Sic Semper Tyrannis

Better Late Than Never?

In January, Pentagon officials acknowledged that Paul Bremer, the senior U.S. official in Iraq during the first year of the war, told Rumsfeld in May 2004 that a far larger number of U.S. troops were needed to effectively fight the insurgency, but his advice was rejected.

Bremer said his memo to Rumsfeld suggested half a million troops were needed — more than three times the number there at the time.  NY Times

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"The president's military advisers felt that the size of the force was adequate; they may still feel that years later. Some of us don't. I don't," Powell said. "In my perspective, I would have preferred more troops, but you know, this conflict is not over."

"At the time, the president was listening to those who were supposed to be providing him with military advice," Powell said. "They were anticipating a different kind of immediate aftermath of the fall of Baghdad; it turned out to be not exactly as they had anticipated."

Rumsfeld has rejected criticism that he sent too few U.S. troops to Iraq, saying that Franks and generals who oversaw the campaign's planning had determined the overall number of troops, and that he and Bush agreed with them. The recommendation of senior military commanders at the time was about 145,000 troops.  NY Times

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I don't know about other people but I am tired of folks who held high positions before the invasion of Iraq, who said nothing public before the operation commenced and who now claim that they knew better.  If they knew better, if they knew that the inadequate troop list for the operation was a recipe for disaster, then why did they not protest, even unto the last desperate means of resignation?  (Yes, I ask a lot of rhetorical questions.)

It wasn't rocket science, people.  Anyone with a modicum of common sense knew better.  You had to be willfully ignorant and determined to see the world through your own peculiarly Utopian prism not to know better.

Today William Kristol, the publisher of the "Weekly Standard," said on FNS that "a year ago although things were tough in Iraq, it looked like we were making progress."  Hello!  On what planet did it look like we were "making progress?"  Does he mean that because the political drama of elections was going forward, purple fingers and all, that he actually thought that this was progress?  My God!  The fate of the Republic is in the hands of such people.

A decent silence would be more fitting.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060430/ap_on_go_ca_st_pe/us_iraq

Gingrich on Cultural Relativism

""I'm so worried about the fact the marjaiyah [top Shiite clergy] is given so much power," said Hatem Mukhlis, a secular Sunni Arab politician. "The Americans should be really aware of what's happening. It's giving a lot of power to Sistani that he shouldn't have."

A cleric close to Sistani acknowledged that the statement did signal a new role for the Shiite clergy, that of "monitoring" the performance of the next government and weighing in, perhaps more frequently, on broad policy issues.

"The marjaiyah intends to interfere in some issues," Sheik Abu Mohammed Baghdadi, a Najaf cleric, said in an interview. "This monitoring and direct interference is an essential matter that has never before been proposed by the clergy. The marjaiyah, through this act, is expressing the voice of the people."

Sistani's statement followed a meeting with Prime Minister-designate Nouri Maliki, a conservative Shiite leader. Maliki came to Najaf to solicit Sistani's views in the midst of efforts to form a government, reinforcing a growing relationship between Shiite politicians in Baghdad and their religious counterparts in Najaf."  LA Times

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Are we nuts, or what?  We invaded Iraq to free it from a fascistic but secular dictatorship and now we are sponsoring the creation of a medieval theocracy?  I thought we were supposed to stand for something in the world and that one of those things was freedom OF RELIGION but also FROM RELIGION.  What?  This is their way of doing things?  Genocide and the oppression of minorities and women are "their way of doing things" in many parts of the world.

"Cultural relativism?"  I will quote Newt Gingrich, the sage of the "contract with America."  "Cultural relativism is like saying that going to McDonald's or boiling up your neighbor have equal merit as culturally driven ways of having lunch."  I heard him say it as part of his famous (not) speech about the "bloody footprints in the snow..."  In this, I agree with him.

It is one thing to respect other peoples' ancestral ways and to be considerate in what you say and do when operating on their turf.  It is quite another to set out to empower the most anti-modern, anti-Western elements in a society and then "wink" at the coming subordination of the constitutional government to the theologically driven opinions of clergy who have been waiting all their days for the return of the occulted 12th Imam.  They have been waiting so that they can turn over power to him.

