Iran torpedoes US plans for Iraqi oil
By M K Bhadrakumar
In the highly competitive world of international politics, nation states very rarely miss an opportunity to crow about success stories. The opportunity comes rare, mostly by default, and seldom enduring. By any standards of showmanship, therefore, Tehran has set a new benchmark of reticence.
By all accounts, Iran played a decisive role in hammering out the peace deal among the Shi'ite factions in Iraq. A bloody week of human killing on the Tigris River ended on Sunday. Details are sketchy, however, since they must come from non-Iranian sources. Tehran keeps silent about its role.
The deal was brokered after negotiations in the holy city of Qom in Iran involving the two Shi'ite factions - the Da'wa Party and the Supreme Islamic Iraqi Council (SIIC) - which have been locked in
conflict with Muqtada al-Sadr's Mahdi Army in southern Iraq. It appears that one of the most shadowy figures of the Iranian security establishment, General Qassem Suleimani, commander of the Quds Force of Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) personally mediated in the intra-Iraqi Shi'ite negotiations. Suleimani is in charge of the IRGC's operations abroad.
US military commanders routinely blame the Quds for all their woes in Iraq. The fact that the representatives of Da'wa and SIIC secretly traveled to Qom under the very nose of American and British intelligence and sought Quds mediation to broker a deal conveys a huge political message. Iran signals that security considerations rather than politics or religion prevailed.
But the politics of the deal are all too apparent. Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki, who was camping in Basra and personally supervising the operations against the Mahdi Army, was not in the loop about the goings-on. As for US President George W Bush, he had just spoken praising Maliki for waging a "historic and decisive" battle against the Mahdi Army, which he said was "a defining moment" in the history of a "free Iraq". Both Maliki and Bush look very foolish.
But why isn't Tehran in any hurry to claim victory? After all, rubbishing the Bush presidency has been the stuff of Iranian rhetoric. Perhaps, Iranians had shut down over Nauroz new year festivities. They do take the joyful advent of spring very seriously. Or maybe, Suleimani's involvement makes the subject a no-go area for public discussion. Third, Iranians should know better than anyone that the intra-Shi'ite rivalries are far too deep-rooted to lend themselves to an amicable settlement in a day's negotiations.
The turf war in the Iraqi Shi'ite regions has several templates. Iraq's future as a unitary state; the parameters of acceptable federalism, if any; attitude towards the US; control of oil wealth; overvaulting political ambitions - all these are intertwined features of a complex matrix. Therefore, the fragility of the newfound peace is all too apparent. Tehran will be justified in estimating that it is prudent to wait and watch whether peace gains traction in the critical weeks ahead.
But the most important Iranian calculation would be not to provoke the Americans unnecessarily by rubbing in the true import of what happened. Tehran would be gratified that in any case it has made the point that it possesses awesome influence within Iraq. Anyone who knows today's anarchic Iraq would realize that triggering a new spiral of violence in that country may not require much ingenuity, muscle power or political clout.
But to be able to summarily cry halt to cascading violence, and to achieve that precisely in about 48 hours, well, that's an altogether impressive capability in political terms. In this case, the Iranians have managed it with felicitous ease, as if they were just turning off a well-lubricated tap. That requires great command over the killing fields of Iraq, the native warriors, and the sheer ability to calibrate the flow of events and micromanage attitudes.
Conceivably, Tehran would have decided with its accumulated centuries-old Persian wisdom that certain things in life are always best left unspoken, especially stunning successes. Besides, it is far more productive to leave Washington to contemplate over happenings and draw the unavoidable conclusion that if it musters the courage to make that existential choice, Iran can be an immensely valuable factor of stability for Iraq.
But it wasn't a matter of political symbolism, either. Tangible issues are involved. Questions of vital national interests. Clearly, Tehran had genuine concerns over the developing situation in southern Iraq close to its border. Tehran viewed the flare-up involving the Shi'ite factions with great disquiet. This was apparent from the speech by Ayatollah Ahmad Jannati, who led the prayer sermon in Tehran on Friday. He bemoaned, "Iraq is currently entangled in many problems." But Jannati explicitly didn't take sides between the warring factions.
On the one hand, he advised the Mahdi Army ("Iraqi popular armed forces") and Maliki ("Iraqi popular government") to hold talks. But he also advised the "popular armed forces present in Basra" (read Badr Organization, Da'wa, the smaller Fadhila party, etc.) to intervene with the "Iraqi popular government". Third, Jannati also called on Maliki to "heed the [popular] forces' views and solve problems eventually in a way that would be to the interest of all."
Curiously, he criticized the silence on the part of the Muslim world - "especially the Organization of the Islamic Conference" (OIC) - over the "enormous brutality and oppression in Iraq". He said, "It is not clear why Muslim states, especially the OIC, do not show any reaction against so much injustice and oppression in Iraq, while such measures could be easily prevented through unity and solidarity." The remark contained a barely disguised barb aimed at Saudi Arabia for hobnobbing with the US. (US Vice President Dick Cheney had visited Riyadh and Baghdad barely one week before Maliki launched the offensive in Basra.)
Yet, all in all, Jannati politely refrained from expressing Iran's complete disapproval of the conduct of Maliki in carrying out the offensive as part of the US game plan to establish control of Basra, which is the principal artery for American oil majors to evacuate Iraqi oil. The Sadrists oppose the current plans for opening up the nationalized Iraqi oil industry to foreign exploitation.
However, the day after Jannati spoke, Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Mohammad Ali Hosseini came down hard on the Maliki government. He deplored the use of American and British air power against the Sadrist militia - "waves of US-UK air raids on civilians". He called on the Shi'ite factions to end the fighting as "continued fighting only serves the interests of the occupiers ... and give pretexts to occupiers to continue their illegitimate presence" in Iraq.
Most important, he called for negotiations - which had already commenced in Qom by that time - "in a friendly and goodwill atmosphere". As for the Maliki government, Hosseini expressed the hope it would "exercise wisdom, cooperation, mutual understanding, patience, calm and contacts with Iraqi political leaders to overcome the current crisis period". Plainly put, Hosseini asked Maliki not to be dumb enough to sub-serve US interests and to realize where his own political interests lay. He pointedly drew a line of distinction between Maliki and the powerful Iraqi Shi'ite leadership.
The Iranian accounts of the fighting have shown a distinct sympathy for the Sadrist militia, highlighting that the Mahdi Army was being "unfairly singled out" for attack by government forces; that the Sadrists' quarrel with Maliki was that he "refused to set a deadline for US and coalition troops to leave"; that US troops were providing the government forces with "intelligence, surveillance and occasional air strikes and raids"; and that Iraqi troops were refusing to obey orders to fight the Sadrist militia. The Iranian official news agency quoted Muqtada as comparing Maliki to Saddam Hussein. "Under Saddam's rule, we complained about how the government distanced itself from the people and operated under dictatorial terms. Now the government is also dealing with people on such terms," he was quoted as saying.
Out of the dramatic developments of the past week, several questions arise, the principal being that the Bush administration's triumphalism over the so-called Iraq "surge" strategy has become irredeemably farcical, and, two, US doublespeak has become badly exposed. What stands out is that Washington promoted the latest round of violence in Basra, whereas Iran cried halt to it. The awesome influence of Tehran has become all too apparent. How does Bush come to terms with it?
What has happened is essentially that Iran has frustrated the joint US-British objective of gaining control of Basra, without which the strategy of establishing control over the fabulous oil fields of southern Iraq will not work. Control of Basra is a pre-requisite before American oil majors make their multi-billion investments to kick start large-scale oil production in Iraq. Iraq's Southern Oil Company is headquartered in Basra. Highly strategic installations are concentrated in the region, such as pipeline networks, pumping stations, refineries and loading terminals. The American oil majors will insist on fastening these installations.
The game plan for control of Basra now needs to be reworked. The idea was to take Basra in hand now so that the Sadrists would be thwarted from taking over the local administration in elections in October - in other words, to ensure the political underpinning for Basra. All indications are that the Sadrists are riding a huge wave of popular support. They have caught the imagination of the poor, downtrodden, dispossessed masses in the majority Shi'ite community. They are hard to replace in democratic elections. The sense of frustration in Washington and London must be very deep that Basra is not yet fastened. Time is running out for Bush to make sure that his successor in the White House inherits an irreversible process in the US's Iraq policy.
Indeed, in his first comments, British Prime Minister Gordon Brown initially refused to say on Tuesday whether the government's plans to cut the number of troops in Iraq to 2,500 from 4,000 were on course. He simply said British troops were facing "difficulties" in Basra. This was followed by Defense Secretary Des Browne saying that return of 2,500 troops from southern Iraq this spring had been placed on hold indefinitely.
Bush hasn't yet spoken. US Secretary of Defense Robert Gates put on a brave face, saying first-hand information was limited, but based on that, "they [Iraqi troops] seem to have done a pretty good job". To be sure, Cheney must be furious that Tehran torpedoed the entire US strategy for Big Oil. He has had a hard time shepherding the pro-West Arab regimes in the region, especially Saudi Arabia, up to this point.
Besides, nothing infuriates Cheney more than when US oil interests are hit. Thus, the most critical few weeks in the decades-long US-Iran standoff may have just begun. Last week, five former US secretaries of state who served in Democratic and Republican administrations - Henry Kissinger, James Baker, Warren Christopher, Madeline Albright and Colin Powell - sat at a round-table discussion in Athens and reached a consensus to urge the next US administration to open a line of dialogue with Iran.
M K Bhadrakumar served as a career diplomat in the Indian Foreign Service for over 29 years, with postings including India's ambassador to Uzbekistan (1995-1998) and to Turkey (1998-2001).
(Copyright 2008 Asia Times Online Ltd. All rights reserved. Please contact us about sales, syndication and republishing .)
Reflections from news and commentary of the day
Subscribe To
Posts
All Comments
Saturday, April 5, 2008
The Water Cooler: Dave Marash: Why I quit
This interview from the Columbia Journalism Review documents its highly-regarded American anchorman, David Marash's views of the evolution of Al Jazeera English, some of the effects on Gulf Arab politics of US threats to bomb Iran, and the consequences of these developments for Mr. Marash himself as he sees them. (One is, however, left to wonder whether the unmentioned fact of American censorship -- Al Jazeera English has been denied access to the US airways by cable companies responsive to administration-orchestrated "patriotic" public reaction against it -- may not have
had something to do with the Qatari company's decision to abandon its American accent and shift Mr. Marash out of his position as anchor, the decision that led him to quit. Arguably, the credibility with American viewers that Mr. Marash brought to Al Jazeera English ultimately had no value to the company, as there turned out to be no American viewers to speak of. And, sadly, if one is denied access to a media market, one has no incentive to take account of the views of its audience.)
The Water Cooler
Dave Marash: Why I Quit
The veteran newsman says Al Jazeera English's mission changed
By Brent Cunningham Fri 4 Apr 2008
In February 2006, David Marash, a veteran correspondent (and substitute host) for ABC's Nightline, raised eyebrows in the U.S. journalism world when he took a job as the Washington anchor for Al Jazeera English, the new sister channel of the Arabic-language news operation in Qatar. For American viewers, Marash brought instant credibility to the new channel, even as it struggled to find a cable outlet that would agree to put it on the air. Eyebrows rose again last week when Marash announced that he was quitting Al Jazeera English because of what he considered anti-American bias in the channel's coverage. CJR's Brent Cunningham spoke with Marash yesterday.
Brent Cunningham: Would you elaborate on your decision to quit?
David Marash: It's been a gradual process, and defining it all, is that with corporate encouragement, over the first two years of the channel's existence, I have made myself effectively the American face of the channel and vouched for its credibility and value. And over the last seventeen months there have been several changes at the channel which put things on the air that, frankly, I could not vouch for. If I had just been another employee I might have just dropped my head and let it all wash over, because it is the nature of our business that every place you work occasionally does things that embarrass you. But I felt an extra measure of responsibility.
Now, as anchor, I was in position to vouch for at least half of the material that went on air because I got to speak it and I could edit it on the fly if I felt that there were any inaccuracies or imbalances in it. But when the proposal was made that I leave the anchor chair [he was informed of this in December and his last day as anchor was March 13] and become a sort of heavy correspondent, I knew that I would never be able to have the kind of editorial input or control that would put me in a position to honestly vouch for anything. Furthermore, when I was taken off that meant that there were zero American accents in any of the presenter roles at Al Jazeera. And it occurred to me that this was just one part of a series of decisions that diminished editorial input from the United States. It got to the point where I feel that in a globe where Al Jazeera sets a very, very high reporting standard, and a very, very high standard for both numerical and qualitative and authentic staffing, that the United States was becoming a serious exception to their role, and a place where the journalism did not measure up to the standards that were set almost everywhere else by Al Jazeera English's very fine reporting.
BC: What are some examples of the kinds of stories that made you uncomfortable?
DM: There was a series entitled "Poverty in America" which, in the first place, was done in a way that illustrates some of the infrastructural problems that disturbed me greatly. The idea of a series about poverty in America was broached by the planning desk in Doha. The specifics of the plan were so stereotypical and shallow that the planning desk in Washington said that we think this is a very bad idea and recommend against it and won't do it. And so the planning desk in Doha literally sneaked a production team into the United States without letting anyone in the American news desk know, and they went off and shot a four-part series that was execrable. That was essentially, if I may say so, here a poor, there a poor, everywhere a poor poor.
Now, there is poverty in America, and there is a very wide gulf between rich and poor in America and that is a trend for which there are stories to be reported. But this series reported nothing beyond the stereotype and the mere fact that there were homeless people living on the street in Baltimore, for example. Well, were they there as a consequence of mental illness that was not properly cared for because of a generation of a policy of de-institutionalization? Al Jazeera didn't know because they didn't ask. Frankly they didn't know enough to ask. It was enough for them to show poor people living in wretched conditions in a prosperous American city and decry it. Then they went to South Carolina and found a town that—I know this is going to shock you, Brent—had very rich people and, on the other side of the railroad tracks, very poor people. And the wretchedness of the poor people's living conditions was enumerated. In fact this memorable question and answer exchange occurred:
Q: What's it like to live with rats in your home? A: Bad. [laughs]
The economic divide is a story and the reasons why, over a long period of time in this South Carolina town there should be very little transmigration across the line between rich and poor, is a story. The sources of wealth of the rich may be a story. The lack of opportunities for the poor may be a story. But again, you gotta report all these things. This series merely named them in a very accusatory way. This to me is the very quintessence of what television news should not be doing. And by the way is not the kind of reporting you see very much elsewhere on Al Jazeera English.
There was another story about the plight of indigenous people in Chiapas. Again, real story. But the point of this story seemed to be that they were victims of NAFTA. Now, again, does NAFTA create problems among rural farmers in Mexico? Yeah. But the situation in Chiapas is at best only marginally affected by that. It has much more to do with race and class issues in Mexico, their relations with the Mexican national government, the adversarialism of the Chiapas state government, and the cultural dislocation and deprivation that not only predates NAFTA, it almost predates the states of Mexico and the United States. And also has a lot to do with the command and control of the indigenous movement by the most peculiar Subcomandante Marcos and his Zapatista allies, who have an interest in isolating if not in depriving this group of people. So again, it was really shoddy reporting.
And you don't see that in Africa, in Latin America, in the Middle East, in Asia, on Al Jazeera. You see state-of-the-art, world-class reporting, and south of the equator I don't think anyone will give you much of an argument that Al Jazeera has become the most authoritative news channel on earth. And so, I took it particularly amiss, and it was for me, as their voucher, endorser, and brand face especially problematic, that their standard for journalism on Al Jazeera in the United States didn't seem consistently to be as good as their standards elsewhere. And let me rush to add that yes, Al Jazeera has in Rob Reynolds, one of the best TV correspondents in America, in the world, and Kris Saloomey in New York is a very competent and growing correspondent, and Mike Kirsch, their stringer in California, is network quality. But for more than a year Kirsch wasn't even there and they were trying to cover the country with two people; can't be done.
BC: You must have sought assurances that this kind of thing wouldn't happen?
DM: In fact, the prospectus for the channel and the channel that I hawked, if you will, is different from the channel today. It is different infrastructurally and editorially, in that the original concept was literally cosmopolitan—the whole world covered from many points of view representing the whole world. That was the logic of having four news centers in Doha, London, Washington, and Kuala Lumpur. All four were supposed to be autonomous, to initiate their own assignment decisions and lineup priorities. And the sum total of the four points of view was to put a truly cosmopolitan, multipolar gloss on the world. Over the last nine months, in particular, bureau autonomy has almost completely disappeared and rather than being a multivoiced, multipolar news channel, I think Al Jazeera English is now an authentic regional voice, much in the manner of Al Jazeera Arabic, although they are in no way a translation of each other—they are two thoroughly different and independent channels. Just as Al Jazeera Arabic can rightfully claim to be a first-class news organization with high professional standards, but one that authentically represents the point of view and interests of the region defined by the Arabic language, less defined by but certainly involved in the Islamic faith, and most particularly the gulf region, I think that Al Jazeera English is a very competent, very professional news organization that does a particularly great job south of the equator, but tends to report almost everything from the point of view of either the Arabic-speaking world or at the very least what you might call the post-colonial world. And since I'm not authentically those things, I don't belong there.
BC: What changed?
DM: I think that the world changed about nine, ten months ago. And I think the single event in that change was the visit to the gulf by Vice President Cheney, where he went to line up the allied ducks in a row behind the possibility of action against Iran. And instead of getting acquiescence, the United States got defiance, and instead ducks in a row the ducks basically went off on their own and the first sort of major breakthrough on that was the Mecca agreement, which defied the American foreign policy by letting Hamas into the tent of the governance of the Palestinian territories. This enraged the State Department and was one crystal clear sign that the Mideast region was now off campus, was off on its own. And it is around this time, and I think not coincidentally, that you see the state of Qatar and the royal family of Qatar starting to make up their feud with the Saudis, and you start to see on both Al Jazeera Arabic and English a very sort of first-personish, "my Haj" stories that were boosterish of the Haj and of Saudi Arabia. And you start to see stories of analysis in The New York Times where regional people are noting that Al Jazeera seems to be changing its editorial stance toward Saudi Arabia. I'm suggesting that around that time, a decision was made at the highest levels of [Al Jazeera] that simply following the American political leadership and the American political ideal of global, universalist values carried out in an absolutely pure, multipolar, First Amendment global conversation, was no longer the safest or smartest course, and that it was time, in fact, to get right with the region. And I think part of getting right with the region was slightly changing the editorial ambition of Al Jazeera English, and I think it has subsequently become a more narrowly focused, more univocal channel than was originally conceived.
