Sic Semper Tyrannis

Iran's complex game in Iraq.

Bringing the militias to heel is no easy task, considering that it's not clear that the supposed leaders can even control their own fighters. On Wednesday a spokesman announced that Sadr was freezing his militia for six months to bring rogue elements under control. It's difficult to imagine that Sadr would willingly neutralize the militia that aided his rise to prominence in 2004 and has been an important asset in his difficult and often violent relationship with the government and other Shi'ite factions. More likely he is responding to the bad publicity resulting from the scuttling of the commemoration in Karbala. He responded in similar fashion to this year's U.S. troop surge, pledging his full cooperation. As Americans in Shi'ite areas of Iraq can attest, the gap between Sadr's rhetoric and the actions of his militia is often vast.

Sadr's cagey response to the violence underscores that the armed groups battling in Karbala and other Shi'ite areas aren't simply external forces the government must bring under control - they are, in essence, the government. SIIC and the Sadrists dominate Maliki's increasingly tenuous parliamentary majority. And, while the militias had more than enough fighters on hand in Karbala to spark serious violence, the central government had to bring in reinforcements from outside the area to reassert control.

Meanwhile, the continuing American and British policy is to draw down, not increase, their military presence in southern Iraq. The British are in the midst of pulling out of the port city of Basra. The long-standing American policy has been to defer to Shi'ite religious sensibilities and keep as low a profile as possible in holy cities like Karbala and Najaf.

In what one senior American military official called a "schizophrenic" policy, Iran offers support both to the Mahdi Army and to SIIC, even as they fight each other. Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad added insult to injury this week by observing that the Americans were leaving a power vacuum in Iraq that Iran and other nations would be glad to fill. The Iranian strategy of playing both sides may not be tenable in the long-term, but for now it gives Iran influence in southern Iraq that must be the envy of both the Americans and Iraqi politicians in Baghdad. "  Time

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"A schizophrenic policy?"  What a joke!  The Iranians must find us really laughable.

They are playing all these groups against each other in order to have the deciding influence with all of them.  Surely that is not hard to understand.

At the same time they are providing a certain amount of aid to the Sunni based groups just to have a "say" in the game there as well.

Compared to these people, we are children.  pl

http://news.yahoo.com/s/time/20070831/wl_time/iraqmilitiasfightingforsupremacy

Who is Moqtada al-Sadr?

We ought not to let the comic opera aspects of Moqtada al-Sadr's theatricality deceive us into thinking he is not important in Iraq. 

I have listened to much learned  discussion of his immaturity, the "cloud" over his father's credentials, the splintered nature of his movement and forces.  All true.  He does often seem to be channeling" the Mad Mullah stereotype that so thickly populated old movies like "Drums," one of my favorites.

In spite of all that I think he is probably the man of the future in Shia Iraq.  The coming departure of the British from the south of Iraq will signal the onset of all out struggle; political, paramilitary, and financial for ultimate authority in the Shia run parts of the country.

Shiism is a social construct (and faith) of the disinherited and hungry.  He stands for the Shia poor and their ultimate dreams.  The secular world thinks the idea of the return of the Mahdi/Occulted Imam is absurd, that this supposed belief must be a fraud on some level.  The poor men who carry guns for Moqtada do not think it is a fraud.  they believe that the Mahdi will return soon to restore justice to the earth and that Jesus will come with him.

Moqtada has had a difficult time disciplining his growing "forces."  This was inevitable in a grass roots movement made up of human material focused on salvation and looking to him for leadership rather than command.

Whether or not  one thinks that he was somehow responsible for the recent tragedy at Karbala, it is now clear that he is going to take the opportunity provided by that event to reform his movement and to seek command of those who say they follow him.  We will see if he can do that.

Sadr, IMO, is not really focused on the coalition or the American forces.  He is waiting for them to leave.  When that happens he will seek to become the power behind the prime minister.  pl

http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/world/iraq/bal-te.iraq30aug30,0,6258228.story

"Considering a War With Iran" SOAS

One of our readers asked me to look at this paper.  Having done so my opinion is that the authors  need to develop a healthy sense of skepticism when confronted with bureaucratic statements of intent with regard to desired capability.

