From SNAFU to FUBAR in Basra
[Phillip Carter,
Wednesday March 26, 2008 at 9:51pm ]
I've been waiting for a bit of clarity to emerge in Basra before commenting. Unfortunately, that could be a pretty long wait. So I figure now's as good a time as any to opine a bit on what's going on in Southern Iraq.According to the New York Times:
BAGHDAD — An assault by thousands of Iraqi soldiers and police officers to regain control of the southern port city of Basra stalled Wednesday as Shiite militiamen in the Mahdi Army fought daylong hit-and-run battles and refused to withdraw from the neighborhoods that form their base of power there.It's difficult to see how this ends well. This is some of the nastiest intra-sectarian fighting we've seen in Iraq. Second, it looks pretty clear that Maliki is using the Iraqi security forces to consolidate his own power and eliminate his rivals. Third, I can only imagine the trepidation being felt by Sunni leaders who are watching this and wondering whether they're next on Maliki's hit list. For now, the heavy fighting remains limited to Basra, although skirmishes have erupted throughout the country. If this clash in Basra lasts longer than a week, that's going to be really bad for the Maliki government. If the heavy fighting spreads, that's going to be even worse.
American officials have presented the Iraqi Army’s attempts to secure the port city as an example of its ability to carry out a major operation against the insurgency on its own. A failure there would be a serious embarrassment for the Iraqi government and for the army, as well as for American forces eager to demonstrate that the Iraqi units they have trained can fight effectively on their own.
During a briefing in Baghdad on Wednesday, a British military official said that of the nearly 30,000 Iraqi security forces involved in the assault, almost 16,000 were Basra police forces, which have long been suspected of being infiltrated by the same militias the assault was intended to root out.
The operation is a significant political test for Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki, who traveled to Basra to oversee the beginning of the assault. It is also a gamble for both the Iraqi and American governments. The Americans distrust the renegade cleric Moktada al-Sadr and his Mahdi Army militia, who consider the Americans occupiers.
* * *
Mr. Maliki issued an ultimatum on Wednesday for Shiite militias in Basra to put down their weapons within 72 hours. Yet battles continued, killing at least 40 people and wounding 200 others, hospital officials said.
Though American and Iraqi officials have insisted that the operation was not singling out a particular group, fighting appeared to focus on Mahdi-controlled neighborhoods. In fact, some witnesses said, neighborhoods controlled by rival political groups seemed to be giving government forces safe passage, as if they were helping them to strike at the Mahdi Army.
Even so, the Mahdi fighters seemed to hold their ground. Witnesses said that from the worn, closely packed brick buildings of one Mahdi stronghold, the Hayaniya neighborhood, Mahdi fighters fired mortars, rocket-propelled grenades, automatic weapons and sniper rifles at seemingly helpless Iraqi Army units pinned on a main road outside, their armored vehicles unable to enter the narrow streets.
The assault has also sparked continuing violence by outraged Mahdi commanders in other major cities, including Baghdad, where the sprawling urban slum called Sadr City forms the militia’s power center in Iraq.
Update I: Abu Muquwama adds some trenchant observations and analysis at his site. He keys in on the same thing I noticed in the press coverage -- "The Basra operation, which senior Iraqi officials had been signaling for weeks, is considered so important by the Iraqi government that Mr. Maliki traveled to the city to direct the fighting, several officials said." Seriously? How is this possibly a good idea? I mean, it ain't like Maliki is an Iraqi version of Dwight Eisenhower or U.S. Grant. He's a 3rd-string kleptocrat whose political skills basically stop at the edge of the Green Zone.
Update II: Oh yeah, and another thing. Every time you think of the "adviser model" for Iraq, you should think of this operation in Basra. Because this is the end result of the U.S. advisory effort to date -- which has focused on creating well-trained and equipped units at the tactical level, but has basically failed at the national, strategic level. The leaders of the Iraqi security forces at the ministry level are as bad as they ever were. And the national government is about as bad. Training and advising Iraqi units at the brigade level and below is well and good. But if you fail to properly shape the national command structure, you're handing those units over to leaders who will misuse them.
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Oh my.
You mean just like here in the United States the last six years with no end in sight before January 2009, if then?
The clearest thing about it is that the Iraqis will never have effective command, an effective military, OR an effective government as long as the US occupation continues.
(Speaking as a Brit, I like to think our government's decision to withdraw the Army to the airbase in Basra is a cunning experiment to demonstrate how well or badly the country will operate without coalition forces. I think it's proved a point.)
As of the moment, I'd say the point it's proved is that as liberators we have proved unfortunate while as colonialists we have proved incompetent.
And as for our "allies", having lived for the past generation as subdued pawns under Saddam they seem insistent on recreating another class of subdued pawns in the Sadrists.
WASF
An Iraqi born American adviser whose father (a Shiite) was murdered and buried at Abu Ghraib by the previous landlord once told me that violent nature of our assualt upon Fallujah in 2004 would be more to please the Shiite bloodlust for revenge from past wars. The Fallujah Sunnis had been the source of manpower in the military forces used by Saddam to crush the Shiite rebellion after Gulf I baited by 41. Blackwater murders, like previously used WMD, gave the excuse.
Think that when Cheney demanded this action by the Malakii (Jaafri controlled, Iranian influenced) Baghdad government to conquer the Iranian controlled South, he didn't understand that he needed Sunnis to do the dirty deed?
Not that it really matters.
Human beings are fundamentally social, and what the historical record says is that in every place they have ever lived they have always established a functioning society absent natural disasters or predatory abuse by other human societies. Baghdad is an awful mess, but it's in a lot better shape than Berlin or Tokyo was in 1945. Iraq has been "civilized" longer than literally any other place on the planet.
And what's the evidence here?
The United States and Britain have had fully five years to demonstrate how well the understand what needs to be done in Iraq, and we have fully 500 years of evidence concerning the effects of Western powers imposing their will in such places in pursuit of their "national interests". Iraq is the way it is because we made it that way, and have prevented the Iraqis from doing anything except what we tell them to.
