General McChrystal is Right, Al Qaeda is a Non-Factor
Lt. Gen. Stanley McChrystal, head of the Joint Special Operations Command’s operations in Iraq, is the chief promoter of a victory declaration and believes that AQI has been all but eliminated, the military intelligence official said. But Adm. William J. Fallon, the chief ofU.S. Central Command, which oversees Iraq and the rest of the Middle East, is urging restraint, the official said. The military intelligence official, like others interviewed for this report, spoke on the condition of anonymity about Iraq assessments and strategy.
Senior U.S. commanders on the ground, including Gen. David H. Petraeus, the head of U.S. forces in Iraq, have long complained that Central Command, along with theCIA, is too negative in its analyses. On this issue, however, Petraeus agrees with Fallon, the military intelligence official said.
While General McChrystal is being unfairly pilloried as the author of “Mission Accomplished”, he is not receiving credit for extraordinary sacrifice and leadership during the last three years. The public will never know much about his command’s activities because they are highly classified. General McChrystal is not an armchair general. He has spent an extraordinary amount of time during the last three years deployed with his troops. He does not ask the units under his command to do anything he is not willing to do.
If the McChrystal quote is accurate (and I believe it is) then the American people are being given important information critical to understanding what is happening in Iraq. It is General McChrystal and his troops, not General Petraeus or Admiral Fallon, who are on the pointy end of the spear in the battle against what is left of Al Qaeda. What has been apparent for quite some time, most of the violence in Iraq is not (I REPEAT NOT) being caused by Al Qaeda in Iraq or foreign fighters.
As I have reported in these pages previously, I was in Iraq in May of 2006. I saw firsthand what units under General McChrystal’s command were doing–they were killing and capturing on a daily basis suspected Al Qaeda in Iraq operatives. Despite the success of their operations, the violence in Iraq continued to escalate (a trend that continued thru May of this year). Why? Very simple. Most of the violence was not being initiated nor carried out by Al Qaeda elements. The violence then (and now) stems from sectarian strife–i.e., sunnis versus shias.
But the Bush Administration does not want to accept nor hear this kind of report. To admit that most of the violence in Iraq has nothing to do with Al Qaeda, and even less to do with foreign fighters, completely obliterates the Bush Administration’s rationale for keeping troops in Iraq. Once again we are witnessing a General being silenced for telling an uncomfortable truth to the American people. This is a new “General Shinseki” moment in my view.
McChrystal’s assessment must be put on the public record as soon as possible. The Senate and House Armed Services committees need to call General McChrystal to testify. He is not some political pollyanna seeking to curry favor with political masters. He’s a solid, professional soldier who has made enormous personal sacrifices during the last three years. Once we understand that Al Qaeda is not the primary cause of violence in Iraq we can turn our attention to devising viable strategies to defuse the enmity fueling the civil war raging between Sunnis and Shias. Unfortunately, it appears that the Congress and the American people are, once again, prepared to ignore an important warning from a frontline general. McChrystal’s views on this are important and should be heard.
Oh, it's all just too obvious to ignore. Just about every general willing to speak up and out is incapable, resentful due to lack of promotion, has lost the will to fight, does not have US interests at heart, is not a patriot, and has been over-trained to the point that they can't see the wood for the trees, does not fully appreciate the strategic or international situation, and/or retired and out of touch, therefore anything said can be discounted.
On the other hand, our clear-minded, tactically and strategically savvy, inspirational commander-in-chief, and his band ot highly knowledgeable advisors, with their broad experience in all things military, occupation, insurgency and nation-building, and long string of successes to look back on, . . . .
You see! The choice is easy.
October 17, 2007 2:48 PM | Reply | Permalink
After the Petraeus Show this year from his appointment and the surge to his charade on the Hill last month, which was exposed as fraudulent all along the way and still presented as Gospel, I have no faith that the major American media or Congress itself will reveal the truth about Iraq.
The Democrats have been a total failure at illuminating the situation and forcing an end to the war. They say one thing and do nothing. It seems now that they are part of the head-in-the-sand crowd that perpetuates our permanent presence there. Unfortunately for Gen. McChrystal, he was the one who declared major combat operations over, which is a ready excuse for all to ignore him.
October 17, 2007 7:29 PM | Reply | Permalink
I see this morning that Turkey has voted to invade Iraq, in pursuit of Kurds. Obviously Bush's invasion is such a huge success that it's inspiring others. Soon everyone will want to invade Iraq. I know I do.