What happened to the part in which the Iraqi Shia higher Clergy were not interested in political power?  Did that "reality" depart with the children's crusade that was the CPA?

Where are the neocons and their familiars and their famously Jacobin and secular "principles?"

Pat Lang

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-sistani28apr28,0,3209360.story?track=tothtml

Ben Franklin Remembered

"Iraqi unity and security are the ingredients for the start of an American military withdrawal, U.S. officials say. The U.S. commander in the country, General George Casey, wouldn't specify yesterday when a pullout of the 133,000 troops might begin, only that his ``general timeline'' is intact."  Bloomberg

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Translation:  A withdrawal of American forces, even if only partial, is conditioned;

1- on the ability of the new government to hold together in the face of the centrifugal social forces tending to tear the country apart

2- On a rapid diminution of the violence (insurgent and inter-communal as the administration wants to see it) that afflicts Iraq.

The Bush Administration desperately wants to get most American troops out of the country starting this Summer.  They can read the poll numbers in the US  which virtually forecast a "bad patch" for the Republican Party both this Autumn and also in the next presidential election.

Unfortunately for them the time has passed in which they could control the actions of the government which they have gone to so much trouble to create.  They insist that it is sovereign and it increasingly sees itself as sovereign whether or not it can maintain its unity and whether or not it can control the country's territory.

In other words, the fate of the Bush Administration's policy in Iraq is now in the hands of; a group of grasping and fractious 3rd World politicians, various private armies belonging to sectarian groups and leaders,  the emerging armed forces of a fledgling state and the will to fight of various Sunni insurgent groups.

The people who now have the least control over Iraq's future are we Americans.

Let us all hope that the Iraqis believe that "they must all hang together or they will surely all hang separately." 

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=10000103&sid=aai9QtPy4oWE&refer=us

Emerging Counterinsurgency Doctrine

As we have been discussing here, the subject of "Counterinsurgency" is the flavor of the month in the Army and Marine Corps.  People who could not spell "Counterinsurgency" three years ago are now busy reading TE Lawrence, Mao Tse-Tung and even more obscure texts from the corpus of "Counterinsurgency" literature.  A political appointee in the DoD recently asked me with great and serious solicitude if I had ever seen "The Battle of Algiers."  The implication was that seeing this movie would make all clear.

It often happens that desperation leads to a willingness to listen to people who would, in other circumstances, never get an official hearing.  As General (Retired) Keane said on the Newshour a while back, the army that he ran went into Iraq without a clue on "Counterinsurgency."  It is now playing "catch-up" in its own ponderous, committee-bound, acronym, and general officer burdened way.  The US Marines seem better at such problems of intellectual introspection, somehow.

In this muddle of frustrated brooding, a cogently written document on "Counterinsurgency" has an enormous appeal as a kind of "open sesame!"  It helps if that document actually informs.

The writings of this Australian are now the flavor of the week.  Good!

Pat Lang

Download Panel5-kilcullen.pdf

Download twentyeight_articles_edition_1.pdf

"The Adviser" 22 April, 2006

"Ladies and Gentlemen, 

Attached is this week's Advisor for you to review.  Please feel free to pass along to friends, family and colleagues.  If you have any questions or comments please feel free to e-mail us.

V/r

Staff Sergeant Lucia Newman"

The Advisor -- Journalist/Combat Correspondent

Phoenix Base

MNSTC-I PAO

APO

AE 09348

DSN: 318-852-1356

Download advisor_22_april_06.pdf

Good luck to him and to us all.

"U.S. and Iraqi officials are hoping that a government representing Shiites, Sunnis and Kurds will be able to quell both the Sunni-led insurgency and bloody Shiite-Sunni violence that has raged during the political uncertainty. If it succeeds, it could enable the United States to begin bringing home troops.

