load.
Virtually all successful insurgencies have had a sanctuary and supply base outside the country, which is not especially the case in Iraq, where the fighting is much more multiparty than Vietnam. JFK and LBJ, under in part what they considered part of SEATO treaty obligations, first covertly, and then overtly with troops in SVN, tried to stop the supply chain from NVN.
I am emphatically not saying the sensible goal was to continue supporting the government in the south. Once the policy to do so was put into effect, then NVN and the trail become important to the strategy. Iraq, in contrast, is mostly home-grown with a lot of weapons left behing by Saddam.
Not exactly. We blundered into a combat role in Vietnam, where we might have had an alliance in 1947 on, at the cost of pissing off the French and not Doing Everything Against The Evil World Communist Conspiracy.
Come back again to Johnson's ego involvement, and stretch it to cover the core Administration decisionmakers on Iraq. Draw parallels between LBJ not wanting to interfere with the Great Society, and the GOP base's social agenda.
Contrast McNamara's compulsion to micromanage and belief statistics were the only way to judge victory, with Rumsfeld's insistence, which I think he believed, that 150,000 or so troops were adequate, with the only significant multinational help from the UK.
Police, whether US, multinational, or including Debaathed Iraqi police, perhaps could have been effective if, like the US Constabulary in post-WWII Germany, they had been following the combat troops, pretrained, and ready to operate in large numbers. There has been a tendency, in Army documents on Foreign Internal Defense, the branch of Stability Operations that roughly pertains here, to see the US role (with Special Forces and the like) to grow and advise, commanding in the first phase, local nationals to form the police and security force. Doctrine, and WWII history, wasn't followed at all here.
--
Howard
*equal opportunity offense to both extremes*
October 17, 2006 8:24 AM | Reply | Permalink
Politics hasn't kept us from winning but politics can make us continue to lose.
In Viet Nam there were Vietnamese who wanted to expel the U.S. and unite the country. They wanted Viet Nam to be not just run but also controlled by Viet Nam. They had some combination of internal and external support. South Viet Nam’s government was a puppet of the U.S. It had less internal support but massive external support.
The NVA and the VC attacked the S. V.N. government, its infrastructure, and anyone, domestic or foreign, who supported the government of S. V.N.
The U.S. tried to protect the S. V.N. government and its people while rebuilding infrastructure, training and equipping the S. V.N. army and defeating the opposing forces on the field of combat.
The fight was on.. During fight the U.S. abandoned some of its goals. As Sanger points out, the whole country became a free fire zone. Virtually any weapon in the U.S. arsenal, short of nuclear, was used anywhere it was believed an enemy might be. So much for protecting the people. The U.S. military failed miserably to accomplish any of its goals. Ultimately, it was the support of the Vietnamese people which determined which side won the war and the U.S. never was able to get enough of the people of Viet Nam to give their allegiance to us. They gave their allegiance to Viet Nam first. Some Americans still cannot understand why the Vietnamese would not support us first or why that was the decisive difference. Blindingly stupid.
There might be something else we could have tried, some other pony to gallop out to the field which was kept in the stall because of politics, but to believe that pony could have carried us to victory is, in my opinion, wrong. To have tried would have made it dead wrong for many more people on both sides.
Politics can be brought in as an excuse for failure in Iraq also. After all, if you believe that enough troops could win in Iraq, then the impossibility of sending enough troops, because it would require a draft, which is politically impossible right now, is the reason we are not winning but ultimately, the real reason we are not winning in Iraq, and will not win in Iraq, is that even though we defeated its army, we did not defeat its people. I hope that we do not stoop the inhumane level of brutality which would be required to defeat the people. Even though they have their internal conflicts which have been allowed to blossom, they are united against us. Many are willing to fight us; most of the rest support those who fight us, and the few who might wish for our success are afraid to openly support us. War against Iraq has now become a war against its people as opposed to war against its army and they cannot be expected to give up. The more that we kill, the more that starve, the more that die because of the destruction of their infrastructure regardless of who actually pulls the trigger now, the more they are united against us.
We have lost but we refuse to quit losing. Politics causes us to continue to lose because it is still considered bad politics by the politicians to “cut and run”. It would cost them votes. Only when the politics change will our commitment to “staying the course” change.
It is time to pony up and get the hell out of Iraq.
October 17, 2006 9:21 AM | Reply | Permalink
There were Vietnamese that wanted to unify the country in 1945-1947. Apparently, it was more important to the Truman administration to keep the French happy. Can one blame the US there? Was it ignorance or malice? The Patti OSS mission brought back some fairly reasonable and specific policies that were ignored.
