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March 30, 2006

Iraqi Perspectives Project - Part IV

In this part we learn about Saddam's inner circle, and how his senior advisors "exhibited pathological behaviors". We also see how Saddam's obsession with internal revolt handicapped his army's ability to fight external enemies.

The Iraqi Perspectives project is "an unclassified historical report in book form on the Iraqi view of coalition military operations conducted in Iraq." Published in book form by the U.S. Joint Forces Command’s Joint Center for Operational Analysis, the project examines "the perspectives of the Iraqi civilian and military leadership involved in major combat operations gathered through interviews conducted during the fall and winter of 2003/2004, and an extensive review of Iraqi historical documents done in the months since then."

You can download the report here. It is 230 pages and about 7.5Mb.

This series will summarize the report chapter by chapter. I will provide commentary at the end of each part.

Previous Posts
Iraqi Perspectives Project summary
Iraqi Perspectives Project - Part II Introduction and Chapter I: The Nature of the Regime
Iraqi Perspectives Project - Part III - Chapter II: Skewed Strategy

CHAPTER III MILITARY EFFECTIVENESS

• Saddam was hardly the only thing wrong with Iraq; his senior officers exhibited pathological behaviors that are “a world apart from a Western conception of military professionalism”. Far from seeing themselves as impartial military advisors, their role was to carry out Saddam’s wishes “to the letter, no matter how infeasible or irrelevant to the military problem”.

• “Simply put, the Iraqi military’s main mission was to ensure the internal security of the Ba’ath dictatorship. It’s second was to fight wars.”

• American assessment of Iraqi military abilities before the war was fairly accurate.

• The Iraqis did things during the war that made no sense to American commanders. Within the Iraqi world view, however, they made perfect sense, for their primary objective was to do whatever Saddam wanted, no matter how objectively absurd it might be.

• For example, Saddam decided that rather than use his air force against the coalition, he would try and hide it as best he could. This took an important weapon away from his commanders, but Saddam believed that we would not send our ground forces very far into Iraq.

• Because the sanctions so hurt the Iraqi army, Saddam formed an organization called the Military Industrial Commission. It’s job was to develop “wonder weapons” that would save Iraq. Saddam put great faith in the eventual development of these weapons. Because the Commission’s leaders were so fearful of Saddam, they made promises that they knew they could not deliver.

• Senior officials lied to Saddam extensively and continually about the true state of Iraqi defenses. As a result, he never knew the true state of his military.

• Any report to Saddam had to be embellished with flowery rhetoric about what a great leader he was. This applied even to the most simple reports.

• After the war, some of the more capable military commanders we interviewed reported four additional factors that negatively affected military readiness:

o “The most irrelevant military guidance passed from the political leadership to the lowest level of military operations.”

o “The creation and rise of private armies.”

o “The tendency for relatives and sycophants to rise to the top national security positions.”

o “The combined effects of the onerous security apparatus and the resulting limitations on authority.”

• Conclusion: “Many senior Iraqi military officers blamed this “coup-proofing” of the regime for most of what befell the Iraqi Army during Operation Iraqi Freedom.”

My Take

The report goes into much greater detail on the "four additional factors that negatively affected military readiness" cited above, but I believe that you can get the gist of it from this summary.

It is clear that the Iraqi regime was much more fragile than we had believed it was. When our analysists looked at the Iraqi Army, they looked at it just as our guys looked at the Wehrmacht before D-Day. We examined their weaponry, expertise in handling it, the leadership capabilities of their junior as well as senior officers, their logistical trail, their communications, in short, everyting that we considered important.

What we failed to realize is that although Iraq was ruled by a Ba'athist regime ever bit as brutal as the Nazis, Saddam had completely co-opted the Iraqi Army in a way that Hitler never had with the Wehrmacht. The German Army managted to remain outside the Nazi structure, it kept and promoted it's own officers, and kept it's own tradition of excellence.

Not Just Our Leaders

But it wasn't just American military leaders who missed it; the entire press corps did as well.

Just as with the Gulf War, in the run-up to OIF we heard predictions of tens of thousands of American casualties, of a "Battle of Baghdad" that was sure to last for months, the "pause" during our invasion that was a sure sign of doom, millions of Iraqi casualties, a gigantic humanitarian crisis, on and on. Gateway Pundit has a collection of these and other predictions that turned out incorrect.

Natan Sharansky would smile if he read this. One of the points he made in his book The Case for Democracy was that dictatorships are much more fragile than they appear. While the aftermath was certainly more messy and difficult than we predicted, taking down the regime was much easier.

There are lessons here for everyone.

Posted by Tom at 9:31 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

March 29, 2006

Iraqi Perspectives Project - Part III

In this part we learn how Saddam Hussein wrecked the ability of the Iraqi Army to put up an effective defense of their country.

The Iraqi Perspectives project is "an unclassified historical report in book form on the Iraqi view of coalition military operations conducted in Iraq." Published in book form by the U.S. Joint Forces Command’s Joint Center for Operational Analysis, the project examines "the perspectives of the Iraqi civilian and military leadership involved in major combat operations gathered through interviews conducted during the fall and winter of 2003/2004, and an extensive review of Iraqi historical documents done in the months since then."

You can download the report here. It is 230 pages and about 7.5Mb.

This series will summarize the report chapter by chapter. I will provide commentary at the end of each part.

Previous Posts
Iraqi Perspectives Project summary
Iraqi Perspectives Project - Part II - Introduction and Chapter I, The Nature of the Regime

CHAPTER II SKEWED STRATEGY

• Up until the actual invasion occurred, Saddam believed it would not happen. To Saddam, the most important military event that occurred when he was ruler was not the Gulf War, but his war with Iran. He lost hundreds of thousands in that war, and after between it and the revolt by the Shi’a in southern Irar after the Gulf war, he was deeply suspicious and fearful of Iran. To him, then, Iran was the primary enemy.

• “After the 1991 Shi’a and Kurd uprisings Saddam gave his armed forces three priorities: first, secure the regime; second, prepare to handle regional threats; and third, defend against another attack by and American-led Coalition. Thereafter, only the air defense forces received significant resources in order to address the external threat.

• “Saddam always viewed Iran as the primary external threat, followed by Israel and then Turkey.”

• By 2002 Saddam knew we were trying to contact his generals to secure their cooperation in case we invaded. Because of this, he again turned up his internal repression, which had the effect of reducing the effectiveness of his military.

• Saddam set up an intricate and complicated set of organizations which spent their time spying on each other. Some even developed paramilitary capabilities. Saddam’s primary objective was to prevent a coup, and everything in this vast bureaucracy was devoted to this goal. His security restrictions severely degraded the military’s ability to defend the country from external threats. For example, because Saddam believed that officers might plot against him, units were forbidden to communicate directly with each other. In another example is that only a few units were allowed to have maps of Baghdad.

• The primary reason why Saddam thought that the United States would not attack with ground forces was his faith that Russia and France would intervene on his behalf. Their economic interests in his country, he believed, was so great that they would use their vetoes in the Security Council to prevent US action.

• Saddam knew how much the US relied on, indeed believe in, the power and effectiveness of air power. He also knew how much we hated American casualties. He therefore thought that we would hit him with air strikes on 2003 but there would be no ground invasion.

• Worst case, Saddam thought we might occupy southern Iraq. He held onto this view well into OIF (Operation Iraqi Freedom).

My Take

A western reader comes away with an overwhelming sense of waste and inefficiency after reviewing this chapter. We often or usually regard our own governments as inept in many respects, but they are models of perfection compared to that of Ba'athist Iraq. We didn't so much defeat the Iraqi military as did Saddam.

To a large extent I can understand Saddam's belief that we would not invade. After all, we "ran way" after taking what were to him insignificant casualties in Vietnam, Beirut, and Somalia. We could have easily gone all the way to Baghdad at the end of the Gulf War but did not.

But while this may have made sense in the 1990s, it no longer held true after September 11. As was made clear in Chapter I (Part II of this series), Saddam never understood the impact that day had on Americans.

Further, once resolution 1441 passed the Security Council in November of 2002, only someone completely deluded could not see that the Americans were serious this time. Yet Saddam would still not come clean with his WMD programs. It is clear now that all he had to do was open up completely, and all inspectors would find (at least in late 2002/early 2003) was ready-to-go production facilities; bad, but not a caus belli.

If World War II was, as Churchill said, the most preventable war in history, then the Operation Iraqi Freedom was the most telegraphed. Yet Saddam refused to believe the evidence mounting before his eyes. And now he is on trial for his life, which is just where he belongs.

Posted by Tom at 8:13 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

March 28, 2006

Iraqi Perspectives Project - Part II

In this part we begin to gain an understanding of the nature of the Iraqi regime, and how Saddam and his closest advisors lived in a world completely different from any a Westerner might imagine.

A DOD press release describes the Iraqi Perspectives Project as an

...unclassified historical report in book form on the Iraqi view of coalition military operations conducted in Iraq. Conducted by U.S. Joint Forces Command’s Joint Center for Operational Analysis, the Iraqi Perspective Project (IPP) is a research effort focused on coalition military operations in Iraq from March to May 2003. This project focused on the perspectives of the Iraqi civilian and military leadership involved in major combat operations gathered through interviews conducted during the fall and winter of 2003/2004, and an extensive review of Iraqi historical documents done in the months since then.

You can download the report here. It is 230 pages and about 7.5Mb.

Today we will cover the Introduction and Chapter 1: The Nature of the Regime. First I will summarize the report, then provide my analysis.

INTRODUCTION

- Saddam had a history of 'shooting the messenger"

- Saddam did not trust anyone but his sons and a few others, so the army did not receive adequate training. Saddam was afraid that it would turn on him. For example, he restricted units and officers from contacing each other, going as far as to prevent social contacts.

