It isn't obvious that the countries in that region have the slightest interest in stability.  They each have an axe to grind and their interests are in how best to do the grinding.  If there is one constant in those interests it is that all of those countries are ruled by men who strongly wish to continue to rule.  That isn't the same as stability.

Prior to the invasion of Iraq an animated cartoon went the rounds of the internet showing the chain of likely events if that invasion were to happen.  While the exact sequence depicted has not followed the script, the story line has certainly been followed.  I hope someone has a link to that cartoon, just for old times sake. 

Hoppy in Sacramento

In the first place, the so-called Iraq Survey Group contains no experts on the military or middle east -- Pat Lang or anyone else -- because this so-called "advisory commission" doesn't care about the military or the middle east. It only exists to provide domestic political cover back in the United States for the maladroit miscreants who have royally screwed the pooch in Central Park at high noon after brazenly summoning a crowd to watch a poodle-grooming contest -- so to speak. So can we please refrain from any further fantasies about what this claque of politically connected "insiders" knows or doesn't know about the middle east? They don't need to know anything about the middle east and wouldn't listen to anyone who did. They have no other purpose in life than to see that the present reckless rogue regime doesn't deservely receive the fate of the Romanovs. You mean to tell me you don't know this?

In the second place, I don't know whether Pat Lang's cautionary tale qualifies as "damning with faint praise" or "praising with faint damnation." So I'll just split the difference and settle on "damned faint" as the descriptor I would choose. Far from laying out any "worst case" arguments against "Going Big" (which itself only qualifies as yet another fraudulent, flawed figure of speech), Pat limits himself (probably due to time constraints) to just a tip-of-the-iceberg, standard-issue synopsis of hidebound military "combat" bureaucracy. He understandably completely avoids the even greater logistical import of the so-called "tail-to-tooth" support ratio: which we might call the "Corporate Camp Followers Per Legionaire" requirement now that our troops can't learn foreign languages, wash their own clothes, and/or feed themselves any longer. Not only does posting abroad our Foreign Legion (40% of whom we used to call a "National Guard") involve hideous expenses due to equipment and training (although not so much for pay and allowances), but the Crony Corruption Quotient payable (at exhorbitant markup) to Haliburton and Blackwater Mercenaries, Inc., for all the Shopping Malls, Burger Kings, World's-most-obscenely-huge bases and embassies, etc., not to mention "security" (which one would have thought our military existed to provide) -- well, all of this "extra," Big-PX stuff drains more from our limited personnel and fiscal resources (of which we have not yet funded -- as opposed to "financing" -- any) than even our proverbial "boots on the ground" do. So I think Pat Lang went pretty easy on Mad-dog McCain and Company. He could have easily made their ludicrous proposals look much worse than he did. For instance:

Just consider what Pat Lang's military pyramids have achieved in nearly four years of wallowing ineffectively over their pyramidally pointed heads in Iraq: namely, indescribable disaster. Whatever one wants to say about our troops and their training -- good, bad, or indifferent -- it certainly doesn't look like their ticket-punching, career leadership has accomplished anything meaningful in Iraq other than getting the "pyramid base" of inconsequential, interchangeable individuals incinerated by IEDs. Having luckily survived my own six years at the enlisted base of many such pointless pyramids (the last one in South Vietnam), I have a rather-less-sanguine regard for their efficacy than Pat Lang does. Iraq has demonstrated nothing at all about our military force structure other than its anachronistic organization, stupendously destructive ineffectiveness, and time-dishonored workings of two mutually-reinforcing iron laws of bureaucratic growth: Parkinson's Law and the Peter Principle -- colloquially known as "Fuck up and move up." Lots of promotions. Lots of rotations. Just nothing to show for any of it but more of the same dead and maimed inconsequential, interchangeble individuals (of whom I knew and respected quite a few) at the base of the Unit pyramid. And nothing about that sad, sorry state of affairs has changed since the time of Alexander the Great and King Pyrrhus, the Fool of Hope.

Finally, I would only add that our bloated and antiquated military force structure -- whatever it does or doesn't do -- simply costs more to operate than America can afford. Back in the day of our War on Vietnam, we would send an aircraft carrier battle group halfway around the world to blow up a bamboo bridge that the "other guy" could rebuild and re-use in little time and at much less relative expense. A few years ago during the opening phases of Deputy Dubya's War on Iraq I saw a picture of a little Iraqi boy rebuilding -- in very little time and at relatively little expense -- a mosque that we had sent an aircraft carrier battle group -- or its equivalent -- halfway around the world to destroy. In point of fact, the so-called "high value" targets disappear quickly and very soon it takes more and more German/Americans to destroy less and less of Stalingrad/Hanoi until the Law of Diminishing Returns bankrupts -- as it appears ready to do in Iraq -- the entire misguided enterprise.