Without coalition forces you say?
As if pulling out of one city represents anything like an end to this pointless criminal occupation. Or as if the CRIMINALS in Washington and London who are responsible for this disgraceful RAPE of a prostrate nation represent effective government. The clearest thing abouyt it is that the US and Britain have nothing constructive to offer but more of the same, and for the same reasons: because it's politically advantageous to the leaders of those nations regardless of what happens to the Iraqis, and regardless of the costs to their own people in the United States and Britain.
You speak about this as if you are god looking down from on high with perfect understanding of the consequences of every human act and human beings were a flock of sheep committed to your omniscient care, yet the fact remains that Iraq was better off under Saddam than it is now, bad as that was. It is equally clear that things under Saddam were a direct result of previous interventions by Britain and the United States in the region dating back to WW1.
The reality is that the occupation is a self-perpetuating disaster -- a disgraceful crime -- and that is all that it is.
"Advisor model" you say? And thugs are better equipped and winning in an asymmetrical tactical action...hmmmm...I'm sure we can find a way to blame Iran for this result.
Failure would not seem to be an option. Do we then send U.S. ground forces into Basra and take a more active role in that civil war? Is that what we're there for?
BBC Online
Sooo...the titular head of the Iraqi Gov't issues a statement indicating the *Gov't forces* will not retreat from a battle with the Mahdi's.
I'm no expert but this sure seems like a pretty damn bad tack to take. Maybe it lost something in the translation.
No indeed -- after five years of this nonsense and considering the abilities of the people in charge, it appears to be an absolute certainty.
The troop levels remain at the height of the "surge" yet all hell is breaking loose now that Sadr has told the Mahdi army to resist.
Hmmm, guess all that "the surge worked" info was, as I said, pure bullshit. The Surge changed nothing, it was tactically successful and strategically meaningless, and now we are going to have another spasm of violence.
How many times have we been told that things are looking up, victory is near at hand, things are improving, there is, to use the Vietnam phrase, "light at the end of the tunnel"? And how many times, again from Vietnam, did the light turn out to be an oncoming train, not the end of the tunnel?
We beat the Iraqi Army - Mission Accomplished! ('cept for a few dead-enders of course).
We are rounding up the 55-most wanted (remember the deck of cards?) and that will result in victory, yay!
We captured Saddam - yay, we have won ('cept for a few dead-enders).
We turned over sovereignty from the CPA to the Iraqis - yay, we are going home (uhh, not exactly).
We held elections and people showed purple fingers - yay ('cept the Sunni boycotted the election, about 90% stayed home, something the purple-finger waving Republicans at Bush's state of the union speech that year completely ignored).
Democracy sweeps the mid-east, with elections in Lebanon and the Palestinian Authority, maybe Bush was right! ('cept those elected were not who we wanted to win, so we disavow the results and refuse to deal with Hamas and encourage Israel not to do so - as if encouragement was needed).
We killed Al-Zarquawi - yay, we are winning! (uhh, not exactly).
We have a new general! General (pick one of the following: Sanchez, Casey, Abazaid, Petraeus, [insert next name here]) and he has a new plan to win!
We have a war tsar! (whatever happened to him?)
We will draw down - no, we will build huge FOBs - no, we will clear-hold-build - no, we will surge - hey it is working! Violence is down, so we are winning!
No. No we aren't. We have already lost. The only thing now is to get the fuck out with as little damage as possible. Not a "precipitous retreat" but a strategy (say it with me: STRATEGY) to get out carefully, but quickly, keeping the negative effects down as much as possible. The effects of staying are worse than leaving. We will continue to pay for this war long after the last soldier has left Iraq - but we will not be able to turn this mess around. Nobody won this mess, but we clearly lost.
Until the next tactical victory or delay. Victory will always be "just around the corner" until we finally accept what we have done and face the consequences - and then those most responsible will blame those who take the correct action for the defeat - the familiar "stab in the back" theory used so successfully by the fascists in post-WWI Germany, and by the right-wing extremists here over Vietnam.
We never had a plan to win, only to not lose "just yet," and that is exactly what we got - a war that we have not lost "just yet."
If you are not outraged you are not paying attention.
And, as I said about a year ago, PETRAEUS CAN SUCK IT.
If the Sadrists are conclusively beaten they will form an angry disaffected faction that will continue to simmer and attempt to foment trouble whenever and wherever possible. The only way to prevent this is decimation of the Sadrist Iraqis, which, while workable (Saddam proved that), isn't politically doable with U.S. forces in country.
If the government (i.e. the ISCI/Dawa militia) forces are beaten it may possibly cause the Maliki camorra to fall, precipitating a government crisis. Also, as Plymouth Rock notes, we will be required to commit our ground forces to "retrieve" any failure of Lam Son 719 or whatever our proxies are calling this clusterfuck.
The irony here is that there's really no reason for the U.S. to be on one side or the other of this goatrope. Sadr's only real sin is that he doesn't like us. I had to laugh at the sentence in the NYT story about this - that makes the IA/IP look pretty fucked up, BTW - that stated that Sadr "views the Americans as an occupation force".
Who knew? And here I thought that all those GIs were just on leave and forgot to turn their weapons back into the arms room. Well, fuck, Mookie, our bad. We'll leave the keys on the table before we go.
What a goatscrew. WASF.
LAM SON 719 came to mind also; but, both sides of Viet Nam had state structures. We are in the world of barter war where all is in trade. We have mastered the skill of societal fracture - create with the blitzkreig conventionally the effects upon the land halfway between a thermonuclear strike and a neutron bomb cloud burst. I am sure this was the vision of the aviators and submariners who wore all stars in the Pentagon. Easy like a stern shot to a hospital ship, they must have thought as they took their orders and lad their plans. Problem was that the afterstrike floaters seem to know how to thrive in conditions repulsive to the plebe year graduate plus thirty.
