Seems to me the only surge in this escalation will be a surge in Iraqi and American deaths.

There is no military solution in Iraq and just about everybody in the USA and the world knows it except madman Bush and the neo-con fools who gave us this disaster and may be preparing a worse disaster in Iran. People need to wake up and stop this man. James Carroll has a good article on this in today's Boston Globe.

Pressure must be put on the Democrats who are still waffling around on this issue.

Tom

"So, he believes that the various Sunni and Shia factions will come together and act in a national interest "

Well, if the reports that Pershmerga militias will also be deployed in Baghdad prove to be accurate, Odierno may be correct although perhaps not in the manner he hopes for.

The blockade tactics will only remind Iraqis of the Israeli occupation and that is a recipe for disaster, IMO.

LOL...I do stand corrected and rightly so.  My sincere apologies for making it sound like it was an idea you endorsed. 

Agreed this is a very likely outcome. Before continuing to think of future rational behavior, silly person that I am, I would like to offer a reality check on one recurring meme.

I can see no plausible way that a US pullout would, at least for the US forces, look remotely like OPERATION FREQUENT WIND, the 1975 Saigon evacuation. People seem to lose sight that there was minimal US fighting power in Vietnam in 1975. Some Vietnamese fought brilliantly to the end, some fought brilliantly and got out, some just got out. The US advisory units had local security only.

While I recognize that evacuating Iraqis could be a real problem, I can conceive of no serious scenario in which US forces, perhaps abandoning or destroying resources, could not leave Iraq without serious opposition. An extreme case would be to pull back on Balad (LSA ANACONDA) and keep heavy air support over it as transports shuttle to Kuwait, Qatar, or further destinations. Strongpoints in Kurdistan are reasonable. A reverse of 1991 is quite plausible, with a massive armored movement back to Kuwait.

OK. Assume US troops are out. What are the best outcomes with the three likely groupings? The Kurds are already de facto autonomous.

--
Howard

*equal opportunity offense to both extremes*

"Odierno said another reason for Iraqis' alienation was the tendency of many leaders to be more interested in sectarian interests than the national good of Iraq."
Sounds like the way Congress ran under The Hammer and the way Cheney and Rove run policy in the Administration.
Mayberry Machiavellis are everywhere.

Howard,
I believe you must hold the record for the most comments on this sight. You have demonstrated a truly remarkable encyclopedic command of information and facts. You always know the reasons for successes or failures of governments and their actions in the past. As far as I know, no person who posts here on a regular basis claims more knowledge of world history, the history of war, the details of all levels of strategy and tactics, the abilities and proper usage of weapon systems, the gross and subtle differences between cultures, and even what diseases they have.

Most of the people who post here voice an opinion as to what we, as a country, should do beginning now and going forward in regards to our involvement in Iraq and its region. I ask you to do the same. Please give us your educated advice or guess as to what our country’s best policy going forward should be? If you were to become Commander in Chief right now with the abilities our country has right now, what would you direct the various forces under your command to do?

I feel confident that you can do this in some detail. Should we stay and if so, how should we operate? Should we leave, and if so, when and how? Should we leave Iraq but remain in the region?

Now is the time for all good men to come to the aid of their country. We need your advice, Howard. Don’t be shy.

I can hardly endure the irony of golden-boy General David Petraeus "training" the Iraqi "security forces" who have simply become death squad militias that have provided Iraq with no security. Now, with his very own "training manual" to guide him, General Petraeus ostensibly heads back to Iraq to fight his own militia "trainees," probably the only people who have actually read his "counter-insurgency" manual. Now I understand why military historian Martin Van Crevald says: "The American military is completely incompetent. They only know how to train Iraqis how to fight Americans. How stupid can they be?" This Vietnam Veteran can only roll his eyes and remember similar situations from thirty-five years ago and answer: "too stupid to stipulate." No doubt about it. We've just got to get a new army -- at least from the rank of major on up.