As one who survived his own indendured incarceration as an inconsequential, interchangeable individual at the base of an insane isosceles industry, I can only hope never to see the likes of Mad-dog McCain and Abu Abizaid promoted to their final levels of incompetence atop another pathological pyramid expanded endlessly to occupy all the "long" years that anyone on planet earth has yet to live before they die for nothing. We need to get our military the hell out of Iraq immediately, before that incompetently instructed, lamely led, and malignantly misdeployed mob hurt themselves, the Iraqis, and the rest of us (in our hearts and pocket books) more than they already have.

Hi Larry,

Thanks for posting this. I agree that it is indeed heartbreaking that Col. Lang is not included on the commission. Maybe it's because he speaks Arabic and can tell an Egyptian accent from a Gulf or Lebanese accent. He was only in charge of human intel for the Gulf War. Equally heartbreaking was when Bremer ignored your advice on consulting with Pat. Maybe it was because Col. Lang wasn't a part of the 2000 Bush Florida recount team. Col. Lang, like yourself - has an uncommon ability to break things down for  us lay people. For any of you that have yet to read Col. Lang's excellent analysis on how we were sold Iraq, you have to check this out.

http://www.mepc.org/journal_vol11/0406_lang.asp   

Repetition  does not tranform a lie into a truth. FDR

The pundits and feckless politicians (Yes, I mean Saint McCain among others), who are discussing Iraq policy, are not "serious" about actually affecting the situation on the ground in Iraq.

What they are doing, is avoiding the obvious: Iraq is lost.

Iraq is lost and Bush lost it. He lost it, when security did not provide widespread looting. He lost it when the Reconstruction, as at a cost of several tens of billions accomplished nothing, except raising Halliburton's share price.

Iraq is chaos, never mind civil war, and it is the fault of Bush and the Republican Right and the worthless pieces of crap that play liberals on teevee.

Bush is a dangerously stupid man.

20,000 Americans are not going to make any difference now. None.

That's what these stupid talking heads don't want to talk about. Their responsibility for putting a dangerously stupid man in the Presidency, and the consequences.

The truth is, all of these pundits and politicians should resign, quit, shut up and never voice a political opinion or even vote again as long as they live.

This depends in part on the political game being played in Iraq.

Under the present Constitution, that game is "winner take all". The majority in parliament controls the army, the army, if it ever gains control of the situation on the ground, controls the country.

Now, we were told that we were establishing Jeffersonian democracy in Iraq ... indeed, I have seen the events in Iraq used as evidence that they can't handle Jeffersonian democracy. But that is one of those situations where some people say things they know are untrue ... I believe the technical term is "lie".

Here is an English translation of the Iraqi Constitution ( wikipedia, AP via USA Today). Read it ... I'll wait. Find the checks and balances. Find the reservation of powers to the Provinces where they are not explicitly allocated to the Federal Government.

There is plenty of fine words that guarantee all sorts of fine rights, but without the balance of powers for minority interests to enforce those words on majority interests, its not Jeffersonian democracy.

As long as its a political game of winner take all, bringing in the other nations of the region is not going to create peace. Many nations will have a stake in peace, as long as it is a peace with the proxy for their interests ending up on top of the heap.

Of course, the proposal to Balkanize the country is the American Imperial fallback position of first resort, in the belief that the Kurdish third will be willing to host US bases, and of course the standard position of the US Military is that any expansion of the US base system is a good thing, no matter how much damage it does to long term US interests.

An actual Federal system, on the other hand, may offer an option for a stable negotiated halt to hostilities ... provided that the main protagonists see that they have a stable political power base to defend within the reformed Iraqi system of government.

Thank you, Larry. This clears up many questions I've had about what the numbers of troops debate involves. Very valuable contribution.

It's certainly the case that hundreds of thousands of troops could have been recruited. Pay increases and larger signing bonuses would have been necessary.

But doing so would have taken at least a year, much more time than it would have taken for the inspectors to prove that there were no WMD. As it was, it was clear from the inspectors March 2003 reports that there were no nukes and there was no credible threat to the US or the region from Iraq.

