Two assertions about Iraq ought to be challenged or at least examined more closely. The first is the idea that security improvements in Iraq and al-Qaeda’s defeat had little if anything to do with the US effort. The second is the assertion that the “real” strategic center of gravity always should have been Afghanistan, because the proper object of the War is to “get bin Laden”.
Take the question of whether the growing success in Iraq had anything to do with US effort. Once violence in Iraq began to wane and al-Qaeda was clearly being defeated, the search to find a non-American explanation began in earnest. For a while it was fashionable to credit Moqtada al-Sadr’s “ceasefire” with improving conditions in Iraq. The Guardian report of February 2008 ascribing nearly miraculous powers to al-Sadr typified the explanation that violence was down because he had turned it off.
the radical Shia cleric Moqtada al-Sadr today threatened to end a crucial six-month ceasefire that has been credited with halving the level of violence in Iraq. … His decision to order his militia to stand down last August allowed stretched US forces to re-establish some control in the country and helped reduce violence by 60%.
A variant of the same narrative was that Iran had for reasons never fully explained, decided to let a defeated American army off the hook. The Washington Post reported in December of 2007 that violence in the South had declined because
The Iranian government has decided “at the most senior levels” to rein in the violent Shiite militias it supports in Iraq, a move reflected in a sharp decrease in sophisticated roadside bomb attacks over the past several months, according to the State Department’s top official on Iraq.
Still another line of argument was that the Anbar Awakening occurred prior to and independently of the Surge. The Huffington Post’s Sam Stein for example, wrote, “on Tuesday evening, McCain falsely claimed that the downturn in violence in Iraq’s Anbar province was a result of the surge, when in fact the surge began months afterward.” Others argued that the fall in sectarian violence in Baghdad occurred because the “ethnic cleansing” had already been completed. Taken together the sum of the arguments were that the decline in violence in both northern and southern Iraq was the result of either dumb luck or enemy pity, a view neatly summed up by Barack Obama when he ascribed improvements in Iraq to a confluence of unforseeable factors. He said:
I think that, I did not anticipate, and I think that this is a fair characterization, the convergence of not only the Surge but the Sunni awakening in which a whole host of Sunni tribal leaders decided that they had had enough with Al Qaeda, in the Shii’a community the militias standing down to some degrees. So what you had is a combination of political factors inside of Iraq that then came right at the same time as terrific work by our troops. Had those political factors not occurred, I think that my assessment [that the Iraq was headed for catastrophe] would have been correct.
This discounts the effect of operations prior to the 20% increase in troop strength in Iraq that is commonly regarded as the start of the Surge. It discounts improvements in intelligence gathering, the creation of the Iraqi Army, the election of the Iraqi government, dismantling of the insurgency’s lines of communication of the insurgency, the change in tactics — a whole host of things — almost as if the Surge started from tabula rasa; a blank slate. Future historians can debate whether General Petraeus and George W. Bush won an accidental victory, like a monkeys who have luckily typed out Shakespeare’s XXIXth sonnet or whether the success owed something to skill and intelligence.
But that is a question for history, if Joe Klein of Time is to be believed. He wrote, “the reality is that neither Barack Obama nor Nouri al-Maliki nor most anybody else believes that the Iraq war can be ‘lost’ at this point.” How the quagmire and lost cause became the inevitable victory is of academic interest but the more practical question is what to do next. In the opinion of Barack Obama, the US should withdraw from Iraq to concentrate on Afghanistan, the central theater of the war against Islamic terror. According to Boston.com Obama said:
It is unacceptable that almost seven years after nearly 3,000 Americans were killed on our soil, the terrorists who attacked us on 9/11 are still at large. Osama bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahari are recording messages to their followers and plotting more terror. The Taliban controls parts of Afghanistan. Al Qaeda has an expanding base in Pakistan that is probably no farther from their old Afghan sanctuary than a train ride from Washington to Philadelphia. … I will focus this strategy on five goals essential to making America safer: ending the war in Iraq responsibly; finishing the fight against al Qaeda and the Taliban.
But is Afghanistan the enemy’s center of gravity? Juan Cole, who has been a critic of the campaign in Iraq from the beginning wondered whether Obama isn’t jumping from the “frying pan into the fire”. Certainly the Pakistani politicians thought he was.
After Obama met with Karzai, reporters asked his aide, Humayun Hamidzada, if the criticism had come up. He tried to put the best face on issue, saying the Afghan government did not see the comment as critical, but as a fair observation, since it had in fact been tied down fighting terrorism. Less forgiving were the politicians in Pakistan, who reacted angrily to Obama’s comments on unilaterally attacking targets inside that country. … The governor of the North-West Frontier province, Owais Ghani, immediately spoke out against Obama, saying that the senator’s remarks had the effect of undermining the new civilian government elected last February. Ghani warned that a U.S. incursion into the northwestern tribal areas would have “disastrous” consequences for the globe.
Even laymen might wonder whether distant Afghanistan and not the Middle East was the strategic center of gravity of Islamic fundamentalism. In an earlier post I wrote: “In the debate over whether America should have focused its initial response on uprooting al-Qaeda from Southwest Asia, one thing should not be forgotten. From it’s inception al-Qaeda’s center of gravity has been the the Middle East. It was the source of its money, leadership, ideology and manpower. Afghanistan’s importance from the beginning lay in what it could provide Bin Laden in terms of prestige he could parlay into into influence in Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Jordan, Syria and Iraq. The strategic value of land-locked, impoverished Afghanistan to the Jihad was as a symbol rather than a geopolitical prize. The image of Jihadis defeating the Soviet Army was the ultimate source of al-Qaeda’s credibility; something that could prise money, men and political authority from their home front, treasury and recruitment depot. Given a choice between giving up Afghanistan and reprising the defeat of a superpower in Iraq, al Qaeda would have clearly preferred the latter. This does not mean that Afghanistan is strategically unimportant, but it was always secondary to the Middle East.”
Kenneth Pollack in his new book A Path Out of the Desert: A Grand Strategy for America in the Middle East essentially agrees that the Middle East, with its petroleum resources, religious ideas and population is the foundation of the Islamic challenge facing the world today. It is in the Middle East that the ideological war against terrorism will be won or lost. And speaking of ideology, America’s efforts to maintain status quo relationships with some of the most repressive and dysfunctional governments on the planet have been much more damaging than the attempt to bring democracy to Iraq has been . It wasn’t driving Saddam from Iraq that has hurt America’s image so much as maintaing support for its loyal “allies”. Lee Smith, in reviewing the book says that “Pollack argues that Washington’s greatest sin in its relations with the Middle East has been its persistent unwillingness to make the sustained and patient effort needed to help the people of the Middle East overcome the crippling societal problems facing their governments and societies.” Whether Iraq, one of the few elected governments in the region, should be written off in order to return to business as usual deserves at least some consideration.
Philip Bobbitt in his new book Terror and Consent argued that “the struggle against terrorism is plainly a war, to be called a war and fought as a war, against religiously driven Islamist ideologues …”. In Bobbitt’s view terrorism is not simply a criminal activity, but a symptom of the convulsive transition between twentieth century state and the freewheeling 21st century “market state”, in which empowered individuals seek to live in a looser — but still ordered — polity. He scathingly criticizes those who would view terrorism as a “tactical event” amenable to a “policy minimimalism” which reduces the current world crisis to an effort to “get bin Laden”. Kenneth Anderson, reviewing Bobbitt’s book writes that:
Thus, in Barack Obama’s reckoning, Islamist terrorism is just one threat among so many: climate change and poverty, genocide and disease. The task is to learn to do as Western European countries do, and manage terror and terrorism, preferably within the existing confines of the criminal justice system.
But it will not be so reduced. The treasury of the Jihad, the wellsprings of its ideology and even the source of its manpower are not to be found in Afghanistan but in the Middle East. Michael Totten, traveling through the Balkans has found that the Binladensa — the people of Osama bin Laden — spreading Wahabism through the Balkans don’t hail from Afghanistan but from Saudi Arabia. “When they came here, the Wahhabis, with the intent to take full control of the Muslim community, they used these people who had been studying in Saudi Arabia and other Arab countries. They were using them to put them in some of the mosques, and now they are in control of eight mosques with these people who had been studying in the Arab countries.” Whatever place Osama Bin Laden temporarily occupies the homeland of the Jihad and the place where it all comes from is arguably the Middle East.
And it is in the Middle East — in Iraq — that the Islamic extremism has been most publicly defeated and humiliated; it is in Iraq where a dictatorial Arab regime has been overthrown. An ordinary observer might be forgiven for thinking the defeat of al-Qaeda right next door to Saudi Arabia was a great victory on strategic ground, which makes the efforts to ascribe improvements in Iraq to Moqtada al Sadr, Iran or the Anbar Sheiks even more puzzling. And as for Afghanistan, even Barack Obama could not seem to muster much of an argument for its strategic importance. At a July 26, 2008 McClatchy Newspaper interview he said:
I’m not here to lay out a comprehensive military strategy. That’s the job of our commanders on the ground. I can tell you what our strategic goals should be. They should be relatively modest. We shouldn’t want to take over the country. We should want to get out of there as quickly as we can and help the Afghans govern themselves and provide for their own security. Our critical goal should be to make sure that the Taliban and al Qaida are routed and that they cannot project threats against us from that region. And to do that I think we need more troops. I also think that we need to deal with the situation in Pakistan and the fact that terrorists are able to operate with relative freedom of movement there right now.
This is a remarkable statement, a complete admission that even if he accomplished all he set out to do, he would not accomplish much. He doesn’t call for a defeat of the Taliban — which would be meaningless — and still less for dismantling of Islamic extremism. One can’t help thinking that Obama’s reason for redeploying to Afghanistan is because it is not Iraq. That is strategic vision of a sort, but of a very political kind.
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132 Comments
1. Jeff Burton:How the quagmire and lost cause became the inevitable victory is of academic interest
It’s interesting that the left’s talking points on Iraq have followed the same trajectory they did during the Cold War. While the issue was in doubt, the conflict was portrayed as hopeless, unwinnable, and the best course of action was to just stop resisting. After it was over, the story changed to emphasize the inevitable collapse of our enemies and how our actions had little to do with it.
Jul 29, 2008 - 5:55 am 2. Utopia Parkway:The importance of Afghanistan and more recently the tribal regions of Pakistan to AQ has been mostly as a safe haven. AQ needs its rear areas where it can train and plot and live without much fear of being shot in the streets. The time that Afghanistan stood as a symbol for AQ is past.
The war in Afghanistan has been a symbol for everyone who was against the war in Iraq. Every one of them has been saying since 2003, we shouldn’t be in Iraq, we should be getting bin Laden in Afghanistan. This is a cudgel to be used against GWB and the war in Iraq.
I think that AQ fights against the US in Afghanistan because they are like the scorpion in the fable. It’s their nature. They are nearby and they fight anyone who comes near them. Yeah sure they’d like to humiliate the US in Afghanistan and maybe they have some hope that if they could force the US to retreat from Afghanistan then it could become a symbol for them but I don’t see how they can really hope for this.
Jul 29, 2008 - 6:00 am 3. RWE:In any town there is always at least one run-down house used by neer-do-wells. It is run-down and left alone because no one wants it, not even the neer-do-wells, who only want to use it because no one else does.
That is what Afghanistan is, a run-down house no one wants. The Bin Laden types want it because it is the one place they can go and not be bothered too much.
But the problem in any town is not simply the existence of run down houses but the fact that people are willing to tolerate the existence of the neer-do-wells. And no one thinks that the mere existence of a run-down house will lead to the occupants storming city hall and taking over the entire municipality. If they could do that they would not be living in the run-down house in the first place.
It would be nice to burn the house down and shoot the occupants as they ran out, but that would set up screams of protest and thus is not an option unless you want to, at a minimum, spend a lot of time in court.
Jul 29, 2008 - 6:04 am 4. Pseudo-Polymath » Blog Archive » Tuesday Highlights:[...] Richard Fernandez, who is in my opinion probably the most insightful conservative essayist blogging, takes on two left-leaning assumption on Iraq and Afghanistan. [...]
Jul 29, 2008 - 6:10 am 5. Stones Cry Out - If they keep silent… » Things Heard: e29v2:[...] Richard Fernandez, who is in my opinion probably the most insightful conservative essayist blogging, takes on two left-leaning assumption on Iraq and Afghanistan. [...]
Jul 29, 2008 - 6:12 am 6. Insufficiently Sensitive:Uh, some of the savants who languidly dismiss the festering presence of AQ in Pakistan/Afghanistan might consider how successful it previously was at providing a refuge and logistics center for the blokes who planned and financed the destruction of two ugly but useful buildings in New York City.
Jul 29, 2008 - 6:33 am 7. Teresita:Still another line of argument was that the Anbar Awakening occurred prior to and independently of the Surge.
Sorry Wretchard, but that line of argument has weight. Here’s a briefing on the Anbar Awakening given by a colonel months before Bush even announced the 2007 Surge, let alone sent troops there (who were mainly to stabilize the Baghdad situation anyway, not Anbar)
This is a different phenomena that’s going on right now. I think that it’s not so much the insurgent groups that are fighting al Qaeda, it’s the — well, it used to be the fence-sitters, the tribal leaders, are stepping forward and cooperating with the Iraqi security forces against al Qaeda, and it’s had a very different result. I think al Qaeda has been pushed up against the ropes by this, and now they’re finding themselves trapped between the coalition and ISF on the one side, and the people on the other.”
Jul 29, 2008 - 6:33 am 8. Mrs. Davis:how successful it previously was at providing a refuge and logistics center for the blokes who planned and financed the destruction of two ugly but useful buildings in New York City.
Are you referring to Germany?
Jul 29, 2008 - 6:40 am 9. SpeakEasy:Teresita et al., the change that occurred to make the awakening happen was the change in tactics. Read the words of Gen. Petraeus when talking about the change and you will see it, if you are willing that is. The surge was more about the manpower to extend those tactics that were working to other areas and capiatalize on the successes. As far as Sadr calling for a cease fire, that was not good will on his part, that was about not getting your followers killed for no purpose once you see the ineveitable. Classic case of attrition warfare. His supply was limited and we had just decided to enhance ours. IMHO, his tactic now is to wait and see what happens while maintaining even a modicum of power in the area. If we leave posthaste (the Obama plan) he will be more than willing to fill the vacuum if the political climate allows.
Jul 29, 2008 - 7:04 am 10. Herb:Well Afghanistan is a place where AQ hangs out. No it doesnt. AQ is in NW Pakistan. There is a line on a map that differentiates between the two.
The former is a sort of a country that is barely a country. As I understand it its an area occupied by tribes with a few cities where government happens. Everything else is banditry. The Gov’t tries to keep the banditry to an acceptable level. The latter isn’t even a sort of a country but is assigned to the Paks because nobody else wants it.
There is a whole arc across central Asia that is wild. These are the focus of our attention only because OBL and his gang are holed up there.
Which leads me to my point. What could be the purpose of a substantial increase in our activity in Afghanistan? Whats the end point? How will we define victory?
The Soviets got handed their heads in that place because they tried to control it. We apparently have enough sense thus far not to try that. We’ve got some hunting parties out hunting. We’ll get the game eventually. But the 5th Armored Division isnt going to be a factor.
Your comparison of AQ to a scorpion is apt.
Jul 29, 2008 - 7:10 am 11. Derek:Teresita: The time preceeding the surge wasn’t a vacuum. The US and increasingly the Iraqi’s were taking the fight to the sunni extremists, and killing many of them. Al Queda had shown their colors to the locals, and were not pleasant taskmasters. The war of attrition had effect.
Tides of change on a battlefield happen for a reason. The surge was good timing, with tactics and manpower to take advantage of a situation that had been developing. The sale had been prepared, the surge closed it.
A similar surge one year previous would probably not had the same effect.
Do you think that if the US hadn’t shown up when a large group were ready for a change in allegiance, no one else would have?
Derek
Jul 29, 2008 - 7:11 am 12. RWE:The logistics base for the 9/11/01 terrorists was the United States of America. That is where they lived for months prior to the attack. That is where they trained to fly airplanes and even conducted dry runs. That is where they launched from. That is where the airplanes they used were built.
The money for all this, modest as it was, came from Saudi Arabia. The money got to Saudi Arabia from the United States because we refuse to drill for oil on our own property.
The strategy for all of this came from the United States, when we insisted on treating terrorists as mere individual criminals and told our airline pilots that if they even thought about doing anything but turning their airliners over to hijackers the FBI would throw them in jail (I know some pilots and they told me this.) It wasn’t just their strategy; it was our national strategy and they reacted to it.
Jul 29, 2008 - 7:22 am 13. Derek:Insufficiently:
Indeed. Within a few months, with literally a handful of operatives, the government of Afghanistan fell. Bin Laden and crew were on the run. If Afghanistan became another failed state, another group or the same could use it as a base of training and operations for something similar.
It has been written that Al Queda pulled off 9/11 with the intent of drawing the US into a conflict in the middle east, where the mujahideen would rise up and defeat the oppressor. Some have written that the US fell for the ruse, blindly to die in the graveyard of empires. They saw it as the conflict of the ages.