Mr. al-Maliki has a reputation as a hard-line, outspoken defender of the Shia position -- raising questions over whether he will be able to negotiate the delicate sectarian balancing act."  Globe and Mail

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The Bush Administration, its "congregation" and what is called the "mainstream media" are all infatuated with political PROCESS as panacea.

Across the world, and Iraq is not an exception, the expectation on the part of these groups is that political processes which are conducted in accordance with our concepts of civic probity and fairness will produce governments which do not wage war against their neighbors and which will be accepted by the people they rule.

In Iraq we have yet another example of this belief on our part.  The clear expectation is that if the Iraqis can succeed in forming a cabinet that represents the major ethno-religious groups, then the JUSTICE of this will be recognized and the Sunni Arabs will stop giving the Islamo-nationalist-tribal-Baathist guerrillas the support that the Bush Administration and its "Amen" chorus used to insist did not exist.  What is wrong with that theory? 

Symbols are only effective in changing behavior if they are believed to be representative of reality.  It is the belief that "counts" here rather than the reality itself.  The formation of a government of "unity" is symbolic and in and of itself changes nothing.  Phony governments of unity and coalitions of this or that occur in the Islamic World with great frequency.  Rebellions are ended through conference and "devolution" of power to minorities and regions with ennui inspiring regularity.  It usually means nothing.  Rather, it is just a reflection of the "conferenciasis" that afflicts the region. 

A "unity" cabinet will be welcomed throughout Iraq.  The peoples will then watch to see if the symbol matches the reality for them.  As I said, perception in such matters is all.

Hope for the best, prepare for the worst.

Pat Lang

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/LAC.20060422.IRAQ22/TPStory/TPInternational/

Samuels on the Land LOC

Here we have Sam's discussion of the land LOC.

Download lloc_based_on_the_worstcase.doc

Pat Lang

Naval LOC Problem

Seymour Samuels addressed the Naval LOC problem in the Gulf at my request.

Pat Lang

Download loc_based_on_the_worstcase.doc

(c) 2006 Seymour Samuels, All Rights Reserved

Open Thread - Cordesman

This the Cordesman paper on Iraq.  This is an open thread.

http://www.csis.org/media/csis/pubs/060419_iraqlitany.pdf

Which Mistake Was the Worst?

I am talking about Iraq of course.  The current candidates are -

1- Invasion of the "Iraq of Our Dreams" rather than the Iraq of objective reality.  Chas Freeman cites this formulation of mine on occasion.  What this refers to is that before the war as well as now, the US government abandoned the standard of objective reality in making judgments concerning the nature of Iraqi society in favor of making judgments "relevant to policy" as a neocon yuppy recently expressed the phenomenon to me.  This kid was in OSD in the "great days of high adventure" when intelligence analysts' opinions were dismissed as worthless by professors and their "familiars" from among their favorite graduate students.  "Just give us the data," was the refrain in those days.  We went to Ivy League colleges and our daddies have money, and so we must be smarter than you civil servants and soldiers.  What was the result?  The USG conceived of Iraq as a "nation" of wogs, each of whom contained in his/her breast an American yearning to be set free as part of the upward and inevitable progress of mankind toward Westernization and latte for all.  The neocons, the oil men, Chalabi and behind him probably the Iranians all played a role, but as the president said yesterday, he is the "decider."  Astonishingly, the Americans involved still do not seem to understand the enormity of their folly.

2 - P--s poor planning for OIC.  Planning conducted under the supervision of men like General Keane, former Vice-Chief of Staff who yesterday admitted on the Newshour that the army that he had supervised threw away everything it knew about counter-insurgency after Vietnam or the lackeys who ran CENTCOM before and during OIC and who allowed Rummy to intimidate them.  Pathetic.

3- Disbanding the Iraqi Army.  This requires no comment at this point.

I vote for #1.

Pat Lang

"Inside Man" Alan Farrell

Alan Farrell is one of the few people I know anymore who actually knows a lot of Latin and Greek as well.  "Beati pauperes spiritu." This is from this movie review.  It applies neatly in the context of the piece but even more so to the race of Wal-Mart managers now running the US Government.  Hmm.  Maybe this all comes together somehow.