- The American experience in Vietnam influenced Saddam greatly. We had run away, he thought. Therefore, wouldn't we do the same with him? To him we “only” suffered a “mere” 58,000 dead in Vietnam. To Saddam this was a trifling amount. The lesson for him was that we would not risk taking many casualties.

- Saddam was amazed the we had stopped short during Desert Storm. After the Gulf War, he simply couldn’t imagine that we would actually go through with a ground invasion and go all the way to Baghdad.

- Saddam thought that just like with Desert Storm, in 2003 we would start with a sustained air campaign.

- Saddam turned General Patton's aphorism that “no poor dumb son of a bitch ever won a war by dying for his country, he won it by making the other poor dumb son of a bitch die for his” on its head. He perversely saw victory through how may Iraqis could die for him. He had an almost World War I view of war, that his mounting casualties meant that he was winning.

- During OIF (Operation Iraqi Freedom, the 2003 invasion) everyone in his government was afraid to tell Saddam bad news. Further, no one wanted to say that the military plans Saddam came up with were rubbish.

- During OIF Saddam was told his Saddam Fedayeen were being successful in attacking American supply convoys when in fact they were being slaughtered.

- “…Saddam and his advisors lived in a world determined by personal ideology and the narrow perspectives of people who grew up in small Iraqi villages. It is this insular mindset, and its subsequent manifestations that this book describes.”

I THE NATURE OF THE REGIME

- In the 1990s Saddam worried a lot about “international Zionism” and saw their troubles at the UN as being caused by "the Zionists". UN General Secretary Butros-Butros Ghali had a Jewish mother, and had married a Jew. Saddam believed that Zionists had driven the Mongols from Europe in the 13th century, and and had deliberatly pushed them toward Baghdad. The Mongols then sacked the city, leaving a mountain of skulls, which he blamed on the aforementioned Jews. As a result of this anti-Semetic paranoia, he and his security services were always on the lookout for internal "Zionist" plots.

- Saddam saw himself as a modern Nebuchadnezzar and Saladin, two heroes of ancient Iraq

- By 2003 Saddam was completely ignorant of the true state of the Iraqi army. Tariz Aziz said that Saddam “lost touch with reality during the 1990s”. He was in denial about his loss during the Gulf War, for example.

- Saddam made decisions himself, for example decided to invade Iran while on vacation and without consulting any advisors. Sometimes he did consult close relatives and advisors but did so erratically. He had “mystical” confidence in his own abilities.

- In the 1990s during meetings Saddam reminded advisors who disagreed with him about his past “right” decisions. He was infallible, he thought.

- Saddam did not recognize that for Americans, Sept 11 changed everything.

My Take

Nothing terribly earth-shattering so far. The Washington Times story I summarized in my introductory piece had more from later parts of the report, ones I will summarize this week.

However, one cannot help but notice similarites between Saddam Hussein and Adolf Hitler. Hitler too had delusions of granduer, believing himself to be the reincarnation of Frederick Barbarossa or Frederick II ("Frederick the Great"). Hitler's early triumphs such as the remilitarization of the Rhineland, Munich, the blitzkrieg invasion of Poland made him feel invinceable, with disasterous results later in the war. Hitler trusted no one but himself, and in the end lost touch with reality.

One shouldn't take these parallels too far, of course. But they are sometimes helpful in learning how to deal with an enemy.

Just as Osama bin Laden saw our withdrawals from Lebanon after the Marine barracks was bombed, and from Somalia after the "Black Hawk Down" episode as signs of weakness, so did Saddam see our loss in Vietnam in the same light. But while in 1991 we saw the Gulf War as a victory for us, Saddam came to see it as proof that we could always be counted on to stop short of driving all the way to Baghdad.

So we do now see why Saddam felt it safe to bluff, and lead us to believe that he had stockpiles of WMD.

Saddam wanted everyone to believe that despite the inspections and sanctions, he had outwitted the Americans, British, and "Zionists" and had kept a portion of his WMD stockpile. This way he could still look tough; always important for a dictator, whoee internal enemies are not always imaginary.

Posted by Tom at 8:45 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

WMD and the Foreign Minister

We're all to believe that Bush Lied! us into Iraq, but as more and more details emerge we learn just how stupid that claim is.

Last Thursday we learned from a Washington Post story that Saddam's last foreign minister, one Naji Sabri, was a spy for French Intelligence, who in turn passed his information to us. Sabri was paid some $100,000 for his services, and according to the story, was motivated entirely by money.

He supplied us information about Iraq's "chemical, biological and nuclear weapons programs more than six months before the war began in March 2003" according to the Post story.

Publicly Sabri was insisting that Iraq had no prohibited weapons of mass destruction. Privately, the sources said, he provided information that the Iraqi dictator had ambitions for a nuclear program but that it was not active, and that no biological weapons were being produced or stockpiled, although research was underway.

When it came to chemical weapons, Sabri told his handler that some existed but they were not under military control, a former intelligence official familiar with the situation said. Another former official added: "He said he had been told Hussein had them dispersed among some of the loyal tribes."

Wow

The White House was far more interested in trying to get Sabri to defect than in the information he was providing on Iraq's weapons programs, in part because the intelligence community did not trust him, another former intelligence official said.

What of it?

If I was an intelligence officer in the CIA, and had received information from other sources that Saddam did in fact have at least some stockpiles of WMD, this would seem to secure the case for me. Reread that second paragraph quoted above (the 6th in the story): What is says is that Sabri believed that at least some chemical weapons existed but that they had been hidden by loyal tribes.

No it is not the "smoking gun". No Sabri didn't confirm that Saddam had "huge stockpiles" or even the amounts that we believed he did have. But what he did say was that he thought that Saddam had at least some chemical weapons, and wanted nuclear or biological weapons.

Only a completely irresponsible person would dismiss this and say "oh that doesn't mean anything". No, a reasonable person, adding this to all of the other evidence, would conclude that Saddam was hiding stockpiles of chemical and maybe biological weapons.

Posted by Tom at 8:25 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

March 26, 2006

Reprisal, not Civil War

StrategyPage has it about right

Deaths from revenge killings now exceed those from terrorist or anti-government activity. Al Qaeda is beaten, and running for cover. The Sunni Arab groups that financed thousands of attacks against the government and coalition groups, are now battling each other, al Qaeda, and Shia death squads. It's not civil war, for there are no battles or grand strategies at play. It's not ethnic cleansing, yet, although many Sunni Arabs are, and have, fled the country. What's happening here is payback. Outsiders tend to forget that, for over three decades, a brutal Sunni Arab dictatorship killed hundreds of thousands of Kurds and Shia Arabs. The surviving victims, and the families of those who did not survive, want revenge. They want payback. And even those Kurds Shia Arabs who don't personally want revenge, are inclined to tolerate some payback. Since the Sunni Arabs comprise only about 20 percent of the population, and no longer control the police or military, they are in a vulnerable position.

After Saddam's government was ousted three years ago, the Sunni Arabs still had lots of cash, weapons, and terrorist skills. Running a police state is basically all about terrorizing people into accepting your rule. For the last three years, the Sunni Arabs thought they could terrorize their way back into power. Didn't work. Now the Kurds and Shia Arabs are not only too strong to defeat, but are coming into Sunni Arab neighborhoods and killing. Sometimes the victims are men who actually took part in Saddam era atrocities. But often the victims are just some Sunni Arabs who were in the wrong place, at the wrong time.

Monday Update

So who cares whether we call it a civil war or not? Some will say it doesn't matter what you call it, what's happening is what's happening.

I think differently. Words have meaning beyond saying them. They determine how we look at things, and influence public opinion. There are two meanings to every word; the connotative and the denotative. The first is the "dictionary meaning", the second the thoughts, images, and feelings that the term or word conjures up.

So when some people say Iraq is in a "civil war", most people who hear that don't run to the dictionary, or a book on military terms. They relate the term civil war to other civil wars they know about; the American Civil war, the Spanish Civil war, etc. And what they think of is two armies fighting each other in a somewhat conventional fashion.

This is why I agree with StrategyPage that Iraq is not in a civil war, and why we need to be careful in how we descrive things.

Other Opinions

I don't have time to sample a whole lot of what's out there, but here are the opinions of a few people that I respect, and a few somewhat disagree with me.

Charles Krauthammer wrote in Friday's Washington Post that Iraq was indeed in a state of civil war

This whole debate about civil war is surreal. What is the insurgency if not a war supported by one (minority) part of Iraqi society fighting to prevent the birth of the new Iraqi state supported by another (majority) part of Iraqi society?

By definition that is civil war, and there's nothing new about it. As I noted here in November 2004: "People keep warning about the danger of civil war. This is absurd. There already is a civil war. It is raging before our eyes. Problem is, only one side" -- the Sunni insurgency -- "is fighting it."
...

But let's put this in perspective. First, this kind of private revenge attack has been going on at a low level since the beginning of the insurgency. Second, it does have the effect of concentrating Sunni minds on the price of their continuing support for the random, large-scale and heretofore unanswered slaughter of Shiites that they either actively or passively support.

And, third, if the private militias are the problem, it is a focused and relatively narrow problem. Creating discipline and central control over the security services is a more manageable issue than all-out Hobbesian conflict.

Much as I respect Krauthammer, I think that the second two paragraphs I quoted contradict the first two. But what's interesting is that he doesn't really disagree with the StrategyPage analysis, he just doesn't see a problem with calling it a civil war.

Michael Yon also doesn't have a problem in calling it a civil war

Throughout 2005, I said in writing, on the radio and television that Iraq is in a state of Civil War. It had been in that state for decades. I’d point to all the kindling heaped around the country and point to the smoke on the horizon, but most people politely dismissed the warnings. Now the fire is bigger. Listen. Listen! Iraq is in a state of Civil War. Much bigger than it was a year ago, and next year it will be bigger still, if we do not recognize that there is a FIRE!