So, if you were to fight such a battle, where would you choose to fight it? In the mountains of Afghanistan, or the plains of Iraq?
Iraq has been a humiliating defeat for al Queda. Now they are regrouping elsewhere. Afghanistan was a good place in other times. I don’t think it is now. They will pop up somewhere else.
Derek
Jul 29, 2008 - 7:33 am 14. Cannoneer No. 4:If security improvements in Iraq and al-Qaeda’s defeat had much to do with the US effort, then Bush is not the chimp-like imbecile Soros’ puppets want you to think he is.
If the “real” strategic center of gravity always should have been Afghanistan, because the proper object of the War is to “get bin Laden”, then the war can never be won and Bush can never claim victory so long as the death of bin Laden cannot be proved beyond a shadow of a doubt.
The Party of Defeat has as more invested in denying Bush credit for anything than in defeating their friends, the enemy. Regime change in America has always been their shared goal.
Jul 29, 2008 - 7:34 am 15. Morton Doodslag:And, as if on cue, the local specimen “Terasita” provides the taste that proves the pudding. It’s all there, the characteristic bitter clinging, the antipathy towards those who know more than she. There’s not even the slightest hint of embarrassment (but then there never is). Thank you for providing an example of the exact thing which this article skewers.
It still amazes me to witness the relentless way detractors of America can twist our successes into accusations of our failures. Which counterinsurgency agency thought up the Anbar Awakening? Who has selflessly ceded credit to the Anbar Sunnis, knowing well that America’s fingerprints can’t be too evident on ot all? Who do these anti-Americans imagine set up those Council forums which triggered the Awakening? Whose blood and steel provided the security? Who brought the loot? Who also brought the precision bombs, and suggested taking the loot and turning in al Qaida and Sunni weapons caches would be good for those sheiks health?
The gobsmacking stupidity of it all, the villainous obsession with perverting America’s prowess, of perverting our successes and attempting to turn those successes into proof of our failures, it’s all disgusting. However and whenever did we nurture such treacherous vipers in our midst?
Jul 29, 2008 - 7:53 am 16. dla:Al-Qaeda, if anything, has been remarkably consistent. IF the US Media would do it’s job, Americans would know that Iraq was the first step in a world-wide caliphate. Al-Qaeda was drawn to GWB’s bait precisely because it was their game plan from day one. Afghanistan is a giant nothing. Iraq has oil, a sea port, infrastructure, etc.
The sad fact for American liberal wiener-heads is that GWB has won in Iraq. He’s pulled it off. The left calls Bush an “idiot”, yet Bush has won Iraq. This victory won’t do for Obama as there’s no way he can fold himself into it and bask in the success. Barack chose to align himself with the far-left anti-war crowd betting on American failure. American success has him scrambling in recovery mode.
Again the American press refuses to report intelligently on Al-Qaeda. America is quite happy to see Al-Qaeda holed up in the mountains again, as Afghanistan is of no strategic value and Pakastani nukes are easy enough to guard. GWB has not only killed their fighters, but more importantly he has broken their financial network. Al-Qaeda leadership can boast and make threats via video, but they can’t actually do much. GWB, by enlisting world support, has reduced Al-Qaeda to “all hat and no cattle” - in Texan-speak, i.e. just a shell of it’s former self.
Barack can play a liberal slight of hand exercise with the adoring media where he feints action against terrorism but blames Iraq for lack of troops, squandered opportunity, lack of international goodwill, etc. This might be enough to get him elected.
Jul 29, 2008 - 7:54 am 17. jerry:I think Obama’s love affair with a surge in Afghanistan will be a short lived one. It is just a variant of the old Cold War technological filibuster that the Democrats used to try to stop US military modernization. Once we are out of Iraq then Obama would declare Afghanistan a hopeless quagmire that we cannot win and then pull out. Surely he must know that if the Government of Pakistan objected to his plans to go after bin Laden in NW Pakistan alt they would have to do is stop the flow of supplies to our troops leaving them starving in the Afghan wastelands. You know what they say: “Amateurs talk tactics; Professionals talk logistics.
Jul 29, 2008 - 7:57 am 18. Nomenklatura:The Democrats have consistently refused to think coherently about the war unless and until we put them in charge of it. This overtly terroristic campaign (against the rest of us), a campaign which includes in many cases flirting with the enemy, goes to the heart of their one core objection to the war - that they are not running it.
Modern Democrats, being for the most part materially comfortable, are primarily about struggling to enhance their status. Status in society is often a zero-sum game (which is why they remain unaffected by appeals to recognize that economics is not a zero-sum game). The Democrats simply cannot allow the other party to acquire the status associated with having fought and won a war. The more the war looks like it might be won, the more desperate the efforts will become to redefine it as a ruinously expensive mistake.
It is crucial to understand that if war winning becomes an important source of status across our society then a lot of college professors, lawyers and desk-bound government employees would overnight become drab, uninspiring and uncool. Attractive young people would no longer listen to them uncritically. This is an excruciating form of death to these aging people, who live and breathe their carefully burnished self-image as heroic ‘activists’. That self-image is their investment of a lifetime, to be removed only from their cold dead hands.
Jul 29, 2008 - 8:05 am 19. Cannoneer No. 4:When [Secretary of War Newton D.] Baker arrived at the War Department, he approached Chief of Staff [Major General Hugh L.] Scott
Jul 29, 2008 - 8:09 am 20. Herb:and said, “I want you to start an expedition into Mexico to catch Villa.” This alarmed
Scott, who asked: “Mr. Secretary, do you want the United States to make war on one
man? Suppose he should get on a train and go to Guatemala, Yucatan, or South America;
are you going to go after him?” The Secretary replied “Well, no, I am not.” Scott
suggested “That is not what you want then. You want his band captured or destroyed.”
Baker finished the conversation with “Yes, that is what I really want.
Jerry said “Once we are out of Iraq then Obama would declare Afghanistan a hopeless quagmire that we cannot win and then pull out.”
My point above is that we should continue a light footprint in Afghanistan lest we go the way of the Soviets. That place is not governable. It wont be for another 200 years, if then. Care should be taken.
Jul 29, 2008 - 8:12 am 21. Wadeusaf:Limiting the enemy to the Taliban and to Al Qaeda would be a huge mistake. The war is against Islamist terror, not just against Bin Laden. The war is against States who sponsor terror, not just against Bin Laden. The war is against all of the other groups, in the Philippines and in SE Asia, and in Indonesia, and lately in India, who may not call themselves Al Qaeda but are a part of the same network of sick persons who use the Whabbi form of Islam to pursue their purpose in life of to humiliating and torturing humans. Bin Laden is their idol, President George Bush has been their scourge.
The measure of effectiveness in Iran cannot be credited to the enemy (President Bush) for in doing so the democrats must make the admission that they were wrong. Not just about Iraq, but about the whole global effort…, about Bali, about Thailand, about Libya, The Sudan, about Columbia, about Cuba and about Venezuela, have they been wrong. They have tried to ignore Lebanon and Syria and they are wrong in their assessment of the terrorist situations in those countries as well as the nature of terror in the Palestinian un-states.
A victory in Iraq, puts the lie to the notion that Arabs (and gooks) cannot handle democracy, and puts a lie to the utterly pompous nonsense that individual humans cannot decide nor act in what is in their best interest, and that government (any government)is the higher and final arbiter of what is good. The hubris that says we can mess with you but not with your government, and that you cannot mess with your government or the elite few that have self elected and self anointed themselves as the official holy ones able to mess with governments and dabble in law, all others please shut up, and thank you.
No I just don’t think they can admit to all of that without a huge wave of deadly embarrassment, thus unable to ignore the reality they must deny it all.
And then there is the very real possibility that they simply do not get it.
Jul 29, 2008 - 8:21 am 22. wretchard:The Democrats have consistently refused to think coherently about the war unless and until we put them in charge of it.
It’s been argued that that a successful President has to put together a necessarily “broad but shallow” coalition to win a long war. In order to maintain political support the President’s policy aims might have to be suboptimal. I think part of the antipathy of the Democrats to the war stems from the feeling that it’s not “their” war; “not invented here”. Because even a President Obama can’t walk away from the challenge of radical Islam, it will eventually involve him. So the argument goes, it is better to put the Democrats in charge for a while in order for events to drag them in.
But if you look at the Olmert experience in Israel, this is not necessarily the case. Sometimes a muddled leader simply makes a mess of things, not broadens the coalition. That being said, I think it is self-evident that unless the Democrats, who make up about 50% or more of the political population are somehow brought aboard, it will be a hard road. So whether it through a President Obama or some other means, a coalition has to be built.
GWB never managed to build a coalition. My guess is that a President Obama will similarly fail. A conservative Republican and a liberal, even Left Wing Democrat is handicapped because he alienates the other side. Perhaps a conservative Democrat or a liberal Republican might succeed.
Jul 29, 2008 - 8:23 am 23. Wadeusaf:Herb
With roads and infrastructure in Afghanistan, the appeal of the Taliban and the allure of Al Qaeda drop to zero. With education and information and the means to stay part of modernity the ability of such groups to control the people of Afghanistan is eliminated. The infighting that is happening in the NW Tribal areas is begun because people are sick of the the Old ways, and yearn for the freedom to follow their hearts, not some sick old (or younger) semi illiterate with twisted hands and foul breath.
Jul 29, 2008 - 8:32 am 24. Wadeusaf:“GWB never managed to build a coalition. My guess is that a President Obama will similarly fail.”
If he tries, a President “OH” would not fail to build a coalition on this matter, for as limited as the battle would be, even some effort is better than no effort. It would not be in the interest of anyone to act as the spoiler, except for the extreme elements of the left (no such a thing as a just war) and extreme element of the right (its not any of our business).
That is that is how President Clinton got the Regime Change bill passed into law where if President Bush had attempted a similar thing, prior to 9/11 it would not have passed, just because it would have been President Bush (perhaps any GOP President) who proposed it.
The bigger issue is if the effort of a President “OH” could be shaped to have a real and lasting effect on Terrorism. The strategy as “OH” has laid it out screams “NO”.
Jul 29, 2008 - 8:50 am 25. wretchard:David Kilcullen writes:
Not just Kilcullen, but several professionals I’ve spoken to think Iraq was a mistake. One senior coalition officer who served there thinks we don’t know (whather it was a mistake or not). I tend to agree. We won’t know for a while. But so as not to weasel out and because one has to risk being proven wrong, my own judgment is that the decision to take down Saddam will prove to be correct.
The idea that oppression and terrorism are correlated is a correct intuition. That the planners misjudged the readiness and ease with which Arab culture might transition to a less toxic political culture does not invalidate that basic correctness. I do not believe (and this is all opinion here) it is possible to return to business as usual: another Mubarak. another Shah, another Musharraf, another Saddam.
Second, I believe we are undervaluing the gains in information we have bought at so high a price. We now know that no WMDs will be developed in Iraq for the foreseeable future; nor any countries invaded from there. We do not know that about Iran; nor about Syria. But we do know it about Iraq today. The No-Fly Zones, the sanctions, the presence in Saudi Arabia was the price of not knowing about Saddam; just as the close watch on Iran and Syria are today’s price of not knowing what they will do. And while the gain of turning Iraq from an enemy to an ally may arguably not have been worth the effort put into it, there was a return and we don’t know the value of it yet.
A lot depends on how well the post-kinetic conflict with Iraq is handled: the Status of Forces, regional diplomacy, etc — all the decisions going forward will determine whether Iraq becomes a positive force in the region; provides a return on investment or not. South Korea once looked like a pig in a poke and could have been without wise diplomacy. The key was what happened after the ceasefire in 1952.
Because however you shake it, the Middle East is strategically crucial in ways that Afghanistan can never be. So Iraq has a potential to alter the political culture in the region that can never be achieved through Afghanistan. That’s why we are not yet sure whether Iraq, even in its “won” state, will turn out to be a mistake or not. I don’t know it will be worth it, but I think it was the only way to go because there was nowhere else to go.
Jul 29, 2008 - 8:54 am 26. Cannoneer No. 4:MilBlogs TV: Anbar Rising (part two)
Jul 29, 2008 - 8:56 am 27. NahnCee:If whichever administration that is currently in the White House refuses to go into Saudi Arabia and overthrow that nest of oil ticks, then I think (after we nuke Iran) our next target should be Pakistan.
And not just “the tribal areas” that abut Afghanistan, but the whole kit and caboodle starting with Musharref, his bunch of terrorist-supporting army people, and especially their local hero Dr. Khan.
We can, of course, use Afghanistan as a jumping-off place to get to Pakistan but I’m not willing to spend a gazillion billion dollars trying to upgrade Afghanistan to the 19th Century when it’s apparent that the problem is Al-Queda and the Taliban hovering next-door and not a bunch of poppy-growing dirt farmers.
Killing terrorists is relatively inexpensive if we don’t have to then stick around and show the locals how wonderful running water can be and that yes, females can be educated, too. Let them discover these niceties on their own — or not. I’m just not willing to pay for dirt farmers to switch over from poppies to wheat if they’re not smart enough to figure it out for themselves.
If we have Israel partnering with us on kicking in Iran’s teeth, I’ll bet India would be on-board in a heartbeat to do the same with their nextdoor neighbor Pakistan.
Jul 29, 2008 - 8:58 am 28. RWE:“A conservative Republican and a liberal, even Left Wing Democrat is handicapped because he alienates the other side.”
This reminds me of a quote from Peggy Noonam concerning John Kerry as President: “He would surround himself with very bright people and they would study every problem carefully and then they would do nothing. Because they would figure out that the thing to do is to do what the Republicans would do and they can’t do that.”
If a President Obama figures out the correct thing to do and implements that approach then he will be alienated from HIS side. As in Tony Blair. If instead he does what the Left would do and thus screws things up royally, they will still love him and make excuses for him.
Jul 29, 2008 - 9:15 am 29. Tamquam Leo Rugiens:Wadeusaf: “Limiting the enemy to the Taliban and to Al Qaeda would be a huge mistake.” Essentially correct, but too narrow. The Islamicists are not the only enemy, there are also actors such as the FARC, and the various old Communist failed states in places as diverse North Korea, Myanmar, Cuba, as well as the new Communist states such as Venezuela. All of these have certain characteristics in common with the Islamicists. Most notable among these traits is the following: were the behaviors displayed by these groups presented by an individual within any modern society it would be considered not only aberrant but criminal. They are more akin to criminal gangs operating under cover of a totalistic ideology which, unable to compete in the mainstream culture must resort to creating chaos through violence in order to survive and prosper. GWB’s central insight was that the post 9/11 problem was not specifically and simply bin Laden and Al Qaeda, but the entire culture that had spawned them. It is my belief that even that wider focus is too narrow.
Jul 29, 2008 - 9:17 am 30. wretchard:One of the ways in which a thing can be proved to be a mistake is if it were shown to be predicated on the impossible. If the US had been defeated in Iraq, whatever the justification, the infeasibility would have proved the error. Gallipoli, Dieppe, Operation Barbarossa, Market Garden were all mistakes because they failed. Failure is proof of a mistake.
It is a harder proposition to prove that a victory is a mistake. One might argue that it cost too much or prove to sow the seeds of future catastrophe. But today, in 2008 is truly hard to categorically declare the West’s first apparent victory against a modern terrorist foe to be a defeat. Not in Algeria nor in Lebanon did France or Israel succeed to the degree the US has in Iraq. It might be argued that the Russians are succeeding in Chechnya in their own inimitable and brutal way. But it is possible to make the minimalist claim that the US has achieved something very, very remarkable.
That achievement can either be thrown away or serve as the keystone to future progress. The way ahead doesn’t necessarily have to be mostly kinetic. But I doubt it will be completely diplomatic. My own worry about BHO and to a certain extent, John McCain is whether they can find the right continuing line. I think John McCain will try, whatever fortunes his effort might bring. I am less convinced that BHO will make a good faith effort, simply because he is too political an animal.
In truth, I think we are in a far more critical period today than we were at the end of 2007. Iraq can so easily be ruined by a mistake by either administration, even one that is doing its best.
Jul 29, 2008 - 9:17 am 31. programmer:I keep hearing more and more pundits (both liberal and conservative), saying going into Iraq was a mistake but since we are there let’s finish the job, yadda, yadda, yadda.
Why and how was going into Iraq a mistake? In my my admittedly very unsophisticated view:
we blew the doors off the Iraqis (the strongest army in the middle east) in very short time with amazingly few losses and or setbacks. (I read that Russian generals who were advising the Iraqis were stunned by the ease with which we rolled up the road to Baghdad).
We eliminated the THREAT of WMD’s by Saddam.
We have stacked up a bunch of the world wide supply of jihadis.
We eliminated a truly cruel and dangerous regime.
We are in the process of establishing a more or less “United States friendly” regime in a very important part of the world.
We have demonstrated to the world that when we get really upset, we are very good at breaking things.
Okay, what have I missed?
Jul 29, 2008 - 9:18 am 32. Jamie Irons:Wretchard,
Just idle curiosity, but why did you pick the 29th sonnet?