BC: This doesn't bode well for AJE as a credible journalistic operation.
DM: If the goal is to be true to the idea of multipolar transparency, then this is very bad news. And I admit that I find that to be a higher goal than being a thoroughly respectable, thoroughly professional, but somewhat regional or region-specific voice. And I think that Al Jazeera is headed in that slightly lesser but still to me very respectable, and in terms of viewing choices, very necessary channel. And the coverage of Latin America and Africa in particular is just so terrific, that if that's the only reason you would watch is to stay up on the half of the planet that none of our networks or news channels are going to tell us much about, you would want to watch it for that alone. But you know, the thing that I loved best about the original concept was the sort of fugue of points of view and opinions, because I think that's what desperately needed in the world. We need to know, for example, in America, how angry the rest of the world is at Americans. Our own news media tend to shelter us from this very unpleasant news. So if you watched and every piece seemed tendentious and pissed you off, and I don't think that would be the case, but even if worst case the channel turned shrill and shallow, you would still want to watch them on the principle that millions—tens of millions—of people watch them every day and you need to know what's going on in their brains.
CJR
had something to do with the Qatari company's decision to abandon its American accent and shift Mr. Marash out of his position as anchor, the decision that led him to quit. Arguably, the credibility with American viewers that Mr. Marash brought to Al Jazeera English ultimately had no value to the company, as there turned out to be no American viewers to speak of. And, sadly, if one is denied access to a media market, one has no incentive to take account of the views of its audience.)
The Water Cooler
Dave Marash: Why I Quit
The veteran newsman says Al Jazeera English's mission changed
By Brent Cunningham Fri 4 Apr 2008
In February 2006, David Marash, a veteran correspondent (and substitute host) for ABC's Nightline, raised eyebrows in the U.S. journalism world when he took a job as the Washington anchor for Al Jazeera English, the new sister channel of the Arabic-language news operation in Qatar. For American viewers, Marash brought instant credibility to the new channel, even as it struggled to find a cable outlet that would agree to put it on the air. Eyebrows rose again last week when Marash announced that he was quitting Al Jazeera English because of what he considered anti-American bias in the channel's coverage. CJR's Brent Cunningham spoke with Marash yesterday.
Brent Cunningham: Would you elaborate on your decision to quit?
David Marash: It's been a gradual process, and defining it all, is that with corporate encouragement, over the first two years of the channel's existence, I have made myself effectively the American face of the channel and vouched for its credibility and value. And over the last seventeen months there have been several changes at the channel which put things on the air that, frankly, I could not vouch for. If I had just been another employee I might have just dropped my head and let it all wash over, because it is the nature of our business that every place you work occasionally does things that embarrass you. But I felt an extra measure of responsibility.
Now, as anchor, I was in position to vouch for at least half of the material that went on air because I got to speak it and I could edit it on the fly if I felt that there were any inaccuracies or imbalances in it. But when the proposal was made that I leave the anchor chair [he was informed of this in December and his last day as anchor was March 13] and become a sort of heavy correspondent, I knew that I would never be able to have the kind of editorial input or control that would put me in a position to honestly vouch for anything. Furthermore, when I was taken off that meant that there were zero American accents in any of the presenter roles at Al Jazeera. And it occurred to me that this was just one part of a series of decisions that diminished editorial input from the United States. It got to the point where I feel that in a globe where Al Jazeera sets a very, very high reporting standard, and a very, very high standard for both numerical and qualitative and authentic staffing, that the United States was becoming a serious exception to their role, and a place where the journalism did not measure up to the standards that were set almost everywhere else by Al Jazeera English's very fine reporting.
BC: What are some examples of the kinds of stories that made you uncomfortable?
DM: There was a series entitled "Poverty in America" which, in the first place, was done in a way that illustrates some of the infrastructural problems that disturbed me greatly. The idea of a series about poverty in America was broached by the planning desk in Doha. The specifics of the plan were so stereotypical and shallow that the planning desk in Washington said that we think this is a very bad idea and recommend against it and won't do it. And so the planning desk in Doha literally sneaked a production team into the United States without letting anyone in the American news desk know, and they went off and shot a four-part series that was execrable. That was essentially, if I may say so, here a poor, there a poor, everywhere a poor poor.
Now, there is poverty in America, and there is a very wide gulf between rich and poor in America and that is a trend for which there are stories to be reported. But this series reported nothing beyond the stereotype and the mere fact that there were homeless people living on the street in Baltimore, for example. Well, were they there as a consequence of mental illness that was not properly cared for because of a generation of a policy of de-institutionalization? Al Jazeera didn't know because they didn't ask. Frankly they didn't know enough to ask. It was enough for them to show poor people living in wretched conditions in a prosperous American city and decry it. Then they went to South Carolina and found a town that—I know this is going to shock you, Brent—had very rich people and, on the other side of the railroad tracks, very poor people. And the wretchedness of the poor people's living conditions was enumerated. In fact this memorable question and answer exchange occurred:
Q: What's it like to live with rats in your home? A: Bad. [laughs]
The economic divide is a story and the reasons why, over a long period of time in this South Carolina town there should be very little transmigration across the line between rich and poor, is a story. The sources of wealth of the rich may be a story. The lack of opportunities for the poor may be a story. But again, you gotta report all these things. This series merely named them in a very accusatory way. This to me is the very quintessence of what television news should not be doing. And by the way is not the kind of reporting you see very much elsewhere on Al Jazeera English.
There was another story about the plight of indigenous people in Chiapas. Again, real story. But the point of this story seemed to be that they were victims of NAFTA. Now, again, does NAFTA create problems among rural farmers in Mexico? Yeah. But the situation in Chiapas is at best only marginally affected by that. It has much more to do with race and class issues in Mexico, their relations with the Mexican national government, the adversarialism of the Chiapas state government, and the cultural dislocation and deprivation that not only predates NAFTA, it almost predates the states of Mexico and the United States. And also has a lot to do with the command and control of the indigenous movement by the most peculiar Subcomandante Marcos and his Zapatista allies, who have an interest in isolating if not in depriving this group of people. So again, it was really shoddy reporting.
And you don't see that in Africa, in Latin America, in the Middle East, in Asia, on Al Jazeera. You see state-of-the-art, world-class reporting, and south of the equator I don't think anyone will give you much of an argument that Al Jazeera has become the most authoritative news channel on earth. And so, I took it particularly amiss, and it was for me, as their voucher, endorser, and brand face especially problematic, that their standard for journalism on Al Jazeera in the United States didn't seem consistently to be as good as their standards elsewhere. And let me rush to add that yes, Al Jazeera has in Rob Reynolds, one of the best TV correspondents in America, in the world, and Kris Saloomey in New York is a very competent and growing correspondent, and Mike Kirsch, their stringer in California, is network quality. But for more than a year Kirsch wasn't even there and they were trying to cover the country with two people; can't be done.
BC: You must have sought assurances that this kind of thing wouldn't happen?
DM: In fact, the prospectus for the channel and the channel that I hawked, if you will, is different from the channel today. It is different infrastructurally and editorially, in that the original concept was literally cosmopolitan—the whole world covered from many points of view representing the whole world. That was the logic of having four news centers in Doha, London, Washington, and Kuala Lumpur. All four were supposed to be autonomous, to initiate their own assignment decisions and lineup priorities. And the sum total of the four points of view was to put a truly cosmopolitan, multipolar gloss on the world. Over the last nine months, in particular, bureau autonomy has almost completely disappeared and rather than being a multivoiced, multipolar news channel, I think Al Jazeera English is now an authentic regional voice, much in the manner of Al Jazeera Arabic, although they are in no way a translation of each other—they are two thoroughly different and independent channels. Just as Al Jazeera Arabic can rightfully claim to be a first-class news organization with high professional standards, but one that authentically represents the point of view and interests of the region defined by the Arabic language, less defined by but certainly involved in the Islamic faith, and most particularly the gulf region, I think that Al Jazeera English is a very competent, very professional news organization that does a particularly great job south of the equator, but tends to report almost everything from the point of view of either the Arabic-speaking world or at the very least what you might call the post-colonial world. And since I'm not authentically those things, I don't belong there.
BC: What changed?
DM: I think that the world changed about nine, ten months ago. And I think the single event in that change was the visit to the gulf by Vice President Cheney, where he went to line up the allied ducks in a row behind the possibility of action against Iran. And instead of getting acquiescence, the United States got defiance, and instead ducks in a row the ducks basically went off on their own and the first sort of major breakthrough on that was the Mecca agreement, which defied the American foreign policy by letting Hamas into the tent of the governance of the Palestinian territories. This enraged the State Department and was one crystal clear sign that the Mideast region was now off campus, was off on its own. And it is around this time, and I think not coincidentally, that you see the state of Qatar and the royal family of Qatar starting to make up their feud with the Saudis, and you start to see on both Al Jazeera Arabic and English a very sort of first-personish, "my Haj" stories that were boosterish of the Haj and of Saudi Arabia. And you start to see stories of analysis in The New York Times where regional people are noting that Al Jazeera seems to be changing its editorial stance toward Saudi Arabia. I'm suggesting that around that time, a decision was made at the highest levels of [Al Jazeera] that simply following the American political leadership and the American political ideal of global, universalist values carried out in an absolutely pure, multipolar, First Amendment global conversation, was no longer the safest or smartest course, and that it was time, in fact, to get right with the region. And I think part of getting right with the region was slightly changing the editorial ambition of Al Jazeera English, and I think it has subsequently become a more narrowly focused, more univocal channel than was originally conceived.
BC: This doesn't bode well for AJE as a credible journalistic operation.
DM: If the goal is to be true to the idea of multipolar transparency, then this is very bad news. And I admit that I find that to be a higher goal than being a thoroughly respectable, thoroughly professional, but somewhat regional or region-specific voice. And I think that Al Jazeera is headed in that slightly lesser but still to me very respectable, and in terms of viewing choices, very necessary channel. And the coverage of Latin America and Africa in particular is just so terrific, that if that's the only reason you would watch is to stay up on the half of the planet that none of our networks or news channels are going to tell us much about, you would want to watch it for that alone. But you know, the thing that I loved best about the original concept was the sort of fugue of points of view and opinions, because I think that's what desperately needed in the world. We need to know, for example, in America, how angry the rest of the world is at Americans. Our own news media tend to shelter us from this very unpleasant news. So if you watched and every piece seemed tendentious and pissed you off, and I don't think that would be the case, but even if worst case the channel turned shrill and shallow, you would still want to watch them on the principle that millions—tens of millions—of people watch them every day and you need to know what's going on in their brains.
CJR
Friday, April 4, 2008
The Terrorists Are In Fact Peacemakers by Pepe Escobar
The Terrorists Are In Fact Peacemakers
By Pepe Escobar
Iran is sufficiently powerful to broker a ceasefire deal. Continue
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article19675.htm
By Pepe Escobar
Iran is sufficiently powerful to broker a ceasefire deal. Continue
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article19675.htm
NATO's Destined Failure by William Pfaff
NATO's Destined Failure
William Pfaff
Paris, April 4, 2008 – The NATO summit in Bucharest contributed nothing to an explanation of why there should still be a NATO. Once upon a time, as we know, it was created to keep the Russians out and the Germans down. To hear Washington, Ottawa and the Secretary General of NATO in Brussels, the problem now is to get the Germans up, rearmed, and ready to fight the Russians, should that come, as well as the Taliban in Afghanistan.
Is this such a good idea? Nearly everyone in Europe, and certainly the Germans themselves, are content with a Germany without a general staff, whose army does peacekeeping, and builds bridges in developing countries.
They are also content with a Germany that does not consider that it has a national enemy, or any threat to its well-being other than inflation, global warming, genetically modified vegetables, and EU-imposed speed limits on the autobahn.
The commentator Robert Kagan famously described Western Europe as a postmodern paradise selflessly defended by the United States. But defended from what? He said at the time he wrote that America was defending Europe from Saddam Hussein and "the ayatollahs, Kim Jong Ils and Jiang Zemins [now departed]" with a Hobbesian realism (compared to Europe's Kantian lack of realism). Very few in Europe, then or now, really believe themselves threatened by these people. It's the United States that feels threatened.
This is the problem in NATO today. When George Bush addressed the alliance delegates on Wednesday, he added Darfur to the list of problems that his version of NATO must confront. He gave a fresh definition of the alliance and its mission: "It is no longer a static alliance focused on defending Europe from a Soviet tank invasion. It is now an expeditionary alliance that is sending its forces across the world to help secure a future of freedom and peace for millions."
This is the ever-expanding NATO the United States wants. It is likely to continue pressing for this global NATO whatever the result of the presidential election in November. Global expansion is in the national DNA.
As that expansion happens, Australia, Japan, possibly India, and others will be pressed to join, and soon there will be the long-sought universal alliance of democracies, including some newcomers who are not quite so democratic, such as Ukraine and Georgia. The United States will head it all, leading the world towards an ever-more radiant future.
As long ago as 2003, Condoleezza Rice told the International Institute for Strategic Studies that an international system of balance of power among several major states produced competition and potential conflict, leading to war. "We tried this before," she warned. The answer, she said, is a global alliance of democracies, a global NATO.
Others tried global alliance before, when it was called Communism or imperialism, and it came to a bad end. This American effort will come to a bad end too, although one can hope for a less than disastrous one, just for the reason that sets it apart from the previous efforts: that it is voluntary.
There will have to be American pushing and shoving to get and keep the members of the League fighting in Afghanistan, Iran, Darfur, Somalia, Palestine, and whatever the other countries that come to be identified as terrorist-harboring, terrorist training-grounds, failing nations, rogue nations, or recruits to the Axis of Evil. But in the long run it won't work, simply because the democracies are democracies. They won't go along.
They won't do so, first of all, because few of them believe in such a world or want such a crusade. To reverse the application of what Condoleezza Rice said, nations have "tried this before," and it ended in war.
They also won't agree because the effort simply is not serious. It is constructed on political fantasies and counter-verities, and half-baked ideas. It's like George Bush's announcement before leaving Washington that Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri Malaki's sending his national army to Basra was "a defining moment in the history of free Iraq," restoring central government authority in Basra and ridding it of "criminal elements."
It was in fact a political power-play concerning oil and sectarian and electoral power in Basra. The army (even with hasty U.S. support) was quickly blocked by Moqtada al-Sadr's militia resistance. There was an uprising in Sadr City in Baghdad and bombardment of the Green Zone. Malaki's demands and threats that the militia hand over its arms were ignored. And everyone, including the Iraqi president's representatives, went to Qom, in Iran (for heaven's sake!) for the Iranians to establish a cease-fire in Basra.
Neither President Bush nor, it seems, anyone in the American command or embassy in Baghdad, knew what was going on, before, during, or after. But everyone knows now who controls Basra, and it's not Malaki's elected government, nor the American (or British!) army.
That's why there is not going to be a global Pax Americana imposed by NATO. Failure is built into the imperial project. Ask the Europeans, who have seen it all before.
© Copyright 2008 by Tribune Media Services International. All Rights Reserved.
William Pfaff
Paris, April 4, 2008 – The NATO summit in Bucharest contributed nothing to an explanation of why there should still be a NATO. Once upon a time, as we know, it was created to keep the Russians out and the Germans down. To hear Washington, Ottawa and the Secretary General of NATO in Brussels, the problem now is to get the Germans up, rearmed, and ready to fight the Russians, should that come, as well as the Taliban in Afghanistan.
Is this such a good idea? Nearly everyone in Europe, and certainly the Germans themselves, are content with a Germany without a general staff, whose army does peacekeeping, and builds bridges in developing countries.
They are also content with a Germany that does not consider that it has a national enemy, or any threat to its well-being other than inflation, global warming, genetically modified vegetables, and EU-imposed speed limits on the autobahn.
The commentator Robert Kagan famously described Western Europe as a postmodern paradise selflessly defended by the United States. But defended from what? He said at the time he wrote that America was defending Europe from Saddam Hussein and "the ayatollahs, Kim Jong Ils and Jiang Zemins [now departed]" with a Hobbesian realism (compared to Europe's Kantian lack of realism). Very few in Europe, then or now, really believe themselves threatened by these people. It's the United States that feels threatened.
This is the problem in NATO today. When George Bush addressed the alliance delegates on Wednesday, he added Darfur to the list of problems that his version of NATO must confront. He gave a fresh definition of the alliance and its mission: "It is no longer a static alliance focused on defending Europe from a Soviet tank invasion. It is now an expeditionary alliance that is sending its forces across the world to help secure a future of freedom and peace for millions."
This is the ever-expanding NATO the United States wants. It is likely to continue pressing for this global NATO whatever the result of the presidential election in November. Global expansion is in the national DNA.
As that expansion happens, Australia, Japan, possibly India, and others will be pressed to join, and soon there will be the long-sought universal alliance of democracies, including some newcomers who are not quite so democratic, such as Ukraine and Georgia. The United States will head it all, leading the world towards an ever-more radiant future.
As long ago as 2003, Condoleezza Rice told the International Institute for Strategic Studies that an international system of balance of power among several major states produced competition and potential conflict, leading to war. "We tried this before," she warned. The answer, she said, is a global alliance of democracies, a global NATO.
Others tried global alliance before, when it was called Communism or imperialism, and it came to a bad end. This American effort will come to a bad end too, although one can hope for a less than disastrous one, just for the reason that sets it apart from the previous efforts: that it is voluntary.