OSS wasn't military in the conventional sense. I am a bit tired of hearing something was a "military failure" when the civilian policymakers sent the military into something fundamentally unwinnable. Unfortunately, there were a number of senior commanders, in different wars, that would not or could not convince their civilian superiors that the mission was fruitless.
I will say the US government failed miserably to accomplish any of its goals, ill-formed as they were. The SVN government was never going to get appreciable support without change it was unwilling to allow. I would point out that the various Ambassadors did make the point they controlled the troops in Vietnam, so it's arguably as much as a State Department than military failure -- but it was most a White House failure. CIA reporting was fairly accurate, unless an estimate got into a committee dispute with "we-are-winning" members of Westmoreland's or McNamara's staff.
The error was getting into the war. Had Kennedy lived, I suspect he would have stopped sending advisors at some point, and certainly not large forces. Johnson, by many accounts, seemed to want to prove he was a better macho man than Ho -- there wan't much rationale for much of what he did.
It wasn't military restraint per se, but I consider it an impeachable offense that Johnson, eager to make the 11PM TV news and the deadlines for morning papers, announced that there were retaliatory air raids for the Gulf of Tonkin incident, while the aircraft were still approaching their targets. Postwar analysis suggests the North Vietnamese simply would not believe what they were being told by Soviet advisors, and didn't go to full air defense readiness.
A commander-in-chief doesn't give advance warning to the enemy. A commander-in-chief doesn't send airmen to a target and not let them suppress the air defenses. A very large percentage of POWs were put into prison by the actions of Lyndon Baines Johnson.
Had the Weinberger-Powell doctrine been followed at the time, we wouldn't have been in Vietnam and we wouldn't be in Iraq.
As you say, it's politics. It's not a military failure if they are ordered into an unwinnable situation, any more than you'd expect a Pop Warner team of 12-year-olds to beat an NFL team.
--
Howard
*equal opportunity offense to both extremes*
October 17, 2006 12:28 PM | Reply | Permalink
When I say that the military failed it is not to attack the military, it is just to say that they did not succeed in Viet Nam or in Iraq. I don’t see that as debateable. I have seen a portion of the military from the inside and I think most soldiers deserve the admiration that they get, even the draftees for which you have shown borderline contempt in the past.
Well, Howard, you and I and many others at TPMC have given our analysis of the past and current situations. I have, along with some others, said that we should leave Iraq now because we cannot accomplish anything good and we are just prolonging a horrible situation. Will you say [maybe you have and I missed it] what you believe we should do now and going into the future, the future about which no history books or studies have yet been written? Tell us what you would do as President today if you were acting in the best interests of our country.
October 17, 2006 3:55 PM | Reply | Permalink
I'm starting from what is, as opposed to what should have been. I assume you mean generic president, as the best interests of the country with the current Administration might involve several resignations.
I should make something clear. There is an important difference between the capabilities that a soldier can learn in a two-year draftee status. It takes too long to bring someone up to useful capability. Is this contempt? No, I don't think so. It's an assessment of how long modern training takes. Of most serving soldiers I know, very few want draftees at their side; they only want people who want to be there
First, I'd like to see up-to-date status reports on the capabilities of Iraqi military and security units, and a comparison of their capabilities to those of known insurgent groups and of militias that represent an interest group, and get a reasonable sense of what can be done in a matter of months that would appreciably improve their capability. That is a key input into planning, although not the only issue. It may well be that certain units can be 80% capable with 6 months additional training, but it would take them two years to get to the standard of a comparable US unit.
Second, and you will see several things here that are information-gathering or -exchanging, I'd open diplomacy to Iran. If it were a different president, I'd suggest that he put out a public call for discussion, but not the proposed debate: debate, by its nature, is adversarial, and I'd explicitly say the meeting would be to find common ground.
Recognizing that the region is not exactly full of corporate ethics compliance specialists, I'd pull US and even third-party contractors out of as many rebuilding functions as possible, and replace them with Iraqis. US contractors, for security reasons, might
I want to find out if the Arab League proposal to bring in peacekeepers from non-neighbors of Iraq is a dead issue, or could be restored. The Algerians have a reputation for being honest brokers, even if they may seem somewhat extreme. Again, I don't know if GWB is capable of it, but a series of summits, with learning as a set goal, would be desirable. I don't know if the GOP base would accept it.
At that point, I'd weigh alternatives. In general, I'd greatly decrease the number of US units on urban policing, and, to some extent, let some of the areas find equilibrium. That may look like a local strongman, but I am not expecting to see Jeffersonian democracy. Essential, there would be a phased movement back to major bases. At that point, I'd try to come up with a withdrawal schedule. I do not see Iraq as a useful location for US bases, ignoring that there are other places in the region that welcome US forces.
