Category: Iraq

Many Iraqis who have aided US occupiers and troops are now in extreme danger. Why will Bush not grant even 800 of the most urgent cases? Fred Kaplan wants to know. George Packer proposes a practical first step here.

A reader notes:

Americans are an impatient people. Everything seems to be driven by short term goals. So if I were fighting the Americans in Iraq and the surge meant really high losses, I would just fade into the woodwork for a few months.  The whole world knows that come next March the US has to start pulling out of Iraq. So instead of fighting and dying, why not just sit back and let the Americans arm you and train you. There will be plenty of time to kill each other after America reduces it forces back to pre surge levels.

I have to say I don’t know. I’m not sure anyone can know what will happen. One thing I’ve learned is that Iraq is what it is. And our ability to change it is as illusory as all the other imperial attempts to change it. I tend to agree with Gertrude Bell who tried a similar quixotic venture in 1916:

We rushed into the business with our usual disregard for a comprehensive political scheme. We treated Mesop[otamia] as if it were an isolated unit, instead of which it is part of Arabia… When people talk of our muddling through it throws me into a passion. Muddle through! why yes, so we do—wading through blood and tears that need never have been shed.

My optimistic military emailer from yesterday, it needs to be said, added this vital caveat:

Of course, all of this still means nothing if there is no political accommodation. There is not and has never been a military solution to Iraq.  The best we can do is keep chaos and fear from preventing a solution.

And the news on that front remains as dire as ever. That’s why I find Glenn Reynolds’ view of what’s happening in Iraq to be more than typically glib. Let’s hope he doesn’t unfurl a banner over his blog. It seems to me that we should all be thrilled at the sharp decline in violence in Iraq, alongside 160,000 US troops with a serious counter-insurgency strategy. I certainly didn’t think we could achieve that with that number of troops, and I’m still not entirely clear what the precise factors are behind it. But, despite this unexpected progress in bringing Iraq back from a hot civil war, I see no serious reason to believe that the potential for such a war re-booting is in any way "over". We still have no indication of the kind of national reconciliation that the surge was designed to engineer, and the president himself said was the sole criterion of success. That is the only meaningful rubric by which to judge the current strategy; and currently, it’s still failing – not because of the troops, but because of the Iraqi "leadership".

Sure, we could just use the short-term calm to get the hell out and hope for the best – but I thought that was the Democrats’ strategy, not Bush’s. (It’s basically my preferred strategy as well, at this point.) We have no idea what will happen when the surge ends, as it must, next spring. We have, thanks to Petraeus and exhausted troops, a once-only window of opportunity to rescue something from the wreckage. But that window closes soon – and only the Iraqi political leadership can take advantage of it. What reason do we have for believing they are now ready to sink their differences? Surely that’s the only basis to argue that the war is heading to a "successful close" rather than a permanent occupation. Or are they the same thing in the neocon mindset?

A reader writes:

I was utterly disillusioned regarding Iraq’s chances until very recently, and have been highly skeptical that any of the recent good news signaled any real progress. In the last couple of weeks, however, I’ve started to see cause for hope that I have been wrong. Some of it is the precipitous decline in violence, some the increasing willingness of ordinary Iraqis outside of Al Anbar to come forward and help us make things safer. The joint Shia-Sunni fatwa against violence is a part, as is the reopening of roads closed by the security deficit. The real reasons, however, that I’m able to muster some cautious optimism are my positive conversations with my girl, currently on her second deployment in Baghdad.  The significance of this is only evident if I back up and provide some perspective. We are both military intelligence, filling somewhat similar roles for different units. Our first deployments overlapped significantly, and we were able to compare my experience in northern Iraq with hers in Baghdad, and the contrast was a source of despair for her: despite Baghdad’s great resources, it became evident that our kind of intelligence was neglected and accomplishing nothing there. (I can’t elaborate on our kind of intelligence, except to say its exercise is expensive, somewhat arcane and does not involve anything like torture. Perhaps that explains its neglect in the Rumsfeld era.) For me, this fact elicited rage: many units were essentially reduced to driving around until something blew up – including convoys of which my fiancée was a part!  Meanwhile, attempts to share with Baghdad leadership the techniques that had worked so well in the north ran into excuses and disinterest. 2006’s promise to be the year that paid for all the mistakes faltered, then reversed.

This time around, it’s all different.