There will have to be American pushing and shoving to get and keep the members of the League fighting in Afghanistan, Iran, Darfur, Somalia, Palestine, and whatever the other countries that come to be identified as terrorist-harboring, terrorist training-grounds, failing nations, rogue nations, or recruits to the Axis of Evil. But in the long run it won't work, simply because the democracies are democracies. They won't go along.
They won't do so, first of all, because few of them believe in such a world or want such a crusade. To reverse the application of what Condoleezza Rice said, nations have "tried this before," and it ended in war.
They also won't agree because the effort simply is not serious. It is constructed on political fantasies and counter-verities, and half-baked ideas. It's like George Bush's announcement before leaving Washington that Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri Malaki's sending his national army to Basra was "a defining moment in the history of free Iraq," restoring central government authority in Basra and ridding it of "criminal elements."
It was in fact a political power-play concerning oil and sectarian and electoral power in Basra. The army (even with hasty U.S. support) was quickly blocked by Moqtada al-Sadr's militia resistance. There was an uprising in Sadr City in Baghdad and bombardment of the Green Zone. Malaki's demands and threats that the militia hand over its arms were ignored. And everyone, including the Iraqi president's representatives, went to Qom, in Iran (for heaven's sake!) for the Iranians to establish a cease-fire in Basra.
Neither President Bush nor, it seems, anyone in the American command or embassy in Baghdad, knew what was going on, before, during, or after. But everyone knows now who controls Basra, and it's not Malaki's elected government, nor the American (or British!) army.
That's why there is not going to be a global Pax Americana imposed by NATO. Failure is built into the imperial project. Ask the Europeans, who have seen it all before.
© Copyright 2008 by Tribune Media Services International. All Rights Reserved.
Time to Disband NATO Now that the Cold War is Over? by Adrian Hamilton
Mr. Hamilton is The Independent's comment editor. He articulates a question that is unheard here but becoming ever more widespread in Europe. It is a view with which the next administration must be prepared to contend.
http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/adrian-hamilton/adrian-hamilton-time-to-disband-nato-now-the-cold-war-is-over-804013.html
Adrian Hamilton: Time to disband Nato now the Cold War is over?
Thursday, 3 April 2008
It was Harold Macmillan, ever shrewd in the ways of politics, who said that the only way to hold a successful summit was to have the communiqué already written before you arrived. On that reading, the Nato summit in Bucharest has all the elements of a truly miserable failure.
The participants are at odds over expansion to the East, with the US, backed by the new entrants, urging Georgian and Ukrainian membership against the public doubts of Germany and the vehement opposition of Russia. The core members are at odds over their individual contributions to the war in Afghan-istan. Even on what should be the relatively uncontentious issue of bringing Macedonia into the organisation, the Greeks are threatening to veto the move unless the new member changes its name.
If this were a family it would compete with the Royal Tenenbaums for disfunctionality. Of course it won't be allowed to end in a climax of slammed doors. The North Atlantic Treaty Organisation is regarded as far too important, and prestigious, for that. Indeed no Nato meeting is complete without a chorus of pronouncements by premiers, politicians and pundits stressing just how important the alliance is to the West and how, despite the end of the Cold War that was its raison d'etre, it is still needed more than ever in the post 9/11 world.
All true, no doubt – or at least in part. Nato has been an extra-ordinarily effective organisation in locking the US into Europe militarily and in containing the Soviet Union. But past pre-eminence is no guide to future purpose and it is the lack of definition of what Nato is for that is now producing all the strains.
With the Cold War the organisation had a defined enemy and a clear function – to defend Western Europe against conventional or nuclear assault. Without the Cold War it has no clear enemy or function, only the persistence of a well-honed military structure. The "War on Terror" proponents – President Bush with Gordon Brown padding along behind him – see that honed structure as a ready-made means of combating the new enemies in a world of Muslim extremism and nuclear proliferation. If Europe was its theatre of operations in the Cold War, Nato's role after 9/11 is, according to this doctrine, to go "out of theatre" to engage in operations in Afghanistan, the Middle East, Africa or wherever else a threat is perceived.
At the same time President Bush, in pursuit of his vision of "democracy" around the world and in search of a legacy for his failing presidency, wants to use Nato membership to secure the new democracies of the Orange and Rose revolutions. Hence his enthusiasm to start the process of entry for Ukraine and Georgia. Add to that a new President of France who wants re-entry to full military participation in Nato as a means to take France back to the heart of international decision-making, and you have more energy for movement in Nato than in a generation.
Only it is an energy without consensus or agreed direction. The reluctance of member states to send more troops to Afghanistan or to send them to the hot spots is not, as Washington would brief, a matter of cowardice or parsimony. It is because, for a number of European countries, there is no public support after Iraq for an operation which makes Nato troops into a white, Western occupying force charged with rooting out drugs, confronting local warlords and instituting civil reconstruction – tasks for which Nato troops are not trained and which make them participants in local rivalries.
In the same way President Bush, and the Ukrainian and Georgian leaders, would make eastward expansion into a matter of facing down Russia. But fear of Russia is not the main reason for German (and French, Belgian and Dutch) doubts. The problem is that expansion this far east would take Nato right into the middle of the conflict between Russian and Ukrainian speaking halves of Ukraine, never mind the problem of the breakaway parts of Georgia, disputes that could easily escalate into confrontation with Moscow. For the very reason that the two countries want membership, the organisation should be wary of it. For, as Moscow not unreasonably argues, if Russia is no longer regarded as the enemy, why are we doing it and in such haste?
This isn't a case of: if we didn't have Nato we'd have to invent it. The opposite is true. If we didn't have Nato we'd invent something quite different at this point. We would be involved in a different way, if at all, in Afghanistan. We'd be using membership of the EU as the means of securing the democracies of the former Soviet republics. And we'd be developing an independent European defence capability.
The fearful prospect at Bucharest is that, by allowing Nato to be driven in new directions without confronting the hard questions on its future, we are in danger of breaking the whole alliance on which it is founded.
http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/adrian-hamilton/adrian-hamilton-time-to-disband-nato-now-the-cold-war-is-over-804013.html
Adrian Hamilton: Time to disband Nato now the Cold War is over?
Thursday, 3 April 2008
It was Harold Macmillan, ever shrewd in the ways of politics, who said that the only way to hold a successful summit was to have the communiqué already written before you arrived. On that reading, the Nato summit in Bucharest has all the elements of a truly miserable failure.
The participants are at odds over expansion to the East, with the US, backed by the new entrants, urging Georgian and Ukrainian membership against the public doubts of Germany and the vehement opposition of Russia. The core members are at odds over their individual contributions to the war in Afghan-istan. Even on what should be the relatively uncontentious issue of bringing Macedonia into the organisation, the Greeks are threatening to veto the move unless the new member changes its name.
If this were a family it would compete with the Royal Tenenbaums for disfunctionality. Of course it won't be allowed to end in a climax of slammed doors. The North Atlantic Treaty Organisation is regarded as far too important, and prestigious, for that. Indeed no Nato meeting is complete without a chorus of pronouncements by premiers, politicians and pundits stressing just how important the alliance is to the West and how, despite the end of the Cold War that was its raison d'etre, it is still needed more than ever in the post 9/11 world.
All true, no doubt – or at least in part. Nato has been an extra-ordinarily effective organisation in locking the US into Europe militarily and in containing the Soviet Union. But past pre-eminence is no guide to future purpose and it is the lack of definition of what Nato is for that is now producing all the strains.
With the Cold War the organisation had a defined enemy and a clear function – to defend Western Europe against conventional or nuclear assault. Without the Cold War it has no clear enemy or function, only the persistence of a well-honed military structure. The "War on Terror" proponents – President Bush with Gordon Brown padding along behind him – see that honed structure as a ready-made means of combating the new enemies in a world of Muslim extremism and nuclear proliferation. If Europe was its theatre of operations in the Cold War, Nato's role after 9/11 is, according to this doctrine, to go "out of theatre" to engage in operations in Afghanistan, the Middle East, Africa or wherever else a threat is perceived.
At the same time President Bush, in pursuit of his vision of "democracy" around the world and in search of a legacy for his failing presidency, wants to use Nato membership to secure the new democracies of the Orange and Rose revolutions. Hence his enthusiasm to start the process of entry for Ukraine and Georgia. Add to that a new President of France who wants re-entry to full military participation in Nato as a means to take France back to the heart of international decision-making, and you have more energy for movement in Nato than in a generation.
Only it is an energy without consensus or agreed direction. The reluctance of member states to send more troops to Afghanistan or to send them to the hot spots is not, as Washington would brief, a matter of cowardice or parsimony. It is because, for a number of European countries, there is no public support after Iraq for an operation which makes Nato troops into a white, Western occupying force charged with rooting out drugs, confronting local warlords and instituting civil reconstruction – tasks for which Nato troops are not trained and which make them participants in local rivalries.
In the same way President Bush, and the Ukrainian and Georgian leaders, would make eastward expansion into a matter of facing down Russia. But fear of Russia is not the main reason for German (and French, Belgian and Dutch) doubts. The problem is that expansion this far east would take Nato right into the middle of the conflict between Russian and Ukrainian speaking halves of Ukraine, never mind the problem of the breakaway parts of Georgia, disputes that could easily escalate into confrontation with Moscow. For the very reason that the two countries want membership, the organisation should be wary of it. For, as Moscow not unreasonably argues, if Russia is no longer regarded as the enemy, why are we doing it and in such haste?
This isn't a case of: if we didn't have Nato we'd have to invent it. The opposite is true. If we didn't have Nato we'd invent something quite different at this point. We would be involved in a different way, if at all, in Afghanistan. We'd be using membership of the EU as the means of securing the democracies of the former Soviet republics. And we'd be developing an independent European defence capability.
The fearful prospect at Bucharest is that, by allowing Nato to be driven in new directions without confronting the hard questions on its future, we are in danger of breaking the whole alliance on which it is founded.
Thursday, April 3, 2008
BBC Poll: Iran Only Country Viewed More Negatively Than Israel
BBC Poll: Iran Only Country Viewed More Negatively Than Israel
Haaretz
April 2, 2008
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/pages/ShArt.jhtml?itemNo=971013&contrassID=1&subContrassID=1
Israel is viewed as the country with the second most negative influence on the world, according to a poll released recently by the BBC World Service.
Iran was considered to have the most negative influence, ranked lowest in world opinion at 54 percent - the same ranking it was given in a poll taken last year.
Israel's negative rating dropped this year from 57 percent to 52 percent, moving it from having the worst influence in world opinion to second most negative.
Pakistan was rated the country with the third most negative influence in the world.
The survey also found that world opinion of the United States has risen, with 35 percent of respondents finding it to have a positive influence, compared to 31 percent in the last poll.
According to the poll, Germany was considered to have the best influence on the world, with a positive score of 56 percent and a negative score of 18 percent.
Japan ranked closely behind Germany, with a positive score of 56 percent and a negative score of 21 percent - though respondents in neighboring Asian countries China and South Korea showed negative views.
The poll was conducted by the international agency GlobeScan along with the Program on International Policy Attitudes at the University of Maryland.
Respondents were asked to rate Brazil, Britain, China, France, Germany, India, Iran, Israel, Japan, North Korea, Pakistan, Russia, the U.S. and the European Union as having positive or negative influence.
Haaretz
April 2, 2008
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/pages/ShArt.jhtml?itemNo=971013&contrassID=1&subContrassID=1
Israel is viewed as the country with the second most negative influence on the world, according to a poll released recently by the BBC World Service.
Iran was considered to have the most negative influence, ranked lowest in world opinion at 54 percent - the same ranking it was given in a poll taken last year.
Israel's negative rating dropped this year from 57 percent to 52 percent, moving it from having the worst influence in world opinion to second most negative.
Pakistan was rated the country with the third most negative influence in the world.
The survey also found that world opinion of the United States has risen, with 35 percent of respondents finding it to have a positive influence, compared to 31 percent in the last poll.
According to the poll, Germany was considered to have the best influence on the world, with a positive score of 56 percent and a negative score of 18 percent.
Japan ranked closely behind Germany, with a positive score of 56 percent and a negative score of 21 percent - though respondents in neighboring Asian countries China and South Korea showed negative views.
The poll was conducted by the international agency GlobeScan along with the Program on International Policy Attitudes at the University of Maryland.
Respondents were asked to rate Brazil, Britain, China, France, Germany, India, Iran, Israel, Japan, North Korea, Pakistan, Russia, the U.S. and the European Union as having positive or negative influence.
US should press against new Israeli Settlements by Robert Naiman
All we are saying is: the U.S. should take its own stated policy seriously.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/robert-naiman/us-should-press-oppositio_b_94927.html
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2008/4/3/16153/44534/557/489655
Robert Naiman
Just Foreign Policy
www.justforeignpolicy.org
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/robert-naiman/us-should-press-oppositio_b_94927.html
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2008/4/3/16153/44534/557/489655
Robert Naiman
Just Foreign Policy
www.justforeignpolicy.org
NATO in need of an exit strategy in Afghanistan by Patrick Seale
NATO in need of an exit strategy in Afghanistan
Patrick Seale
Saudi Gazette
Thursday, 03 April 2008
LAST Monday, March 31, two British marines and one Danish soldier were killed in a firefight with Taleban in the southern Afghan province of Helmand. This brought the number of international soldiers killed in Afghanistan this year to over 30.
For what noble cause have these young men died?At their summit meeting in Bucharest this week, NATO heads of state have discussed how to boost the Alliance's war effort in Afghanistan. They should instead have debated how to reach a peace settlement with the insurgents - and how to get out. NATO has evidently got itself into a colossal muddle in Afghanistan. Everything that could possibly go wrong has gone wrong. It is far from clear why the Alliance is fighting there at all, and what it is seeking to achieve. Talk of 'victory' is a dangerous illusion.
In 2003, there were 20,000 foreign troops in Afghanistan. By 2007, this number had trebled to 60,000 - and is shortly to increase further with the arrival of another 3,200 US Marines and a further 1,000 French soldiers, as President Nicolas Sarkozy has pledged to the anger and dismay of the Socialist opposition. That he chose to make this pledge in the British Parliament, during his recent state visit to Britain, rather than in the French National Assembly has not helped his cause.
Has this vast increase in troop levels brought added security to the country? Is peace breaking out? Are reconstruction and development of the war-torn country progressing? Has opium growing been eradicated, or at least curbed? Alas, quite the contrary.
Violence and deaths have increased steadily over the past five years, with attacks on foreign troops now running at a rate of 500 a month. In 2007, there were no fewer than 140 suicide attacks - the most dreaded and lethal form of attack. As Westerners are often targeted, they live in fear, restrict their movements and therefore cannot help much with reconstruction and development. Far from being eradicated, opium production has increased year by year and narco-traffic is booming.
Anyone with the slightest knowledge of Afghanistan knows that this is an overwhelmingly Muslim country, profoundly attached to its customs and traditions. It is a country of tribes, clans and warlords, of mountains and deserts. What most Afghans have in common is pride and a fierce attachment to their country - as well as a visceral hatred of foreign domination.
This was a lesson the British learned to their cost in the 19th century and the Soviets in the 1980s. It is a lesson the United States and its NATO allies are painfully learning in their turn. A leading French expert on Afghanistan, Professor Gilles Dorronsoro, believes that NATO's key blunder has been the attempt to impose a Western model of modernization on Afghanistan, where it is inevitably seen as a foreign import. The goals of democracy, of a market economy and of gender equality may be embraced by a small elite in Kabul, but are rejected in much of the countryside, where they face incomprehension and hostility.
President Hamid Karzai's state is a fiction. It controls only 30 percent of the territory - the rest is in the hands of warlords or insurgents - and has only a tenuous grip on the economy.
The West may seek to demonize the Taleban as medieval barbarians, alien to Afghan society. The truth, however, would seem to be that they are very much a home-bred product. Although originally almost exclusively Pashtun, the insurgency has now spread beyond the Pashtun areas, pointing to the Taleban's growing support.
In 2006-07, there was a notable change of sentiment in Afghanistan. The idea took hold that NATO and the Americans were losing the war. This alone should have persuaded the heads of state gathered in Bucharest this week that it was time to bring this thankless neo-colonial military adventure to a close.
An astonishing statistic is that American forces in Afghanistan cost the American taxpayer $100m a day - or, currently, $36 billion a year. So far, since 2001, the United States has spent $127 billion on the war in Afghanistan. One can only weep at such a waste of resources.
In contrast, total international aid to Afghanistan - on which the Kabul government depends for 90 percent of its expenditure - has averaged only $7 million a day since 2001. Half the promised aid has failed to arrive - there is a $5 billion shortfall - while two-thirds of the aid was not channeled through government institutions at all. A lot of it was squandered inefficiently or was diverted into private pockets. The result has been an explosion of corruption, which may be observed in million-dollar houses in Kabul.
These facts and figures are taken from a recent report by ACBAR (Agency Coordinating Body for Afghan Relief), which has the difficult task of coordinating the work of 94 NGOs (nongovernmental organizations) working in Afghanistan, including such major NGOs as Oxfam and CARE.
What the ACBAR report makes damningly clear is that some 40 percent of the aid money finds its way back to the donor countries, one way or another, mainly in the form of salaries to expatriates. An expatriate consultant can cost between $250,000 and $500,000 a year.
If seeking to impose a Western model on Afghanistan has aroused local opposition, another even greater source of hostility is the large-scale use of airstrikes, especially by American forces. Millions of tons of bombs have been dropped on Afghanistan in pursuit of a policy of "killing the enemy."
These have inevitably caused the death of hundreds of Afghan civilians and much material "collateral damage." Breaking into homes, ignoring local customs and showing disrespect for ordinary Afghans has also created immense anger. The result has been to bring large segments of the population over to the Taleban side. As in Iraq, far from pacifying the country, US strategy has created an enemy bent on revenge.
There is much talk in Washington these days of taking the war to the Taleban in the tribal areas of West Pakistan. Already, US airstrikes pay no attention to the frontier between Afghanistan and Pakistan. It is as if the frontier had ceased to exist. Even Barack Obama, the leading Democratic presidential candidate and a stern critic of the Iraq war, has spoken of "cleaning out" Pakistan's tribal areas.