Seems to me the monkeys would have an easier time with, say, the 18th or the 73rd, with their more straightforward syntax…
Jamie Irons
Jul 29, 2008 - 9:31 am 33. Mark:Jerry wrote:
“I think Obama’s love affair with a surge in Afghanistan will be a short lived one. It is just a variant of the old Cold War technological filibuster that the Democrats used to try to stop US military modernization. Once we are out of Iraq then Obama would declare Afghanistan a hopeless quagmire that we cannot win and then pull out.”
Just so. And good comments by DLA and RWE, among others.
Amazing how the memory hole swallows so much recent history whole. Does anyone remember, or am I delusional, that the left decried the Afghan incursion as suicidal, misguided, imperialistic, Islamophobic, etc., etc., ad nauseam, with a chorus of Islamic nations similarly decrying the invasion?
Then, under presessure, the Taliban collapsed and fled. This U.S. victory was a bitter disappointment for the left.
Not even the left remembers its opposition to the U.S. Afghan incursion. That is why Sen. Obama can get by with his Afghan talking points, at least for now.
Jul 29, 2008 - 9:34 am 34. Herb:Wadeusaf:
Perhaps but who’s going to pay for the infrastructure, including the risk premium. Site security will cost more than labor.
Education is useful when it can be utilized. No demand.
AFAIK the tribes in the NW frontier have been fighting each other for centuries. They only quit when somebody prettier shows up. Scorpions, again
Jul 29, 2008 - 9:43 am 35. David M:The Thunder Run has linked to this post in the - Web Reconnaissance for 07/29/2008 A short recon of what’s out there that might draw your attention, updated throughout the day…so check back often.
Jul 29, 2008 - 9:50 am 36. Roderick Reilly:When the Soviet Union fell, certain people refused to give Reagan and George H.W. Bush any credit whatsoever, despite evidence to the contrary.
When forces gathered in the Gulf to oust Saddam from Kuwait, the Iraqi Army was described as the formidable force of an emerging nation. When the U.S.-led effort routed the Iraqi Army, Saddam’s forces were described as third-world and rag-tag.
The sudden need to urge a shift from Iraq to Afghanistan is an attempt by those doing the most strident cheerleading for such a shift to hide their previous cowardice. The spineless twits who didn’t want to fight ANY war under ANY circumstances now want to look at least semi-belligerent in order to feign manhood. They want to use the very military forces for which they’ve had so much comtempt — but which they now realize are quite competent and deadly — to do their bidding and make them look good.
Jul 29, 2008 - 9:51 am 37. Old Blue:Excellent piece of writing, not so much answering all the questions as raising a few and inspiring discussion, while at the same time calling into questions some liberal sacred cows.
It is certainly unfortunate that the Anbar Awakening is being used as a refutation of the surge. It is without question that the surge enabled the same methods and tactics used by Colonel MacFarland in Anbar to be put into effect on a larger scale.
Someone in this group quoted Galula recently in pointing out that a protracted conflict favors the counterinsurgent. This is likely true; but the local populace will not stand up to the insurgents (in this case, Al Qaeda,) without knowing that someone has their back. The reason that they didn’t object physically in the first place was fear and intimidation. Colonel MacFarland helped to provide that piece.
The Anbar Awakening wasn’t some random act of patriotic or tribalistic ferver on the part of the locals. It was the result of good, sound counterinsurgency strategy put into practice at a point where the locals had seen what the future with Al Qaeda in charge held.
The attempts to break down the war into neat compartments is an oversimplification based on an unwillingness to address the core issue. The core issue is not Bin Laden.
I would refer you to my post, “Where Is Osama?” http://billandbobsadventure.blogspot.com .
I submit that the center of gravity is neither Iraq nor Afghanistan, but the people of the Islamic countries of the Middle East and Central Asia. Our tacit failure, seemingly agreed upon by both parties, is based upon our “…persistent unwillingness to make the sustained and patient effort needed to help the people of the Middle East overcome the crippling societal problems facing their governments and societies.”
Galula pointed out that the reason that insurgencies survive is because the insurgents, who he likened to fish, have a medium in which to swim; the people. Without the fluid environment of the people, the insurgents are easily separated and dealt with.
The failure, by and large, of Wahabbism to catch on in the Balkans is a case in point. Though the Wahabbists attempt to convince the Balkan Muslims to partake in the “Global Jihad,” the takers are few. The water is shallow. The fish remain small and struggle to make a living… they are fed from the outside; Saudi Arabia.
They do not share in the core issues which provide a base for the base (Al Qaeda translated means “the base.”)
We view removing the fish, and in many cases, the one brightly colored and influential fish, from the water as the task at hand. The problem with that strategy being the only strategy, the only question being argued, is that the fish has laid eggs, and the water is deep and fertile. My point is that the people have concerns and issues which the regional/global insurgents appeal to.
Galula pointed out that the counterinsurgent must see the central issues upon which the insurgency appeals to the people and coopt their message.
This, given the scale of the problem, is a huge issue; so huge as to disappear as a background in front of which the smaller issues of Iraq, Afghanistan, and Bin Laden appear to be the only contrasts. It is so huge that our leadership cannot find it within themselves to even look at it as a key. We paint it with the brush of “Islamofascism.”
How mystical; how utterly incomprehensible and incapable of Western address.
This struggle was years in the making, and while one of the seminal events was the creation of Israel, and the reason that we are depicted as “The Great Satan” is our unwavering support for that tiny, feisty nation; that is not the only issue that keeps the water flowing and the fish reproducing.
An integrated strategy which attempts to address these issues has not even been considered. For one thing, it requires an unflinching honesty of which we appear to be incapable. It also requires us to see things from their point of view.
Am I advocating the abandonment of Israel? No. But I am advocating taking a look at our failure to effectively influence Israel in a positive way to be a good neighbor in a bad neighborhood. Israel is like a small but very muscular guy who grew up getting slapped around, winning every fight and having many thrust upon him. His first reaction to any provocation is to fight, and when he has taken a spoil, to keep it.
We need to admit to ourselves that sometimes the Arabs have a point when they claim Israel is a terrorist nation. I am not labeling Israel a terrorist nation, but I am saying that sometimes their reactions to provocation are excessive and cause too much collateral damage.
And, just when Israel seems to be acting so far above the baser reactions, they are successfully goaded by some heinous but limited act into spasmodic kinetic action, destroying their newly developing relationships.
Israel is a key plank in the Wahabbist/Jihadist platform. Israel would not have survived had it not been for our unwavering, if righteous, support. But we must admit to ourselves that we have turned a blind eye to Israeli missteps, gaffes and excesses while unfailingly denouncing Arab and Palestinian affronts.
But Israel is only one plank; one small but emotionally charged piece of the puzzle.
The points about the socioeconomic and political considerations of Muslims in the various nations of the Middle East and Central Asia are of much greater but much less emotional import. These people have issues; and their oppressors point the convenient finger at us, at Israel, and the rest of the west; much as Hitler pointed his finger at the Jews in Europe.
We are a convenient, seemingly evil nemesis against which to rail and rally support for the ultimate distraction; Jihad.
We are the scapegoat for all of their issues, much in the same way we here in the States demonize the oil companies into some kind of overarching, evil cabal that secretly runs everything and keeps us all in everlasting serfdom.
Yes, yes; it’s all THEIR fault.
The one issue that we cannot coopt is the religious issue. That requires moderate, progressive Islamic influences to have a consistent and unwavering voice in renouncing Jihad and advocating religious tolerance. We do not control these influences and never can. We must seek their attention to this issue and seek to enlist their willing assistance.
We do have prototypes of relatively tolerant Islamic societies. Qatar, for example.
The conversation about Iraq vs. Afghanistan and the pertinence of Bin Laden are, in this light, not strategic issues but tactical ones.
My central point is that our real task, which we refuse to even consider and have convinced ourselves is merely the backdrop of the sky, is to render Osama Bin Laden a moot point; to render him irrelevant. Osama is a symptom of a disease which will continue to afflict us until the central drivers are no longer a factor.
We are driven by the Pashtun principle of Badal… “vengeance.” Revenge is a terrible motive for any positive action. It is emotional and unreasoning and therefore flawed as a strategy.
We don’t even know if Osama is alive or dead, but it doesn’t matter; we are still engaged. If he were the real point, the real lynchpin, then it would matter if he were dead or alive, but it does not.
In the absence of a leader who will become a counterinsurgent on a global level and direct our various agencies to become more than localized tactical counterinsurgents, we will remain a tactically focused nation and our national debate will hinge upon who is perceived by a public uneducated in counterinsurgency to be the least ineffective or damaging tactical counterinsurgent.
Those of us who are not overwhelmed by our lust for Badal have a nagging, niggling small still voice inside which hints at a larger truth so large as to become the lanscape itself, too large a forest to contemplate for the trees; a sense of a truth without any real grasp of it.
We know that we, like in any human interaction; have a part in this.
And so the uneducated are asked to make a decision; they will choose based on what makes sense to their personal interpretation of a huge convoluted yet undefined issue and their personal selection of nemesis. For many that is “neoconservatism” or the great oil magnate cabal.
Hey, it makes just as much sense as making Osama Bin Laden the focus of all of our efforts.
Jul 29, 2008 - 9:56 am 38. exhelodrvr:RWE<
“If a President Obama figures out the correct thing to do and implements that approach then he will be alienated from HIS side.”
I disagree with that; for proof look at how Clinton is still viewed by the left, despite the conservative policies that were implemented during his administration (obviously with big pushes from the Republican congress).
Jul 29, 2008 - 10:00 am 39. Eggplant:People need to read Osama bin Laden’s history. The man is a moving target. He started out in Saudi Arabia then went to Afghanistan as a Mujahedin and founded al Qaeda to kill Soviets. After the Soviets were driven out of Afghanistan, Osama went back to Saudi Arabia, initially as a hero but soon became a trouble maker. At this point, al Qaeda metastasized from a purely anti-Soviet guerilla organization into an international jihad organization focused on refounding the Caliphate. Osama then went back to Afghanistan after being accused by the Saudi government of supporting subversive groups. Osama found things too hot for him in Afghanistan so he fled to the Sudan along with thousands of his al Qaeda cohorts. From this new sanctuary in the Sudan, Osama launched terrorist actions against the United States. The Saudi government then stripped Osama of his Saudi citizenship and attempted to seize his assets. Following US pressure, Osama was requested by Sudanese authorities to leave the Sudan. Osama left the Sudan and established himself in Jalalabad, Afghanistan. From Afghanistan, Osama launched the 9/11 atrocity and got lucky. The United States responded with the Global War on Terrorism and forced Osama out of Afghanistan into the tribal areas of Pakistan.
What history teaches us about Osama bin Laden is that he attacks when he can but also knows when to cut and run. Like a cockroach, if you find him underneath the kitchen sink, he’ll quickly run to underneath the refrigerator. Nobody with good sense chases after single cockroaches. You either spray the whole kitchen or put out baited traps.
Iraq was a baited trap and it worked well. It may not be necessary to spray the whole kitchen so we should think about setting another baited trap.
Jul 29, 2008 - 10:05 am 40. Benj:Wretch’s and Wade’s comments underline why the rag I’ve been associated with, FIRST OF THE MONTH, tried to make case a left case for the War in Iraq and the War on Terror. Kilcullen’s comments indicate why we also always made room for folks who thought the Iraq War was a mistake. Hope W & W will allow for the possibilty that what one Clubber recently called Bush’s “heavy lifting” has set the stage for a different kind of effort to promote Western/liberal/American values - one that’s more suited to O’s talents that W.’s. (And I’m talking about brigades in Afghanistan!) The cunning of history? - Well I recall that Wretch recently lifted Marx’s line on farce/tragedy. Thought of that as I was watching the Beatles HELP with my little boy over the weekend. Occurred to me that Farce predicted tragedy. Ya’ll remember that movie. Ringo is targeted by human sacrificers from some nameless “Oriental” religion. There’s a great scene where one of “their” priests takes tea with High Anglican (pace Rowan Wiliams) who listens attentively as the exotic makes the case for the purity of blood sacrifice…(There’s a Greek Orthodox prelate at the garden party too.) Anyway - the Beatles and their fans all over the world once incarnated the pursuit of happiness. Fundamentally - you know hard Islamist really hate that…BTW - HELP - in classic 60s fashion mocks the military and Scotland Yard. Such mockery all seems out of time now. Still - I’ll allow that I think the key opposition going forward is going to be between the party of hope = democracy/pleasure principle/humanism/wit/rationalism vs. party of death = authoritarianism/fundamentalism/piety/death-mongering/isolationism…What the hey - W & W- I believe we just might belong to the same party even I believe in social living (if not necessarily socialism). If that seems possible, maybe, as I’ve suggested here in the past - you might be a little more welcoming to those of us tweeners who are on the margins…
Help…I need somebody!!
Jul 29, 2008 - 10:35 am 41. Benj:Missed a Nego - meant to say - I’m NOT talking about brigades in Afghanistan…
Jul 29, 2008 - 10:38 am 42. Stan:Programmer: not a bad summation…
the rosy/optimistic line of reasoning employed in arguing that Iraq invasion was a mistake is unfair and not rigorous…
1) the sanctions were a failure and set to be lifted even as they were pretty much ignored by much of Europe. The “500,000/year Iraqi children dying due to sanctions” UN/NGO crowd were close to calling Saddam ok wrt WMD and letting him off the hook. As of this date he & Iran would have been in a WMD arms race and there would have been nothing the West would have done.
2) after Desert Storm the requirement was growing for a UN/World sanctioned use of force. Bush 41 had done such a good job of building the coalition that it was becoming a standard that couldn’t be met to the effect that no international use of force could be used. Operation Iraqi Freedom has reset that bar a bit lower.
3) Libya’s surrender of nuclear ambitions would hardly have happened without OIF and who knows what other salutory effects the beat down on Saddam has fostered by making at least some dictators/movements become more circumspect in their oppression.
There are other points to raise but courtesy here prevails - the idea is that in order to argue OIF was a mistake one has to take a hard look at the possible downside of letting Saddam (& sons) continue, not just the rosy picture of the most optimistic outcomes imagined.
As an example look at the butcher’s bill in Darfur (much bigger than OIF actually) as the UN and the African States attempt to talk and monitor their way through that humanitarian crisis with no end in sight except the lives of the poor in the south.
Jul 29, 2008 - 10:47 am 43. Cannoneer No. 4:Old Blue, their point of view is wrong.
Israelis are Good Guys.
Palestinians, PLO, PFLP, Fatah, Hamas, Hezbollah, et cetera are Bad Guys.
Probably not a good idea to press this point upon the Muslim indigs one is trying to get useful work out of, but true, nevertheless.
Jul 29, 2008 - 11:11 am 44. Old Blue:I’m tracking, Cannoneer; but to stand on that as dogma is self-defeating. We need to hold ourselves and our allies to a higher standard.
Just like in A’stan, if we did something heinous, we were screwed for a long time; but if they did it, well… they’re insurgents, what do you expect?
My point is that for each individual, perception is reality. The average Muslim sees us as always being against their interests, and that’s just not true.
We can either render the Osamas of the world irrelevant by deflating their key issues or we can find ourselves consistently embroiled for many years to come.
I do not advocate abandoning Israel. I do advocate being even-handed in our dealings in the region.
That’s still only one plank in the Al Qaeda platform.
Jul 29, 2008 - 11:20 am 45. Old Blue:We should all be well beyond arguing over whether the invasion of Iraq was needed/not needed/lied about/not lied about.
It is what it is. Whining over someone not getting their way five years ago is as productive as inserting your digits in various orifices and trying to vary your internal air pressure.
Even if you make a whistling noise; who cares?
Arguing over the merits of the invasion is a classic time-wasting tactic that liberals engage in to derail discussion of the now. If you are too busy trying to justify 5 years ago, you cannot adequately debate the inexperience of a man three years removed from a state legislature who only recently spoke to a combatant commander… and even that didn’t change his stand on his unilateral timetable for withdrawal.
The end state in Iraq will be determined in the United States in just over three months. Discussing the relative merits of five year old arguments is a waste of time.
Jul 29, 2008 - 11:28 am 46. Eggplant:Old Blue said:
“Arguing over the merits of the invasion is a classic time-wasting tactic that liberals engage in to derail discussion of the now.”
Very perceptive. The liberals also do this to establish their greater competence through 20/20 hindsight.
Old Blue also said:
“The end state in Iraq will be determined in the United States in just over three months. Discussing the relative merits of five year old arguments is a waste of time.”
The election in November might make discussion of FUTURE actions a waste of time.
Jul 29, 2008 - 11:44 am 47. Teresita:Morton Doodslag: And, as if on cue, the local specimen “Terasita” provides the taste that proves the pudding. It’s all there, the characteristic bitter clinging, the antipathy towards those who know more than she. There’s not even the slightest hint of embarrassment (but then there never is). Thank you for providing an example of the exact thing which this article skewers.
That’s really good. I link to a transcript from a Pentagon briefing that described the Anbar Awakening bearing fruit in September 2006. Bush announced the Surge in January 2007 and it wasn’t until April 2007 before the bulk of the troops were on-line. From this you derive “bitterness” and “antipathy” and a lack of “embarrassment”. Is this a history blog, or psychology amateur hour?
