“There is no substitute for victory.”
(Douglas MacArthur)
Anytime, anyplace Americans are sent to fight, there must be clearly defined strategic goals that, once reached, constitute the essence of victory. Any other reason to put our men and women in harm’s way must be considered immoral. You cannot ask people to fight and die for anything less than recognizable and measurable strategic yardsticks which would constitute ultimate triumph.
The Iraq War has always been, to my mind, a close call which is why readers of this site have seen my support waxing and waning over the last two years. Achieving the goals of overthrowing Saddam and negating his ability to deliver WMD to terrorists (or, originally, to find and destroy the WMD) were noble and achievable goals, met in spectacular fashion by our military. But that third strategic goal of creating a democracy smack dab in the middle of jihad country to serve as an example to others in the region (its very democratic nature posing a threat to the autocracies and dictatorships in the Middle East) has proven to be depressingly elusive.
The litany of mistakes made by the Administration of George Bush in trying to achieve this last goal is long. But that statement is made with 20/20 hindsight. Each step taken seemed reasonable at the time. As in every war ever fought, mistakes are too numerous to count. And I daresay that there is ample evidence that for every mistake ever made in any war, there were voices warning of dire consequences if that particular plan were followed. Just as there were voices warning of catastrophe when there was a spectacular success. Funny how we never hear of the naysayers when that happens.
Viet Nam was, at bottom, an immoral war because the United States was asking its young men to fight and die not to win but to avoid losing. This was clear as early as 1968 when President Johnson halted the bombing and sought peace talks. In practical terms, it meant that 22,000 more American soldiers were killed between 1968-73 in a war that we had no intention of achieving victory. Our leaving in 1968 would not have altered the final outcome. All we did was kill hundreds of thousands of Vietnamese civilians and those thousands of additional American boys. The “peace treaty” that the North Vietnamese broke the minute they thought they could get away with it only put a disastrous coda on a war fought in what we can see with 20/20 hindsight was the wrong place at the wrong time.
Would it have been better to leave in 1968? My own personal feeling is that if we had pulled out then, we would have saved lives and perhaps avoided the worst of the rending, tearing battles that made the 1960’s and 70’s so turbulent. As long as we had no intention of fighting through to victory – and there was no definition of victory ever announced in the first place – there was no sense keeping men there to die.
This is apparently the rationale being used by anti-war Democrats as they seek to put a “timetable” for withdrawal before the Senate this week:
Trying to bridge party divisions on the eve of a Senate debate, leading Democrats called Monday for American troops to begin pulling out of Iraq this year. They avoided setting a firm timetable for withdrawal but argued that the Bush administration’s open-ended commitment to the war would only prevent Iraqis from moving forward on their own.Coming the week after partisan and often angry House debate over the war, the Senate proposal, a non binding resolution, was carefully worded to deflect any accusations that the Democrats were “cutting and running,” as their position has been depicted by Republicans. The Democrats behind the measure did not even use the word “withdrawal,” and talked about how to guarantee “success” for Iraq, not about any failures of the war.
Weasel words from weaselly men and women. Using as a cover the idea that the Iraqis can get along without us if only we tell the government when we’re leaving and how many of us will be going (strangely forgetting that the insurgents will get the exact same information and adjust their activities accordingly), the Democrats are engaging in an exercise of breathtaking immorality.
Any timetable for withdrawal necessarily obviates any thought of victory. And if you don’t believe that victory is achievable then clearly you believe we have lost already. Trying to split the difference between victory and defeat in war is not possible. One side wins and one side loses. Hence, by offering this “timetable,” the Democrats are saying that we have lost the war and should leave in order to cut our losses.
There is nothing intrinsically wrong with this position, by the way. It is defeatist. It is cowardly. But there is nothing necessarily incorrect in admitting defeat and pulling out.
But what makes the Democrats position immoral is that they are not advocating this timetable to get our troops out of harms way as fast as possible. In fact, they are terrified of the political consequences of doing so. Instead, they opt for the Viet Nam approach. According to them, the war was a mistake to begin with, it was fought incompetently, it was illegal, and we’ve already lost since there’s no way we’re ever going to say that George Bush won the war. But instead of advocating an immediate withdrawal of all American forces, we are going to advocate that more young men die in a losing cause just so that we don’t appear to be “cutting and running” and thus, lose badly at the polls in November.
If there has been a more cynical, immoral ploy in the last half century of American politics, I can’t think of it.