This is dangerous talk. Pakistan is seething with angry opposition to the NATO campaign in Afghanistan and, more generally, to US President George W Bush's war on terror.
Some experts believe that a large-scale Western ground incursion into Pakistan's tribal areas could split the Pakistan army, bring down President Pervez Musharraf, and put an end to any security cooperation with the West.
On a visit to Islamabad in late March, John Negroponte, the US Deputy Secretary of State, was surprised to hear that the leaders of Pakistan's new coalition government - former prime minister Nawaz Sharif and Asif Ali Zardari (the late Benazir Bhutto's husband) - want talks with the Taleban rather than military strikes.
"One is dealing with irreconcilable elements who want to destroy our very way of life. I don't see how you can talk with those kinds of people," Negroponte was quoted as saying. It would be in NATO's, and Washington's, interest to find out - and the sooner the better.
Patrick Seale
Saudi Gazette
Thursday, 03 April 2008
LAST Monday, March 31, two British marines and one Danish soldier were killed in a firefight with Taleban in the southern Afghan province of Helmand. This brought the number of international soldiers killed in Afghanistan this year to over 30.
For what noble cause have these young men died?At their summit meeting in Bucharest this week, NATO heads of state have discussed how to boost the Alliance's war effort in Afghanistan. They should instead have debated how to reach a peace settlement with the insurgents - and how to get out. NATO has evidently got itself into a colossal muddle in Afghanistan. Everything that could possibly go wrong has gone wrong. It is far from clear why the Alliance is fighting there at all, and what it is seeking to achieve. Talk of 'victory' is a dangerous illusion.
In 2003, there were 20,000 foreign troops in Afghanistan. By 2007, this number had trebled to 60,000 - and is shortly to increase further with the arrival of another 3,200 US Marines and a further 1,000 French soldiers, as President Nicolas Sarkozy has pledged to the anger and dismay of the Socialist opposition. That he chose to make this pledge in the British Parliament, during his recent state visit to Britain, rather than in the French National Assembly has not helped his cause.
Has this vast increase in troop levels brought added security to the country? Is peace breaking out? Are reconstruction and development of the war-torn country progressing? Has opium growing been eradicated, or at least curbed? Alas, quite the contrary.
Violence and deaths have increased steadily over the past five years, with attacks on foreign troops now running at a rate of 500 a month. In 2007, there were no fewer than 140 suicide attacks - the most dreaded and lethal form of attack. As Westerners are often targeted, they live in fear, restrict their movements and therefore cannot help much with reconstruction and development. Far from being eradicated, opium production has increased year by year and narco-traffic is booming.
Anyone with the slightest knowledge of Afghanistan knows that this is an overwhelmingly Muslim country, profoundly attached to its customs and traditions. It is a country of tribes, clans and warlords, of mountains and deserts. What most Afghans have in common is pride and a fierce attachment to their country - as well as a visceral hatred of foreign domination.
This was a lesson the British learned to their cost in the 19th century and the Soviets in the 1980s. It is a lesson the United States and its NATO allies are painfully learning in their turn. A leading French expert on Afghanistan, Professor Gilles Dorronsoro, believes that NATO's key blunder has been the attempt to impose a Western model of modernization on Afghanistan, where it is inevitably seen as a foreign import. The goals of democracy, of a market economy and of gender equality may be embraced by a small elite in Kabul, but are rejected in much of the countryside, where they face incomprehension and hostility.
President Hamid Karzai's state is a fiction. It controls only 30 percent of the territory - the rest is in the hands of warlords or insurgents - and has only a tenuous grip on the economy.
The West may seek to demonize the Taleban as medieval barbarians, alien to Afghan society. The truth, however, would seem to be that they are very much a home-bred product. Although originally almost exclusively Pashtun, the insurgency has now spread beyond the Pashtun areas, pointing to the Taleban's growing support.
In 2006-07, there was a notable change of sentiment in Afghanistan. The idea took hold that NATO and the Americans were losing the war. This alone should have persuaded the heads of state gathered in Bucharest this week that it was time to bring this thankless neo-colonial military adventure to a close.
An astonishing statistic is that American forces in Afghanistan cost the American taxpayer $100m a day - or, currently, $36 billion a year. So far, since 2001, the United States has spent $127 billion on the war in Afghanistan. One can only weep at such a waste of resources.
In contrast, total international aid to Afghanistan - on which the Kabul government depends for 90 percent of its expenditure - has averaged only $7 million a day since 2001. Half the promised aid has failed to arrive - there is a $5 billion shortfall - while two-thirds of the aid was not channeled through government institutions at all. A lot of it was squandered inefficiently or was diverted into private pockets. The result has been an explosion of corruption, which may be observed in million-dollar houses in Kabul.
These facts and figures are taken from a recent report by ACBAR (Agency Coordinating Body for Afghan Relief), which has the difficult task of coordinating the work of 94 NGOs (nongovernmental organizations) working in Afghanistan, including such major NGOs as Oxfam and CARE.
What the ACBAR report makes damningly clear is that some 40 percent of the aid money finds its way back to the donor countries, one way or another, mainly in the form of salaries to expatriates. An expatriate consultant can cost between $250,000 and $500,000 a year.
If seeking to impose a Western model on Afghanistan has aroused local opposition, another even greater source of hostility is the large-scale use of airstrikes, especially by American forces. Millions of tons of bombs have been dropped on Afghanistan in pursuit of a policy of "killing the enemy."
These have inevitably caused the death of hundreds of Afghan civilians and much material "collateral damage." Breaking into homes, ignoring local customs and showing disrespect for ordinary Afghans has also created immense anger. The result has been to bring large segments of the population over to the Taleban side. As in Iraq, far from pacifying the country, US strategy has created an enemy bent on revenge.
There is much talk in Washington these days of taking the war to the Taleban in the tribal areas of West Pakistan. Already, US airstrikes pay no attention to the frontier between Afghanistan and Pakistan. It is as if the frontier had ceased to exist. Even Barack Obama, the leading Democratic presidential candidate and a stern critic of the Iraq war, has spoken of "cleaning out" Pakistan's tribal areas.
This is dangerous talk. Pakistan is seething with angry opposition to the NATO campaign in Afghanistan and, more generally, to US President George W Bush's war on terror.
Some experts believe that a large-scale Western ground incursion into Pakistan's tribal areas could split the Pakistan army, bring down President Pervez Musharraf, and put an end to any security cooperation with the West.
On a visit to Islamabad in late March, John Negroponte, the US Deputy Secretary of State, was surprised to hear that the leaders of Pakistan's new coalition government - former prime minister Nawaz Sharif and Asif Ali Zardari (the late Benazir Bhutto's husband) - want talks with the Taleban rather than military strikes.
"One is dealing with irreconcilable elements who want to destroy our very way of life. I don't see how you can talk with those kinds of people," Negroponte was quoted as saying. It would be in NATO's, and Washington's, interest to find out - and the sooner the better.
Iraq: Dark Shadowsw of Things to Come by Wayne White
Middle East Institute Commentary
Iraq: Dark Shadows of Things to Come
April 03, 2008
Wayne White
The Nuri al Maliki government's failure to defeat Muqtada al-Sadr's Mahdi Army in Basra is yet another indication that beneath the widely acclaimed "success" of the surge is a country largely bereft of the legitimate governance required for genuine stability. Iran's intermediary role between Maliki and Sadr suggests that what passes for an Iraqi central government is, in fact, little more than another actor on an Iraqi political scene still badly fragmented along factional lines.
At the conclusion of Prime Minister Maliki's determined effort to wrest control of much of Basra from Sadr's fighters, Sadr's people reportedly controlled even more of the city than before. The government has lost face, Sadr's standing has been considerably enhanced, and his defiance of the government, which he labeled a "Satan" in an interview with al-Jazeera, is unshaken. Past US and Iraqi government efforts to wear down Sadr's forces with scattered attacks and arrests clearly have had little impact. Indeed, a Mahdi Army commander in Baghdad bragged last week: "We can take on anyone now."
The popular appeal of the brash, anti-American and nationalistic young cleric among vast numbers of downtrodden Shi'a has been powerful. It may now exceed that of other more established movements such as that of leading rival Abdul Aziz al-Hakim's Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq (ISCI).
Although little-discussed, this episode also undermines the myth of the successful surge. Sadr's Mahdi Army was not especially strong in Basra until the surge into Baghdad in early 2007 caused thousands of Sadr's fighters to redeploy to southern Iraq, effectively out of reach of US forces, in order to wait out the surge. This major reverse for the Iraqi central government is partly an adverse consequence of the surge.
Meanwhile, Maliki's government continues to drag its feet in allowing tens of thousands of Sunni Arab Concerned Local Citizen (CLC) cadres to be incorporated into the Iraqi security forces. This comes as no surprise since the CLC's, the result of the so-called Sunni Arab "Awakening," are made up largely of former insurgents and other Sunni Arab tribal elements who harbor considerable hostility and mistrust toward the Shi'a-dominated government.
Maliki and other key government figures strongly opposed the US decision to allow the CLC's and other local Sunni Arab groups to arm and organize themselves in the first place. Such elements had begun asking for an alliance of convenience between themselves and US forces (but not the Iraqi government) since 2004 in order to move against abusive al-Qaeda in Iraq (AQI) elements in their midst. The U.S. only agreed to this dicey arrangement in late 2006 amidst the awful sectarian strife of that year: violence driven by AQI's bombardment of suicide bombings.
Ever since, the Administration has done quite well in convincing many that the Awakening is a surge-related success story, even though the vast majority of U.S. troops involved in the surge were sent to Baghdad, not to areas where the CLC's have been active. The deal with the CLC's, not the surge, stabilized large predominantly Sunni Arab areas, cut U.S. casualties, delt severe blows to AQI, and reduced suicide bombings hammering the Iraqi capital. This cooperation, however, is uncertain over the long-term in the face of profound government mistrust.
The Administration has gone so far as to characterize this hasty improvisation in the midst of crisis as a new "bottom-up" strategy for bringing stabilization to much of Iraq. However, in the continued absence of meaningful reconciliation between Shi'a and Sunni Arabs, the CLC's are, in reality, a robust collection of potentially very dangerous Sunni Arab militias now numbering nearly 100,000. And they are fast losing faith that the government will ever accept them. There is great risk that the CLC's could turn on the government at some point down the line, one reason Gen. Petraeus recently characterized the situation on the ground as still "tenuous."
Limited as they are to largely Sunni Arab portions of the country, the CLC's hardly represent a new approach to stable governance. In fact, the only reason they have been described in such terms is out of frustration with the dysfunctional, sectarian and corrupt performance of the Iraqi central government.
The government's lack of authority in most areas of Iraq has reduced it, especially in the context of its botched effort to bring the Mahdi Army to heel, to little more than another major party competing for power on an Iraqi political scene dominated otherwise by the Kurdish Regional Government and its armed Peshmerga in the far north, armed Sunni Arab elements in north central Iraq, and various Shia militias in Baghdad and much of the south. That was illustrated when the Iranians had to mediate between Maliki and Sadr, strongly suggesting that only they had sufficient influence with Sadr to broker a ceasefire.
Both the U.S. government and military have failed to recognize in recent years that the one major Iraqi government institution upon which Americans have pinned so much hope—the Iraqi Army—also is deeply divided by various conflicting factional loyalties. The lackluster performance of the army (and other Iraqi security forces, such as the long-troubled police) against the Mahdi Army (as well as desertions to Sadr's side during the fighting) revealed that many soldiers feel more loyalty toward Shi'a parties and their militias than the central government. This should come as no surprise given the Baghdad's poor performance on a variety of issues since a fully sovereign government was established back in 2005.
This Administration—as well as the next—may find itself increasingly in a quandary. As the U.S. continues to withdraw additional troops, there could be a rebound in violence in various forms. With most Iraqi loyalties factional, U.S. troops in many ways represent the only relatively neutral party separating potentially hostile elements. It comes as no surprise, therefore, that Gen. Petraeus has asked that withdrawals be halted in July when the downsizing to pre-surge levels has been completed. Nonetheless, there is little reason to believe that simply "sitting on" or separating various factions for a long time to come would bring genuine stability.
Wayne White is an Adjunct Scholar with the Middle East Institute. Previously he served as Deputy Director of the State Department's Bureau of Intelligence and Research, Office of Analysis for the Near East, with a special focus on Iraq.
Disclaimer: Assertions and opinions in this Commentary are solely those of the above-mentioned author(s) and do not reflect necessarily the views of the Middle East Institute, which expressly does not take positions on Middle East policy.
_______________________________________________
Iraq: Dark Shadows of Things to Come
April 03, 2008
Wayne White
The Nuri al Maliki government's failure to defeat Muqtada al-Sadr's Mahdi Army in Basra is yet another indication that beneath the widely acclaimed "success" of the surge is a country largely bereft of the legitimate governance required for genuine stability. Iran's intermediary role between Maliki and Sadr suggests that what passes for an Iraqi central government is, in fact, little more than another actor on an Iraqi political scene still badly fragmented along factional lines.
At the conclusion of Prime Minister Maliki's determined effort to wrest control of much of Basra from Sadr's fighters, Sadr's people reportedly controlled even more of the city than before. The government has lost face, Sadr's standing has been considerably enhanced, and his defiance of the government, which he labeled a "Satan" in an interview with al-Jazeera, is unshaken. Past US and Iraqi government efforts to wear down Sadr's forces with scattered attacks and arrests clearly have had little impact. Indeed, a Mahdi Army commander in Baghdad bragged last week: "We can take on anyone now."
The popular appeal of the brash, anti-American and nationalistic young cleric among vast numbers of downtrodden Shi'a has been powerful. It may now exceed that of other more established movements such as that of leading rival Abdul Aziz al-Hakim's Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq (ISCI).
Although little-discussed, this episode also undermines the myth of the successful surge. Sadr's Mahdi Army was not especially strong in Basra until the surge into Baghdad in early 2007 caused thousands of Sadr's fighters to redeploy to southern Iraq, effectively out of reach of US forces, in order to wait out the surge. This major reverse for the Iraqi central government is partly an adverse consequence of the surge.
Meanwhile, Maliki's government continues to drag its feet in allowing tens of thousands of Sunni Arab Concerned Local Citizen (CLC) cadres to be incorporated into the Iraqi security forces. This comes as no surprise since the CLC's, the result of the so-called Sunni Arab "Awakening," are made up largely of former insurgents and other Sunni Arab tribal elements who harbor considerable hostility and mistrust toward the Shi'a-dominated government.
Maliki and other key government figures strongly opposed the US decision to allow the CLC's and other local Sunni Arab groups to arm and organize themselves in the first place. Such elements had begun asking for an alliance of convenience between themselves and US forces (but not the Iraqi government) since 2004 in order to move against abusive al-Qaeda in Iraq (AQI) elements in their midst. The U.S. only agreed to this dicey arrangement in late 2006 amidst the awful sectarian strife of that year: violence driven by AQI's bombardment of suicide bombings.
Ever since, the Administration has done quite well in convincing many that the Awakening is a surge-related success story, even though the vast majority of U.S. troops involved in the surge were sent to Baghdad, not to areas where the CLC's have been active. The deal with the CLC's, not the surge, stabilized large predominantly Sunni Arab areas, cut U.S. casualties, delt severe blows to AQI, and reduced suicide bombings hammering the Iraqi capital. This cooperation, however, is uncertain over the long-term in the face of profound government mistrust.
The Administration has gone so far as to characterize this hasty improvisation in the midst of crisis as a new "bottom-up" strategy for bringing stabilization to much of Iraq. However, in the continued absence of meaningful reconciliation between Shi'a and Sunni Arabs, the CLC's are, in reality, a robust collection of potentially very dangerous Sunni Arab militias now numbering nearly 100,000. And they are fast losing faith that the government will ever accept them. There is great risk that the CLC's could turn on the government at some point down the line, one reason Gen. Petraeus recently characterized the situation on the ground as still "tenuous."
Limited as they are to largely Sunni Arab portions of the country, the CLC's hardly represent a new approach to stable governance. In fact, the only reason they have been described in such terms is out of frustration with the dysfunctional, sectarian and corrupt performance of the Iraqi central government.
The government's lack of authority in most areas of Iraq has reduced it, especially in the context of its botched effort to bring the Mahdi Army to heel, to little more than another major party competing for power on an Iraqi political scene dominated otherwise by the Kurdish Regional Government and its armed Peshmerga in the far north, armed Sunni Arab elements in north central Iraq, and various Shia militias in Baghdad and much of the south. That was illustrated when the Iranians had to mediate between Maliki and Sadr, strongly suggesting that only they had sufficient influence with Sadr to broker a ceasefire.
Both the U.S. government and military have failed to recognize in recent years that the one major Iraqi government institution upon which Americans have pinned so much hope—the Iraqi Army—also is deeply divided by various conflicting factional loyalties. The lackluster performance of the army (and other Iraqi security forces, such as the long-troubled police) against the Mahdi Army (as well as desertions to Sadr's side during the fighting) revealed that many soldiers feel more loyalty toward Shi'a parties and their militias than the central government. This should come as no surprise given the Baghdad's poor performance on a variety of issues since a fully sovereign government was established back in 2005.
This Administration—as well as the next—may find itself increasingly in a quandary. As the U.S. continues to withdraw additional troops, there could be a rebound in violence in various forms. With most Iraqi loyalties factional, U.S. troops in many ways represent the only relatively neutral party separating potentially hostile elements. It comes as no surprise, therefore, that Gen. Petraeus has asked that withdrawals be halted in July when the downsizing to pre-surge levels has been completed. Nonetheless, there is little reason to believe that simply "sitting on" or separating various factions for a long time to come would bring genuine stability.
Wayne White is an Adjunct Scholar with the Middle East Institute. Previously he served as Deputy Director of the State Department's Bureau of Intelligence and Research, Office of Analysis for the Near East, with a special focus on Iraq.
