FROM SOMALIA TO IRAQ — Excerpt, Article, Commentary
Pay attention to key points, because I am posting an article afterwards that is relevent, followed by commentary. Think of Iraq as you read it. -SG
(from Full Spectrum Disorder – The Military in the New American Century, pp. 53-57)
[from Chapter 5, "Somalia - The Meanings of Bakara"]
South Mogadishu – 1993
In Somalia, all [Somali] parties significantly, and predictably, strengthened their defensive postures to ensure they held onto the terrain they already controlled.
A Pakistani attack in June 1993 against Mohammed Farah Aidid’s Somali National Alliance (SNA) in Mogadishu met that well-prepared defense, and the SNA delivered them a decisive tactical defeat that pivoted on a very well-prepared anti-armor ambush – which the Day paper refers to, demagogically, as a “massacre.” The SNA’s next major ambush would be against the Americans in Bakara.
There is another inherent weakness for outside forces in this situation, and that is the necessity to develop fixed installations and then supply them. The airport had to be secured to maintain an airhead. The roads from the airport to Sword Base (the main U.S. installation), a good forty-minute drive by armored convoy past a miniature Maginot line of 10th Mountain Division roadside bunkers, each themselves vulnerable to small attacks, went all the way around Mogadishu to avoid the ubiquitous mining and mortar/sniper attacks. These two installations and the corridor that linked them were all “fixed.”
Against a highly-mobile, lightly-equipped enemy, this translates into a total loss of battlefield initiative, like timber wolves taking down an elk. The mobile indigenous force can pick away at the edges of the fixed positions, when they want and how they want at minimal risk to themselves, especially in urban areas. Each mildly successful strike can inaugurate a whole new set of policies, procedures, and countermeasures from the fixed force, keeping them perpetually in a state of reaction to the initiatives of their enemies. The U.S. political emphasis on “force protection†(that is, an obsessive avoidance of any U.S. combat casualties, an implicit component of the Powell Doctrine) only increases the vulnerability associated with loss of battlefield initiative.
This not only drains resources and decreases flexibility. It is very hard on troop morale. I point that out not only in passing, but because it is significant to discussions about operations in Afghanistan and Iraq. [first written in April 2003 -SG]
[The following is a key point! -SG]
There was a way out of this dilemma from a strictly tactical perspective, and that was to regain the initiative through audacious, aggressive, sustained ground action against the SNA. But the Powell Doctrine is one that seeks to avoid ground combat engagements unless there is overwhelming superiority in firepower and a low likelihood of American combat casualties. For the ground tactical commander, ever mindful of the priorities of his or her superiors, that translates into a powerful reluctance to engage in decisive combat, or to even risk combat, and an inordinate emphasis at every level of command on force protection.
Audacious, aggressive, sustained offensive operations against one enemy organization will yield tactical victories, but it will inevitably cost “friendly†lives, and thereby risks losing the unseen but essential element in all U.S. military operations – the support of the civilian population at home.
So regaining the tactical initiative (forcing your enemy to react to your plans and actions, instead of you reacting to your enemy’s) depends on a type of action – one with a higher probability of “friendly†casualties – that could threaten domestic acceptance of the military action. This is one reason the Bush-Rumsfeld regime, after 9/11 gave them their pretext for war, began to warn the public about the “costs†of the Infinite War. We were being inoculated in order to give the military more tactical flexibility.
A key and integral part of the Powell Doctrine – and still one of the predominant thrusts of current military doctrine in the U.S. – is information/spin control. Controlling the public’s perceptions of operations is as important a part of military operations, under this doctrine, as logistics or intelligence. One of the primary difficulties for the U.S. military, for example, in Haiti was that Haiti’s porous borders allowed swarms of uncontrolled international reporters loose across the country. Not so in Iraq and not so in Afghanistan. These actions were sifted, sanitized, and packaged for public consumption.
With the release of Black Hawk Down, we have seen the retrojection of this policy to past operations through a public-private partnership including the Department of Defense and Hollywood – another piece of Powell Doctrine image management.