The Democrat’s supporters on the far left have no such timidity. They state in no uncertain terms that the war is lost and that the troops should come home immediately. Bully for them. In this, they show more guts than their representatives in Congress. Of course, it’s easy to have guts when your sitting on your fat ass in an air conditioned room at mommy’s house pecking away at a keyboard about how the country is turning into a dictatorship and whining about the war. Real patriots would have been off their duffs long ago, filling American jails to overflowing with their bodies as they did everything in their power to stop what they considered an immoral war.
Why are the Democrats so scared of cutting and running? Are they afraid the Republicans will make political capital out of this position? It’s not like they can make a case that they want to “win” the war. In fact, their advocacy for withdrawal before the job of helping the Iraqis with their security problems is done proves that they have no interest in victory. Their leading spokesmen have declared the war “unwinnable” and therefore already lost. Not standing behind that principle smacks of both political cowardice as well as having a depraved indifference to the lives of American soldiers.
Are they right? Is the war already lost?
What is happening in Iraq at this moment is deadly chaos. A memo from our embassy in Baghdad tells the horrific details of life in the capitol city:
- Two of the three female Iraqis in the public affairs office reported stepped-up harassment since mid-May….”some groups are pushing women to cover even their face, a step not taken in Iran even at its most conservative.” One of the women is now wearing a full abaya after receiving direct threats.
- The overall environment is one of “frayed social networks,” with frequent actual or perceived insults. None of this is helped by lack of electricity. “One colleague told us he feels ‘defeated’ by circumstances, citing his example of being unable to help his two-year-old son who has asthma and cannot sleep in stifling heat,” which is now reaching 115 degrees.
- Another employee tells us that life outside the Green Zone has become ‘emotionally draining.’ He lives in a mostly Shiite area and claims to attend a funeral ‘every evening.’”
Fuel lines have grown so long that one staffer spent 12 hours in line on his day off. “Employees all confirm that by the last week of May, they were getting one hour of power for every six hours without.
While all of the “evidence” in the embassy memo is anecdotal, the information jibes with other sources about the almost total breakdown in society that has occurred in the last several months since the bombing of the Samarra Shrine. Hundreds of thousands have either fled the country or have left their homes in fear of being murdered or kidnapped. There are problems with militias, with training Iraqi security forces, with corruption, with the dual loyalty of some to both Iraq and Iran, and of course, the insurgency itself.
Daunting problems, indeed. But do they add up to defeat with no prospect of turning the situation around? Emphatically no. And while there may be days where Iraq takes one step forward and two back, there are also days where the opposite is true and real progress is made. The point is, that some trends – especially political ones – are moving in a positive direction. And I have a hunch about this fellow Prime Minister Maliki. I think he will surprise. He seems very determined to succeed as well as being committed to the Constitution. If we can stay long enough, I think there is a very real chance that by election day, there will be ample evidence that things are flowing in the right direction.
So what the Democrats want to do is snatch defeat from the jaws of victory. Just when most of the political pieces to the puzzle are in place, they want to yank the rug out from underneath the Iraqi government and leave them to the tender mercies of the insurgents. And the way they advocate doing it will only mean more Americans dying in what they consider a lost cause.
Having the courage of one’s convictions seems to be lacking on the Democrats’ side of the aisle. Will none of them stand up for what they truly believe? Or will they hide behind weasel words in hopes that no one notices how truly wretched they are
1:52 pm
We should demand that the troops be brought out of Bosnia first. We have had troops in the former Yugoslavian republics since Bill Clinton promised they would be there for only 18 months. Tell the Democrats that when troops are brought home from Bosnia and Kosovo, we will talk about bringing troops home from Iraq.
1:57 pm
And one other thing … notice how the media hyped up the casualties in Baghdad over the weekend when there was a surge but they have been strangely silent the past three days on how quiet things are compared to an average day at the start of the month, or even over the past several months.
1:59 pm
“But what makes the Democrats position immoral is that they are not advocating this timetable to get our troops out of harms way as fast as possible. In fact, they are terrified of the political consequences of doing so. Instead, they opt for the Viet Nam approach. According to them, the war was a mistake to begin with, it was fought incompetently, it was illegal, and we’ve already lost since there’s no way we’re ever going to say that George Bush won the war. But instead of advocating an immediate withdrawal of all American forces, we are going to advocate that more young men die in a losing cause just so that we don’t appear to be “cutting and running†and thus, lose badly at the polls in November.”
