Iraq: Facing the Truth, and Now What? Posted by Suzanne Nossel

After a few posts about how progressives can build on their recent successes at the polls, readers have had frustration with my inadequate prescriptions for Iraq policy.  Well, I fess up.  I can't promise to solve this any more than the Administration, the Congress, the military or the Baker-Hamilton Iraq Study Group can.  But for those who demand more, here's what I can say on how I see the situation and what we do next:

1.  The scenarios where maintaining current troop levels and adopting various political strategies pay off by producing greater stability seem wildly far-fetched - In short, its tough to imagine a regional conference, a new political bargain among Sunni and Shiite, the involvement of Syria and Iran, an oil trust, the partitioning of Iraq or any of the other steps talked about producing a sustainable agreement that will quell the Iraqi factions and militias.  Not least of the problems is that with our credibility crisis and the Iraqi military's wholesale failings, there's no one obvious to police a ceasefire assuming one could be reached.  In short, it doesn't look like anything that could be tried at this stage stands a reasonable shot of "working."

2.  Talk of a US pullout to put pressure on the Iraqis to "get their act together" simply wont work - Its become very popular to pledge efforts to force Iraqi Prime Minister al-Maliki and others to take control of their country and wean themselves from over-dependence on US troops.  This is the equivalent of deciding to close down the homeless shelter so that residents will finally just go out and find themselves jobs and apartments.  The reasons are rooted in a tangle of political hurdles, legitimate fears, and probably some personal limitations among the Iraqi leadership, but bottom line is:  the Iraqis can't and won't manage to stem the fighting on their own in the short term.

3.  At least in the near-term, if US troops pull out, conditions on the ground in Iraq will probably get worse in terms of lives lost - There are conflicting figures about how many people are dying daily in Iraq, but whether there are 100 or 300 violent deaths a day, the numbers could go up and with the absence of any force capable of maintaining order, its reasonable to expect that they will.   There are plenty of other risks associated with a pull-out, including the spillover of violence into regions of Iraq that are currently quiet, the encouragement of al-Qaeda to turn the country into a new stomping ground, and the emboldening of a potentially incorrigible Iran.

4.  Putting in more US troops seems untenable at this point, and there's no evidence it would help - Not much more to say on this.  It's untenable both for political reasons and because we don't have the troops available (which ties back to the political reasons, but is also an independent constraint).  When we infused Baghdad with more troops, conditions worsened.  When he testified on before the Senate Armed Services Committee last week, General Abizaid offered no hope that more troops was the answer.

5. The US needs to be seen to try everything to end the crisis - From a moral perspective and in terms of our international legitimacy, no matter what we do the fate of Iraq will be on our hands in the eyes of the Iraqi people and the world.  While that doesn't mandate an indefinite commitment to a strategy that's manifestly failing, it does mean that reasonable suggestions - the regional conference, the involvement of Iran and Syria - must be pursued even if the chances of their working are remote.  This does not mean that we need to sustain current troop levels until these avenues have been exhausted. 

6.  The US cannot confidently or credibly pick a winner among the Iraqi political factions - Some analysts suggest that in order to quell Iraq, the US should side with a faction - there are arguments favoring both Sadr, the Baathists, and other individual militant groups - and help them fight to the finish to defeat their opponents are assert stable rule.  Unfortunately, our track record of picking foreign political horses in Vietnam, Latin America, Iraq (remember Chalabi?) and elsewhere is dismal.  This strategy stands to potentially deepen Iraq's crisis and - by attempting to impose a leader hand-picked in Washington - erode whatever remaining credibility we have built up as a result of Iraq's lurch toward democracy. 

7.  Folding Iraq into a broader quest for Middle East peace won't solve the crisis any quicker - There's been talk that because the Iraqi insurgency may be fueled in part by frustrations over the plight of the Palestinians, resolution of the conflict ought to be enveloped in a broader strategy for peace in the region, including principally between Israel and the Palestinians.  But wrapping Iraq's fate around an Israeli-Palestinian settlement is hardly a sure path to swift resolution.  On a political note, suggesting that Iraq's fate is somehow inextricably linked to the broader Middle East peace process could become an excuse for the Administration to throw up their hands, averting blame for a regional standoff that no prior President has been able to resolve.

8.  The effort to train Iraqi troops and police is failing - This is hard to face up to, but after years of effort and continued reports like this, its hard to deny.  That's not to say the training effort is a waste, or couldn't be strengthened, but rather that the idea of withdrawing significant troop numbers and simultaneously beefing up the training effort will not significantly buttress Iraq's ability to fend for itself.

