Year: 2003

Al Jazeera. A perfect career development. No surprise that the new editor of the English-language Al-Jazeera website is a former BBC journalist. Meanwhile, Glenn Reynolds has some sociological observations.

I wish I knew. I doubt anyone but the people running this war know for sure. And at some point, you have to trust them. But there’s some hope to be gleaned at least by what hasn’t happened. The oil fields seem secured and haven’t been set aflame. No chemical or biological weapons have yet been used. Iran is quiescent. The Turks have not invaded. Israel hasn’t been attacked. These are all good signs. So far, the worst hasn’t happened. But there are obvious worries as well. The Shi’a population in the South is still not sure of an allied victory. It seems we under-estimated their skittishness about an allied war – due in large part to their understandably bitter feelings at being betrayed in 1991. If we had more overwhelming force in the region, that may have been less of a problem. But it appears we don’t, for reasons of logistics and Turks but also of war planning. The fact that Saddamite forces are now firing into civilian areas in Basra is therefore a horrifying but also hopeful sign. And the Brits, it seems, are determined to try and support the civilians. As I write, they’re probably moving in. (Note to self: this is what a real ally looks like.)

The money paragraph in the Washington Post this morning (I cannot read the New York Times right now) is the following:

An uprising in Basra has the potential to alter the political landscape across southern Iraq in a matter of days, forcing Hussein loyalists to flee for their lives and placing Shiite leaders in control of local affairs. Likewise, if U.S. forces are able to quickly quash Republican Guard units around Karbala and Kut, Hussein’s government in Baghdad would find itself without regular military defenses against a U.S. attack.

That’s the strategy. But the deeper truth is that speed, while wonderful, isn’t everything. We have more and more troops coming in; Saddam is losing hundreds daily and is slowly running out of options which aren’t war crimes. Shouldn’t we wait for the biggest possible force before moving on Baghdad? Gregg Easterbrook has a good, if limited, analogy:

Saddam’s professional army is now fighting like it doesn’t plan to give up – exactly as the French fought in the early days of the Nazi attack in 1940. And that makes perfect sense: Saddam’s professional army doesn’t yet have to give up because it still has men and materiel. But every day it will have less of both, while every day the United States has more, as more forces enter the region. France in 1940 went from determined resistance to collapse almost without warning. This may still happen to Iraq, just not the in 48 or 72 hours that commentators foolishly predicted.
Iraq cut and ran in 1991 in less than 100 hours because the fight then was to expel Saddam’s legion from a neighbor; pretty much the moment Iraqi commanders realized they were being pounded, they turned and sprinted back to the safe turf of their home country, where the coalition left them alone. Now Saddam’s legions, and his Baath Party, have no safe turf to which to retreat. So they’re not yielding, at least not yet, just as the French, with nowhere to retreat, initially resisted the odds.

Makes sense to me. But it also makes sense to bring more troops into the theater as soon as we possibly can. So we need patience now. And domestic nerve.

It’s smart, dependable and, I’d say, worrying. Money quote:

In an important sense, the [fedayeem] attacks have worked. As Col. William Grimsley, commander of the 1st Brigade, put it, “They are diffusing some of our attention, causing us to fight them instead of focusing all our attention on our larger objective.”
The division commander, Maj. Gen. Buford Blount, is candid about the threat. “The Baath Party is very well organized and very active with a lot of forces in Najaf and Samawah,” he said in an interview Monday night. “And they are capable of responding fluidly to us.”
It has always been the hope of the American war planners to avoid Iraq’s cities, so as to minimize both American and Iraqi casualties. But there are doubts. “I think these guys are going to keep coming out and harassing us,” Blount said. “I think eventually we’re going to have to go in there and kill them. I think we will have to kill them unless we can get rid of the top guy in Baghdad.”

If we are indeed shifting tactics to respond to the Southern threat of random Baath guerrillas, maybe it’s a good thing. Flexibility in war plans is not defeat. It’s an essential part of victory.

THE STRATEGY: Here’s a useful examination of the Rumsfeld strategy in Iraq. What is making armchair generals and some bloggers like me nervous is all, apparently, part of the plan.