There is no reason why Iraq and its proud people cannot make it. There is nothing written in any holy scripture – so far as I know – that says Iraq cannot make it. Iraq can, but will it? Not if we don’t stop quibbling over definitions and just come to grips that the fire is growing. This is not a fire we can afford to leave to natural forces. Not in that tinderbox we call the Middle East.

Bill Roggio thinks that Iraq is not in a civil war yet, but that it remains a very real possibility

We argue the definition of civil war is far too broad, as armed conflict within a state is not the sole indicator of civil war. Key indicators of a civil war would include the breakdown of the political process and an unwillingness of the opposing parties to negotiate, the factionalization of the military and security institutions, and open warfare between the various parties. It is for these reasons we provided the indicators of a civil war in Iraq after the destruction of the dome of the Golden Mosque in Samarra.

So far, we have seen little indications of these signs coming to pass.
...

The threat of a civil war in Iraq is quite real, particularly if the political process breaks down. Iraq may be a step or two from a civil war, but it is not there yet

Richard Hernandez ("Wretchard") takes a middle ground at The Belmont Club

So what's the truth? The principle in determining truth should be to apply the factual indicator test. A civil war is a visible event whose indicators includes the insubordination of armed units, mass refugee flows, the rise of rival governments, etc. The test is whether those events are being observed. What famous individuals say about a situation is a shortcut for encapsulating a factual assessment; it describes reality as public figures see it but is not the reality itself. That remains a mystery until developments unfold. ...

Instead of insurgency the talking points have changed to how Sunnis might soon become victims of an ethnically hostile Iraqi army in a Civil War. Going from a boast of conquest to a portrayal of victim is usually an indicator of something. In my view, the shift of meme from the "insurgency" to a "civil war" is a backhanded way of admitting the military defeat of the insurgency without abandoning the characterization of Iraq is an American fiasco. It was Zarqawi and his cohorts themselves who changed the terms of reference from fighting US forces to sparking a 'civil war'. With any luck, they'll lose that campaign too.

Me - Monday Evening

As I said earlier, it matters what term we apply to the current situation in Iraq. Public support is percarious as it is, it the situation goes south it will deteriorate further. This week we had the administration hinting that troops would be brought home this year. One hopes that when they are brought home it is not because of a political decision, but that the generals on the scene truely believe it is safe to do so.

Most Americans, I think, still support our presence in Iraq because they believe that things are getting better, slowly but surely. If they believe that there is a civil war, therefore, even this support would quickly erode.

None of this is to say that we should hide or shade the truth. Not at all. My point, rather, is that we ought to be very careful as to the words and terms we use because it does matter.

And as such the situation in Iraq does not constitute what most people think of as a civil war. There are no rival governments sending armies in the field to do battle. Rival militias, like the Badr and Sadr brigades, are private armies, not those of warring governments. As StrategyPage observes, mose of the killings are reprisals by armed factions.

I won't go through what needs to be done in Iraq, because we all know that the two biggest challenges are that a government needs to be formed asap and we need to continue building and supporting the new Iraqi army. The faster and better we can achieve those goals, the better chance we have of bringing peace to that troubled country.

Posted by Tom at 10:07 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack

March 25, 2006

Iraqi Perspective Project

Within a story in today's Washington Times on Russian spies in US Central Command was a mention of something called the "Iraqi Perspective Project: A View of Operation Iraqi Freedom From Saddam's Senior Leadership,"

I'm not going to write about the Russian spies, because that's been done well elsewhere. Check out this post at Flopping Aces, for example.

But check out what the Times article says about the report

The regime planned to restart production of weapons of mass destruction. It continued to hide scientists from U.N. inspectors right up to the time U.N. inspectors left and the war began.

A seized Dec. 15, 2002, memo, written by an Iraqi intelligence agent posing as a U.N. escort, states, "Inside Bader WMD inspection site, there are Russian and Turkish scientists. When we visited the site, they were forced to hide from inspectors' eyes."

And, Saddam continued to tell his commanders he still had such weapons. "For him, there were real dividends to be gained by letting his enemies believe he possessed WMD, whether it was true or not," the report said.

• The quickly assembled air strike on one of Saddam's residences, Dora Farms, in pre-dawn March 19, 2003, never had a chance of succeeding. Saddam had not stayed there since 1995.

• There was no evidence that Saddam or his top aides planned the insurgency, now in its fourth year; in fact, Saddam was sure the Americans would never advance on Baghdad.

"There were no national plans to transition to a guerrilla war in the event of military defeat," the report states.

This fact helps explain why commanders did not predict, nor plan for, the robust insurgency and al Qaeda terrorists now spreading violence.

Saddam's misguided belief that he would stay in power in 2003 was fed by the support he got from France and Russia, his top aide, Tariq Aziz, told U.S. investigators.

Very interesting, no?

By 2002 the sanctions regime was falling apart. As soon as it was gone, Saddam would restart his WMD programs. He'd already started two wars, there was no reason to believe he would not start a third.

The report also puts an end to the notion that we should have predicted the insurgency. Yes we mishandles it for the first year and a half, but no it was not predictable.

French perfidity is nothing new or unexpected. But I have been very disappointed by Putin. When Bush first reached out to him early in his presidency I had hoped that we might reach some understanding, some accord, or at least not work against each other. It's becoming more and more clear that Putin is reverting to his KGB Cold War Days.

The Report

I did some searching and you can download the report here (link courtesy of Welcome to Jermany)

It is of course a pdf file, and they authors have disallowed copy and paste of text. However, this is from the DOD press release on the report

U.S. Joint Forces Command will release on Friday, March 24 an unclassified historical report in book form on the Iraqi view of coalition military operations conducted in Iraq. Conducted by U.S. Joint Forces Command’s Joint Center for Operational Analysis, the Iraqi Perspective Project (IPP) is a research effort focused on coalition military operations in Iraq from March to May 2003. This project focused on the perspectives of the Iraqi civilian and military leadership involved in major combat operations gathered through interviews conducted during the fall and winter of 2003/2004, and an extensive review of Iraqi historical documents done in the months since then.

The project is the first such effort by the U.S. government to understand the views of an enemy military force since World War II, when the U.S. government conducted a comprehensive review of recovered German and Japanese documents, along with interviews of key military and civilian leadership.

The overall objective of this project was to learn lessons from Operation Iraqi Freedom, and use those lessons for ongoing transformation activities.

The report is 230 pages long. From reading the forwrd, the report is based on a two-year study in which they interviewed political and military officials of the Saddam Hussein regime and went through thousands of documents. The objective was simply to find out why the Iraqis made the decisions they did. The results were summarized in the Times article above. I do not have time to go through it tonight but hope this week to read through parts of it.

Posted by Tom at 9:13 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Useful Idiots

I wasn't going to write about this but I just can't take it anymore. Normally I try to provide what I hope are unique peerspectives on issues, and don't repeat the story-of-the-day that everyone else is talking about.

But this issue with the rescue of the Christian Peacemaker Teams hostages in Iraq has set me off.

Just to lay my cards on the table, I am a Christian, I go to church every Sunday and participate occasionally in mission programs. Currently I attend a non-denominational somewhat evangelical church. I used to go to a Presbyterian church, but changed when I moved to a different town. Over the years my reading had led me to conclude that the national leadership of the Presbyterian Church USA was hopelessly left-wing and so it seemed as good a time as any to sever that relationship.

That said, I do not believe nor would never insinuate that in order to be a Christian you have to be conservative. Far from it. One can certainly be liberal or even left-wing and still be a good Christian.

Nor do I question any one's personal relationship with God.

But what I will do is question people's public actions. And the actions of the Christian Peacemaker Teams(CPT) has been nothing short of reprehensible.

The Story

Some four months ago three members of a group called Christian Peacemaker Teams were kidnapped in Iraq. The kidnapped men were Norman Kember, Jim Loney, and Harmeet Sooden. It is not entirely clear as to who the kidnappers are, but according to the BBC Mr Loney "described the kidnappers as a criminal gang, apparently motivated by money. The same story, however, tells of a split in the gang, with some motivated more by ideology.

In a daring raid this past Thursday, British, Canadian, and US troops rescued the three hostages. The raid was led by a British SAS unit, which is their equivalent of our Navy SEALs.

These same kidnappers had just two weeks ago murdered fellow CPT member Tom Fox. Mr Fox had been beaten before being murdered.

Ingrates

So you think they'd be grateful to their rescuers, and help in locating other hostages so that they might be rescued too, right?

Think again

The London Telegraph has the story

The three peace activists freed by an SAS-led coalition force after being held hostage in Iraq for four months refused to co-operate fully with an intelligence unit sent to debrief them, a security source claimed yesterday.

The claim has infuriated those searching for other hostages.

Neither the men nor the Canadian group that sent them to Iraq have thanked the people who saved them in any of their public statements.

But wait, it get's worse. Yesterday the CPT issued a statement which reads in part

Harmeet, Jim and Norman and Tom were in Iraq to learn of the struggles facing the people in that country. They went, motivated by a passion for justice and peace to live out a nonviolent alternative in a nation wracked by armed conflict. They knew that their only protection was in the power of the love of God and of their Iraqi and international co-workers. We believe that the illegal occupation of Iraq by Multinational Forces is the root cause of the insecurity which led to this kidnapping and so much pain and suffering in Iraq. The occupation must end.