9.  If we don't begin a planned exit, there's a good chance we'll find ourselves in an unplanned one - Its surprising that by now we haven't experienced the Iraqi equivalent of the 1983 bombing of the Marine barracks in Beirut or the dragging of a corps of an American soldier through the streets of Mogadishu a decade later.  But it seems likely that that day will come.

So what do we do next:

In short, develop a withdrawal scenario that includes whatever steps can reasonably be taken to minimize the chaos in our wake.  A regional conference, talks with Syria and Iran, improved training and reconstruction efforts, political mediation and efforts to bolster the security of less violent regions should all be part of the package.  To the extent we can engage Iraq's neighbors as well as any other global powers who are willing to step up to the plate and help us and Iraq, we should.  We should be honest with ourselves and with the Iraqis about what we are doing and why, acknowledging all of the above rather than pretending that we're handing off a country that's in better shape than it is.  But we should commit to getting out of there regardless of how the diplomacy and mediation progress.

Our exit should be as responsible and forthright as our entrance was wanton and misleading.   The best thing we can promise troops who are now being asked to put their lives at risk for an all-but-declared failure is that they are taking risks to enable the US to make the best out of a terrible situation, preserving what can be saved of both Iraqi stability (in geographic pockets) and of American credibility.  Its by no means the mission they signed up for, but its an important one nonetheless.

Comments

[Cal]

The US needs to be seen to try everything to end the crisis...While that doesn't mandate an indefinite commitment to a strategy that's manifestly failing, it does mean that reasonable suggestions - the regional conference, the involvement of Iran and Syria - must be pursued even if the chances of their working are remote.

This continues to be the area where you get vague. What does "doing everything" mean?

Would you agree that Iran has the right to develop the nuclear fuel cycle in exchange for its help in Iraq? (That's probably the minimum required to get its support)? What about the Golan and Syria?

If you're not willing to at least negotiate these issues, then we shouldn't be talking nonsense about how "the US needs to be seen to try everything to end the crisis." Nobody will be fooled by this but us.

[Zathras]

Had I written this post I would have put the penultimate paragraph first. The American priority with respect to Iraq must be to remove the burden imposed by our commitment there on our resources, on the structure and capabilities of our military, and on the time and attention of our government.

If that can be done without worsening conditions in Iraq, great. It will have to be done regardless, however, and among ourselves we ought to be clear about that. No illusion Americans have cherished about this subject -- not about WMD, or Iraqi gratitude for their deliverance from Saddam Hussein, or the likelihood that a mostly Arab country was capable of building and sustaining a democracy -- has been more profound or consequential than the illusion that this one, mid-sized Arab country and its future are more important to the United States than any other region or task in the whole field of foreign policy (or indeed than all the others put together). It isn't, and never has been, and American policy needs to start reflecting that fact.

That is the main pount. Secondarily, though, I observe that though the herd of Washington foreign policy analysts is convinced that American withdrawal from Iraq is sure to bring all Iraq's neighbors flying into the country to join in its civil war while a terrorist sanctuary blossoms in Anbar, there are elements in this scenario that seem unlikely. Iran may have some illusions about how much it has to gain from direct involvement in Iraqi sectarian fighting, but Iraq's other neighbors do not seem to be champing at the bit to place themselves in the line of fire. Moreover the potential for terrorist training and development in a country where Sunni Arabs and Shiites are intent on killing one another may be less than some people think. In Afghanistan, after all, terrorists could be trained, indoctrinated and so forth for operations outside the country because the civil war there had essentially been won by the Taliban by the mid-1990s. I wonder if there is not some "fighting of the last war" going on among terrorism experts looking at Iraq after the Americans leave and seeing Afghanistan as it was ten years ago.

[J Thomas]

I want to note that our military problems have come from a failure to negotiate.

We started out saying we wanted democracy but we forbid Ba'athists from participating and we annulled elections when religious leaders won. Surprise! The people who got disenfranchised had no stake in the democracy we wanted to supply to them.

And all along we have refused to recognise militias. We try to build an iraqi army and we have no way to get people to be loyal to it. Meanwhile we ignore or try to suppress the militias whose members are ready to die for what they believe.

We try to build police forces and army units that are supposed to confront the militias and disarm them. Because we assume that militias are antidemocratic?

It's likely too late now, but imagine that it wasn't. Imagine that we went to each militia we could find and invite them to define the boundaries they're willing to commit to maintain order are. And then we look at the overlaps, and invite the militias with overlapping claims to work something out. They could agree on boundaries, or share authority, or maybe barring anything else they could fight it out.