Has there been much evidence of that?
Well I'm sure he has one, just you and Mr. Bush do Stephan., but I'm more concerned with actions and results, especially since I don't know of any better way to judge someones character if that's a concern.
What I know here is that he works for Bush, has failed to establish anything which might resemble a legitimate government in Iraq, and that Mr. Bush is a pathological liar, a mass-murderer, and a fool, none of which suggest that his accomplices should be given the benefit of the doubt where their character is concerned.
First off Stephen, who are you?
Secondly, how are these stupid comments?
Thirdly, throwing out a straw man like "review of Maliki's character..." etc...begs the question of how are his mannerisms when you have tea with him that you feel entitled to be so familiar to his character?
Fourth, you imply "ops" as if you are familiar with the term "ops" enough to be one of the military or former military. So if you are, please, enlighten us so that we can know whom it is that wishes to lecture us on researching "ops."
And then, fifth, there is this little gem of yours..."Maybe wew should ahve bush make you top general and send you over to correct the situation." [sic] which is loaded with precious, and priceless comedic value.
Lastly, and so to clarify, and thus ensure that we're all on the same page...who are you?
Well, Stephen, I'm sure your insightful comments will be missed by all should you choose to discontinue reading this blog.
Nice comments by the rest of you.
So what do we gain by persisting in this? A ringside seat, complete with incoming? I'd prefer to watch the stuff Hollywood puts out, at least they have a disclaimer that no actors were maimed or killed during the filming.
"...we will be required to commit our ground forces to "retrieve" any failure of Lam Son 719 or whatever our proxies are calling this clusterfuck."
Or maybe NOT! After all the original recipe Lam Son 719 was the first and last attempt to grab Tchepone (main toll Plaza of Ho Chi Minh Thruway and location of exit 0). Man, do you remember seeing that shit on the boob tube?...it was hillarious, I was laughing so hard, I pissed my pants more than once. For those too young to have vidi'ed the quality footage of same, this operation gave birth to the immortal saying "going out on the skids." The crew chiefs of the assorted slicks were beating the Marvins with blunt implementa, and failing that shooting them off the skids.
If you want a cool Army Aviation site that covers that fuck story, go HERE scroll down and see the extent of damages to the personnel/airframes...what zippy the pin head general came up with that plan?
Ole Walt Rostow and the JCS tried to convince LBJ to take out Tchepone and sit astride the son of a bitch in 1967. It would have taken 200,000 Murrican GI's, they said....If it had to be done, it had to be done then. I bet Al know something about that Operation.
Helping Maliki out of this mess is dumb for the Deciderist, better to let his (Maliki's) rep suffer and arrange for him to be shitcanned if his Army suffers reversals. Meanwhile back at the Ranch, Cheney can blame Petraeus' MTT's for having insufficiently trained our resolute Iraqi Allied forces.
I disagree with Phil on this one. It is NOT pretty clear that he is consolidating his power, that is a faulty inference. This is not intra-sectarian to the degree that we are making it out to be. This is a Shia led government attacking Shia extremists, no different from Sunni leaders attacking Sunni extremists in Anbar.
The article says "Shiite Militia" and automatically we infer Sadrists and Mahdi Militia. This fight was not triggered by Sadrists at all, nor is that the target of Maliki (The press assumes that because we don't understand who we are fighting).Why does every one assume this has anything to do with Sadr or Sadrists, or even Mahdi Milita for that matter? (this is not the result of Mookie calling for civil disobedience).
This was triggered not by actions in Basra, but instead by actions in Baghdad (earlier this week rocket attacks killed dozens in the Green Zone). It was before Sadr's proclamation that these rockets were fired into the Green Zone, and it was well beyond the capabilities of your average Mahdi to do so (with that accuracy and that quantity). This fight was likely triggered by Iranian backed Shiite Extremists who use Madhi Militia as a cover for status and action. (the same guys who kill GIs 4 at a time with the still prevalent EFPs).
My bet is this, Maliki hit a tipping point with these Shitte Extremists. Shiite Extremists, with likely implicit support from Sadrists I will admit, are probably the ones who attacked the green zone, and Maliki, looking for a target, saw a big one in Basra.
Maliki has never been for attacking of Sadrists or Madhi Militia. Look back at when Maliki took power, look back in 2006 when we were forced to remove barracades around Sadr City, and when Maliki refused to allows US forces to go after Sadrists. Why would anyone believe he has changed his loyalties?
Ummm...because all of the reports from Basra describe fighting between IA/IP units and militia described as "Sadrist" or "Mahdi Army"???
I don't get the sense that Maliki or any other of the players in Iraq have "loyalties" outside their own faction. That seems to be the real problem: there's no place in the system there for trust. The Iraqi game has - at least since Ottoman times - winner take all. So in this case the pan-Shia Shiites (Maliki and his crew, SICI and Dawa) appear to have come to blows with the Iraq-for-Iraqis Shiites (Sadrists and their allies). But, frankly, who the hell knows. As Bill Keller points out - this is MilitiaWorld now; we've moved Beyond Thunderdome. Everyone with a gun to hire - and that includes us, the biggest, baddest militia on the Basra block - can get a little piece of this action.
This fight was likely triggered by Iranian backed Shiite Extremists who use Madhi Militia as a cover for status and action.
This makes no sense on the face of it. Maliki is Tehran's Man in Baghdad as much as he is ours. The entire ruling Shia clique owes a lot to and plays well with the Iranians. If the IA/IP "stand up" enough that the Baghdad government feels strong enough to require a withdrawl timetable from us, the Iranians surely understand that they will benefit thoroughly and quietly in the long run. While Iran wants to keep us fighting defensively - and stir us up to continue to use our tac air and kill civvies in the process - the notion that they'd want to get tangled with us is silly. They were doing just fine before...