IN DEFENSE OF THE STRATEGY: “Thus far the campaign resembles the brilliantly successful, life-sparing, WWII island-hopping strategy of Admiral Nimitz and General MacArthur. Yet no critic seems to have the depth of knowledge of military history to have recognized, let alone to have praised, the similarity. Bypassing, and leaving to die on the vine, cut-off pockets of resistance is an exemplary tactic. It is also one forced on CENTCOM by the Turkish denial of a second front to the 4th Infantry division. In the absence of the advantage a second front would have conferred, CENTCOM’s bypassing of cut-off Iraqi units is also exemplary of the flexibility afforded it by its existing preponderance of combat power on a single front. The long coalition supply lines may be harassed, but the bypassed enemy units – which will function only so long as their in situ ammunition lasts – haven’t the offensive power to sever them for long enough to defeat coalition forces, or even to delay significantly the concentration of forces for the assault on Baghdad.” – other reader insights, including a defense of Barry McCaffrey and a guffaw at Eric Alterman, on the Letters Page.

READ JONAH: A lot of common sense. I agree with him about the military being more helpful in galvanizing domestic morale. We need to know more about how we’re winning. We need a useful summary-cum-pep-talk. C’mon, Rummy. Tell it like it is.

This may be the best response to my worry yesterday about enough troops. It’s from the British commander dealing with Basra:

“What’s going on there is there are these unconventional forces, the people who really have gripped the people of Iraq in fear, the Saddam Fedayin, for example, the Baath party militia and the special security operation, and these are bunches of determined men who will fight hard because they have no future in Iraq and it is they that we have to get at.
“We have always known we would have to get at them and we did that last night in Zubayr.
“We went to their headquarters and engaged in contact with them, killed a number of them and made it quite clear that we are up for this and you are going to have a very hard time.”
“A column of armour did try to come out of Basra last night and 20 of them won’t be going back because they had the attention of our artillery.”

“Had the attention of our artillery.” He seems confident enough. he also said that “it was ‘slightly early days’ to be expecting a popular uprising against Saddam.” He spoke too soon, it seems.

GAY DISCHARGES HALVED: It’s a revealing statistic. Gay discharges from the military are down almost a third in one year. The reason? Primarily because the military is at war and needs good soldiers. Gay discharges always plummet in wartime – they have in every modern war. But doesn’t that suggest that the policy is not in fact essential to military effectiveness? If the military keeps gay soldiers when it’s at its most stressed, it’s surely conceding that they are an asset – not the morale-busting danger they are made out to be by some. The other reason for the drop may be that gradually, openly gay and lesbian servicemembers are coming out on the job and not being fired. Good commanders just ignore the policy to keep good soldiers. There are more and more cases of this happening. All in all, a good sign. But more evidence that what Dick Cheney once called “an old chestnut” of a policy needs to be retired as soon as this conflict is over.

Here’s NPR’s John Burnett, a guy who puts the term “liberation” of Iraq in parentheses, comparing himself with the BBC:

What’s interesting is that I think when you come over here and when you imbed with this, with this group and you in a sense become sort of part of the project of the invasion and pacification of a country, you cease to hear the dissonant voices against that project, un–un–until you tune in to the BBC. And even then, you know, they’re pretty muted.

Just so you don’t think I’m imagining this. The BBC is increasingly perceived, even by sympathetic parties, as the voice in part of the anti-war forces. Other lefties, like Katha Pollitt, who opposed the invasion of Afghanistan and refused to let her own daughter fly the American flag, see the BBC as their kind of news organization:

On BBC, there is serious discussion of how the invasion of Iraq is being received around the world — not so well, it turns out. There is much discussion of the bombing of civilians, of the apparent good cheer of the Iraqi leadership and the seeming lack of universal jubilation among the population; last night there were substantial interviews with an Iraqi official (or former official? missed that) and with Paul Wolfowitz. I’m a fan of NPR, but I have to say I think they’re missing an opportunity here.

I wonder if most listeners know that the BBC is the favorite station of the far left? How the Beeb ceased to become an objective news source and became a broadcast version of the Nation is one of the great tragedies of modern journalism.

THE BBC COMES UNSPUN: Two great stories. The first details why the Iraqi civilians in Basra are uniting with the Saddamies to resist the enemy invaders. The support for this theory? A Guardian correspondent:

Consider what happened in Basra last Saturday when there were air raids. The Qatari television channel al-Jazeera had a team in the city and it sent back graphic pictures of dead and wounded civilians which were widely shown in the Arab world. But these images have been all but ignored in the West, which seems more interested in pictures of the American prisoners of war. People do not take kindly to being bombed, even by “friendly forces”… There is an interesting article in the Guardian of 25 March from its correspondent, James Meek, who has been with the US Marines in Nasiriya. He shows how hostility to Saddam Hussein is not necessarily converted into support for the invasion.

Then, nine hours later, the BBC reports the following:

British forces on the outskirts of Basra have reported that a violent civilian uprising against Saddam Hussein’s regime has begun in the southern Iraqi city. Major General Peter Wall, British Chief of Staff at Allied Central Command in Qatar, confirmed that it appeared an uprising had taken place, but that it was in its infancy and British troops were “keen to exploit its potential”.