The Powell Doctrine is named for Colin Powell, who is the former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and as of this writing is the U.S. Secretary of State.
Powell’s first test as a young Black officer was as Deputy Assistant Chief of Staff for the Americal Division in Vietnam, where he was given the difficult and dubious task of damage control after revelations about the My Lai massacre, in which U.S. soldiers from the Americal Division tortured, raped, and eventually slaughtered 347 unarmed civilians in a remote Vietnamese hamlet.
He performed brilliantly in that role, showing a real talent for negotiating politically sensitive bureaucratic and diplomatic mazes, and was noticed by one Caspar Weinberger, who would eventually appoint him his Deputy Security Adviser when Ronald Reagan appointed Weinberger Secretary of Defense. Powell was then personally groomed to become the youngest (and only Black) Chairman of the Joint Chiefs.
Powell never forgot the “lessons†[he imagined] he’d learned from Vietnam:
• that there needs to be some simple and clear criteria for “national interest†that determines when military force will be used
• that the full weight of government and press influence should be mobilized to ensure public support of the military action
• that overwhelming and devastating force must be employed against the entire society with whom we are at war (as opposed to “proportionality†, the bugaboo that many—including Powell—incorrectly hold responsible for the U.S. defeat in Vietnam, which was resurrected to explain the defeat of Task Force Ranger)
• and that there is some clear “exit strategy.â€
Implicit in the Powell Doctrine, with its heavy public relations emphasis, is an obsessive minimization of U.S. casualties, which is directly related to the emphasis on maximizing offensive force. Holding down U.S. casualties and hiding U.S. “collateral damage†resulting from the heavy-handed operations that keep U.S. casualties low are the two halves of the public relations issue…
…We had launched ground patrols out of the airport after the first night, August 26, in response to mortar attacks – a tactic that, had it been pursued aggressively, would have regained some of the initiative. But the firing of a warning shot to halt a fleeing Somali spooked the command element and they halted the patrols.
Veterans of Special Ops blunders like Grenada began complaining early, especially after we accidentally “captured†several UN aid officials on an August 30 raid in yet another classic goat fuck. The next two raids were done in exactly the same way. Our complaints centered on the execution of one raid after another using the exact same tactical template, which some of us were convinced was giving the SNA and others an opportunity to analyze that template and prepare counter-measures. (We were right, but most officers consider enlisted men, even senior ones, to be stupid.)
Each time we raided another target, we would simply go back to the airport and hunker down for a day or two until we did it again – the same way!
Our grouplet of malcontents were privately saying that we should fire up the coffee pots and launch one raid on top of another, using a different template each time, as fast as we could re-arm and refuel, until we were dropping out from exhaustion, then sleep for six hours and start again. But we were not in charge. And greater tactical efficacy would only have altered the superficial features of the overall situation, as the retaliation rousts in Iraq are now showing.
We were still American troops in Somalia. The only way we could change that was what we eventually did – leave.
The Powell Doctrine pushed “force protection†and overwhelming firepower. The Special Operations commanders were a generation removed from an earlier Special Ops establishment that made the soldier, the team, and creativity the centerpiece of its doctrine. This new lot had been raised under a regime that constructed its doctrine around its technology (instead of the inverse). And the political context was very poorly understood, if at all. This is a perennial problem in the U.S. military.
END Excerpt
Iraqi Troops to Lock Down Baghdad, Defense Minister Says
Conflicting Reports on Zarqawi, Possible Successor Posted on Islamist Web Sites
Wire Services
Thursday, May 26, 2005; 7:25 AM
BAGHDAD — Iraq’s defense and interior ministers announced a massive security operation on Thursday that will see more than 40,000 Iraqi troops deployed in the capital to hunt down insurgents and their weapons.
During a press conference to announce the new security measures, Iraq’s Interior Minister Bayan Jabr also said his office believes Abu Musab Zarqawi was wounded, but doesn’t know if he is dead.
The statement by the Interior Ministry came hours after an Internet statement claimed Iraq’s most feared terror group had appointed a fill-in for purportedly wounded leader Abu Musab Zarqawi.
