What is the Mission? Or, Russian Roulette
Reuters reports::
' BAGHDAD - The U.S. military said three of its soldiers were killed and two others wounded by insurgents in Baghdad on Sunday.
RAMADI - U.S. forces killed two suspected insurgents on Sunday after observing them loading weapons from a cache into a vehicle in the insurgent stronghold city of Ramadi, 110 km (70 miles) west of Baghdad, the U.S. military said. . .
RAMADI - The U.S. military said four Iraqi civilians were wounded, including three boys aged 6, 13 and 16, when mortar bombs fired by U.S. forces against insurgents hit them. The wounds were not life-threatening, a statement said. '
Well, something clearly was going on in Ramadi on Sunday, though it isn't clear from these staccato and desultory items what exactly it was. As I understand it, there are daily battles between US forces and local ones in Ramadi and its environs. This Sunni Arab city of 400,000 west of Baghdad is under continual siege. I want to ask a question here. Why? When and under what conditions will it be lifted?
What are we to think when we see an item like this one, which says that the elected Iraqi PM, Nuri al-Maliki, was pelted by stones by his own constituency in Shiite Sadr City; that 21 villagers were captured by guerrillas in Diyala; or that 25 bodies (7 of them little girls) were found in Baquba, the capital of that province; or that (as al-Zaman reports in Arabic) Sunni Arab guerrillas fought a pitched battle with police in the city of Buhriz near Baquba, defeated them, chased them out of the HQ and set it on fire, and completely took over the city? What about the reports in al-Zaman of car bombings in al-Huswah and in al-Hilla, killing a dozen? When you hear these things, ask yourself 'What is the mission? When and how could it reasonably be expected to be accomplished?'
The Iraq Study Group or Baker-Hamilton Commission will urge intensive diplomacy with Syria and Iran to help deal with the Iraqi civil conflict but will not urge a phased pull-out of US troops.
If they don't, they should specify the mission. What is the mission of the US military in Ramadi? I hope my readers will press their representatives in Congress and the executive branch to answer this question. What is the mission? When will it be accomplished?
At what point will the people of Ramadi wake up in the morning and say, 'We've changed our minds. We like the new government dominated by Shiite ayatollahs and Kurdish warlords. We're happy to host Western Occupation troops on our soil. We don't care if those troops are allied with the Israeli military, which is daily bombing our brethren in Gaza and killing them and keeping them down. We're changed persons. We're not going to bother to set any IEDs tonight and we've put away our sniping rifles.'
(You could substitute Tikrit, Samarra', Baquba, and other Sunni Arab cities for Ramadi).
It is not going to happen. In fall, 2003, 14 percent of Sunni Arabs thought it was legitimate to attack US personnel in Iraq. Now over 70 percent do. Isn't it going toward 100 percent? How would more or less keeping the people of Ramadi in a cage help things in that regard, especially if they perceive us to be doing it on behalf of the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq (founded by Ayatollah Khomeini in Iran) and the Kurdish Peshmerga and the Israeli army?
(Despite the denials of Bush administration officials such as Condi Rice, the Arab and Islamic opposition to US presence in Iraq has at least something to do with local perceptions that the US invaded Iraq on behalf of Israel, and Iraqis often refer to US troops as "al-Yahud," "the Jews." This is conspiracy theory thinking and wrong-headed, but it is the reality on the ground. Even the notorious attack on the four mercenaries in Falluja was done in the name of the murdered Palestinian leader Sheikh Yassin. The deeply unpopular US support for Israel's depredations against the Palestinians was one of the things that foredoomed a US military occupation of a major Arab country.)
The idea that al-Anbar tribal forces will pull the US fat from the fire is a non-starter. Some of the tribes are openly agitating on behalf of Saddam Hussein. Any who are fighting the Salafis or Muslim fundamentalists are doing it as a grudge match. Tribes are notoriously factionalized among themselves and seldom unite for very long. The rural tribes just aren't a big center of power in Iraq any more-- it is largely urban and the power centers are urban political parties and their paramilitaries. Those urban forces have vast hinterlands of practical and monetary support in the region-- Iran for the Shiites, the Oil Gulf and small-town Jordan and Syria for the Sunni Arabs. They are not going to decline in importance.
Syria and Iran are not responsible for the resistance in Ramadi or Baquba and probably can't do anything about it. Therefore negotiating with them is not a silver bullet, though it might be useful in its own right.
What is the military mission? I can't see a practical one. And if there is not a military mission that can reasonably be accomplished in a specified period of time, then keeping US troops in al-Anbar is a sort of murder. Because you know when they go out on patrol, a few of them each week are going to get blown up or shot down. Reliably. Each week. Steadily. It is monstrous to force them to play Russian roulette every day unless there is a clear mission that could thereby be accomplished. There is not.
Senator Chuck Hagel's argument for withdrawal is powerful, but it focuses on the botched character of the American enterprise in Iraq and the monetary expense and cost to our military force structure. Those are important arguments, but could be countered by the White House as insufficiently urgent to require a withdrawal.