The premise of the paper is that the US possesses the ability to attack 10,000 Iranian targets from a great distance on a nearly simultaneous basis.  The authors believe this because the US Strategic Command (old SAC) has as its goal to achieve such a capability and a clutch of think tanks are holding meetings about it.

Just after the first Gulf War a senior civilian colleague approached me to express outrage that the "smart" weapons in use had Pk (probability of kill) rates lower in fact than those promised by the manufacturers.  She was surprised when I told her that highly complex equipment (gadgets) never performed as advertised and that they usually broke down just when needed. 

The point is that these two academic authors actually believe the "air power" baloney.  They think that a renewed attempt to apply the principle of "shock and awe" will result in complete devastation of Iran, Iranian inability to respond and a very short war.

Douhet, Trenchard and Mitchell would be pleased with their gullibility.

In fact such a strike would be merely the opening battle in yet another long war fought against a major piece of the Islamic World.

The current IO campaign against Iran makes it seem more and more plausible that such an onslaught will be attempted.  pl

http://www.rawstory.com/images/other/IranStudy082807a.pdf

Basra - Last Hurrah for the Special Relationship?

"The British army is not on the"verge of collapse" - see pw. above.  The British army, like the American army at present, is incredibly stretched and subject to stress - falling recruitment levels, long tours of duty, wear and tear on equipment, high levels of mental stress among troops.  But on the verge of collapse?  The French army in 1917 on the Western Front mutinied; the Italian army retreate from Caporetto was a chaotic debacle; the Iraqi army in the first gulf war fell apart  at the first hint of allied assault.  Those are what you would call collapses. There will be no such collapse - not mutiny nor blind panic stricken chaotic retreat - that will afflict the British or American armies.

pw imagines the politician who associates himself with withdrawal from Iraq will win the election.  Not true.  Iraq and Afghanistan are unpopular wars/occupations here but are not by any stretch of the imagination deeply significant factors in elections.  Iraq rarely makes the headlines and usually is on somewhere like page six, bottom paragraph of the newspapers, or item four in the TV news broadcasts.  The next election will be won or lost on the performance of the economy, and a judgement of the Government's general level of competence.  Only one political leader has openly and unequivocably called for an end to the occupation - Menzies Cambell, leader of the Liberal Democratic party.  This will in the next election, as it always does, get 20 to 25% of the votes and 10% of the seats in the Commons.  The old Liberal party (now theLiberal Democrats) last governed Britain in the period during and immediately after the Great War of 1914 -1918.  Campbell has not a snowball in hell's chance of becoming the next PM.  Cameron, leader of the Conservative party, will remain uncommitted on the issue of whether or not to withdraw British troops; Browne, our "socialist" PM will continue to promise to stand "shoulder to shoulder" with the Americans while he quietly desrts them and oversees the slow withdrawal from Basra."  Mike G

The British Withdrawal from Basra

"The US soldiers are expected to move south early next year, when Downing Street hopes to begin a scale down that will lead to a complete departure. Iraqi sources last night confirmed earlier reports that Britain would pull its remaining 500 troops out of Basra Palace - the last remaining garrison in the city itself - in a matter of days, paving the way for a full scale withdrawal in the coming months.

But the British officer also added: "It's clear from talking to the Americans that they are going to have to fill the gap we will leave.

The feeling is that the moment the vacuum opens there the Iranian Revolutionary Guard will be in like a shot. The Americans are talking about sending a brigade, but it's still fluid."

The likely US presence in the south is smaller than the 5,500 strong British force currently deployed, but US brigades come with far more air power than their counterparts."  The Independent

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I have a lot of respect for British troops, but there is no doubt that the vacuum created in southern Iraq by their government's decision to withdraw them will have to be filled by US troops.  This is yet another burden for a force that is already too small.