The Internet statement, the authenticity of which could not be verified, was quickly denied in another Web site claim disputing Abu Hafs Gerni had taken over from Zarqawi, the Jordanian-born head of the al Qaeda in Iraq terrorist group. The conflicting statements follow days of rumors Zarqawi was wounded and possibly killed or moved outside Iraq for treatment.
Jabr said his office believes Zarqawi was wounded, but said he did not know how seriously or if he was dead. It was not clear on what evidence Jabr was basing his statement.
Defense Minister Sadoun Dulaimi said the 40,000 force would include troops from the interior and defense ministries. It would be by far the largest anti-insurgent operation carried out in Baghdad by Iraqi security forces.
“We will divide Baghdad into seven main areas, and the number of the forces who will take part in the operation from the interior and the defense ministry will be more than 40,000 security men,” he told a news conference.
Dulaimi said it would be the first phase of a security crackdown that could eventually cover the whole country.
“We will also impose a concrete blockade around Baghdad, like a bracelet around an arm, God willing, and God be with us in our crackdown on the terrorists’ infrastructure. No one will be able to penetrate this blockade,” Dulaimi said.
“You will witness unprecedentedly strict security measures.”
“These operations will aim at turning the government’s role from defensive to offensive,” Jabr said.
END article excerpt
COMMENTARY
Note the special attention the press constantly gives to al Zarqawi — the evil personification of the war. This is part of the massive disinfo campaign that has characterized this image-management war from the outset. I have serious doubts about who this person is, and whether “he” is responsbile for everything the press claims — since the info-tainers simply repeat what the Centcom PAO and the Pentagon tell them. This is to divert us from the fundamental understanding that the resistance, in all its forms, is primarily Iraqi… and it experesses with arms a widespread Iraqi hositlity toward American forces.
The recent spate of US and US-directed “offensives” is a dcsperate attempt to regain the initiative, which has been largely lost since around Day Two of the invasion. What is interesting is how this condition is constantly transferred back onto the resistance by the administration, who never tire of telling us how the resistance is “on its heels,” its “back is broken,” and that every upsurge of resistance activity, which is becoming increasingly adaptable and sophisticated, is an indication of their own “desperation” and impending defeat.
This only increases the hostility of the general population toward both US forces and Iraqi collaborators. Tactically, these round-ups are what someone once called the equivalent of “squeezing Jell-O,” because the insurgent forces simply vacate the operational area except for a few delaying actions when one of the US/Collaborator operations begins.
The US is now being hoisted on its own political petard in Iraq, even as it has scored remarkable imperial success in Central Asia at quietly installing bases there on the doorsteps of Russia and China, and with the proposed Georgia-Turkey oil pipeline (Let’s hope Turkish comrades wil ramp up their efforts to close down US bases!). The military operations are increasingly being hemmed in (even though these “offensives” look like the opposite, for now) by the politic of unintended consequences — the stickiest being the fact that the US now has ZERO option to attack Iran. For those who haven’t noticed, or failed to understand, the new “government” is a kind of Pinocchio, part puppet, part “real boy.” It still depends on the US to some degree; it hasn’t managed to extricate itself from US control; but it is a decidely pro-Iranian government, with a pro-Iranian popular base that is being held back by Sistani and others from joining the open resistance. If the US attacks Iran, there will be a general Shia rebellion in Iraq, which will rapidly deliver the United States a decisive military defeat. How’s THAT for a Catch-22?
And the attacks on any and all collaborators will continue. This is not a moral or political choice for the resistance, but an ironclad tactical necessity. Every Iraqi who speaks with Americans in any form of cooperation is a source of intelligence for the occupiers. The resistance, which is massively outgunned, cannot allow the occupation to maintain a steady flow of intelligence, so the attacks on collaborators are — in effect — the only method available to the resistance to “blind” the occupying forces. It is not only easier, tactically, to attack collaborators. It is in many cases a higher battlefield priority. The Americans can never become “oriented” in Iraq without Iraqi assistance, because the culture is too foreign to them; and this disorientation is a tremendous ally for the resistance.