The above is a breath-takingly true statement of what the Democratic Party has become. I reject them and EVERYTHING they stand for. Period. Never again!!
Carol
2:52 pm
Very thoughtful commentary. I am a life long Democrat with nothing but contempt for the current gaggle of Democratic “leaders”. Be FOR something positive or be gone!
The problems in Iraq are numberous and indeed onerous. “Cut and run” is an inappropriate response to the current situation in Iraq, however, as is “stand and die forever.” My hope is that President Bush would provide more concrete benchmarks for the idea of “when the Iraqis stand up, we’ll stand down.” Such as:
Exactly how many Iraqi soldiers and police must be functioning before we withdraw honorably?
How many insurgent stikes per week are an acceptable number before we can withdraw honorably?
What must the oil and electricity production level be in all of Iraq before we can withdraw honorably?
What are the specific functions and levels of functioning that must be attained by the new government before we can withdraw honorably?
It would seem to me that the level of support for the War in Iraq would undoubtably increase if, as Rick Moran wrote above, Americans knew more specific objectives of the democratization project in Iraq. Americans of all political persuasions have persevered in time of war when what we are fighting for is clear to them.
3:34 pm
Crosspatch,
Actually, we have hardly anyone in the Former Yugoslavia. Those missions are largely NATO run with European troops. I don’t have the exact figures on me, but I’m sure we have less than 1000 total troops in the FRY. Most of our forces were gone from Bosnia and Kosovo by the time 2004 rolled around.
4:21 pm
The struggle within the democratic party is going to cost them come election time. You see, democrats can not take personal responsibility or see beyond their hands. They want it and they want it now..sounds a lot like my 10 year old.
4:45 pm
I’m in a quibbling mood…
First off, there were those (pat myself on the back) who argued close to four years ago that it was a mistake to include goal #3 into the mix, that getting rid of Hussein and making sure there were no WMDs in Iraq was sufficient (as well as believing that goal #3 was a waste of time, that even if we pulled it off, it wasn’t going to make us any safer). And, fwiw, I will always think that Bush backed into goal #3, not because it was what he truly wanted to do (“no nation building for me”), but because he was convinced by Colin Powell and others that he needed more of a reason to invade Iraq than simply #1 and #2.
As for your claim that we weren’t fighting in Vietnam to win, but merely to avoid losing, I’ve always thought our goal there was not to defeat and conquer North Vietnam but to defend South Vietnam against its internal and external enemies (as well as to stand athwart the communist surge.. you know, fight them in Vietnam so we wouldn’t have to fight the commies in San Francisco… oops, bad example). IF (a big if, to be sure) North Vietnam had left South Vietnam alone after 1973, I wouldn’t have thought we lost the war. Maybe you disagree.
Which brings me to a point about Iraq. While I didn’t want our troops sticking around there in the first place, what they are doing there now is very similar to what I think our troops were supposed to be doing in Vietnam: defending the locals against foreign and internal attack, while train ing the Iraqi army and police to (hopefully soon) assume those duties for themselves. Let’s assume that we’re successful and the Iraqis take over security for themselves and we leave. How would that be different from our leaving Vietnam in 1973? If we ‘lost’ Vietnam, would you say our leaving Iraq under similar circumstances would mean we also lost there? If it was immoral to be in Vietnam merely to keep from losing, wouldn’t it be just as immoral to be in Iraq for the same reasons?
And finally, I see nothing wrong with setting timetables and goals for getting our troops out. I have no interest in having a permanent presence in Iraq. I see no problem in giving the Iraqis a hint of when they have to have their act together. I see no problem with outlining the goals and objectives that we need to accomplish before we leave. In fact, I see those as requirements. How can Bush ever (again) claim “Mission Accomplished” without having told us ahead of time what was to be accomplished? how does Bush ever counter the inevitable terrorist claims that they ‘drove us out’ without having first outlined the circumstances under which we will leave? How does Bush ever give the Iraqis a sense that they will be running things themselves, that they will be free of us, without outlining what has to happen before we take off? And remember, just like at work, goals and timetables there can be adjusted to reflect changing conditions. If things work out better than expected, we leave earlier. If things bog down a bit, we stick around until we get down what we said we were going to do. So, bottom line, while I feel the Democrats are trying to do so for political advantage, I see no problem in the substance of what they are arguing for.
in fact, I believe Bush’s reluctance to outline goals and timetables reveals a certain degree of “I have no clue, I’m trying to figure things out as we go along”ism…
(and still no preview button for comments… c’mon, rick)
5:56 pm
There is no difference between the Democrats and Republicans position on this war, only rhetoric.