OTOH, if this was an Iranian black-bag job designed to get us to help their Iraqi proxies to eliminate a local rival or rivals - hmmmm. Dunno if they're cunning enough to think of that. I'd bet we'd be stupid enough to fal for it if they did, tho.
I'm with bigTom on Sadr: we should have got him inside the tent pissing out. But to do that we'd have had to promise to get out, and as y'all know, I'm convinced that was never in the cards from the day Dick conned his man Dubya into sticking our Army's dick into the meatgrinder.
Cliff's notes version:
1. The Maliki government (i.e. the Tehran-aligned Shia factions) is hammering two umbrella groups in the Basra area: Fadhila and the Sadrists.
2. They may be doing this because the U.S. doesn't like Sadr's people's anti-occupation views and are worried that the Sadr trend might do well in the upcoming provincial elections.
3. They may be doing this because Tehran is getting pissed about Sadr's successfully going off the Tehranist Shia reservation and doing shit like cutting deals with the IAF, Dialogue Front and Allawi.
4. Or it may be both.
Anyway, it's up to y'all to decide if it's worth Yankee blod and treasure to decide which Iraqi loves them some mullahs better than others. As for me, Dick Cheney and his entire AEI/neocon pack can kiss my ass. My country has been led by some knaves and fools before, but never for this long and never as knavishly and foolishly as by these peckerheads. This tears it. The Iraqis just snatched Dubya's cunning Middle Eastern plans off the table, rolled them up and stuffed them up America's jacksie.
Can we impeach the stupid fucking sons of bitches now?
I say this because:
1. This sectarian crap was entirely foreseeable and WAS forseen, and
2. The only way to stuff this sectarian fighting back into the bottle is to give one of the factions the Seal of Solomon and turn them to get all medieval on the others' ass - call it the "Frankie Drackie Solution".
So now, having gotten us ass-deep in the shitter, they have neither the courage to quit nor the viciousness to win the peace of the grave. We are lead by callous, greedy, self-deluded men who lack the only virtue of vicious greed: the pure ruthlessness of self interest. Capable of being neither Bolivar nor Attila, they will dither around being Nicholas II, uselessly and dangerously fiddle-fucking around in global affairs they don't understand. They are, in the truest sese of the word, oxygen thieves, wasting valuable O2 just by existing.
WAS,S,S,FF
American forces
$lede
guess that 4000 was just too low a number
Also, the ISF used its own assets for these unit moves. They shifted 5-8,000 troops without using a single coalition vehicle...
FDC, you know better than to confuse press with "reporting". Consider the your sources. There are groups who fight under the Mahdi Banner, but are not true Mahdi. This is classic surrogate warfare (kind of life Delta Force guys taking down a target in Columbia back in the 90s, and claiming to be 6'3" Columbians).
Also, never try to understand Iranian words, intent or action as monolithic. There are two governments in Iran, the elected branch and the clergy. Often, the right hand and left hand are playing different music. And do not confuse Iranian backed with Iranian "ordered." My belief is that Iran is not telling these Shitte extremists what to do, they are simply giving money and supplies and saying, "Don't tell us, we don't want to know" to give them more plausible deniability as a surrogate to attack US interests.
I do agree that we should have brought in Mookie years ago, we actually tried that back in 2003 back in the days before the first government (my unit did this). Sadr was very cooperative and the SF guys who lived with him actually really liked him. But he got shut out of the Interim Government, and that hurt his feelings, which forever condemned us in his eyes. So he has been playing the "liberation" card ever since.
"Maliki suffers from attacks in Baghdad and so moves his rather dubious forces south to enter Sadr's area w/o the approval of Mookie?"
Wisedup, you are assuming that Maliki did not get approval from Mookie (note Mookie has yet to come out and speak against the Basra actions, to my knowledge). Two, Mookie wants it to happen! I say again, show me proof (other than uninformed press reporting), that Mahdi Militia and Sadrists are really being targeted in Basra. More likely what is happening is Sadr's rivals in Basra are being targeted.
To explain the difference between Shiite Extremists in Basra, and those in Sadr City, it is simple. Maliki can't get into Sadr City any more than we can, so he went after the big visible target, Basra. He has been eyeing it for some time, I am sure.
Remember, Maliki would have never gotten into office with the Sadr Block. Why would he turn on Sadr and Sadrists? If he is solely attacking Sadrist now, this would be a new development completely contrary to his previous actions (or inactions more appropriate).
gives way to:
BG -
When multi-sourced reporting from NYT, BBC, WAPO, etc all indicate Iraqi Gov't forces launching an attack on neighborhoods known to be controlled by the Mahdi militia, what other conclusion can we reach? I'll agree with you that just because they are reporting it, it doesn't mean it's correct. But really, what other source/s of info do we have about what's really going on there?
This is a non-sensical line of reasoning. We removed barricades and returned Mookie's men because he demanded it, not because Maliki had the stroke on his own accord to make this happen. Maliki had nothing left in the bag to bargain with and was thankful just to wake up every morning. How many reports came in about US forces snatching up some murderous Sadrist thug only to have to release him within 48 hours? Or maybe those bad guys were really our confidential informants and we roughed them up and brought them in as a cover so they could comfortably spill the beans to us? That line makes as much sense to me as your very thin assertion that this is all Iranian intrigue using double and triple cover.
Now, there's no doubt that Iran is influencing events all over Iraq. And as I've said before if they weren't then I'd be scared to death we were too stupid to detect their actions. But this is pushing it a little too far. Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar. In this case the most logical explanation, ISTM, is what is being reported - most likely for political power gain in the next election.
My reading of several translated articles from the Arab press suggest that:
1. Maliki is under pressure from the U.S. to ensure that the nationalist Shia groups get weakened to prevent the success of anti-occupation groups like the Sadrists from doing well in the provincial elections. Supposedly this is happening now because the last of the reinforcement brigades (the "surge") are still in country and the U.S. has troops to spare. Wait until May or June and the extra bodies will be gone.
