Valdron,

Thank you, that was the intent. But the disclosure part is because although I've regularly written over at Eric Alterman's site "Altercation", this is my first foray here at TPM. I've learned, the hard way, that people who do *not* know of my background, and then later discover it, become extremely suspicious. (One person once postulated that I did not even actually exist, but was a consortium of PR people in the bowels of the Pentagon. Others have had similar thoughts.) So I introduce myself in full...it'll get more contentious later this week because although I know and like Greg, and his book, there are some things that need to be punctured all around. Or maybe I just like poking things with needles...

Regards,

Bob Bateman

"I am more or less out of space for now, so I will leave this post with the contentious opinion (as always, all of these thoughts are mine alone, not those of DoD, or the Army, or any official body), that Print Media has been failing…because they have failed to see how “war” could provide a new income stream which would result in a massive increase in journalists “in theater.” But that is a business issue. More on that later."

Didn't it become too unsafe in Iraq for Journalists to move around the country to actually cover the story in full, so how could you expect them to obtain the coverage that would lead to the new income stream?

The US can not solve the Iraq problem. They made it worse by going in. They are now in the same posture as all Colonial powers have always ended up in.

The USA was stupid enough to think that jumping on the back of a caged tiger was good idea. They never stopped to think: How the hell do we get off the tiger's back without getting mauled. A tiger is caged for two reasons, first to keep the tiger away from you, and second to keep stupid people away from the Tiger.

The problem is you elected a stupid guy to be your zoo keeper, and he just had to jump on the back of the tiger that was already in a cage.

Sooner or later you are going to have to get out of the tiger's cage, and you will have to be very lucky to survive the experience.

Robert,

No, the surge and the shift in tactics were independent of one another. When the surge is over, we'll still be using those tactics. They only appear related because both came in at about the same time, with General Casey's departure and General Petraeus's arrival.

And that's what I mean. There should have been more reporting on how the two are not the same.

Some Baghdad neighborhoods certainly are de facto ethnically "cleansed," and were by the time of the start of the surge. There are still a few, however, which remain mixed. Some (such as Sadr City) never were mixed at all. There have been a few, a very few, good articles on that.

Bob Bateman

This is a very confusing post. How can anyone judge whether the surge has been adequately covered by the press when 1., we don't have reporters who can cover it, and 2., we have such large discrepancies in numbers reported that it is impossible to reconciliate them? The Pentagon releases the most confusing of the figures with the most convuluted accounting, while the GAO's method of accounting is completely different. We then have the McClatchy News Service accounting and the Iraqi government accounting method. All of them are so different in their compilations, numbers, methods of collecting that it is impossible to come to any meaningful conclusions or analysis at all at this time or even years in the future.

I doubt that it matters what years we compare or use as a benchmark because no year accurately portrays the whole picture. In the last three months we went from Jan., - 20 killed a day, Feb., - 26 killed a day and the first part of March - 39 killed a day. (Averaged) Here's a report from McClatchy for 18.03.08 - Baghdad, 12 dead, 17 wounded, Nineveh 3 dead, 42 injured, Diyala, 3 dead, 3 wounded, Salahuddin 1 dead, 1 kidnapped, Diwaniyah 12 rockets launched at city, Basra, 3 dead, 3 injured. These are the results of car bombs, kidnappings, rocket launches, assassination attempts and no doubt criminal activity for one day! But how do you sort them out? You can't, at least you can't accurately because there is not enough information to accurately assess the numbers.

As an aside, I am very surprised that an active duty Army Officer would comment on any aspect of this particular operation. (I am not criticizing, merely mentioning that I find it surprising, I thought that the policy was that they were not to comment.)

BevD,

Well, I've been writing and commenting for about 16 of my 18 years in the Army, so it doesn't feel strange to me. Indeed, inside our profession (mostly in our journals) we are very self-critical. Sometimes nowadays when some of that leaks out into the "mainstream" it creates a brouhaha, such as when my friend Paul Yingling wrote a critique of our general officer corps.

Anyway, you're certainly on the mark about the confusing nature of the reporting, and the statistics, and believe me, it's no better on the inside.

One of the things we've been wrestling with for years now is the question, "what are the appropriate things to measure in this war?" I mean, how do we *know* if we're winning or losing, or even if we're having a net positive or a net negative effect towards our objectives. But more reporting would help that, on both sides of the equation.

And we *do* have reporters who can cover it. We have a whole nation with literally hundreds of thousands of journalists...we're just not sending them to Iraq. (And here I will lean on Chomsky's thesis from his book Manufactured Consent, wherein he notes that journalism is at the core a business...and the market forces inform the newsroom that "Iraq doesn't sell.")(I don't generally agree with Chomsky in most things, but like Derrida, or Fred Kagan for that matter, some things he gets right.)

Regards,

Bob Bateman

I'm familiar with Mr. Bateman from his posts on Eric Alterman's site, and I have no reason to distrust him. His posts on Altercation were always
informative and never lead me to beleive he was trying to sell me aluminum siding.