The initial statement contained not a single word of thanks to their rescuers. This was noted by many people, who chastised them for it. Later that same day (Thursday March 23) they added this addendum

We have been so overwhelmed and overjoyed to have Jim, Harmeet and Norman freed, that we have not adequately thanked the people involved with freeing them, nor remembered those still in captivity. So we offer these paragraphs as the first of several addenda:

We are grateful to the soldiers who risked their lives to free Jim, Norman and Harmeet. As peacemakers who hold firm to our commitment to nonviolence, we are also deeply grateful that they fired no shots to free our colleagues. We are thankful to all the people who gave of themselves sacrificially to free Jim, Norman, Harmeet and Tom over the last four months, and those supporters who prayed and wept for our brothers in captivity, for their loved ones and for us, their co-workers.

We will continue to lift Jill Carroll up in our prayers for her safe return. In addition, we will continue to advocate for the human rights of Iraqi detainees and assert their right to due process in a just legal system.

So they just forgot, huh? If you believe that I've got a bridge for sale.

Contradictions

Richard Hernandez ("Wretchard") of The Belmont Club pointed to this ABC News story

Peggy Gish, a member of the Chicago-based group for which the former hostages worked in Baghdad, said the men were bound and their captors left the building "right before the intervention." ...

Gish said the captives were not always bound during their captivity and were allowed to exercise regularly. The kidnappers provided medication for Kember, who had an undisclosed health problem. She said the three appeared physically fit despite their long captivity. "We do not know of any specific maladies, any particular illnesses, as a result," she said. "Even Norman (Kember) seemed fairly strong for what he had gone through."

Gish said the captives never learned why they were kidnapped or who their captors were. "Our team has never received any direct communication with them," she said of the captors, adding that no ransom was demanded or paid.

Gish also said she did not know why Fox was killed. "He was the only American," Gish said. "I don't know if that's the reason."

He then asks some relevant questions

Why did James Loney characterize his captors as "criminals" or Norman Kemper call them "criminals rather than insurgents" whose "motive was believed to be money" if "the captives never learned why they were kidnapped or who their captors were"? Although the captives were "not always bound during their captivity and were allowed to exercise regularly" they never learned a thing about why Tom Fox was killed. Did they bother to ask? Why would Fox be singled out as "the only American" if the captors were criminals interested only in money? Or are they now not sure?

Who Are the Christian Peacemaker Teams?

From the CPT website, their mission statement

Christian Peacemaker Teams (CPT) offers an organized, nonviolent alternative to war and other forms of lethal inter-group conflict. CPT provides organizational support to persons committed to faith-based nonviolent alternatives in situations where lethal conflict is an immediate reality or is supported by public policy. CPT seeks to enlist the response of the whole church in conscientious objection to war, and in the development of nonviolent institutions, skills and training for intervention in conflict situations. CPT projects connect intimately with the spiritual lives of constituent congregations. Gifts of prayer, money and time from these churches undergird CPT’s peacemaking ministries

Sounds innocuous enough. Lefty and naive, but noting special.

But then there's a photo of some of their protesters confronting some Israeli soldiers with the caption

CPTers "get in the way" of Israeli soldiers preparing to open fire on peaceful Palestinian protesters.

And then, regarding "Palestine"

A continuing presence in the Hebron District (West Bank) since June 1995. Team members stand with Palestinians and Israeli peace groups engaged in nonviolent opposition to Israeli military occupation, collective punishment, settler harassment, home demolitions and land confiscation.

Regarding Iraq

A Baghdad-based presence since October 2002. Team members accompanied the Iraqi people through the U.S.-led 2003 war and continue during the post-war occupation to expose abusive acts by U.S. Armed Forces and support Iraqis committed to nonviolent resistance.

And also

The primary focus of the team for eighteen months following the invasion was documenting and focusing attention on the issue of detainee abuses and basic legal and human rights being denied them. Issues related to detainees remain but the current focus of the team has expanded to include efforts to end occupation and militarization of the country and to foster nonviolent and just alternatives for a free and independent Iraq.

Not one word about terrorism that I could find. Anywhere.

Just from reading the CPT site, one could be forgiven for believing that the Israeli and American armies had no enemies to fight at all. To the CPT, insurgents and terrorists simply do not exist.

If they want to say that they are Christian, that they accept Jesus Christ as their Lord and Savior, I'll believe them. Their members might well spend other time participating in evangelism or other activities that are not political and more in line with Christians ought to be doing.

But there is little that is Christian about the Christian Peacemaker Teams organization itself. One searches in vain for any scripture or religions teachings on their site. Indeed, in their FAQ section they go to great pains to point out that they are not a missionary organization. Indeed, their actions seem to be entirely political.

They do say that "participants in CPT are Christians", that they "engage in regular spiritual reflection" and that "public and private prayer is emphasized". But that's about it. Nowhere is there a theological justification for their pacifism. There are a very few mentions of Jesus, but as far as I can tell there are no references to scripture anywhere on their website.

As always, David Horowitz has the scoop on the CPT at his database of the left Discover The Network. Here's part of it

Clearly, the evidence demonstrates the vast gap between CPT's claims to work for peace "through non-violent means," and its biased political agenda. CPT's strident advocacy is part of the NGO-led divestment campaign designed to promote demonization and isolation of Israel in the framework of the on-going political conflict.

They call themselves "peacemakers", I call them Useful Idiots.

Update

The Iraqi government is furious

Iraq's embassy to Canada lashed out at the Christian Peacemaker Teams Friday, calling them "phony pacifists" and "dupes" after the anti-war group responded to the rescue of three of its kidnapped activists by condemning the U.S.-led military intervention in Iraq.

In a statement obtained by the National Post, the Iraqi embassy called CPT "willfully ignorant" and "outrageous," and accused the Chicago-based group of being on the side of anti-democratic forces in Iraq.

"The Christian Peacemaker Teams practises the kind of politics that automatically nominate them as dupes for jihadism and fascism," the embassy's statement said.

"The statement shows they even share the rhetoric of the jihadists, even if they do it out of naivete. Despite their claimed affinity for 'non-violence,' this is false.

"Politically, they are on the other side of this war. Christian Peacemaker Teams are objectively on the side of the fascists, Saddam Hussein's loyalists and al-Qaida in Iraq."

It is abundantly clear that Christian Peacemaker Teams are opposed to and, in effect, at war with Iraqi democrats, Americans, the British, and the rest of the multi-national Coalition."

They don't mince words, do they? Can't say I disagree.

Posted by Tom at 12:06 PM | Comments (4) | TrackBack

March 22, 2006

The Rise of the "To Hell With Them Hawks"?

The most important justification for our invasion of Iraq was of course that we had good cause to suspect that Saddam had stockpiles of WMD. Forgotten by most is that the Congressional Resolution which authorized force (Passed by House and Senate in October 2002) offered some 16 justifications. Not mentioned is what would happen to Iraq after the invasion.

It is well know that the President's views have been very much influenced by Natan Sharansky's 2004 book The Case for Democracy: The Power of Freedom to Overcome Tyranny and Terror (reviewed by me here)

Sharansky's formula for for defeating totalitarianism, whether of the communist or Islamofascist variety, is simple

When freedom's skeptics argue today that freedom cannot be "imposed" from the outside, or that the freed world has no role to play in spreading democracy around the world, I cannot but be amazed. Less than one generation has passed since the West found the Achilles heel of the Soviet Union by pursuing an activist policy that linked the rights of the Soviet people to the USSR's international standing. The same formula will work again today.

The President and Secretary Rice have largely adopted Sharansky's recommendations. As such, it is said that they are pursuing a "Wilsonian" foreign policy. President Wilson was an idealist, and it is said that Bush is also. Wilson's Fourteen Points, however, were silent on the issue of democracy or even self-determination. Wilson was more interested in peace than anything else.

The To "Hell With Them Hawks"

Rich Lowry has an article in the March 27 print issue of National Review titled The ‘To Hell with Them’ Hawks, And what’s wrong with them (subscription required to view it on-line)

Who is Lowry talking about?

These are conservatives who are comfortable using force abroad, but have little patience for a deep entanglement with the Muslim world, which they consider unredeemable, or at least not worth the strenuous effort of trying to redeem. To put their departure from Bush in terms associated with foreign-policy analyst Walter Russell Mead, they want to detach Bush’s Jacksonianism (the hardheaded, somewhat bloody-minded nationalism) from his Wilsonianism (the crusading democratic idealism). Democrats are headed in this direction too. But the tendency is problematic and, in its own way, as naïve and unrealistic as Bush at his dreamiest.

Lowry does not name anyone in his article, but Scott Johnson at Powerline believes he is talking about conservatives such as William F. Buckley, George Will, Jeffrey Hart, and John Derbyshire, and I think he's got it about right.

President Bush calls Islam a "religion of peace", and, not at all happy with simply knocking off the Taliban in Afghanistan and Ba'athists in Iraq, has set ourselves the task of nation-building. Specifically, to install some sort of democracy in the aforementioned countries.

"Nation-building" has been alternatively seen as good and bad in the post World War II era. Obviously it worked with Germany and Japan. We tried it in South Korea, and it seemed to work there, although it took a lot longer for true democracy to take root. Vietnam was just as obviously a failure, and doubt about nation-building began to set in. However, in the 1980s we took it upon ourselves to build up El Salvador as a bastion of hope against communist insurgencies in Central America. After a fitful start, we succeeded. Then, in the 1990s, we abandoned the concept again. Today we are invested in it lock-stock-and-barrel.

The problems that Bush has encountered are several, but Lowry's points can be boiled down to three

1 With the "cartoon intifada" the idea that "Islam" is a "religion of peace" looks ridiculous to many on the right.

2) "The Palestinian elections have undermined Bush’s contention that all people everywhere desire freedom in their hearts"

3) And the big one, Iraq. Lowry says that it "has reminded us of the enduring importance of culture" because it "suffers from a lack of a democratic culture, and its longstanding ethnic and tribal divisions have worked against us"

Unfortunately, given the daily headlines it doesn't help Bush much to point out that

1) One should never characterize an entire religion as anything. The real struggle is within Islam, between the moderates (yes they exist) and the extremists who want to silence them (see this interesting debate between Mansoor Ijaz and Andy McCarthy)

2) No one ever said that voting alone defined democracy. To have democracy you need democrats.