I have written often of the danger posed by the exposed US supply line in the same area.  That supply line will have to be protected.  In the same way, the city of Basra can not be completely surrendered to ISCI, the Sadrists and/or their Iranian friends.

pl

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2007/08/26/nbrown226.xml

"Iraq Tribal Study - Al Anbar Governorate"

"Today, the support of Sunni tribal leaders against al-Qaeda in Iraq is hailed as one of the few successes from the U.S. troop increase this year.

The Iraq Tribal Study provided a handbook on how to gain that support by covering the basics. One section, titled "How to Work With Tribesmen," explains that "RESPECT ( Ihtiram in Arabic) is the key," and also warns: "Do not assume that they want to be like you."

The study summed up how the Sunni tribes viewed the conditions that Washington established in Iraq after the fall of Saddam Hussen. "Throughout the modern history of Iraq, the Sunni tribes have occupied a privileged position in Iraq society and enjoyed wealth, autonomy and political clout," the report said. "To lose those advantages in a system of proportional representation that empowered the Shia, or in a truncated Iraq with a Kurdish autonomous province, would bring shame to a long and prosperous Sunni history."

It also cautioned that the main themes of the U.S. message in Iraq -- "freedom and democracy" -- do not resonate well with the population "because freedom is associated with chaos in Iraq." In addition, the Sunnis "are deathly afraid of being ruled by a Shia government, which they believe will be little more than a puppet of the Shia religious extremists in Iran.""  Pincus

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This book was written for the Defense Department by a group of colleagues of whom I was happy to be a member.  It was completed in June, 2006.

Although unclassified the book has not been released to the public and for that reason I can not provide it to you.  pl

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/08/26/AR2007082601143.html

John Warner - I hope he runs again..

Senator Warner was on MTP today.  Senator Warner knows that the present US force levels in Iraq are not sustainable.  He knows that the force must be heavily reduced next year.  There are a number of reasons for this but the bottom line is that the numbers just are not there.  The sizing of the ground forces that was done after the end of the Cold War, was not based on the idea of an interventionist foreign policy.  The Bush Administration did not react to 9/11 by starting an increase in the size of those forces.  As a result the forces are TOO SMALL to sustain continued rotations at the "surge" level.  The numbers MUST come down.  In the message that he has delivered to the White House, Warner is trying to get the president's attention, to warn him that time is running out in the real world, as opposed to the world of the sycophants who surround Bush.

MG Lynch, presently in Iraq, somewhere in what he calls his "battle space," has presumed to instruct members of the US Congress with regard to foreign policy.  "Civics" is a little taught curriculum item in the high schools these days.  When I was a boy, it was core curriculum everywhere.  I learned in high school that US military officers are the servants of the civilian government.  I guess Lynch never learned that.  The decision to go to war, the decision to remain at war, the decision to end wars, these are all foreign policy decisions.  They are not the province of uniformed leaders.  Lynch is way off the reservation in what he has been saying about Clinton, Warner and Levin.  Now we have "legionary" commanders dictating from the Rhine what policy should be?

The Congress has no say in such things except for funding?  The US Congress intervened mightily in the conduct of the Civil War through the "Joint Committee on the Conduct of the War."  Then there was the raging controversy that went on in the Congress during the Philippine Insurrection and over the Platt Amendment...  Shall I continue?

Lynch said that the insurgents will re-occupy the ground that he and his men have gained if our troops are withdrawn.  Well, fellah, unless one subscribes to the idea that the US intends to remain in Iraq permanently, (I do not.) then Iraqis of one stripe or another will have to take charge of your "battle space."  When do you intend to hand it over to them?

The Iraqi Government?  There is no Iraqi Government.  pl

http://www.knx1070.com/pages/856595.php?contentType=4&contentId=838843

http://www.civilwarhome.com/committee.htm

See Barabara Tuchman's "The Proud Tower" for a discussion of the Phillipine controversy.

Anbar and Diyala - Bad news for AQinM

"Alleged al-Qaida fighters attacked a Sunni village east of Baqouba on Thursday and killed a village leader who had led the community in an uprising against the terrorist organization, witness and police said.

At the same time Timim, a nearby Shiite village, came under attack, again by alleged al-Qaida fighters. A total of 15 people, including seven women, were killed and 22 wounded in the two assaults, said Baqouba police Brig. Ali Dlaiyan.

