Don't Forget Iraq Posted by Lorelei Kelly

...in New Orleans and southern Mississipi for Thanksgiving and just now found a laptop with cable. NOLA is looking significantly better than it did last January, but it is still a city in shock.(a resident told me that their post-Katrina motto is "together alone" the same as Sinn Fein in Ireland. Its not hard to understand why, given their virtual abandonment by the rest of us)

These past few  days have seen a jaw-dropping amount of carnage in Iraq....and my Thanksgiving prayers were for everyone over there and also about making sure Americans never allow an ideologically driven war to happen again.  Hopefully, the elections this month will start the long slow road back to a healthy democracy

Here are some comments sent to me by a friend who was deployed to Iraq a few years ago and has since followed the war closely and with a planner's perspective:

...with regard to U.S. war-policy and strategy in Iraq – no revisits of the past recent history of the Iraq War policy and strategy, but instead a deliberate focus on "new prescriptions."  ...a way to both change the course and stay the fight....

• A continuation of US support for the Iraqi Governance-Building enterprise. Specifically,
• Continued diplomatic, economic, military and "other" support to the Iraqi government in its ongoing "national reconciliation" efforts;
• Support in the Iraqi governments "DDR" process (Disarmament; Demobilization; and Reintegration) regarding the current militia threat to current and future Iraqi Nation-Statehood ;
• A "moderate" theater-strategic re-posturing of the preponderance of US military force units more toward the Iraqi territorial borders so as to enable two critical conditions for the future success of Iraq's continuing war for Nation-hood and the US/International Community's grand strategic interest in waging a successful long war against transnational and global terrorism:

Posture US forces at the operational center of gravity in the GWOT-in-Iraq and the surrounding region . . . at the borders, and in so doing, also . . .

Posture ourselves in locations that offer the Iraqi Government a means of ensuring the sovereignty of its own national borders (one important condition of nation-state sovereignty) as well as setting the best operational conditions for ensuring an internal conflict over the future of Iraq that is not dominated by unwanted and unwarranted "foreign" influences.

• Continue to reinforce the US military "advisory" program to Iraqi Security Forces, with a plus-up of officer-advisor commitments to ISF units (the US "Military Transition Team" program, or MTT) – this plus-up could come from a downsizing of the US forces in Iraq that would come from the theater-strategic re-posturing of US military forces to the Iraqi periphery.      

Any comments?

Comments

[Dan Kervick]

Lorelei, I’ve read your friend’s comments several times now, but I’m having a lot of difficulty understanding them. They seem to be written in some sort of military-bureaucratic code intelligible only to Pentagon staffers, and display the legendary military love of euphemism. But interestingly, he scare-quotes his own euphemisms, as though even he is embarrassed to be using them. Note the quotes around “new prescription”, “other”, “DDR”, “moderate”, “foreign”, “advisory” and “Military Transition Team”.

So now the new buzz expression is “new prescriptions”? I must have missed that press release. But I see that these new prescriptions are designed to split the difference between “changing course” and “staying the fight”. That’s slick. We chart a bold middle course between two euphemisms with a third euphemism.

I’ve hear much talk over the past week or so about increasing the number of advisors in Iraq. Well, anybody familiar with the history of the Vietnam War and US involvements in Latin America should feel a chill whenever they hear the word “advisors,” since the term seems to be nothing but a euphemism for “soldiers.” The escalation in Vietnam from a small skirmish to an all-out war came about through gradual increases in the number of “advisors” in country.

And what are these advisors supposed to do exactly? Command the units? Do most of the actual fighting? Baby sit? I’m having trouble believing that the failure over three years to produce an effective Iraqi national army is due to the fact that there aren’t enough US military “advisors” in Iraq. Instead my impression is that the problem is that not too many people are really interested in fighting in a sham army for a sham government, against people whom they like more than they like the government. They might be interested in drawing a paycheck, of course. So maybe the job of these so-called advisors is just to continue to do the actual fighting, but now to pretend that it is Iraqis who are doing the fighting, and to pretend that there aren’t as many US soldiers in Iraq – but just some advisors. It all strikes me as classic Pentagon doubletalk designed to pull the wool over the public’s eyes.

The “plus-up” of advisors is supposed to follow a “theater-strategic re-posturing of the preponderance of US military force units more toward the Iraqi territorial border.” (I love that one – “theater-strategic re-posturing” – it’s better even than “redeployment”). The description of the re-posturing contains the crux of your friend’s “new prescriptions”. The point is to:

§ Posture US forces at the operational center of gravity in the GWOT-in-Iraq and the surrounding region . . . at the borders, and in so doing, also . . .