3) Contrary to popular belief, it was thought in the 1940s that democracy would never work in Japan or Germany because those countries had no history of pluralism. Further, in Germany at least the occupation did not go well all in the early years.

What the 'To Hell with Them' Hawks Want

According to Lowry, these hawks want "to write off reforming Islam, since they consider it inherently unreformable" and consider " the Iraq War as essentially lost". They want to pull out as soon as it is feasible.

They are not isolationists, or dreamy-eyed about negotiations or the UN. They have no problem with using force, they just don't want to stick around for very long afterwards.

A Time for Force

Col Harry Summers made the point in On Strategy: A Critical Analysis of the Vietnam War that in order to win a war you have to understand it's nature. Further, you have to tune your military strategy to achieve your political goals. This sounds obvious, but it is evidently lost on some people.

As such, there is a time to use overwhelming firepower to achieve your goals, and a time not to. Lowry says that

“To hell with them” hawks misinterpret the Vietnam War as badly as liberals. They are inclined to conclude that, if only the U.S. had really let loose in Vietnam, bringing to bear even more firepower, the war would have been won. On the contrary, it was only near the end of the war, when the U.S. started to fashion a true counterinsurgency strategy focusing on winning hearts and minds, on holding territory, and on training Vietnamese security forces, that we began to succeed. If there hadn’t been a catastrophic loss of political support for the war at home, this strategy might have held South Vietnam, and it didn’t involve — in a tactic “to hell with them” hawks tend to instinctively favor — bombing anyone back to the Stone Age.

As such, "we will need more engagement with the Muslim world rather than less", he says. To turn from the Muslim world after the riots over the cartoons would only be playing into the hands of the Islamofascists.

Lowry's Recommendations

Lowry says that we need to recognize that the wr in iraq is a counterinsurgency and act accordingly. Lt. Col. John Nagl makes just this point in his book Counterinsurgency Lessons from Malaya and Vietnam: Learning to Eat Soup with a Knife, reviewed by me here. The question here, I believe, is one of time; now that we've figured out how to fight in Iraq will we be allowed to win before political considerations at home force a troop pullout?

'To Hell with Them Hawks' do not believe that Islam can be reformed. Lowry does. He says that "like Christianity, Islam has within it resources that can be used both to promote liberty and peace and to repress" liberty. This is true, I believe. Only doesn't have to go back very far in Western history to find some truely abominable things. Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani says nicer things in English than he does in Arabic, as Lowry concedes, but asks "is this surprising? He is a conservative Shiite cleric, not an Episcopal minister. Not to realize that someone utterly different from us can still be an ally is a flat-out failure of imagination."

Our Dictator?

For much of the Cold War, and especially with regard to policy in the Middle East, the United States was accused of propping up dictators. Unfortunatly, this charge was usually true. The US tolerated and/or supported authoritarian regimes in South Korea, Taiwan, and throughout the Middle East. What do the critics want? A return to the days of "he may be a son of a bitch, but at least he's our son of a bitch"? (I've seen this quote attributed to both LBJ and Nixon)

We tried this once in Iran. In 1953, along with British Intelligence, we orchestrated the removal of Mohammed Mossadegh, and restored the monarchy, putting former Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi back on the throne. The Shah became more and more dictatorial as the years went by, prompting a revolution in 1979 that put the Ayatollah Khomeini in power. That didn't work out so well.

What do the 'to Hell with Them Hawks' want to do? According to Lowry

For believers in a clash in civilizations, the “to hell with them” hawks have an odd attitude toward their own. They want to put our civilization in a permanent posture of strategic defense. In Cold War terms, they believe in Containment rather than Rollback. Containment was a successful strategy, but especially so when Ronald Reagan invested it with aspects of Rollback, launching insurgencies against Communist states and engaging in unapologetic evangelism for the Western cause.

In short, they want to play defense. This, Rich says, is unacceptable. He concedes that for the moment, the 'to Hell with them Hawks' are in the ascendency. But "If we try their approach, it won’t be long until we are complaining yet again about the lack of realism in U.S. foreign policy, and yearning for something less simplistic and naïve."

The Response

Jed Babbin has written a piece in The American Spectator called Endgame Conservatives. Babbin is a good conservative. I've heard him on the radio many times, and gave his book Inside the Asylum: Why the United Nations and Old Europe are Worse Than You Think a positive review.

Babbin says that the "neo-Wilsonians such as he are profoundly wrong about the nature of this war and how we must fight it to win in the long haul". This is so, he says, because the " nascent Iraqi democracy is neither the center of gravity in this war nor a factor determinative of victory or defeat. Iraq is but one key campaign in a larger war and if it becomes a democracy that is a collateral accomplishment, nothing more." This is quite different than the assessment of most people who look at Iraq, for whom the establishment of an at least somewhat democratic government is seen as the key to stopping the insurgency.

Here is why Babbin says we are at war

We didn't invade Afghanistan and Iraq because they weren't democracies. If the lack of democracy were a casus belli we'd be at war with about two-thirds of the world. We counterattacked the Taliban because with malice aforethought they provided the base from which Osama bin Laden organized an attack that killed three thousand Americans and then refused to turn him over to us when we gave them the choice between doing so and war. In Iraq we sincerely believed that the Saddam Hussein regime posed a threat to Americans and attacked only after the UN failed, as it always does, to deal with such a threat. The only goal of this war, which Lowry and the others lost track of, is to end the threat of radical Islam and the terrorism that is its chosen weapon against us

.

We will win this war, he says, by "destroying the regimes that provide terrorists with weapons, funds, people, and sanctuary" and by defeating "the radical Islamist ideology" just as "we defeated the Soviet communist ideology."

Babbin denies that the global war on terror is like fighting an insurgency. What is it, then"

First, it is a war against nations that has to be fought both diplomatically and on the battlefields, both conventionally and otherwise. Second, it is an ideological war that can't be won with soft words and euphemisms. And third -- in Iraq, the Philippines, and much of the Horn of Africa -- it is both a counterinsurgency and war for ascendancy among tribes and religious sects.

Me: So how exactly do we fight the war? What type of government do we install in Iraq? Maddeningly, Babbin doesn't say. He denies that winning "hearts and minds" was important to winning Vietnam, and blames instead Johnson's on-again off-again incrementalist approach. Maybe so.

But by not offering any concrete alternative, Babbin opens himself to two criticisms:

1) That he just wants to 'bomb them back to the stone age' and leave it at that. Break it and then leave.

2) That all he wants to do is install another dictator, albeit one that is not as murderous as the old one, and is friendly to the US.

Neither of these are acceptable to me.

On the Positive Side for Babbin

Let's be clear that Babbin's criticism is from the right. He wants Bush to be more, not less, aggressive. He's upset because we're stalled in Iraq. In conclusion, he says that

Mr. Bush's democratization strategy, naive and Wilsonian, has put us in the posture of strategic defense. His original formulation -- that nations are either with us or against us -- has been whittled away to a confrontation-cum-engagement strategy that enables Iran to offer cooperation in Iraq while buying time to build nuclear weapons. The President is in the process of putting the UN in control of the Iran nuclear issue. This will result, in all probability, in allowing Iran enough time to achieve nuclear weapons. In Iraq, we are on the defensive because we haven't taken sufficient action to end the foreign interference that disrupts the nation-building effort. It's time to extricate ourselves from the Wilsonian policy quagmire....Let's press on with this war through the endgame and defeat the enemy decisively on both the military and ideological fronts.

Unfortunately, he never says how we are to extricate ourselves. However, I agree that we need to move on to dealing with Iran.

Posted by Tom at 9:35 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

March 21, 2006

Eating Soup with a Knife and the Question of Time

Without question the hottest book on Iraq right now is Counterinsurgency Lessons from Malaya and Vietnam: Learning to Eat Soup with a Knife by Lt. Col. John Nagl. I have not read it, and given my other obligations it will be some time before I have an opportunity to. However, since the author is making the talk-show rounds, and I thought a few comments were in order.

Nagl's book is based on his Ph.d dissertation. I'm not sure if he's still in the military or is retired, but from what I can gather from various sources he was operations officer during the 2004 battle for Fallujah. The story is that his book has not only become very influential among Army and Marine Corps officers, but was given to Rumsfeld himself during a visit to Iraq, although I can't find any definite confirmation of this.

But just in case you haven't heard about it, here's the book description on Amazon

Armies are invariably accused of preparing to fight the last war. Nagl examines how armies learn during the course of conflicts for which they are initially unprepared in organization, training, and mindset. He compares the development of counterinsurgency doctrine and practice in the Malayan Emergency from 1948-1960 with that developed in the Vietnam Conflict from 1950-1975, through use of archival sources and interviews with participants in both conflicts. In examining these two events, he argues that organizational culture is the key variable in determining the success or failure of attempts to adapt to changing circumstances.

Defeating an insurgency described by Lieutenant-Colonel Thomas Edward Lawrence, better known as "Lawrence of Arabia", as being like "Eating Soup with a Knife". In other words, you can do it, but it's messy and takes a long time.

There was also an article the other day in the Wall Street Journal about the book (subscription only), that was excerpted by Rich Lowry on NRO's The Corner

Col. Nagl's book is one of a half dozen Vietnam histories -- most of them highly critical of the U.S. military in Vietnam -- that are changing the military's views on how to fight guerrilla wars. Two other books that have also become must-reading among senior Army officers are retired Col. Lewis Sorley's "A Better War," which chronicles the last years of the Vietnam War, and Col. H.R. McMaster's "Dereliction of Duty," which focuses on the early years.