That is why I think it is important to keep the focus on the question of the US purpose in occupying the Sunni Arab regions of Iraq. Every time you hear someone say that we have to keep the troops in Iraq, press that person to explain what the mission is exactly and how and when it will be accomplished.
posted by Juan Cole @ 11/27/2006 12:30:00 AM
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12 Comments:
Though I agree with you on this one "This is conspiracy theory thinking and wrong-headed, but it is the reality on the ground." (indeed the Mediterranean region north and south is plagued with conspiracy theories) you have to admit that U.S. politicians and journalists don't help either. Whenever they are pressed on news programme (as in Meet the Press, Late Edition, etc.) to explain how x is dangerous to this (U.S.) country, the answer is invariably x wants to wipe out Israel, y wants to kill Jews, etc. Say what ?
Good job debunking the US strategy in al-Anbar. It is only to be wished you had done so sooner. Meanwhile, Baghdad appears to have definitively collapsed on Sunday, with US troops nowhere to be seen. Coverage is thin because of the four-day curfew, but I try and summarize what is available here
The deeply unpopular US support for Israel's depredations against the Palestinians was one of the things that foredoomed a US military occupation of a major Arab country.)
Do you really think that the US would be more welcome in Iraq if she wasn't supporting Israel against the Palestinians ? The position of the US in the Israelo/Palestinian conflict doesn't help. But which country could accept to be occupied ? Even if the US wasn't supporting the Israelian occupation, they would still be illegal occupiers in Iraq, waging a colonial type of war :
The US went in Iraq because it was a weak country located in an interesting geostrategical spot with reguard to energy ressources.
Syria and Iran are not responsible for the resistance in Ramadi or Baquba and probably can't do anything about it. Therefore negotiating with them is not a silver bullet, though it might be useful in its own right.
Agreed. The project to lead talks with Iran and Syria just look like another of these artificial timetable the US creates for Iraq in order to keep the US citizen quiet : wait untill we have elections, wait untill the new government is in place, and now, wait untill the talks with Iran and Syria show their effects. It's like on a long road and Bush tells you : the arrival is just around the corner; come the turn, nothing change (or things get worse) and the arrival is just after the next turn etc.
The new fact is that Dems may be lured into this as well.
"What is the mission?" is a very good question and it's about time to ask it. It wasn't even clear at the beginning. (well, at least the Bush government didn't think it was suited to tell it clearly to its citizen)
You hope "readers will press their representatives in Congress and the executive branch to answer this question. What is the mission?" Of course, the answer will be "to leave Iraq in unity, peace, and free of al Qaeda." Not even Cheney will say it is "to grab oil." Nor would Perle say it was "to soften Israel's east flank." References to WMD, 9/11 ties, or democracy are being left to wither, but none of the GOP or DEM spokespeople saying, "Heck, just get out and let the place burn." McGovern and Polk say tointernationalize the occupation and pay reparations through multilateral organs, but no important block of people in congress concur.
The real problem is that NONE of the formulas say what to do about tactical operations in Ramadi or anywhere else. All the "models" simply presume that some central force is supposed to quell or supersede the insurgents and militias. Time's Klein says to kill Muqtada. No one envisions simply hand over power to imams, mullahs, Baathists, and klepto-killers who shout anti-US slogans. No one believes that they would not harbor insidious elements that would later come back to haunt the US. Kerry, Clinton, Biden, Baker, and Hagel all want to "phase" the withdrawal around some tangible goals. But not a single darns one has a clue about what this would mean in Ramadi. At best, they manufacture a scenario which is unlikely to materialize.
AEI militarist, F.W. Kagan might be wrong that more US troops would pacify Baghdad or al-Anbar, but may be right that there is no "middle," whereby central Iraqi forces would substitute cuts in US forces, or where the present Iraqi government would survive. The choice may be between a dubious escallation and a chaotic shambles. Given a choice between an unaffordable buildup and an apocalyptic retreat, most in Congress will prefer to tell US troops "to hold the finger in the dike." Absent a "mutiny of the grunts," or a "VFW / Legionaire coalition against the war," this could go on for years.
So Many Dead; For What?
“Pandora's War”
Once there were the three countries that comprised the axis of evil, N. Korea, Iran and Iraq.
By putting the US Military in the hand of incompetents N. Korea now feels free to set off a nuke. Iraq becomes the training ground for Jihadists and we're moving towards asking evil Iran and its evil cousin Syria to intervene to save our butts.
In this Pandora's War of Bush et al we are so lost and defeated as to be now resorting to empowering terrorist states as the best available option.
If you score this debacle like it was a round robin tournament it would come out to:
N. Korea 20
Iraq disqualified
Iran 50
Syria 15
Israel minus 30
U.S.A. withdrew
If terrorist states are an existential threat to the West we just ceded them home field advantage for decades.
So many dead; for what?
Your question: what is the USA's mission is appropriate. I don't see any serious discussion of how to contain the damage of Iraq's implosion or how to limit its effects. From what I gather, both the Foreign service and the War College are struggling with the complex nature of the security problem and the lack of tools for coping with them. So the foreign policy realists are advocating discussion with Syria and Iran, but unfortunately both sides have no incentive to help the US and seemingly have more to gain from our unceremonious withdrawal, particularly Iran. The War College is remarkably rehashing Vietnamization strategies, ignoring the fact that al Maliki cannot be propped up. Neither approach seems likely to bear fruit as their advocates recognize.