The generals have figured this out — at least some of them have — and I’d bet a paycheck that the most powerful voices behind the scenes clamoring for an “exit strategy” are them. The dilemma is that their political masters are hell-bent on permanent bases there, and they wouldn’t know a sound military doctrine if it bit them square in the ass (Rumsfeld is the chief moron in this regard, and he runs the Pentagon!). So these Brook Brothers warriors in the administration directed the generals to build a puppet Iraqi military force to do the heavy lifting, which hasn’t worked worth a tinker’s damn, and more recently, to organized multiple militias out of semi-criminal military organizations like the Badr Brigades and the peshmergas.
So here we are… back in Beirut, or should I say Mogadishu?
During training scenarios, I used to ask young officers who were faced with a tactical dilemma, “What are you going to do now, Lieutenant?”
“What are you going to do now, Donald?”
m.c.:
Rummy’s thinking hard. The Associated Press has reported that Amnesty International, based in London, has branded the U.S. prison base at Guantanamo Bay “the gulag of our time” as well as other detention centers. In a 308-page report calling for the base to be closed, AI accused the United States of shirking its responsibility to set the bar for human rights protections and said Washington has created a new lexicon for abuse and torture.
Any bets that Tony Blair retires in the next month and hands power over to Gordon Brown?
26 May 2005, 4:16 pmeoinmonkey:
Anything is possible in politics, but I dont see Tony Blair as the kind of guy who would retire any time soon. He is still, contrary to some belief, playing a strong hand as regards British politics. People might have felt “betrayed” by the war on Iraq, but what exactly is that going to add to the kind of discussions going on in the UK about “asylum seekers”, hooligan culture, pensions, the NHS, and all the usual bugbears about taxation and representation. Most British people recognise the lack of a viable alternative to the current government- the Conservatives are worse, the Lib-Dems havnt a chance without PR, and Respect are a one trick pony with fundamentalist backing; Gordon Brown isnt well liked enough or personable enough to win the popularity contest that is modern UK ‘democracy’. My bet is on continued stagnation and political apathy, marked by increasingly foul and hollow rhetoric about unwanted immigrants and violent chavs.
27 May 2005, 6:56 amGetting off the sham that is British politics, perhaps with the segway that it was announced this week that 400 more HM Armed Forces personel are being posted to Iraq, somewhere slightly less popular than Northern Ireland in the late seventies, the question would be: exactly how long will it take the Brooks Brothers generals to realise their mistake and give in to the demand to come up with an exit strategy? I agree with the proposition that the US position in Iraq is utterly untenable and getting out will have to happen at some point, but are we looking at a few years, or decades? Is it possible that perpetual low-intensity war until the inevitable oil-entropy collapse is on the cards? I guess this is another catch-22 of the situation- every US serviceperson who dies is another argument for leaving, but every death is another justification to “not give up the good fight” and betray their brave memory… The Neo-cons would be tearing their hair out if they werent living in a universe based on massive levels of self-delusion.
eoinmonkey:
http://www.guerrillanews.com/headlines/3051/US_fights_Iraq_fire_with_street_fighters
“With the Iraqi resistance showing no signs of wavering and extending its roots deep into the population, the US has realized that to counter this threat it must change its approach.
Asia Times Online has learned that the US, instead of training up a regular professional Iraqi army, will create what in effect will be armed militias, acting under US central command, to take the militias of the resistance on at their own game.”
Is this just part of the same failing attempt to redefine the boundries of the conflict? Is this going to have the same success as the regular AmerIraqi armed forces have had?