Ten attackers were killed as villagers fought back, he said. A joint U.S.-Iraqi force had blocked the region.

The attack began at 6:30 a.m. by about 25 gunmen on the Ibrahim al-Yahya village when the fighters exploded a bomb at the house of Sheik Younis al-Shimari, destroying his home and killing him and one member of his family. Ten people were wounded, including four other members of the family and passers-by. Some of the wounded were hit by gunfire.

"They were shouting Allah Akbar and Curse be upon the Renegades," said Umm Ahmed, who was among the three women wounded in the attack. She refused to give her full name fearing retribution. "This attack will cause the uprising against them to spread to other villages.""  IHT

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Not a bad day's work for the villagers.  If AQinM feels constrained to attack Sunni villages to try to discipline them and regain control, then they are in a sorry state.  If villagers are willing to defend themselves against AQinM, then a kind of turning point has been reached.  If the technique of accepting the "rally" of previous hostiles has been successfully exported from tribal territory in Anbar, then something serious is happening.  The US military has "broken the code" on this.  It took a long time, but, better late than...

Those who believe that war must follow the dictates of policy however foolish are upset about this development.  They argue that there is a government in Baghdad.  It was elected under a constitution that most admired.  They reason that the present government must have all power in the state and must dictate the terms of power and wealth sharing.

It does not seem to matter for people who reason that way that the government in Baghdad is unrepresentative of the Sunni Arabs and unwilling to share power or wealth with them.  It does not seem to matter that an armed citizenry is the best guarantee of government moderation.  Federalist #46 argues differently, but no matter.

There is a major disagreement building up between the civilians and the newly pragmatic military.  This should be interesting.  pl

http://www.iht.com/articles/ap/2007/08/23/africa/ME-GEN-Iraq.php

Nuri al-Maliki, Time's up?

"US President George W Bush has withheld support for embattled Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, saying Iraqi voters could decide to replace him.

"There's a certain level of frustration with the leadership in general," Mr Bush said today, after two senior US senators suggested Iraq's parliament remove Mr Maliki's government if it fails to make progress on national reconciliation.

While Mr Bush acknowledges the Baghdad government is failing to live up to expectations, he plans to issue a stark warning in a speech tomorrow that an early US withdrawal from Iraq could have traumatic consequences similar to the Vietnam War's bloody aftermath. The Australian

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"In Cambodia, the Khmer Rouge began a murderous rule in which hundreds of thousands of Cambodians died by starvation, torture, or execution. In Vietnam, former American allies, government workers, intellectuals, and businessmen were sent off to prison camps, where tens of thousands perished. "  The Australian

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I thought we had learned not to push our "friends" this way.  Ngo Dinh Diem's placid face and white suits should haunt us.  We connived at his removal and no subsequent government achieved real legitimacy in the eyes of the Vietnamese (or us).

What the clever people in this administration seem to "miss" is that there is no one in Iraq who will do any better at stabilizing the country than Maliki.

We re-made the government on the basis of individual rights and interests but the Iraqis don't function that way.  They think of themselves as members of groups, just like the bonzes who burned themselves on the streets of Saigon so long ago.

Maliki knows that his real job is to ensure that the Shia Arabs will be the "overdogs."  In his mind he is the defender of Shia rights in Iraq.  Someone else would merely be the defender of some other group.  There are a few, like Allawi, who think of themselves PRIMARILY as Iraqi, but we saw how well he did at election time.  What a disappointment that must have been.

We keep "screwing up" in places like Vietnam and Iraq because we (as a people) do not accept the relevance of history and cultural difference.  We insists on believing  people are all pretty much the same and that they will behave as we think we would behave.  Nonsense.  We and another set of peoples have paid the price for that cultural blindness once again.

"Swapping" Maliki for someone else would be pointless.  The groups will not share power and wealth amicably.  In their minds that is simply arming and equipping one's enemies.