Jul 29, 2008 - 11:44 am 48. Wadeusaf:I don’t think Israel is the Question, nor even the answer. but as a part of the equation it certainly has been credited with a lot of emotional baggage to handle. I am in agreement with the positive assessment that all politics is local and that in resolving many of the local issues will allow the large emotional charge to fade into the irrelevance which they should be seen.
It is not an easy task, but even the Afghans with a little help initially can build their own infrastructure. Some thing Bin Laden with his contractual and conceptual ingenuity was remiss to do.
I also cleve to the notion that Bin laden is under house arrest in Iran.
Tamquam Leo Rugiens: thanks, please read the rest of the statement, if I did not make that point, I meant to, Do I need to check what I wrote again, er still, um yup.
Benj: I keep getting stuck on that alternate vision of economics.
Jul 29, 2008 - 11:50 am 49. Cannoneer No. 4:The average Jew-hating Muslim sees us as always being against their interests, and that is true.
The average infidel-hating Muslim sees us as always resisting submission to the will of Allah, and that is true, too.
Jul 29, 2008 - 12:25 pm 50. Old Blue:Teresita; I still point to what I wrote above. The Anbar Awakening was simply a local response to effective COIN tactics properly employed by COL MacFarland, not a wave that was going to spread across the nation without the assistance of the surge.
The surge itself was not the producer of such events, but rather the availability of the forces needed to employ Petraeus’ excellent COIN strategy and tactics. The Anbar Awakening was enabled to spread by the surge.
To dicker over when the “Awakening” occurred relative to the surge is another petty distractor. If you click the (-) part on the ZOOM bar and pull away from the map a little, you will see that the Anbar Awakening was replicated as part of the employment of the forces made available in-country by the surge.
The surge without the tactics would have been a disaster, but the tactics without the surge would have been less effective.
Contrast this with the ISG’s recommendations to start the Vietnamization of the war. I mean, the Iraqification… oh, never mind; it would have worked out the same way that the first such dropping of the ball did. The Iraqis would have fallen on their faces and we would have witnessed helicopters taking off from roofs in the Green Zone filled with Americans, Press, and selected Iraqis fleeing for their lives as the various parties moved in to carve Iraq into fiefdoms.
Jul 29, 2008 - 12:27 pm 51. Wadeusaf:“Whining over someone not getting their way five years ago is as productive as inserting your digits in various orifices and trying to vary your internal air pressure.”
Unless you are checking for leaks, which brings up the idea of other perhaps intentional internal injuries, which I can perfectly understand the reluctance of the left to talk about. I do wish they would at least clean up the irritant eliminate the ‘vanity’ and try to appear a little ‘fare’ in an arena where gray ladies abound and unnamed sources are for sale by the pound.
Even if you make a whistling noise; who cares? My dog.
Arguing over the merits of the invasion is a classic time-wasting tactic that liberals engage in to derail discussion of the now.
By Douglas Fieth “War and Decision”, it opened my eyes even bigger, if that is possible or even grammatical.
Jul 29, 2008 - 12:32 pm 52. Old Blue:Canoneer; I disagree that the average Muslim is necessarily infidel-hating. I saw lots of average Muslims in Afghanistan and spoke with many of them. While they have an innate distrust of outsiders in general and infidels in particular, that aversion can be turned in short order when they see us working in concert with themselves for their own ends.
There are a great many who are the equivalent of redneck racists in the 60’s. Don’t think that you could walk into any Afghan village by yourself without getting the same treatment Medgar Evans did, but it wasn’t the average southerner who killed civil rights activists; just like the average Afghan wouldn’t kill you just because. You will find enough who will, though.
That’s why we travelled in heavily armed groups. There were many many many times and many many villages that I was the only American in, though. I could do that because the Afghans I was with were not the redneck Afghan infidel-hating racists, nor would they let them have me.
I’m not under any illusions that they weren’t asked from time to time.
We have to stop painting with such broad brushes.
Jul 29, 2008 - 12:34 pm 53. sirius_sir:I submit that the center of gravity is neither Iraq nor Afghanistan, but the people of the Islamic countries of the Middle East and Central Asia. Our tacit failure, seemingly agreed upon by both parties, is based upon our “…persistent unwillingness to make the sustained and patient effort needed to help the people of the Middle East overcome the crippling societal problems facing their governments and societies.”
Old Blue, I appreciate your comments and think you are generally correct here. My concern is that we don’t underestimate the corrosive effect of bad teaching. It seems to me we make a mistake trying to address “crippling societal problems” absent a way to redress the crippling moral indoctrination that goes by the name of Wahhabism. I claim no original insight in saying that all the good work we have done to reform the societal problems in Iraq may yet be undone. But it seems the influence of modernity and moderation has taken hold and will thrive, absent pernicious meddling by outsiders. That alone makes continued close contact and cooperation vital for both countries’ interests.
The real importance of Iraq (though President Bush currently gets scant credit for seeing it early on) is as an entry point to inoculate the Mid-East(and by extension the entire Muslim world) against extremism by introducing Western values–or at least the values we in our best moments aspire to. Yet wouldn’t it be the height of irony if in some distant day Iraqi society was more recognizably ‘American’ than our own?
But I digress. The real reason I wanted to respond was to second the suggestion that the “center of gravity” resides in the populations of the Islamic countries. I would suggest that Saudi Arabia represents a special problem, with its sponsorship of Wahhabist/Salafist teachings. A cover article in U.S. News the week after 9/11 identified as a critical factor the Saudi funding of radical Islamic madrassas worldwide–the breeding grounds of future terrorists, according to Colin Powell. I believe this problem persists largely unaddressed and remains entirely unresolved.
Jul 29, 2008 - 1:10 pm 54. Old Blue:The Wahhabists gain traction where there are no other answers offered. It is an explanation of the source of and a solution to their less-than-satisfactory lives in the light of the evident prosperity of so much of the world; primarily the West.
How do they know that they are so miserable? Well; TV and movies for example. We export images of our culture… it’s an area where we do not suffer from a trade deficit.
Other than the fact that the Chinese unashamedly commit copyright violations on such a massive scale that it’s unbelievable. But that’s another story.
In any case, with no first-world work, no prospects, limited possibilities for education and becoming aware that their mud-hut conditions are completely unsatisfactory, they look for an answer.
A Wahhabist scholar is only too happy to oblige… and then clue them in to their “sacred commission” from God (Allah,) to take over the world in His name and convert the world to the One True religion.
Poof; Jiffy Pop Radical. Wahhabism is more mystical and less practical, adding to the propensity to bullshit one’s way through any serious discussion and make stuff up as one goes. Justifications are just too easy. Questions are easily bluffed off, other religions too easy to debunk.
It’s all someone else’s fault. It’s OUR fault that they live in a mud hut. We kept them down. If they can slay the dragon, they will not only be a hero, but lauded in paradise as well.
Progress will not entirely remove the problem of Muslims who seriously believe that they have a holy commission to conquer the earth in the name of Mohammad, but it will sure make a lot fewer people willing to listen.
We exacerbate this problem when our own well-meaning Christian churches want to send missionaries into Muslim countries.
Why? Because it is a Christian’s holy commission from God to convert the world to Christianity. While western Christians are no longer willing to do this by force, it has been done in the past.
My impression of Afghan society was that it is very medieval; biblical times mixed with the wild west, with a Mad Max tone about it. Literacy hovers around 18%.
Fertile, fertile ground for the seeds.
Jul 29, 2008 - 1:32 pm 55. whiskey:First off, Dems are not a 50% force politically. They are basically, minorities, wealthy white status-obsessed yuppies, and the media. That’s it.
It’s only been the very bad performance of Republicans that have allowed these inroads to take place. Dems do poorly with White voters, particularly white working-middle class voters, and anyone outside urban centers.
This is typical among the elites in the West (Olmert, etc.) No one wants to expend any energy under the fantasy that Western industrial and post-industrial economic power = physical security.
However, the “gated communities” and “security condos” that the Western elites like Obama have built for themselves are falling apart, because poor nations can and have made nukes too. Pakistan is a mess, nukes poorly guarded, and now Iran with nukes shortly makes it a fatal mess.
Regardless of who is President, US cities will die. That much is frighteningly clear. Pakistan and Iran can each credibly point fingers at each other, while deniable terrorist groups make demands that fit the power-agenda of each (withdrawal from Afghanistan, apology to bin Laden, release of prisoners like KSM, withdrawal from the Gulf, etc.) Or more cities die.
Obama of course would give in because that’s what weak, appeasement minded Liberals always do (Jimmy Carter, Olmert, Clinton, etc.) No one wants to face reality: the spread of nuclear technology and global trade allows poor nations to kill American cities with near impunity.
Jul 29, 2008 - 1:55 pm 56. NahnCee:We can either render the Osamas of the world irrelevant by deflating their key issues or we can find ourselves consistently embroiled for many years to come.
It seems to me there is a relatively easy third option which would take care of all the little Osama nits and his believers and also leave us unembroiled in the future.
Old Blue has a higher standard for American soldiers working and dying in Afghanistan. He does not, evidently, hold the Afghans themselves to any sort of standard at all. Which is a problem for this taxpayer.
Jul 29, 2008 - 2:03 pm 57. Teresita:Old Blue: The Iraqis would have fallen on their faces and we would have witnessed helicopters taking off from roofs in the Green Zone filled with Americans, Press, and selected Iraqis fleeing for their lives as the various parties moved in to carve Iraq into fiefdoms.
The difference between Iraq and Vietnam is as stark as night and day. In Iraq we are attempting to hold together three factions in one nation. In Vietnam we were trying to prevent the unification of two factions into one nation. In Iraq we faced an “insurgency” that was really a few thousand foreign infiltrators using suicide tactics with no real support from the populace and only a tenouous supply chain to Iran or Syria. In Vietnam we faced a true insurgency (the Vietcong), supplied though Laos and Cambodia by a belligerent who was a fully operational state (North Vietnam), all backed up by our Cold War adversary (USSR).
Jul 29, 2008 - 2:16 pm 58. Old Blue:NahnCee; I do have a higher standard for us. I worked with a squad of MP’s who were providing the training for ANP’s in southern Nuristan and northern Laghman Provinces. They, at one point, insisted on having a female soldier wanding village elders who were seeking entrance to the sub-governors compound where we were working. The local elders were seriously offended.
When I spoke to the MP squad leader, his response was, “She’s a soldier, they’ll have to get over it.”
No, they don’t. You see, they don’t have to impress us, because they didn’t ask us to come and fix them. They were not happy, they weren’t doing very well, but they didn’t beg us to invade their country. Nope.
We invaded their country to bring all the fruits and benefits of our western wisdom, democratic superiority, and economic prowess. Ummm… that and we wanted that Bin Laden guy.
Yes, we need to be better than the insurgents, and lots of Afghans are doing some pretty good things.
T.W. Lawrence (Lawrence of Arabia) said: “It is better for them to do things tolerably than for you to do it perfectly for them.”
They do not have to impress us, although many of them, particularly my four soldiers who gave their lives and another who was shot through his head and will never be the same impressed this American by rising to the standard of being willing to risk their very lives for their country.
We need them to get it together more than they need us to fix it for them. They were suffering locally, but we are the ones with the global issue.
And yes, that does require that we hold ourselves to an unimpeachable standard.
Jul 29, 2008 - 2:22 pm 59. Alexis:Benj:
I think part of the fault comes from how too many people from the Left refused to challenge George W. Bush’s ownership of the war effort. Tony Blair tried, but he failed. The September 11 attacks were a direct attack against the urban proletariat by a neo-feudal offshoot of oriental despotism – hardly the folks that any Marxist or populist ought to feel sympathy towards. And yet, much of the Left simply wants America to lose, even against al-Qaeda.
I will easily grant that George W. Bush made horrible mistakes. One of the reasons why public support for the war effort tanked in early 2005 was because George W. Bush staked his political reputation upon privatizing Social Security, which gave the impression that he didn’t regard victory in Iraq as important. That hurt. Ambassador Bremer’s dictatorship over Iraq was a disaster. I am quite sure that I would have done a better job running Iraq than Ambassador Bremer, and I knew that at the time. I am also less than favorably impressed with a record of corruption involving military contractors.
Still, there is a difference between criticizing how a war is fought and desiring America’s defeat. A big difference. Ever since the Anthrax Attacks, polarization within the Beltway has been rancid, spreading in waves outward from Washington, DC. Hate blogs on both the Left and the Right have not helped, for while too much of the Left really has been defeatist, much of the Right has been more interested in falsely accusing opponents of treason than promoting a solid pro-war coalition. “United We Stand” has become a joke.
Yes, I did support the war in Iraq (and still do), but it was not without qualms. I utterly detested (and still do) the doctrine of “preemptive defense” which sounds much like a doctrine of “unprovoked attack”. Were there good reasons to overthrow Saddam Hussein? Yes! Were they good enough to support a war? Also yes. Would another strategy have been better? Quite possibly, but none was presented by those opposed to the war.
In 2002, the alternative to invading Iraq proposed by the opposition was essentially to sit on our asses and do nothing. Or, even worse, send our troops into Palestine as peacekeepers to got shot at and bombed by Hamas, presumably after we threatened to either cut off aid to Israel or threatened to bomb Tel Aviv.
Before the war, I quietly recommended liberating the Saudi Kingdom as a prelude to liberating Iraq, but my ideas were apparently not taken seriously in Washington. And yet, in retrospect, I am honestly unsure whether liberating the Saudi Kingdom first would have been the better course of action. I am quite sure I would have done a better job of running Iraq than Ambassador Bremer, and I knew that at the time. The Bush administration wasn’t too keen on hiring anybody from the opposition, though.
I knew before the war that we would have a difficult time winning the peace, with all the firebrand imams from Saudi Arabia and Iran preaching death against us. I warned about that before the war, and yet I still supported the war because I thought the price of doing nothing was higher than liberating Iraq. As it is, the war in Iraq has been far more successful than I feared it would be.
I think our main problem in America is the disintegration of our ideals of loyal opposition. Those who are opposed to administration policies have a moral responsibility to recommend alternative courses of action. And what did we get? The Department of Homeland Security (which I still think is a blunder). True, George W. Bush has lacked deftness in reaching out to political opponents who share a common goal. But our president could have been called on that, and he hasn’t been. As a rule, the Right isn’t interested in fighting using anything other than military means while the Left isn’t interested in fighting this war at all.
Is Senator Obama willing to reach out to those who still think that overthrowing Saddam Hussein was a good idea? Based upon Senator Obama’s past history, the answer is unequivocally no. He has backed himself into a corner he cannot get out of, and his opponents are backed into a corner they cannot escape either. I refuse to repent of a decision I still think was right. I flatly opposed going to war because of “weapons of mass destruction”; indeed, I specifically warned against basing our casus belli upon “weapons of mass destruction” when there were better reasons to fight. This also means that I am immune from “I told you so” accusations by anti-war activists on that issue.
A “dumb war”, eh? A “rash war”? I’ll let you in on something – supporting the liberation of Iraq doesn’t mean I am any more or less intelligent than anybody else. It means I disagree with Barack Obama and I have good reasons for my disagreements.
The fact is that the war in Afghanistan isn’t popular in Europe either, and the real concern in France in early 2003 wasn’t that we were going to war but that “America is too big”. In late September 2001, South African Communists didn’t give a damn about whether Americans got hurt in the September 11 attacks; all they cared about was a fear that America would “overreact”. Germany? Expecting Germany to fight against our enemies is ridiculous because our alliance with Germany is a one-way street and will continue to be a one-way street as long as there is an alliance. Spain? Spanish Socialists blamed Spain’s alliance with the United States for the 3-11 attacks in Madrid. After that calumny, any pretense of an alliance with Spain is a vicious joke. For altogether too many Europeans, Americans exist for the sole purpose of providing cannon fodder for their own purposes; if Americans bother to fight for American national security, they will naturally get upset. NATO exists to combat American isolationism; thinking that Europeans desire to protect America is sheer fantasy. Anybody who dares stand on our side is called a “poodle”.
So yes, George W. Bush has made severe blunders in his diplomacy. No vision of the world after the defeat of al-Qaeda and its fellow travelers has been enunciated on either the Left or the Right. Many people on the Left feel they have nothing to fight for in this war because there is no vision of a better tomorrow while many people on the Right feel they can have nothing to fight for when our borders are not secure and illegal immigrants can march down our streets at will.
Fighting the terrorists is not easy. It is becoming increasingly clear that victory against al-Qaeda may require Americans to fight nonviolently against our own government.
Jul 29, 2008 - 2:22 pm 60. Old Blue:Teresita, your participation in this forum is, for me, a joy and I certainly hope that you continue to participate.
However, I completely refute your evaluation of the fall of Viet Nam and your characterization of the events in Iraq. Iraq suffers from mulitiple insurgencies, but they are not just foreigners and they do not just employ suicide tactics.
Viet Nam was not about reunification; it was about one group, the communists, taking over the southern half of the country which had previously been under the control of a (supposedly) elected autocracy that we unwisely propped up without insisting on rooting out corruption.