However, I believe nothing that comes from the Bush administration, and I'm very skeptical of any of his appointees, knowing full well they were vetted before their appointments; this goes for civilian and military appointees speaking on domestic conditions or conditions in Iraq.

During WWll I fought in France, Holland, and Belgium; and it wasn't until I crossed the Rhine into Germany that I had to worry about the civilians trying to kill me.

Our troops in Iraq are in the same position as the Germans and the Japs during WWll, occupying countries where the civilians are what we now call "insurgents."

Bush/Cheney have abused our armed forces by sending them into Iraq. Get them out as quickly and as safely as possible.

several quite good historical monographs were published outlining what the "troop to population" ratio had been in successful, and unsuccessful, situations.

I guess the war in the Phillipines a century back must be considered one of the successful operations. In these histories does the fact that the US killed 300,000 natives (about 10% of the population then) count as part of the success.

I have read about some of the more unsuccessful operations. Namely, French attempts to hold onto Algeria, the British in Kenya and the US in Vietnam. Were all of these loses due to "troop to population" ratio failures? The thesis I have seen advanced in these cases is long term, near impossibility of western countries to successfully occupy third world countries. Unless, like in the example with the Phillipines we are willing to kill 10% of the population.

ALCON,

I'll make one more post on the general topic of Iraq, and then I request that we move this back to a discussion about Greg's book and the state and nature of journalism/war today. Fair?

OK, in sequence: Liam:

Yes, I understand your point about history. Indeed that is one of the reasons the Army chose me, an academically educated historian, to be a "strategist" (it is now a very very small specialty within the Army). And as a historian, I am inclined to think in big chunks of time. Again, that goes to why they asked me to become a strategist. But your Collins argument doesn't work. Why? Because you're ignoring the fact that Ireland had been unsuccessfully rebelling for more or less 350 years at that point.

From a historical standpoint, the fact that England dominated Ireland, extracting wealth and labor and value for 350 bloody years, works exactly contrary to your thesis. 350 years, I would suggest Liam, is nothing to sneeze at. You look at the very last one of the rebellions, and point and say, "See? SEE?" and ignore the history of Ireland from Henry VIII and Elizabeth and James I (not to mention that asshat Cromwell).

Moreover, the contention that England was at the "height of it's global power" is also ahistorical. The height of England's global power was either 1763, or, if you prefer, 1848. At the time of the Collins-led rebellion England was exhausted, having lost so heavily in WWI in human, economic, and spiritual terms that I would say they could have been pushed over by a feather. (Which, no offense, is essentially what Collins presented, in comparison to earlier more robust Irish Rebellions.)

I am, I should note, again in "disclosure mode", a scion of the Kelleher Clan. But history is history, and you shouldn't cherry-pick it anymore than people should cherry-pick intelligence.

Beyond that, I will NOT be arguing in favor, or against, the decision to go into Iraq. As I said, that's beyond my ken while I wear the uniform. Fair dinkum.

NO EXIT: I can't respond to most of your post, because you don't posit any questions but merely make assertions. (As is your right.) But on Fallon, well, I'm working on an article on that. I want you to consider something: If a Democrat was president, and a senior admiral or general publicly made comments contrary to the Administration, would you support their relief? (The salient modifier is "public".) I will not comment on Iran, or current events within my "day job", but it does occur to me that this is not a bad thing, in the Looooooong term, for the nation. Truman sacked MacArthur for, more or less, the same exact offense. No?

WE are supposed to be subordinate to you, all of you, regardless of party. And that, I believe, is the way it should be.

JOHNW1141: No comments. Thanks for the compliments.

Now all, can we return to the topic of Greg's book and journalism?

Bob Bateman

Bob,

Sorry, you are the one who is cherry picking. Mao, Castro and Menachim Begin all studied and applied the lessons of the tactics that Michael Collins had developed. You are going to get no where if you do not study how others got defeated, instead of writing them off as being ready to be pushed over by a feather, unless you are conceding that is the stage where America is now.

The Brits were not pushed over by a feather in Ireland. They tried every tactic that you are now trying in Iraq. They reinforced and reinforced, and they resorted to destroying homes and town centers. They tortured, they detained without charges. In short they they rallied those on the sidelines to root for and support the home team.

You know about how everyone roots and supports their home team, and why the odds favor the home team.

You are playing every game on the road. You can not win.

Do you really want to make a case for staying Iraq for as long as the British did in Ireland, and have to do the same things in order to last that long. Wow. John McCain only talks about a hundred years.

Now. Let us get down to the central issue.

Explain to me why you want to stay in Iraq. What the hell are we doing over there. What is the end game, and how will we know when we have achieved it. Who's country is Iraq, and who's country is the USA, and would you not resist if it were the other way around.

Imagine if some foreign power had invaded and occupied your country for the past five years, and some of their most senior leaders are openly promising to stay here for decades. Would you be a resister or collaborator.

I know I would fight the occupation as long as I lived.