§ Posture ourselves in locations that offer the Iraqi Government a means of ensuring the sovereignty of its own national borders (one important condition of nation-state sovereignty) as well as setting the best operational conditions for ensuring an internal conflict over the future of Iraq that is not dominated by unwanted and unwarranted "foreign" influences.

I presume the foreign influences to which he is referring are US influences. If I may be so bold, then, as to hazard a straightforward English translation of these hieroglyphs, this is how I read them: We’re going to get ourselves out of the insurgency-fighting business, withdraw our forces from the main battlefields of the actual war, hang out in safer locations near the borders, and let the Iraqis fight their own civil war without a lot meddling by Uncle Sam.

But mindful of the eternal military need for face-saving doubletalk in the event of retreat, your friend chooses to describe getting our soldiers out of Iraq’s business as “ensuring the best operational conditions” for Iraqis to fight the civil war themselves. And instead of admitting that one of the “new prescriptions” is that the soldiers are be removed to a safe distance, he would have us believe that the safer place they are being moved to is actually the new “operational center of gravity” in the Global War on Terror in Iraq. Later he forgets himself, though, and describes the re-posturing as a move to the “Iraqi periphery.”

So far, minus the bureaucratic bullshit, I would say this all sounds like a step in the right direction. But I worry again about all the talk of advisors, and wonder if this alleged “re-posturing” isn’t just designed as some sort of sham for public consumption. Your friend wants to “continue to reinforce the US military "advisory" program to Iraqi Security Forces, with a plus-up of officer-advisor commitments to ISF units (the US "Military Transition Team" program, or MTT)”, and says the reinforcements could come “from a downsizing of the US forces in Iraq that would come from the theater-strategic re-posturing of US military forces to the Iraqi periphery.”

This sure sounds like some creative bookkeeping to me. First we downsize the US forces in Iraq as part of a withdrawal … oh, excuse me…I mean a theater-strategic re-posturing… and then we re-insert those soldiers - except that now we call them “advisors”.

[J Thomas]

This sounds sensible to me, within the limits that we'd be staying in iraq.

Our troops are not particularly useful for fighting insurgents or fighting the civil war. We mostly can't tell who's on the other side until they shoot at us, except for places where we know everybody's against us like Haditha. Not useful.

But we can seal borders. We don't have to be able to tell people apart to kill them when they try to cross the border. And it gets us out of the way. When we're controlling the borders we officially give the iraqi government sovereign control of those borders, and to the extent that foreign terrorists are the problem we're handling it. Foreign terrorists are part of the GWOT in ways that iraqi civil war is not.

Advisors can do various things for the iraqi army. They continuously monitor the morale and desertion rates of the units they attend, far better data than we'd get otherwise. They can note problems with supply and possibly get them fixed. (Iraqi logistics is notoriously corrupt, which causes problems for the fighting units.) They can train iraqi officers on-the-job. They can train soldiers on-the-job. They can sometimes shame iraqi soldiers into doing their job when they'd otherwise chicken out.

When we expand US forces, the ideal is to mix the new guys into operational units. Put one green squad with two seasoned squads, and one mixed platoon with two seasoned platoons, and so on. Ideally, at every level you have two experienced people to coach the new guy. I've read that the best mix of advisors to iraqis is 1:1 which surprises me, I'd expect it to be 2:1 as it is inside our own units. Another way we could benefit iraqi units is to provide firepower. We're great on firepower but we tend not to know which way to aim it. If we had iraqis to tell us who to shoot we could attack without waiting to get shot at first. That would help with the civil war provided the iraqis who're telling us who to shoot happen to be on the right side.

I foresee some problems. We don't want our troops spread out in long thin lines, we don't want an eggshell strategy. The obvious way to control the border is to lay down smart minefields and patrol that border with UAVs etc. That doesn't take a whole lot of ground troops, mostly just some protected bases to launch the UAVs and drop more mines and sensors. We could just about do that without troops incountry at all.

One problem with advisors is that our advisors are at the mercy of the troops they're advising. They can't stay in full armor all the time, so they get lots of chances to be shot by small arms fire, blown up with grenades or RPGs, etc. I predict casualties would go up.