We could start paying militias to maintain order in their areas. The more violence reported, the less pay.

This might seem like a step backward for democracy promotion. Some of these guys are thugs. But while we're officially giving them no status but things to be disarmed, how much influence do we have over them? And who actually has power now, the thugs with loyal militias or anybody else?

Once the violence dies down and the militias are official government units with pay and responsibility, then the iraqi government can look at reducing their thugginess. One good step would be to announce that the (paid) militia leaderships will become elected positions. Who can really argue with that? And each leader will have lots of loyal militia members who'll vote for him. But within a generation it could settle down to politics as usual.

Would iraq become an islamic state? Maybe more than the USA is a christian one. We could live with that Our problems have centered around telling iraqis what we want them to believe and what we want them to do instead of noticing what they believe and what they want to do. The militias represent a primitive form of democracy. One gun, one vote. Recognise them and get them organised some, and they're likely to evolve into something even more democratic. Oppose them and what do we get?

What kind of democracy would we have if we were forbidden to let people organise into political parties? People could believe whatever they wanted but they couldn't organise? In the absence of security, militias are like political parties. People who agree enough to stake their lives on it. And then we say they must disband. Only the democracy we give them is OK, nothing else. They disagree, they don't disband, they're stronger than the government we gave them and we can't disarm them -- we can only kill them when we're ready to apply overwhelming force.

Find the people who're ready to die for their beliefs, and listen to what they want. What do we have to lose? Well, it might already be too late. But apart from that, what do we have to lose?

[Dan Kervick]

First, I would like to point out that we have a few dozen excellent reasons to talk directly with Iran, reasons that are not all related to Iraq. So I hope the question of whether or not to deal directly with Iran doesn't become hostage to the issue of what Iran can and cannot do for us in Iraq.

As you say, Suzanne, none of the options that have been proposed will bring a quick end to the violence. No matter which options are pursued, the results are going to be bad. That doesn't mean all of the results will be equally bad. So the question now is not which option will "work" to bring a speedy end to the violence, but rather which represents the least bad option.

I think the best options now available are those that accept the reality that much of the division of Iraq has already occurred, and that further movement in this direction is inevitable. Much of the ethnic cleansing has already happened; much of the division of Baghdad has already happened; the consolidation of home rule and the provision of security by local militias has already taken place in large parts of the country. Undoing the division of Iraq is likely to be more bloody than allowing the process of dissolution, which is already well underway, to continue.

The point is not whether some outside forces or foreign diplomats should "partition" Iraq by drawing lines on maps and attempting to impose them on Iraqis. The point is instead to recognize that Iraqis have already drawn several of their own lines, and that foreign efforts to assist those who now want to erase those lines, and to establish the primacy or influence of some particular sect or group over the whole country is a recipe for even greater violence.

As I see it there are some factions who are currently endeavoring to forcibly re-unify the country and others who are attempting to shore up local autonomy. It is the re-unifiers who are appear to be responsible for much of the most violence at the present time - particularly the insurgency and the US. The insurgency is fighting to re-establish Sunni power in Baghdad and over much of Iraq, and to reverse the movements toward Kurdish and Shiite autonomy. the US is fighting to shore up the pathetic Iraqi government - a government in name only - and establish its sway over all of Iraq, including Anbar province and other Sunni-dominated areas. The sooner both of these parties recopgnize that their aim is futile and they can't win, the better.

This is where may be some hope for Iranian assistance. It is not that the Iranians can bring stability to Iraq under a unified central government. They don't have that kind of influence - not over the whole country. But they do have influence over the Iran-affiliated militias. They can encourage their allies to shore up their own gains and focus on building a secure autonomous region in the Shiite provinces of the south. Currently, some Shiites who have accepted the inevitability of separation may be driven to press the fight against the insurgency, and crush it entirely, because they worry that they will not be able to defend themselves against the Sunni Arabs once the US leaves. This is where the US and Iran could work together to provide assurances to Shiites - along with money and weaponry. Similar support should be given to the Kurds. The Sunnis must be made to see that while they may be able to succeed in driving US forces out of Iraq, their dreams of a unified Iraqi state in which they hold some semblance of their former power are futile.

The major effort now should not be to shore up a central government in Iraq that is almost certainly doomed to fade away, but to recognize the de facto division of the country that has already occurred, and work to help assist who live in those parts of Iraq that are relatively safe in protecting themselves.