7:40 pm
GOP’ers are simpletons.
8:05 pm
“GOP’ers are simpletons.”
Woah, dude! I’ll bet you typed that with BOTH fingers! Awesome!
“Actually, we have hardly anyone in the Former Yugoslavia.”
Not the point. The point is that after many years of troops there, I never once heard the Democrats call for an immediate withdrawal or a cut-off of funding for their support. That was a war that absolutely was a civil war that we injected ourselves into. I didn’t hear Murtha then … nor do I hear him now. My point isn’t scale so much as it is principle.
The first elected govenment under a constitution written by Iraqis has had it’s ministry heads in place for all of two weeks. I would caution people to consider that things take a little longer in real life than they do on, say, Survivor. Basically it has taken us 3 years to get an Iraqi government to the starting gate. I can not believe the moronic logic that leads one to believe that now is the time to even consider leaving. Yes, it is time to consider the PROCESS of how to go about leaving and there was a terrific article in the Washington Post today from Iraq’s minister of national security that lays that process out (I don’t have the link handy but Austin Bay has a link on his blog). It is well thought out and well considered.
The problem with making a public timetable is that it is a setup for failure. First of all you tip your hand to the enemy of exactly how events are going to unfold and when. In other words, you are delivering to your enemy your strategic plan. Nothing smacks of defeat more than a call to inform the enemy of our plan. Asking for a public timetable is asking for failure.
Also, events might not play according to our timetable. Some things might be ready sooner, others later. We should be flexible and be ready to move forward as events allow and to stand fast when events dictate. That is common sense. To blindly go along a pre-plotted course in spite of events actually happening at the time is more than asinine, it is pure stupidity. That is what frustrates people with half a brain with the Democrats, they propose stupid ideas.
I suppose Democrats take their sick kids to a doctor with a specific timetable for treatment regardless how the child responds to the treatment and when time is up, ready or not, treatment stops. And be careful not to let your jerking knee hit the “but Iraq isn’t a child” button because the two situations are analogous. To prescribe a specific timetable for the problems in Iraq is just exactly as stupid as prescribing a specific timetable for treating a human illness. The result in both cases is likely to be disaster.
8:25 pm
crosspatch: when I take my kid to a doctor, I better see some measurable progress within an acceptable timeframe or I will definitely yank my kid from that doctor and go somewhere else. There’s no way I’ll entrust my kid to somebody who offers me no specifics as to what they hope to accomplish and the time frame in which that is to happen…. I would hope no doctor would be silly enough to say “stay the course” to me without making it real clear what the course is and how long it will take….
8:42 pm
The FIRST thing you need to do is stabilize the patient. That was done two weeks ago. Iraq has had an in-place elected government with all it’s ministries staffed for almost exactly two weeks. The clock didn’t start counting until then as far as I am concerned.
8:47 pm
The first treatments that have been applied are Operation Forward Together and expoitation of the Zarqawi intelligence. So far we have had two days of violence in Baghdad at about average levels, and 5 days much quieter than usual. In other words, Forward Together, despite a two-day surge in violence on Friday/Saturday (our time), seems to be working quite well.
Exploitation of intelligence seems to be paying off as we nailed a key Liason between an influential Sunni tribe and al Qaida today.
Don’t expect things to magically get better in only two weeks but I will say thing things are looking much brighter than they have in a very long time.
9:30 pm
Crosspatch- Dude, the Republicans want at of this thing as badly as the Democrats do. I will say this one more time, there is no difference on the position of the two parties on this war. They both want out, and neither side has a plan to get us out.
9:31 pm
Neither side is willing to build the massive army we need right now, either.
9:33 pm
There is a big difference. The Democrats have a need to see Iraq as a defeat. A win in Iraq will be seen by the Democrats as a defeat for the Democrats and so that must be avoided at all costs. A defeat in Iraq would be seen as a vindication of the Democrats so in this sense, the interests of the Democrats and the interests of al Qaeda are in common.
Sure, both sides would like it to be over as quickly as possible, but one side with victory and the other with defeat.
9:40 pm
We don’t need a “massive Army” anymore. With weapons systems that are now available, we are probably 10x more lethal with the same number of troops that we were in the first gulf war.
Armor is practically obsolete against US forces. You can’t defend against our our as it is invisible to your radar. We will spot any vehicle you move and will kill it. If you move we will kill you, if you communicate we will kill you, and if you fire at us we will kill you.