Pat Lang

Download inside_man.doc

Download inside_man.pdf

BG Alan Farrell.

Pentagon Pow Wow

A couple of years ago I was in London on business and received a phone call from the Pentagon.  On the line was a woman from the PR branch of the Office of the Secretary of Defense.  She had been trying to reach me for a couple of days.  In those days I was doing a lot of television interviews.  I have since stopped doing that. 

She told me that a group of retired military people who were often interviewed in the media were briefed on a frequent basis in the Pentagon by seniors in order to make sure that these media figures were well informed.  "Would you be interested in being included in this group?" was the question.   It had been evident to me for a a couple of years that a number of my interlocutors on TV and radio panels had "inside" information that could only come from the Defense Department.  I told her that I would be happy to be included in these briefings.

Over several months (this was in '04) I attended meetings in the Pentagon and participated in conference calls with very senior officials (both military and civilian).  The Pentagon meetings were well attended by a variety of retired generals, colonels, Navy captains and a few retired NCOs, all of whom were familiar faces from TV news.  Most of them were cable people, and there was a disproportionate representation from Fox News as well as people who were both TV commentators and think tankers, mostly from AEI and Heritage.   There were several retired four star generals present whom I had never seen on the tube, but who may have been off camera consultants.

The Defense staff always made their case for the correctness of the policies followed by the administration and handed out "talking points" as suggestions.  The retired officers listened politely with clear skepticism on the part of quite a few.  There was always an opportunity for Q&A and a lot of the questions were both polite and very pointed.  Some of the questions were not well answered.  This was the period of the emerging Abu Ghraib mess, and many of the officers attending were bitter and unhappy over what had been happening in that matter.  In some instances, there simply were no good answers available.  One retired colonel asked how Rumsfeld thought a future prolonged campaign could be sustained with the reduced logistics structure that he appeared to be inflicting on the army.  His response was that he did not know if his reforms would work under those conditions but that "these people" (pointing to the active duty generals present) had assured him that it would.  They looked uncomfortable. 

My impression was that the media consultant officers at these events wanted and needed the access provided in order to be secure in their retirement employment.  The media companies obviously valued that.  After all, most of them are commercial enterprises and cannot afford to have their rival companies granted such access if they are not.  This creates a certain pressure on the retired military people involved to stay "on the reservation."  The program occasionally took the group to Iraq for on the scene briefings.  So, if you hear that so and so has recently been to Iraq, you probably know how.  I would have liked to make such a trip but the PR people stopped inviting me after a few months and before a trip.  They never gave me a reason and I am still puzzled over the matter.

On the whole I think that the retired consultants try to strike a useful balance between their need for access and a desire to meet their professional responsibilities and duty as citizens.

This is the group being briefed in the Pentagon today.

Pat Lang

Retired Soldiers Should Not Criticize?

"..the rebellion is problematic nonetheless. It threatens the essential democratic principle of military subordination to civilian control -- the more so because a couple of the officers claim they are speaking for some still on active duty. Anyone who protested the pushback of uniformed military against President Bill Clinton's attempt to allow gays to serve ought to also object to generals who criticize the decisions of a president and his defense secretary in wartime. If they are successful in forcing Mr. Rumsfeld's resignation, they will set an ugly precedent. Will future defense secretaries have to worry about potential rebellions by their brass, and will they start to choose commanders according to calculations of political loyalty?

In our view Mr. Rumsfeld's failures should have led to his departure long ago. But he should not be driven out by a revolt of generals, retired or not."  Washpost

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I guess my ox is being gored here.  I never attained the rank of general in the Army but after I retired from the Army I was a member of the Senior Executive Service of the Defense Department civil service with a grade equivalent to a lieutenant general among the uniformed.  So, I guess I qualify for criticism under Mr. Hiatt's criteria.  I have certainly been both analytic and critical of policy in Iraq.  I always thought that the intervention in Afghanistan was a good idea and continue to think the same thing.  I have always thought that the Jihadis should be pursued wherever they are found, but I also always thought that the costs in an occupation of Iraq would outweigh the benefits and that the distortion of the intelligence process supporting the decision to go to war in Iraq and the operational planning that flowed from that were fatal flaws compounded by the ill advised dissolution of the Iraq Army.  I was "bitching" about these things when most of the gentlemen now speaking up were still on active duty and trying to do their duty within the context of the strictures of UCMJ and military custom.  I reckoned I was free to do that because I was retired from the Army, that is, still officially a member of the Army but by custom a private citizen with all the freedoms and responsibilities of any private citizen.  I reckoned that I was doing my duty to the Republic and to our soldiers.

