Blah

Awaiting NH results eagerly. Expecting an Obama win amidst news that Hillary is considering giving up on both South Carolina and Nevada - which would undoubtedly be huge and probably spell the end of her candidacy (the Guiliani strategy isn't for winners).

Anyway, thought I'd put up a link to this article which I find quite interesting in that it not only supports my point that the Militia Support (i.e. buying off the enemy) Strategy in Iraq is the reason why the "surge has worked" but it also supports my argument that this strategy is likely to lead to a bloodier and more dangerous civil war "ahorita" as we say down here.

(Ahorita: at some point in the undefinable future. Used like this: "When are you going to clean the dishes?" "Ahorita.").

I also like the ego gratification of being proven right 1 out of a 100 times or so.

Cheers and happy voting.

From the "No Shit Sherlock" Files

US calls a lull in violence in Iraq success while Sadr uses the time to reconstitute his army. I smell bad things in the future. (This is a must read.)

Bush's Speech

Sometimes I prefer the sports world for its simplicity and, ironically, honesty. Last night the Prez gave a speech that was chock full of lies, half-truths, and outright deceptions. But I can’t score it like this Monday’s upset when Washington runs the ball all over the Eagles defense. There aren’t touchdowns, field goals, passing yards, or turnovers. Instead, there’s just one jackass with the attention of the nation.

Sigh.

Sometimes I just want to forget politics altogether.

I was thinking of doing a paragraph by paragraph rebuttal to the speech, but then institutional laziness and depression took over. It’s hard enough just to read the speech, not to mention analyze it. I seriously wonder if we have a talking monkey in the White House. De-volution indeed.

Anyway, for those interested, here’s a copy of the transcript. Read at your own peril.

I, however, do want to comment on several points.

First, Al-Anbar. The Monkey Prez is making a big deal out of this. In the few moments I actually watched last night (the sound of his voice is grating and the wife hates him), he mentioned that, “Anbar citizens who once feared beheading for talking to an American or Iraqi soldier now come forward to tell us where the terrorists are hiding,” and then, “During my visit to Anbar on Labor Day, local Sunni leaders thanked me for America’s support.” And finally, “Earlier today, one of the brave tribal sheikhs who helped lead the revolt against al Qaeda was murdered.”

Now this is a pleasant fiction. Never mind that what’s happening in al-Anbar is just a replay of Afghanistan 2001 (local tribal leaders taking advantage of US funds and guns for their own ends), the story that the Monkey Prez told is flatly deceptive. Sheikh Abu Reesha was murdered by car bomb, but that was almost certainly retaliation for meeting with the Monkey Prez a week and a half ago. So much for “coming forward to tell us where the terrorists are hiding.”

Second, the “success” in Al-Anbar certainly can’t be attributed to the surge. As I mentioned previously, the province received only a very small percentage of “surge” troops (Bush mentioned 4,000 last night) and the Asian Times article I linked above clearly explains that the US piggy-backed on preexisting paramilitary organizations that were fighting Al-Queda for their own motives.

Not only that, it belies credibility to call something a “success” when the reduction in violence is extremely minimal. This is an area where we could especially use some touchdowns. There’s a lot of press on this, but essentially, General Petraeus massaged those figures like a well oiled Ross Perot.

I liken the strategy to the OJ Simpson defense team. The general public is going to be easily confused by the laundry list of statistics, statistics which they have no control over, no ability to independently verify, and no opportunity to question.

Last, it’s not a drawdown. The US never had any intention of keeping 160,000 troops in Iraq indefinitely. It’s called a “surge” because it is a temporary increase aimed at heading off obscene violence levels. Think about it like this. If you were on a diet and you decided to go off the diet temporarily for 1 year, it would be news when you went back on, but it wouldn’t be an indication that you had gained more weight over that year. It would just mean you are following your prearranged plan. (Sorry, best analogy I could come up with.)

My point is that drawing down troops to pre-surge levels (130,000) doesn’t mean that the surge is working anymore than it means Bush has committed to “bringing some troops home”. It just means that realistically, we can’t maintain those troops levels, something we’ve known for a long ass time.

Not only that, the White House is already backtracking on the whole 30,000 number. They pretty much pulled that number out of a hat to placate the public, nothing more, nothing less.