The embrace of these Vietnam histories reflects an emerging consensus in the Army that in order to move forward in Iraq, it must better understand the mistakes of Vietnam.

In the past, it was commonly held in military circles that the Army failed in Vietnam because civilian leaders forced it to fight a limited war instead of the all-out assault it longed to wage. That belief helped shape the doctrine espoused in the 1980s by Defense Secretary Caspar Weinberger and Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Gen. Colin Powell. They argued that the military should fight only wars in which it could apply quick, overwhelming force to destroy the enemy.

The newer analyses of Vietnam are now supplanting that theory -- and changing the way the Army fights. The argument that the military must exercise restraint is a central point of the Army's new counterinsurgency doctrine. The doctrine, which runs about 120 pages and is still in draft form, is a handbook on how to wage guerrilla wars.

The Lesson

The point that Col Nagl makes is simple; we screwed up in our first two years in Iraq but we've got it right now. He's pretty critical of Army leaders and Secretary Rumsfeld. Fair enough. From time immortal wars have always been this way. Unless they are short, they never go quite the way either side thinks they will.

But despite what some people seem to think, yes counterinsurgencies can be won. With US help, the government of El Salvador defeated their communist rebels in the 1980s. Peru defeated the Shining Path in the 1990s. The Greeks defeated their communist rebels in the late 1940s, thanks to some timely aid authorized by President Truman. The classic case, of course, was the British defeat of communist insurgents in Malaysia in the 1940s and 50s. As Rich Lowry recounts

The Brits at first considered the insurgency primarily a military problem, and tried to take the guerrillas on in conventional military formations. These tactics not only failed to engage the guerrillas, who easily evaded the large jungle sweeps, but their heavy-handedness alienated the local population.

The British were losing. One observer thought the guerrillas were "probably equal to that of government in the matter of supplies and superior in the matter of intelligence." Guerrilla attacks had been fewer than 100 a month in mid-1949, but spiked to more than 400 a month by mid-1950. This is when, had the Brits operated in our media and political environment, New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd would have witheringly declared all lost, and calls from across the political spectrum would have gone up to quit.

With a patience born of fighting many "small wars" in dusty parts of the world, the British simply set about fixing what they had done wrong. Most fundamentally, they realized that counterinsurgency depends on winning a political battle for "hearts and minds" (a famous phrase that originated in the Malaysia fight). Military operations were conducted on a smaller scale. The Chinese population was secured from guerrilla influence. A Malaysian army was built, with Chinese involvement. Elections were organized and independence promised. Slowly, the air went out of the insurgency, which was officially declared over in 1960, 12 years after it began.

We made the same mistake in Iraq, and have made the same journey to our current counter-insurgency campaign.

Three Washington Post articles by Thomas Ricks, who was (or is) in Iraq tell the tale.
The Lessons of Counterinsurgency
U.S. Counterinsurgency Academy Giving Officers a New Mind-Set
In the Battle for Baghdad, U.S. Turns War on Insurgents
And let's not forget David Ignatious Fighting Smarter in Iraq from last Friday's Washington Post.

So contrary to what the critics would have you believe yes we are getting it right. We didn't at first, as I recounted in back in October of 2004 in What Went Wrong?

Wretchard, author of The Belmont Club(and arguably the best WOT blogger there is) doesn't share what is apparently becoming the "mainstream" opinion that we "got it all wrong at first but are now finally doing it right"

The US is not "finally becoming adept" at fighting in Iraq so much as reaping the result of a two pronged strategy. First, building up indigenous and de-Baathized forces (with a large Shi'ite and Kurdish component) and second, destroying the infrastructure of the insurgency.

He points to the impressive buildup of Iraqi forces as evidence(read his post for details or see the CENTCOM posture statement).

Wretchard concludes that

In retrospect three of the decisive weapons of victory in Iraq will have been the 190 military transition teams which raised the new Iraqi Army, the Transitional Administrative Law which made a new coalition government possible, and the US Armed Forces itself, which held up the shield behind which the training and political components could take shape. It now seems fairly clear that many of the 'far better' strategies which were suggested in 2004 and 2005 in place of CENTCOM's may not have been as good as they were made out to be. There were many calls for more American troops on the ground, up to 400,000 men. There were even calls for a return to the draft to rescue a "broken army". It had been suggested that it was a "mistake" to fire the old Saddamite Army, which alone could maintain control, or so it was said. In the end, CENTCOM's strategy did not prove so amateurish after all.

So much for the "More troops!" line that we've been hearing for the past three years. As the Brits found out in Malaysia, you win these wars not by sending in "More troops!" but by going back to counter-insurgency basics.

But the differences between Fall 2004 and Spring of 2006 are like the differences between the beginning of 1864 and the end of 1864. Once it looked like stalemate, then victory seemed possible if not assured.

The Question of Time

This morning I was listening to the Tony Snow show today, with guest host Brian Kilmeade (from Fox and Friends) standing in for Tony. Kilmeade interviewed Bill Hemmer, who is on assignement in Iraq for Fox News.

Hemmer was not all sun and roses, saying for example that things are more dangerous today, at least for journalists, than they were a year or so ago in Baghdad.

But his main point, and one that he stressed, was that he had spoken with many members of the US military, and they are convinced they can do it, that they can succeed, but they just need more time. "Give us more time" is what he heard again and again.

Will they be allowed to finish their job before political events in the US force a pullout, or a reduction in force before the job is done? We're already hearing about troops reductions scheduled for later this year, no doubt timed to coincide with the elections. Hopefully it won't be too soon.

Wednesday Morning Update

President Bush does the right thing

President Bush said yesterday that future administrations will have to grapple with how and when to withdraw U.S. troops from Iraq, indicating that he doesn't see an end to U.S. commitments until at least 2009.

"That'll be decided by future presidents and future governments of Iraq," Mr. Bush said at his second press conference of the year, during which he also said Iraq is not in the middle of a civil war and defended his continued commitment of U.S. troops.

...
Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid said Mr. Bush was signaling an open-ended commitment that "was never contemplated or approved by the American people."

When the American people signed up for World War II they never contemplated or approved keeping troops in Europe for another 60+ years, either. They thought that, like after The Great War, they'd all be brought home immediately after hostilities ended. Although I can't find it on the web at the moment, I do recall reading congressional testimony of the late 1940s whereby generals are grilled by congressmen who are not happy with what they are being told, that many US troops would have to stay in Europe for the indefinate future.

Was this a failure of the Roosevelt and Truman administrations? Of course not. Analogies are never exact, of course, which is why they call them analogies. The administration, and most of us war supporters, thought that the invasion aftermath would be easier (as Rich Lowry asked in "What Went Wrong" cited above, "We knew it would be difficult, but did it have to be so hard?"). Fair enough.

But as I've written in about a million posts, unless the war is very short, they always seem to go this way. Victory does not go to the side who doesn't make mistakes. Victory goes to the side that does not learn from them. And while we're not out of the woods yet by a long shot, we're learning a lot faster than the insurgents.

Posted by Tom at 9:35 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

March 19, 2006

The New Iraqi Army

"But why is it taking so long to build up the Iraqi army?"

"If only we'd have kept the old one together!"

These are two criticisms we often hear.

I dealt with the second one a few months ago, and you can go read it here if you like. I only mention it because the issues are tied together.

Getting back to the first, there were two very interesting letters posted last week on NRO's The Corner that can shed some light on the issue.

Both are anonymous, but I don't think that really matters, as they both ring true.

In the first one, the author says that not keeping (or recalling) Saddam's army was "a grave error" but that

...this also does not mean that a reconstituted Iraqi Army would have been performing at the level we are seeing now in the fall of '03 or even in the summer of '04. The most capable units, the Republican Guards and the more notorious Special Republican Guards, were either decimated in the fighting or filled with the types of thugs and regime supporters we were not about to keep around in significant numbers. The vast majority of Iraqi units were poorly trained, ineptly led and indifferently equipped. Their officers were largely ineffective and a professional NCO corps virtually non-existent. Even if the majority of the troops remained with their units, it would still take a great deal of time to train a new officer and NCO corps, provide them with new or refurbished equipment and train them in sufficient numbers.

Go and read the whole thing. The author is quite critical of the military and Bremer, and I suppose by implication the Administration.

In the second the author is also critical of Bremer, saying that the original plan was to keep elements of the Iraqi army. The decision not to do that was "... made at the last minute and that decision contradicted the original plan...."

That said, he points out that had we kept the old army, "Bremer is correct in saying the Shia and Kurds were not going to tolerate a reconstituted Sunni dominated Army."

Moving to the difficulties of creating a new army

The next time someone glibly says “We can take some kid off a tractor in Iowa and another one off the block in Baltimore and turn them into infantrymen in 16 weeks. Why is it taking 2 years to train the Iraqi’s?” Please slap them for me. First of all the 16 weeks number is just for basic training/bootcamp. Most service members then go to some specialist training. For some specialties this might last an additional year. Even infantrymen, artillerymen and tankers usually get another 10 weeks or so depending on service, branch, specialty etc. And that is just the privates.

In some posts last year, the invaluable Bill Roggio discussed "readyness" and how it is so often musunderstood by the media and war critics who like to claim that the new Iraqi army suffers low readyness. It's a complicated issue, and too much for me to summarize here now. Go to Roggio's post, read it, and follow his links.

Posted by Tom at 9:27 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

David Ignatius in Iraq

If the lefties who read this blog don't want to believe me, Victor Davis Hanson, Ralph Peters, David Frum, Oliver North, or any of the others that I regularly quote regarding Iraq, maybe they'll believe one of their own.

Today I bring you David Ignatius of the Washington Post. In his article of last Friday he writes

BAGHDAD -- Three years on, the U.S. military is finally becoming adept at fighting a counterinsurgency war in Iraq. Sadly, these are precisely the skills that should have been mastered before America launched its invasion in March 2003. It may prove one of the costliest lessons in the history of modern warfare.