It is pretty twisted that a nation the size of the Chicago metropolitan area gets the lion's share of U.S. foreign aid, in spite of much bigger needs elsewhere in the world. AIPAC yanks the string and every American politician jumps.
Israel is the real Third Rail of American politics. Step on it and you're toast. Like Iraq, it's another creation of Europeans to clean up a mess they made. It would have helped if nations around the world would have accepted all the displaced Jews before and after WW2. Then, the necessity for a nation in the middle of the Arab world would not have been so intense.
The Zionist fundamentalist settlers scattered in Palestinian territory demand army protection but exempt themselves from military service and smugly claim that the land they occupy is a gift from God and deserving of military protection. Faith is one thing, but when God is made into a real estate developer, it's gone too far.
Hitler was the origin of the modern state of Israel. Without his extermination of Jews, the middle east would be a different place today.

It starts at the top. We need a new Commander in Chief. The current one isn't up to the job.

I don't think there would be any serious resistance to the operational pullout, but people keep raising the spectre of Saigon in 1975.

Yes, this is a strategic disaster. The closest historical parallels that come to me, all things eventually reversed, are Clark Field and the Korean War bug-out to Pusan. One has to look to allies, and see things such as Dien Bien Phu -- although it's not directly comparable in having an empire end.

I'm literally not convinced that an Iraqi retreat, embarrassing at best, will cripple regional influence. While it's a very marginal parallel, think of the lessons and operational changes coming from Dieppe and Pearl Harbor (alas, if Taranto had not been forgotten). So no, I'm not ready to say it equates to the Roman or Ottoman examples.

--
Howard

*equal opportunity offense to both extremes*

I would begin, as Commander in Chief, by recognizing what I don't know but need to find out, and being open to being informed that I need to know more about some things about which I may have been smug. My sense of Iraq is that it will partition in some way, with Kurdistan continuing its de facto autonomy while the Sunni and Shi'a work out, probably bloodily, some workable system. While I'd be open to ways that the US might be asked to help in the latter, I don't have any quick solutions.

I would expect to retain forces in Kurdistan, Kuwait and Qatar, with significant naval forces afloat. Some support may continue from Egypt. Diego Garcia will retain its importance.

Just as Eisenhower offered to go to Korea if talks were needed to deal with a stalled situation, I believe the commander-in-chief has to be willing to authorize potentially useful discussions everywhere. Such discussions do not need to be at the level of head of government, but I see no reason for not having ministerial and special discussions with Syria, Cuba, North Korea, Venezuela and Iran (Libya is underway). Perhaps deniably at first, using intelligence channels, groups such as Hamas and Hizbollah cannot be ignored -- although I see little point to discussions with enemies with no real local base, such as al-Qaeda.

Knowledge is key in many ways. Given that the basic Arabic course of the Defense Language Institute takes 62 weeks with well-selected personnel, I'd make a major effort to improve language and cross-cultural as early as possible in the American educational system. There's a long list of needed skills.

Among those skills are the ability to build cooperation in subsaharan Africa, perhaps the last remaining area where the "Great Powers" haven't established spheres of interests. Working with regional organizations has particular promise.

Tantrums by US officials, and hiding facts because they offend political blocs. I refer, for example, to the massive cut in the travel budget for US scientists going to the World AIDS Conference, because activists sassed the Secretary of HHS. When government-funded research produces ideologically impure hard data, it will no longer be suppressed.

--
Howard

*equal opportunity offense to both extremes*

Hopefully, mispelling is not a sign of impending collapse.
That's Ataturk.

Thanks for your answer so far.

I agree that it is hard or impossible to see any quick solutions but everyone agrees that we should have a plan.

Should the movement of all forces out of Iraq except for those which you would leave in Kurdistan begin immediately?

Approximately how many personnel should remain in Kurdistan and, granting that situations evolve, what would their initial mission be? Would they just be there to jump into the fray at an opportune time or would they remain actively involved in the rest of Iraq?