In what I have said and written over the last four years I have tried to avoid "picking on" individuals in government or anywhere else.  The reason for that was that I assume that all concerned in the debate over planning and executing the war are sincere and well meaning people.  Anyone can err, and those who can now clearly be seen to have made terrible mistakes are not different.  For that reason I do not think that I have ever called for anyone to resign from any office and I will not do so now.  It is truly the responsibility of the president to determine who should serve in the executive branch, and he should do so.  For that reason I would not have called for Rumsfeld to resign.  I think it was a mistake to do that, but I certainly believe that the officers now speaking up in a retired status have a duty to do so, and I would associate myself with them in their effort.

Now, the Washington Post has proclaimed a doctrine of civil-military relations which was previously unknown to me.  According to the Post, it is improper for a RETIRED officer to criticize POLICY.  The Post should reconsider this position.  If this notion became general, then there would be no one in the body politic who would have the knowledge and the expertise with which to inform an often uninformed and unqualified media community with regard to the wisdom and practicality of decisions made by politically motivated civilian leadership.  In that situation, an administration that embarked on a disastrous course of action in foreign policy could continue to follow that course indefinitely bolstered in the public's opinion by the kind of ruthless Information Operations (propaganda) that we have experienced in recent years.

Think it over, Post.

Pat Lang

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/04/17/AR2006041701261.html

The War of the Generals

It seems appropriate that President Bush, Vice President Cheney, Secretary Rumsfeld and Generals Myers and Franks should be left to the judgment of history.  They are still quite pleased with themselves and seem to be sure that they took action over the last however many years that it has been that has been in the public interest.

That is certainly debatable and my position has been clear.

Nevertheless, I think that criticism of these men, and in this case Rumsfeld should be civil and restricted to their policy and operational decisions.

The question of whether or nor Rumsfeld should be SECDEF is something for the president to decide since he, Cheney and Rumsfeld will be thought of as a "triumvirate" for all time.

I regret my earlier comparison of Rumsfeld to George Marshall.  The two men are so dissimilar that the comparison is inapt.

Pat Lang

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http://www.nytimes.com/2006/04/16/washington/17militarycnd.html?hp&ex=1145246400&en=9edfffbb5839b5c8&ei=5094&partner=homepage

"The Advisor" 15 April, 2006

This is from the Multi-National Security Transition Command - Iraq, not sure exactly about the name.  I guess any kind of torture of the language will do if you do not want to use the words that sound like the 20th Century.  I subscribed to it.  Anyone can do so.  I think it is worth reading as an indication of the sincerity and devotion to duty with which our people are approaching the task that our government have given them.

Pat Lang

Download the_advisor_15_april_06.pdf

"Ahmadinejad's Demons"

"Since Ahmadinejad became president, the influence of the Basiji has grown. In November, the new Iranian president opened the annual "Basiji Week," which commemorates the martyrs of the Iran-Iraq War. According to a report in Kayan, a publication loyal to Khameini, some nine million Basiji--12 percent of the Iranian population--turned out to demonstrate in favor of Ahmadinejad's anti-liberal platform. The article claimed that the demonstrators "form[ed] a human chain some 8,700 kilometers long. ... In Tehran alone, some 1,250,000 people turned out." Barely noticed by the Western media, this mobilization attests to Ahmadinejad's determination to impose his "second revolution" and to extinguish the few sparks of freedom in Iran.