There are too many variables to say precisely what to do next, and it would be foolhardy to make a flat statement. I've expressed, in good faith, some areas that would get us better communications and perhaps some alliances.
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Howard
*equal opportunity offense to both extremes*
October 17, 2006 4:33 PM | Reply | Permalink
Well put.
You raise an angle not usually addressed; it seems a cheap shot but I feel it is very germane to consider the personal competition between state leaders. Consider that after a man has achieved the highest office, who's left to compete with? Only other states.
I find some of this in the current spat over bilateral talks with NK. There's a "Will!", "Will not!", tone in Kim's insistence on it and Bush's resistance.
Bush has also referred to both Kim and Saddam in personal ways, as in "He tried to kill my Daddy" (S) or "I loathe this man" (K).
October 17, 2006 4:51 PM | Reply | Permalink
Although the debate on the European side of the Atlantic isn't particularly active, I deem Howard's reasoning above to be very easy to follow and agree with over here.
I would like to raise a few points:
October 18, 2006 5:47 AM | Reply | Permalink
To J M Olofsson (the column width was getting hazardous). Let me address some of your points, perhaps clarifying my responses:
Let me draw a distinction, taken in part from the customary laws of Land Warfare, the GC, etc.
The most important qualification that goes into the legal combatant determination, is that individual is in a chain of command. I'm far less concerned that an individual wear a uniform than that he reports to a leadership, which, at some point, can be recognized as a participant in negotiations.
Some will claim that recognizing groups gives them a certain undesirable legitimacy. As Mao put it, political power comes from the mouth of a gun. If a group is sufficiently strong that it presents a threat to peace and good order, it can't be ignored if it can't be annihilated.
Border surveillance and security is an issue and is not simple. In some cases, it will take airborne reconnaissance, which, for various reasons, the US has been willing to hand over. Some of those reasons are as simple as it may take a year or two to become proficient with the equipment.
There is a current proposal to have the Russians and Americans fly joint surveillance missions around the border between Siberia and Alaska. Actually, there are more Russo-American joint verification programs, actively running, than many people realize. These were under the On-Site Inspection Agency, restructured into the Defense Threat Reduction Agency. During the Y2K event, both sides had liaison officers in the others' command posts to help avoid accidental war due to techinical malfunction.
As you mention, there is a danger of invasion from some neighboring states. There had been a proposal, initiated by the Saudis, to put in border patrols from non-neighboring Arab states (e.g., the Maghreb of North Africa, Egypt, Yemen, etc.). This might be extended to states with significant Muslim populations. That Israel objected to having Indonesians on its borders is irrelevant here.
3. Local "strongmen" may well be an expression that gives the wrong associations. The system of clans is not destroyed, and local leaderships would likely reflect the ethnic dominance. Such leaders tend to be legitime, i.e. the population tend to consider them legitime, which gives hope for a stable governance. But that puts ethnic minorities in danger!
Please feel free to substitute "clan leader" or other term. The key issue is legitimacy and that they can speak for potential fighters. Minorities are a problem, although there are case-by-case ways to deal with them. A strong and respected local leader may offer them protection, or appropriately directed oil revenues might fairly relocate them.
As to Democrats, or, for that matter, Republicans, deciding what to do after US political events, this is why the first things I suggested are information gathering, and the opening of talks even with hostile nations -- and, where possible, a lowering of tensions. Whatever strategic assumptions Democrats make, they are not going to happen in isolation from local and regional bodies. All the information is not in Washington, DC.
All true, but most needing more information and analysis. If I look more regionally than Iraq, there are a multiplicity of cases where there is a threat of ethnic cleansing, from Kurdistan to Darfur. Some of these areas could lend themselves to international peace enforcement, where others are too inaccessible, or the local forces are too strong.
Whether they are competitors or not, other power blocs have to be considered. I'm glad, for example, you put down India, which is too often ignored. Whenever you bring in India, that usually shows a need for balancing forces from Pakistan. The good news there is that India and Pakistan both seem to accept that.
Perhaps counterbalancing the Shanghai Cooperation Organization may be new East Asian/Pacific pacts. Unfortunately, much of this region is reluctant to ally with the Japanese, buy that may become necessary. Australia, Southeast Asia, Japan, the Koreas, etc. aren't in any neat grouping. Certainly in the case of Japan, some of them are sufficiently powerful to be international brokers.
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Howard
*equal opportunity offense to both extremes*
October 18, 2006 8:24 AM | Reply | Permalink