That would apparently mean air strikes. Would local US commanders decide when and what targets to go after if those forces were employed or would we let forces presumably under the control of the elected government in Baghdad direct supporting fire? Would we still be trying to control the insurgency in favor of the current government or would we let the feuding forces fight it out or would we pick a side and support it?

Would we honor the commitment to leave all of Iraq if asked to by the Iraqi government now or in the foreseeable future? If after leaving Iraq, except for Kurdistan, would we support the movement of Iraqis from the rest of Iraq into Kurdistan where we could presumably offer them safe haven? If the Kurds acted to prevent such an influx of refugees would we take a side in the ensuing fight? If elements in Kurdistan began targeting US forces because they wanted us to leave, would we forcefully seek them out and crush them?

Would you authorize bombing or artillery attacks on suspected insurgents in towns and cities in Kurdistan?

Would we have a plan to deal with these and other questions and should it be announced as our policy when we move all remaining forces to Kurdistan?

See if the phrase "enable rich-text editor" appears below the comment box (sometimes it's only on reply function). If so, click on it and the view should switch to a comment box with a row of icons under it. Use the chain.

Also check your account settings. "Tiny MCE tich-text" is near the top. Set the default to "true". I find the appearance of rich-text editor a bit sluggish, but it shows up after a delay.

Quick question Kevin on your comments about the world oil supply - are you saying that if the Iraqi's, or the Iraqi Shia, control their own oil it won't reach world markets but if the US controls Iraq's resources, it will?

The nearly half trillion USD the neocons have spent on their wars would buy a lot of oil or go a long way towards funding alternative energy sources.

To me this whole affair, the invasion of Iraq and now ramping up the hype about Iran's nuclear "program", is all about us controlling their oil.

Everything else is for show.

"This is a defeat on the scale of the Romans in the 7th Century or the Ottomans in the 20th."
WesJ, weren't the Romans long done by the 7th century?

Careful with that creeping Eurocentrism! The Roman Empire was driven out of its impoverished western provinces in the 5th Century. In the 7th, it was still one of the world's great empires, if not comparable to its glory days, and its population centers were in what are now Turkey, Syria, and Egypt. The initial Moslem expansion from Arabia took away the last two provinces, reducing it permanently to a regional power centered on Constantinople, formerly Byzantium. Hence, we refer to that latter stage as the Byzantine Empire.

The Phillipine Campaign of 1941-42 and the "Big Bug Out" in Korea in 1950 are the two greatest battlefield defeats in American military history, but we recovered from both, strategically. I avoided using them for that reason. We need to look on this on a large enough scale that the conservatives cannot keep talking about it like they just lost a fistfight in the hallway and think they can get revenge right after gym class.

There is no simple answer to what the effects of our loss of control/slash influence over Mid-Eastern oil might be. We can only know that it will be much reduced. That is a bad thing, from any American point of view. Hopefully we will use that long-term security threat as a reason to finally end our oil addiction, instead of opting for more imperial bullying and subversion. That is what we should have started doing 34 years ago, after the first OPEC oil embargo.

=== There is no simple answer to what the effects of our loss of control/slash influence over Mid-Eastern oil might be. We can only know that it will be much reduced. That is a bad thing, from any American point of view. ===

Personally, I think that would be the just about the best thing possible for the long-term future of the United States. In the short term, the owners of the oil have no choice but to sell it to someone (else they would face economic collapse and revolution), so it will still be on the market. That would give the US time to hear the wake-up call and get to work on serious, sustainable, long-term energy independence. Without which WE will collapse in the medium-term anyway.

sPh

Or should the slogan read:

HOWARD FOR PREZ! EQUAL OPPORTUNITY OFFENSE TO BOTH PARTIES!