2. He's also under pressure from Tehran to disrupt a potential Sadrist-Sunni-secular nationalist/rejectionist axis from developing and derailing Tehran's plans for a Iranian-leaning post-occupation government.
Also, after leaving the UIA the Sadrists have been playing a spoiler role - they're not part of the Maliki/SICI/Dawa coalition anymore, at least not entirely.
This may be a calculation on Mookie's part - he may be working with the IG to decimate portions/splinters/factions of his guys who have headed off HIS reservation.
My bottom line: we probably don't know and never will know. What I do know is that this doesn't look like a Good Thing. Fuck Lam Son 719 - this reminds me more of the kind of Our Man in Saigon sneak and peek shit that went down in 1963, where we decided that we needed to replace Our Man in Saigon with...ummm...Another Man in Saigon. And Another. And So On.
IMO this is just another campaign in the seemingly endless War of Iraqi Succession. Eventually a strongman - probably an IA general - will sieze power, dictatorship will return and everything will be back to normal, except for the dead, the widowed and childless and the debris.
Mission Accomplished.
another campaign in the seemingly endless War of Iraqi Succession. Eventually a strongman - probably an IA general - will sieze power, dictatorship will return and everything will be back to normal, except for the dead, the widowed and childless and the debris.
Have we returned to fight out own wars against the Plains Indians?
Missio Accomplished, indeed.
The "no-hopers" (like me) find that this is a perfect example of the reason that we're throwing blood and treasure down a rathole: they these guys are going to fight it out and that by getting involved we're making ourselves into just another local militia, Lebanon 1983-style.
The "stay-the-coursers" find that this is a perfect example of why we Can't Just Leave: these guys need to be mentored, channeled, directed, moderated and occasionally bitchslapped into reaching some sort of accomodation, and if we go they'll just all go to hell.
Proving yet again that Iraq isn't About Them: it's about Us and what we see when we look at it is a reflection of our convictions.
I guess my final thought would be: the "stay-the-course" meme seems to be based on the notion that by staying we're 1) preventing intracene civil war, and 2) that if we just keep killing enough of the right people that the factions will reach accomodation. But doesn't this Basra mess kind of suggest that the probability is at best armed truce and at worst war-to-the-knife over the spoils? Anbar is quiet because frankly there's nothing for the Maliki militias to fight over - who gives a fuck who rules over a patch of desert? But the north and the south have oil and whatever passes for an economy in the place. It seems like this is the opening round of gangfighting over the south. Is this a preview of IA/IP vs. peshmerga when the Kurds go for Kirkuk (I'll put 5:1 on the Kurds, thanks...)?
I reiterate: there will be no "accomodation". There will be off-and-on civil war - just like this - until the eventual Saddam-replacement decides to end the chaos. IF the Iraqis are lucky they'll get Ataturk. If not...well, they'll continue to get what they have now.
two funny blurbs arise:
Does the misister get his talking points style guide from the MNF-I PR dorks?
This reminds of the Kadaffi Gulf Of Sidra Comedy Hour, when he went "You cross this line of death, and we will KEEEEL you!...Ok, now I double Dog dare you to cross this new Line of Death!
Undoubtedly more comedy to come. On the economic front, the Deciderist said yesterday that once Americans spend their Stimulus checks, the economy will be back stronger than ever. I knew there was a reason why right thinking Murricans reelected our nation's first MBA Prez.
This is the first coherent comment I've seen in this discussion. In spite of several people's best efforts, there's just not enough information about why Maliki chose this time and place to launch a major offensive. Everybody here so far has been speaking from their biases, not from valid information.
The WaPo article impressed me because nearly everybody in the article on all sides of the struggle have admitted that they have no clue as to what is really going on. They only have some local information and contradictory rumors. And the local information doesn't add up to a coherent picture of the big scene either.
We need to do two things at this stage:
1) Wait for more information, especially about what happens after Maliki's deadline expires at midnight local time.
2) Be glad we aren't any closer to the struggle than we are. It sounds like a confused mess and an awful lot of people get killed by accident in those circumstances.
3) Tell the Prez to STFU instead of making grand statements about Basra being the "defining moment in the struggle for Iraq."
Bush might want to wait until we find out who wins before predicting the future. He might find his words to be accurate in ways he never imagined.
2) What happened to COIN? Malikis offensive (wich came close after Darth Cheneys visit) is obviously some sort of open declaration of war, designed to take on a armed association with 40-60000 members. Now that is one hell of a biker-war. How does this square with Sadrs truce? What will the longterm effects be, how many IEDs are being made and emplacementplans being dusted off by serious men with mustaches as I write this? Gods.
Get ready for watching Maliki backpedalling, or the US to move in are my guesses. Points to Fasteddiez. for the Libyan comparision.
2) What happened to COIN? Malikis offensive (wich came close after Darth Cheneys visit) is obviously some sort of open declaration of war, designed to take on a armed association with 40-60000 members. Now that is one hell of a biker-war. How does this square with Sadrs truce? What will the longterm effects be, how many IEDs are being made and emplacementplans being dusted off by serious men with mustaches as I write this? Gods.
Get ready for watching Maliki backpedalling, or the US to move in are my guesses. Points to Fasteddiez. for the Libyan comparision.
Sounds like pretty much what's been going on since April, 2004 to me, but, enh, what's a few wogs more or less, eh, Frankie?
"This just in:
"A Reuters witness said Mehdi Army gunmen had seized control of the southern city of Nassiriya. Mehdi Army fighters have also held territory or fought with authorities in Kut, Hilla, Amara, Kerbala, Diwaniya and other towns throughout the Shi'ite south over the past several days.""
Isnt that the whole MSR blocked by hostile elements?
The news reports say air strikes commenced yesterday.