I had a chance to see the new counterinsurgency doctrine in practice here this week. U.S. troops are handing off to the Iraqi army a growing share of the security burden. As the Iraqis step up, the Americans are stepping back into a training and advisory role. This is the way it should have happened from the beginning.

raq is still a mess. Traveling over Baghdad by Black Hawk helicopter, you can see piles of fetid trash on nearly every block and pools of raw sewage glinting in the sun. Car bombs and roadside explosions are still a daily feature of life, and the death toll remains horrific, especially for Iraqi civilians. But it would be a mistake to think that nothing is changing. The country is fragile, but it hasn't splintered apart.

I visited two bases where you can see the new U.S. strategy begin to take hold.

...

I wouldn't pretend that these two snapshots are an accurate representation of the whole of Iraq. If that were so, the country wouldn't be in such a mess. But this is the way this war is supposed to be going. It's a few years late, but the new U.S. strategy is moving in the right direction.

Even though Ignatius can't help but give us the "this is the way it should have happened from the beginning" routine, the message is clear enough; we are winning. It would be a tragedy to pull out now.

Yes, hindsight is 20/20. Everyone's a genuis on what ought to have been done. Oh, yes, "counterinsurgency" seems so obvious now.

Funny, though, I recall that before and during the initital invasion all of the talking heads were insisting that there was going to be a massive "Battle of Baghdad" that would tie down US troops for weeks or months. Oh yes, the "elite" Republican Guard would fight us house-to-house in a battle that would rival Leningrad.

More on Ignatius

Rich Lowry had some comments Friday on Ignatius' piece that I think are worth quoting at length

He argues that we finally have an effective counter-insurgency strategy in Iraq. A lot of people have written this lately, usually with the implicit suggestion that this is some sudden development, that out of nowhere these fairly effective Iraqi troops are appearing and contributing to a better counter-insurgency effort. But the strategy that is now beginning to bear fruit has been in place for a long time, as anyone would know who actually listened to what the administration was saying over the last year or more. All during the long, long period that the administration was scored for having no strategy in Iraq (a charge, I regret to say, echoed in this very Corner), the strategy that is now being recognized was in place. It just took time to take hold. Apparently few people anymore have enough patience to realize some things take time.

In this connection, Igantius writes of Iraqi forces standing up as we take a more of a support role, “This is the way it should have happened from the beginning.” Of course it should have. But sometimes the real world isn't so cooperative. The fact is that we started training Iraqi security forces right away, but we were going about it the wrong way and had to start again almost from scratch. Regrettable? Of course. But who seriously thinks you can plop yourself down into the middle of an alien culture and create a major new institution like a military without trail and error?

To maintain otherwise is magical thinking. David Brooks engaged in some of his own earlier this week in this column (TimesSelect). He criticizes Rumsfeld for not adjusting sooner to the fact that we were facing an insurgency. Fair enough. But what would this adjustment have chiefly meant, according to Brooks? More troops. The additional manpower could have helped. But...

Brooks also wrote an excellent column recently on the importance of culture. Knowing and negotiating the culture of a country is particularly important in a counter-insurgency, which is why, in terms of troop levels, it tends to be a qualitative rather than a quantitative problem: It's not necessarily how many troops you have, but what they're doing. I'm no military expert (obviously), but this is why I tend to dis-believe anyone who argues winning in Iraq just required X-number of additional troops.

Would these additional troops have had a complex understanding of Iraqi tribal politics? Would they have known all the key players on the ground in their area--who to trust and not to trust? Would they have gotten better intelligence tips from the Iraqi public? Would they have understood that the traditional American “kinetic” approach to warfare really doesn't apply in a counter-insurgency? I doubt it. All of this knowledge takes time to develop. It means being on the ground and tasting and feeling local conditions. It is conventional wisdom that we “wasted” the first year in Iraq. It is true that we were ineffectual during that year, but it wasn't wasted as long as we were learning and adjusting--as we were.

A final point. Any additional troops wouldn't have made much of a difference if they had been engaged in the kind of large sweeps without holding territory that we used for so long in Iraq. They might have made a difference, however, if they had been used to garrison every Iraqi town. But there was a judgment made that that would have been too heavy-handed and we should instead wait to hold territory until Iraqi forces were available to do it. You can argue with this strategic judgment, but it is not an unreasonable one. Indeed, the same people who suggest the administration didn't have a strategy now praise our approach in Iraq because, in the words of Igantius, “Americans are stepping back into a training and advisory role.” So does the administration get any credit for having had this as its goal--and consistently working toward it--for so long? Of course not.

I have criticized the administration at various times for not being realistic enough; the same applies to some of its (well-intentioned) critics.

Ditto that.

Posted by Tom at 9:01 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

March 18, 2006

Code Pink at it Again

From their latest on-line petition

We, the women of the United States, Iraq and women worldwide, have had enough of the senseless war in Iraq and the cruel attacks on civilians around the world. We've buried too many of our loved ones. We've seen too many lives crippled forever by physical and mental wounds. We've watched in horror as our precious resources are poured into war while our families' basic needs of food, shelter, education and healthcare go unmet. We've had enough of living in constant fear of violence and seeing the growing cancer of hatred and intolerance seep into our homes and communities.

(If you want the root URL, start here and select "Sign the Call Now". Also hat tip to Freedom Watch for finding the petition)

Uh, wait a second. So their objection to the war in Iraq is financial? That we're spending money there that we oh-so-desperately need here at home in the world's richest nation?

"...our families' basic needs...go unmet"

Basic needs? The federal budget this year will be over 2 trillion dollars, with less than 400 billion of that on defense. This doesn't even count spending by states and localities. And we still can't meet our "basic needs"?

The reality, of course, is that OIF has cost much less than most American wars, once one adjusts for inflation.

Also, aren't liberals the ones who are always telling us that we need to spend more on foreign aid?

For the record, I'm in favor of foreign aid, if it is done right. If we can pull this off (and I think we can), then our investment in Iraq will pay dividends for decades if not centuries to come. Stay tuned for a coming post on this subject.

Christopher Hitchens had something to say about this during the last presidential campaign

A few years ago, many of the same liberals and leftists were quoting improbable if not impossible numbers of dead Iraqi children, murdered by the international sanctions imposed on Saddam Hussein. Even at its most propagandistic, this contained an important moral point: Iraqi civilians were suffering for the sins of their dictatorship (and from the lavish corruption of the U.N. supervision of the "oil-for-food" program). OK, then, we'll remove the regime and lift the sanctions. Happy now? Not at all! It turns out that 1) the Saddam regime was only a threat invented by neo-cons and that 2) we don't owe the Iraqi people a thing. Also, we could use the money ourselves.

This would mean that all the protest about dead and malnourished Iraqi infants was all for show. Surely that can't be right?

Afraid so, Hitch.

He continued

Whatever you think about the twists and turns of U.S. policy toward Baghdad in the last three decades, there can be no doubt of any kind that we have collectively incurred a huge responsibility there, much of it political but a good deal of it purely humanitarian. To demand that American funds be cut off or diverted, just as the country is fighting to rebuild and struggling toward a form of elections, is unconscionable from any standpoint.

"Unconsionable" pretty much sums up Code Pink. You can read all about them on David Horowitz database of leftist groups here. I exposed them (again) here last week. And just click on "Rallys and Protests" at right to read all about their fake vigils in front of Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington DC.

But Wait, There's More

What does Code Pink want? Here are their first three demands

- The withdrawal of all foreign troops and foreign fighters from Iraq;

- Negotiations to reincorporate disenfranchised Iraqis into all aspects of Iraqi society;

- The full representation of women in the peacemaking process and a commitment to women's full equality in the post-war Iraq;

Oh, my head is spinning.

Do these useful idiots not realize that if they got their way on the first the second two would not take place? No, they don't. These people actually think that if we left Iraq the insurgency would die by itself, that the only thing that keeps it going is the presense of foreign troops.

This, however, is not the case. To be sure, the presence of American troops provide propaganda value for recruiting and a rally cry.

But as General John Abizaid, CENTCOM commander, said in his statement before the Senate Armed Services Committee on March 14 2006, the enemy in Iraq is made up of three groups, each of which would continue to fight whether we were there or not

Iraqi insurgents are predominantly Sunni Arab and consist of three major elements: Iraqi rejectionists, Saddamists, and terrorists and foreign fighters. These groups operate primarily in four of Iraq’s eighteen provinces, where they receive varying levels of support from the Sunni population but are certainly not supported by all Sunni Arabs. Indeed, Sunni Arabs participate in all governmental activities and constitute a large number of Iraq’s security forces. These different insurgent groups have varying motivations but are unified in their opposition to U.S. and Coalition presence and their refusal to accept the authority of the legitimate, democratically-elected government of Iraq. While deadly and disruptive, the insurgency is also attractive to numbers of unemployed Iraqi young men and criminals.

The Iraqi rejectionists, mostly Sunni Arabs who want a return to their privileged status under Saddam, form the largest insurgent group. Their leadership is fragmented. They view themselves as an “honorable resistance” seeking to oust foreign occupation forces and unwilling to recognize the new-found power of groups previously excluded from political and economic life.

The Saddamists are mostly former senior officials from Saddam Hussein’s dictatorship. Their numbers are smaller than the Iraqi rejectionists. They seek a return to power by trying to de-legitimize and undermine the new Iraqi government through a campaign of mass intimidation against the Sunni population. They also conduct stand-off attacks with improvised explosive devices (IEDs), rockets, and mortars against U.S. and Coalition forces, Iraqi security forces, and government officials in an attempt to demoralize these groups. They exploit criminal elements to assist them with these attacks. The Saddamists lack broad popular support, but they harbor long-term designs to try to infiltrate and subvert the newly-elected government from within.