He [Bush] has perfected the alchemical process of turning milestones into headstones and millstones. Ges's Blog 12/31/06

I *hate* Jews and others who cry anti-Semitism at any opposition to Israel. For the record, I'm a Jew who criticizes Israel all the time, thinks they need to negotiate a peace that involves pulling back to more or less the '67 borders, including giving back the Arab part of Jerusalem, and thinks they've been dragging their feet in negotiations for years. But the preceding post, if not actually anti-Semitic, is obscenely insensitive to the Holocaust and Jews generally. I'm not going to dignify it by arguing with the specifics. What Baker said was "Fuck the Jews"; this guy seems to be saying the same. I'm not marking him down, but if all he has to contribute is this garbage, I'm not sure what he's doing here.

I think you have it... Agree with "The Decider" and you get the job.

I keep asking myself if any good can ever come from this FIVE STAR mistake and the answer keeps coming up NO.

OWH

Petreaus and Odierno may get it all wrong but they both have served in Iraq. Petreaus more than Odierno seemed to have an understanding of what was needed in Iraq and was overruled by Bremer and other civilians of the Pentagon.

Most of the field generals were more correct about the situation in Iraq than either the CIA, which seemed to get nothing correct, and Rumsfled and Franks.

It may be way too late to do anything but let the Iraqis slaughter each other but the certainty that no one, even those with experience in Iraq, know less than those with none is interesting.

Daniel A. Greenbaum

There never was an Iraq. There was only Saddam. Odierno's idiotic assertion that "We underestimated that…. We thought they'd think Iraq first, and that didn't occur. I think maybe it will occur over time, but it's not occurring now." Is a typical "wha happened?" talking point from an administration that never listened to anyone with knowledge of the Arab world before committing to the invasion as early as Feb. '02.

What motive would these people have to come out of hiding and actively engage the American convoys?

As Jay says vengeance. Also if the divide really is between those who want us to stay or leave making a Custer's Last Stand out of one of our convoys might be a big feather in the cap of one of the Madhi Army's rogue commanders.

Even if we announced we're leaving and negotiated safe passage there's a whole lot of pent up anger over what we've done to them and their country. It'd be their last chance to get back at us.

China's already imagining.

What have they ever done for America but interfere in our internal political affairs and whine about what some Germans did to them -- and about six million non-Jews -- in Europe sixty years ago.

I'm curious -- if Hitler only exterminated Jews, and not the six-million other non-Jews, would their whining then be justified?

I'm trying to figure out, based on your really, really fine contribution to the discourse here at the Cafe, at what point it's OK to complain, or even be enraged, about the extermination of a race of people, and when it's simply just whining?

"Gee Mom, do I HAVE to take the garbage out tonight?"

"But Dad, I don't WANT to mow the lawn today!"

"Rats, they just took another 1000 Jews to the gas chamber!"

How about: My ancestors were taken to Auschwitz, and all I got was this lousy t-shirt!

Silly whining Jews....

Dissent Protects Democracy.

They've let the Palestinians get pushed around. They did nothing significant to free Sunnis from Saddam's cruching, secular rule.

What do think they'll do? Supply them with arms through Syria? Furnish the (Sunni) Peshmerga with armor?

But Howard asked for the best case scenarios. The scenario I find more likely is an extended period of civil war, ethnic cleansing and a failed state.

Wait a minute...John Locke, a major inspiration of the American Revolution, wrote "God gave the earth to man as property, to dispense with as he pleases."  From an
American Indian's point of view, yes, that's going too far. But if you live in the US, and own property, you can to some extent thank John Locke, who went too far, for his metaphysical assumption.

Also, I've noticed over the years that those settlements in Palestine seem to attract Americans.  Is that a "Jewish thing" or an "American thing?"  The US grew and prospered by public access to free land that actually belonged to someone else.  After two centuries, this might be embedded in American culture. Are American Jews who emmigrate to the settlements simply following their manifest destiny?

Zionism preceded Hitler by several years, however.  If you take the Third Reich out of the equation, there's a good chance that the Nation of Israel would have come into existence anyway.  You've got to keep in mind that the Holocaust was a culmination of many tendencies that were already operational in Europe, even the internment camps in several European countries - the man without a country syndrome, you might say. 