Sadr's defensive stand
I don't know anything about the rest of John Robb's work but this post is really good. IMO, the comments are also worth evaluating on this one. May be worth reading for others here, IMO.
I'm going to go back through more of his work as time permits.
Well?
Sure glad the "Surge" worked. I guess I was wrong when I predicted it was stupid, unnecessary, and doomed to fail because it was too little, too late. Now that violence is "down" the "cut and runners" like me sure have egg on our face, huh? Other than we are in the third straight day of fighting in "peaceful" Basra and the fight is spreading and Sadr still hasn't declared the end to his ceasefire (if he does watch the hell out), well, other than that Mr. Bush was right again. Right as in "right-wing" and wrong on all his facts, theories, predictions,and plans.
And did I mention Gen. "tell Congress what the White House tells me to" Petraeus sucks the big one? Oh, my, sure hope Congress doesn't want to censure me for stating the truth - that he did not speak forthrightly and honestly when he testified, that he knew or should have known that the surge would not "work" except for anything other than a temporary reduction of violence, that it would not even meet any of the agreed-upon "benchmarks" (note how the press in reporting the "success" of the surge rarely mentions that the agreed-upon mission-success criteria makes this a failing effort), and that he should have and could have - and did not - tell the American People what it would take to stabilize Iraq because, as happened before we even fucking invaded, the cost would be considered too high.
So we spend our resources piece-meal, again, because we are caught between two certainties:
1) it is certain that the true cost of stabilizing Iraq, if known to the American People (and it is knowable, entirely predictable) will be unacceptable. The American People if told the cost of war in 2003 would have said "hell no" so instead they were lied to - it will be over in weeks, and it will pay for itself, etc. etc. And the true cost of stabilizing Iraq is still too much, so the lies continue (see Petraeus, et al for the lying SOBs in uniform who have no honor left).
2) The Republicans, so committed to their idiotic positions, their idiotic president, and this idiotic war, will never, ever, ever admit defeat. But they also won't tell the truth about what it will take to win.
So given that we won't do what it takes to win, and we won't get the fuck out, this will drag on and on until a new president takes over. As I predicted as early as late 2003 (again, I prayed to be wrong). Either we will get out and the right wing will blame the Democrats for defeat, or McCain will be elected and we may see success - and enormous, unsustainable, horrifying, bloody, and ultimately self-defeating cost. Plus war with Iran for good measure, the possible downfall of our republic, and a slight but real possibility of thermonuclear war within the next 8 years.
A right-winger commented on hate radio this morning that the "liberals must be rejoicing in the bloodshed because they will claim the surge isn't working," followed by fantastical explanations of how the surge is working despite this spike in violence. The administration pretends it is good news. Joseph Goebbels had nothing on the modern Republican Party.
But it isn't the idiocy of not facing reality on the ground and telling lies that made me so angry - I am used to that BS from the deciderist. It is the notion that those who thought the surge a dumb idea (and it was, very dumb, very stupid) would rejoice at the failure in Iraq. I wanted to b wrong, you fucking assholes. I don't want my Army to fail. I would much rather have to eat crow and admit I was wrong instead of seeing my Army put in an impossible situation, harming our national security, and attending yet more funerals of my brothers in arms. I wanted to be wrong. It isn't about I Told You So. It is about I WARNED YOU THIS WOULD HURT US, YOU DUMBASS. Not "I told you so" but "I warned you this would hurt US."
This makes me so damn angry. I so wanted to be wrong again. I wanted to be so damn wrong. I wanted people to make fun of me for being so wrong.
And I was not.
The Surge worked as predicted - as I predicted. That is, it didn't work.
But it is looking very bad.
They crushed my old squat, Ungdomshuset in Copenhagen. We used to come there and run kitchen.
The point is not that his tactics are bad. The point is we have no strategy, and that it is too little too late.
Doing the correct thing to win four or five years too late without proper resources is not doing the right thing.
WASSSSSSF.
Corner stone, is this multi source, or is this multi-reports. Truth is, we don't know the source of any of these news outlets. News sources are not vetted, there is no historical tracking of reporting nor an assessment of valid placement and access. Who is to say that these news outlets are not all repeating the same story from the same source (a source of unknown reliability).
"That line makes as much sense to me as your very thin assertion that this is all Iranian intrigue using double and triple cover."
That is an exaggeration, I suggested that some Iraqis draw support from Iran much in the same way we supported muj fighting the Soviets. These Iraqis find it convenient to use the Mahdi Militia infrastructure that is already in place to do support their operations, and of course, someone to blame for their attacks. My belief, is that these individuals are the ones who conduct EFP attacks and rocketed the Green Zone last week. These are the ones Maliki is really targeting.
Does it make sense that Maliki has to go into Mahdi controlled muhallas to get to these muj? Of course it does, because that is where they are hiding.
If that seems like an unfair statement towards the press, who report it as they see it, as soon as they see it, I would argue that we have a saying in the military. That saying is, "The first report is ALWAYS wrong." You can no better trust initial reports from news services than you can trust first reports from combat units.
I have seen far too many cases where the news doesn't reflect reality on the ground. We have no way to determine the validity or news reporting, we don't know their sources, we don't know anything.
Cornerstone asks a valid question, if you can't trust multiple news outlets, what else can we depend on? I have no answer except this. Don't trust the first report, wait for the dust to settle.
With all said, I am willing to withdraw my previous statements quickly as the situation develops, it looks like even if the initial attacks on Basra were not intended to target Madhi, it definitely looks like Mahdi is involved now. But I am still curious to hear any reaction from Muqtada.
I hope we still have a Royal Navy; they have a history of getting the Army out of tight spots. And if it gets that bad, well, we have elections looking here. I don't think any of our politicians would dare send troops back.
I also hear claimns of some huge number of mercenaries on Iraq. If things get that pear-shaped, there could be a lot of armed people in the retreat who are not that well disciplined. They're not going to be integrated into the command and control structures.