27 May 2005, 6:59 amArminius:
So, 40,000 Iraqi troops will “lock down” Baghdad. And do what? If they were serious about it they wouldn’t announce it at all, they’d just do it. This is simply a way of informing the “insurgents” to keep out of the way for a couple of days while the Iraqi troops go through their charade. I’d bet my bottom $ the real leaders of the Iraqi resistance are high-ranking members of the new Iraqi army. Al Zarqawi is just of nuisance value and owes his notoriety to the American-Hollywoodian need to have a “bad guy” to demonize…
27 May 2005, 7:41 amn.cafferky:
“Respect are a one trick pony with fundamentalist backing;”. Who exactly are these fundamentalists? What policies do they espouse that make them fundamentalist? Are they calling for the introduction of shari’a law into Great Britain or the banning of alcohol? Respect seems to me to be a coalition of left wingers and people who are concerned about the UK’s involvement in Iraq. Alot of the latter are Muslims who do have conservative views on some social issues. So whats the alternative for a leftist organisation try to build resistence to the war? Ignore them? Call them names? Isn’t it better to have some common ground with people of opposing views to build an alliance against the war mongerers who are surely the real enemy? It also helps the left to have a point of contact with Muslim and Asian communities it might not have had before. Trying to build a coalition purely with people who agree with everything you stand for is really just a coalition with yourself. Creating a successful alliance of many different constituent organisations with differing views helps sharpen the organizational tactics of all groups involved. Tarring anti-war consevative muslims as fundamentalists is sloppy thinking eoinmonkey. The left here in the UK and around the world needs more imaginative thinking and organisational flexability like that shown by Respect if it is to have any hope of going toe to toe with the powers that be.
27 May 2005, 11:53 am(P.S. I’m not a member of Respect, this has not been a party political broadcast)
peggy:
Stan – What are the reasons why, after all this time, the US has not developed a workable counter-insurgency program? Is it because all the defense planners are unable to see out of their clouds? Is it because the Powell Doctrine works against the use of ground forces? Or is it because there is no possibility of a universally applicable counter-insurgency program, nor any possibility of quick-and-light in-and-out neat-and-clean counterinsurgency? Or some other reason or combination of reasons?
The article below was in the news today:
http://www.defenselink.mil/news/May2005/20050527_1385.html
It is illuminating.
27 May 2005, 5:30 pmpeggy:
eoinmonkey – Aha. In your second post you have answered some of my questions above. The US will create a bunch of paramilitaries and arm them all. Then they will all fight against each other as well as the current insurgents, guns will be everywhere, nobody will be safe, and Iraq will be rendered permanently unstable. The poor will be rendered poorer. Clever thieves will profit handsomely.
27 May 2005, 6:21 pmBut in such a situation, it would be difficult to maintain oil fields and refineries and all that. If the US were far-sighted (which it isn’t) it would colonize like the English did – get the colonies well-organized the better to produce and extract more wealth. On the other hand, probably such an effort is not possible now, for many reasons.
m.c.:
I don’t profess to be an expert on UK politics but in the May 23, 2005 New Yorker there is a good Comment “The Talk of the Town: Blair’s Bushy Tail”; pp.29-30 by Hendrik Hertzberg, a senior editor who was also a former presidential speechwriter for Jimmy Carter.
He claims one popular view is that the election, although not a defeat for Blair & New Labour, is about as close as he could get without losing his job. Glenda Jackson, the Oscar-winning left-wing Labour MP (who has called for Blair to resign) is quoted in a Guardian op-ed last week: “Some people are still trying to define the election result as a triumph. Get real.”
Add this to the Liberal Democrat MP who complained recently to the effect that not only does Blair lie reflexively much of the time and handles the truth carelessly, he doesn’t seem to care even when he is caught red-handed. To me personally, this sound like the twin brother Bill Clinton never had.
27 May 2005, 9:01 pmEd:
Lots of interesting points in here, some true and some not so true. I’ll pass on the armchair strategist comments by some in the peanut gallery, but Stan raises some very good issues borne of his own professional experiences.
First, a general comment from an insider: the US military is a staggeringly ponderous institution, bordering on inept at the micro level. That is coming from an upper-middle manager with 20 years of experience in the bowels of the beast at all levels. The amount of stupidity, group think, and myopic behavior never cease to amaze me. I wonder how we ever win anything.
Funny thing is, it has always been this way. Read soldier-level history from WWII or the civil war, about blunders like Tarawa or Gettysburg which cost tens of thousands of lives in a day. Stupidity in uniform is not a recent invention.