The Viet Cong were such a minor influence, basically incapable of combat operations after breaking themselves during the 1968 Tet Offensive. No, Teresita, by the time Saigon fell in 1975 it was the Regular NVA who were knocking at the doors.
The fall of Baghdad under the ISG recommendations would have looked tactically more like the race to win Kabul that occurred in the time following the withdrawal of the Soviets from Afghanistan. As the Americans withdrew, the forces of whatever force intended to take over that area would be hot on our heels, speeding us on to increase their moral victory.
Laos and Cambodia were their Pakistan, or Syrian border, or Iranian IED trafficking routes… whatever.
Afghanistan is tactically more similar to Viet Nam than Iraq, but the fall of Baghdad as the weakened US Army was routed by a resurgent Al Qaeda/Jaish/Mahdi Army/(place your insurgent group name here) would have resembled the panicked flight from Saigon in 1975.
Jul 29, 2008 - 2:34 pm 61. Wadeusaf:While I disagree with most of what you said, I respect your opinion. I will however have to throw the BS Flag on this statement,
“As a rule, the Right isn’t interested in fighting using anything other than military means while the Left isn’t interested in fighting this war at all.”
Which is totally without foundation or merit. Young men from both sides of the political aisle have given the ultimate sacrifice, and continue to support their fellow soldiers right left or in between.
Jul 29, 2008 - 2:55 pm 62. Doug:And more diplomatic entreaties have been sent than saber rattles by far during this administration. I am sorry this is just too far off the shoulder to allow to stand unchallenged.
Pak PM to Bush: We Are “Fighting The War For Ourselves”
The Australian quotes Pakistani Prime Minister Gilani warning President Bush against attacks on al-Qaeda inside Pakistan. His chosen words are wont for substantive evidence of effective actions and tangible results.
Speaking immediately after his meeting with the US President, Mr Gilani said: “This action should not have been taken by the United States. It’s our job because we are fighting the war for ourselves.”
If the missile strike was proven to have been a US operation, it would be a violation of Pakistani sovereignty, he said.
“Basically, Americans are a little impatient. Therefore in the future I think we’ll have more co-operation on the intelligence side and we’ll do the job ourselves,” Mr Gilani said.
Jul 29, 2008 - 3:54 pm 63. Doug:“Young men from both sides of the political aisle have given the ultimate sacrifice, and continue to support their fellow soldiers right left or in between.”
Jul 29, 2008 - 3:55 pm 64. wretchard:True.
Leaders on the left, and most Democrat politicians, otoh, live “up” to Alexis’ characterization.
Alexis wrote:
While I am totally ignorant of the internal strategic calculations which underpinned OIF, the following arguments can be made from common sense in the KSA vs Iraq debate.
1. KSA, Egypt, Jordan, Syria, (pre-Saddam) Iraq and Iran were the major centers of gravity of Islamic terrorism.
2. The cores of the Shi’a and Sunni jihads were KSA and Iran respectively. Why not invade them first after 9/11? Lack of forces and fear of an energy disruption.
3. Of the countries listed in (1) Iraq was vulnerable because of a) its international isolation; b) ethnic division between Sunni, Shia and Kurd. The British knew this. When invading a country choose the one with large minorities so you can play everyone against everyone else; c) its capture would allow the oil embargos to be lifted, weakening the power of KSA and increasing the oil supply to the world market, thereby easing prices; d) it was geographically positioned between KSA, Iran and Syria thereby allowing force projection in all directions; e) US bases in Iraq would create a long-term fallback to KSA if and when the US decided to take them on; f) Saddam’s WMD program would be destroyed.
Now I am completely unaware that anyone actually thought this way. Maybe a Wolfowtiz, Feith and GWB made a very simplistic decision like “Saddam sponsored 9/11 and he is building nuclear weapons. So let’s bring freedom to the Middle East and let our friends get a lot of contracts in the bargain.” But maybe not. I suspect that when posterity weighs in the US decision in 2003 will be a mixture of rational and irrational, high minded and venal, good and bad. Most historical decisions are.
The plan miscarried. But not in its essentials. Many things went wrong. Oil, rather than loosening, tightened. The US, rather than Saddam, became the whipping boy of the international media. Saddam himself underwent a rehabilitation in the press. The ethnic groups in Iraq, instead of being compliantly played off against each other, nearly went into civil war. Iran and Syria, rather than trembling in fearful anticipation invaded Iraq through proxies. But the basics were right. Once things started to stabilize Iraqi oil did come online. However world demand rose much faster, and the conflict inhibited the development of Iranian gas, because now it was Iran that had to be isolated. Paradoxically, the KSA was scared out of its sandals by the fear that the Iranians would take over Iraq. This, plus the annihilation of the Jihad in Iraq put the damper on Wahabi militancy. They began to issue fatwas against bin Laden’s group. The ideology of the Jihad itself began to tarnish because of Iraq.
As of this writing, Petraeus has very nearly achieved in 5 years what perhaps some feckless planners believed would be achieved in one. Iraq is now potentially an American ally located between KSA and Iran. A Shi’ite democratic tradition, albeit a flawed one, now competes with Teheran for legitimacy. The KSA still holds cards, but basing is not one of them. Oil remains its primary trump. All in all, we are now ready to consider Alexis’ next step: how to “take down” KSA — and I would add, Iran.
Here is where we enter terra incognita. But I think the following will play out. The way forward will be Iran, KSA, Syria and Egypt in that order. Most of what will follow will be nonkinetic, more akin to the twilight struggle against the USSR than the fight against Nazi Germany. The US will have to achieve two generational projects: 1) wean itself and the world off oil and 2) create the equivalent of a West Germany or South Korea in the Middle East to contrast with the Muslim, Arab “Warsaw” pact. Lastly, it will have to create a bipartisan domestic consensus to pursue this policy for the next 30 years. Then one day, just as the USSR did, the toxic regimes of the Middle East will fall. And once the core Islamic states democratize, all the rest will more or less follow, like the tide of democratization that swept through the world after the Soviets collapsed. US conventional forces will provide distant cover; they will protect the information warfare campaign against the heartland of the Jihad; they will stand ready to repel boarders but unless something very wrong happens, they won’t engage in open warfare.
That’s why I think Iraq will prove in retrospect, the right move, according to my own private little strategic calculus. I am well aware than I may be full of s**t and totally wrong. But I think it’s a reasonable scenario, one unlikely to play out as I have described it. Yet I’ll saw I would be truly surprised, if in my old age (if I reach it) something like what I’ve sketched out doesn’t happen.
Jul 29, 2008 - 4:18 pm 65. fred:The earlier posts by “Nomenklatura” and by “Cannoneer No.4″ were the ones which I think grasp the irrationality and deceptiveness of the Democrats’ and Left’s memes and counternarratives. There is the unreality in the “understanding” of the conflict that asserts that OBL is the key to it all. They missed out on the lesson of this drama, which began 1,400 years ago when a band of criminals, opportunists, sycophants, outcasts, and psychopaths gathered around a man in Yathrib (Medina) who was chased out of Mecca, who told them “Allah” said they could raid the caravans with abandon - provided he got a very large share of the booty.
The blueprint for the ideology and manner of war IS that old. And that blueprint provides more than enough substance for any jihad organization to thrive on.
I have always thought that the most important task was to destroy the organization and its networks. But we have neglected (badly)the ideological and intellectual battle. That neglect kicks a can down the road. Anyway, those who taunt that GWB did not catch or kill bin Laden either do this out of sheer stupidity or they do it out of a much more calculating intent (Nomenklatura’s point). There are plenty of Jackasses who stupidly think this is a law enforcement matter. And there are the more cunning Jackasses who know damn well it is a war and they resent not being the masters of it. I am inclined to think that the more one is ignorant of Islam the more one is susceptible to the error of thinking that this is a law enforcement issue. Thus, the concept of “state sponsors of Islamic terror” eludes them and the war in Iraq seems, to them, unnecessary and besides the point.
Bottom Line: We are experiencing TWO wars simultaneously. One is the external one thrust upon us (realistically, the renewal of an old one) from outside. The other war is a vicious internal political war.
A house divided against itself cannot stand.
Jul 29, 2008 - 5:00 pm 66. Nomenklatura:“The plan miscarried. But not in its essentials.”
That’s entirely right.
The other big pillar of the plan I believe you’re missing here is “fight them over there rather than fight them over here“, which is pretty persuasive all by itself.
We also should award credit because fighting over there has allowed us to engage in a great deal of experimentation that has now multiplied the effectiveness of our military in both this and other war situations. Check with the Chinese, the Russians or other potential foes to see just how psychologically staggering the extent of this progress has been.
It’s also worth noting that another big attack on our soil would have built the missing domestic coalition overnight. For a long time seemed more likely than not. Ironically the Bush administration’s success in this respect created a political liability.
The only thing Bush is lacksadaisical about is the politics of ‘the permanent campaign’, and this may have a lt to do with the failure to build a consensus around the war. That’s because he’s basically not a guy who lives and breathes politics, or bases his self-esteem on his popularity. I find I don’t really feel like count this against him. Plus, look closely at other American wars over time and you will find that consensus in the sense of a suspension of determined and even grossly abusive political opposition was generally not achieved.
Jul 29, 2008 - 5:22 pm 67. The Count:Wretchard- Once again you hide some of the best stuff in the comments. Thanks for being there to help me sort out this stuff in a civil way. I don’t know what I would do without you.
One irony I have not seen pointed out is the camp that now concludes the surge was not critical to the success of the Anbar Awakening was also the very same that ridiculed “stay the course”. Aren’t they now saying “stay the course” was all that was needed?
A further ironic proposition on offer is the idea that the Democratic threat to withdraw in 2007 was more responsible for positive developments in Iraq than the addition of troops and a better strategy. This from the same people who rejected as the worst kind of divisive rhetoric the argument that their calls for retreat and endless negativity regarding the war might have an encouraging effect upon our enemies.
Do words now speak louder than actions? Let’s hope it really is true if Obama is elected.
Jul 29, 2008 - 5:59 pm 68. RWE:Old Blue:
As you say, the VC were broken by Tet and later some of them came to believe that was the real objective of Tet in the first place. “Throw the round eyes into the sea, and if that don’t work at least they will clean out the non-NVA elements for us, which otherwise might be a problem when we take over.”
Interesting statistic I recall: The North Vietnamese invasion of the South in 1975 employed more vehicles than the Nazi invasion of France in 1940.
So much for the brave little guys in black PJ’s running us out of there.
And as for the question of invading or not invading Iraq, I want to ask the opponents “What would you have done?” The sanctions were falling apart, Saddam had bribed everyone and his brother (the truth of all that still has to come out) and the existance of Batthist Iraq would have led to calls to look the other way
relative to Iran’s ambitions.
And aside from that, you may have to eat an elephant one bite at a time, but you still have to get started at some point.
There is a real analogy between our past policies in the Middle East and our extended refusal to allow drilling for oil on our own property. You can screw around with no strategy for just so long.
Jul 29, 2008 - 6:04 pm 69. dla:Old Blue: something to consider.
Four major leaders – 4 schools of law – still in existence today. Differ mainly on emphasis to the Quran, or the Hadif, or Ijma
Abu Hanifa (d. 767) Hanifi School of Law – largest and most liberal. “A Muslim is permitted to marry a Christian or a Jew “people of the book” “. They use kiia (analogy) from the Quran/Hadith to apply to a wide range of situations. The idea of tempory marriage came from this school. Big in Turkey and much of Asia. As you move away from Saudi Arabia, you get more liberal.
Malik ibn Anas (d. 796) Malikite School of Law – Sudan/North Africa. They use mostly the Hadith.
Muhammad al-Shafi (d. 819) Shafite School of Law – lower Egypt. Big on Ijma (consensus)
Ahmad ibn Hanbal (d. 855) Hanbalite School of Law – Saudi Arabia. Very literal interpretation of the Quran. Wahabbis are in this group. This very extreme group believes that the other schools have fallen from the faith.
About the time that the West was exiting the dark ages, Islam entered theirs. Most of their rejection of anything “new” (i.e. post 10th century AD) came from the belief that “things are going bad for us because Allah has rejected our surrender (Islam)”. As the West has prospered, the Middle East has remained frozen in time. So they still burn the whole goat in the fire and pick out the parts with their fingers - and live to a ripe old age of 35. Just as it was 1000 years ago.
If it wasn’t for the house of Saud conquering the peninsula, the Wahhabbists would be in the dumpster of history. But the ultra-conservative movement that gave us great governments like the Taliban, got a lease on life with oil money.
What will collapse will be Saudi-funded Wahhabbism - just like the rusty, moldy old Soviet Union. And then Islam will be free to evolve. I just wish that day would come soon.
Jul 29, 2008 - 6:20 pm 70. Alexis:wretchard:
Liberating Najaf is not a minor achievement and neither was wiping away the stain of the 1991 betrayal of Iraqi revolutionaries. I am skeptical that we can replicate the success of the Cold War in the Arab world, but it is possible if a democratic Iraq gains a robust military capable of defeating any of its neighbors. I think we need a “strong Iraq” policy; any talk of Iraq no longer being a threat to its neighbors ironically entices its neighbors to attack Iraqis with impunity. Iraq needs deterrent capability against its neighbors. I think the Bush administration did America a service by distancing itself America from its long-standing alliances with tyrants, the very same tyrants who promote terrorism against us.
I do think that ending the Iranian regime is important, for overthrowing KSA only to see Iran take over the Hijaz may be exchanging the frying pan for the fire. Still, we need to keep our eyes on the ball. I do think there is something insane about the Saudi Kingdom promoting air travel for the Hajj, for it is not inconceivable that some terrorist may hijack a hajji plane to do the “unthinkable”. KSA’s control over the Hajj can be and should be challenged by other Muslim states. America can help behind the scenes.
Jul 29, 2008 - 6:22 pm 71. Alexis:Wadeusaf:
I wish I were wrong. I wish I were horribly wrong. Sadly, I think I’m horribly right.
The American military is professional. It is the last part of American society that polarizes along partisan lines and that is as it should be. I wish America had political leadership on both sides of the aisle worthy of the service of our fighting men and women. The polarization in Washington is reported to be as severe as the domestic tensions of the late 1850’s. That concerns me.
I wish what I wrote were not true. I really wish that. America’s progress on most non-military fronts has been anemic. In particular, America has been lacking in leadership in promoting alternative fuel; we need to think of getting off hydrocarbons as a means to achieving victory against petroleum despotism, not as a utopian means to “save the planet”.
True, the Bush administration has conducted low-key diplomacy throughout the world when under pressure from Congress to do so. Still, America’s ability to project an alternative vision to al-Qaeda is shockingly weak. Part of the fault lies in Hollywood, but part of it also lies in the Bush administration’s apparent inability to promote its message in Hollywood. In cultural warfare and propaganda, Denmark seems to be far ahead of the United States. Denmark??
Nancy Pelosi doesn’t see our war as something to be won, but as something to be “managed”. Yet, American conservatives have not been much of an improvement. Where is the money for repairing our roads and bridges, for a massive expansion of mass transit, for promoting wind and geothermal energy everywhere that is feasible? Where are America’s plans for converting existing cars to battery power? Our electrical grid is not merely a pocketbook issue, but a matter of national security. We need to promote alternative energy as a means of hitting Iran and the Saudi Kingdom in the pocketbook, drying up their funding for terrorism. So far, we have baby steps, if that.
Decades ago, party caucuses in Congress were held every week, if that often. Nowadays, they are held every day, with congressmen on each side of the aisle conspiring on partisan tactics. I want what I wrote to be false, but for that to happen, we need senators and congressmen who are willing to socialize with members of the other party on an informal basis. These bonds of affection among our political leaders from opposite parties are the bonds that keep our nation together more than any laws of our land.
Democrats need to call this war their own. Republicans need to embrace progressive means of fighting this war when there is good reason to think those policies will be successful. The oil industry is not a free market and we must not treat it as such. Our military needs to put an end to hazing, which scares off many good men and women from our armed forces. We need to find a way for homosexuals to serve openly in our military with honor. And despite my strong disagreement with the politics of Pat Tillman, his kind of “friendly fire” death under suspicious circumstances is the kind of behavior that frays our social fabric. I think he was probably “fragged”. Our military has performed admirably, and it is a dishonor to those who have served America so well for the Tillman Affair to cause lingering damage to our military’s image. Remedial action is necessary to ensure that a repetition of that sorry episode never happens again.
Hope is all too often the flip side of gloom, and while I may partake of that gloom at times, I think the real hope for America exists not in any one man but within ourselves. As it is, I wish I were wrong in the statement you quote and utterly wrong at that. America’s political leadership needs to prove me wrong.
Jul 29, 2008 - 6:27 pm 72. fred:dla,
All the orthodox, traditional Islamic scholars consider the most authoritative ahadith to to be the first two ones compiled: Bukhari and Muslim. Those two also most well track the Qur’an’s teachings. The Qur’an is dualistic (hat tip: Bill Warner)with the Medinan revelations abrogating, but not abnegating the earlier Meccan “revelations.” Another authoritative source for Islamic orthodoxy is the Sira, since Muhammad is considered The Perfect Man and imitation of his deeds and words puts the Muslim on solid footing.