Disclaimer: Assertions and opinions in this Commentary are solely those of the above-mentioned author(s) and do not reflect necessarily the views of the Middle East Institute, which expressly does not take positions on Middle East policy.
_______________________________________________
Testimony Before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on The Surge and Withdrawal of Troops
Statement for the Record
Senate Foreign Relations Committee
MG (Ret) Robert H. Scales, Jr.
President, Colgen, Inc.
April 2, 2008
After the Surge: A Responsible Ending
Once the dogs of war are unleashed all consequences, political, diplomatic and domestic are shaped by what soldiers call “ground truth” and the truth on the ground has changed enormously over the past year in Iraq. Through Herculean efforts the military command under the leadership of General David Petraeus has quite literally wrenched military advantage from what a year ago was the beginning of catastrophic defeat. Increasing the number of “boots on the ground” was an important factor contributing to recent successes. But perhaps a more significant reason for the change of circumstances on the ground was Petraeus’ change of strategy. For the first time since the invasion in 2003 he has been able to approach the war as an insurgency, granted an insurgency of a very unique Middle Eastern character.
A year’s effort and the loss of nearly 900 lives have placed the military situation at what soldiers refer to as a “culminating point.” The culminating point marks the shift in military advantage from one side to the other, when, with all other variables fixed, the military outcome becomes irreversible: The potential loser can inflict casualties, but has lost the chance for victory on the battlefield. The only issue is how much longer the war will last, and what the butcher's bill will be.
Battles usually define the culminating point. In World War II, Midway was a turning point against the Japanese, El Alamein was a turning point against the Nazis and after Stalingrad, Germany no longer was able to stop the Russians from advancing on their eastern front. Wars usually culminate before either antagonist is aware of the event. Abraham Lincoln didn't realize Gettysburg had turned the tide of the American Civil War. In Vietnam, the Tet offensive was a teachable moment for the situation today in that it proved that culminating points aren't always military victories particularly in an insurgency.
In an insurgency culmination just buys time. The temporal advantage gained on the battlefield can be squandered if time isn’t used to turn a military advantage into a successful political outcome. Another lesson from the past is that the military advantage can be lost if the dynamics of the conflict change over time. After the surge the United Stated will begin to leave and the Iraqis will assume responsibility for their own defense. The battlefield advantage won at so costly a price can only be continued if this change of players is managed with the same strategic genius that gave us the battlefield advantage we now enjoy.
While the military advantage clearly resides with the coalition very little can be done on the battlefield for the remainder of the surge to accelerate the pace of military operations. The counterinsurgency strategy implemented by Petraeus is the right one and cannot be substantially altered. The crucible of patience among the American people is emptying at a prodigious rate and very little short of a complete shift in conditions on the ground is likely to refill it.
The military balance of power cannot be changed very much throughout the remainder of the surge. Al Qaeda has been pushed into a northern corner of Iraq and constant harassment by the US military supported by the Sons of Iraq effectively limits how much mischief they can cause. But their numbers though small have remained fairly constant. The United States has run out of military options as well. The Army went in to this war with too few ground troops. In a strange twist of irony for the first time since the summer of 1863 the number of ground soldiers available is determining American policy rather than policy determining how many troops we need. All that the Army and Marine Corps can manage without serous damage to the force is the sustained deployment in both Iraq and Afghanistan of somewhere between 13 to 15 brigade equivalents. Assuming that Afghanistan will require at least 3 brigades troop levels by the end of the surge in Iraq must begin to migrate toward the figure of no more than twelve brigades…perhaps even less. Reductions in close combat forces will continue indefinitely thereafter.
So regardless of who wins the election and regardless of conditions on the ground by summer the troops will begin to come home. The only point of contention is how precipitous will be the withdrawal and whether the schedule of withdrawal should be a matter of administration policy. Adhering to a fixed schedule is not a good idea in an insurgency because the indigenous population tends to side with the perceived winners. However, some publicly expressed window of withdrawal is necessary for no other reason than to give soldier’s families some hope that their loved ones will not be stuck on a perpetual rollercoaster of deployments.
By the end of the surge much will have been accomplished. The ethno-sectarian competition for power and influence will continue. The hope is that all parties by then will seek to resolve these contests in the political realm and not in the streets. The campaign against al Qaeda and the Sunni Extremists will continue to show success although insurgent groups will remain lethal. Militia and criminal violence will continue to be a thorn in the side of the Maliki regime as gangs roam the streets of cities occasionally killing on the order of rouge militia leaders. No solution to this festering problem is possible by the time the troops start coming home.
The influence of Iran will loom very significant - and will seem "conflicted," given Iran's desire to bloody America's nose but not let the Shia-led Government of Iraq fail. By this January about the time the drawdown begins in earnest pressure will build to show some progress toward reconciliation nationally and within warring ethnic groupings.
Governmental capacity will still be inadequate though it will continue to develop. It will resume only when the dust settles from the recent flare-up connected with the Iraqi army operations in Basra. Basic services will remain inadequate but presuming a lull after Basra will slowly improve as long-term electrical and oil projects gather momentum.
In sum after the surge much will remain to be done and nothing substantial can be done without the ability of the Iraqi military to maintain security after American forces begin to depart. This task is so important for the creation of a stable state that the establishment of an effective Iraqi National Security apparatus will become a new center of gravity for the remaining phases of the war. Can the Iraqi Defense Forces grow competent and confident enough to take up the task in the time remaining to them? So far the answer to this question, like so many questions about American policy in Iraq, remains clouded in uncertainty.
Some signs are encouraging.
The Iraqi Security Forces have shown strength in recent weeks. The Iraqi high command deployed elements of the 14th Division to Basra to destroy the Shia militias and criminal gangs that have held the city hostage for years. Iraqi motor transport units moved one national police and three army brigades on short notice from Baghdad to Basra a distance of about 400 kilometers with less than a week for planning and execution. During the operations Iraqi special forces units were transported, some in Iraqi C-130 aircraft, from the very northern most regions of Iraq to the vicinity of Basra. An Iraqi Base Support Unit, roughly the equivalent of an American combat service support battalion, has so far managed to sustain the Basra operation with some help from American supplied civilian contractors. There have been problems. Some units in the 14th have not fought well. There have been some sectarian infiltration and desertions. But for all its problems the division has not lost fighting effectiveness or cohesion.
These accomplishments might seem at first glance to be less than impressive. But it’s important to recall that only a year ago it would have been virtually impossible to pull an Army division from one province and move it to another in shape (and willing) to fight.
Officer leadership at the small unit level is improving. Sadly the process of leader development is driven by the wasteful Darwinian process of bloody self=selection that always attends armies that must learn to fight by fighting, the only way to build an Army from scratch in wartime. The American Army in the Civil War experienced a similar baptism of fire at a cost of more than half a million dead.
Non commissioned officers are the backbone of the American Army but NCOs are an alien concept in areas of the world ruled by strict hierarchies. The Iraqi Army is no exception. Only last year did the Iraqis start divisional schools to teach and build corporals, squad and platoon leaders. Some of these newly minted NCOs are filling the ranks of the Iraqi Army and initial reports of their success are encouraging.
This process of “on the job training” in combat has been made more efficient with the addition of American military training teams. These are squad sized units that imbed themselves in each Iraqi combat battalion and brigade. Equally important are partnership arrangements between American and Iraqi combat units. Emulation and example are powerful forces in combat. Iraqi soldier and leaders tend to mimic the example of American professionalism and effectiveness and when fighting side by side the Iraqis inevitably fight better. American units habitually partner with Iraqi units for the duration of their time in Iraq. These enduring partnerships have the added advantage of allowing the development of personal relationships between Iraqi and American soldiers and commanders.
But very serious problems continue to plague the Iraqi military and in spite of the best efforts of the coalition these problems will linger well after the surge. Iraqi senior leaders and staffs are reasonably competent at moving brigades and battalions from point to point but their ability to do quality planning and execution is very immature. While small unit leaders are being selected by merit higher level selections are too often based on nepotism or tribal and clan loyalty. In some units sectarianism still trumps allegiance to the nation and on occasion soldiers desert rather than fight against their tribal peers.
From the beginning the Coalition leadership focused on building close combat small units as first priority. As a consequence by the end of the surge non combat functions, what the military calls “enablers”, will be immature at best. No army can function for long without being competent in intelligence, fire support, administration, logistics, communications and medical support. The American military will not only have to train the Iraqis in these functions but remain in Iraq to provide them for a long time, perhaps several years.
The challenge after the surge will be to increase the effectiveness of training, advising and mentoring to the Iraqis as American forces depart so that the Iraqis will be able to fill the void. Rather than pulling out combat brigades whole cloth partnership units will probably follow a “thinning” strategy whereby a partner unit will thin its ranks gradually leaving the “brains” of the unit in place for as long as possible to assist with planning and employment of enablers.
Today there are 5,000 imbedded trainers and 1,300 headquarters trainers and advisors to joint, army and ministerial staffs. As the Iraqis face fighting without partners they will probably need more training teams to imbed with them. More Americans left to fend for themselves in an alien and hostile environment might also mean more casualties. It certainly will mean that if the enemy sees killing advisors and support soldiers as the surest means for getting us out of Iraq and toppling the Iraqi government.
Training, advising and assisting the army of an alien culture is now job one for the American military. History shows that we are good at this. For over a century from the Philippines to Korea, Thailand, Greece, Indonesia, El Salvador and in many other distant and inhospitable places American soldiers have successfully assisted in building armies during wartime. Unfortunately after Vietnam we lost the skill to do these tasks effectively. Rebuilding a world class advisory capacity is a cultural not an organizational challenge. This is graduate level work and advisors need time to learn the language and culture as well as the particular personal skills to do their jobs competently. Not all officers are good at training and advising foreign militaries. We must go the extra mile to find those with the cultural “right stuff” and reward the best of them with fully funded civil schooling, advanced promotion and a chance to command at all levels.
The post surge strategy should not be focused solely creating an Iraqi Army in the image of our own. The Iraqis only have to be better than their enemies. Not is the challenge to commit the blood, treasure and time necessary to train and equip a large Iraqi Army. Wars are not won by the bigger forces but by the force that wants most to win. It will in the end be the intangibles; courage, adaptability, integrity, intellectual agility, leadership and an allegiance to a cause other than the tribe that will ultimately determine who wins. As we move into a new season of this sad war the age old axioms will prevail: we will in the end discover that our greatest task will be to inculcate in the Iraqis the will to win rather than to teach them how to win.
From: salon-bounces@committeefortherepublic.org [mailto:salon-bounces@committeefortherepublic.org] On Behalf Of Chas Freeman
Sent: Thursday, April 03, 2008 6:00 PM
To: Salon
Subject: [Salon] Lt. Gen. Odom on Iraq
TESTIMONY BEFORE THE SENATE FOREIGN RELATIONS COMMITTEE ON IRAQ
By William E. Odom, LT General, USA, Ret.
2 April 2008
Good morning Mr. Chairman and members of the committee.
It is an honor to appear before you again. The last occasion was in January 2007, when the topic was the troop surge. Today you are asking if it has worked. Last year I rejected the claim that it was a new strategy. Rather, I said, it is a new tactic used to achieve the same old strategic aim, political stability. And I foresaw no serious prospects for success.
I see no reason to change my judgment now. The surge is prolonging instability, not creating the conditions for unity as the president claims.
Last year, General Petraeus wisely declined to promise a military solution to this political problem, saying that he could lower the level of violence, allowing a limited time for the Iraqi leaders to strike a political deal. Violence has been temporarily reduced but today there is credible evidence that the political situation is far more fragmented. And currently we see violence surge in Baghdad and Basra. In fact, it has also remained sporadic and significant in
several other parts of Iraq over the past year, notwithstanding the notable drop in Baghdad and Anbar Province.
More disturbing, Prime Minister Maliki has initiated military action and then dragged in US forces to help his own troops destroy his Shiite competitors. This is a political setback, not a political solution. Such is the result of the surge tactic.
No less disturbing has been the steady violence in the Mosul area, and the tensions in Kirkuk between Kurds, Arabs, and Turkomen. A showdown over control of the oil fields there surely awaits us. And the idea that some kind of a federal solution can cut this Gordian knot strikes me as a wild fantasy, wholly out of touch with Kurdish realities.
Also disturbing is Turkey's military incursion to destroy Kurdish PKK groups in the border region. That confronted the US government with a choice: either to support its NATO ally, or to make good on its commitment to Kurdish leaders to insure their security. It chose the former, and that makes it clear to the Kurds that the United States will sacrifice their security to its larger interests in Turkey.
Turning to the apparent success in Anbar province and a few other Sunni areas, this is not the positive situation it is purported to be. Certainly violence has declined as local Sunni shieks have begun to cooperate with US forces. But the surge tactic cannot be given full credit. The decline started earlier on Sunni initiative. What are their motives? First, anger at al Qaeda operatives and second, their financial plight.
Their break with al Qaeda should give us little comfort. The Sunnis welcomed anyone who would help them kill Americans, including al Qaeda. The concern we hear the president and his aides express about a residual base left for al Qaeda if we withdraw is utter nonsense. The Sunnis will soon destroy al Qaeda if we leave Iraq. The Kurds do not allow them in their region, and the Shiites, like the Iranians, detest al Qaeda. To understand why, one need only take note of the al Qaeda public diplomacy campaign over the past year or so on internet blogs. They implore the United States to bomb and invade Iran and destroy this apostate Shiite regime.
As an aside, it gives me pause to learn that our vice president and some members of the Senate are aligned with al Qaeda on spreading the war to Iran. Let me emphasize that our new Sunni friends insist on being paid for their loyalty. I have heard, for example, a rough estimate that the cost in one area of about 100 square kilometers is $250,000 per day. And periodically they threaten to defect unless their fees are increased. You might want to find out the total costs for these deals forecasted for the next several years, because they are not small and they do not promise to end. Remember, we do not own these people. We merely rent them. And they can break the lease at any moment. At the same time, this deal protects them to some degree from the government's troops and police, hardly a sign of political reconciliation.
Now let us consider the implications of the proliferating deals with the Sunni strongmen. They are far from unified among themselves. Some remain with al Qaeda. Many who break and join our forces are beholden to no one. Thus the decline in violence reflects a dispersion of power to dozens of local strong men who distrust the government and occasionally fight among themselves. Thus the basic military situation is far worse because of the proliferation of armed groups under local military chiefs who follow a proliferating number of political bosses.
This can hardly be called greater military stability, much less progress toward political consolidation, and to call it fragility that needs more time to become success is to ignore its implications. At the same time, Prime Minister Maliki's military actions in Basra and Baghdad, indicate even wider political and military fragmentation. We are witnessing is more accurately described as the road to the Balkanization of Iraq, that is, political fragmentation. We are being asked by the president to believe that this shift of so much power and finance to so many local chieftains is the road to political centralization. He describes the process as building the state from the bottom up.
I challenge you to press the administration's witnesses this week to explain this absurdity. Ask them to name a single historical case where power has been aggregated successfully from local strong men to a central government except through bloody violence leading to a single winner, most often a dictator. That is the history of feudal Europe's transformation to the age of absolute monarchy. It is the story of the American colonization of the west and our Civil War.
It took England 800 years to subdue clan rule on what is now the English-Scottish border. And it is the source of violence in Bosnia and Kosovo.
How can our leaders celebrate this diffusion of power as effective state building? More accurately described, it has placed the United States astride several civil wars. And it allows all sides to consolidate, rearm, and refill their financial coffers at the US expense.
To sum up, we face a deteriorating political situation with an over extended army. When the administration's witnesses appear before you, you should make them clarify how long the army and marines can sustain this band-aid strategy.
The only sensible strategy is to withdraw rapidly but in good order. Only that step can break the paralysis now gripping US strategy in the region. The next step is to choose a new aim, regional stability, not a meaningless victory in Iraq. And progress toward that goal requires revising our policy toward Iran. If the president merely renounced his threat of regime change by force, that could prompt Iran to lessen its support to Taliban groups in Afghanistan. Iran detests the Taliban and supports them only because they will kill more Americans in Afghanistan as retaliation in event of a US attack on Iran. Iran's policy toward Iraq would also have to change radically as we withdraw. It cannot want instability there. Iraqi Shiites are Arabs, and they know that Persians look down on them. Cooperation between them has its limits.
No quick reconciliation between the US and Iran is likely, but US steps to make Iran feel more secure make it far more conceivable than a policy calculated to increase its insecurity. The president's policy has reinforced Iran's determination to acquire nuclear weapons, the very thing he purports to be trying to prevent.
Withdrawal from Iraq does not mean withdrawal from the region. It must include a realignment and reassertion of US forces and diplomacy that give us a better chance to achieve our aim. A number of reasons are given for not withdrawing soon and completely. I have refuted them repeatedly before but they have more lives than a cat. Let try again me explain why they don't make sense.
First, it is insisted that we must leave behind military training element with no combat forces to secure them. This makes no sense at all. The idea that US military trainers left alone in Iraq can be safe and effective is flatly rejected by several NCOs and junior officers I have heard describe their personal experiences. Moreover, training foreign forces before they have a consolidated political authority to command their loyalty is a windmill tilt. Finally, Iraq is not short on military skills.
Second, it is insisted that chaos will follow our withdrawal. We heard that argument as the "domino theory" in Vietnam. Even so, the path to political stability will be bloody regardless of whether we withdraw or not. The idea that the United States has a moral responsibility to prevent this ignores that reality. We are certainly to blame for it, but we do not have the physical means to prevent it. American leaders who insist that it is in our power to do so are misleading both the public and themselves if they believe it.
The real moral question is whether to risk the lives of more Americans. Unlike preventing chaos, we have the physical means to stop sending more troops where many will be killed or wounded. That is the moral responsibility to our country which no American leaders seems willing to assume.
Third, nay sayers insist that our withdrawal will create regional instability. This confuses cause with effect. Our forces in Iraq and our threat to change Iran's regime are making the region unstable. Those who link instability with a US withdrawal have it exactly backwards. Our ostrich strategy of keeping our heads buried in the sands of Iraq has done nothing but advance our enemies' interest. I implore you to reject these fallacious excuses for prolonging the commitment of US forces to war in Iraq.