At the end of July 2005, the Basij movement announced plans to increase its membership from ten million to 15 million by 2010. The elite special units are supposed to comprise some 150,000 people by then. Accordingly, the Basiji have received new powers in their function as an unofficial division of the police. What this means in practice became clear in February 2006, when the Basiji attacked the leader of the bus-drivers' union, Massoud Osanlou. They held Osanlou prisoner in his apartment, and they cut off the tip of his tongue in order to convince him to keep quiet. No Basiji needs to fear prosecution for such terrorists tactics before a court of law. "  Matthias Kuntzel

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Kuntzel does not have the role of the Basiij in the Iran-Iraq War quite right.  They were as described but they were usually used as "fillers" in IRGC "Divisions."  These "Divisions" were only about five or six thousand in strength.  The IRGC lost a lot of men in the early part of the war in fighting the Iraqis around Khoramshar and other places and because of that the decision was made to have these "divisions" be made up of IRGC cadres leading and controlling Basiij "infantry" companies.  In that way, a typical IRGC "Division" was probably 20% IRGC and 80% Basiij.

These units did not have artillery, armor or engineer support troops and relied almost exclusively on the actual Iranian Army for these support services.  Kuntzel does not mention the Iranian Army, but they continued to exist.  This was the old Imperial Army.  They fought well and actually progressed in skill during the war.  Their officers had been trained in US and British service schools, The infantry at Ft. Benning, The artillery at Ft. Sill, the armor at Ft. Knox, etc. 

The Iraqis were a lost more impressed with the Iranian Army than with the IRGC.  They said that the IRGC/Basiij were only dangerous if you ran out of ammunition.  If that happened then, they said, the IRGC/Basiij would simply flow over you like a Tsunami.  On the other hand the Iranian Army often outfought the Iraqis, using their artillery, armor and engineers with a skill that the Iraqis could not match.

This article is a portent.  It says that the Basiij/IRGC faction of the revolutionary establishment is now running Iran and prospering.  Those people seek death.  They always did.

Pat Lang

http://www.tnr.com/doc.mhtml?i=20060424&s=kuntzel042406

"How Bad Could It Get?"

I have received this worst case scenario from our beother Erasmus.  I thank him for it spares me the necessity of posting my own worst case.

Pat Lang

Download how_bad_could_it_get.doc

An Un-Muddled but Perhaps Addled Stand.

"The immigrant demonstrators who flooded the streets of America's cities Monday ratcheted up pressure on lawmakers to complete an overhaul of the nation's immigration laws, while raising Republicans' frustration with President Bush for what they see as a muddled stand on the issue."  Weisman

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I have decided to venture into untested waters (for me.)  I suppose that Mr. Weisman is the "child of immigrants."  Me too, partly.  On the basis of my Tiger Woods like patrimony of French/Scottish/Irish/Huron/German genes I refuse to be anything in particular other than difficult.  Us Hurons reserve the right to say who has the right to be here.

The immigration thing is vaguely unsettling.  I do not think there are many citizens in this country who advocate shipping the illegal aliens - There, I Said IT- back to bongo-land or lower Oaxaca, whichever they came from, but there are a good many of us who do object to said "undocumented workers,"  BS! They are ILLEGAL ALIENS!! telling us that they are citizens of the world or the Americas and therefore not only have as much right to be here as we citizens (including Hurons) and that there should be no borders at all.

Wait a minute!  That might be a good thing.  Tell you what.  As an experiment in the abolition of the state system in world organization, let's open the border with Mexico completely to all economic and residential activity.

Under this scheme, Mexicans could come live in the US, work here, own whatever they please (and can pay for) but they could not become citizens entitled to a vote unless they go through the process of legal immigration and naturalization under our laws complete with application for an immigrant visa, a Green Card and the ability to tell the judge who Millard Fillmore was and what the 13th Amendment meant.  We would also change our rules so that the children of non-citizen resident workers would not automatically be US persons.  Happy?  Arriba Mexico!