Suzanne, you say:

A regional conference, talks with Syria and Iran, improved training and reconstruction efforts, political mediation and efforts to bolster the security of less violent regions should all be part of the package.

How can we improve training and reconstruction efforts and withdraw at the same time? If we're gettting out, we have to give up on the idea of training the so-called "Iraqi Army," and working to reconstruct the country. The best we can do is give money to local governments. And I don't know how much the US can do in the area of political mediatiation. We're one of the combattants in this war, not some kind of honest broker. If anything, we need someone to step in with an offer to mediate between us and the people we're fighting.

[Don Bacon]

All the DA regulars have done a fine job of laying out the situation we have brought about in Iraq and what we might do about it. It's all right on--can't fault any of it. Suzanne and her first responders are first rate thinkers and writers. Seriously. A lot of it ought to be done.

My own feeling, expressed repeatedly, is that we should leave Iraq yesterday.

But don't you think that the powers that really run things in this country (and thereby the world) are probably chuckling at all this chatter and all these remedies from us and others for something that they don't really see as a problem at all? Bring stability to Iraq--why? The elite's making tons of money, the stock market is high, the US treasury is being depleted thus mandating the cutback of social programs--what's the problem with that? We've built at least four military mega-bases in Iraq complete with bowling alleys, bus routes, theatres and fast food franchises situated over our Iraqi oil--why leave all that? A small city almost the size of the Vatican, including three apartment buildings, called "the US embassy," is being erected in Baghdad--why go?

So after all this fanfare the government will "steer a middle course" somewhere between cut-and-run and stay-the-course. Very sensible and responsible, they'll say. And stir up trouble somewhere else besides--Iran comes to mind.

It's like the Palestine problem, which could have been solved long ago by a snap of US government fingers. But, like Iraq, the US government don't want it solved. Instability serves their needs for military spending, domestic repression and keeping us focused on foreign enemies instead of domestic ones.

"War is the health of the state"--Randolph Bourne

[Tommy Atkins]

The US and its allies have no option but
to remain in Iraq for the long term.

Do you seriously think you can afford to
allow al Qaeda to establish itself right
next door to Saudi Arabia? This region is
THE major source of oil, - the stuff that
underpins your economic well-being. What
a weapon to place in their hands, never
mind the fact that a US retreat would lead
to massive slaughter and suffering!

[flagrl118]

A military retreat is necessary but we need to give aid to the country in order help improve their economic situation. We need to help move them out of the poverty we created and let the Iraqis solve their problems. We seem to believe that we know how to solve their problems but we are doing a pretty bad job of it right now. So we should get out of their militarily and give them the resources to rebuild and improve their livelihoods and economy. It will save us a lot of money and a lot of lives.

[Don Bacon]

Tommy,
Al-Qaeda in Iraq? Not a factor.

From the WaPo: Although the Bush administration continues to emphasize the role of al-Qaeda in Iraq, Maples [DIA] described the current situation as "mostly an intra-Arab struggle to determine how power and authority will be distributed," with or without the U.S. presence. Al-Qaeda and foreign terrorist numbers were put at roughly 1,300, while Hayden [CIA], pressed by senators, estimated the number of insurgents in the "low tens of thousands." Maples estimated the number of Iraqi insurgents, including militias, at 20,000 to 30,000, and said there are many more who supply support.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/11/16/AR2006111601509.html

A US retreat would lead to massive slaughter and suffering? Already happening.

[J Thomas]

The US and its allies have no option but
to remain in Iraq for the long term.

Saddam's iraq had no option but to remain in kuwait for the long term. If they gave up and negotiated kuwait away, or failed to show the resolve to keep kuwait in the face of armed opposition, the result would be the eventual destruction of the whole iraqi nation.

But it turned out they just didn't have what it took to stay in kuwait.

And we don't have what it takes to stay in iraq. We don't have $12 billion a month to spare for the foreseeable future. We don't have the men. We don't have the bombs. We don't have the political will. We don't have a strategy. We don't have a clue. We don't have the will or the blindness to continue indefinitely despite all that.

[Tommy Atkins]

Don Bacon

Al Qaeda not a factor in Iraq? They are in
alliance with Sunni insurgents. The secularism of the Baath party is fading.
There is no reason to think that they
will not be given a safe haven from which to
mount a serious campaign in Saudi Arabia.

Yes, there is slaughter and suffering in
Iraq, but it's a matter of degree. If you
think that, say 500,000 deaths is bad, then
presumably you think 2 million in the wake of a US withdrawl is worse.