We are doing the right thing now in Anbar and Diyala.  In those places we are balancing real forces not constitutional fantasies.  Let us get on with that process and start working toward real accommodation with the neighboring states.  pl

http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,22288051-15084,00.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ngo_Dinh_Diem

Oh, by the way.  US forces had been completely out of VN for two years when the NVA attacked in violation of the cease-fire and over-ran the country.  pl

A recall of Tenet's medal would be a good idea.

" "The agency and its officers did not discharge their responsibilities in a satisfactory manner," the CIA Inspector General found.

"They did not always work effectively and cooperatively," the report stated."  Shrader

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And that's the truth.  The CIA like the DIA failed miserably to penetrate the apparatus of the takfiri jihadi networks.  Such penetrations would have enabled the US to anticipate coming jihadi actions.

Once again it will be said that penetrating these groups is "too hard to do."  Rubbish.  I know better.

Why were these groups not penetrated?

Timidity.  Fear of Risks,  Bureaucratic inertia.  Poor leadership at the top in all the significant organizations.

Has anything changed?  I doubt it.  If it had, bin Laden would be dead by now.  pl

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070821/ap_on_go_ca_st_pe/cia_sept11

Download artists_versus_bureaucrats....pdf

"How We Would Fight China" Robert Kaplan

"To do their job well, military officers must approach power in the most cautious, mechanical, and utilitarian way possible, assessing and reassessing regional balances of power while leaving the values side of the political equation to the civilian leadership. This makes military officers, of all government professionals, the least prone to be led astray by the raptures of liberal internationalism and neo-conservative interventionism. 

The history of World War II shows the importance of this approach. In the 1930s the U.S. military, nervous about the growing strength of Germany and Japan, rightly lobbied for building up our forces. But by 1940 and 1941 the military (not unlike the German general staff a few years earlier) was presciently warning of the dangers of a two-front war; and by late summer of 1944 it should have been thinking less about defeating Germany and more about containing the Soviet Union. Today Air Force and Navy officers worry about a Taiwanese declaration of independence, because such a move would lead the United States into fighting a war with China that might not be in our national interest."  Kaplan

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It appears to me that this two year old article is worth a read for all those who do not have a background in national defense planning or are so concerned with the Middle East that they have thought of little else lately.  pl

http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200506/kaplan

Barak will "fix" the IDF

"A focus on counterterrorism and guerrilla warfare in recent decades has weakened Israeli ground forces by creating a mind-set averse to accepting casualties, according to an initial assessment by Defense Minister Ehud Barak.

Mr. Barak, a former army chief of staff, a former prime minister and arguably Israel's most decorated soldier, took over the defense portfolio two months ago with a mission to rebuild the army after a disastrous war with Hezbollah in southern Lebanon last summer.

Examining the lessons of the war, colleagues say, Mr. Barak has been disturbed by how far the ground army had regressed since fighting in 1982 against Yasser Arafat's Palestine Liberation Organization and the Syrian army in Lebanon."  Abraham Rabinovich

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All those who thought I was excessively harsh last year in criticizing IDF performance in Lebanon should consider this.  Those who claimed as a part of the usual Israeli propaganda campaign that the IDF had won against Hizbullah should also take note. 

The IDF and US forces have now had so much contact that they begin to resemble each other.  The shared aversion on the part of commanders to accepting necessary losses in mission accomplishment is merely one example. In Iraq, commanders are reported to be so casualty shy that operations are often not pressed for that reason.  Why?  Dead soldiers can easily mean the end of a career. 

In the case of the IDF, the "rot" in the forces extended far past the tactical level of operations and planning.  The conception on the part of the general staff and the government which led to a bombing campaign intended to break the will of the Lebanese was deeply flawed.  This application of classic strategic bombing theory was as bad an idea as it proved to be.  Douhet's theories were embraced by such people as Hugh Trenchard, Curtis Lemay and "Bomber" Harris.  They have never worked well as a predicate of national victory.  People will point to the Balkans in the '90s as an example of vindication for these ideas, but it has been argued that this is not so.  A discussion of that would be welcomed.  pl

http://www.washingtontimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070815/FOREIGN/108150039/1003

Check Special Forces story on TA

Colonel Aaron Bank was the founder of US Army Special Forces.  pl

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aaron_Bank

Maliki's Last Chance (almost)

"U.S. officials have called the meeting a make-or-break moment for the government, which was formed in 2006 to reduce violence by including all groups but has been paralysed by boycotts and infighting on ethnic and sectarian lines.