Even the French started a resistance campaign shortly after Hitler invaded. It is human nature. Study that more, instead of listening to the Kagans, both Father and Son drone on and on about ancient battle texts.

that didn't come out right.

it is the president's perogative to fire a general for whatever reason.

truman fired macarthur because macarthur was acting completely beyond his authority to start a war with china which truman desperately wanted to avoid.

which is nice contrast to a general that wants to prevent a president from pursuing an ill fated occupation of iraq.

fallon's dismissal is a part of a disturbing trend in the WH, whereas macarthur's was not.

I tend to disagree that the history of colonial empires, such as the British, French and Dutch have much useful to offer in terms of the Iraq venture.

Instead, I'd argue that the period of European colonialism occurred during a period of historical fluke, in which the technological gulf, a gulf that included weapons, communication, transportation, commerce and forms of organization, between European societies and soon to be colonial ones was vast.

So, consistently, it was the extraordinarily strong preying upon the extraordinarily weak. Spain overrunning plague decimated stone or copper age societies in the New World in the beginning, and British gatling guns slaughtering Zulu armies in the end.

The picture is more complicated, of course. Indonesia and India were relatively advanced societies, though still backwards compared to European advantages. Still, Britain, France and the Netherlands did not so much overwhelm these states as take advantage of their political discords and insert themselves. As models go, this might be analogous to globalism and concepts of neocolonialism, but certainly it has nothing to do with Iraq.

Where European states went up against societies with comparable levels of organization and technology, the results were often unhappy.

Spain's colonial adventures in Europe, such as in the low countries, failed spectacularly even while succeeding in the New World.

Indeed, the record showed that wherever the playing field started to even up in any substantive way, things started to go south pretty dramatically.

The Haitians were able to throw out the French in 1804. Spain's latin America possessions broke away in 1820, and with the exception of Mexico... neither Spain nor any other European state was ever able to reassert control... the playing field was just too level.

The only efforts that were partially successful - the United States and then Frances depredations on Mexico illustrated the strengths and weaknesses. The United States used technological and organizational superiority to successfully rape away hinterland territories. On the other hand, France was able to use the same technological and organizational superiority to temporarily take over Mexico, but it wasn't able to hold it in the face of a determined insurgency. By the time the US Civil War ended, the French were about to throw in the towel. The writings of French commanders in that theatre are occasionally quite reminiscent of those from Iraq. Juan Cole might be better served studying the adventures of another Napoleon in a different land of Pyramids.

Lagging but organized states were able to consistently resist European colonialism. In the 19th century, both the Italians and French failed dramatically in Abyssinia. Thailand, Japan and Persia avoided colonial subjugation, as did China (with compromises). Islamic mediterranean societies mostly held out until the late 19th and early 20th century, and were often the most restive. The British occupation of Iraq commenced 1918 and immediately ran into trouble.

Essentially, the closer the technological gulf became, the less effective was colonialism.

Today there's an immense technological gulf between Iraq's resistance with its IED's, rockets, mortars, suicide bombers, RPG's and Kalalshnikov's on the one side... and armour, air superiority and stealth fighters on the other.

But it's not nearly as wide as it appears. For one thing, America's advantages are incredibly expensive. Those stealth fighters cost as much as if they were made from solid gold. On the other hand, Iraq's resistance technology is incredibly cheap. Factor that into each side's effectiveness, and things flatten out dramatically.

Moreover, the sharp or killing edge of the technological gulf only tells a part of the story. Such things as cell phones, photocopiers, computers, techniques of organization, dissemination of information, planning, communication and local transportation mean that in crucial areas there is very little gulf.

The European colonial era had many astonishing successed. But it also had its share of humiliating failures. Ultimately, the question is, how close is the resemblance to those humiliating failures...

Pretty close, I'd say, in far too many respects.

LTC Bateman,

You reference self-criticism among military personnel in professional journals. In the interest of furthering public awareness of how the military actually thinks and functions, can you provide cites or links to publicly-available journals? I don't think the public can access really fascinating sites like CompanyCommander or any of the other .mil sites available through AKO, but Small Wars Journal , for example, has a user-friendly website.

I think most civilians would be stunned to discover how the military really works. (Disclaimer: I'm in my 21st year as an Army employee, either as a green-suiter or DA civilian, and it still stuns me sometimes to realize how little 'command-and-control' there is in the Army.)

Hello Bob.

(I'm the physics professor you corresponded with a few months back.) That was an insightful post - and I learned something. The word limit seems far too severe, but I look forward to reading more in your next post.

Also, I can now say I've seen a U.S. officer cite Noam Chomsky. Didn't see that coming. (Not sure if this is a good or bad thing...)

Regarding your comments: As I recall, Kagan had the surge taking place in Baghdad with (hopefully) effects spreading to other regions later. Instead, Anbar and other parts of Iraq evolved first and Baghdad followed.

It seems to me this aspect of the war is the most important now because bottom-up is meeting top-down (CLCs, militias being integrated into the
Iraqi army or not; gov't fear/distrust of the Awakening; etc).

I'd like to know where Petreaus thinks this is going. But, he can't speak frankly on this, can he? In the few interviews with him I've followed closely, I didn't feel I learned anything.

Also, shouldn't the focus of journalists be more on establishing relationships with people in the Awakening, in the militias and in Sadr's camp? Hard, but since we're going to be here for awhile...