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October 18, 2006
Last Chance Fading?
We've been hearing for some time that in order for Iraq to succeed the Iraqis are going to have to step up to the plate and take control themselves. One key element of this is the new Iraqi Army, which we hope will be able to defeat the insurgents and replace the militias. As anyone who has even a cursoy knowledge of warfare in the Middle East knows, Arabs have made lousy soldiers. Thus, the need for intense training.
Then today we get this from the Wall Street Journal(hat tip NRO)
President Bush has touted such advisory teams as key to the U.S. strategy for stabilizing Iraq and bringing American troops home. So Col. Demas and his troops expected some of the best instruction the Army had to offer. What they got was a "phenomenal waste of time," the colonel wrote from Iraq last fall, in a report to his superiors......Internal Army reviews and interviews with dozens of advisers show that, thus far, the Army hasn't treated the advisory program as a priority. The job has often fallen to the military's less seasoned second team: reservists, guardsmen and retirees called back to active duty. A 48-page Army study, finished in May and marked "For Official Use Only," concluded that 10- to 12-man advisory teams are too small and "do not have the experience to advise in the various areas they are assigned."
Huh?
The post at NRO also pointed to a column by Max Boot in the LA Times which essentially said the same thing
OF THE MANY failures that have bedeviled the American military effort in Iraq, few are as inexplicable and costly as the failure to commit more resources to the Iraqi security forces. The only way U.S. troops will be able to go home without having failed in their mission is if Iraqis are capable of establishing order on their own. Yet U.S. efforts to train and equip the Iraqis got off to a laughable start in 2003 and have only slightly improved since. ...It's not only a matter of money. We have more than 140,000 troops in Iraq, but fewer than 4,000 of them act as advisors. There are barely enough to go around for higher-level Iraqi headquarters; there are no "embeds" available to consistently operate at the company and platoon level, where most of the action occurs. The Iraqi police forces are even more neglected.
What's more, some of the best and brightest American officers are being steered away from Iraqi units. Everyone in the U.S. armed forces knows that the way to the top is to command American units, not to advise foreign units — even if the latter task is more difficult and more important.
One Army officer who has served in Iraq and would be well qualified for an advisory role told me recently that he was asked to become an ROTC instructor at home but not an advisor in Iraq. Those he sees being sent to help Iraqis tend to have "marginal career prospects." "No one is diverted from a school or command," he told me. "No one is sent after a successful command."
I don't know if these articles are accurate or not but if they are then our last hope for Iraq may be fading. When Bill Roggio writes stuff like this it is time to be worried
As the sectarian violence in Iraq, which is largely centered in and around Baghdad, threatens to bring down the Iraqi government and push the country into civil war, the Interior Ministry is desperately trying to purge the police forces of sectarian death squads and criminal elements. On October 4th, an entire police brigade stationed in Baghdad was "pulled off the line" and sent off to be vetted and retrained. Over 3,200 police have been dismissed - " 1228 had been sacked for breaking the law while nearly 2000 more were dismissed for dereliction of duty."Operation Together Forward, the security plan to restore order in Baghdad, is in danger of being overtaken by the self perpetuating sectarian violence. The operating has made improvements in the neighborhoods it has addressed, but large segments of Baghdad remain open to al-Qaeda suicide bombers and death squads. The methodical pace of the operation is ignoring the reality of the situation on the ground – as death squad attacks increase, the citizens of Baghdad are forced to turn away from their government and towards the armed gangs for protection.
But as you know I've been worried for some time now.
Posted by Tom at October 18, 2006 7:52 PM
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Comments
All of these conditions with Ramadan in October and the spike in violence prompted Tom Friedman to draw comparisons between Ramadan and the Tet offensive (military failures for our enemies, but an overall PR success). Even Bush himself told ABC News "He could be right,'' referring to Friedman. "There's certainly a stepped-up level of violence and we're heading into elections." Tony Snow has made similar acknowledgements that this is similar to the Tet offensive. Personally, I think this comparison to Tet is overstated (although I haven’t been able to read Freidman’s article), and this month seems like one of many in recent time where violence has unfortunately increased while stability is far away.
Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison has added a voice to the crowd. In news reports, she described the situation in Iraq as "chaos" and said Tuesday that it's time to consider splitting the country into semiautonomous regions – an approach she said would boost stability but also require more American troops. "We have to step back and stop trying to put our American ideas onto this problem and start trying to get an understanding of their views, and strong-held prejudices," the Texas Republican said.
This minor political noise seems to be the pre-show for the James Baker report, which will probably echo many of these concerns, and provide some solutions that are very different than the spin we have heard about the war so far (the insurgency is in it’s “last throes”, the violence is carried out by a small group of dead-enders, the Iraqi oil revenue will pay for the war in the long run, Iraq is on the path to democracy and stability, etc).
In my view, I have yet to see a Tet offensive event. To most of the public, last month has been the same as the others, a stream of daily deaths in Iraq from IEDs and combat, with more problems from Iraqi-Iraqi violence. Iraq is far from stable, but is the insurgency really on the verge of a big landmark PR win? I haven’t seen it yet. I will be very interested in the Baker and their assessment of the current situation and their recommendations. Iraq seems to muddle along, but I don’t think we’ve seen a landmark event that says this project is without a pulse and there is no hope left, although we certainly are close.
Tom: I would also point that committee member Ed Meese was attorney general under Reagan and a part of Reagan’s National Security Council. He was implicated in the Iran/contra and Wedtech scandals, so for better or worse, he certainly has experience in Washington and dealing with military and international issues. As a black mark on his name, I guess you could say he helped with the ultimate appeasement; giving the Iranians HAWK missiles in exchange for freeing American hostages. Message to Iran from the Regan administration: if you kidnap out people, we will give you missiles if you let them go.
Posted by: Jason at October 19, 2006 5:48 PM