The worst split occurred this month when the main Sunni Arab bloc, the Accordance Front, withdrew its six members.

"The Sunni Arabs, who along with Shi'ites and Kurds are one of the three parts of Iraqi society, will not be excluded from the government," Maliki said.

He said he hoped the front would return. But if not, he could replace them with others -- possibly tribal sheikhs who have emerged in the past year at the helm of the first Sunni Arab armed groups loyal to the government and its U.S. allies.

The sheikhs have seized control of areas from insurgents in the western desert province of Anbar, and are believed to have national political ambitions. Asked if he had agreed to give the sheikhs seats vacated by the Front, Maliki said: "There are people who have come forward and offered to be an alternative."" Reuter

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This makes Maliki seem a bit like Custer at the Little Big Horn or Chelmsford at Isandhlwana. 

So, he is going to replace the Sunni politicians with tribal sheikhs and village mukhtars?  Great idea.  The whole thing may hold together long enough, just long enough.

Realistically, the most likely outcome of his coming failure to make political peace among ethnic enemies will be his replacement.  Then we will go through this drill with the next man. 

Well, let's get on with it!  Eventually we will decide that we have to make enough deals with enough players to enable us to leave.  pl

http://africa.reuters.com/world/news/usnGRA249861.html

"The assymetry in power?"

Continuing the discussion of the sterility of US policy approaches to the difficulties with Iran, we have received the following from BM.  In the article linked below, we have evidence of the recognition in Washington diplomatic circles of the need to do something creative concerning Iran.  pl

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"I am not aware of any concrete incentives communicated by US to Iran. The closest was statements by the Secretary of State to the effect that US would not object, in practice, to the development of high technological capabilities in Iran through transfers, investments etc. And I think that was a trial balloon that sank. There was a 2005 package of incentives presented by EU which seems to have been calculated to insult the Iranian Government and the Iranian people; it treated Iran as a defeated country of inferior people who had to defer to their betters' good judgment. It was long on demands on Iran and short on what EU would be prepared to deliver within any specified time (nothing, it turned out). And the 2006 offer was not much better; in fact, the French thought that was good enough for Iran, yet another insult. My sense of this is that US was not interested in paying the price for the normalization with Iran. Clinton was not interested, expecting Iranian surrender. Bush followed suit by threatening Iran to get a cost-free solution. This approach, in my opinion, was also employed in case of North Korea. US, under Clinton, dragged her feet in meeting the Agreed Framework commitments to North Korea, all the time calculating that North Korea will collapse. When it didn't, Bush had to threaten them too. And when that did not work, we were back with the Agreed Framework plus North Korea with a few nuclear bombs and also outside of NPT. I think both US and EU, for some reason, really expected (expect?) cost-free negotiations and diplomacy. I am not sure how to account for that; perhaps the great asymmetry in power? "  Babak Makkenijad

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/08/09/AR2007080902290.html?hpid=artslot

What "Carrots" Have Been Offered to Iran?

When I first read this article I was tempted to think that Robin Wright had gone over to "the dark side" as Vice President Cheney calls it.  A closer inspection reveals that she is actually compiling a list of the current "group think" among the Jacobins and their auxiliaries.

It is quite egregious for the Jacobins to argue that Iran has not responded to a diplomatic effort in which carrots and sticks have been offered.  What carrots?  Whenever Rice or Satterfield talk about diplomacy on Television we are treated to a vision of glowering bluster demanding Iranian compliance in Iraq.  Period!!! 

Our "negotiating" strategy toward Iran is nothing but a demand for their surrender.  Period!!  How Middle Eastern we have become in so short a time.

The AEI types that Wright mentions are consistent in the fullness of their fantasy life just as they were before Iraq.