The bellicosity of the Medinan “revelations” is beyond dispute. The surahs from that period most ardently enjoin jihad against the unbelievers, and apportions stern invective and punishment of them.
It is the dualistic nature of Islamic scripture (Qur’an) and traditions (ahadith) that provides the practitioners of taqiyya the ammunition they need to call people like me ignorant Islamophobes, and to seduce the credulous ill-informed populace.
One parting shot. The “Surge” worked because we backed it up with the mailed fist. The Iraqi military was not yet quite up to the task and the political process was hedging its bets to see who was going to win. The “Anbar Awakening” was a combination of realizing who the stronger horse was and that the agitators were simply destructive thugs. For anyone to suggest that the U.S. military contributed only a minor or footnote role is to be breathtakingly ignorant of how war plays out and how they are resolved.
This is why it would be a disaster for our nation if that long-legged mack daddy was to occupy the Oval Office. The ONLY good thing that would come out of it would be the hard lesson it would impart to a lazy, mentally defective, or intoxicated-with-the-Left populace.
Jul 29, 2008 - 6:37 pm 73. LazP:Not on topic:
Jul 29, 2008 - 6:42 pm 74. ricpic:I wonder what Obama thinks of the indictment of Sen. Stevens of Alaska for unreported illegal contributions received. I.e. Resko will the MSM mention it? The value about $250000 is less than what BO obtained in his Resko deal.
I seriously doubt that Obama has a sense of the significance of Iraq geo-strategically: because of where it is on the map.
I don’t think Obama thinks in terms of maps at all. That would require tempering his grand overarching declarations to fit facts on the ground, to fit the ground itself.
I doubt that Obama has thought his way to any position. He has been imprinted with the Left’s givens, one of which is that since America is always wrong, even when it has been attacked, it behooves America to reverse its evil invasion of Iraq, apologizing all the way.
And that’s what a Barak Obama administration will do.
Jul 29, 2008 - 6:48 pm 75. fred:ricpic,
Glad you’re back. I hope you took note of my apology to you on the prior thread.
His geography and history are certainly defective. I’m still looking for those other seven states.
Jul 29, 2008 - 6:57 pm 76. NahnCee:Old Blue - you misunderstood my comment. I agree that we need to hold ourselves to a higher standard, but I also think that the Afghans have got to get used to the idea that they MUST change if they want our aid and assistance. And that includes being wanded by a female American soldier if the situation calls for it. If they want to remain proud misogynistic dirt farmers scrabbling for subsistance and being invaded every decade or so by a different bunch of warriors, fine. We can take our toys and leave them in peace to do that.
It appears to me at this point that we really don’t need their assistance to look for Bin Laden and it would be just as easy to kill Taliban in Pakistan and leave the other civilians to their own devices in Afghanistan.
If, however, the Afghan police and army want American help in becoming more competent and proficient (including giving them Big Boy Toys) then I want to see some changes coming from their side, too. I want the burka to disappear entirely. I want mandatory schooling for their girl children. I want forced marriages of young girls stopped. And if there’s ever a gang rape sentenced by some village elder sort of nonsense, I want Very Bad Things Indeed to happen to both the elders of said village and the participants. Castration sounds about right.
Not holding them to any standards at all is much too multi-culti kumbaya equivalency that their society is just as good as ours, and how dare we try to change them from being noble savages. They want to remain noble savages? Fine — just don’t expect me to pay for the privilege of being around it.
* * *
Comment on the musings of Wretchard and Alexis — excellent excellent excellent. Every once in a while Wretchard busts loose with something so crystal clear and enlightening I have to wonder how long he’s been chewing on it that it springs fully formed from his fingertips. Interesting that he’s included our good ally Egypt in his line-up of terrorist states to be dealt with.
I like Alexis’ comments re: the Sandbox, too. I had wondered the same things. Very sneaky thinking about the Hajj. I’ve sort of decided that what has saved the House of Saud is the personal relationship between Bush Senior and those 3 or 4 highest ranking Princes (and maybe the demented-at-that-point King). That sort of emotional playing from the heart will trump logistics and statistics every time; and I think Bush Jr. would bow to the wishes of Bush Sr. in this particular matter.
Hopefully with Bush Senior and Bush Junior out of the WH, the next President will be reluctant to get to the hand-holding stage with the King of Saudi Arabia and we can at least start messing with their minds. Although the drastic reduction in visas for Saudi’s to come to the U.S. is already doing that … yum.
Jul 29, 2008 - 7:13 pm 77. ricpic:Read it, Fred. No need, really. But thanks.
Jul 29, 2008 - 7:30 pm 78. fred:More and more I am convinced that there really is no physical strategic center of the jihad movement. It morphs and it moves, always seeking weaknesses to exploit. The networks that finance the jihad will evolve, but foundationally we know that the money’s collection point is the zakat. The conduits change. It’s whack a mole when you are trying to get at the terrorist financing.
Plus, there is no centralized religious structure/hierarchy in Islam.
This is why we don’t win this fourteen century war until we take on the cult/ideology head on and relentlessly criticize it and expose it. But we do not seem ready for that. I consider the case of Maj. Coughlin’s polite exit from his job description at the Pentagon symptomatic of how far behind the curve we are.
Without proper knowledge of the enemy there is no correct doctrine.
Jul 29, 2008 - 8:07 pm 79. Wadeusaf:Wretchard and Alexis,
The KSA is not on the list of the Axis of Evil, there is a reason. Despite the compact made with the Wahabbi a century ago, to enable the House of Saud to reign in and rule over the other clans, It is not Wahabbi complicity that today keeps the Saud on the throne. The internal workings of the kingdom will be changed by diplomatic and necessary other means not associated with violent overthrow (unless that force come from within KSA) but by the necessity of retaining the hajji.
It is and remains an uneasy arrangement with KSA, due to the dual and vital nature of their position in the Islamic world, But the house of Saud is not stupid, neither is it suicidal. They don’t owe their health and future fortune to a returning Imam. There will be a reckoning, but it will and should involve Islam and not us.
Iran is being dealt a serious economic blow that can be sustained and made to cause the long suffering people of Iran to toss off their mullah approved rule as bing something not sensible or sustainable. It can happen, if Iraq can retain its unity a move which is in the three party’s best interest, there can be no threat from Iranian influence weakening the Shi’ah’s resolve. With the Baathist’s relegated to the dustbins of history, the Syrian version of the NAZI party remains the only viable ME variant. Jordan, Turkey, Egypt (and the KSA) want no part of disrupting the peace which they have attained with Israel, as they prosper more from that arrangement than any counter offer by Syria or Iran could hope to profit them.
Remove Iran its irritant Hezbollah and outrageous Palestinian irritants and reason returns to the Levant. With the exception of fighting Iran’s proxies, and brief struggles on the level of LEOs the overwhelming military aspect of the GWOT ought by rights to be done, but it must be held out as an option.
Since elevating Sec. Rice to the head of DOD there has been some greater cooperation between State and DoD, a real headache in the early planning which was not DoD’s doing, but nearly the military undoing due to the cross-efforts of DoD and CIA Careerists.
Progressive ideas are more than welcome and are embraced, so long as a real effort to understand and support the President’s policy and by extension the policy of the American congress and people and me, is made by those same Careerists. So far as I can tell, and I can only judge by the snippets of whispering campaigns what here and there caused this or that to fail.
I have not witnessed where this has been the case, but in damnable case after damnable case it is certainly the cause of much death and heartache. And even though it appears to have sold a lot of news print, it really ain’t so. I have every confidence in the intellectual prowess of my fellow citizens that the vast majority of them, when confronted by the facts, can make a just decision. Why cannot the government careerists and panderers in the press allow for similar trust?
Stepping on toes of the DoS in an attempt to get it to do its job, is why congress passed laws making sure DoS would not have to actually do its job of promoting the policy of the President. I am sure the careerists are grateful. The children of those parents getting shot at in Afghanistan and Iraq are certainly not as thrilled. The congress which has struggled mightily in freeing the FBI and CIA from the burdens of having to collaborate with one another does us no favors either. The level of humint and even publicly available intelligence translated into something of use by Analysts wasn’t enough to provide a safe trip to the corner store, much less take down OBL or determine the level of Al Qaeda infiltration into the US not to mention Iraq. And pardon me but when was it ever the purview of a former ambassador to determine that his were the definitive observations on anything. That is not his job, until he proves otherwise.
What the heck is a Progressive method of fighting anyway?
What pressure has this Congress ever put on the Administration to negotiate that the Administration has not first placed on itself? Tillman’s situation has been aired and resolved, yet I find myself questioning what purpose it suits to resurrect it here. If you are as i think, more than wrong in your assessments of his demise, if you are being willfully disingenuous on the cause and eventual effects of his situation, why should I respect your opinion or choose to take your advice no matter what the party is to which I belong?
Jul 29, 2008 - 8:16 pm 80. Wolf Pangloss:Old Blue:
“The one issue that we cannot coopt is the religious issue. That requires moderate, progressive Islamic influences to have a consistent and unwavering voice in renouncing Jihad and advocating religious tolerance. We do not control these influences and never can. We must seek their attention to this issue and seek to enlist their willing assistance.”
Actually, it is possible to redefine Jihad for Muslims. Now it means honor, glory, booty, slaves, rapine and guaranteed admission to Paradise for those killed in Jihad and up to 70 of their closest family and friends. What it should mean is humiliation, death, destruction, disaster, and sorrow for those engaging in Jihad and up to 70 of their family and friends. A sense of guilt needs to be built into Muslims. The traditional way to do that is to crush their societies, knock down their holy places, and scatter them to the winds. That’s how the Romans did it to the Jews and their Barrabbases. I’m not tied to that way of doing things. I hope there is a less bloody way. But somehow Jihad must be taken on and totally discredited for now and always. It may take discrediting Muhammad too. If so, we’ll need a lot more cartoons.
I don’t hold out any hope for a moderate Islam to provide a shortcut for this process, however. There will be blood.
Jul 29, 2008 - 8:25 pm 81. 3Case:Haven’t said it in a while, but if we find and kill bin Hidin’ and the Genocidal Dwarf, then we must stop slaughtering their minions (that is, if the current kill ratio is to be considered slaughter). I’m not sure I understand that the al Sauds wish that their malcontents no longer be slaughtered.
Now, if the Metro-Kosites feel that we are not playing capture the skinny $hit and his trained genocidal Egyptian chimp, maybe they could organize themselves into some sort of civilian defense corps and go up into the nether regions of Afghanistan and Pakistan and figure out over a few lattes with the tribal chieftains the issues the Pakis, Warziris (o.k., only 1 Warziri so far) and Indians I chat up tell me has been boilin’ along over there for about 1,000+ years. They all do agree that the Khyber Pass is beautiful and should be seen…after that, it gets pretty confusing, pretty fast.
Watching Dems at foreign policy is like watching a 3 year old play with a loaded and cocked .357. They really should stick to robbing the Treasury.
Jul 29, 2008 - 8:30 pm 82. fred:Wolf,
I would prefer that we first square ourselves with the truth about Muhammad and his sock puppet deity, “Allah.” Once our populations know the truth about the totalitarian cult that Islam is, we will feel free to respond in powerful ways as the need arises.
First win the ideological battle. Then find some way of containing Islam. And then, if necessary, slam the fist down on them. I always prefer the most violent, destructive option LAST. But just because it is last does not mean it is not valued. They have to know that we know who they are and what they are after. And then they have to know that we will, if necessary, present extinction as a remedy to their pestilence.
Jul 29, 2008 - 8:34 pm 83. Chip:Wolf’s right about one thing, at least: they think they’re winning and we’re soft. The Islamic revival/awakening, the Sahwa, is viewed as moving from victory to victory especially in Europe. The EU is a prime mover in the triumph of Islam, it’s their policy. From suppressing secular checks on Islam in Turkey to favoring unrestricted immigration with massive welfare benefits for actual jihadis in the UK (inter alia). Human rights law as applied in the EU most protects those mujahideen who want to commit murder because their home nations (wisely) want to get rid of them.
“There will be blood.”
Of course there is now. But we miss every opportunity to really destroy terrorist infrastructure because it’s usually in mosques, at rallies, politically connected, or surrounded by nominal civilians.
The same psychological dynamics which made it possible to win WWII haven’t developed despite a longer time frame and almost as (sometimes more) brutal enemy tactics. The Japanese beheaded prisoners but didn’t sell videos in London.
I no longer look for so-called “wakeup calls.” Our civilization is apparently too soft and intellecutally stunted to respond properly to genocidal movements which act in a piecemeal fashion and often through education, politics, law, ‘outreach,’ and business.
Make no mistake, though you’re invited to Islam (da’wa), the alternatives are second-class status (under sharia, paying the jizya) or death. Where did all those large non-Muslim populations go in every so-called Muslim nation on Earth? Massacres feature prominently when someone is accused of something like throwing a rock at a mosque or tearing a page out of a Quran (violations of the dhimma — treaty of protection — like Mafia protection). Project this behavior out over nearly 1,400 years and that’s where all the missing kuffars went, if they didn’t run screaming ASAP after the Muslims took over.
Some Jewish examples, and a few mentions of other non-Muslims feeling the ‘peace’ of Islam throughout history.
All polling of modern Muslims suggests history is now as well, and getting more aggressive as people cravenly appease their every threat and ridiculous demand.
Jul 29, 2008 - 9:39 pm 84. Benj:Alexis - Since you checked out Goodwyn - figure I’ll encourage you to go to firstofthemonth.org and read pieces by Charles O’Brien in the War on Terror section, beginning with his 9/11 meditation - “The War” - O’Brien and (more famously, though not more fiercely) Kanan Makiya made the pro-war case for radical imaginations - Can’t pretend too many folks were swayed but I certainly was. (Like you, I never went for WMD as an key - But when Makiya successfully pushed Bush to come out for demos and Federalism for the Kurds BEFORE OIF - I put my queer shoulder to the wheel…
BTW - Tried to get some traction for O’Brien et al at the Club way back in the day, but folks here didn’t know what to make of pro-war polemicists from the left. (Though I think Hitchens got some respect.) Not whining about that - You’ve defined the cultural/political context which makes crossing over HARD. And, then there is also those pesky, sticky “economic” questions as per Wade’s laugh line above. But - A. I think you’re being a bit disingenous when you bemoan the absence of a pols (on either side) who will allow the other side had a point re the War. Obama has done that repeatedly! Hell that’s HOW he got famous in 2004. (Patriots who supported and patriots who opposed yada yada…) BTW - he did it again (implicitly admittedly) in that speech in Germany - pushing back on any Euro who had concluded that America was not overwhelmingly a force for good in the world. As a matter of fact, he was probably over-the-top there! - Like most big and powerful countries we done some bullying in our time.) I hear you re O’s politics of prevarication NOW when it comes to the surge - but you know he’s playing in a gotcha game and McCain is not going to let him rewrite the rules on the fly…Though, you know I just read a Hitch piece (and you know he’s no fan of OBama’s) that pointed out how honestly O dealt with the Surge question in one debate with Hillary. (I remembered the moment Hitch cited perfectly.) Wish O had stayed the course there - but I noticed Maliki had given him an Out weeks ago. He IS a pol and he’s going to see if he can slide over the surface to safe water - Course he’s best when he gets in trouble and dives down deep…
Appreciate Old Blue’s comments and I’m with him all the way on Teresita. That’s a contrarian who would sharpen anyone’s arguments. I appreciated Wretch’s prophecy in this thread - I’d roll with it. Though that might make W. think twice! Occurs to me that Wretch’s forward thinking leaps right past some of the doomier forecasts that often rule here among the most fearful and prideful posters…
Jul 29, 2008 - 9:55 pm 85. Brian H:It’s notable that despite all the morphings of O’s “positions” on Iraq, the constant conclusion and solution is unwavering: troops out in 16 months.
Which to me says that all his effort and thought are going into crafting rationalizations for a fixed course, which is not up for consideration.
Jul 29, 2008 - 11:38 pm 86. Alexis:benj:
I loved Obama’s 2004 speech. I am frustrated by how various aspects of Obama’s past fail to measure up to the soaring rhetoric of that speech. Please understand that I was once open to supporting Obama, but his there are aspects of his character I simply don’t trust. The irony is that I would probably be able to get along with him quite well on a personal level, but many aspects of his professional behavior bother me.
In particular, I am unhappy with how Obama has been marketed on the web. I don’t like his use of halos and I don’t like his use of disturbing images in an apparent imitation of the techniques of tobacco companies. (Take the negatives of downloadable wallpapers from his website and see Obama’s marketing techniques for yourself!) And until the “vero possumus” flap, Obama had posted images where his rising sun emblem superceded symbols of America.
As petty as my objections against Obama’s symbolism may appear to some people, his marketing bothers me. Before discovering his marketing techniques, I was skeptical but open about Obama’s candidacy. I do think Obama’s symbolism crosses a line.
Jul 30, 2008 - 1:20 am 87. 3Case:Obama’s most elemental symbolism is dead on:
“O” while he is a cipher.