J Thomas

Maybe you're right. Maybe the US is not able
to secure the cheap oil its economy needs.
Maybe the future is a world dominated by
China, with economic and military decline
in the West.

[Don Bacon]

Tommy,
Provide proof, please, that "al Qaeda is in alliance with Sunni insurgents."

The Director of the CIA made no such claim in his recent statement--he said: "There remains in Iraq today an active insurgency; a broad al-Qai'da offensive targeting us and Iraqis; criminality and lawlessness on a broad scale; rival militias competing for power."
https://www.cia.gov/cia/public_affairs/speeches/2006/DCIA_SASC_Testimony.html

It does seem odd that General Hayden would say that al Qaeda is targeting Iraqis if as you claim they are allied with the Sunnis against us. Maybe you're right and the CIA is wrong. I wouldn't rule it out, actually.

The Sunni, as I understand it, do not share the al Qaeda goal of a broad Islamic caliphate. They are nationalists.

I think that the main point here is that whatever al Qaeda presence there is in Iraq, and whatever they are doing, was created by our presence, and our continued occupation characterized by wanton killing, rape and torture is acting as an effective al Qaeda recruiting program. So we need to get out. Now.

[J Thomas]

Tommy, betting the nation on our ability to "secure" the dregs of the world oil supply is an absurd plan. The more oil we burn for the war, the less is left.

Our national survival demands we find cheap alternate energy. If we fail at that we'll have a low third-world economy in 30-50 years regardless whether we control the last of the oil up to the end.

So how much of our wealth should we squander on iraq when we need to be transforming our economy? The only way it possibly makes sense to do what we're doing is to assume the chinese will continue to loan us money up to the point we default with no particular consequences.

[Bob Gaines]

"9. If we don't begin a planned exit, there's a good chance we'll find ourselves in an unplanned one"

There is another very important aspect to point 9: the logistics of getting out won't be quick or easy, and the logistics will require a great deal of careful planning and also some good luck with the insurgency.

As a number of military professionals have noted, US forces are deployed over a vast area, and there is not enough airlift to move them out. Most personnel and equipment will have to be trucked south to Kuwait (or to the Basra port if the insurgency allows). Imagine doing this under fire.

Because the military has outsourced a great deal of its logistical support to contractors, the military will be dependent on contractors to move much of the stuff. How well will that work if the contractors are under fire?

These and other issues are briefly described in this article:
http://www.globalsecurity.org/org/news/2005/051208-widthrawal-logistics.htm

Pat Lang and many of his readers comment here: http://turcopolier.typepad.com/sic_semper_tyrannis/2006/04/line_of_communi.html

[Don Bacon]

Maybe the future is a world dominated by China, with economic and military decline in the West.

Tommy, it's already happened. Look at the bottom of your laptop--what do you see? Made in China. China holds the equivalent of a trillion dollars in foreign reserves, 700 million of it US dollars. The US is eight trillion dollars in debt and climbing rapidly, a lot of it owed to China. Did you read the recent story about the Chinese diesel submarine bobbing to the surface only five miles away from one of our nuclear carrier fleets in the Pacific? Yep, that's gone too.

[Don Bacon]

Bob,
Excellent point--the 400 mile main supply route through Iranian-controlled southeastern Iraq, with our convoys manned by unreliable foreign nationals. A military nightmare to be sure.

[J Thomas]

I don't think that many of our convoys are manned by unreliable foreign civilians any more. The foreign civilians wised up, and the army didn't like what they had to pay the temp services, and we have more military guys doing it now. I think. I see local news snippets about individual soldiers who're driving convoy trucks.

When I think about it carefully, I think I've gone overboard about the supply problem. After all, in WWII the germans got supplies to the russian front across a very long distance in russia. They took some losses but their armored convoys mostly got through.

Our military surely has contingency plans prepared to deal with the possibility. It's a simple matter -- simply don't allow anybody but americans within 2 miles of the supply routes. Route them around cities, and then depopulate the actual routes. It's simple though somewhat expensive to dump smart minefields all along the route. It's simple to set up a 1600 square mile free-fire zone where any iraqis will be killed on sight.Simple to patrol it with UAVs. Etc.

We haven't done anything like that because we officially haven't admitted all of iraq is enemy territory. We have tried to make sure that iraqi supplies get through too. The imported food that 80% of the population depends on comes in through the southern ports and goes north, of course it has to go by rail

http://www.ajg41.clara.co.uk/iraqrailways.html

along a route that somewhat parallels our supplies. Why aren't we using the railway? I dunno, maybe it's too hard to protect. Maybe it's at capacity carrying food, maybe it just isn't our custom? We could use that railroad, we could publicise how desperate the iraqi food crisis is and then ship our supplies on trains that partly carry food. Point out that if they attack us they take food from their babies' mouths and worse if they sabotage the track.