Whereas last time she had suffered from extensive free time to contemplate her inability to do anything about the wanton violence around her, this time there’s so much effective, relevant work to do she can barely find a free moment.  Far from feeling like she’s pushing on a rope, commanders now come seeking intelligence on which to base future operations.  Finally, things are the way they’re supposed to be.  No more detaining crowds of anonymous local nationals because we have no way of telling who the real malcontents are.  No more making ourselves the unwitting tools of one faction or another because our tools for identifying slander are limited.  From what I can tell troops in Baghdad are twice as effective and half as offensive as this time last year.  We may yet achieve security.

Of course, all of this still means nothing if there is no political accommodation. There is not and has never been a military solution to Iraq.  The best we can do is keep chaos and fear from preventing a solution. I’m still pretty damned upset that my girl was supposed to get out in July before our almost-broken Army involuntarily extended her into mid 2009, but if someone takes advantage of this window of opportunity, I think we’ll both feel it was worth it.  They’d better, because the Army won’t be able to provide another.

(Photo: Joe Raedle/Getty.)

Intel-Dump comments on that simultaneously depressing and hilarious video of US soldiers trying to train Iraqis to do jumping jacks:

For me, this reinforces why classic Foreign Internal Defense ("FID") missions focus on the elite units in a foreign country’s security forces. It’s just too hard to reform all of the educational, economic, civic and societal systems necessary to raise the lowest common denominator for general purpose forces or conscripts in a 3rd World country. It takes years to make meaningful improvements in these areas, and doing so is far beyond the capabilities of any advisory strategy. At best, maybe you can raise the bar for a few elite units through training, equipping and advising, and only if you field good advisers with the right resources and strategy.

Juan Cole gets up in Bush’s kool-aid:

The US embassy in Iraq should be closed. It is not safe for the personnel there. Some sort of rump mission of hardy volunteers could be maintained. But kidnapping our most capable diplomats and putting them in front of a fire squad is morally wrong and is administratively stupid, since many of these intrepid individuals will simply resign. (You cannot easily get good life insurance that covers death from war, and most State spouses cannot have careers because of the two-year rotations to various foreign capitals, and their families are in danger of being reduced to dire poverty if they are killed).

There is, in addition to the daily danger, no good escape route for civilian personnel from Baghdad. The troop escalation will be reversed by next year this time, and as the US draws down, the Green Zone is in danger of being overwhelmed by the Mahdi Army. The State Department employees sent there for two year missions are the ones who may end up in secret JAM prisons, as happened in Tehran in 1979.

Bush should not be allowed by Congress to commit this immoral act against the civilians who serve us so faithfully.

A report on the diplomats’ revolt can be read here.

(Photo: Land-mine victim and former pro-goverment village guard Murat Benek sits in his house with his friend on October 24 2007 in Hilal village in the southeastern Turkish province of Sirnak at the Turkey-Iraq border. The Turkish army has moved more throops to the Iraqi border after Kurdish rebels ambushed a military unit killing 12 soldiers and increasing pressure on the Turkish government to stage attacks against Kurdish rebel camps in Iraq. By Burak Kara/Getty Images.)

It’s good news, but befuddling. I thought the surge would mean more casualties but with the prize of real counter-insurgency. And we’ve certainly seen a decline in Iraqi deaths. Fred Kaplan spots a fascinating statistic that should surely merit further examination:

Since the surge began and Gen. Petraeus shifted the strategy to counterinsurgency, the number of U.S. airstrikes has soared.

From January to September of this year, according to unclassified data, U.S. Air Force pilots in Iraq have flown 996 sorties that involved dropping munitions. By comparison, in all of 2006, they flew just 229 such sorties—one-quarter as many. In 2005, they flew 404; in 2004, they flew 285.

In other words, in the first nine months of 2007, Air Force planes dropped munitions on targets in Iraq more often than in the previous three years combined.

More telling still, the number of airstrikes soared most dramatically at about the same time that U.S. troop fatalities declined. (Click here for month-by-month figures.)

My best bet is that Petraeus is doing the best he can with insufficient troop levels to succeed. Hence the airstrikes. But they can create more civilian casualties and alienate the populace. The emerging CW that the surge has "worked" seems to me to be extremely premature.

Riverbend is back, blogging about the Iraqi diaspora:

It is estimated that there are at least 1.5 million Iraqis in Syria today. I believe it. Walking down the streets of Damascus, you can hear the Iraqi accent everywhere. There are areas like Geramana and Qudsiya that are packed full of Iraqi refugees. Syrians are few and far between in these areas. Even the public schools in the areas are full of Iraqi children. A cousin of mine is now attending a school in Qudsiya and his class is composed of 26 Iraqi children, and 5 Syrian children. It’s beyond belief sometimes. Most of the families have nothing to live on beyond their savings which are quickly being depleted with rent and the costs of living.