Neocon Advocates Civil War in Iraq as "Strategic" Policy
Daniel Pipes Finds Comfort in Muslims Killing Muslims

Former CIA Official: The "New" Iraq Likely to Seek WMD's Newsday

Personal Foul, Unnecessary Roughness - Larry Johnson & Co. - Piling On - 15 yards - First Down!

As Bush begins yet another "Victory" offensive, Americans are left wishing that failure still was an option in Iraq. 

John Burns (NYT), Back from Baghdad: U.S. Effort In Iraq Will Likely Fail - Editor and Publisher

Expect to see Democratic "Leaders", perhaps even their Council, pulling their heads out of the sand (and where ever else they've been stuck) and finally telling the truth to themselves, their Party and the public. Failure hasn't been an option for quite sometime.

Good Catch Josh!! 

Iraq through the prism of Vietnam (Lt Gen William Odom).

Gen Odom's one of my favorite observers, and one of the more prescient.

 BAGHDAD (Reuters) -     Iraqi leaders bicker amid bomb blasts

Iraq's leaders failed to agree on Thursday to convene parliament, another sign of the political deadlock that has stalled formation of a grand coalition seen as the best hope of halting a slide to civil war.

Raising the question against those who claim that the US presence is necessary to keep things from getting even worse-

Say what?

Say What's Wrong with Cutting and Running?

We cannot leave Iraq before it is stabilized," declared a former CIA officer. But to maintain a prolonged foreign occupation of Iraq is to destabilize it only further. Once the invader departs, there will no doubt be a civil war, which will accelerate the dismemberment of the nation, giving rise to a fundamentalist regime, which will make at least some people miss the era of Saddam.

On the other hand, if the occupation persists, one can foresee a multifaceted terrorist es­calation eating away at U.S. forces and aggravating ethnic and religious divisions. The Americans will bring in reinforcements, including Fijians and Norwegians. They'll talk of the final fifteen minutes and of last gasps. A coup d'etat or uprising will be inspired in Teheran (terrain more favorable to the West than Iraq is) but with irritating repercussions in Najaf, which will be transformed into a base of retreat for vengeful ayatollahs. The Americans will cling to Iraq as "useful" and ensconce themselves inside supposedly unbreachable bastions. Then, as the death toll mounts by the hundreds, the "bring the boys home" movement will spread like an oil slick across the United States... But how many lives will be ruined in the meantime Regis Debray 9.03

 

For misleading the American people, and launching the most foolish war since Emperor Augustus in 9 B.C sent his legions into Germany and lost them, Bush deserves to be impeached and, once he has been removed from office, put on trial along with the rest of the president's men. If convicted, they'll have plenty of time to mull over their sins.

Martin van Creveld

Professor of Military History

Hebrew University, Jerusalem

 

 

 

A few days ago a debate of sorts raged in response to a Larry Johnson post - Is Iraq in Civil War?

To me there's no question but that Iraq has been engulfed by civil war for over year, perhaps two, a war in which the US has been serving as a mercenary force for one side.  If there's a semantic problem, it a problem of an overly pliant media cowed by the Bush Administration into reading their talking points instead of reporting reality

Expert on Iraq: 'We're In a Civil War'

U.S. Officials Deny Violence Has Risen to That Level, but ABC News Analysts See a 'Serious Lack of Realism'

BAGHDAD, March 5, 2006 — - As Pentagon generals offered optimistic assessments that the sectarian violence in Iraq had dissipated this weekend, other military experts told ABC News that Sunni and Shiite groups in Iraq already are engaged in a civil war, and that the Iraqi government and U.S. military had better accept that fact and adapt accordingly.

"We're in a civil war now; it's just that not every body's joined in," said retired Army Maj. Gen. William L. Nash, a former military commander in Bosnia-Herzegovina. "The failure to understand that the civil war is already taking place, just not necessarily at the maximum level, means that our counter measures are inadequate and therefore dangerous to our long-term interest.

"It's our failure to understand reality that has caused us to be late throughout this experience of the last three years in Iraq," added Nash, who is an ABC News consultant.

Anthony Cordesman, the Arleigh A. Burke chair in strategy at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, told ABC News, "If you talk to U.S. intelligence officers and military people privately, they'd say we've been involved in low level civil war with very slowly increasing intensity since the transfer of power in June 2004."

That Iraq is in civil war not only comports with reality and common sense, it accords with a widely accepted academic definistion developed by Professors Fearon and Laitin of Stanford University and approvingly cited by James H. Joyner, Managing Editor of Strategic Insights, the journal of the Naval Postgraduate School:

Stanford political scientists James D. Fearon and David D. Laitin offer a narrower definition that more closely mirrors the way most of us conceive of civil war:

"(1) They involved fighting between agents of (or claimants to) a state and organized, non-state groups who sought either to take control of a government, take power in a region, or use violence to change government policies. (2) The conflict killed or has killed at least 1000 over its course, with a yearly average of at least 100. (3) At least 100 were killed on both sides (including civilians attacked by rebels). The last condition is intended to rule out massacres where there is no organized or effective opposition."

Or as Congressman Murtha  succinctly put the matter yesteday:

American troops are doing everything they can militarily but "are caught in a civil war," said Murtha, a former Marine who has called on the administration to bring U.S. troops home.

"There's two participants fighting for survival and fighting for supremacy inside that country," he said of ethnic divisions. "And that's my definition of a civil war."

Why then does the US persist in what Gen Nash rightly condemns as "unreality"?  The answer is simple - domestic politics. Bush desperately needs to avoid the  public perception that the US is fighting a civil war for as Bruce Jentleson and others have convincingly established in their research

 Americans don't like to intervene militarily in civil wars.  This is one of the most consistent findings in my own research about public opinion, and it confirms the findings of many others, most prominently Bruce Jentleson, but also Eric Larson at the Rand Corporation.  Richard Eichenberg

Domestic politics of fear and manipulation and mass deceit has from the very start determined US policy and war fighting strategy in Iraq. That's why failure is not an option in Iraq, but an accomplished fact.

Iran and Al Qaeda Benefit from US War on Iraq - Murtha


Silly me, I thought failure was optional.

The Des Moines Register reports that Sen. Tom Harkin has called for the withdrawal of US forces from Iraq because the War has become a quagmire. Let us hope that this marks the start of a trend toward genuine leadership in the Opposition Party. The American People have been waiting patiently for the leaders to catch up.