Jul 30, 2008 - 3:00 am 88. Doug:C.I.A. Outlines Pakistan Links With Militants
The agency presented Pakistan with evidence showing that members of its spy service had deepened ties with militant groups responsible for a surge of violence in Afghanistan.
Times Topics: Pakistan
Jul 30, 2008 - 3:53 am 89. Wadeusaf:Inter-Services Intelligence
Wretchard and Alexis and all,
I went off on a pretty good rant (there is still some spittle on my screen), and I feel the need to synthesize my thoughts somewhat.
I wish someone would make a solid case for why KSA is our enemy? It seems so, but it ain’t so or so it seems to me. There is an exchange that must be made, and KSA is a little slow on its end, but I do not think they are playing both ends against the middle. Members of the royal family as individuals, not representative of the KSA, are undoubtedly funding terrorists in a way that gives them a perception of leverage in the event of an Iraqi collapse. The banking, like the SA wire transfer traffic, must be made transparent, but it will only make sense to do so if a long term US commitment to Iraq and the ME is real. “OH”’s mideast strategy doesn’t lend itself to making such stability appear promising, No matter how many envoys are sent behind the camera’s refuting whatever statement was just made for political consumption.
Same same in Pakistan, unless some means of giving stability to a self determined Pakistani government is realized, nothing will improve along the border. I hope the current Government of Pakistan is up to it, and I believe the Obama Sabre rattling in that sphere sends the totally wrong message.
Yet if “OH” somehow won the presidency, it would not be my chosen course of action to by subvert by news leaks, his policies. It would not be my favored means of registering disapproval to work some other stuff, while pressing business of the nation piles up unattended. Whether in Congress or in the various Executive agencies, the work of the people is being ignored, while the work of partisanship is attended. Members of both sides of the aisle are guilty of pandering and whoring themselves to constituents as well as the highest bidder.
In our military we are asking CIA and DoS personnel to advise Military Commanders in theater on operation they do not believe in, prepare for contingencies some suspect they wish would occur. It is an unhealthy alliance that allows the civilian leadership and the civilian consultants place our armed forces in the middle of their squabbles, it is shameful behavior that must not be allowed in war time. There is no middle ground here.
In Washington DC, a town where even the solid waste substation manager can become full of himself in pleading for revenues before congress, no ones waste doesn’t stink. Fortunately the prevailing winds carry the stench out to sea so the rest of the nation does not catch the odor, but that is our misfortune as well. We are not mushrooms.
Jul 30, 2008 - 5:19 am 90. Charles:Old Blue
I submit that the center of gravity is neither Iraq nor Afghanistan, but the people of the Islamic countries of the Middle East and Central Asia.
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I saw this line and somehow flased on Hemmingway’s Old Man and the Sea.
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When you look at sedimentary rock or the ground under any city — you can see one age laying right on top of the next. That sediment and rubble falls from above.
Some of the change that’s coming to the middle east in the next 10-30 years will reflect the immense innovative technological power drive that’s ongoing in the west and east. The cost of Solar power for example is now falling faster than computing power. Nanosolar’s factory last september introduced a solar cell that produces electricity for $1@watt. Installation might cost another $1@watt. To understand those numbers its helpful to consider that the cheapest means of producing electricity currently is Coal which costs 2.10@ watt. Solar power costs are expected to fall further faster in the next couple years. In ten years the cost of solar power will be a fraction of the cost of today’s coal power electricity.
That means that desert regions will become giant power units.
The cost of desalination is currently falling much more slowly than photovoltaics. Both Singapore and Australia have undertaken research programs to cut the cost of desalination in half in +-7years.
That’s not very ambitious imho.
The goal of desalination work should be to cut the cost of desalination to 1/10 current prices and create cheap easy to maintain pipelines that push water uphill for a thousand miles inland for little or no cost in terms of energy.
What happens to deserts when you deliver cheap power and cheap water to them?
Think this is a pipe dream?
The serious dreamers showed everyone a picture of water ice on Mars.
The stuff I’m talking about is starts to scale in only +-a decade.
Jul 30, 2008 - 6:07 am 91. NahnCee:I wish someone would make a solid case for why KSA is our enemy?
Four reasons immediately spring to mind:
1. Funding. Google Golden Chain and see how many Saudi names appear on it. They funded 9/11 and are *still* sending money out of their Sandbox to fund terrorism right now. And this includes their Princes who hold positions at the highest levels.
2. Wahhabism. They made up and are exporting a particularly virulent form of Islam which is antithetical to every value the West holds dear.
3. Internal brainwashing and politics. They teach their children to hate from the cradle, not only Jews but everyone who is not part of the Saudi tribe. They’re still practicing a form of slavery in holding workers’ passports, they won’t allow women to drive, and rape of both boys and women is acceptable enough for some people to never be charged with it even when they’re filmed in the act.
4. Oil. They have no problem with using their natural resources as a blackmail bargaining chip. And the things they are trying to blackmail the world over are nasty such as support of Palestinian terrorists and trying to get their convicted prisoners freed when they’ve been jailed in other countries. They also want America, especially, to lift visa restrictions and to admit more of their misbegotten idiot children into our educational system.
Jul 30, 2008 - 6:41 am 92. Doug:Funding.
Buying off US Politicians to the tune of hundreds of thousands per.
PBS - frontline: saudi time bomb?: analyses: wahhabism
Jul 30, 2008 - 7:05 am 93. Benj:Wahhabism’s explosive growth began in the 1970s when Saudi charities started funding Wahhabi schools (madrassas) and mosques from Islamabad to Culver City, California.
Lawrence Wright - author The Looming Towers - wrote this great piece about everyday life in Saudia Arabia…Might be of interest…
http://www.lawrencewright.com/art-saudi.html
Jul 30, 2008 - 8:12 am 94. Old Blue:An interesting point, and one that should be addressed, was the call for the loss of the burqa and changes in Afghan society.
I submit that those changes will occur naturally as we go. The only thing that we are successfully insisting on is the building of girl’s schools in Afghanistan. The education of girls who will grow into women will have the same effect that it has had in the United States. It took time here as well; what makes us think that there will not be resistance to it in Afghanistan?
Pissing off the elders of a remote district in Afghanistan by standing on our principle of a female soldier wanding them is simply a waste of engagement and damages our ability to make further progress. When that elder walks back to his village in the evening and sits down to talk with his friends over chai, he will not talk about how the Americans are at the district center helping the local Police learn how to better provide security to their district; no, he will talk of the humiliation of an elder by being forced to be scanned (including over his genitals) by an instrument of unkown capability held by a female.
That is unnecessary humiliation and blocks the reception of our real message.
There are some things that need to be achieved in the short term and some things that are going to require long-term societal growth to take hold. Mysogyny is in the latter class.
Let the insidious creep of education do that work, and in the course of a generation or two, you will see real change there. In the meantime, to make that a central point due to our personal sensibilities is a huge error and shows a greater lack of concern for and sensitivity to their culture, which has worked for them for literally thousands of years.
Jul 30, 2008 - 11:03 am 95. Eggplant:Off topic but interesting:
According to this article:
http://health.usnews.com/articles/health/2008/07/30/health-buzz-black-aids-epidemic-and-other-health-news.html
“In places such as Detroit, Newark, N.J., New York City, Washington, and the Deep South, HIV prevalence in parts of the black community are near the levels found in severely affected African countries”
I find this very difficult to believe. At first glance one would conclude that there is something in the genetic makeup of Africans that makes them more susceptible to HIV. However the ancestors of many African-Americans left Africa almost 300 years ago. I would dare say that most African-Americans have as many European ancestors as African. Does this imply that the genetics for HIV susceptibility are a dominant trait?
The whole story is probably a lie but it’s an interesting lie.
Jul 30, 2008 - 11:43 am 96. trangbang68:Nomenklatura’s dissection of the leftist ideologues on campus is brilliant. These guys (and gals) are so stuck in a Ground Hog Day of “the movement” once and forever. Even when they mercifully leave the scene ,their disciples will carry on the Hate AmeriKKKa dialogue ad intinitum. I was at a workshop this week with educators from elite universities. The workshop dealt with 60’s themes (Civil Rights in the South) While some who lived it were generally flexible and saw a bigger picture; a number of the young “skulls full of mush” were rigid ideologues who were extremely pessimistic about the soul of the USA.
Jul 30, 2008 - 11:50 am 97. Eggplant:Old Blue- Any coercion in Christian proselytizing in times past is contrary to the letter and spirit of the New Testament while coercion is at the heart of Islamic teachings.
I agree at this point Christian missionary activity in Islamic lands is largely counter- productive.
While Old Blue very astutely critiqued the Viet Nam analogy Terasita made; I would add the Viet Cong was never a local insurgency. At the time of the 1954 accords, some of the Viet Minh regulars stayed south of the DMZ and blended in with the Catholic refugees fleeing
Ho Chi Minh’s communist north. They were always the NVA junior auxillary and as such were Giap’s cannon fodder during Tet.
Old Blue,
Did the American authorities continue with the practice of using female MPs to do general security checks or did they recognize the cultural mysogyny problem? Call me naive, but I’d like to think the American authorities could see the big picture and only use female MPs to check Afghan women.
Jul 30, 2008 - 12:10 pm 98. Doug:Westhawk - Burning the bridge to Pakistan
Either way, this recent series of leaks about the anger U.S. operators feel toward the ISI, first to the Los Angeles Times, and now to the New York Times, threatens to burn the bridge of cooperation (such as it is) between CIA and the ISI, and between the Pentagon and the Pakistani army.
Once the leakers have convinced reasonable observers that the ISI, and perhaps the broader Pakistani security establishment, is effectively in league with the Taliban and al Qaeda, the U.S. side will no longer be able to carry on as before. It would be untenable for a U.S. president to speak the same soothing platitudes about the “strong alliance” between the U.S. and Pakistan if it is common knowledge, revealed by high-level U.S. intelligence officials, that the Pakistani government, or at least very important parts of it, is working for the enemy.
Jul 30, 2008 - 12:26 pm 99. NahnCee:Let the insidious creep of education do that work, and in the course of a generation or two, you will see real change there.
I don’t want to be paying for their misogyny for the next 40 years. If they insist on being noble savages then I don’t want to pay for bringing them into the 19th Century, let alone the 21st Century, like we’re having to do in rebuilding Iraq from the ground up.
I understand what you’re saying about the message being lost but, really, why is it always America (and America’s women) that’re expected to be flexible, caring and understanding, while noble savages can skip blithely along beating their donkeys and their wives, and claiming exemption from the most basic of human values because of “social mores”?
At the very least we should be laying guilt trips on the Afghan elders, the Afghan police and the Afghan soldiers, letting them KNOW that we think they’re barbarians and not quite up to snuff humanity-wise. And that people who beat other people haven’t earned the right to carry the really good guns so they’ll just have to make do with slingshots until they can ramp up their manners a little bit.
Assuming, of course, that you Old Blue *do* agree they’re barbarians for their antiquated misogyny (among other things).
Jul 30, 2008 - 12:49 pm 100. ash:Old Blue wrote:
“Pissing off the elders of a remote district in Afghanistan by standing on our principle of a female soldier wanding them is simply a waste of engagement and damages our ability to make further progress.”
I’ve appreciated the wisdom in your comments. I’m curious, given the insight you’ve expressed so far, how you view the chances of success given the natural humiliation that occurs when we, a foreign invader, tries to ‘help’ the Afghanis? Is there really any chance of successfully invading and occupying their lands and making progress ‘civilizing’ them? Aren’t there better methods of attempting to ‘civilize’ then the military option?
Jul 30, 2008 - 1:20 pm 101. Doug:- Intelligence, Pakistani Whispers and ‘Fighting The War For Ourselves’-
Jul 30, 2008 - 1:29 pm 102. fred:While I am loathe to recognize any of Islam’s misogynistic customs, practices, and laws I realize that in a place like Afghanistan, for the sake of denying the Taliban toeholds we should respect the local mores. That’s a no-brainer. For the long-run, I am pessimistic that education alone will drive a stake into the heart of Islamic attitudes about women. In Muslim countries that did have a period of secularization women made some progress, but the people as a whole are reverting back to Islamic law and customs, and the role of women is sliding backwards.
Islam IS the problem. As long as it remains it will most certainly subvert even Muslim societies where people - even women - have access to more education. Education itself is not the magic bullet. I hate to break the bad news to y’all, but it really is the case. You know, we keep going ’round and ’round this without end, namely, the endless ways we try to avoid the harsh reality of Islamic scriptures and law and how these are the foundation for the confrontation with the world of us kafirs. That’s just the way it is. All of you policy wonks on this forum might think I’m just playing the role of the blunt instrument that lacks subtlety, but I’m only just refusing to bury my head in the sand.
For God’s sakes there are educated Muslim women who revert back to the burqa and who submit to Islamic law. There are even Western women who convert to Islam and agree to submit to the savagery, when they should know better. There is a definite allure to this thing that the narcissistic criminal from Mecca set in motion 1,400 years ago. Sir Lawrence was not the only Westerner who fell for it. As long as it exists and is out there, it has this annoying ability to renew itself and reignite the violence. I think the only American leader who honestly came to grips with it, because he read the Qur’an, was Thomas Jefferson. I guess they just don’t produce men like him anymore.
Jul 30, 2008 - 1:40 pm 103. The Glittering Eye » Blog Archive » Strategic Objectives in Afghanistan:[...] tip to Richard Fernandez for finding this useful bit of information. In a July 26 interview Sen. Obama said: I’m not [...]
Jul 30, 2008 - 2:33 pm 104. Steve:Wretchard
In your last post you said
“While I am totally ignorant of the internal strategic calculations which underpinned OIF”
Have you read War and Decision?
Jul 30, 2008 - 2:41 pm 105. sirius_sir:Let the insidious creep of education do that work, and in the course of a generation or two, you will see real change there.
The use of the word insidious couldn’t be more apropriate. The realm of education–indoctrination, if you will–may be the real center of gravity in the long war. At some level we already understand the importance of building schools in Iraq and Afghanistan and educating women in order to reform these cultures.
Ash asks, “Is there really any chance of successfully invading and occupying their lands and making progress ‘civilizing’ them? Aren’t there better methods of attempting to ‘civilize’ then the military option?” Again, the best answer is education. But the question is how do you go about educating–civilizing–from without?
I would argue the problems of cultural antipathy we encounter by virtue of being in country are manageable; the schisms might even be to our advantage. For every chieftan in Afghanistan offended by being wanded by a female (a stupidity easily addressed) there are possibly thousands of young Iraqi males so favorably impressed by the U.S. soldier as to want to be like him.
The bigger problem seems to me what to do about Muslim populations with which we have little or no direct contact. The problem is made worse by the influence of extremist teachings–indoctrinations–conducted in too many madrassas. Fred says, “Education itself is not the magic bullet.” Maybe not. Perhaps especially not in countries like Pakistan where we have no actual footprint. But where, as in Iraq and Afghanistan, we have influence it seems to me only sensible that we should continue to assert and cultivate it. Meanwhile, we should watch what is going on with the education of our own, both in the public schools and private–especially given the potential for insidious creep towards something quite counter to our way of life.
Jul 30, 2008 - 3:16 pm 106. ash:sirius_sir wrote:
“…there are possibly thousands of young Iraqi males so favorably impressed by the U.S. soldier as to want to be like him.”
I’m tryin to envision what it is you think would impress Iraqi (or Afghani) males so much about our occupying forces. Surely they are not sitting in a bar having a beer and shooting the sh*t with each other. Would it be their courteous driving habits? Their pleasant middle of the night visits to their humble homes? Those nifty guns they tote about? Maybe they really hated that uncle of theirs killed? Put the shoe on the other foot. What possible features do you think would favorably impress you if the US were occupied by some foreign force?
Jul 30, 2008 - 4:11 pm 107. Old Blue:Those are good questions, and I had to bear the ire of the female soldier when I had to put my foot down and say, “No, we are not going to expect these old mountain men to understand OUR way of life.
The message is lost for the same reason my message would be lost if I started off with, “Nahncee, you silly beytoch…”
You would be offended, and anything I said beyond that point would be largely lost. You see, we are not making them change, we are influencing them to change. There is very little that we actually forced them to do. Now, some methods of influencing them are more direct than others, for instance; when we wanted to stop payroll skimming, we simply observed their pay operations. The officers who were skimming simply didn’t have the chance to “tax” their soldiers unobserved. The skimming stopped.
Influencing village elders is another ball of wax. Influencing them does include the mild shock of dealing with American females in uniform, who are treated like rock stars by the children and the males. Don’t think that doesn’t influence the little girls as well. It does; deeply.
Their struggles with mysogyny are, unfortunately, their own. Our society had to come to grips (and still is, really) with sexism and finding the right balance. We must pick and choose our battles, or we may lose the most important ones. One of the key Taliban IO talking points is that we are “un-Islamic,” not meaning that we’re not Muslim, but that we are ANTI-Muslim… that we mock them and flaunt our ways in their faces, humiliating them.
The point is that they were willing to continue on under Taliban rule, and we are the ones who need them to change. Overall, a lot of Afghans see the benefit to doing things more along the lines of what we would like them to do, but it is still up to us to sell them on it. Offending them prevents that.