The terrorists and foreign fighters are the smallest but most lethal group. The al Qaida in Iraq (AQI) network, led by the terrorist Zarqawi, is the dominant threat within this group. AQI’s objective is to create chaos in Iraq by inciting civil war between Sunni and Shia through terrorist acts such as the recent bombing of the Golden Mosque in Samarra. Such mayhem, they believe, will topple the elected government of Iraq and drive Coalition forces from the country. This could enable AQI to establish safe havens for Islamic extremism within Iraq from which to launch terrorist attacks against other moderate regimes in the region. Zarqawi has pledged his allegiance to Osama bin Laden, and the goals of AQI support bin Ladin’s broader objective of establishing a Caliphate throughout the Middle East.

One may make the argument that none of these groups would exist if we hadn't invaded. This is only partly true, as the first two would be running the country, and as we all know now were partially in league with last. We went into Iraq for sound reasons, but that's not the point of this post.

None of the above three groups would support either the reincorporation of "disenfranchised Iraqis into all aspects of Iraqi society" or women's equality.

Code Pink ends their petiton by calling on

...world leaders to join us in spreading the fundamental values of love for the human family and for our precious planet.

Doll at Freedom Watch says it best: "The only fundamental values these morons seem to be spreading is their hate of George Bush and the War on Terror."

Ditto that.

Posted by Tom at 3:25 PM | Comments (5) | TrackBack

March 14, 2006

Myths of Iraq by Ralph Peters

Ralph Peters is recently back from Iraq and wrote about what he found at Real Clear Politics

During a recent visit to Baghdad, I saw an enormous failure. On the part of our media. The reality in the streets, day after day, bore little resemblance to the sensational claims of civil war and disaster in the headlines.

No one with first-hand experience of Iraq would claim the country's in rosy condition, but the situation on the ground is considerably more promising than the American public has been led to believe. Lurid exaggerations and instant myths obscure real, if difficult, progress.

Why do I keep reading this time and time again? Most of the non-msm types who go over there come back with the same thing; it ain't being reported right. Only Fox News seems to get it right also,

Here are some of the myths that Peters dispels

Claims of civil war. In the wake of the bombing of the Golden Mosque in Samarra, a flurry of sectarian attacks inspired wild media claims of a collapse into civil war. It didn't happen. Driving and walking the streets of Baghdad, I found children playing and, in most neighborhoods, business as usual. Iraq can be deadly, but, more often, it's just dreary.

Iraqi disunity. Factional differences are real, but overblown in the reporting. Few Iraqis support calls for religious violence. After the Samarra bombing, only rogue militias and criminals responded to the demagogues' calls for vengeance. Iraqis refused to play along, staging an unrecognized triumph of passive resistance.

Expanding terrorism. On the contrary, foreign terrorists, such as Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, have lost ground. They've alienated Iraqis of every stripe. Iraqis regard the foreigners as murderers, wreckers and blasphemers, and they want them gone. The Samarra attack may, indeed, have been a tipping point--against the terrorists.

Hatred of the U.S. military. If anything surprised me in the streets of Baghdad, it was the surge in the popularity of U.S. troops among both Shias and Sunnis. In one slum, amid friendly adult waves, children and teenagers cheered a U.S. Army patrol as we passed. Instead of being viewed as occupiers, we're increasingly seen as impartial and well-intentioned.

The appeal of the religious militias. They're viewed as mafias. Iraqis want them disarmed and disbanded. Just ask the average citizen.

The failure of the Iraqi army. Instead, the past month saw a major milestone in the maturation of Iraq's military. During the mini-crisis that followed the Samarra bombing, the Iraqi army put over 100,000 soldiers into the country's streets. They defused budding confrontations and calmed the situation without killing a single civilian. And Iraqis were proud to have their own army protecting them. The Iraqi army's morale soared as a result of its success.

Reconstruction efforts have failed. Just not true. The American goal was never to rebuild Iraq's infrastructure in its entirety. Iraqis have to do that. Meanwhile, slum-dwellers utterly neglected by Saddam Hussein's regime are getting running water and sewage systems for the first time. The Baathist regime left the country in a desolate state while Saddam built palaces. The squalor has to be seen to be believed. But the hopeless now have hope.

The electricity system is worse than before the war. Untrue again. The condition of the electric grid under the old regime was appalling. Yet, despite insurgent attacks, the newly revamped system produced 5,300 megawatts last summer--a full thousand megawatts more than the peak under Saddam Hussein. Shortages continue because demand soared--newly free Iraqis went on a buying spree, filling their homes with air conditioners, appliances and the new national symbol, the satellite dish. Nonetheless, satellite photos taken during the hours of darkness show Baghdad as bright as Damascus.

Take it from someone who's been there.

Posted by Tom at 9:00 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

Media Memes of the War on Terror

Chester posts on his blog some media memes of the War on Terror and asks how they might be categorized or classified. The ones he came up with are

-the US is disrespectful of Islam (the Newsweek story)

-the US routinely violates human rights (Guantanamo, Abu Ghraib)

-the Iraq war is analogous to the Vietnam war

-Iraq is perpetually on the brink of civil war

-extreme Islam should be tolerated (the refusal to publish cartoons)

-Iraq grows more violent by the day

Commenter El Jefe Maximo adds a few more

The US has driven Iran to build a bomb.

The Islamicist movement is a defensive response to US led globalization.

The Iraqi "resistance" is a legitimate response to foreign occupation.

The Iraqi government has no legitimacy because it was planted by a foreign occupation.

Saddam governed Iraq in the only way possible.

Al Sadr is a true Iraqi nationalist: he's uniting Sunni and Shia Iraqis against the Americans.

Islam good, Neocons bad.

Our overreaction to 9/11 feeds violence and Al Qaeda.

Peace only when we bring the troops home.

Violence in Iraq result of too few troops.

Pro US government in Iraq oppresses women and minorities.

Pro US government in Iraq tortures its opponents.

Dangerous if Iraqi government succeeds, because US may try this kind of intervention again.

Bush responsible for Katrina, Rita, Wilma and for too much/little rain and the crops not growing (okay, that was a joke...I think).

All this illustrates perfectly why I watch virtually no TV news anymore(including Fox). Newspapers are better, and readers of this blog know that I quote both the Washington Times and Washington Post regularly. But for the most part if you want to find out what's going on you'll have to visit the blogosphere, especially the sites I link to at right.

Chester is an Iraq war vet and his blog is a must-read. You'll find it as "The Adventures of Chester" at right under "War on Terror Analysis"

I'd send him a trackback but in order to try and get a handle on spam he's turned them (and comments) off for now.

Posted by Tom at 9:15 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

US Casualties Down in Iraq

A few days ago StrategyPage reported that US casualties are way down in Iraq

There were 6,790 U.S. troops killed and wounded last year, compared to 8,837 in 2004. That's a drop of 23 percent. But so far this year, the casualty rate for Americans is down 62 percent from 2005. Given that the main goal of the Sunni Arab terrorists is the expulsion of foreign troops, why the sharp reduction in attacks and casualties among the American forces? One of the least reported reasons is that U.S. troops have been winning the tactics and technology race with the terrorists. Although the media make much of terrorist innovations, less is said about the more frequent, and more effective, improvements in tactics and technology American troops are using. The cumulative effect has been steadily lower American casualties, and larger losses for the terrorists. Another reason for the decline is a sharp reduction in the number of Iraqis and foreigners committing terrorist attacks, and fewer Sunni Arabs fighting their government.

A month-by-month chart of US casualties in the war can be found on StrategyPage here.

Yesterday, StrategyPage posted an article in which they explained in more detail why our casualties were dropping (hat tip Austin Bay)

The violence has shifted away from American troops, who are suffering 60 percent fewer casualties this month than in the past year. and more towards Iraqi security forces and civilians. Part of this is because there are simply more Iraqi police and soldiers patrolling the streets and policing the neighborhoods. Where there are about two American advisors for every hundred Iraqi security troops, these Americans are there to advise, not fight. And the Iraqis are doing the fighting, and taking the casualties. American troops are still making raids and patrols, but there has also been a sharp decline in terrorist attacks. Some six months of sweeps and battles in western Iraq has shut down many of the Sunni terrorist sanctuaries. Indeed, many al Qaeda terrorists have fled western Iraq for towns and villages on the Iranian border. Iranians don't like to advertise the fact, but they do provide support to al Qaeda, despite al Qaeda's attacks on Shias (for being heretics.) Iran would also like to see a civil war (ethnic cleansing of Sunni Arabs) in Iraq. If that were to happen, Shia Arabs would be 75 percent of the Iraqi population, and likely to side with Iran on many issues.

As always, go and read the whole thing.

Posted by Tom at 9:01 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

March 13, 2006

The Morning Paper

A few quick stories from this morning's Washington Times

Hillary turns quiet on Wal-Mart ties

With retail giant Wal-Mart under fire to improve its labor and health care policies, one Democrat with deep ties to the company -- Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton -- has started feeling her share of the political heat.

Mrs. Clinton served on Wal-Mart's board of directors for six years when her husband was governor of Arkansas. The Rose Law Firm, where she was a partner, handled many of the Arkansas-based company's legal affairs.

She had kind words for Wal-Mart as recently as 2004, when she told an audience at the convention of the National Retail Federation that her time on the board "was a great experience in every respect."

But in recent months, as the company has become a target for Democratic activists, she has largely steered clear of any mention of Wal-Mart. Late last year, Mrs. Clinton's re-election campaign returned a $5,000 contribution from Wal-Mart, citing "serious differences with current company practices."

BRRRHHAHAHAHAAAAAA!!!!!

The hypicrisy of the Clintons knows no bounds. As if there w