As you say, it would have also been very difficult to persuade American voters that adding that number of troops was a good policy decision. It would have been difficult to beat the drum for a year and keep up the fear levels necessary.

So they had to go when they did if they wre gonna go at all--with a force that their most knowledgable general on occupying and stablizing a foreign said was completely inadequate.

And since he couldn't defraud it he sent John Bolton to wage war on it and try to destroy it...

During Nam there was a draft. One tour of duty and then home ... indeed, with McNamara at the helm, AFAIR individual soldiers slotted into and pulled out of units like they were spare parts for a Ford.

With a professional army (modern US Army, British imperial regiments in India during the Raj, Roman Legions), there seems to be a tendency to get this rotation system. Mind you, the rotations in the British imperial regiments system were longer, but then it took a lot longer to get the regiment out to the far reaches of empire in those days than it does today.

WWII was an actual declared s war with full mobilization, sacrifices on the home front to support the boys at the front, etc.

There has got to be a term for that.

What was it that Germany and Russia (a two nation coalition of the willing) did to Poland in the late 1930's?

Oh, yeah, unprovoked aggresion. That's the word for it.

The doctrine of "preemptive" attack, though, is more along the lines of what Japan did, say I guess some people might prefer to refer to it as "infamy".

Again, I appreciate all efforts -- including Pat Lang's -- to throw cold water on Senator Mad Dog McCain's heated hyperbole about sending "more" American military forces to Iraq (and Afghanistan, too). The "mission" that never could have succeeded has predicably failed and no good will come from changing the name of the Nixon-Kissinger Fig Leaf Contingent (in which I served) to the Cheney-Bush Buy Time Brigade. Tragically, too many good Americans -- not to mention Southeast Asians and Middle Easterners -- have needlessly died for America's "Best and Brightest" (then) and its "Worst and Dullest" (now). What we will call what next passes for political and military "leadership" in America, I shudder to think. The historical trends do not look auspicious. ...

Still, the American War on Iraq happened because the American War on Vietnam happened because the American War on China happened. Or as the late, great historian Barbara Tuchman put it in her classic March of Folly:

"The American government reacted not to the Chinese upheaval or to Vietnamese nationalism per se, but to intimidation by the rabid right at home and to the public dread of Communism that this played on and reflected. [In the] social and psychological sources of that dread ... lie the roots of American policy in Vietnam."

In short, the generic "American War on ..." keeps happening for reasons having little, if anything to do with what comes after the "..." ellipsis. The crime of rape, for example, does not depend for its legal definition on distinctions without a difference between the rapist's blond, brunette, or red-headed victims. Natually, from the rapist's point of view, this sort of analysis seems distinctly uncomfortable and so one seldom hears it seriously discussed in polite rapist circles. Still, with all the historically-multiplying number of victims filing suit ...

The rabid, reactionary right in America (or any country, for that matter) continually needs a "new" mystic dread, abstract angst, or just plain fear itself to terrify the American Nation of Sheep into uncritical, unreflective obedience. All too often, the ancient pyramid hierarchy of the professional military caste only too willingly plays along for its own self-interested reasons. ("Don't knock the war, it's the only one we've got," they said during Vietnam's -- for the Vietnamese -- Second Indochina War.) For America, this pattern of mutually-reinforcing domestic political fascism combined with rampant military careerism has repeated itself to our continuing sorrow for at least the past sixty years. President Eisenhower only caught a glimpse of its future malignancy in his famous (but largely ignored) "Military-Industrial Complex."

At any rate, whether we deploy more troops (however pyramidally organized) to Iraq for no good purpose or simply allow the ones we currently have there to slowly die through attrition for no good purpose hardly matters to most Americans. America simply has no good purpose to achieve militarily in Iraq and it never did, any more than it did in China or Vietnam. The ancient, hidebound human pyramid, though, does have one outstanding characteristic: stability. It may not achieve any purpose, worthwhile or otherwise, but it certainly functions like nothing else to achieve its own growth and perpetuation. As we usd to say in the Nixon-Kissinger Fig Leaf Contingent: "We're here because we're here because we're here because we're here."

If the post-WWII Warfare Welfare and Makework Militarism pattern holds, the professonal military will keep agitating for ever more "long" war, ticket-punching (rotations for promotions) glacier races for the obvious reason that they simply can't sprint to the finish line (i.e., accomplish missions) in measurable human timeframes (which they will mightily resist to their last, dying breath). However, since an increasingly broke and indebted America refuses to quit robbing the future to pay for its Free-Lunch Guns AND Butter self-indulgence, the implacable Law of Diminishing Returns will solve the problem for America no matter what Senators Mad Dog McCain and You-Know-Her think about pyramidally structured troop levels in Iraq. This overcooked turkey already looks like it has a fork sticking out of it -- so to speak.