Ultimately, if you cut through all the bullshit, the President basically said, we’re staying in Iraq with a large number of troops at least until I leave office.

At the end of the day, even with the most wildly optimistic estimates, we’ll have 130,000 troops in Iraq in January 2009. This is the Democrats problem.

I’ll end this post by linking to a speech by Dick Lugar (R-Ind) that he made on September 11th of this year. The money quote:

One can debate, as many will do this week, whether progress in Iraq has been sufficient to justify continuing American sacrifices. But the greatest risk for U.S. policy is not that we are incapable of making progress, but that this progress may be largely beside the point given the divisions that now afflict Iraqi society. The risk is that our efforts are comparable to a farmer expending his resources and efforts to plant a crop on a flood plain without factoring in the probability that the waters may rise. In my judgment, some type of success in Iraq is possible, but as policy makers, we should acknowledge that we are facing extraordinarily narrow margins for achieving our goals.

Surge Reporting

While the entire world appears totally preoccupied with the Petraeus testimony, I’m pretty bored with it. Several things are clear. First, he’s the water carrier for the “pro-surge” community. He has to be. He’s in charge. That means that he’ll defend the surge no matter what.

Two, minor gains or great ones, we’re still f*cked in the long run. Nothing he says has any real bearing on the outcome of the war because the surge is temporary. Not that making it permanent would make any difference either. Any amateur historian versed in the history of occupations knows two things: insurgents don’t go away because of a military presence and they can afford to wait. This means that just like in Algiers, the Occupied Territories, and other diverse experiences, a military solution has no hope of long-term success, even if there are (very minor) short term gains.

Three, none of his testimony is related to the political considerations or attitudinal issues. Politically, Iraq is frozen in time and there appears no breaking the deadlock on all pivotal legislation. But perhaps more troubling for US interests is that according to a BBC/ABN poll, 60% of Iraqis thinks it’s totally legit to attack US troops. Look – they hate us. They hate our presence. They want us out. It’s that simple. We have no hope of “winning the war” unless we change that and to date, we have had no success at “winning the hearts and minds” of the Iraqi people. Welcome us with open arms indeed.

Four, Bush is clearly pushing Iraq off to the next president. The sum of Petraeus’s testimony was, we’re doing well, making improvements, might be able to bring 5,000 home in the near future, but the rest gotta stay. For how long? Forever or until the American public finally forces the Democrats to act.

Last, this is Vietnam all over again. Not only have we had shifting goalposts but we’ve also had the exact same type of threat construction. Back then, they said Red Spread. If we let them commie bastards win in Vietnam, they’ll infect all of Southeast Asia and then the US will be encircled by Commie Pinko Bastards®. Didn’t happen.

Now, in Iraq, they’ve shifted the message several times to land on the currently popular scribe of “Middle Eastern Conflagration” aka a region-wide war. Now, not only is there a clear lack of evidence to support such a claim, the action most likely to unite Iraq and unify the country is an Iranian invasion. It’s hard to imagine how a wider war would serve the Realist interests in Iran, especially when it would legitimize US presence and international condemnation. But then again, the whole Middle Eastern Conflagration is just as much bullshit as Red Spread was.

At any rate, these debates are little more than self-serving political theater and necessary ripely stupid, most notably, because they ignore the central concept of inevitability. As in, some day, hopefully sooner than later, we’re leaving Iraq and all the currently described “risks” of pullout will become real. The only question is how many dead American soldiers is Bush going to be personally responsible for.

3774 and counting.

Iraq progress?

I'm linking an editorial from the WSJ about potential progress in Iraq because I do think it's important to read both sides of this issue. In the interest of full disclosure, the article was written by a close friend's sister (I have never met her) who happens to be the husband of the author of the "surge" strategy Fred Kagan (shame on the WSJ for not disclosing that).

While her article reads a bit like the last vestigages of someone trying to prolong US involvement in Vietnam, it is well written and fully immersed in vetted-Bush administration language. Potential problems with her work include:

- Pushing Al Queda out of one area doesn't mean they'll stay out, even if we try to hold it
- Local militias are having an effect, but only in homogenous areas, something she omits
- Military (security) improvements haven't been shown in the body count (civilian deaths still extremely high, military deaths higher than the same peroid last year and every previous year)
- A political solution is the only solution no matter how many military successes there are and there has been basically no progress on that front.