It was Spanish Jews - scholars - who translated the books in the libraries and gave Europe the ability to claim lineage to the glory of Ancient Greece.   (I've always thought it was a tenuous claim, but what the heck.)

Neoboho

The WaPo blurb on its website for their story this morning (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/01/08/AR2007010800237.html),
seems to succumb to the same problem. As it says over Michael Abramowitz's name, "President says al-Maliki's willingness to commit forces against Shiite militias ensures success."

Yet as far as I know, the key problem is that far too many of al-Maliki's forces ARE Shi'ite militias, or at least infiltrated by Shi'ite militiamen, for this statement to make any sense. Kudos for the Post for at least saying "President says...," but in the rest of the article, the key problem that by now, there are not really any "Iraqi forces" seems to be neglected, and the Post's article doesn't push the question.

I believe there is a tendency, even among the learned, to overestimate the consequences of an American withdrawl from Iraq. In much the same way that many Americans were deluded in thinking invading Iraq and removing Saddam would be "easy", it is also easy to be overly pessimistic envisioning the aftermath of American withdrawl. The imagination tends to stick on the most fearsome possibilities, while reality tends toward a much more mundane outcome. Removing American troops from the fray would at least diminish the number of focal points for violence by one.

One great fallacy of the imagination that exaggerates one's sense of dread over withdrawl is the belief that the presence of American forces makes a big difference in what's going on in Iraq. Yes, of course American troops have an effect, but in terms of the larger picture of how the Iraqi political struggle irons itself out, American military forces have almost nothing to contribute. American troops act as both a cushion and a catalyst in the in the Iraqi political brew, but they are not a real factor in the outcome. They merely postpone the eventual resolution of divisions between interested Iraqi and regional players.

If we recognize that American military forces can do little to influence the political process that will eventually bring some measure of stability to Iraq, acknowledging that the troops mostly confuse and complicate the issues, it is at least plausible that a measured withdrawl would in fact alleviate one of the major impediments to progress.

Another delusion of American power is that we tend to underemphasize the death and destruction in Iraq when it is carried out by our troops, we see it as part of the mission, but when we envision the civil violence that is likey to follow our withdrawl it seems much more vicious and unnecessary. I would wager that to the Iraqis the violence seems pretty much equally depressing no matter who does it. We wish our troops could be there to tamp it down, we optimistically imagine that they could, but the reality is more complicated. It's important to recognize that from an Iraqi perspective it is hard to know whether American troops cause more death and destruction than they prevent, and that fact neutralizes American efforts to influence Iraq's eventual political resolutions.

The key point here is that America has almost no meaningful control over the outcomes in Iraq. Our every effort is met with stalemate and confusion, not simply because our leaders are incompetent, which they are, but also because it is a rather simple matter to frustrate American aims in Iraq, no matter how noble, and there is enough political energy among various Iraqi interest groups to continue to frustrate American efforts as long as we're there. Whatever minor influence we may exert, it is vastly outweighed by the costs of bringing it to bear and the unintended negative consequences of our efforts.

If American policymakers in Iraq were to recognize the futility of our efforts there and try to reorganize our activities based on our true strengths (not on the illusion of military power or the ego needs of a flailing president), based on the limited power we do have to make a positive difference in Iraq and the Middle East, withdrawl would be the first step.

There is a real possibility that the Iraq conflict will descend into a nightmarish regional conflagration, but it is a scenario that is in league with the neocons' vision of Iraqis welcoming American troops with flowers and candy, in this case based on a selective emphasis on our greatest fears (as the flowers and candy vision was based on the neocons' naive hopes). Now that we've unleashed the demon in Iraq, now as we see our power to bottle up that demon diminished to the point of irrelvancy, we need to fall back to a position where our actions do make a difference, if indeed there is such a place. Unfortunately, we have put ourselves into a position where no matter what happens in Iraq and in the region, we have little power to influence events. We long ago exhausted our potential by leading with our biggest punch, the military cudgel, and we find our adversaries are still standing, in fact thriving.