There are lots of ruthless things we could do to get supplies through if we decided that we have no friends in iraq, and if we cared nothing about iraqi civilian casualties. We don't do those things because our mission is to help iraq. But if our army was in danger we could change that in an hour. Once iraqis knew that it was death to get within 2 miles of our supply lines, attacks on our convoys would go way down.

"Why did the mountain lion cross the road? Because it was too far to go around." We could make iraqis go around our roads. We don't do that now, because we aren't that threatened.

We could get our supplies through long enough to withdraw, we aren't going to lose an army there unless the iraqis get advanced weapons. There would be awful iraqi casualties but not awful US casualties. We ought to have contingency plans set up for it; if we don't it's only because of the horrible publicity we'd get if those plans were leaked.

Our supplies are not in real danger. It's just that if we effectively protect them we make a mockery of our mission in iraq.

[Kostoglotov]

Was there any special reason you removed your earlier post?

As for this post, Is there a particular reason that you excluded any discussion regarding the Kurds?

Point 4 is incorrect as stated. The troops are available.

Point 8 – Is the Iraqi 36th Commando Batt. a failure? The issue with training is more of trying to fit a square peg into a round hole.

[J Thomas]

Kostaglotov, I have answers that might not be the answers whoever you're asking them of would give.

It isn't obvious what to say about the kurds. We'd hate to abandon them. But they're landlocked, with enemies on all sides. We have abandoned them before and they trusted us again, having no better choice. They would presumably welcome our bases, but we have no way to supply a sizeable base in kurdistan unless we can get a neighboring country to let us run through them. Syria, perhaps? We could send the kurds advanced weapons by air, and get a favorable bang per pound ratio, and if they're cautious maybe nobody will invade them. A bolder plan would be to help the kurds invade iran and capture a port, or at least a stretch of shore that we could create a port on. This does not look plausible to me, but implausible plans have succeeded before.

Part 4: Some troops can be made temporarily available. Enough to matter? Hard to say. At first sight it looks like an insignificant number. But most of our troops are doing supply, or holding down bases. At one point we had about 30,000 available to go out and kick ass, the rest were all basicly maintaining those 30,000. If we could get another 20,000 or 30,000 and temporarily maintain them with the same facilities, it would make a big difference in our ability to kill people and blow stuff up. Maybe we would be twice as good at killing people and blowing stuff up. The trouble is, we've been the best at that for nearly four years and what has it gotten us? Getting a temporary surge in our ability to kill people and blow stuff up is not likely to be decisive. Can the insurgents etc lay low for 3 to 6 months while we stomp around, knowing we're about to leave again? Sure. So what it does, is it gives us a chance to put off the hard choices. We can spend 3 months arguing about it, and then 3 to 6 months doing it, and then 6 months deciding whether it helped enough for us to try another bold new strategy rather than give up. So that takes care of a year or more, and with one more last-gasp strategy to pass another year with we'll be at the 2008 elections.

Point 8: An iraqi battalion officially has about 600 men, right? So to date we've attempted to train, what? 250+ battalions? It would be very sad if the best of them was no good. The problem is that the iraqi government needs well over a quarter million trained loyal soldiers, and they claim to have something over half that, and there's no reason to think more than a quarter of those are particularly loyal to that particular entity.Our plan to build an effective iraqi army has mostly failed. We don't have nearly enough trained loyal iraqis to travel through iraq killing people and blowing things up the way we do.The plan is not working.

However, it's possible the iraqi army will become quite loyal to the iraqi government. I think one of the most plausible ways for that to happen would come if the iraqi government were to tell the US military to leave, and we left. A lot of iraqis might turn loyal in that case. And if they had elections where every militia can run its most popular candidates, so that the militias were represented according to their strength and popularity, most of the largest and most popular militias might then be loyal to the government and might help suppress the others. Just because the iraqi army is failing now, doesn't mean it has to fail until it's destroyed.

[Kostoglotov]

JThomas – Just throwing it out as fodder.

Regarding the Kurds, they seem to be forgotten in most of the discussions, especially as they seem the most stable. If a strict timeline for pull out is accepted, a fairly sizable force could be garrisoned and supported via air to quell any major problems in the south and give Iran pause to become involved directly in Iraq.