Suddenly, a different picture. Never mind.

It seems to me that this is where the real weakness is. We don’t have enough troops or materiel yet, thanks to the Turks. And if the Turks start anything, we could have a nightmare response from the Kurds. So far, so good. But unless we get major troops in there soon, we’re at real risk of things getting out of control. That’s why telling the Turks to cool it is probably the most important message we can send out right now. Sources reiterate to me that the sand-storms are our friend. We’re a little ahead of ourselves. Anything that can keep them in the dark while allowing us some rest and reinforcement can only be for the good. Meanwhile, I can’t help feeling that the Iraqi war crimes are only hardening morale and nerve at home.

COME, FRIENDLY BOMBS: From Kanan Makiya’s latest war diary: “”I have friends and relatives in Baghdad … But still those bombs are music to my ears.”

One report says the Brits are going in. Another says there’s a civilian uprising against the remnants of Saddam’s regime. I pray for both. If we can start getting humanitarian supplies to the Iraqis, it can only help relations with civilians. Meanwhile, sand-storms will presumably help us get more troops into position around Baghdad.

From the invaluable David Warren:

You wouldn’t know it from reading most of the papers, but the war in Iraq is going fabulously well. After just five days the U.S. Third Infantry Division and supporting units are approaching Baghdad. The immense steel column continues to drive reinforcements across the Iraqi desert, while its leading edge rumbles through the fields, villages, and waterways of Mesopotamia. To its rear, the “sleeper cells” of Ba’athist and terrorist hitmen waiting in ambush are being eliminated one by one. Special forces have seized bridges, dams, airstrips, oil and gas fields, and weapons sites all over the country. The U.S. Air Force has devastated leadership targets, military infrastructure, and the physical symbols of the Saddam regime, across Baghdad and elsewhere. Allied troops have Basra, Nasiriyah, now Karbala, and other Iraqi cities surrounded, and are tightening each noose. Snipers in the towns are being patiently deleted. The “Scud box” of western Iraq is in allied hands, daily more secure, and allied forces are building with endless air deployments to the northern front. In all, the allies have taken only a few dozen killed, and a couple hundred lesser casualties — many of these from small accidents within the most amazing and vast logistical exercise since our troops landed in Normandy (when we lost men at the rate of up to 500 a minute, liberating France). In just five days all this has been achieved! And while the most grisly parts of the campaign still lie ahead, all the worst fears have gone unrealized, so far.

I second that. And if we weren’t bending over backward to act scrupulously while the enemy behaves like barbarians, we’d be even further along.

THE MAIN WORRY: I’m not a military expert, so I offer this piece from the Washington Post just as food for thought. Do we have enough troops in time for the final battle? Have we gone too fast too soon? Those seem reasonable concerns to me, although I’m not qualified to take a side in the argument. But it is not too unreasonable to worry that with one northern front denied us, we need overwhelming force to smash through to Baghdad quickly enough. Do we have enough? And do we have enough humanitarian follow-through available soon enough to build support in the South? That’s what I want to know. If you see any useful information out there on this, please send it to me and I’ll link and post.

I guess I should mention: the BBC is not Britain. Check out these front-pages from today’s British press. The reason that the press is more supportive than the BBC is because there’s real competition among the papers and the Beeb is a mandatory government-run service staffed with the usual people who go into government-run media, i.e. left-wing hacks. Meanwhile, polling shows an enormous swing toward the pro-war camp. From the Guardian:

The 15-point swing in public opinion recorded by the ICM survey means that there is now a clear majority, 54 percent, who back military action, after a sharp rise from 38 percent just a week ago. The results represent a sudden and widespread shift in public mood in Britain. Opposition to the war has slumped in the past seven days from 44% to only 30% of the public, the lowest level since the Guardian began tracking public opinion on this issue last August.

I predicted this, but not to this extent. Blair too is reaping a sudden huge windfall of new support:

Both a weekend ICM poll and the latest YouGov poll also show significant strengthening of Mr Blair’s approval rating. In the ICM/News of the World poll, Mr Blair registered a plus-18 approval rating for his Iraq policy (compare that with his minus-11 showing in our own poll just a week previously). In the YouGov/Daily Telegraph poll, the improvement in Mr Blair’s standing runs well ahead of the growing support for the attack on Iraq. Labour’s own internal polling shows the swing is particularly strong among the skilled working-class voters, whose loyalties tend to determine elections, and lowest among the middle-classes.

Heck, I’d vote for him next time. Blair is teaching an old lesson: if you lead, they will follow.