Mission Creep

David Petraeus, he’s the Gold Standard for western generals including our own Rick Hillier.

The 4-star top honcho of American forces in Iraq, along with ambassador Ryan Crocker, just put on the lamest presentation ever about the Iraq war in their appearance at congressional hearings.

Jon Stewart had the best analysis of Petraeus’ performance on last night’s The Daily Show, calling it a “polished turd.” Lest you think that a bit harsh, Stewart was responding to Petraeus’ godawful, circuitous doublespeak in which he said that American troops can’t be withdrawn until they’ve created “winning conditions” and then responded that he couldn’t describe what winning conditions would be. He, naturally, had no hesitation in describing, in precise detail, what losing would look like should US troops be “prematurely” withdrawn. Winning? Well that’s something else best left to others in, say, ten or fifteen years, maybe more.

Here’s a hint. If a general can’t tell his political bosses what winning his battle is, much less how and when he’s going to do that, get rid of him, he’s a damned loser, a careerist, a useless ticket-puncher. Go to the next guy in line and just keep going if necessary until you find the “Can Do” guy, the one who has some idea of how to win the battle and give you some idea of what it’s going to take to win it and when that’ll be done.

If a commanding general can’t tell you how he defines victory, it’s a safe bet that he doesn’t have a damned clue how to get there. And, if he doesn’t have any idea how to get there, he’s not going to get you there now is he?

What’s particularly disturbing about Petraeus is that he knows full well how to “get there.” It’s plain as day in his latest book, FM 3-24, the US military’s new counterinsurgency field manual. Petraeus knows it, he co-wrote it. If you want an insight into the wisdom of the ages, check it out. It’s available, free, in PDF format on the internet.

It’s too bad none of those concerned congressfolks had the guts to hold up a copy of FM 3-24 and ask the good general just how the war he was waging in Iraq compared to the tactics for success enshrined in his own manual. They probably haven’t even bothered to read it themselves.

The cardinal lesson of Petraeus’ manual is that counter-insurgency warfare is enormously labour intensive. He knows the reason that so little progress has been achieved over the past five years is that there were never enough American troops, only just enough to knock over Saddam’s already devastated forces. That, of course, was the easy part. Only after Saddam was driven into hiding did the hard part begin. Saddam’s soldiers took their weapons and went home. The Americans didn’t have enough troops to secure Iraqi installations so many arsenals sat unguarded for a year or more while Iraqis looted them at their leisure, hauling away truckloads of small arms, rocket propelled grenades, raw explosives – the very stuff that’s been used against US forces ever since.

The grossly negligent and unfathomably incompetent American invasion created an enormous power vacuum into which militias and insurgents poured, heavily laden with looted weaponry. Without sufficient troops to secure Iraq and impose order, sectarian violence broke out leading to ethnic cleansing on a grand scale in Baghdad and other cities.

Petraeus points out in FM 3-24 that in unconventional (guerrilla) warfare, time is not on their side. Time only works for the insurgents. The way he put it was that liberating forces have a brief shelf life before they morph, in the locals’ eyes, from liberator to despised occupier.

It’s no wonder Petraeus can’t define “winning conditions” for the wars he’s babysitting (there are several underway) because he knows that the essential steps needed to create such conditions were ignored back when they might have done some good. I’ll bet he knows that winning in Iraq is out of the realm of possibility without instituting another draft which, in turn, would be political suicide, even for John McCain.

In other words, General David Petraeus can’t define “winning conditions” because he knows that, five lost years later, there aren’t any.

 

Is Failure the New Norm?

It may just be anecdotal but the claims made this week by General Petraeus and Ambassador Crocker about progress in Iraq suggest that we may have entered an era where we’ve set the bar so low as to render failure irrelevant.

Five years to the day after Saddam was deposed America’s top general and its chief diplomat in Iraq assured congress that progress is indeed being made, that Iraq may be about to turn the corner. That’s all nonsense of course, it’s all been said before, but that doesn’t matter. Simply by refusing to admit failure they’ve guaranteed another extension for the occupation of Iraq by American forces.