What do we need a “massive” Army for? We aren’t even using anywhere near our entire force in Iraq. The Army has about 500,000 active and 700,000 reserve for a total size of 1.2 million … and that is just the Army. We have about 130,000 deployed in Iraq or about 10% of our force.
Just exactly what do we need a “massive” force for right now?
10:14 pm
“We don’t need a “massive Army†anymore. With weapons systems that are now available, we are probably 10x more lethal with the same number of troops that we were in the first gulf war.”
Crosspatch,
You are partially right. If you read anything by Robert Kaplan, you would have learned that we are developing better military techniques not just bigger badder weapons. Smaller groups of better trained soldiers that are willing to blend with the locals would be loads better than the massive army occupation. Unfortunately, it takes a lot of time to properly train soldiers for this type of warfare.
Why do we have big armies? Because would you be the one to fire around a million people? There are entire towns that exist because of military bases so the losses would be well beyond those million soldiers.
10:29 pm
I must admit that at this point I have no clue as to what you are talking about. Mention was made of needing a much MORE massive military than the one we have. I countered with the fact that we are only using 10% of what we have now.
I was in the Army during the cold war. Our Army was much larger then than it is now. But we also didn’t have terminally guided artillery shells and bombs that could be dropped from planes 20 miles away and hit a pinpoint target. There were no systems for the ground commander such as JSTARS. There were no “fire and forget” munitions that could find and engage tanks on their own without human intervention. Cruise missiles were new and GPS wasn’t invented yet. These days we have the capacity of one shot, one kill on a tank except by another tank or a soldier with an anti-tank weapon.
Anyone putting massed armor against a modern US brigade combat team with air support is going to be in a world of hurt. They are going to find their tanks gone, their resupply convoys gone, their supply depots gone, and any deployed troops pinned down before they even SEE one of our units to engage.
10:29 pm
The left wing and the antique MSM are totally to blame for the torture and murder of the two american soldiers. Their hype of the college frat type hazing of the prisoners and the hype about non existant torture at Gitmo led to this sad state of affairs. Will they now step up and accept the blame or do like they did when they got millions of people slaughtered in Southeast Asia in the 70’s. Deny, Deny, when everyone knows that people like Hanoi John are the worst enemies the people of the U.S. has ever faced. I suspect the gutless weasels will bury their heads in the sand and try to project the blame to someone else, say Bush maybe. It won’t work with me, i put the blame on what once was the democratic party, but now is the party of anti-americanism.
10:30 pm
These days we have the capacity of one shot, one kill on a tank except by another tank or a soldier with an anti-tank weapon.
Should be :
Those days we didn’t have the capacity of one shot, on kill on a tank …
10:46 pm
we’re getting off-topic, but all our technology have severe limitations against the insurgent in an urban area. None of the equipment we have is really designed for the war we’re fighting, though we’ve adapted. Body armor and armored hummers are only two examples.
11:36 pm
As for Vietnam, the question I have is when did we lose it? As I remember my history South Vietnam did not actually fall to the commies until after the Democrat controlled congress witheld US funding to the South Vietnam government. Until that time South Vietnam had a chance of surviving, but we’ll never really know thanks to the democrats who wouldn’t even give them a chance to go it on their own with a little financial support from the US.
After watching how the dems have treated Bush, I’ve become convinced that they abandoned South Vietnam not because they thought it was futile, but because they wanted to see the treaties negotiated by the Nixon administration fail. If South Vietnam had survived as an independent country Nixon would have gotten credit for that and they wanted the humiliation of Nixon to be complete. For the Democrats defeating Nixon was more important than the lives of millions of South Vietnamese and thousands of US service men and women, just as defeating Bush is now more important than the millions of lives in the middle east that could be placed under the boot of Bin Laden’s islamic fascism if we lose in Iraq.
I have my problems with the Republicans, but the history of the Dems since 1968 leaves me with no choice but to work and hope for their utter defeat. Let the Libertarian party take their place and I would be happy to actually have a choice of who to vote for as opposed of who to vote against.
Now if you want to talk about a war that was F’d up, lets talk about WW2, the very war that made SNAFU a household word. Lets, talk about the total screw ups of Huertgoen forest or the battle of Aachen. How about the supply corp taking up residence in Paris, and how many of those guys left the service as wealthy men? And if we could talk to my dear departed uncle we could talk about his opinion of what he went through on Iwo Jima. Maybe we should have pulled out of that one, too.
all IMHO of course, obviously others will disagree, but I still love you anyways.