John
http://www.haberarts.com/
October 17, 2007 10:58 PM | Reply | Permalink
It's the hip, cool, happenin' thing to do! All the kids are being ordered into it!
thosethingswesay.blogspot.com
October 18, 2007 1:10 AM | Reply | Permalink
I'm confused. Larry Johnson has a good record on this, but in the current issue of "The New Republic" Peter Bergen makes the opposite argument -- that Al-Qaeda was almost destroyed but is now resurgent in a different form, and not in Iraq, but in Pakistan and Afghanistan.
Maybe there's no contradiction. Al-Qaeda in Iraq is not what we're fighting and Bush is lying about that. Still, Bush has incompetently dealt with Al-Qaeda where it actually exists.
thosethingswesay.blogspot.com
October 18, 2007 1:12 AM | Reply | Permalink
The combat in Iraq is not being fought to protect America from terrorists. If anything it is a clear distraction.
The combat involved in the occupation of Iraq is being conducted so that the Republican Party does not have to admit that the invasion of Iraq had no real purpose beyond demonstrating that America remains the most militarily powerful nation in the world. The combat there has always been about getting and keeping political power for the Republican Party here in America, and attempting to intimidate the nations of the Middle East into following American instructions.
The combat in Iraq is a play in a shadow theater, designed to get the audience to think what is done there matters to the audience. What happens to the actors is of no importance to the producers of the play, only the reaction of the various factions of the American audience.
Lt. Gen. McChrystal is exposing that the shadow villian has already departed the stage. The Republican producers don't want the audience to leave the theater yet, so Gen. McChrystal's revelations are not appreciated.
It is well past time the Americans left Iraq. The Republican Party desperately wants the audience to remain in its seats until after the 2008 election, so they are stretching out a play that has already past its climax.
Someone needs to raise the curtains, turn on the house lights, and say "It's over. Go home."
October 18, 2007 2:50 AM | Reply | Permalink
How unfortunate for Uncurious ("fight them there rather than over here") George. Now we need a new rationale (#65) for continuing in Iraq. How about the real one - maintaining a footprint in this oil-rich area. As Steve Martin would say - "Naaah".
October 18, 2007 3:38 AM | Reply | Permalink
aL-CIAduh will never be defeated, not until the war mongers in D.C. come up with another cute little entity that is shaped, molded and designed to scare the hell out of the American public, to keep them perpetually fearful.
It might take awhile, but eventually, the gullible American public will be given the latest version of Emmanuel Goldstein to vent their homicidal rage upon so the Corporate War Party can keep doing what it does best:
Fighting endless wars for corporate profits and world dominance.
P.S. Back in the 1980's, Bin Laden was on the CIA's payroll. If he's still alive, who's to say he still isn't on that same payroll?
October 18, 2007 4:36 AM | Reply | Permalink
Apparently you are not aware of even the most basic facts, such as that the organization in Iraq that calls themselves "Al Qaeda" is not the same as the organization that ObL heads. (This is separate from the fact that they aren't primarily responsible for the violence in Iraq.) Many of our troubles are due to people thinking in terms of labels without ever questioning the application. Arabs, Muslims, terrorists, insurgents, "the troops", "the Republicans", "the Democrats", "the left", "the right", "evangelicals", etc. etc. All of these terms hide important distinctions that are critical to a sound understanding of the world.
October 18, 2007 6:24 AM | Reply | Permalink
That's pretty clueless. The reason to be there is to control the region, and particularly the oil supply. The U.S.'s permanent bases do not and never did have anything to do with Al Qaeda. Al Qaeda and "terrorism" are just excuses for pursuing a U.S. foreign policy that many of its citizens would never approve of if they were fully informed of it.
October 18, 2007 6:27 AM | Reply | Permalink
At one point, according to an apocryphal story, the FBI had so heavily infiltrated the ACP that undercover agents and informants actually outnumbered the genuine communists!
Um, "apocryphal" means it isn't true. It's not considered good form to use falsehoods to support an argument.
What you say about the Republicans is true, but it isn't limited to them. The cold war occurred under Truman, Kennedy, and Carter as well. And many Dems, especially "leaders" who in that position through heavy corporate support, strongly promote the "war on terror" theme. The underlying problem is the corporate state and American exceptionalism, and that spreads far beyond the Republican party.