What would success actually look like in Iraq. That’s hard to pin down but I think it would definitely feature the following:

1. A national constitution that genuinely unites all Iraqis – Arab and Kurd, Sunni and Shiite;
2. An oil law that serves the Iraqi people, not foreign oil companies;
3. Some sort of recognition of Iran as a regional power and engagement of Tehran;
4. The return and resettlement of Iraq’s 4-million displaced citizens;
5. The re-establishment of Iraq’s professional classes – doctors, teachers, engineers;
6. The restoration of Iraq’s core infrastructure, notably water, sewer and electricity utilities.

Five years down the road these things are not too much to ask and yet progress on these essentials has been minimal at best. Until these conditions are met, Iraq cannot and will not break its dependence on the United States and its armed forces. Can’t be done, won’t be done.

The lack of progress on these issues screams failure but rather than acknowledging that and finding ways to do things differently, means to success, the approach is to “stay the course.” That, in turn, enshrines failure as the standard for the occupation which, if it achieves nothing else, is bound to perpetuate failure as the norm for years to come.

This is a never-ending dog & pony show. The essentials to return Iraq to viable statehood – things as mundane as safe water, sanitation and electricity – are almost as distant today as they were when the infrastructure was originally destroyed. Imagine ongoing gasoline shortages in Iraq, a country that is a veritable sea of oil.

For diplomats and generals, Iraq is viewed in the context of the enemy du jour. In this year’s hearings the villain of choice is Iran, by a landslide. In previous years it was Saddam’s Baathists, the deadenders, the Sunni insurgency, al-Qaeda or the Shiite militias. They rotate in and rotate out as necessary to perpetuate the narrative of the need to keep America’s military strength bleeding out into the Iraqi sands for yet another year.

But even that is a failure. Look at the list: Baathists, deadenders, Sunni insurgents, al-Qaeda and the Shiite militias. Name one that’s actually been eliminated, just one. They’ve ebbed and flowed, to be sure, but not one of them has been defeated and removed from the equation. The ironic part is that it is in the context of these enemies that America now judges its progress in Iraq.

 

Iraq’s "Tet" Moment?

The Pentagon and the White House are working so furiously to conceal what actually happened in Basra and Baghdad that it’s entirely conceivable that last week witnessed Iraq’s “Tet” moment, that seminal event that marked the end of Washington’s grand adventure in Mesopotamia.

Last week George w. Bush was positively giddy, calling the Iraqi army’s assault on Basra a “defining moment.” And it seems it was, only just not at all the sort Bush had in mind. News organizations such as Inter Press Service are beginning to winkle out what actually happened:

“Mehdi army militias controlled all Shia and mixed parts of Baghdad in no time,” a Baghdad police colonel, speaking on condition of anonymity, told IPS. “Iraqi army and police forces as well as Badr and Dawa militias suddenly disappeared from the streets, leaving their armoured vehicles for Mehdi militiamen to drive around in joyful convoys that toured many parts of Baghdad before taking them to their stronghold of Sadr City in the east of Baghdad.”

The police colonel was speaking of the recent clashes between members of the Shia Muqtada al-Sadr’s Mehdi Army, the largest militia in the country, and members of the Iraqi government forces, that are widely known to comprise members of a rival Shia militia, the Badr Organisation.

“I wonder what lies General David Petraeus (the U.S. forces commander in Iraq) will fabricate this time,” Malek Shakir, a journalist in Baghdad told IPS. “The 25th March events revealed the true failure of the U.S. occupation project in Iraq. More complications are expected in the coming days.”

“This failure takes Iraq to point zero and even worse,” Brigadier-General Kathum Alwan of the Iraqi army told IPS in Baghdad. “We must admit that the formation of our forces was wrong, as we saw how our officers deserted their posts, leaving their vehicles for militias.”

Alwan added, “Not a single unit of our army and police stood for their duty in Baghdad, leaving us wondering what to do. Most of the officers who left their posts were members of Badr brigades and the Dawa Party, who should have been most faithful to Maliki’s government.”

The Green Zone of Baghdad where the U.S. embassy and the Iraqi government and parliament buildings are located, was hit by missiles. General Petraeus appeared at a press conference to accuse Iran of being behind the shelling of the zone that is supposed to be the safest area in Iraq. At least one U.S. citizen was killed in the attacks, and two others were injured.

“The Green Zone looked deserted as most U.S. and Iraqi personnel were ordered to take shelter deep underground,” an engineer who works for a foreign company in the zone told IPS. “It seemed that this area too was under curfew. No place in Iraq is safe any more.”