I really hope I'm wrong about the potential for military disaster, but if the Soputh falls apart, where do you retreat to?
Five Things You Need to Know to Understand the Latest Violence in Iraq
I think this article does a great job of both supporting and destroying my arguments on this thread. It discusses how the mainstream press is wrong, and also does well to prove my previous assertions about Maliki's intent as likely wrong as well. Good stuff.
An excerpt:Hmm, I recall somebody around here saying that... went by initials...
And you're a lot more like a Nazi than "people".
How did Strategic Air and Tac Air do at destroying an actual standing Army (the NVA)....Not too great as I remember; not that you'd have the slightest 10 degrees of separation on the subject. How are you at Math Buck? In order to degrade an entity you must be in the ballpark as to the conocimiento of its' relative size. Without that your expected results are zilch point shit. There are some benefits to be gleaned from effective and discriminating, targeted CAS (usually when saving a US unit's bacon). When you use Air on behalf of our Wogs, you can bet your last Saddam Dinar, that this will be the least popular choice in greater Wogdom.
" it didn't even correlate with the lull chronologically and was certainly a minor causal factor at best."
I think the authors missed a point here (probably not missed it, but just didn't discuss it). Who cares about an actual casual relationship??? This is a war about perception, as most are. What we need is the perception of a victory so that we can leave. Until we perceive victory, we will stick it out so we don't "empower" our enemies by showing weakness.
So everyone stop your whining about how bad the war is going, get on board and declare victory so we can go home.
This is a Nazi. Just so you know.
FastE,
One thing all polls in Iraq show is that the Iraqi army (Our Wogs as you call them) is the most respected institution in the country.
And, Buck, good to see you're still alive and kicking in that 30% that believe "government spokesmen" when they ask, "who are you going to believe, me or your lying eyes?" George Bush and company must get up every morning and say a little prayer that you and those like you survive for another day.
BG, I'm going to do it for you. We win! We win!
Now go home.
Holy Jeebus.
Buck if you've ever said anything more idiotic on this blog I must've skipped it. I pray for you and your offspring's sake that you are just jacking with us.
Fasteddiez - "your expected results are zilch point shit"
This may have just become my new favorite phrase.
As for Iraq, we should simply evacuate as fast we can, and it shouldn't take any longer than it did to invade.
We have Iraqi Sunni kicking hell out of AQI Sunni and now Iraqi Shia engaging Iranian backed Shia. It's clear our BFF's are dominating the field of battle in their home turf.
We've won the day. BG please come home asap and bring all your brethren with you.
Fuck I HATE that - now I've got Coke all up my nose and on the monitor. Buckster, you gotta warn me before you make a funny like that.
Respected? Like up in the north, where the peshmerga won't even let the IA go? Or maybe over in Anbar, where the CLC's will stare 'em down or Diyala where the Snni rebels will shoot at 'em? Sadr City? Kut?
Given how much money we've spent on these jackheads relative to repairing/building civil government, they're about the ONLY institution in the country. But "respect"? Maybe their families respect them...but given their performance overall, I'd call it zilch point shit just as that wordcrafter Fasteddiez would say.
Y'know, the sad thing about not having MSR is that as annoying as the massive waste of bandwidth he'd use to say the same sort of thing as these gomers, at least he SOUNDED so much smarter when he said them.
That concluding statement sums up the past seven years. Yes, it is time for the great propaganda machine to declare victory so we can get on with our lives.
Al
Zilch point shit is an approved 60's USMC idiom. It found a million applicabilities in its' heyday....Natch!
So a question to those who know -- who's wrong, me or the Post?
Isn't that a good thing? Iran and AQ are at war with us.
That about covers it.
Cranky
Of course, I said the same thing in letters to my Senators in 2002 and 2003 but I was just a nobody compared to the Serious People.
1. As Plymouth Rock has noted, the IA doesn't have the logistical muscle to move even a single division, much less the 2-3 divisions that appear to have been moved into the area. That implies that US military officials were at least involved enough in the planning of the offensive to approve transport for the operation.
2. There have been a fairly large number of eyewitness accounts of air support early in the operation and the WaPo article specifically mention seeing a few Strykers heavily engaging the militias.
3. The Bush administration usually stops dead in its tracks when caught by surprise and says a bunch of foolish things before they figure out what they wanted to say. Instead they immediately went into cheerleader mode.
4. The Maliki government is so completely inept that it is highly unlikely they could have developed an operation of this size by themselves. Coincidently Darth Cheney was recently in the area for unspecified reasons. Both of these statements suggest that the Basra operation was actually planned in Washington in an environment that is well shielded from the facts.
5. The IA appears to have been unable to make ANY headway against the militia-held areas. Eyewitness reports from WaPo and others say that the IA was mostly pinned down and taking heavy fire. BG is generally correct when he says that "the first report is always wrong" but there is a great deal of evidence to support the media this time.
6. In spite of Maliki's statements to the effect that there will be "no retreat until total victory is achieved," he pulled his troops back and offered a deadline for the militias to surrender. When none came surrendered before the deadline, he extended it. Now there's two possibilities here, either he's bringing in considerably better (possibly US) troops or he's trying to face up to the fact that the offensive is DOA. Either way, the myth that the IA is an effective organization has been effectively shattered and we're back where we were in 2005.
7. Sadr's organization, perhaps without it's official leader, has demonstrated considerable ability to disrupt or challenge government control across the country in a variety of ways. This implies that the government isn't really as in control as we've heard and that these regional militias are the actual governmental organizations for much of the country.
7a. We've heard and seen a lot about the Mahdi's, what are the capabilities of their chief rivals, SIIC (or whatever they are calling themselves)? Or is are the Mahdi's the only group with these capabilities. This will be a key question in determining the fate of Iraq. If, as I suspect, ALL militias essentially run their part of the country, soft partition is the only optimistic solution left.