There is no obvious solution to Bush's Mesopotamian misadventure, but the first step should focus on diagnosing the problem. Internally to Iraq we need to recognize the complete collapse of civil society and the fracturing of the state into dozens of armed interests. Secondly, we have to recognize the ability of money and arms pouring into Iraq and the exportation of fighters and violence to neighboring states.
Dealing with Iraq's neighbors seems to require not one-on-one diplomacy, but a dramatic Summit of the Arab league plus say NATO, China, and Russia in which a formula is created for distributing Iraq's oil to various interest groups, along with the US renouncing its claims to Iraq, and Iran and Syria make public pledges of support for disengagement.
Inside Iraq, the US needs to articulate a phased withdrawal plan in some form. This will clearly touch off an inevitable escalation of the factional violence especially in integrated areas like Baghdad and Mosul, but this spurt might in a Machiavellian way resolve the ethnic and political tension over the longer run.
Also, the current thinking is that Iraqi unity must be preserved or that the country must be partitioned into three distinct territories. What about the "feudal" option? It seems to me that the factionalization of Iraq is much more extensive than just along ethnic lines, many of the armed groups are local, and the criminalization of society is extreme. In a failing state such as Iraq the feudal option would have the USA adopt initiatives to fracture the ethnic enclaves while also keeping the oil out of possible reach of any faction. Once foreign troops are removed you would dole out cash to local leaders based on population and also to strongmen premised on their "good behavior" and with the secret aim of carving out baronies that would act as a counterweight to subnational forces along ethnic lines. The feudal option is cynical, once implemented the USA would lose control over Iraq, and it would only work after a complete withdrawal, but feudalism is a historically viable reaction to intense political instability and it might work to crimp both the sectional violence that is sure to follow a US withdrawal, while diffusing a potentially long term and escalating a regional civil war for Iraq's oil reserves.
The military reason for contesting Anbar Province is that there is going to be some front line and it may as well be there. If it isn't, it will just get closer to Baghdad. The political reason is that to concede Anbar is to provide the insurgency with legitimacy. They would soon be providing local government services in a defined area. All sorts of advantages accrue to being a government.
This is not to say that the battle for Anbar makes sense. It simply can't be separated from the battle for the rest of Iraq.
The mission is clear:
Postpone admission of failure as long as possible - preferably indefinatly.
Unfortunately, the media elites, Neo Cons and hapless Bush appointees don't have to answer questions that refute their arguments. The media just clips this stuff out.
"No one envisions simply hand over power to imams, mullahs, Baathists, and klepto-killers who shout anti-US slogans."
Thus "john koch" posts -- quite mistakenly. The empowered Busheviki have very clearly enunciated to us all de haut en bas that "Freedom means Peace," and how is there to be any Freedom where there is no Power to enforce it? Whom are are we to believe, then, the officially authorized White House or some random "john koch"?
To be sure, anybody decent and adult with any imagination at all must rather wonder what "imams, mullahs, Baathists, and klepto-killers" will do, once equipped with Crawfordite Freedom and Crawfordite Power and presumably the consequential Crawford-branded brand of "Peace." But that refutes "john koch" eo ipso, him who doesn't, after all, have a monopoly or even a patent pending on other peoples's envisionments.
EVERBODY envisions, Mr. Koch, everybody capable of any envisionment at all! What a bloody shambles is "our" neo-Iraq if the TX Republicans now depart! What a bloody shambles if the TX Republicans insistently hang around! Nightmare scenarios to the left, nightmare scenarios to the left, nightmare scenarios everywhere one looks! (To this pass have the Busheviki brought us, O America!) One almost doubts, at times, that Hamilton and Baker and the usual CFR suspects will somehow bipartisanly manage to tame the Bushogenic tempest.
But that,of course, must be heresy.
Again and again and again:
(1) Cut off the funding for occupying iraq. (2) Revoke the "Authorization" for occupying Iraq. (3) Punish the perpetrators for occupying Iraq.
There you have it. America's solution to America's own quagmire problem -- already time tested and approved in the mid-nineteen-seventies.
As for the problems Iraqi people might have killing other Iraqi people when we stop doing that for them: well, that does seem to concern them primarily. Perhaps they'll stop. We owe it to them as well as ourselves to let them make liars and fools out of everyone who said things would only get worse in Iraq once America left and stopped guaranteeing that they did.
what is the mission?
to show THEM we are powerful
and can rain fire down from heaven
and its getting worse
remember the election of 2004?
and bush celebrating by the conquest of Fallujah
making it a huge concentration camp to show WE could.
the leadership of our country is committed to the fight in iraq by any means
why we need to leave now?
before the whole of the army degenerates
and allies with the elite of OUR country
if you told a german officer or service man
in august 1939
what they would do in the comming war
the overwhelming majority would have told you
NO we are not like that.
war changes men and nations
been listen to martin luther kings anti war speech
stunning
IF WE DO THE RIGHT THING
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