I don't wish to address those issues directly, however, as i have previously discussed them and others (like Juan Cole) are much more adept on the specifics.

What I do want to say is, be careful what you wish for. The administration (and Kagan) is making a strong case that "paramilitary" forces working with the Iraqi government and the US are making the difference. They refer to these "paramilitaries" as "concerned citizen groups".

This is essentially the real world application of "the enemy of your enemy is your friend". Any student of Colombia is aware just how that turns out.

Bottom line, a lack of a political solution makes any indications of "progress" worthless past the very short term.

(Also of note: Kagan mentions the role of Iran. This is important. There is a lot of talk about the US preparing to strike Iran. Constantly mentioning the role of Iran is one way to soften up the public to support further military action. This is Cambodia and Laos all over again.)

UPDATE: Counter article in the Washington Post that is not only actual reporting but answers some of Kagan's claims.

Massaging the facts

We’re on the cusp of the Surge Report due in September and that means the outright deception from the White House and Pentagon are now bombarding the airways. I thought I’d take this opportunity to state some facts that should be fairly obvious.

1. Casualties are up. I’ve posted about this previously. If the surge was designed to reduce casualties, then it has clearly failed.

2. Watch the press closely. They are talking an awful lot about success in the Al Anbar province which I find strange since it wasn’t the focus of the surge.

I know this point is a bit controversial with the left-o-sphere claiming it wasn’t a part of the surge at all (I think it was) and the right-o-sphere overstating it’s relevance to the surge.* Frankly, it’s hard to find hard numbers on how many additional troops were deployed to Al Anbar. The best estimate I have is 4,000, which is about 13% of the total 30,000.

The point is, however, that the “surge” is mostly irrelevant in Al Anbar. It hasn’t brought more security or aided the political situation. What has worked, and the reason for why violence is decreasing, is the rise of tribal warlords who are expelling foreign fighters (terrorists) and taking control of the territory. I don’t think any author of the “surge” would conclude that this is empirical evidence that adding troops to an insurgency reduces violence. If anything it proves my point that insurgency ends when a population gets tired of killing its own and takes action.

(This is a very risky development by any standard. Just look at the paramilitary problem in Colombia. It started as a way to “improve security” and fight the FARC. It ended with mass graves and political corruption to the top.)

3. There have been few, if any, political successes. This is the root of the struggle and the Congressionally established benchmarks for evaluating the success of the surge are political, not military because political reconciliation is the key to solving conflict. None of the political benchmarks have been achieved.

4. Look who’s writing General Petraeus’s report:

Despite Bush's repeated statements that the report will reflect evaluations by Petraeus and Ryan Crocker, the U.S. ambassador to Iraq, administration officials said it would actually be written by the White House, with inputs from officials throughout the government.

5. Fundamentally, the surge’s exclusive focus on security misses the most important variables (from the same LA Times article):

But the official said he did not believe such security improvements would translate into political progress or improvements in the daily lives of most Iraqis.

"Who cares how many neighborhoods of Baghdad are secured?" the official said. "Let's talk about the rest of the country: How come they have electricity twice a day, how come there is no running water?"

Ultimately, even a cursory reading of insurgency literature leads one to conclude that fighting an insurgency is 5% military and 95% political and economic. I’ve written about this before but I wanted to restate it in light of the onslaught of MEDIA-ocracy.

* I really don’t know what to make of the “Surge didn’t happen in Al Anbar” story. It comes from sources I generally trust but they seem to have just asserted it without independent verification. I have read media reports that give the 4,000 number while other reports say that the surge redeployed troops from Al Anbar to Baghdad. If it’s the case that there are now less troops in Al Anbar than prior to the surge, then this post has distinct relevance. I welcome any evidence available on this issue.

The best that I could find is this: As of November 26, 2006, there were 30,000 troops in Al Anbar. The pentagon talked at the time of rotating troops out of the province to reinforce the efforts in Baghdad. However, in April 2007, the San Diego Union Tribune reported there were 35,000 troops in Al Anbar. That supports the argument that there was a “surge” in the province.