Re Point 4 – I don’t think more troops is necessarily the answer, its more of the right type that are required. The insurgents aren’t going to go looking for DA encounters with US troops as such we need to change our tactics.

Re Point 8 – I think the difference is comparing who trained the 36th Commando Batt Vs the information contained in the link provided by the Author. For our (US) efforts to be successful we need to concentrate on quality over quantity. I am not very hopeful that this shift in philosophy will take place as the was is being fought on 2 year election cycles.

I disagree with the final part of your post. The Iraqi’s that fit your description are in the minority right now and are smart enough to realize that if the US goes and hope of eradicating secular violence is gone.

[J Thomas]

Kostoglotov, you haven't given any indication what US forces can do to eradicate secular violence.

What we're good at is killing people and blowing stuff up. What we're not good at is talking to people in arabic, listening to people in arabic, telling iraqis apart, etc. How do we eradicate secular violence by killing people and blowing stuff up?

So if we have forces (supplied by air) in kurdistan that are supposed to "quell any major disturbances in the south", what's the method for them to do the quelling? I guess we could do airstrikes on major disturbances. Given a few hours notice we could send in a whole bunch of troops, secure a landing zone, land the troops, defend the landing zone, send out raiding parties to do whatever, withdraw to the LZ and pull out. Kind of like in vietnam except the helicopters and vehicles are harder to defend now. But what sort of target do we expect for this sort of exercuse?

I just don't see what the US military is doing to slow down the violence.

And about the official iraqi army, agreed that quantity isn't enough. But quality isn't enough either. You need a force that's everywhere important or the people you want to suppress will be acting up wherever you aren't. So it needs both very high quality and very large quantity. Which is not particularly attainable.

What are our guys doing over there that's worth 12 billion dollars a month?

[Kostoglotov]

Short term, I don’t think there is much that can be done to eradicate secular violence, unless the ROE are modified to permit troops to inflict civilian causalities in hunting insurgents. Though I doubt the American public has the stomach to see the US running Iraq in a Saddam like fashion.

I disagree the notion that we are not good at talking to Iraqi’s, the problem is we don’t have enough qualified individuals to manage this task. It’s a failure of previous administrations and the military to have missed the boat on assessing future threats.

As for troops stationed in the Kurdish controlled North, infiltration could be handled via an airborne operation. DA incidents have not faired well for the insurgents and I don’t think that they are itching for more fights.

The intent is not to remove all support in the South, rather remove basic infantry units that are as you note doing little to quell the violence. Keep SF, Psyop, etc type troops in areas to continue training and working with the Iraqis. Unfortunately this is a slow process and I doubt if we have the resolve to see this type of plan through.

Quality takes time. Again there is no quick fix, no instant gratification, to do it right its going to take time, money and yes American lives. I am of the opinion as well trained Iraqi units begin to take control and get acceptance from the populace, the insurgents will be forced to move and a smaller stabilizing force can be left in place.

[J Thomas]

Short term, I don’t think there is much that can be done to eradicate secular violence, unless the ROE are modified to permit troops to inflict civilian causalities in hunting insurgents.

I agree with everything here except the concept that our ROE don't allow civilian casualties. Surely the large majority of the casualties we've dished out have been civilians.

I disagree the notion that we are not good at talking to Iraqi’s, the problem is we don’t have enough qualified individuals to manage this task.

Yes, that's what I meant. I don't see that this is particularly a fault of previous administrations. Our arabic training program takes so much time that the enlistment runs an extra year. And lots of our arabic-trained soldiers drop out when their enlistment is up, partly since they can make so much more money with those skills as civilians. So if we had started training 5 times as many translators starting 10 years ago instead of 5 years ago, how many of them would we have now? Probably about the same number. The real crime is we didn't start training a lot more 5 years ago, or 3 years ago, or 2 years ago.But then, 3 years ago the consensus was that we weren't going to be in iraq very long....

As for troops stationed in the Kurdish controlled North, infiltration could be handled via an airborne operation.

I don't get it. Their strategy has mostly been to keep the action small-scale and spread out so we lack good targets. When we move in large forces they mostly move out and leave a few people behind to attack the worst-armored of them and make us take casualties. We have reduced our casualties by including sacrificial iraqi units that are so poorly armored they take the hits instead. They could surely continue the same approach when it's only iraqi army units on the ground. So what do we win beyond reducing US casualties? We still have a failing strategy.

Keep SF, Psyop, etc type troops in areas to continue training and working with the Iraqis. Unfortunately this is a slow process and I doubt if we have the resolve to see this type of plan through.