In return we Gringos and associated US Citizens would have the identical rights in Mexico.  We could live there as often and for as long as we want.  We could own any property, business, mines, railroads, utilities, petroleum deposits and extraction facilities that we can pay for.  We would have the right to re-patriate 100% of our profits and pay the same taxes as Mexican citizens.  In other words, we would shortly largely own the economy of Mexico as we did before the Mexican Revolution and the forced nationalizations of the barefoot Marxists "ripped us off."

No?  Why not?  Fair is fair.  Turn about is fair play.  I would love this.  I speak Spanish, love Mexican food and art and would buy a hacienda by the sea where the Mariachi guys could sing "La Paloma" and "Nosotros" in the evenings on the patio.

What a good deal this would be for everyone.

Pat Lang

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/nationworld/2002923934_immigcongress11.html

"Mind War" and the Public's Opinion

"For the past two years, U.S. military leaders have been using Iraqi media and other outlets in Baghdad to publicize Zarqawi's role in the insurgency. The documents explicitly list the "U.S. Home Audience" as one of the targets of a broader propaganda campaign."  Tom Ricks

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The disastrous war in Vietnam or more properly in what used to be called Indochina, led to many strange twists and turns in the development of American institutions. 

The Army fought well in Indochina.  It won all the big fights.  It won nearly all of the smaller fights.  The counter-insurgency doctrine eventually applied experience considerable success, but we lost the war.  The communists control Vietnam in spite of all that pain, all that death.

Not surprisingly, the military (especially the Army) tried, in its unhappiness, to explain its defeat to itself.  The issue of institutional failure was examined for years and years and lessons were learned for good or ill.  One of the big "lessons" learned was a renewal of the "stab in the back" theorizing that always follows the defeat of an army that survives the defeat.  In this case, the belief grew up that the war had been lost in the United States itself through the "betrayal" of the cause by the media.  As a result, the armed forces focused on the value of what is now called "Information Operations" to control that aspect of the "battle space."  The "battle space" is now conceived of as extending to the United States as a legitimate area of operations for conducting "Information Operations (propaganda) to maintain US citizen support for the war effort.

In this article by Ricks we have a documented example of the authorized planning for such an effort conducted in both the the US Homeland and in the theater of active COMBAT operations.  COMBAT operations are now referred to in armed forces doctrine as "kinetic" operations in order to distinguish such operations from "Information Operations" and operations in cyber-space.

I attach an early paper written and published by advocates of such an approach to warfare.

Pat Lang

Download Mindwar.pdf

http://oneheartbooks.com/mindwar.pdf

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/04/09/AR2006040900890.html?referrer=email&referrer=email

Line of Communication

I don't know what they call it these days in the military.  It used to be called a "line of communication," (LOC) or a "Main Supply Route."  These days it could be anything since the main line of intellectual advance in the services seems to be to invent new terms, abbreviations and acronyms for the simplest and most familiar things.  "Front Line" is now called "Forward edge of the Battle Space."  "How you do things," has become "Tactics, Techniques and Procedures"  (TTP)  This kind of fooling around is probably indicative of an absence of real thought.

An LOC is the road, railroad or combination of tracks overland that lead from your forward deployed forces to their supply base.  George Marshall once put Patton into a main twist by inquiring politely "Where is your railhead, George?"  This was in Champagne somewhere.  There was no answer and Marshall got up and walked out of the room.  Patton had a bad habit of ignoring things like railheads and as a result he often ran out of  bullets, beans and gasoline.  He could get a way with that because the German Army was in retreat and people like Marshall kept "fixing up" his railheads and roads behind him.  If that had not occurred, then Patton's 3rd Army would have ground to a halt with catastrophic results "for keeps" rather than just occasionally as a passing irritation to higher headquarters.

In Iraq, our LOC runs to the south through "Shialand" as someone described it to me recently.  Down from the Baghdad area through Kut, Amara, Nasiriya and Basra to Kuwait where the roots of the supply base are.  There is some resupply through Turkey, but the bulk of everything comes through and from the ports in Kuwait.

Airplanes?  Hah!  The tonnage just is not there, the tonnage and the bulk.  It is helpful but not anything like enough to sustain the force in field.  The British, etc.?  I am glad they are there but anyone who thinks they could keep our LOC open if the Shia started working on closing the roads is smoking something "good."