[Don Bacon]

The "DDR" process (Disarmament; Demobilization; and Reintegration) for the Iraqi militias was a new term to me so I looked it up. It apparently is a United Nations term applied to post-conflict peacekeeping, and hardly applicable to the current Iraq situation. The Prime Minister depends on SCIRI and its Badr Brigades (which have infiltrated the police) and Sadr with his militias for his support. There will be no DDR of the PM's support.

The "sovereign" Prime Minister also depends on these militias because he has not been given control of the New Iraqi Army. The NIA, now poorly trained and equipped with cast-off Soviet bloc equipment, is completely, except for one division, under US control. So the main role of the "advisors" is to see that US orders are carried out and that the army stays "loyal." The NIA does not have the logistical capability to carry on independent missions--all of this designed to make sure that we don't have to face this army in the field. It's sort of a continuation of the disbanding of the previous Iraqi army.

The main problem I have with these prescriptions is that they are all keyed toward helping the Iraqi "government," which is actually a fiction applied to some of our puppets ensconced in the safety of the Green Zone. There is no mention of the Iraqi people who due to our torture-and-murder-based occupation want us out of Iraq, as do the American people. So as Dan suggests this alleged “re-posturing” is just designed to be "some sort of sham for public consumption" to justify our continued brutal imperialist occupation of Iraq with its oil.

So much for the election mandate--here we are discussing how to re-arrange the deck chairs on the Titanic. "Troops to the borders"--how silly.

[Spencer]

"Support in the Iraqi governments "DDR" process (Disarmament; Demobilization; and Reintegration) regarding the current militia threat to current and future Iraqi Nation-Statehood."

Sadly -- and this echoes a point made by Don Bacon -- this is pure fiction. First off, there is no "DDR" process in Iraq. (Not that it was ever actually DDR -- it was "TR," or Transition & Reintegration, in the term of the plan's US architects, David Gompert and Terry Kelly. See this piece: http://www.tnr.com/doc.mhtml?i=20050711&s=ackerman071105)

Second of all, the Maliki government is so precarious, it may actually be about to fall. The Sadr City bombing appears to be akin to a 9/11 in the Shiite mind: When Maliki spoke of reconciliation in Sadr City, people threw stones at him and shouted "coward" & "collaborator." (See: http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-112607iraq,0,4632499.story?coll=la-home-headlines)
Sadr has promised to pull out of the government & cut off Maliki if he goes through with his planned tete-a-tete with Bush. In this environment, Maliki would be downright suicidal to take action against the militias, whatever that means.

Any strategy predicated on the "Iraqi government" needs to be greeted with the question, "What exactly are you talking about? This government or the political process itself?" It's not a simple question: one can easily foresee a situation where the process cannot survive a collapse in the government. On the other hand, supporting Maliki in the name of the political process creates a not-unjustifiable perception, especially among Sunnis & disaffected Shiites, that the U.S. believes the process itself reduces to preserving the power of the "collaborator" Maliki.

[Don Bacon]

I wonder if Maliki has a round trip ticket to Amman, or one way.

[Cal]

There are approximately 1,300 foreign fighters in Iraq, according to the CIA. Even if we kill all of them tomorrow, it's unlikely that our army can prevent this number from being replaced within months. And these fighters are only a small percentage of the overall insurgents/militants anyway. Most of the fighters are Iraqis.

I would also echo the other commenters on the training of "government fortces," which are really just Shia militia. This is completely futile, unless our objective is to simply crush the Sunnis (and play right into Bin Laden's hands -- again).

Here's a Joint Chiefs memorandum on the preconditions necessary for U.S. military aid to South Vietnam to be effective:

It is absolutely essential that there be a reasonably strong, stable civil government in control. It is hopeless to expect a U.S. military training mission to achieve success unless the nation concerned is able effectively to perform those governmental function essential to the successful raising and maintenance of armed forces.

-- August 4 1954

[Don Bacon]

Dan,
As a relief from high-fallutin Pentagon jargon ("theater-strategic re-posturing") try a little M.Kane Jeeves: "And, then, there’s the Pentagon, trying to figure out what to do in Iraq. A group of war planners came up with three sports-oriented plans. “Go big. Go long. Go home.” (Note: They chose these monikers because phrases like “Hail Mary pass,” “punt” and “screwed the pooch” had already been used.)"