Thanks for this opportunity to testify today.
Senate Foreign Relations Committee
MG (Ret) Robert H. Scales, Jr.
President, Colgen, Inc.
April 2, 2008
After the Surge: A Responsible Ending
Once the dogs of war are unleashed all consequences, political, diplomatic and domestic are shaped by what soldiers call “ground truth” and the truth on the ground has changed enormously over the past year in Iraq. Through Herculean efforts the military command under the leadership of General David Petraeus has quite literally wrenched military advantage from what a year ago was the beginning of catastrophic defeat. Increasing the number of “boots on the ground” was an important factor contributing to recent successes. But perhaps a more significant reason for the change of circumstances on the ground was Petraeus’ change of strategy. For the first time since the invasion in 2003 he has been able to approach the war as an insurgency, granted an insurgency of a very unique Middle Eastern character.
A year’s effort and the loss of nearly 900 lives have placed the military situation at what soldiers refer to as a “culminating point.” The culminating point marks the shift in military advantage from one side to the other, when, with all other variables fixed, the military outcome becomes irreversible: The potential loser can inflict casualties, but has lost the chance for victory on the battlefield. The only issue is how much longer the war will last, and what the butcher's bill will be.
Battles usually define the culminating point. In World War II, Midway was a turning point against the Japanese, El Alamein was a turning point against the Nazis and after Stalingrad, Germany no longer was able to stop the Russians from advancing on their eastern front. Wars usually culminate before either antagonist is aware of the event. Abraham Lincoln didn't realize Gettysburg had turned the tide of the American Civil War. In Vietnam, the Tet offensive was a teachable moment for the situation today in that it proved that culminating points aren't always military victories particularly in an insurgency.
In an insurgency culmination just buys time. The temporal advantage gained on the battlefield can be squandered if time isn’t used to turn a military advantage into a successful political outcome. Another lesson from the past is that the military advantage can be lost if the dynamics of the conflict change over time. After the surge the United Stated will begin to leave and the Iraqis will assume responsibility for their own defense. The battlefield advantage won at so costly a price can only be continued if this change of players is managed with the same strategic genius that gave us the battlefield advantage we now enjoy.
While the military advantage clearly resides with the coalition very little can be done on the battlefield for the remainder of the surge to accelerate the pace of military operations. The counterinsurgency strategy implemented by Petraeus is the right one and cannot be substantially altered. The crucible of patience among the American people is emptying at a prodigious rate and very little short of a complete shift in conditions on the ground is likely to refill it.
The military balance of power cannot be changed very much throughout the remainder of the surge. Al Qaeda has been pushed into a northern corner of Iraq and constant harassment by the US military supported by the Sons of Iraq effectively limits how much mischief they can cause. But their numbers though small have remained fairly constant. The United States has run out of military options as well. The Army went in to this war with too few ground troops. In a strange twist of irony for the first time since the summer of 1863 the number of ground soldiers available is determining American policy rather than policy determining how many troops we need. All that the Army and Marine Corps can manage without serous damage to the force is the sustained deployment in both Iraq and Afghanistan of somewhere between 13 to 15 brigade equivalents. Assuming that Afghanistan will require at least 3 brigades troop levels by the end of the surge in Iraq must begin to migrate toward the figure of no more than twelve brigades…perhaps even less. Reductions in close combat forces will continue indefinitely thereafter.
So regardless of who wins the election and regardless of conditions on the ground by summer the troops will begin to come home. The only point of contention is how precipitous will be the withdrawal and whether the schedule of withdrawal should be a matter of administration policy. Adhering to a fixed schedule is not a good idea in an insurgency because the indigenous population tends to side with the perceived winners. However, some publicly expressed window of withdrawal is necessary for no other reason than to give soldier’s families some hope that their loved ones will not be stuck on a perpetual rollercoaster of deployments.
By the end of the surge much will have been accomplished. The ethno-sectarian competition for power and influence will continue. The hope is that all parties by then will seek to resolve these contests in the political realm and not in the streets. The campaign against al Qaeda and the Sunni Extremists will continue to show success although insurgent groups will remain lethal. Militia and criminal violence will continue to be a thorn in the side of the Maliki regime as gangs roam the streets of cities occasionally killing on the order of rouge militia leaders. No solution to this festering problem is possible by the time the troops start coming home.
The influence of Iran will loom very significant - and will seem "conflicted," given Iran's desire to bloody America's nose but not let the Shia-led Government of Iraq fail. By this January about the time the drawdown begins in earnest pressure will build to show some progress toward reconciliation nationally and within warring ethnic groupings.
Governmental capacity will still be inadequate though it will continue to develop. It will resume only when the dust settles from the recent flare-up connected with the Iraqi army operations in Basra. Basic services will remain inadequate but presuming a lull after Basra will slowly improve as long-term electrical and oil projects gather momentum.
In sum after the surge much will remain to be done and nothing substantial can be done without the ability of the Iraqi military to maintain security after American forces begin to depart. This task is so important for the creation of a stable state that the establishment of an effective Iraqi National Security apparatus will become a new center of gravity for the remaining phases of the war. Can the Iraqi Defense Forces grow competent and confident enough to take up the task in the time remaining to them? So far the answer to this question, like so many questions about American policy in Iraq, remains clouded in uncertainty.
Some signs are encouraging.
The Iraqi Security Forces have shown strength in recent weeks. The Iraqi high command deployed elements of the 14th Division to Basra to destroy the Shia militias and criminal gangs that have held the city hostage for years. Iraqi motor transport units moved one national police and three army brigades on short notice from Baghdad to Basra a distance of about 400 kilometers with less than a week for planning and execution. During the operations Iraqi special forces units were transported, some in Iraqi C-130 aircraft, from the very northern most regions of Iraq to the vicinity of Basra. An Iraqi Base Support Unit, roughly the equivalent of an American combat service support battalion, has so far managed to sustain the Basra operation with some help from American supplied civilian contractors. There have been problems. Some units in the 14th have not fought well. There have been some sectarian infiltration and desertions. But for all its problems the division has not lost fighting effectiveness or cohesion.
These accomplishments might seem at first glance to be less than impressive. But it’s important to recall that only a year ago it would have been virtually impossible to pull an Army division from one province and move it to another in shape (and willing) to fight.
Officer leadership at the small unit level is improving. Sadly the process of leader development is driven by the wasteful Darwinian process of bloody self=selection that always attends armies that must learn to fight by fighting, the only way to build an Army from scratch in wartime. The American Army in the Civil War experienced a similar baptism of fire at a cost of more than half a million dead.
Non commissioned officers are the backbone of the American Army but NCOs are an alien concept in areas of the world ruled by strict hierarchies. The Iraqi Army is no exception. Only last year did the Iraqis start divisional schools to teach and build corporals, squad and platoon leaders. Some of these newly minted NCOs are filling the ranks of the Iraqi Army and initial reports of their success are encouraging.
This process of “on the job training” in combat has been made more efficient with the addition of American military training teams. These are squad sized units that imbed themselves in each Iraqi combat battalion and brigade. Equally important are partnership arrangements between American and Iraqi combat units. Emulation and example are powerful forces in combat. Iraqi soldier and leaders tend to mimic the example of American professionalism and effectiveness and when fighting side by side the Iraqis inevitably fight better. American units habitually partner with Iraqi units for the duration of their time in Iraq. These enduring partnerships have the added advantage of allowing the development of personal relationships between Iraqi and American soldiers and commanders.
But very serious problems continue to plague the Iraqi military and in spite of the best efforts of the coalition these problems will linger well after the surge. Iraqi senior leaders and staffs are reasonably competent at moving brigades and battalions from point to point but their ability to do quality planning and execution is very immature. While small unit leaders are being selected by merit higher level selections are too often based on nepotism or tribal and clan loyalty. In some units sectarianism still trumps allegiance to the nation and on occasion soldiers desert rather than fight against their tribal peers.
From the beginning the Coalition leadership focused on building close combat small units as first priority. As a consequence by the end of the surge non combat functions, what the military calls “enablers”, will be immature at best. No army can function for long without being competent in intelligence, fire support, administration, logistics, communications and medical support. The American military will not only have to train the Iraqis in these functions but remain in Iraq to provide them for a long time, perhaps several years.
The challenge after the surge will be to increase the effectiveness of training, advising and mentoring to the Iraqis as American forces depart so that the Iraqis will be able to fill the void. Rather than pulling out combat brigades whole cloth partnership units will probably follow a “thinning” strategy whereby a partner unit will thin its ranks gradually leaving the “brains” of the unit in place for as long as possible to assist with planning and employment of enablers.
Today there are 5,000 imbedded trainers and 1,300 headquarters trainers and advisors to joint, army and ministerial staffs. As the Iraqis face fighting without partners they will probably need more training teams to imbed with them. More Americans left to fend for themselves in an alien and hostile environment might also mean more casualties. It certainly will mean that if the enemy sees killing advisors and support soldiers as the surest means for getting us out of Iraq and toppling the Iraqi government.
Training, advising and assisting the army of an alien culture is now job one for the American military. History shows that we are good at this. For over a century from the Philippines to Korea, Thailand, Greece, Indonesia, El Salvador and in many other distant and inhospitable places American soldiers have successfully assisted in building armies during wartime. Unfortunately after Vietnam we lost the skill to do these tasks effectively. Rebuilding a world class advisory capacity is a cultural not an organizational challenge. This is graduate level work and advisors need time to learn the language and culture as well as the particular personal skills to do their jobs competently. Not all officers are good at training and advising foreign militaries. We must go the extra mile to find those with the cultural “right stuff” and reward the best of them with fully funded civil schooling, advanced promotion and a chance to command at all levels.
The post surge strategy should not be focused solely creating an Iraqi Army in the image of our own. The Iraqis only have to be better than their enemies. Not is the challenge to commit the blood, treasure and time necessary to train and equip a large Iraqi Army. Wars are not won by the bigger forces but by the force that wants most to win. It will in the end be the intangibles; courage, adaptability, integrity, intellectual agility, leadership and an allegiance to a cause other than the tribe that will ultimately determine who wins. As we move into a new season of this sad war the age old axioms will prevail: we will in the end discover that our greatest task will be to inculcate in the Iraqis the will to win rather than to teach them how to win.
From: salon-bounces@committeefortherepublic.org [mailto:salon-bounces@committeefortherepublic.org] On Behalf Of Chas Freeman
Sent: Thursday, April 03, 2008 6:00 PM
To: Salon
Subject: [Salon] Lt. Gen. Odom on Iraq
TESTIMONY BEFORE THE SENATE FOREIGN RELATIONS COMMITTEE ON IRAQ
By William E. Odom, LT General, USA, Ret.
2 April 2008
Good morning Mr. Chairman and members of the committee.
It is an honor to appear before you again. The last occasion was in January 2007, when the topic was the troop surge. Today you are asking if it has worked. Last year I rejected the claim that it was a new strategy. Rather, I said, it is a new tactic used to achieve the same old strategic aim, political stability. And I foresaw no serious prospects for success.
I see no reason to change my judgment now. The surge is prolonging instability, not creating the conditions for unity as the president claims.
Last year, General Petraeus wisely declined to promise a military solution to this political problem, saying that he could lower the level of violence, allowing a limited time for the Iraqi leaders to strike a political deal. Violence has been temporarily reduced but today there is credible evidence that the political situation is far more fragmented. And currently we see violence surge in Baghdad and Basra. In fact, it has also remained sporadic and significant in
several other parts of Iraq over the past year, notwithstanding the notable drop in Baghdad and Anbar Province.
More disturbing, Prime Minister Maliki has initiated military action and then dragged in US forces to help his own troops destroy his Shiite competitors. This is a political setback, not a political solution. Such is the result of the surge tactic.
No less disturbing has been the steady violence in the Mosul area, and the tensions in Kirkuk between Kurds, Arabs, and Turkomen. A showdown over control of the oil fields there surely awaits us. And the idea that some kind of a federal solution can cut this Gordian knot strikes me as a wild fantasy, wholly out of touch with Kurdish realities.
Also disturbing is Turkey's military incursion to destroy Kurdish PKK groups in the border region. That confronted the US government with a choice: either to support its NATO ally, or to make good on its commitment to Kurdish leaders to insure their security. It chose the former, and that makes it clear to the Kurds that the United States will sacrifice their security to its larger interests in Turkey.
Turning to the apparent success in Anbar province and a few other Sunni areas, this is not the positive situation it is purported to be. Certainly violence has declined as local Sunni shieks have begun to cooperate with US forces. But the surge tactic cannot be given full credit. The decline started earlier on Sunni initiative. What are their motives? First, anger at al Qaeda operatives and second, their financial plight.
Their break with al Qaeda should give us little comfort. The Sunnis welcomed anyone who would help them kill Americans, including al Qaeda. The concern we hear the president and his aides express about a residual base left for al Qaeda if we withdraw is utter nonsense. The Sunnis will soon destroy al Qaeda if we leave Iraq. The Kurds do not allow them in their region, and the Shiites, like the Iranians, detest al Qaeda. To understand why, one need only take note of the al Qaeda public diplomacy campaign over the past year or so on internet blogs. They implore the United States to bomb and invade Iran and destroy this apostate Shiite regime.
As an aside, it gives me pause to learn that our vice president and some members of the Senate are aligned with al Qaeda on spreading the war to Iran. Let me emphasize that our new Sunni friends insist on being paid for their loyalty. I have heard, for example, a rough estimate that the cost in one area of about 100 square kilometers is $250,000 per day. And periodically they threaten to defect unless their fees are increased. You might want to find out the total costs for these deals forecasted for the next several years, because they are not small and they do not promise to end. Remember, we do not own these people. We merely rent them. And they can break the lease at any moment. At the same time, this deal protects them to some degree from the government's troops and police, hardly a sign of political reconciliation.
Now let us consider the implications of the proliferating deals with the Sunni strongmen. They are far from unified among themselves. Some remain with al Qaeda. Many who break and join our forces are beholden to no one. Thus the decline in violence reflects a dispersion of power to dozens of local strong men who distrust the government and occasionally fight among themselves. Thus the basic military situation is far worse because of the proliferation of armed groups under local military chiefs who follow a proliferating number of political bosses.
This can hardly be called greater military stability, much less progress toward political consolidation, and to call it fragility that needs more time to become success is to ignore its implications. At the same time, Prime Minister Maliki's military actions in Basra and Baghdad, indicate even wider political and military fragmentation. We are witnessing is more accurately described as the road to the Balkanization of Iraq, that is, political fragmentation. We are being asked by the president to believe that this shift of so much power and finance to so many local chieftains is the road to political centralization. He describes the process as building the state from the bottom up.
I challenge you to press the administration's witnesses this week to explain this absurdity. Ask them to name a single historical case where power has been aggregated successfully from local strong men to a central government except through bloody violence leading to a single winner, most often a dictator. That is the history of feudal Europe's transformation to the age of absolute monarchy. It is the story of the American colonization of the west and our Civil War.
It took England 800 years to subdue clan rule on what is now the English-Scottish border. And it is the source of violence in Bosnia and Kosovo.
How can our leaders celebrate this diffusion of power as effective state building? More accurately described, it has placed the United States astride several civil wars. And it allows all sides to consolidate, rearm, and refill their financial coffers at the US expense.
To sum up, we face a deteriorating political situation with an over extended army. When the administration's witnesses appear before you, you should make them clarify how long the army and marines can sustain this band-aid strategy.
The only sensible strategy is to withdraw rapidly but in good order. Only that step can break the paralysis now gripping US strategy in the region. The next step is to choose a new aim, regional stability, not a meaningless victory in Iraq. And progress toward that goal requires revising our policy toward Iran. If the president merely renounced his threat of regime change by force, that could prompt Iran to lessen its support to Taliban groups in Afghanistan. Iran detests the Taliban and supports them only because they will kill more Americans in Afghanistan as retaliation in event of a US attack on Iran. Iran's policy toward Iraq would also have to change radically as we withdraw. It cannot want instability there. Iraqi Shiites are Arabs, and they know that Persians look down on them. Cooperation between them has its limits.
No quick reconciliation between the US and Iran is likely, but US steps to make Iran feel more secure make it far more conceivable than a policy calculated to increase its insecurity. The president's policy has reinforced Iran's determination to acquire nuclear weapons, the very thing he purports to be trying to prevent.
Withdrawal from Iraq does not mean withdrawal from the region. It must include a realignment and reassertion of US forces and diplomacy that give us a better chance to achieve our aim. A number of reasons are given for not withdrawing soon and completely. I have refuted them repeatedly before but they have more lives than a cat. Let try again me explain why they don't make sense.
First, it is insisted that we must leave behind military training element with no combat forces to secure them. This makes no sense at all. The idea that US military trainers left alone in Iraq can be safe and effective is flatly rejected by several NCOs and junior officers I have heard describe their personal experiences. Moreover, training foreign forces before they have a consolidated political authority to command their loyalty is a windmill tilt. Finally, Iraq is not short on military skills.
Second, it is insisted that chaos will follow our withdrawal. We heard that argument as the "domino theory" in Vietnam. Even so, the path to political stability will be bloody regardless of whether we withdraw or not. The idea that the United States has a moral responsibility to prevent this ignores that reality. We are certainly to blame for it, but we do not have the physical means to prevent it. American leaders who insist that it is in our power to do so are misleading both the public and themselves if they believe it.
The real moral question is whether to risk the lives of more Americans. Unlike preventing chaos, we have the physical means to stop sending more troops where many will be killed or wounded. That is the moral responsibility to our country which no American leaders seems willing to assume.
Third, nay sayers insist that our withdrawal will create regional instability. This confuses cause with effect. Our forces in Iraq and our threat to change Iran's regime are making the region unstable. Those who link instability with a US withdrawal have it exactly backwards. Our ostrich strategy of keeping our heads buried in the sands of Iraq has done nothing but advance our enemies' interest. I implore you to reject these fallacious excuses for prolonging the commitment of US forces to war in Iraq.