Under the king, who died last August, Afghanistan was a fairly progressive society. That was part of what caused the Islamic fundamentalist backlash, but the coup by the communists, intervention by the Soviets, and the ensuing civil war destroyed all of the King’s work of forty and fifty years ago. Still, in Kabul many women do not wear the burqa. Time will tell, but what I can tell you is that we must be careful what we push and what we simply allow nature to take care of.
As far as being the “occupation forces,” we are not, in fact, occupiers. The Taliban tries to paint us as such, but we are an assistance force, tipping the scales heavily in the favor of the IRoA government. That is why we have to walk a fine line.
I was always an advocate of being as gentle as possible in our dealings with Afghans. It surprising how much they actually look up to us, and I was surprised at how many of them thanked me for leaving my family (very important to Afghans) to come to their country and help them.
Still, it was easy to behave like an occupier if you wanted to. I fought against that and ruthlessly enforced my standard among our men.
Sirius, I used the term insidious tongue-in-cheek, but it’s more insidious than that. They are being taught by Afghan teachers. It’s the ability to read and the export of our culture via entertainment that will have the greatest impact. That and when Afghan girls come to the States for higher education.
But ultimately, there are some things that you cannot save others from. I think we’ve all had family members who would prove this to be true. They must choose for themselves, and they can.
Jul 30, 2008 - 4:17 pm 108. Tony:As Roderick Reilly hints - the same impetus that explains the collapse of the Soviet Union as a natural event, independent of American influence (Reagan, Pershings, Star Wars, yee-hah!), is the impetus that insisted that Mookie was the reason for the sudden surge of peace in Iraq. And then it was the tribes, they defeated Al Qaeda in Anbar, the surge was incidental.
So, if events like the fall of the USSR and the defeat of Al Qaeda and the insurgency in Iraq were not caused by anything America did, why is “Climate Change” America’s fault? Surely, if the Great Satan controls the climate, he must be pretty strong.
Btw, if withdrawing our troops from Iraq would make the Iraqi’s pick up the slack, why don’t Obama and the Dems go for the same trick in Afghanistan?
Four years ago, I thought there could be no emptier suit than John Kerry, and now along comes Obama to prove me wrong!
Jul 30, 2008 - 4:18 pm 109. Cannoneer No. 4:Old Blue,
blocks the reception of our real message.
What is our real message?
shows a greater lack of concern for and sensitivity to their culture, which has worked for them for literally thousands of years.
You no doubt saw more vestiges of traditional Pashtun culture than I did, but how ever well their culture may have “worked” for them before the Soviets came, what I saw of it is not “working” for them now. It is unraveling. The old forms of social control have fallen away but Western-style concepts of justice and professonal law enforcement haven’t replaced them.
The social cohesion is gone. The authority of the elders and maliks is undermined by big men with money and guns. Jirgas don’t meet like they did and are ignored. Pashtunawali is not observed as it once was. Kabul is too insecure to let lashkars and arbakai perform their traditional functions even if they still could and too weak to enforce the law and administer justice itself.
I believe in cultural awareness sufficient to get them to do what you want.
Jul 30, 2008 - 4:27 pm 110. Cannoneer No. 4:Doug — check this out: Pakistan Army : We Stand With You
Brig. (r) Junaid Zaman calls for cutting the MSR, supporting the Taliban and shooting down our Predators.
Jul 30, 2008 - 4:41 pm 111. Old Blue:Wow. That article is STRONG.
The Afghans don’t trust the Pakistanis at all, and blame them for a lot of their troubles, especially for backing the Taliban in the melee after the Soviets left. That Brigadier just confirmed some of that inadvertently.
On your other points; I think that our real message varies from place to place based on what issues they have in that locale, but the message overall is about democracy working, about Afghanistan being one nation, about the rule of law and the necessity for government to work for the people and not be corrupt.
Yeah, I know… good luck with all of that. It’s hard, but I’ve seen it start to sink in.
I don’t know; in one district, the Police Chief was attending the Jirgas and the local version of the “mayors court” was working. They were applying local law the same way that a mayor in a small town here in the States would.
On the other hand, they were resolving issues regarding goats and so on. But sometimes it was as complex as social issues such as “kidnapping,” when a guy and a girl actually run away together, sometimes the end result is that they wind up married, but the groom’s family has to pay a “fine” to the bride’s family. Small society stuff, sure; but it was working, and the local police were involved without it getting into the national legal system.
What I saw was police leadership that was very willing to let locals solve their problems as long as it didn’t involve violence.
You’ve got some great points about the frayed social fabric, though. Still, when you piss them off over a matter of principle that is something waaaaay too advanced for their culture at this point, you stand very little chance of further cooperation.
Jul 30, 2008 - 6:44 pm 112. ash:Old Blue wrote:
“As far as being the “occupation forces,” we are not, in fact, occupiers. The Taliban tries to paint us as such, but we are an assistance force, tipping the scales heavily in the favor of the IRoA government. That is why we have to walk a fine line. ”
Kind of splitting hairs here. If a poor ole pasty white guy like me on this side of the pond has trouble distinguishing between “assistance force” and “occupying power” I can just imagine what my counterpart must be thinking over there, especially given their governance history.
…and that “payroll skimming” don’t we refer to that as “payroll tax”?
Cannoneer No. 4 wrote:
“I believe in cultural awareness sufficient to get them to do what you want.”
What the heck is it that ‘we’ want ‘them’ to do??? Isn’t the whole ball of wax just gettin’ them to act civil?
Jul 30, 2008 - 6:49 pm 113. NahnCee:Of course, there is always Option #3. Has anyone ever pointed that out to the tribal elders? Be a lot cheaper bottom-line and it sure would solve a lot of these little “societal” problems in a hurry. American female pilots *are* capable of flying bombers, too.
Jul 30, 2008 - 6:59 pm 114. ash:Why cause mass murder when you can just get outta Dodge?
Jul 30, 2008 - 7:05 pm 115. Mike Sylwester:Some people in Afghanistan and Iraq perceive as occupiers, others perceive us as liberators. We came into Afghanistan through the Northern Alliance, which had been fighting against the Taliban for many years.
Now in Iraq, many Sunnis perceive that we are protecting them from the Shia.
It’s more complicated, Ash, than that everyone perceives us as evil occupiers, even though you yourself obviously perceive our soldiers in that manner.
Jul 30, 2008 - 7:50 pm 116. Cannoneer No. 4:ash, according to their own lights they are acting civil. They/i> think they’re civilized. And the Durrani Empire was civilized in comparison to its contempory neighbors. If you judge a civilization by its output of poetry they may be more civilized than we are.
The main thing “we” want “them” to do nowadays is:
dime out Taliban
rally to Karzai
Further down the list are nice to haves like:
quit buggering young boys, donkeys, sheep, goats, camels, etc.
Jul 30, 2008 - 7:51 pm 117. Old Blue:quit marrying 11-year old girls
quit treating girls and women like crap
quit growing opium
quit wiping their asses with their fingers
quit squatting to pee
quit whining
quit soliciting bribes
quit accepting bribes
LOL
Jul 30, 2008 - 8:20 pm 118. Utopia Parkway:In the meantime, to make that a central point due to our personal sensibilities is a huge error and shows a greater lack of concern for and sensitivity to their culture, which has worked for them for literally thousands of years.
Their culture hasn’t worked so well for them for the past, say 150 years. Perhaps before that it wasn’t so obvious how far behind they were from the rest of the world. In that time they’ve been overrun by the Brits, and the Soviets, and the Taliban and AQ. Their literacy rate is very low. The fact that they are prickly and are willing to fight and die is maybe the reason that their culture still exists at all. Or maybe it’s just that they live in a place that is more rock and dirt and dust than anything else so who really cares to take it away from them.
I’m not saying that we should deliberately step on their culture. Although when they wanted to kill one of their own because he converted to Christianity a year or two ago maybe a little stomping was in order.
Basically what you’re saying is that they have to be treated like children. They need to be tucked in at night and nobody better talk about monsters or let a woman appear to be their better or they will sulk. Um OK.
Jul 30, 2008 - 9:58 pm 119. Wadeusaf:“Basically what you’re saying is that they have to be treated like children. They need to be tucked in at night and nobody better talk about monsters or let a woman appear to be their better or they will sulk.”
What are the options?
A. Continue to piss them off and insult their culture (for what it is it is their culture) thus ensuring eternal enmity and a large very large and bloody war.
B. Ignore them and hope the bad men will go away.
C. Do the dirty work for the Saudi’s and Pakistani’s and wipe the Islamists out.
D. Partner with those are tired of the Islamists and change the face of the ME and SA.
Note that C and D appear to be interchangeable, but like KSA and Pakistan, they are opposite sides of the same coin, one brings the combustibles the other brings the fuel. Neither has control of itself.
So yeah, UP we can lead them, push them or follow them, but we cannot now ignore them or stand still and it makes no sense to insult them in any event.
Jul 31, 2008 - 5:31 am 120. Old Blue:There are many serious indictments of their culture. They have an extremely high infant mortality rate, a maternal mortality rate to match. The list goes on…
While most Afghans (other than the elders and those who benefit directly from the status quo) realize that there is a better way, and they want to move towards it, it has worked for them, after a fashion.
They are still there. They beat the Soviets. They are a proud people. The arguments against their culture sound very much like the arguments against the Native Americans 150 years ago, really.
Despite all of the medieval horror of their daily lives, life went on as it had for centuries. They lived as their father and his father and his… ad nauseum.
It is a process, and that process is a marathon, not a sprint.
These are some of the intricacies and frustrations of COIN. This is part of why it is difficult work and not everyone, not every military professional, finds themselves up to the task. It’s hard.
Jul 31, 2008 - 6:15 am 121. ash:I’m questioning the efficacy of using the military to lead them to where we want them to go. Our military is very good at fighting but liberal inspired ‘nation building’? Not so good.
Jul 31, 2008 - 6:25 am 122. NahnCee:Makes me rethink whether to vote for Hillary, if I knew it would annoy some village Elder in a backwater like Afghanistan that a woman is the leader of the most powerful country on earth. And whether Old Blue would fess up to his elders that his boss was a woman if she were to be elected.
Back when I was still watching “60 Minutes” they did a feature on an Air Force officer who was a woman and served some time in Saudi Arabia. She was an officer, for god’s sake, and had people reporting to her and flew the big expensive airplanes and everything.
The 60 Minutes report was about how her military superiors made her kowtow to Saudi expectations for women, including wearing a black sack everywhere she went, having to have a man accompany her everywhere, and not being able to drive her own car.
The disgust and revulsion in her voice as she talked about both the Saudi’s and her superiors was enlightening. And her body language when the 60 Minutes person asked her to try on the abaya for the camera was also instructive. She flat-out refused to do so, and gave him an “are you KIDDING?!” look.
She served in the Sandbox pre-9/11. For all our contortions to be understanding and caring about their society and its mores, the Saudi’s turned around and gave us 9/11 in return. I just don’t see how stepping on that woman pilot or refusing to let a female soldier do her assigned duty because it will offend some groaty old dinosaur is going to be helpful to any cause, any where, any time, any how.
Like we say to an immature teenager, “Deal with it.” It’s life, it’s the way it is … deal with it.
I like Cannoneer’s list of things we want them to do. It’s much more basic than the things I was thinking of like freedom of speech, freedom of religion, equal pay for equal work, and rule of law, although it would be nice to introduce “the elders” to those concepts, too.
BTW, I strongly agree with the idea that American soldiers in these swamps are very good role models, and something both Muslim adults and their children learn to aspire to be. I don’t agree, however, in lopping off 50% of the role model potential because someone thinks it may be the polite thing to do.
Jul 31, 2008 - 9:03 am 123. Chip:I can’t believe I’m going to say this. But, if you want to know the basics about Saudi Arabia, watch The Kingdom with Jamie Foxx and the Alias chick… hurt boxer movie… from West Virginia… I can see her face. I hate that. My wife to the rescue: Jennifer Garner.
Jul 31, 2008 - 9:06 am 124. Cannoneer No. 4:The historical analogies between the Pashtuns and the Apaches and Sioux are interesting to a history buff like me.
Compare and contrast 9/11 to the Minnesota Massacre.
Is Mullah Omar anything like Red Cloud? Might a Crow have similar opinions about Lakota domination as Tajiks had about Pashtun Taliban domination?
And how much like The Medicine Line is the Durand Line?
Will some 21st-Century General Crook go across the line and talk Baitullah Mehsud in to coming in?
The Taliban is 90% Pashtun. Pashtun culture is under stress comparable to the small pox, the extinction of the buffalo, and disasterous wars. They can assimulate or they can stay on the Rez but the old ways are dying fast.
Jul 31, 2008 - 9:33 am 125. Utopia Parkway:I’m not saying we need to be deliberately provocative (most of the time) but being wanded by a female soldier was a teaching moment. It was an opportunity to let them know what the wand is for and what it does.
Wand an American. Find that the knife in his pocket sets off the wand. Let them understand that wanding everyone is for their own protection too. No one wants someone with a bomb to come into a meeting with them. These guys may be ignorant but that doesn’t mean they’re stupid. They can learn.
The woman doing the wanding is a secondary issue.
I gotta say that many Muslims seem like cats getting their temperature taken at the vet’s office. They don’t understand what’s going on and they know that they don’t like it. Their reaction is often violent. Every Muslim pronouncement seems to contain the terms humiliation and revenge.
Yes, it will be a while before Afghanistan comes into the modern world. Time to start moving is now.
Jul 31, 2008 - 9:52 am 126. Old Blue:NahnCee, far less than 50% of our military is female, and most females don’t leave “the wire.” They hold jobs that don’t require it.
Ash, I agree that the military is doing some things that we are not necessarily the best suited for; but we get shot at sometimes and they send very few people downrange who are not soldiers to be shot at. It happens, but it is a tiny number.
Oh, NahnCee… to vote for a candidate simply to piss off Afghan peasants isn’t what I would call the best decision-making process, but hey; it’s your vote.
The governor of Bamyan Province, Afghanistan, is a woman. In one of the more remote areas of Afghanistan, one of the Provincial Council members with a fair amount of clout was a woman. In Kapisa Province, one of the international community representatives was a Polish female. She did not wear a burqa, but she covered her head (not her face) with a scarf in the manner of Muslim women to respect their culture.
Jul 31, 2008 - 9:55 am 127. Old Blue:Utopia: In southern Kapisa Province, the Taliban had to locals convinced that our ballistic eyewear (I’d like to thank the good people at WileyX for sponsoring my tour) enabled us to see through their clothes.
There is a time and a place for teaching moments, and you must choose your subjects carefully. You must also establish the enabling learning objectives that open the door to learing those other points.
That time was not the time, nor was it the place. What happened was that a squad leader and his female soldiers were so self-centered that they forgot that other people may not share their advanced sensibilities. My point to the female and the squad leader is this:
“It’s not about YOU. It’s about THEM.”
Time and patience. As Canoneer pointed out, they have more fish to fry. Do not try to teach a man gender equality before you get him to stop buggering the livestock.
Jul 31, 2008 - 10:01 am 128. Toward A Better Debate « Strange Monkey Doll:[...] my reader(ship) to another couple of posts by my ideal blogger, Richard Fernandez (aka Wretchard): The Wrong Place and Should Cops or Generals Spearhead the War on Terror?. This kind of discussion is where my [...]
Jul 31, 2008 - 10:25 am 129. NahnCee:I suppose it’s too soon for an American soldier to sue a village elder for sexual harassment. Bankrupt the damned country even worser than it already is.
P.S. I know that 50% of soldiers aren’t female, Blue. You’re flailing.
Jul 31, 2008 - 11:41 am 130. Old Blue:“I strongly agree with the idea that American soldiers in these swamps are very good role models, and something both Muslim adults and their children learn to aspire to be. I don’t agree, however, in lopping off 50% of the role model potential because someone thinks it may be the polite thing to do.” — NahnCee
Just responding to your comment about soldiers/role models/lopping off potential.
I sincerely apologize for any lamps, knick-knacks, assorted crockery, or other collectible items damaged or destroyed by my flailing.
Jul 31, 2008 - 12:52 pm 131. Daily Pundit » Oh, We Don’t Question Those Assertions:[...] Belmont Club » The wrong place Two assertions about Iraq ought to be challenged or at least examined more closely. The first is the idea that security improvements in Iraq and al-Qaeda’s defeat had little if anything to do with the US effort. The second is the assertion that the “real” strategic center of gravity always should have been Afghanistan, because the proper object of the War is to “get bin Laden”. [...]
Jul 31, 2008 - 1:22 pm 132. Cannoneer No. 4:The Endless War
The Durrani tribal federation of Pushtuns has been dominant since the 1700s, well before the British arrived. President Hamid Karzai is from the Popolzai clan of Durrani, whose two other main clans are the Barakzai and Alikojai. These three groups were favored for leadership by NATO after the Taliban were routed. Naturally, all the non-Durranis have resented the situation and the Western sponsors ever since; thus providing a convenient and ready supply of dissident fighters, with and without Taliban connections.
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