This generic, endemic, needless "American War on ..." keeps happening, fellow Crimestoppers, not for anything to do with China, or Vietnam, or Iraq; but rather for the simple reason that we fed up Americans don't stand up to the the rabid reactionary right at home and (1) cut off the funding for their wars, (2) revoke any and all legal authorizations for their wars, and (3) punish the civilian and military perpetrators of their wars. Until we do these three simple and necessary things -- and do them often -- the self-justifying bureaucratic pyramid will just keep on inventing new "syndromes" to prevent our learning the above simply stated lessons. This in turn will only get us more Mad Dog McCains, clueless Charles Rangels, and triangulating You-Know-Hers agitating for more, more, more lives; and always for less, less, and less to show for them; until we get what they always give us for all the needless sacrifice: namely, nothing for us but everything for them.

I say: fuck them and the military-industrial porkbarrel pig they rode in on -- so to speak. Let them go "big" and "long" with that tipping point turning the corner connecting dots with the ink stains on the flypaper dominoes in the tunnel at the end of the light.

You mean preemptive as used by people trying to describe what is actually going on, or preemptive as used by people trotting out an excuse to invade?

And I don't know where the boundary line lies ... given that Singapore fell on the 15th of February, the threat of active intervention by the US Pacific fleet that they were trying to "prevent" was a fairly immediate threat. Is a threat within the next month preemptive and a threat within the next two months preventative?

I'll readily admit that it may be an abuse of language to label a strike "preemptive" when the "threat" is that there may be a reaction to an act of aggression that you yourself have decided upon ...

... however, given the quality of the conservative MSM and the "balance" provided by the well funded radical right media, there's certainly a good chance of getting away with that kind of abuse of language when a US administration is trotting out an excuse for the inexcusable.

"We're here because we're here" goes back to WWI -- another completely pointless war.  The rank and file could see that; it was their hides on the line, after all.

CLAY

Reminds me of something I think I posted earlier - It doesn't make linguistic sense to talk about a "war" if there is no possibility for losing. And since the US Air Force with conventional weapons would reduce every Iraqi city to rubble within a few months, there is no possibility for losing.

I believe that language can define a concept to the point where the concept has no meaning other than the language used to identify it. (Hearing people use the terms of expression you cited in your post sends me regularly into paroxysms.)

Hence the quotation marks in the expression "preemptive" strike.

However, that link reminds me that I overstated the case in making an analogy between the invasion of Iraq and the attack on Pearl Harbor. While neither can be justified, the invasion of Iraq is clearly qualitatively more illegitimate ... if the US Pacific had left harbor, they could have done far more damage to Japanese efforts to respond to the US oil embargo (albeit not recognized as legitimate responses in international law) than any immediate damage Iraq could have done to the US.

At the time of the invasion I really believed it was a preventive attack, although for strange reasons propagandized as preemption against an immediate threat.

Today, I must say that I have seen absolutely no indications of Iraq being any kind of threat against the United States (or Britain or any other country in the Coalition of the Willing).

Hence I have a long time ago reconsidered, and realized that it wasn't even a preventive attack.

In retrospect it seems clear that the comparison with Japan doesn't hold water, and the invasion of Poland is the only comparison that can be made.

And this my government has been contributing to!
:-(

And, even worse, led by a cabinet that I've voted for - and most probably will vote for again.
:-((

JM, please consider adding the US invasion of Granada as another appropriate comparison.  The pretext was that Cuba was building an airfield to accomodate the invasion of Central America, but the real reason (in my opinion) was that Granada's new government announced just before the invasion that it was going to regulate Granada's off-shore banks. 

Years ago a sociology professor taught me that there are two causes for war: the precipitating cause and the real cause.  The precipitating cause convinces us that there is a noble reason to die on the battlefield, while the real cause is always economic. 

The three countries of Bush's Axis of Evil all announced that they planned to hold their national treasure in Euros.  That is actually a very decent threat to the US, all things considered.  Unfortunately, we don't talk about those sorts of things.  As materialistic as US culture is, competing currencies isn't on the list of noble causes worthy of dying for.  Very ironic...

Neoboho