This is log-rolling.  Don't be rolled.  pl

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/08/08/AR2007080802554.html?hpid=moreheadlines

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diplomacy

Taters on Cordesman et al

I received this from Taters and thought it worth putting up as a post by itself.  It calls our attention to Cordesman's vision of Iraq in the time of the Pollack/O'Hanlon visit.  PL

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"Anthony Cordesman was with Pollack and O'Hanlon in Iraq and his take is somewhat different, (he certainly does agree with Col. Lang's  assessment regarding working with tribesman.)
Here is the synopsis - with the link to the full report.

Synopsis:
Everyone sees Iraq differently. As one leading US official in Iraq put it, “the current situation is like playing three dimensional chess in the dark while someone is shooting at you.” It is scarcely surprising that my perceptions of a recent trip to Iraq are different from that of two of my traveling companions and those of several other recent think tank travelers to the country. 

From my perspective, the US now has only uncertain, high risk options in Iraq. It cannot dictate Iraq’s future, only influence it, and this presents serious problems at a time when the Iraqi political process has failed to move forward in reaching either a new consensus or some form of peaceful coexistence. It is Iraqis that will shape Iraq's ability or inability to rise above its current sectarian and ethnic conflicts, to redefine Iraq's politics and methods of governance, establish some level of stability and security, and move towards a path of economic recovery and development. So far, Iraq’s national government has failed to act at the rate necessary to move the country forward or give American military action political meaning.

The attached trip report does, however, show there is still a tenuous case for strategic patience in Iraq, and for timing reductions in US forces and aid to Iraqi progress rather than arbitrary dates and uncertain benchmarks. It recognizes that strategic patience is a high risk strategy, but it also describes positive trends in the fighting, and hints of future political progress.

These trends are uncertain, and must be considered in the context of a long list of serious political, military, and economic risks that are described in detail. The report also discusses major delays and problems in the original surge strategy. The new US approach to counterinsurgency warfare is making a difference, but it still seems likely from a visit to the scene that the original strategy President Bush announced in January would have failed if it had not been for the Sunni tribal awakening. 

Luck, however, is not something that can be ignored, and there is a window of opportunity that could significantly improve the chances of US success in Iraq if the Iraqi government acts upon it. The US also now has a country team in Iraq that is far more capable than in the past, and which may be able to develop and implement the kind of cohesive plans for US action in Iraq that have been weak or lacking to date. If that team can come forward with solid plans for an integrated approach to a sustained US effort to deal with Iraq’s plans and risks, there would be a far stronger and more bipartisan case for strategic patience.

http://www.csis.org/media/csis/pubs/080607_iraq-strategicpatience.pdf

(This is a 25 pager)

I would also highly recommend going to the Atheneum and reading what Col. Lang has posted there on this subject. Please read the links posted after the article.

Maliki And His Friend are Unhappy With Petraeus

http://turcopolier.typepad.com/the_athenaeum/2007/07/maliki-and-his-.html

And certainly a must read for those that haven't read it ( It's also well worth a revisit if you have )on Col. Lang's take on a political solution, entitled A Concert of the Greater Middle East, from The National Interest. 

http://www.nationalinterest.org/Article.aspx?id=13252

Taters"

We do not see clearly.

Here we have a pair of linked articles.  They are linked by the same unwillingness of the United States to understand the local situation in the Middle East, the state interests of Iran (as opposed to its religious ideology) and the need to adapt our own policy to local reality.

We do not see clearly.

In Basra the British have been defeated by the local interests of the several Iraqi Shia factions and their militias.  Their assumption that southern Iraq was a reproduction of the counter-insurgency environment of Ireland has been proven wrong.  The Shia militias are far stronger and more virulently anti-Western than "the boys" ever  were.  The depth of popular support for these militias is overwhelming.  Those who are taking the Crystolian path of rejoicing in the success of the "surge" in central Iraq have little to say of how the US is going to cope with the British loss of southern Iraq to Shia militia control.  In this situation of competition among Fadhila, the Maliki government, Dawa (to the extent that it is separate from Maliki), the Sadrists, and ISCI (SCIRI), Iran is doing well in a skilled game of playing off one group against another to ensure that there will not be a clear victor.  This should be seen as reflective of a realistic analysis of Iranian state interests.  In an idealized world Iran would seek only the victory of the Shia community without regard for its own future ability to manipulate the situation, but, this is not an idealized world.  This is the other of the two worlds, the one in which countries still exist and have interests.  The devotion of Iran to its state interests can also be seen in the willingness of Iran to give limited support to non-religious insurgent groups.  For Iran the goal of helping these groups push America towards the door is sufficient to justify some strengthening of the enemies of the religious Shia community.