Finally, our strategic failure in Iraq was entirely forseeable long before American bombs began falling on Baghdad. It is not a failure of military strategy we are witnessing but a failure of intelligence, both the strategic kind and the mental kind. By failing to understand the complications of military intervention into the sectarian powderkeg of Iraq, by failing to plan for any but the most improbably rosy scenarios, President Bush and his ever-shrinking army of supporters have one by one eliminated every chance of escape from the labyrinth of their own imaginations.

With all due respect for all of the sincere and thoughtful posts on a subject of grave importance....the question that we face is not how do we articulare a rational policy regarding the disaster that is Iraq, it's how do we rein in a seriously delusional President, who is immune to rational considerations?

I don't have the answer for that one, but perhaps we could begin by asking the proper question.

While I don't think it would be relevant, the first Anglo-Afghan War would be worse: one man came back.

--
Howard

*equal opportunity offense to both extremes*

How would our withdrawal from Iraq compare to the Russian withdrawal from Afghanistan or the British withdrawal from India? I don't remember that those were military disasters -- the actual retreats that is --but that is not my subject.

Of course, the Russian withdrawal from Afghanistan led to the dominance of the Taliban, and the British withdrawal from India was followed by extensive violence between Muslims and Hindus. I don't think anybody blames the Russians or the British for getting out, however.

Both of those examples are symptoms of collapsing empires, but that may be coincidental. Perhaps someone could think of examples of strategic retreats that are less closely associated with the ends of empires.

Absolutely. I think that is why Congress should have open investigations aimed at finding the pressure points where it can apply what power it has on this administration.

Bingo.

"I think there are a lot of Arab states in the region who are looking to China not just as a potential economic partner, but also as a potential political counterweight to the US. The more they bring the Chinese into the region and the less they will have to do what the US tells them to."

Kenneth Pollack, a former CIA and national security council Middle East analyst.

Remember when Hu was given the bum's rush instead of a formal state dinner in 2005 on his trip to Washington? Well, he didn't dwell on the slights. He left DC and went to Saudi Arabia to sign a 5+ billion deal. And the next year the Saudi King went to China and got treated to a formal state occasion.

Perhaps the WH should add an etiquette book to the library?

He [Bush] has perfected the alchemical process of turning milestones into headstones and millstones. Ges's Blog 12/31/06

Once we have reined in Mad King George, don't we still have to articulate a policy for dealing with the mess he's made?

Perhaps someone could think of examples of strategic retreats that are less closely associated with the ends of empires. # Valley Forge # Russian defense against French, culminating in Battle of Borodino (subject of "1812 Overture") # Dunkirk # Soviet defense of Moscow against Nazis # Pusan Perimeter # Chosin Reservoir

The only one of these that qualifies as a "strategic retreat" is the second one. The Russian policy of giving ground to the French army overstretched them and led to a major strategic Victory.

The Chosin Reservoir was a tactical retreat, the Pusan perimeter and Dunkirk were tactical / operational defensive operations.

Dunkirk, of course, was part of the strategic disaster usually referred to as the Battle of France. Per Norman Gelb, Dunkirk became a strategic victory because of its political consequences. It solidified British support for their own war effort and also solidified American support for Britain.

Valley Forge was a winter bivouac that went horribly wrong.

I am comforted by tbucklin's excellent missive. If the local powers continue to sell us oil while carrying on with their squalid little traditional rivalries and quarrels, we have a chance to rebuild our diplomatic connections in the region. That will not occur, of course, until we get rid of the frat-house sociopaths currently running our government. No one anywhere in the world trusts them and no one with any sense should trust them.

 Enormous sums of money can be made by whomever gets the contract to extract Iraqi oil.  That is the prize in Iraq.  That oil, once out of the ground, enters the world market and is equally available to American consumers whether an American corporation is raking in production profits or a French company is doing the same.  It is the lure of the production profits that drives Bush and his cabal.

 Hoppy in Sacramento