October 18, 2007 6:36 AM | Reply | Permalink
Our campaign against AQI reminds me of the FBI's struggle to destroy the American Communist Party back in the fifties. At one point, according to an apocryphal story, the FBI had so heavily infiltrated the ACP that undercover agents and informants actually outnumbered the genuine communists!
Unfortunately, the Republican Party thrives on bogeymen, real or imagined makes no difference at all. It used to be communists under your bed, now it's AQI, tomorrow it will be the monster in your closet.
When it comes to terrorizing the American public, Al Qaeda has nothing on the modern Republican party which has, over the past 30-50 years, cost hundreds of billions of dollars in defense spending, tens of thousands of American and millions of non-American lives all to defend us from the bogeyman.
Nice guys, hunh?
October 18, 2007 8:45 AM | Reply | Permalink
Larry is talking about Al Qaeda in Iraq (AQI), which is distinct from Al Qaeda proper. Al Qaeda isn't a unitary movement controlled by an executive council headed by Osama bin Laden. It's more of a franchise. Bin Laden provided training and ideological motivation to alienated Muslims from around the world, then sent them back to their own countries to start their own terror cells. At that point, the Al Qaeda leadership's role is generally to solicit and bankroll proposals from the various terror franchises.
AQI was created as a pretty independent movement by Zarqawi. There was apparently never much coordination or even communication between AQI and the Al Qaeda leadership. (In fact, as I have always understood it, Zarqawi and Bin Laden saw themselves less as allies than as rivals for the leadership of the jihadist movement - I'm sure Larry can correct me if I'm mistaken.) AQI appears never to have numbered much more than a few hundred foreign fighters (as opposed to the many thousands of active members of the Iraqi insurgency). It is quite possible for Al Qaeda's leadership and it's Afghan and Pakistani movements to regroup and recover, even as AQI is dismantled in Iraq.
October 18, 2007 9:02 AM | Reply | Permalink
You are dead on. Couldn't have said it better. Big golf clap for a well struck shot.
October 18, 2007 10:39 AM | Reply | Permalink
As long as there is an active war in Iraq, the Republicans have something going that scares enough voters to get conservative Republicans reelected.
Without the war in Iraq, they have to run on their programs for meeting the domestic needs in America, and their record there includes as a high point their reaction to the disaster in New Orleans, the health care crisis, corruption of Rep. Jerry Lewis and Daryl Issa (among others) and the soap opera surrounding Larry Craig, job outsourcing, the rapidly increasing cost of college, the financial disaster resulting from the collapse of the Housing Bubble (which was created by Greenspan in the first place to ensure that Bush was elected in 2004, and so on.
As long as the war in Iraq does not end before the election in 2008, they still have that war (actually a disastrously run occupation, but who's going to quibble) to counteract all the domestic negatives. If combat can be dragged out until after the election, the Democrats can be blamed for all the disasters that are currently being covered up.
Iraq is not an American war. It is a Republican Party war. America generally is paying for it in blood and treasure as well as total failure to deal with real American problems domestically and a general failure to deal adequately with terrorism world-wide, but the only benefit will be reelected Republican Legislators.
As long as Iraq is not out-and-out lost, its continuance remains a major electoral point in favor of the Republican Party. For everyone else in both Iraq and America, the combat in Iraq is a net loss and will never become a gain of any kind, even the most anemic kind of a gain.
Nothing that happens in Iraq matters. Thus my allusion to a shadow play. No one even cares how the shadows are created on the curtain, so long as the audience buys the fiction the producer intends to display.
You got the idea. All that matters to the Republicans is that the combat in Iraq continue. It will, too, even if the Republicans have to create a straw-man enemy for us to fight. When we finally get out of Iraq, the Republicans have lost everything except the fictions of "Stabbed-in-the-back" that they are hurriedly concocting at this moment.
War was the Neocon dream. It will be replaced by the new dream, the myth of the loss caused by being "Stabbed-in-the-back." Those solve Republican problems which all surround getting and keeping power. Please note that there is nothing in this about solving America's problems. That's not a Republican issue or a Republican competence.
October 18, 2007 11:18 AM | Reply | Permalink
"The violence then (and now) stems from sectarian strife–i.e., sunnis versus shias."