Thanks for this opportunity to testify today.
Testimony Before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on The Surge and Withdrawal of Troops
Statement for the Record
Senate Foreign Relations Committee
MG (Ret) Robert H. Scales, Jr.
President, Colgen, Inc.
April 2, 2008
After the Surge: A Responsible Ending
Once the dogs of war are unleashed all consequences, political, diplomatic and domestic are shaped by what soldiers call “ground truth” and the truth on the ground has changed enormously over the past year in Iraq. Through Herculean efforts the military command under the leadership of General David Petraeus has quite literally wrenched military advantage from what a year ago was the beginning of catastrophic defeat. Increasing the number of “boots on the ground” was an important factor contributing to recent successes. But perhaps a more significant reason for the change of circumstances on the ground was Petraeus’ change of strategy. For the first time since the invasion in 2003 he has been able to approach the war as an insurgency, granted an insurgency of a very unique Middle Eastern character.
A year’s effort and the loss of nearly 900 lives have placed the military situation at what soldiers refer to as a “culminating point.” The culminating point marks the shift in military advantage from one side to the other, when, with all other variables fixed, the military outcome becomes irreversible: The potential loser can inflict casualties, but has lost the chance for victory on the battlefield. The only issue is how much longer the war will last, and what the butcher's bill will be.
Battles usually define the culminating point. In World War II, Midway was a turning point against the Japanese, El Alamein was a turning point against the Nazis and after Stalingrad, Germany no longer was able to stop the Russians from advancing on their eastern front. Wars usually culminate before either antagonist is aware of the event. Abraham Lincoln didn't realize Gettysburg had turned the tide of the American Civil War. In Vietnam, the Tet offensive was a teachable moment for the situation today in that it proved that culminating points aren't always military victories particularly in an insurgency.
In an insurgency culmination just buys time. The temporal advantage gained on the battlefield can be squandered if time isn’t used to turn a military advantage into a successful political outcome. Another lesson from the past is that the military advantage can be lost if the dynamics of the conflict change over time. After the surge the United Stated will begin to leave and the Iraqis will assume responsibility for their own defense. The battlefield advantage won at so costly a price can only be continued if this change of players is managed with the same strategic genius that gave us the battlefield advantage we now enjoy.
While the military advantage clearly resides with the coalition very little can be done on the battlefield for the remainder of the surge to accelerate the pace of military operations. The counterinsurgency strategy implemented by Petraeus is the right one and cannot be substantially altered. The crucible of patience among the American people is emptying at a prodigious rate and very little short of a complete shift in conditions on the ground is likely to refill it.
The military balance of power cannot be changed very much throughout the remainder of the surge. Al Qaeda has been pushed into a northern corner of Iraq and constant harassment by the US military supported by the Sons of Iraq effectively limits how much mischief they can cause. But their numbers though small have remained fairly constant. The United States has run out of military options as well. The Army went in to this war with too few ground troops. In a strange twist of irony for the first time since the summer of 1863 the number of ground soldiers available is determining American policy rather than policy determining how many troops we need. All that the Army and Marine Corps can manage without serous damage to the force is the sustained deployment in both Iraq and Afghanistan of somewhere between 13 to 15 brigade equivalents. Assuming that Afghanistan will require at least 3 brigades troop levels by the end of the surge in Iraq must begin to migrate toward the figure of no more than twelve brigades…perhaps even less. Reductions in close combat forces will continue indefinitely thereafter.
So regardless of who wins the election and regardless of conditions on the ground by summer the troops will begin to come home. The only point of contention is how precipitous will be the withdrawal and whether the schedule of withdrawal should be a matter of administration policy. Adhering to a fixed schedule is not a good idea in an insurgency because the indigenous population tends to side with the perceived winners. However, some publicly expressed window of withdrawal is necessary for no other reason than to give soldier’s families some hope that their loved ones will not be stuck on a perpetual rollercoaster of deployments.
By the end of the surge much will have been accomplished. The ethno-sectarian competition for power and influence will continue. The hope is that all parties by then will seek to resolve these contests in the political realm and not in the streets. The campaign against al Qaeda and the Sunni Extremists will continue to show success although insurgent groups will remain lethal. Militia and criminal violence will continue to be a thorn in the side of the Maliki regime as gangs roam the streets of cities occasionally killing on the order of rouge militia leaders. No solution to this festering problem is possible by the time the troops start coming home.
The influence of Iran will loom very significant - and will seem "conflicted," given Iran's desire to bloody America's nose but not let the Shia-led Government of Iraq fail. By this January about the time the drawdown begins in earnest pressure will build to show some progress toward reconciliation nationally and within warring ethnic groupings.
Governmental capacity will still be inadequate though it will continue to develop. It will resume only when the dust settles from the recent flare-up connected with the Iraqi army operations in Basra. Basic services will remain inadequate but presuming a lull after Basra will slowly improve as long-term electrical and oil projects gather momentum.
In sum after the surge much will remain to be done and nothing substantial can be done without the ability of the Iraqi military to maintain security after American forces begin to depart. This task is so important for the creation of a stable state that the establishment of an effective Iraqi National Security apparatus will become a new center of gravity for the remaining phases of the war. Can the Iraqi Defense Forces grow competent and confident enough to take up the task in the time remaining to them? So far the answer to this question, like so many questions about American policy in Iraq, remains clouded in uncertainty.
Some signs are encouraging.
The Iraqi Security Forces have shown strength in recent weeks. The Iraqi high command deployed elements of the 14th Division to Basra to destroy the Shia militias and criminal gangs that have held the city hostage for years. Iraqi motor transport units moved one national police and three army brigades on short notice from Baghdad to Basra a distance of about 400 kilometers with less than a week for planning and execution. During the operations Iraqi special forces units were transported, some in Iraqi C-130 aircraft, from the very northern most regions of Iraq to the vicinity of Basra. An Iraqi Base Support Unit, roughly the equivalent of an American combat service support battalion, has so far managed to sustain the Basra operation with some help from American supplied civilian contractors. There have been problems. Some units in the 14th have not fought well. There have been some sectarian infiltration and desertions. But for all its problems the division has not lost fighting effectiveness or cohesion.
These accomplishments might seem at first glance to be less than impressive. But it’s important to recall that only a year ago it would have been virtually impossible to pull an Army division from one province and move it to another in shape (and willing) to fight.
Officer leadership at the small unit level is improving. Sadly the process of leader development is driven by the wasteful Darwinian process of bloody self=selection that always attends armies that must learn to fight by fighting, the only way to build an Army from scratch in wartime. The American Army in the Civil War experienced a similar baptism of fire at a cost of more than half a million dead.
Non commissioned officers are the backbone of the American Army but NCOs are an alien concept in areas of the world ruled by strict hierarchies. The Iraqi Army is no exception. Only last year did the Iraqis start divisional schools to teach and build corporals, squad and platoon leaders. Some of these newly minted NCOs are filling the ranks of the Iraqi Army and initial reports of their success are encouraging.
This process of “on the job training” in combat has been made more efficient with the addition of American military training teams. These are squad sized units that imbed themselves in each Iraqi combat battalion and brigade. Equally important are partnership arrangements between American and Iraqi combat units. Emulation and example are powerful forces in combat. Iraqi soldier and leaders tend to mimic the example of American professionalism and effectiveness and when fighting side by side the Iraqis inevitably fight better. American units habitually partner with Iraqi units for the duration of their time in Iraq. These enduring partnerships have the added advantage of allowing the development of personal relationships between Iraqi and American soldiers and commanders.
But very serious problems continue to plague the Iraqi military and in spite of the best efforts of the coalition these problems will linger well after the surge. Iraqi senior leaders and staffs are reasonably competent at moving brigades and battalions from point to point but their ability to do quality planning and execution is very immature. While small unit leaders are being selected by merit higher level selections are too often based on nepotism or tribal and clan loyalty. In some units sectarianism still trumps allegiance to the nation and on occasion soldiers desert rather than fight against their tribal peers.
From the beginning the Coalition leadership focused on building close combat small units as first priority. As a consequence by the end of the surge non combat functions, what the military calls “enablers”, will be immature at best. No army can function for long without being competent in intelligence, fire support, administration, logistics, communications and medical support. The American military will not only have to train the Iraqis in these functions but remain in Iraq to provide them for a long time, perhaps several years.
The challenge after the surge will be to increase the effectiveness of training, advising and mentoring to the Iraqis as American forces depart so that the Iraqis will be able to fill the void. Rather than pulling out combat brigades whole cloth partnership units will probably follow a “thinning” strategy whereby a partner unit will thin its ranks gradually leaving the “brains” of the unit in place for as long as possible to assist with planning and employment of enablers.
Today there are 5,000 imbedded trainers and 1,300 headquarters trainers and advisors to joint, army and ministerial staffs. As the Iraqis face fighting without partners they will probably need more training teams to imbed with them. More Americans left to fend for themselves in an alien and hostile environment might also mean more casualties. It certainly will mean that if the enemy sees killing advisors and support soldiers as the surest means for getting us out of Iraq and toppling the Iraqi government.
Training, advising and assisting the army of an alien culture is now job one for the American military. History shows that we are good at this. For over a century from the Philippines to Korea, Thailand, Greece, Indonesia, El Salvador and in many other distant and inhospitable places American soldiers have successfully assisted in building armies during wartime. Unfortunately after Vietnam we lost the skill to do these tasks effectively. Rebuilding a world class advisory capacity is a cultural not an organizational challenge. This is graduate level work and advisors need time to learn the language and culture as well as the particular personal skills to do their jobs competently. Not all officers are good at training and advising foreign militaries. We must go the extra mile to find those with the cultural “right stuff” and reward the best of them with fully funded civil schooling, advanced promotion and a chance to command at all levels.
The post surge strategy should not be focused solely creating an Iraqi Army in the image of our own. The Iraqis only have to be better than their enemies. Not is the challenge to commit the blood, treasure and time necessary to train and equip a large Iraqi Army. Wars are not won by the bigger forces but by the force that wants most to win. It will in the end be the intangibles; courage, adaptability, integrity, intellectual agility, leadership and an allegiance to a cause other than the tribe that will ultimately determine who wins. As we move into a new season of this sad war the age old axioms will prevail: we will in the end discover that our greatest task will be to inculcate in the Iraqis the will to win rather than to teach them how to win.
From: salon-bounces@committeefortherepublic.org [mailto:salon-bounces@committeefortherepublic.org] On Behalf Of Chas Freeman
Sent: Thursday, April 03, 2008 6:00 PM
To: Salon
Subject: [Salon] Lt. Gen. Odom on Iraq
TESTIMONY BEFORE THE SENATE FOREIGN RELATIONS COMMITTEE ON IRAQ
By William E. Odom, LT General, USA, Ret.
2 April 2008
Good morning Mr. Chairman and members of the committee.
It is an honor to appear before you again. The last occasion was in January 2007, when the topic was the troop surge. Today you are asking if it has worked. Last year I rejected the claim that it was a new strategy. Rather, I said, it is a new tactic used to achieve the same old strategic aim, political stability. And I foresaw no serious prospects for success.
I see no reason to change my judgment now. The surge is prolonging instability, not creating the conditions for unity as the president claims.
Last year, General Petraeus wisely declined to promise a military solution to this political problem, saying that he could lower the level of violence, allowing a limited time for the Iraqi leaders to strike a political deal. Violence has been temporarily reduced but today there is credible evidence that the political situation is far more fragmented. And currently we see violence surge in Baghdad and Basra. In fact, it has also remained sporadic and significant in
several other parts of Iraq over the past year, notwithstanding the notable drop in Baghdad and Anbar Province.
More disturbing, Prime Minister Maliki has initiated military action and then dragged in US forces to help his own troops destroy his Shiite competitors. This is a political setback, not a political solution. Such is the result of the surge tactic.
No less disturbing has been the steady violence in the Mosul area, and the tensions in Kirkuk between Kurds, Arabs, and Turkomen. A showdown over control of the oil fields there surely awaits us. And the idea that some kind of a federal solution can cut this Gordian knot strikes me as a wild fantasy, wholly out of touch with Kurdish realities.
Also disturbing is Turkey's military incursion to destroy Kurdish PKK groups in the border region. That confronted the US government with a choice: either to support its NATO ally, or to make good on its commitment to Kurdish leaders to insure their security. It chose the former, and that makes it clear to the Kurds that the United States will sacrifice their security to its larger interests in Turkey.
Turning to the apparent success in Anbar province and a few other Sunni areas, this is not the positive situation it is purported to be. Certainly violence has declined as local Sunni shieks have begun to cooperate with US forces. But the surge tactic cannot be given full credit. The decline started earlier on Sunni initiative. What are their motives? First, anger at al Qaeda operatives and second, their financial plight.
Their break with al Qaeda should give us little comfort. The Sunnis welcomed anyone who would help them kill Americans, including al Qaeda. The concern we hear the president and his aides express about a residual base left for al Qaeda if we withdraw is utter nonsense. The Sunnis will soon destroy al Qaeda if we leave Iraq. The Kurds do not allow them in their region, and the Shiites, like the Iranians, detest al Qaeda. To understand why, one need only take note of the al Qaeda public diplomacy campaign over the past year or so on internet blogs. They implore the United States to bomb and invade Iran and destroy this apostate Shiite regime.
As an aside, it gives me pause to learn that our vice president and some members of the Senate are aligned with al Qaeda on spreading the war to Iran. Let me emphasize that our new Sunni friends insist on being paid for their loyalty. I have heard, for example, a rough estimate that the cost in one area of about 100 square kilometers is $250,000 per day. And periodically they threaten to defect unless their fees are increased. You might want to find out the total costs for these deals forecasted for the next several years, because they are not small and they do not promise to end. Remember, we do not own these people. We merely rent them. And they can break the lease at any moment. At the same time, this deal protects them to some degree from the government's troops and police, hardly a sign of political reconciliation.
Now let us consider the implications of the proliferating deals with the Sunni strongmen. They are far from unified among themselves. Some remain with al Qaeda. Many who break and join our forces are beholden to no one. Thus the decline in violence reflects a dispersion of power to dozens of local strong men who distrust the government and occasionally fight among themselves. Thus the basic military situation is far worse because of the proliferation of armed groups under local military chiefs who follow a proliferating number of political bosses.
This can hardly be called greater military stability, much less progress toward political consolidation, and to call it fragility that needs more time to become success is to ignore its implications. At the same time, Prime Minister Maliki's military actions in Basra and Baghdad, indicate even wider political and military fragmentation. We are witnessing is more accurately described as the road to the Balkanization of Iraq, that is, political fragmentation. We are being asked by the president to believe that this shift of so much power and finance to so many local chieftains is the road to political centralization. He describes the process as building the state from the bottom up.
I challenge you to press the administration's witnesses this week to explain this absurdity. Ask them to name a single historical case where power has been aggregated successfully from local strong men to a central government except through bloody violence leading to a single winner, most often a dictator. That is the history of feudal Europe's transformation to the age of absolute monarchy. It is the story of the American colonization of the west and our Civil War.
It took England 800 years to subdue clan rule on what is now the English-Scottish border. And it is the source of violence in Bosnia and Kosovo.
How can our leaders celebrate this diffusion of power as effective state building? More accurately described, it has placed the United States astride several civil wars. And it allows all sides to consolidate, rearm, and refill their financial coffers at the US expense.
To sum up, we face a deteriorating political situation with an over extended army. When the administration's witnesses appear before you, you should make them clarify how long the army and marines can sustain this band-aid strategy.
The only sensible strategy is to withdraw rapidly but in good order. Only that step can break the paralysis now gripping US strategy in the region. The next step is to choose a new aim, regional stability, not a meaningless victory in Iraq. And progress toward that goal requires revising our policy toward Iran. If the president merely renounced his threat of regime change by force, that could prompt Iran to lessen its support to Taliban groups in Afghanistan. Iran detests the Taliban and supports them only because they will kill more Americans in Afghanistan as retaliation in event of a US attack on Iran. Iran's policy toward Iraq would also have to change radically as we withdraw. It cannot want instability there. Iraqi Shiites are Arabs, and they know that Persians look down on them. Cooperation between them has its limits.
No quick reconciliation between the US and Iran is likely, but US steps to make Iran feel more secure make it far more conceivable than a policy calculated to increase its insecurity. The president's policy has reinforced Iran's determination to acquire nuclear weapons, the very thing he purports to be trying to prevent.
Withdrawal from Iraq does not mean withdrawal from the region. It must include a realignment and reassertion of US forces and diplomacy that give us a better chance to achieve our aim. A number of reasons are given for not withdrawing soon and completely. I have refuted them repeatedly before but they have more lives than a cat. Let try again me explain why they don't make sense.
First, it is insisted that we must leave behind military training element with no combat forces to secure them. This makes no sense at all. The idea that US military trainers left alone in Iraq can be safe and effective is flatly rejected by several NCOs and junior officers I have heard describe their personal experiences. Moreover, training foreign forces before they have a consolidated political authority to command their loyalty is a windmill tilt. Finally, Iraq is not short on military skills.
Second, it is insisted that chaos will follow our withdrawal. We heard that argument as the "domino theory" in Vietnam. Even so, the path to political stability will be bloody regardless of whether we withdraw or not. The idea that the United States has a moral responsibility to prevent this ignores that reality. We are certainly to blame for it, but we do not have the physical means to prevent it. American leaders who insist that it is in our power to do so are misleading both the public and themselves if they believe it.
The real moral question is whether to risk the lives of more Americans. Unlike preventing chaos, we have the physical means to stop sending more troops where many will be killed or wounded. That is the moral responsibility to our country which no American leaders seems willing to assume.
Third, nay sayers insist that our withdrawal will create regional instability. This confuses cause with effect. Our forces in Iraq and our threat to change Iran's regime are making the region unstable. Those who link instability with a US withdrawal have it exactly backwards. Our ostrich strategy of keeping our heads buried in the sands of Iraq has done nothing but advance our enemies' interest. I implore you to reject these fallacious excuses for prolonging the commitment of US forces to war in Iraq.