12:10 am
Vietnam isn’t a parallel so it would be pointless to go into it except to say that if we had done the same thing in Vietnam that we did in Iraq, things would be MUCH different. Instead of proping up an unpopular and corrupt government, had we taken it down and allowed the people to form a new one of their own making, it would have stood a better chance. If we had allowed additional political parties to form, allowed people outside the corrupt cabal of cronies that were running the place to have a voice and dissolved the then ruling political party, the people would have had more of a personal investment in their government.
Iraq will succeed because all of the groups in the country have a voice. They are all represented. The government in Iraq is their government that they elected. A government built that way can get the emotional buy-in that is required to get people to really defend it. The government of South Vietnam was a sham run by people who would kill you for dissent. It wasn’t popular and there was no real way for alternative political parties to form and have a voice.
To even look at Vietnam as other than an example of what NOT to do when getting involved in a country is a waste of time. In Vietnam the insurgency had the support of the people. In Iraq, it doesn’t. We should never place our troops in the position of defending an unpopular, corrupt, and cruel government. If we are going to send troops in, it should be at the request of a government that has a chance of survival or to tear it down and build one that does. As we did in Iraq.
We could have taken Saddam out and put the Baath party right back in power if we had wanted to and there wouldn’t be so much strife now. But in the long run, by dissolving the Baath party and giving the government back to the people, we have a chance to build something that will last.
The Baathists will simmer down once Saddam is swinging from the end of a rope and all hope is lost of returning him to power.
12:18 am
we’re getting off-topic, but all our technology have severe limitations against the insurgent in an urban area.
To be sure. And what we are doing now in Iraq, if we are going to be doing any more of it in the future almost requires the development of a different kind of military force. More like a paramilitary police force designed to fight an insurgency and train the host police. We have done pretty well at training the Iraqi army but haven’t done such a good job with the police. Our combat forces are not configured or trained to be good police, they are trained to be a good combat force.
We almost need a few “peacekeeping” brigades that are really paramilitary police. They would provide mainly a police function but a bit more heavily armed than average police, trained in combat tactics, able to call in air support/military surveillance assets, etc. Their main function would be checkpoints, house searches, neighborhood patrols. We are currently asking our regular combat forces to do these things and that really isn’t what we pay them to do. We pay them to kill opposing military forces.
1:02 am
crosspatch,
Robert D. Kaplan is great. He is a journalist that actually gets deeply entrenched with the soldiers mainly army special forces and marines. You should read “Imperial Grunts”. It is a very interesting read. Apparently, he is also an advisor for the army. He was once a soldier for the IDF; so he has more military experience than the average journalist.
This is a direct quote from Wikipedia about him:
“Kaplan predicts that the age of mass infantry warfare is probably over and has said that the conflict in Iraq caught the U.S. Army in between being a “dinosaur” and a “light and lethal force of the future.”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_D._Kaplan
Hey bubbafett;
Most people remember how glorious a victory WWII was, but not very many people remember the military failures during the war and the problems that accompanied occupation of Germany.
5:34 am
Crosspatch-
What do you need a massive Army right now for??
Nationbuilding. You cannot do it, without securing the infrastructure first. You cannot do it, without enough men to police the area, set security, provide for a reaction force and humanitarian, infrastructure assistance.
Great, we can destroy anything we want given our technological advantage…BUT OUR MISSION IN IRAQ AND AFG IS NOT TO DESTOROY THINGS, IT IS TO BUILD THEM. If our mission was simply to destroy the place, we would not have men manning checkpoints and walking around in the streets getting shot at. Only boots on the ground, will win this thing. It is why we are attmpting to get the Iraqis trained up to do it… but we cannot stop the sectarian violence and insurgency when we are not there. We cannot control the situation, when we are not there. We cannot be there, without a large enough force on the groung. It is that simple.
You stated that the Dems political future rests on us losing.. that is not a position, that is rhetoric and politics …. the parties have the same position on this war.
6:44 am
Having a large number of troops on the ground in Iraq has its own downsides which more than offset the benefits. First, such a force would help to propigate the notion of a permanent occupying force. That notion would play right into the hands of the insurgents. Such a force would also increase the number of Americans that would be available as targets. That in terms of direct military success would mean nothing if not for the psychological impact we all know it would have on the modern American citizen. In this day and age America expects low to non-existant casualities. One can debate the idiocy of such an expectation but it is reality none the less. Support at home is essential and more boots on the the ground would drain that support in the long run. The Iraqis themselves must fill that particular role and they are every single day in more and more numbers.