We win because of several reasons. 1) There are a lot of us. Quantity has a quality all it’s own. 2) We all meet a set minimum standard of competence and capability. As you recall Stan, the Army is big on “standards”. I hate the word. 3) We have some really good weapons. Stan, the synergy of GPS, computers, and satellites in military operations would truly astound you, even after your short absence. 4) Smart guys at the ground level manage to sort through the stupidity and make good things happen. 5) There are enough good smart leaders that they sometimes form a critical mass and overcome the collective stupidity of the institution as a whole.
So what’s the point? Just this: outsiders see mistakes and blunders and assume that the military is such a precise instrument that any deviation must be by design, a nefarious plot based on direct orders from Rumsfeld. We see this clearly in the Abu G/Gitmo scandals. But the reality is far more mundane and banal; we are simply a huge bureaucracy with a tenuous grasp of our own actions at every corner of the globe. Groups of people can and do act on their own, sometimes with great results, and sometimes with quite stupid results. Some dumbshit thinks he is doing the right thing and flushes a Koran down a toilet. “Quick, write a new regulation, hold an IG inspection, call the PAO! Who told that guy to think?”
I’ve often wondered why we are so clumsy and do such stupid things. After all, I know a lot of officers and NCOs at all levels, and they are for the most part intelligent, educated, honest, well-intentioned professionals. So why, when you put us together, is the end result so much less than the sum of the parts?
Part of it is the bureaucracy, of course. Excessive levels of management exact a tax on the talents of the people within it. But I think there’s more to it than that, something cultural, and I think Stan hints at hit with the comment that “Officers think enlisted men are stupid.”
Our whole organizational culture is built around being control freaks. Officers especially are ingrained from day one with the notion that being in charge means Being In Charge. The idea that you should put your subordinates out there and trust them to do the job as they see fit has fallen by the wayside. Successive generations of board-selection-darwinism have led to the prototype senior officer as the thousand mile screwdriver, controlling details from a point where he can’t even see them. Trusting your subordinates and deferring to them has become a foreign idea, even to some extent in SOF.
And the flip side of the coin: the services are full of people afraid to tell their bosses that they are full of shit. This is not any newer than military stupidity, nor any less harmful. At least Longstreet told Lee he was crazy. But Pickett didn’t.
There is hope, though. War has a way of purging institutional fat. Adapt or die. Right now there are about 100 “teams” out there on their own, developing their own creative solutions to tactical problems. In the time honored tradition of Aaron Bank, they selectively comply with orders and selectively report what they do. It’s enough to make a field grade officer’s hair stand on end. But it works.
Now on to specific points from your comments, Stan. (This is going to get long, I can smell it).
The Powell doctrine is a political doctrine, not an operational or even strategic doctrine. Not surprising since Powell was a political general. There are some inarguable truths in the Powell doctrine, such as the notion that we should only fight where we have a clear and compelling national interest and the support of the American people. Hard to take exception to that.
Where the Powell doctrine errs is in trying to attach a universal military method to all situations. The truth, as Stan well knows, is that each situation is different and each problem demands a custom solution. The Powell doctrine worked well in the first Gulf war. In Afghanistan, it would have been a disaster, and it is to Rumsfeld’s credit that he disregarded it there. In Somalia we probably should have listened to the first tenet of the Powell doctrine and never gone there, or at least not tried to insert ourselves into the resolution of the warlords’ intramural conflicts.
On to Iraq. Yes, of course we need an exit strategy. Any soldier with a brain figured that one out about 2 years ago. We are outsiders and don’t belong in Iraq. They don’t want us there, and we don’t want to be there. On that there is near unanimous agreement. Most puzzling is the insurgent’s failure to realize that their attacks just keep us there. If they were smart they would chill out, and watch us depart. But of course if we leave on our own then we “win”, and they can’t have that.
To win on our terms, we have to define success. I define success as the US gone, and the Iraqi people living under a stable democratic government. My definition basically coincides with the official US policy.
Now we need a strategy. Well, there is only one strategy with a chance at achieving both tenets of the success criteria. That is to get a native Iraqi government up and running things, and get the Iraqi Army capable of defending the government and establishing civil stability.