8. Fnord asked about the status of our MSR's in southern Iraq and JD attempted to answer. We can't answer the question because there is no information from that part of the world, only lots of rumors. We'll just have to wait until the dust settles.
9. Buck commented that we have a considerable air power advantage. While this is true, it is also useless. The IA is attempting to demonstrate its ability to operate without US assistance. What does the appearance of our aircraft tell everybody about their abilities? Furthermore, everytime we use air or artillery power we act as recruiters for more resistance later. This is the nature of the guerilla war we have agreed to fight.
9a. The only way we can use our air and artillery power effectively is to declare most of Iraq to be a free fire zone and start blasting away full force. Civilian casualties would be in the tens of thousands and we'd lose our last shred of national honor and dignity but at least our military would be used in the intended way and would get the intended results, lots of dead people that don't wear US uniforms.
10. It is now obvious that the Iraqi government and army bear a strong resemblance to their South Vietnamese counterparts. Much like their ARVN counterparts, I do not believe we will EVER see the IA "stand up" in the Bush sense of the phrase. They will never be more than colonial support troops and will never be able to replace our soldiers. Iraq, much like South Vietnam before it, will always need our soldiers to continue to exist. How can we afford this war without end when it is costing us so dearly in so many different ways?
11. Frank Drackman is a droll comic genius.
You can claim that individual reports from the mass media are incorrect or distorted but when the overall picture painted over the last 3 years (5 really), particularly when one reads non-US-based sources, is so different from the pyramidally filtered official story then I think the wise man has to started considering the possibility that the official story line is false. Whether unintentionally or intentionally false is then another question.
Cranky
WRT your points about the air war &the Iraqi army, you are not considering the following.
1. US close air support is nothing like a free fire zone. It is precise and lethal. It is not directed at non-combatants. It may kill some non-combatants but only because the enemy chooses to fight from behind them.
2. The US is not constrained or over-extended with air power. We can provide close air support for the Iraqi Army indefinitely with a much smaller force than is currently in Iraq.
3. The Iraqi army lives in a dangerous neighborhood. Some neighboring countries and individual citizens from neighboring countries are making war on it. If they were to lose or surrender to one of the neighboring countries many officers would be tortured and killed. But,
4. As long as the Iraqi Army has US close air support they will not lose to any of their neighbors.
At a deeper level I think many posters here are missing the strategic opportunity we have by staying in Iraq. One of my favorite aspects of the US victory in the cold war in Europe was the role that rock music played. A cultural product whose theme is freedom acted powerfully against the totalitarian tyrants of communist E Europe. Now there is a heavy metal band in Bagdhad. We need to stay there fifty years with the amps at 11.
I'm guessing that this is a way of reminding us of the "soft power" of cultural and economic aspiration. And it IS powerful - I think I've said elsewhere that if we're going to convince the folks in the ME that they want their own Enlightenment it will help that nobody wants to listen to Kuwaiti rap or wear Yemeni sneakers.
BUT - that said, it helped that our troops in Europe weren't bombing little villages in Bavaria and that the satellite news people were seeing in Poland and Lithuania wasn't filled with images of blonde girls in dirndls ripped to pieces in bloody gutters and mustachioed alpine cowherds shoved into trucks with sandbags over their heads.
The misapplication of hard power trumps soft power every time.
Horseshit. A bomb is a bomb. If you're bombing civilian neighborhoods in a country you occupy you're losing. That's why your police don't bomb the rowhouse where the psycho killers are holed up with the hostages and when they do use excessive force - as in Ruby Ridge and Waco - they become a byword for fucked up government. We're choosing this tactic not because it's a good idea but because to save Iraqi lives we'd have to lose ours and the U.S. public won't stand for that - not because we refuse to die for a cause - but because this "cause" visibly has nothing to do with "freedom" or even U.S. geopolitical objectives but is the end result of having no geostrategic plan and letting ourselves get sucked into a militia squabble.
2. The US is not constrained or over-extended with air power. We can provide close air support for the Iraqi Army indefinitely with a much smaller force than is currently in Iraq.
Which, as several other commentators have pointed out, simply means that the current level of chaos can be maintained indefinately.
3. The Iraqi army lives in a dangerous neighborhood. Some neighboring countries and individual citizens from neighboring countries are making war on it. If they were to lose or surrender to one of the neighboring countries many officers would be tortured and killed. But,
1) No, duh? 2) AFAIK the IA is not fighting any of the surrounding countries. Their individual citizens are just taking part on the fun free-for-all war going on now. 3) Death and torture are all part of losing in a pre- or post-Westphalian world. All of this is true but what the fuck sense does this statement make in the context of the discussion we're having about internal Iraqi conflict?
4. As long as the Iraqi Army has US close air support they will not lose to any of their neighbors.
But they may very well fall apart from internal dissention. That's not the point. The point is that this mess shows that:
1) after five years our Marvins are STILL not really worth a fuck without us, probably because
2) our Iraqi "government" is a fiction and a faction and bears little legitimacy outside their own partisans, the oped pages of the Washington Post, George Bush's and John McCain's minds, but
3) we have so swallowed the Administration's kool-ade that the arguments we're having in the press about our Iraq adventure bear little or no resemblance to what the hell is going on there, even if
4) we really understand what IS going on there, which this clusterfuck brings into question.
WASSF
Next?
Who the bloody hell are you? I have never read anything you've written that wasn't airtight. If you wouldn't mind destroying your life for the public good would you please run for office or at least compile your writings and start sending them off to newspapers all over the country. You must have had some fine moments dealing with highly motivated butterbars on their first assignments.
The only failing you seem to have is in your contnued attempts to discuss these matters logically with Mr Buck. While I mightily enjoy Mr Buck's theory about the role of Rock Music, he seems to be reading from Rummie's old playbook and NOTHING ever penetrates his preconceived notions. On the other hand I do enjoy reading your rebutals.
Buck's most egregious statement to me is that "we are at war with Iran." Hmmm