Thanks for this opportunity to testify today.
Senate Foreign Relations Committee
MG (Ret) Robert H. Scales, Jr.
President, Colgen, Inc.
April 2, 2008
After the Surge: A Responsible Ending
Once the dogs of war are unleashed all consequences, political, diplomatic and domestic are shaped by what soldiers call “ground truth” and the truth on the ground has changed enormously over the past year in Iraq. Through Herculean efforts the military command under the leadership of General David Petraeus has quite literally wrenched military advantage from what a year ago was the beginning of catastrophic defeat. Increasing the number of “boots on the ground” was an important factor contributing to recent successes. But perhaps a more significant reason for the change of circumstances on the ground was Petraeus’ change of strategy. For the first time since the invasion in 2003 he has been able to approach the war as an insurgency, granted an insurgency of a very unique Middle Eastern character.
A year’s effort and the loss of nearly 900 lives have placed the military situation at what soldiers refer to as a “culminating point.” The culminating point marks the shift in military advantage from one side to the other, when, with all other variables fixed, the military outcome becomes irreversible: The potential loser can inflict casualties, but has lost the chance for victory on the battlefield. The only issue is how much longer the war will last, and what the butcher's bill will be.
Battles usually define the culminating point. In World War II, Midway was a turning point against the Japanese, El Alamein was a turning point against the Nazis and after Stalingrad, Germany no longer was able to stop the Russians from advancing on their eastern front. Wars usually culminate before either antagonist is aware of the event. Abraham Lincoln didn't realize Gettysburg had turned the tide of the American Civil War. In Vietnam, the Tet offensive was a teachable moment for the situation today in that it proved that culminating points aren't always military victories particularly in an insurgency.
In an insurgency culmination just buys time. The temporal advantage gained on the battlefield can be squandered if time isn’t used to turn a military advantage into a successful political outcome. Another lesson from the past is that the military advantage can be lost if the dynamics of the conflict change over time. After the surge the United Stated will begin to leave and the Iraqis will assume responsibility for their own defense. The battlefield advantage won at so costly a price can only be continued if this change of players is managed with the same strategic genius that gave us the battlefield advantage we now enjoy.
While the military advantage clearly resides with the coalition very little can be done on the battlefield for the remainder of the surge to accelerate the pace of military operations. The counterinsurgency strategy implemented by Petraeus is the right one and cannot be substantially altered. The crucible of patience among the American people is emptying at a prodigious rate and very little short of a complete shift in conditions on the ground is likely to refill it.
The military balance of power cannot be changed very much throughout the remainder of the surge. Al Qaeda has been pushed into a northern corner of Iraq and constant harassment by the US military supported by the Sons of Iraq effectively limits how much mischief they can cause. But their numbers though small have remained fairly constant. The United States has run out of military options as well. The Army went in to this war with too few ground troops. In a strange twist of irony for the first time since the summer of 1863 the number of ground soldiers available is determining American policy rather than policy determining how many troops we need. All that the Army and Marine Corps can manage without serous damage to the force is the sustained deployment in both Iraq and Afghanistan of somewhere between 13 to 15 brigade equivalents. Assuming that Afghanistan will require at least 3 brigades troop levels by the end of the surge in Iraq must begin to migrate toward the figure of no more than twelve brigades…perhaps even less. Reductions in close combat forces will continue indefinitely thereafter.
So regardless of who wins the election and regardless of conditions on the ground by summer the troops will begin to come home. The only point of contention is how precipitous will be the withdrawal and whether the schedule of withdrawal should be a matter of administration policy. Adhering to a fixed schedule is not a good idea in an insurgency because the indigenous population tends to side with the perceived winners. However, some publicly expressed window of withdrawal is necessary for no other reason than to give soldier’s families some hope that their loved ones will not be stuck on a perpetual rollercoaster of deployments.
By the end of the surge much will have been accomplished. The ethno-sectarian competition for power and influence will continue. The hope is that all parties by then will seek to resolve these contests in the political realm and not in the streets. The campaign against al Qaeda and the Sunni Extremists will continue to show success although insurgent groups will remain lethal. Militia and criminal violence will continue to be a thorn in the side of the Maliki regime as gangs roam the streets of cities occasionally killing on the order of rouge militia leaders. No solution to this festering problem is possible by the time the troops start coming home.
The influence of Iran will loom very significant - and will seem "conflicted," given Iran's desire to bloody America's nose but not let the Shia-led Government of Iraq fail. By this January about the time the drawdown begins in earnest pressure will build to show some progress toward reconciliation nationally and within warring ethnic groupings.
Governmental capacity will still be inadequate though it will continue to develop. It will resume only when the dust settles from the recent flare-up connected with the Iraqi army operations in Basra. Basic services will remain inadequate but presuming a lull after Basra will slowly improve as long-term electrical and oil projects gather momentum.
In sum after the surge much will remain to be done and nothing substantial can be done without the ability of the Iraqi military to maintain security after American forces begin to depart. This task is so important for the creation of a stable state that the establishment of an effective Iraqi National Security apparatus will become a new center of gravity for the remaining phases of the war. Can the Iraqi Defense Forces grow competent and confident enough to take up the task in the time remaining to them? So far the answer to this question, like so many questions about American policy in Iraq, remains clouded in uncertainty.
Some signs are encouraging.
The Iraqi Security Forces have shown strength in recent weeks. The Iraqi high command deployed elements of the 14th Division to Basra to destroy the Shia militias and criminal gangs that have held the city hostage for years. Iraqi motor transport units moved one national police and three army brigades on short notice from Baghdad to Basra a distance of about 400 kilometers with less than a week for planning and execution. During the operations Iraqi special forces units were transported, some in Iraqi C-130 aircraft, from the very northern most regions of Iraq to the vicinity of Basra. An Iraqi Base Support Unit, roughly the equivalent of an American combat service support battalion, has so far managed to sustain the Basra operation with some help from American supplied civilian contractors. There have been problems. Some units in the 14th have not fought well. There have been some sectarian infiltration and desertions. But for all its problems the division has not lost fighting effectiveness or cohesion.
These accomplishments might seem at first glance to be less than impressive. But it’s important to recall that only a year ago it would have been virtually impossible to pull an Army division from one province and move it to another in shape (and willing) to fight.
Officer leadership at the small unit level is improving. Sadly the process of leader development is driven by the wasteful Darwinian process of bloody self=selection that always attends armies that must learn to fight by fighting, the only way to build an Army from scratch in wartime. The American Army in the Civil War experienced a similar baptism of fire at a cost of more than half a million dead.
Non commissioned officers are the backbone of the American Army but NCOs are an alien concept in areas of the world ruled by strict hierarchies. The Iraqi Army is no exception. Only last year did the Iraqis start divisional schools to teach and build corporals, squad and platoon leaders. Some of these newly minted NCOs are filling the ranks of the Iraqi Army and initial reports of their success are encouraging.
This process of “on the job training” in combat has been made more efficient with the addition of American military training teams. These are squad sized units that imbed themselves in each Iraqi combat battalion and brigade. Equally important are partnership arrangements between American and Iraqi combat units. Emulation and example are powerful forces in combat. Iraqi soldier and leaders tend to mimic the example of American professionalism and effectiveness and when fighting side by side the Iraqis inevitably fight better. American units habitually partner with Iraqi units for the duration of their time in Iraq. These enduring partnerships have the added advantage of allowing the development of personal relationships between Iraqi and American soldiers and commanders.
But very serious problems continue to plague the Iraqi military and in spite of the best efforts of the coalition these problems will linger well after the surge. Iraqi senior leaders and staffs are reasonably competent at moving brigades and battalions from point to point but their ability to do quality planning and execution is very immature. While small unit leaders are being selected by merit higher level selections are too often based on nepotism or tribal and clan loyalty. In some units sectarianism still trumps allegiance to the nation and on occasion soldiers desert rather than fight against their tribal peers.
From the beginning the Coalition leadership focused on building close combat small units as first priority. As a consequence by the end of the surge non combat functions, what the military calls “enablers”, will be immature at best. No army can function for long without being competent in intelligence, fire support, administration, logistics, communications and medical support. The American military will not only have to train the Iraqis in these functions but remain in Iraq to provide them for a long time, perhaps several years.
The challenge after the surge will be to increase the effectiveness of training, advising and mentoring to the Iraqis as American forces depart so that the Iraqis will be able to fill the void. Rather than pulling out combat brigades whole cloth partnership units will probably follow a “thinning” strategy whereby a partner unit will thin its ranks gradually leaving the “brains” of the unit in place for as long as possible to assist with planning and employment of enablers.
Today there are 5,000 imbedded trainers and 1,300 headquarters trainers and advisors to joint, army and ministerial staffs. As the Iraqis face fighting without partners they will probably need more training teams to imbed with them. More Americans left to fend for themselves in an alien and hostile environment might also mean more casualties. It certainly will mean that if the enemy sees killing advisors and support soldiers as the surest means for getting us out of Iraq and toppling the Iraqi government.
Training, advising and assisting the army of an alien culture is now job one for the American military. History shows that we are good at this. For over a century from the Philippines to Korea, Thailand, Greece, Indonesia, El Salvador and in many other distant and inhospitable places American soldiers have successfully assisted in building armies during wartime. Unfortunately after Vietnam we lost the skill to do these tasks effectively. Rebuilding a world class advisory capacity is a cultural not an organizational challenge. This is graduate level work and advisors need time to learn the language and culture as well as the particular personal skills to do their jobs competently. Not all officers are good at training and advising foreign militaries. We must go the extra mile to find those with the cultural “right stuff” and reward the best of them with fully funded civil schooling, advanced promotion and a chance to command at all levels.
The post surge strategy should not be focused solely creating an Iraqi Army in the image of our own. The Iraqis only have to be better than their enemies. Not is the challenge to commit the blood, treasure and time necessary to train and equip a large Iraqi Army. Wars are not won by the bigger forces but by the force that wants most to win. It will in the end be the intangibles; courage, adaptability, integrity, intellectual agility, leadership and an allegiance to a cause other than the tribe that will ultimately determine who wins. As we move into a new season of this sad war the age old axioms will prevail: we will in the end discover that our greatest task will be to inculcate in the Iraqis the will to win rather than to teach them how to win.
From: salon-bounces@committeefortherepublic.org [mailto:salon-bounces@committeefortherepublic.org] On Behalf Of Chas Freeman
Sent: Thursday, April 03, 2008 6:00 PM
To: Salon
Subject: [Salon] Lt. Gen. Odom on Iraq
TESTIMONY BEFORE THE SENATE FOREIGN RELATIONS COMMITTEE ON IRAQ
By William E. Odom, LT General, USA, Ret.
2 April 2008
Good morning Mr. Chairman and members of the committee.
It is an honor to appear before you again. The last occasion was in January 2007, when the topic was the troop surge. Today you are asking if it has worked. Last year I rejected the claim that it was a new strategy. Rather, I said, it is a new tactic used to achieve the same old strategic aim, political stability. And I foresaw no serious prospects for success.
I see no reason to change my judgment now. The surge is prolonging instability, not creating the conditions for unity as the president claims.
Last year, General Petraeus wisely declined to promise a military solution to this political problem, saying that he could lower the level of violence, allowing a limited time for the Iraqi leaders to strike a political deal. Violence has been temporarily reduced but today there is credible evidence that the political situation is far more fragmented. And currently we see violence surge in Baghdad and Basra. In fact, it has also remained sporadic and significant in
several other parts of Iraq over the past year, notwithstanding the notable drop in Baghdad and Anbar Province.
More disturbing, Prime Minister Maliki has initiated military action and then dragged in US forces to help his own troops destroy his Shiite competitors. This is a political setback, not a political solution. Such is the result of the surge tactic.
No less disturbing has been the steady violence in the Mosul area, and the tensions in Kirkuk between Kurds, Arabs, and Turkomen. A showdown over control of the oil fields there surely awaits us. And the idea that some kind of a federal solution can cut this Gordian knot strikes me as a wild fantasy, wholly out of touch with Kurdish realities.
Also disturbing is Turkey's military incursion to destroy Kurdish PKK groups in the border region. That confronted the US government with a choice: either to support its NATO ally, or to make good on its commitment to Kurdish leaders to insure their security. It chose the former, and that makes it clear to the Kurds that the United States will sacrifice their security to its larger interests in Turkey.
Turning to the apparent success in Anbar province and a few other Sunni areas, this is not the positive situation it is purported to be. Certainly violence has declined as local Sunni shieks have begun to cooperate with US forces. But the surge tactic cannot be given full credit. The decline started earlier on Sunni initiative. What are their motives? First, anger at al Qaeda operatives and second, their financial plight.
Their break with al Qaeda should give us little comfort. The Sunnis welcomed anyone who would help them kill Americans, including al Qaeda. The concern we hear the president and his aides express about a residual base left for al Qaeda if we withdraw is utter nonsense. The Sunnis will soon destroy al Qaeda if we leave Iraq. The Kurds do not allow them in their region, and the Shiites, like the Iranians, detest al Qaeda. To understand why, one need only take note of the al Qaeda public diplomacy campaign over the past year or so on internet blogs. They implore the United States to bomb and invade Iran and destroy this apostate Shiite regime.
As an aside, it gives me pause to learn that our vice president and some members of the Senate are aligned with al Qaeda on spreading the war to Iran. Let me emphasize that our new Sunni friends insist on being paid for their loyalty. I have heard, for example, a rough estimate that the cost in one area of about 100 square kilometers is $250,000 per day. And periodically they threaten to defect unless their fees are increased. You might want to find out the total costs for these deals forecasted for the next several years, because they are not small and they do not promise to end. Remember, we do not own these people. We merely rent them. And they can break the lease at any moment. At the same time, this deal protects them to some degree from the government's troops and police, hardly a sign of political reconciliation.
Now let us consider the implications of the proliferating deals with the Sunni strongmen. They are far from unified among themselves. Some remain with al Qaeda. Many who break and join our forces are beholden to no one. Thus the decline in violence reflects a dispersion of power to dozens of local strong men who distrust the government and occasionally fight among themselves. Thus the basic military situation is far worse because of the proliferation of armed groups under local military chiefs who follow a proliferating number of political bosses.
This can hardly be called greater military stability, much less progress toward political consolidation, and to call it fragility that needs more time to become success is to ignore its implications. At the same time, Prime Minister Maliki's military actions in Basra and Baghdad, indicate even wider political and military fragmentation. We are witnessing is more accurately described as the road to the Balkanization of Iraq, that is, political fragmentation. We are being asked by the president to believe that this shift of so much power and finance to so many local chieftains is the road to political centralization. He describes the process as building the state from the bottom up.
I challenge you to press the administration's witnesses this week to explain this absurdity. Ask them to name a single historical case where power has been aggregated successfully from local strong men to a central government except through bloody violence leading to a single winner, most often a dictator. That is the history of feudal Europe's transformation to the age of absolute monarchy. It is the story of the American colonization of the west and our Civil War.
It took England 800 years to subdue clan rule on what is now the English-Scottish border. And it is the source of violence in Bosnia and Kosovo.
How can our leaders celebrate this diffusion of power as effective state building? More accurately described, it has placed the United States astride several civil wars. And it allows all sides to consolidate, rearm, and refill their financial coffers at the US expense.
To sum up, we face a deteriorating political situation with an over extended army. When the administration's witnesses appear before you, you should make them clarify how long the army and marines can sustain this band-aid strategy.
The only sensible strategy is to withdraw rapidly but in good order. Only that step can break the paralysis now gripping US strategy in the region. The next step is to choose a new aim, regional stability, not a meaningless victory in Iraq. And progress toward that goal requires revising our policy toward Iran. If the president merely renounced his threat of regime change by force, that could prompt Iran to lessen its support to Taliban groups in Afghanistan. Iran detests the Taliban and supports them only because they will kill more Americans in Afghanistan as retaliation in event of a US attack on Iran. Iran's policy toward Iraq would also have to change radically as we withdraw. It cannot want instability there. Iraqi Shiites are Arabs, and they know that Persians look down on them. Cooperation between them has its limits.
No quick reconciliation between the US and Iran is likely, but US steps to make Iran feel more secure make it far more conceivable than a policy calculated to increase its insecurity. The president's policy has reinforced Iran's determination to acquire nuclear weapons, the very thing he purports to be trying to prevent.
Withdrawal from Iraq does not mean withdrawal from the region. It must include a realignment and reassertion of US forces and diplomacy that give us a better chance to achieve our aim. A number of reasons are given for not withdrawing soon and completely. I have refuted them repeatedly before but they have more lives than a cat. Let try again me explain why they don't make sense.
First, it is insisted that we must leave behind military training element with no combat forces to secure them. This makes no sense at all. The idea that US military trainers left alone in Iraq can be safe and effective is flatly rejected by several NCOs and junior officers I have heard describe their personal experiences. Moreover, training foreign forces before they have a consolidated political authority to command their loyalty is a windmill tilt. Finally, Iraq is not short on military skills.
Second, it is insisted that chaos will follow our withdrawal. We heard that argument as the "domino theory" in Vietnam. Even so, the path to political stability will be bloody regardless of whether we withdraw or not. The idea that the United States has a moral responsibility to prevent this ignores that reality. We are certainly to blame for it, but we do not have the physical means to prevent it. American leaders who insist that it is in our power to do so are misleading both the public and themselves if they believe it.
The real moral question is whether to risk the lives of more Americans. Unlike preventing chaos, we have the physical means to stop sending more troops where many will be killed or wounded. That is the moral responsibility to our country which no American leaders seems willing to assume.
Third, nay sayers insist that our withdrawal will create regional instability. This confuses cause with effect. Our forces in Iraq and our threat to change Iran's regime are making the region unstable. Those who link instability with a US withdrawal have it exactly backwards. Our ostrich strategy of keeping our heads buried in the sands of Iraq has done nothing but advance our enemies' interest. I implore you to reject these fallacious excuses for prolonging the commitment of US forces to war in Iraq.
Thanks for this opportunity to testify today.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)