8:33 am
The electrical supply problems in Iraq are well documented to the fact that many of the population now have air conditioners now that did not have them before. The total kw being delivered is about what was there in Saddam days, it is just that the demand has jumped so much it is overloading the infrastructure.
This will be dealt with when stability improves.
Even in our own country not torn by war, we have rolling blackouts and such. To not expect less in an area where infrasture is attacked to make life bad, but which doesn’t catch as many headlines, should not be a great shock.
9:41 am
Electricity and oil production in Iraq remain below pre-war levels. The high power feeder lines and pipelines are frequently attacked. Certainly there is the legacy of sanctions and old infrastructure. The administration likes to emphasis this point while not discussing the success the insurgency has had at interdicting the power and oil lines. 6 hours of power a day really sucks in 120 degree heat.
12:22 pm
“You stated that the Dems political future rests on us losing.. that is not a position, that is rhetoric and politics ….”
The truth is that the Dems political future does depend upon our failure. This may bug many Republicans, but when W ran for president the first time around he made the statement that as a nation the US will not try to be nation builders. It was because of the failure in the Balkans and Somalia that prompted that position and also won the support of millions of Americans in 2000.
2:26 pm
Nationbuilding. You cannot do it, without securing the infrastructure first.
Right, and I say that is not the task of a combat force. The purpose of a combat force is combat. If you want to have a nationbuilding force, then we need a separate branch of the military to do it. People don’t have a switch you can flip like some kind of robot. You can’t send them into battle to destroy an enemy and then flip a switch and turn them into a humanitarian police force.
Electricity and oil production in Iraq remain below pre-war levels.
Untrue. It varies. Oil production is back to about the same with the re-opening of the northern pipeline.
Electricity production has been higher than pre-war levels and is current about at pre-war levels. The problem is that consumption is has grown more than production. People that never had air conditioners, TVs, and refrigerators have them now. Electricity demand has gone through the roof.
What you are now finding is that private entrepreneurs are buying large generators and selling electricity to the neighborhood when the official grid is off.
Just before the war, official production was at 4400 MW (down from a maximum of around 9000 MW in 1991 … in other words, production had already been steadily dropping sice 1991 to 2003) August 2004’s peak production was 4707 MW in August, about 300 MW more than at the start of the war.
People often look at Baghdad and extrapolate from that for the entire country. Not a good thing to do. Many towns that never had electricity under Saddam now have it 24×7. Electricity supplies are stable in the Northern sections of Iraq. Supply is much more available in the Southern parts too. Baghdad’s demand for electricity has skyrocketed. It is estimated that Baghdad will need three times the pre-war level of electricity simply to service current demand 24×7. Doing that with oil for fuel is probably not the best approach. Oil is too valuable for other products to be burned in bulk as power plant fuel.
One thing that is being done is to attempt to capture and use the natural gas that Iraq has traditionally flared off as a waste product. They have little infrastructure for handling gas and it is slowly being built.
2:35 pm
For what I consider to be probably the best data available to the average individual, see This PDF document from The Brookings Institution. In particular, page 31
2:56 pm
Right, and I say that is not the task of a combat force. The purpose of a combat force is combat. If you want to have a nationbuilding force, then we need a separate branch of the military to do it. People don’t have a switch you can flip like some kind of robot. You can’t send them into battle to destroy an enemy and then flip a switch and turn them into a humanitarian police force.
That’s not exactly true. Army SF specializes is doing just what you described. The military, as a team, can do much of the task. We have civil affairs, CE, engineers, the whole bit. The military’s capabilities are only designed to get things going in the short-medium term however. Civilian specialists are needed to built a permanent infrastructure.
As far as power and oil go, it’s true that levels occasionally go above pre-war levels, but most months they do not. I don’t see how anyone can call the electricity and oil situation a success. At best we have been maintaining a status quo for the past three years. Things won’t improve as long as the insurgents are able to interdict the power and pipelines and prevent new infrastructure from being built.