Further complicating matters for the occupiers of Iraq, the U.S.-backed Awakening groups, largely comprised of former resistance fighters, are now going on strike to demand overdue payment from the U.S. military.”

Speaking of “Awakening” groups, a term so far used to describe Sunni resistance fighters who have been given arms and money to turn (for the moment) on al-Qaeda forces, American ambassador Ryan Crocker volunteered this insight:

“We strongly encouraged him to use his most substantial weapon, which is money, to announce major jobs programs, Basra cleanup, whatnot,” Mr. Crocker said. “And to do what he decided to do on his own: pay tribal figures to effectively finance an awakening for Basra.”

So, far from promoting peace between the Shia militias, the US endorses setting up an Awakening group in Basra to fight Sadr’s Mahdi Army. Well, if the US wants a civil war among the Shiites, it’s got it. Now it’ll have to live with the result. How’s that “surge” going, anyway?

 

Lyin’ Their Asses Off Again

Here’s the premise we’re being asked to swallow: Knowing that General David Petraeus and Ambassador Ryan Crocker were packing their bags to head to Washington for a congressional grilling, Iraqi prime minister Nouri al-Maliki decided to send 30,000 Iraqi troops to Basra to destroy Moqtada al-Sadr’s militia without telling them a word about it, leaving the Americans totally in the dark until just two days before it began.

BULLSHIT!

You have to be extraordinarily stupid to believe that, even for a minute, and yet now that the biggest Iraqi military action since 2003 has turned into a total, instant shambles, that’s the line that Petraeus and Crocker are trying to feed congress.

Okay, how do I know that’s a lie? Well, that’s easy. It’s a little something called “logistics” and it’s the essential tedium of any military action. You have to assemble a lot of stuff – food, weapons, toilet paper, medical supplies and soldiers and get them all organized in just the right order – and then you have to assemble in marshalling points the vehicles you’ll need to move all those soldiers and all those supplies. 30,000 soldiers is three divisions. It takes a long time to assemble that sort of force and there’s no way in hell the Americans wouldn’t have been aware of it from the outset. “Gee Sayeed, you’ve got 5,000 trucks there and all those guys. Going to the beach?”

The United States has about 160,000 soldiers in Iraq. Does anybody not in a coma believe that Maliki could pull this off under their noses? Maliki is a serial incompetent and yet he’s going to blindside the Americans with an adventure of this magnitude. Sure.

Former Nixon speechwriter and NYT columnist William Safire was on the Daily Show last night flogging the latest edition of his political dictionary. He mentioned a line Kennedy used after the Bay of Pigs invasion fiasco: “Victory has a thousand fathers, Defeat is an orphan.” Was that ever timely!

There’s no way top American officials, diplomatic and military, didn’t know about this. There’s no way they weren’t involved in the planning for this. There’s no way they weren’t instrumental in the execution of this fiasco and there’s no way the failure of this stunt doesn’t lie every bit as much at their feet as at Maliki’s.

Of course the stakes are insanely high on this one. If Petraeus is tarred with the failure that could further undermine confidence in the “surge.” It will show that he’s accomplished very little and, now, has perhaps even made things irreparably worse. And, he’ll have done it just eight months in advance of a presidential election in which the Iraq issue is again moving its way toward the top of the pile.

I don’t think these lies will hold up. They’re too transparent and facts are already coming out that dispel them. I think the best they can hope for is to ride out the controversy and pray it doesn’t get traction with the American voters. It’s a big risk but what other choice do they have?

 

The Kiss of Death

The US commander in Iraq, counter-insurgency wunderkind General David Petraeus has told BBC that fighting the Iraqi insurgency is a long-term challenge that could take decades.

If anyone should know, it’s Petraeus whose extensive study of insurgency and guerrilla warfare was incorporated in the US Army’s new counter-insurgency field manual, FM 3-24.

The general’s comments, while probably accurate, raise some tough questions. For example, just what is going to be left of Iraq after an insurgency/civil war of decades? What does this forecast mean to the American people and the 2008 elections?

It’s going to be tough, if not impossible, to sell the idea of a decades-long war in Iraq to Americans in 2007 after they’ve put up with four years of setbacks. They have simply lost their appetite for this wholly unnecessary adventure and I’m sure Petraeus knows that as well as anyone.