[Cayle]

Supporting the Millennium Development Goals should be priority number one for stabilizing any impoverished naiton, including Iraq. What the vast majority of Iraqis need is economic support and foreign aid, not our hand-forced attempt at "freedom." According to The Borgen Project only $19 billion annually is required to cut global poverty in half by 2015 and end it by 2025. More than $400 billion has already been spent on the Iraq War. Giving something back to the Iraqis instead of always taking is our greatest humanitarian responsibility.

[flagrl118]

We need to get out of Iraq and start putting our funding toward the Millennium Development Goals. Until we address global poverty, we will not see a decline in violence or any real , long-term peace. The Borgen Project is working towards these goals and it should be imperative to every individual, community, and nation of the world.

[Don Bacon]

Re: The Borgen Project
Unfortunately there is no interest on the part of the US government in "stabilizing" or bringing "freedom" to any country, including Iraq. There is simply no profit in those things. The US government invades countries for power and profit--those are the US government millenium goals. What other country has committed aggression in the last fifty years? Russia in Afghanistan, big mistake, like ours in that hellish country.

The US government gives money to other governments to buy their loyalty--Colombia, Israel and Egypt. We failed hugely even to help disaster victims in our own country.

The immense Pentagon budget for forces and equipment--half a trillion dollars a year--is not even debated in Congress even though the US faces no military threat in the world today. The money is only spent to support the corporate job-providers and sponsors of politicians,in the one industry we still excel in--war machines.

Iraqis do not need foreign support and foreign aid. What they need is to left alone, free of foreign predators. Unfortunately, because of the oil beneath their feet, this will not be their fate. In other words, it is not global poverty that causes war, as you state, it is greed--usually US government greed for their corporate sponsors.

Some poeple call this greed idealism. They say that the US is only interested in spreading democracy and freedom. How wrong they are! The US government aggression against Native Americans, Mexicans, Cubans, Hawaiians, Filipinos, Nicaraguans, Vietnamese, Iraqis and countless others was to spread democracy and freedom? Right, and My Pet Goat is a classic novel.

The Borgen Project is a wonderful thing. It surely is more blessed to give than to receive. Kind of a reverse earmark. Good luck.

[J Thomas]

What other country has committed aggression in the last fifty years?

Let's not get carried away. There was india against pakistan. Ethiopia against eritrea. Libya against chad. Israel against egypt and syria, and then egypt and syria against israel. Israel against lebanon, repeatedly. Argentina against britain. Kenya against uganda. (That last looked completely justified to me, but still....) China against tibet. Nigeria against biafra. There's no shortage of other-people's aggression. For that matter since 1956 there was USSR against czechoslovakia, and maybe against hungary and poland. I'm a little unclear about the dates on those last, possibly both of them were before 1956? 1956. Britain, france, and israel against egypt. Etc etc.

In terms of land area, the conquest of tibet would have to be one of the biggest of the last 50 years. But the USA has done far more direct military intervention far from our borders than anybody else. I guess that's because we're a superpower with control of the oceans. If we lost control of the oceans we'd be a lot more hesitant to send our armies beyond mexico, canada, and the caribbean. Possibly we'd do more invasions in south america to make up for our inability to invade overseas.

[J]

Come on Lorelei, this is "stay the course" with shifting milestones. As soon as I saw the words "continue", it looked bad. This plan would have worked in 2004, might have worked in 2005, but not this year.

Re: Louisiana, hey, Senator Landrieu's a good supporter of President Bush's policies, I find it hard to believe she's not getting all the billions of dollars she's asked for (as unwarrented as many of the requests were) in return for her support. And hey, the state governor can always pull the National Guardsmen out of Iraq and have them push piles of trash around. No offense to the good people of LA, but it's been a year, time to pull yourself out of the muck.

[Don Bacon]

JT,
There you go again, nit-picking on my major points with stuff like Ethiopia invading Eritrea. I had to look in my Atlas for that one. And Tibet. I'm not in your league when it comes to minor invasions, I admit it. I'm not exactly the brightest light in the invasion firmament.

But finally you focused on the US again, as I was, and that's good. "I know my own nation best. That's why I despise it the most. And know and love my own people, too, the swine. I'm a patriot. A dangerous man."--Edward Abbey

[flagrl118]

We need to start putting our efforts to Iraq's reconstruction. We need to start addressing the severe poverty that has been exacerbated by the war. It is time to address poverty in Iraq and all over the world. The Millennium Development Goals will not be achieved if we don't start actively working for them. The Borgen Project, a Seattle-based non-profit, encourages US politicians to fulfill the MDGs because reducing poverty will make the world safer (according to the National Security Strategy of the US)