Yes, the north and south are doing pretty well, especially the north. The North and south are also the safest areas of the country with the least violence. The Kurds have been autonomous up there for a decade and their infrastructure has remained relatively intact. The south is in a similar situation. Even in the relatively safe north and south, few areas have reliable power 24X7 from the grid. In the areas with the most violence, Baghdad and the surrounding cities, the situation is the worst. The areas around Baghdad that have the most violence account for about 60% of the country’s population, so I’d say that is significant. It’s not just the capital, but it’s also all of the surrounding provinces.
Even with generators there isn’t 24X7 power in most of the country, especially when there are fuel problems, which there often are.
So, overall, the power and oil situation does not look good. I stand by my earlier statement that much of this is due to interdiction by insurgents, which isn’t widely reported outside of Iraq. Until the security situation is improved to the point where the the infrastructure can be rebuilt, the best we can hope to do is what we’re doing now – simply hold the line against collapse.
3:04 pm
The Brooking’s chart pretty much confirms everything I’ve said. There is a huge variability from month-to-month but the average is somewhere around the pre-war level. That is because of attacks on the infrastructure. The levels of electricity for Baghdad are consistently about 1/2 of pre-war levels.
The stated goals at the bottom of the chart speak for themselves. The electricity situation is, like I said earlier, stagnant at best.
4:51 pm
I wanted to apologize for the posts that have been placed on this board under the pseudonym “BMOC.”
Whoever is posting these messages is providing a link to a blog that I maintain. However, BMOC is not me. I have never been to this site before noticing the amount of traffic coming to my blog from this site.
“BMOC” is almost certainly an individual who lurks on my site from time to time who wants to embarrass me by posting idiotic messages linking to my site on conservative-themed websites. The sad thing is that he’s been a victim of this himself (liberal posters putting up asinine posts linking to his website), and I stood up for him and did what I could to help track down the folks responsible for the faux postings.
Apparently he’s embraced the very tactic he was victimized by.
At any rate, I just wanted to let you all know that “BMOC” is not me, and while I’d be more than happy to have you stop by my blog, I’d never say something as dopey what BMOC is attributing to me.
Thanks, and sorry again for the silly posts put up in my name.
Cheers,
Ted
7:41 pm
I believe BMOC is a bot. It appears to be sprinkling identical one-liner posts to many websites, a different one-liner each day. It appears that it might be a script and could be simple filling in the “website” field with the address of your blog. I noticed the same exact BMOC posts at several other sites.
7:59 pm
Have a look at the June number and you will notice a significant jump. Expect that to continue. One of the reasons for that jump is the completion of natural gas pipelines to some existing generation capacity.
It is not the function of SF to operate as a general occupation force. Yes, they are trainers but really designed to train insurgents or counter-insurgents in areas where we don’t have an “official” presence. If we are going to do this kind of thing again, we need a special kind of unit. It would be a special MP unit in my imagination. It is difficult to describe this kind of unit as there is nothing in existance to compare it to but if we are going to go on a “nationbuilding” spree, we had better have them. They would have quite a bit of police training and infantry and some special ops skills. Think of MP crosstrained as infantry with Ranger school and you are getting close.
Combat forces would initially clear out combatant formations and these guys would come in behind them as a policing function to maintain order. The combat troops could be based nearby out of sight and used for quick reaction should someone get their ass in a sling. We are currently attempting to do this function with our regular combat forces and I just don’t believe they are the best tool for the job. In fact, I don’t believe we have the tool in our box that we need in order to do this job. It might not be cost effective to build one either because we haven’t faced this kind of task since WWII. In post-WWII Europe, we had a much more developed Civil Affairs branch operating in occupied areas. Even so it took over 5 years to quell violence across Germany. Political assasinations were common in places like Berlin long after the war was over.
The main point is that we are not seeing any popular support of these “insurgents”. They are simply being disruptive and that is very easy to do and doesn’t take a lot of support or infrastructure. A dozen people can raise holy hell and be very difficult to find.
The Iraqis have had about two weeks to start to get a grip on the situation. I am prepared to give them some time.
10:00 pm
I did notice the June numbers. It’s strange they have June numbers since it’s not even July yet. I don’t know their methodology, but it appears they take a snapshot on the first of the month instead of an average over the month. That will give some wonky figures if that’s the case. We’ll see if the trend continues as you suggest.
There is enough popular support to maintain the insurgency. That’s all an insurgency needs. They have a lot of support in key cities and neighborhoods in Baghdad. Undermining and coopting this support is the key to defeating the insurgency.
The support for foreign fighters and terrorists has dropped considerably and will likely drop further. Only the most radical Sunni factions seem to support them now, which will limit their operations considerably.
2:20 pm
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