The first part is going about as well as can be expected. I was in Iraq for the election in January, and like everyone in uniform I was apprehensive about the outcome. I can tell you that the mood the day after the election was one of quiet satisfaction. Those people came out and vindicated our efforts with their purple fingers, in my opinion. I was at a team house when several insurgents turned themselves in a few days later, all with purple fingers. All of them gave some variation of the same reason: “if we can pick our government with a ballot, then what the f*@k am I fighting for?”
The second part is a lot harder. Building an Army from scratch is never easy. Building one in the middle of a war is notoriously hard.
None the less, the IA has made huge progress over the last year. Most of that progress has come since the election. Not surprising. Before the election Iraqi soldiers were asking “what the f@#k am I fighting for.” All too often the answer was “$50 a month.”
Now they get it. The election changed everything, and you see it in their performance. Now they stand and fight. Now they go after the insurgents instead of steering around them. Now the insurgent attacks on the IA and police have made their resolve greater instead of less. Stan, this ain’t Vietnam.
On to the current Operation LIGHTNING. Stan, you remember the phrase “Confidence Target” from the Q-course, don’t you? Well, this is a confidence target at the Brigade and Division level. So don’t get too wound up about the obvious ineffectiveness of announcing the operation 2 days in advance. This is a feel good operation, just like your first raid with the G’s was a feel-good raid. That doesn’t mean it’s bad, as long as you capitalize on that confidence to follow up with more effective operations.
It is also an important demonstration to the Iraqi people that the new government is in fact in charge of the new Army. Civilian control of the military, you see. The day we see some fat guy and a beret and a uniform sitting as the president or the PM, we’ve lost. Victory is seeing the same unctuous types that populate our Senate and House sitting in the Iraqi Parliament, shoveling pork to the Sunnis, Shias, and Kurds to keep them from killing each other. Democracy, it’s the worst form of government, except for all the rest.
Stan, one thing I haven’t seen you address is how Iraq is different from Vietnam. There are some very good lessons we learned from Vietnam and some mistakes we have not repeated. Unit rotation instead of individual replacement is the best example. Another is the attention paid to building legitimacy of the civilian government. I suppose it wouldn’t further your political agenda to discuss that, but it would be interesting nonetheless.
Sorry so long. This is not an academic discussion for me.
30 May 2005, 7:03 ameoinmonkey:
Just as a quick response to illustrate my “sloppy thinking”. The “Repect” Partys main Muslim allies in the UK are the Muslim Association of Britain (MAB). They are the group who invited Dr Yusuf al-Qaradawi, the Spiritual leader of the Muslim Brotherhood, to speak in Britain, where he was warmly welcomed by “red” Ken Livingstone, Lord Mayor of London. The learned Doctor, and presumably the MAB who invited him to preach, both advocate the death penalty for Muslims who leave the faith, either to join other faiths or to become atheists. Quaradawi also advocates wife beating, female ‘circumcision’, and the illegalisation of homosexuality- extending to the death penalty.
31 May 2005, 11:21 amIm sorry that my allegation that this male-dominated Islamic group are fundamentalists was clearly so far of the mark.
Tell me, why would an “alliance” with people like this benefit anyone other than entrenched patriarchal power? Just because they oppose the Iraq war does not make them my allies, and just because they are Muslims does not make them immune to the various disgusting isms that we are so quick to criticise about the US-led world system.
Or am I wrong? Should I let unrepentant Stalinists and Muslim fundamentalists claim to speak for the disenchanted left in Britain, simply because they won a seat in the houses of parliament?
Revo:
Irony. Stan, you are redirecting the image above from a brazilian website wich even question if you realy exist, Stan. In the “tropas de elite” (“elite troops”), your article Full Spectrum is published, with the observation: “We dont necessary agree with Stan Gof’s Position, an even suspect this person can no exist, and this work be desinformation (contra-informação. just a interesting observation. You pointviewn and this website are so opposed, that i’m think this is irony
19 December 2006, 7:57 am