We have secure bases in the south to protect those people. The iraqis stage random small mortar attacks on those bases that do no real damage, and they can't do much else. How will we protect small numbers of US troops when the secure bases are no longer secure? How will we supply them without large armored convoys with heavy security? I guess if they're only doing SF and psyops type stuff maybe we could supply them by airdrop and helicopter etc. But they'd be depending on the iraqi army for a lot of their security.

Quality takes time. Again there is no quick fix, no instant gratification, to do it right its going to take time, money and yes American lives. I am of the opinion as well trained Iraqi units begin to take control and get acceptance from the populace, the insurgents will be forced to move and a smaller stabilizing force can be left in place.

Do we have that time? The various well-motivated militias are strong right now. They are the natural response of people who feel they are not properly represented in the government and who have access to weapons. The plan would have to be to move into each militia's area, disarm the militias, and replace them with small numbers of iraqi troops who're loyal to the government. But we can't do that until we get the competent loyal troops, and we have trouble getting the loyal troops until after there's a government in more than name. Chicken and egg.

And in the meantime we don't really have the initiative. We have a tactical initiative in that we can attack anywhere we want and they can't do anything about it except run away and leave a few people behind to give us casualties. But that level of initiative doesn't do us much good. Say we have some friends in an iraqi town where there's a lot of insurgent support. After the second time we move in and have a big firefight and move out again without leaving any protection for our friends, we can't expect our surviving friends to do or say anything in our favor the third time.

[Kostoglotov]

[i]I agree with everything here except the concept that our ROE don't allow civilian casualties. Surely the large majority of the casualties we've dished out have been civilians.[/i]

For starters, the answer depends on how one defines civilian and what you use as a starting date. Second, if civilians were bearing the brunt of US led attacks I think it would be plastered all over the news. Have civilians been killed by US forces, yes are they targeted as policy no.

[i] I don't get it. Their strategy has mostly been to keep the action small-scale and spread out so we lack good targets. When we move in large forces they mostly move out and leave a few people behind to attack the worst-armored of them and make us take casualties. We have reduced our casualties by including sacrificial iraqi units that are so poorly armored they take the hits instead. They could surely continue the same approach when it's only iraqi army units on the ground. So what do we win beyond reducing US casualties? We still have a failing strategy.[/i]

UW requires a different skill set than DA. The majority of US soldiers are not trained in UW, this combined with (as you noted) the insurgents tactics make the majority of soldiers targets.

One thing I missed is I would continue with CoE projects with a sizable security contingent.

[i] We have secure bases in the south to protect those people. The iraqis stage random small mortar attacks on those bases that do no real damage, and they can't do much else. How will we protect small numbers of US troops when the secure bases are no longer secure? How will we supply them without large armored convoys with heavy security? I guess if they're only doing SF and psyops type stuff maybe we could supply them by airdrop and helicopter etc. But they'd be depending on the iraqi army for a lot of their security.[/i]

Even against a small US military force, the insurgents are itching for more DA battles. These forces would have still have the benefit of US air support and other means of force multiplication.

[i] Do we have that time? The various well-motivated militias are strong right now. They are the natural response of people who feel they are not properly represented in the government and who have access to weapons. The plan would have to be to move into each militia's area, disarm the militias, and replace them with small numbers of iraqi troops who're loyal to the government. But we can't do that until we get the competent loyal troops, and we have trouble getting the loyal troops until after there's a government in more than name. Chicken and egg.
And in the meantime we don't really have the initiative. We have a tactical initiative in that we can attack anywhere we want and they can't do anything about it except run away and leave a few people behind to give us casualties. But that level of initiative doesn't do us much good. Say we have some friends in an iraqi town where there's a lot of insurgent support. After the second time we move in and have a big firefight and move out again without leaving any protection for our friends, we can't expect our surviving friends to do or say anything in our favor the third time.[/i]

I don’t think the alternative is a viable option.

Regarding the example, its somewhat dependent on the size of the town. Outsiders coming into a smaller town will more than likely be noticed and viewed with suspicion and lose any potential element of surprise. Larger towns would require a garrison of troops to dissuade attacks

[Lynne]

Hi guys. Ask a deeply religious Christian if he?d rather live next to a bearded Muslim that may or may not be plotting a terror attack, or an atheist that may or may not show him how to set up a wireless network in his house. On the scale of prejudice, atheists don?t seem so bad lately.
I am from Lebanon and also am speaking English, tell me right I wrote the following sentence: "Festival favorite were the world mine opens today in new york, san francisco, and berkeley."

Thank you so much for your future answers :o. Lynne.