Am I advising the Shia and their Iranian advisers on what to do?  I do not think so.  They are far too smart to have "missed" this vulnerability.  It is there for all the world to see.

What should be done?  As a matter of elementary prudence, we should position a large mobile force in Kuwait, so that we can re-open the roads north if need be.

Pat Lang

Sunni Countries Planning for the Worst

"One diplomat involved in the talks said the officials are focusing on the proposed U.S.-Iranian dialogue on Iraq and the implications on Arabs and Turkey of any "American-Iranian deal.""  CNN

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Zalmai Khalilzad is a native of the Islamic culture continent that extends from Morocco to India.  He knows that US-Iranian negotiations over Iraq are viewed in the Sunni dominated countries of the "Greater Middle East" as deeply threatening and de-stabilizing.  Middle Easterners see processes of negotiation as a means of arranging the surrender of a weaker party to a stronger.  The final outcome is thought to be indicated in advance by the willingness of the supplicant to parley. The idea of negotiations as a Hegelian process of dialectic argument producing a result which emerges in the discussion is Western and not well accepted in the region.  The very fact that Khalilzad is willing to talk to the Iranians about Iraq is seen in this context as indicative of the weakness of our position in iraq and a desire to find "a way out."  It is not surprisiing that the Sunni powers are preparing to defend themselves against what King Abdullah of Jordan called the "emerging Shia Crescent."  Pat Lang

http://www.cnn.com/2006/WORLD/meast/04/04/arabs.iraq.secret.talks.ap/index.html

"Commentary: Operation Silence the Mullahs"

A year or so before the intervention in Iraq, one of the president's men told me that the plan then was to invade the country with two US Army brigades (10,000 men) and rely on a local uprising to do the rest of the job.

Arnaud de Borchgrave is a sensible, worldly man, knowlegeable in military matters.  He is right to be sceptical about this "plan."

Nothing is ever simple in war.  Weapons systems never function perfectly as designed.  Weather, fear, the opposition, etc. all create a situation in which many, many variable are in play in any combat operation.

Two B-2 bombers?  They would be the first of many, many sorties.

Pat Lang

Download Btwocommentary.doc

McCain is Wrong

Senator John McCain said today on "Meet the Press" that Iraqis are no longer Sunni, Shia or Kurd in their loyalties.  Instead, he believes that they are essentially Iraqi and that they feel this identity much more than they do their ancestral group identity.

He is mistaken.  Iraq was a state in transition at the time of US intervention.  During its long history before WW1, this region of the Islamic World was ruled in whole or part by a variety of states.  None of them made any serious effort to create a common identity among the various ethno-religious nations that occupy modern Iraq.  It was left to the British occupiers after WW1 and the various Arab dominated governments that followed to try to create an "Iraqi" identity.  This process was attended with a great deal of pressure from Arab nationalists in a succession of governments.  The process was incomplete at the time of the US intervention, and the sudden disappearance of this pressure released the "ingredients" of emerging Iraqi identity to seek to realize the interests of their own "nations."

The neocon/Bush/Cheney government believed and still seems to believe that Iraq was created by divine intervention and endowed with a special and indelible character which possesses some ineffable mystic and spiritual unifying principle.

Guess what? That is all nonsense, concocted from a line of romantic twaddle about the nature of man that started with the ravings of Jean Jacques Rousseau and descended through the murderous hysteria of the French Revolution, the communist manifesto, Leninism, the Frankfurt School and then on to infect the oh so superior minds of pretentious academic know-it-alls like Wohlstetter, Wolfowitz, Bloom, Feith, et al.  Their acolytes were legion.  The opportunist careerist Yuppies who abetted and to some extent still abet them were even more numerous.  Burke was right.

Cheney?  Who knows?  An enigma wrapped in a riddle. Maybe he is just a man who does not like constitutional government, government that limits power and divides it.

I expected better of McCain.

Pat Lang

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/12067487/