Jalal Talabani, a master of the art of the possible, and Hamid Kharzai have now both tried to tell the Bushies and their Crystolian chums that Iran is a potential asset rather than the inevitable and latest inhabitant of the doghouse to which the US consigns its mythic enemies. (Mythic enemies are often real enemies as well) 

We had the Libyans out in the doghouse for a long time until someone told Qaddhafi that a modicum of drama in yielding to the need to confess his evil would produce wondrous results.  Now we have Iran and Syria occupying adjoining doghouses. 

Both are signaling a desire to negotiate their differences with the US.  In the Bush administration with its Manichaean view of the universe, there has been no willingness to do anything other than to arrange the unconditional surrender of the two countries.

One imagines a scene in which Bashar Assad and Ahmedinajad walk up a slope together to the tent in which they will offer their swords.  Oh! I forgot.  We did that scene at Safwan.  pl 

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/08/06/AR2007080600125.html

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/08/06/AR2007080601401.html?hpid=topnews

O'Hanlon, Pollack and Bernard Fall

Bernard Fall was perhaps the greatest historian of the era of counterinsurgency.  He was French, a veteran of World War Two and acted as a consultant/professor for the US Army in the sixties.  I had the privilege of listening to him lecture at the US Army Special Warfare Center at Ft. Bragg in 1964.

I watched Fall write his formula for counterinsurgency on a pad or blackboard or something.  I have written of this before, but repeat the message here for a purpose. Fall's formula was:  CI (counterinsurgency) = PA (political action) + CO (counter-guerrilla operations) + CA (civic action).

Today on Fox News Sunday (FNS) I watched O'Hanlon and Pollack seek to elaborate the perforce abbreviated message of their NY Times oped last week. 

What they said (again) was that during their recent trip to Iraq they saw a pronounced improvement in security in Anbar brought on by greatly improved CO (counter-guerrilla operations) in both Anbar and in parts of the big towns.  In Anbar the tactic of helping the Sunni Arab tribals clear their zones (dirah) of AQinM interference has prospered thus far.  It would be interesting to know who the Americans are who are "brokering" the deals.  In the big towns the sheer military weight of increased US combat forces is "holding down" the level of visible warfare among the factions.  Continued success in this "urban" effort will depend on the possibility of transferring responsibility for these newly quiescent neighborhoods to the Iraqi security forces.  So far, that has not been possible in more than a few places.

They both said that for them success in Iraq now amounts to enough stabilization to allow our orderly departure.

Towards the end of the FNS interview both men said that in the part of Fall's formulation that concerns PA (political action) there has been NO, ZERO, NOTHING.  In other words the Maliki government has not made any progress at all towards national reconciliation.  They further say that they see no prospect for movement towards national reconciliation in Iraq under Malikis rule but that it would be folly for the United States to attempt to cause his removal.

In other words, they and I have much the same opinion.  People on the left who greeted the NY Times oped with great agitation were mistaken in their reaction.  The piece and the FNS interview today should be seen as deserved praise for long awaited comprehension of "this kind of war" by the US military.  At the same time the esoteric meaning (attention straussians) of their exposition is that without an Iraqi government that wants inter-communal reconciliation there will be no peace in Iraq.  pl

PS.  Bernard Fall died in Vietnam, in the field with US troops in 1967. He stepped on a mine in the Street Without Joy.

Withdrawal Options

For administrative reasons I deleted the previous published post on this subject and here substitute my draft.

Binh - You asked if I thought the loss to the insurgents of territory occupied and the lengths of the line of supply would make a prolongd presence of a reduced force difficult  The answer is yes. pl

Download Withdrawal.doc