This certainly has been true since the invasion, along with the Sunni insurgency waged against US occupiers. However, the times may be a'changin. A report in the Asia Times emphasizes the importance of the visit to Tehran by the leaders of the two Shia groups, al Sadr and al Hakim, where a 'truce' was agreed to between the two, putting a unified Iraq above intra-Shiite fighting. The principles of the truce included no US super-bases to remain in Iraq and no giveaway of Iraqi oil wealth to foreign interests. Another outcome of the truce was that al Hakim went to talk with Sunni leaders about a unified effort to push the US out of Iraq. So, only time will tell, but it looks like the Iraqis may be getting their act together.
October 18, 2007 11:30 AM | Reply | Permalink
My brain is apparently functioning slowly today. I finally get it. The administration can't ever accept that AQI is defeated, because then the "war" in Iraq is won, and there can be no reason to remain there. What good would it be to nourish a nice little "war" for 5 years only to have it end because of an untimely victory?
I'm not really kidding here.
Hoppy in Sacramento
October 18, 2007 12:55 PM | Reply | Permalink
Jibal, I think the explanation is even more cynical than a "war for oil." This is and has always been a war for Bush.
Bush's popularity hit he stratosphere after 9/11 and the defeat of the Taliban. Although he was riding high in the polls in 2002, Bush saw how quickly his father's poll numbers dropped after the First Gulf War. In order to keep the nation rallied behind him going into the '04 election, he needed to bask in the glow of another quick and easy military victory. Iraq was convenient; a de-fanged, hostile Arab government with a monstrous dictator we had beaten once. To a White House in which domestic politics trump policy, it must have been a no-brainer. Re-enforce Bush's image as a warrior-king, energize the base and divide the Democrats. A large enough landslide re-election would then erase any lingering questions about the legitimacy of the Bush presidency.
Unfortunately, victory in Iraq has proven neither quick, easy nor even certain, leaving Bush and his disciples no choice but to either grimly "stay the course" or admit that he was wrong. At this point, Americans and Iraqis are paying with their lives all so that the boy-king doesn't have to admit that he was wrong.
October 18, 2007 2:07 PM | Reply | Permalink
"But Mom, all the other kids are invading Iraq!"
"So if they all jumped off a bridge...?"
October 18, 2007 2:21 PM | Reply | Permalink
Apocryphal means "of uncertain or unproven origin." Apparently it can also mean a false story, although I admit I had never previously encountered that particular usage. Sorry for the confusion!
While there have definitely been Democrats who have benefited from the culture of fear to which I referred, there can be little question that the Republican party depends upon and openly cultivates an atmosphere of paranoia for political gain. Consider how Republican fortunes in the 90's after the Berlin Wall came down and Hussein was driven out of Kuwait and before 9/11.
From Truman's "loss" of China in the 50's through Obama's refusal to wear a pin on his lapel, the Republicans have labeled democrats soft, weak and unpatriotic because fear was the only effective counter to FDR's New Deal.
Don’t get me wrong, plenty of Democrats have played along, most recently by voting for the Iraq War resolution, the USA PATRIOT Act and to extend the Executive's powers under FISA, but it's the Republicans who cultivate the atmosphere of terror.
October 18, 2007 2:29 PM | Reply | Permalink
It's both a war for oil and a war to make Bush a wartime president to give the moron a veneer of authority because nobody in his/her right mind would pay attention to him otherwise.
October 18, 2007 5:09 PM | Reply | Permalink
Control of the region and the oil supply were reasons (not all of them) for invading Iraq. The Republicans really bought the "Shock and Awe" fantasy and tried to implement it on the weakest and most isolated sizable Middle Eastern nation, Iraq. The Iraq insurgency that was created by Bremer's, Cheney's and Rumsfeld's incompetence and inaction blew those fantasies out of the water.
Every nation will rally to reject an invader, as even the people of the USSR rallied behind the hated Stalin when the Germans attacked. Asymmetric warfare was the only possible way to deal with most powerful Army in the world - ours. They got external help anywhere they could get it, which included al Qaeda. That didn't hurt bin Laden's feelings, either, but it was a rational and easily anticipated reaction by the Iraqis to the American invasion rather than a creation of al Qaeda.
Since 2005 the only reason for American forces to stay in Iraq is so the Republicans do not have to admit that they screwed up the invasion and occupation as badly as everything else they have attempted since 1994. They grabbed the tar-baby based on a myth, and now they know better, but they simply can't let go. The results in the American elections would all become totally clear.
October 18, 2007 6:37 PM | Reply | Permalink