"A War We Just Might Win"

Great Debates
101

I listened to excerpts from the confirmation hearing of Admiral Mullen for Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff today. He was picking his words very carefully, but when asked by Senator Graham (R-SC) if he was optimistic that the political situation would improve he basically said “no”. The military success of the surge, in and of itself, is meaningless. Sure, it’s great if security can be improved, even if only marginally. But we can’t (and shouldn’t) be the Iraqi police force forever, and if they can’t reach a political solution then we’re wasting our time.

I’m of the opinion that our forces are simply a crutch which is enabling the Iraqi parliament to put off the needed political progress that must be made to pull that country together. I don’t advocate an immediate and rapid withdrawal, but we need to start the process or those guys are never get their shit together.

102

I agree…I don’t think the lull is significant of anything. What I meant though was what do you think it meant that July was so bad? Or the last several months for that matter (violence has been on the upswing, as have US combat losses IIRC)?

And based on how the Iraqi’s have performed in the field thus far do you feel this was or is a good suggestion? Whats your assessment of this particular policy and how do you feel Bush et al were wrong to disagree with it? Was this the only point of disagreement?

What were his reasons, what alternatives did he give…and do you agree with them and with his other assessments? Or do you only consider him a ‘highly respected general’ because of his disagreement with the surge…or with Bush?

Did Petraeus disagree with this assessment? What has it got to do with the situation that Petraeus is dealing with now? Do you propose the possibility of time travel to correct past fuckups…or are you claiming that because we fucked up initially we should just throw up our hands now and call it quits?

Yes he did. And he should have been listened too. Again though, do you feel that Petraeus disagreed with this assessment that we should have initially sent more combat power? Does Franks disagree with adding more combat force now? What do you base your assessment of Franks being a ‘highly respected general’ on (he is, but why do YOU think so?)? Why do you agree with his other assessments…or do you only list him because of his disagreement with Bush?

But they disagree about different (and in some cases diametrically opposed to each other) things. The only common thread was they disagreed. BTW, you should check again…not all of them were or have been retired IIRC. For instance, if you had clicked on the link I provided it says under years of service for Casey 1970 - Present, suggesting he’s still active duty.

It remains to be seen if he’s right or not…or if he’s allowed to do what he plans without political interference for that matter. What specifically do you feel makes him unqualified for his position or to make a meaningful evaluation of the situation? Why do you feel that those other generals you listed are more competent or skillful?

-XT

103

Exactly. It means that the death toll for Americans has returned to where it was in March of this year. It would be hard for it to be going up, because May was the third highest death toll that we’ve suffered in Iraq to date.

104

I think that’s just the surge in action; lots of little fights for blocks and neighbourhoods.

Looking just at Baghdad, back at the start of June US and Iraqi forces controlled fewer than one-third of Baghdad’s neighbourhoods.
By the end of June, Half of Baghdad under control.
And now, in late July, Greater than 50 percent of Baghdad is currently in control of coalition or Iraqi security forces
We appear to have stalled, with our forces exposed.

The Centcom Casualty reports, seem to bear that out with most deaths occuring among Multi-National Division - Baghdad (MND-B) soldiers.

105

This thread has a lot of tangents. I’ll attempt to cut to the heart of the matter, addressed to anyone who supports the occupation (all six of you).

This will be about the third time I’ve asked this question on this board, if my memory serves me correctly. As always, any answer would be greatly appreciated.

Can you point me to a conflict where 80+% of the population wanted the occupiers to leave and where 55% supported the idea of killing the occupiers and then the occupiers somehow tweaked their rule so as to engender the support and good will of the local population?

That’s the point of basic counter insurgency. Win the people. Or the “hearts and minds” as some like to say.

From my reading, I haven’t been able to find such an occurrence in history. Maybe it happened somewhere, before polling was invented. Maybe it happened in modern times and I am simply ignorant of it, in which case an education could serve me.

Regardless, that’s what we’re facing in Iraq right now. From everyday experience, it seems very easy to slip up and become hated and nearly impossible to reverse a deeply held anger. What would Bush have to do, for example, to create the grass roots support he had in 2002? Something crazy, something wildly improbable, right?

So what are we doing in Iraq? We’ve increased the troop levels by ~20,000. You call that a surge? That’s more like noise when graphed against our historical presence, especially taking into consideration the 100,000 contractors. Baghdad has a population of seven million. You think 20,000 makes a dent?

We’ve tweaked the way our soldiers interact with the civilian population, so as not to be as ham fisted as it was earlier under Rumsfeld. That’s very good. You can look at the numbers and see a lot less civilians die from U.S. actions. That’s progress. Yet, as one can see from looking at the metrics from various reports, things aren’t improving. At best, some are hovering, while others get worse. Or you can play some tricks, like saying we’re turning a corner because there’s been a drop in civilian deaths (just don’t point out that we’re declining from a peak) or screwing with the way you classify bombings and sectarian deaths.

If 3000 corpses filled with drill holes are collected from the streets one month, then 2800 the next, then 2600, does that mean things are improving? It does if your name is Tony Snow. But no one ever asks what it means if the next month after that 3400 are collected.

Or maybe Bush was right when he said:

Don’t even bring up basic infrastructure. What would happen to any American city where electricity was available 2 hours a day and the average summer temp was 120 degrees? What if the water wasn’t drinkable? Schools? Colleges? Hospitals? Doctors? Industry? Massive unemployment? An actual society? Gee, I wonder why they’re so angry and 90,000 Iraqis are leaving their country per month.

Anyone who claims progress is being made after just six months of this surge is gonna have a lot of documentation to go through to prove it’s not just random fluctuations, outside of massive improvements happening all the sudden. I agree with the administration though, it will take years to see any real progress. They’ve used the analogy of the Korea model, of long term occupation. So why are we talking about the magical month of September? Kick the can down the road…

Even if one believes the surge is working great, it’s not a long term solution. It’s going to collapse sometime around spring of 2008 due to the way rotations work. Unless Bush and friends decide to extend the tours even further, the surge will be done by then.

Basically what I’m getting at is this is all half-assed. We’re attempting to just hold onto what precious little control we have over Iraqi society. We need a draft, another trillion dollars, and a transformation of the U.S. into war time footing. We need half a million men in Baghdad alone (1 soldier for every 14 civilians). Otherwise, what we’re doing right now is just a delaying action until 2009, when Hillary Clinton can have a shot at making things even worse.

Note: for the purpose of the above post, ignore our imperial ambitions in Iraq. Pretend we cared about democracy and freedom, for debate’s sake. Ignore the oil law.

106

Let’s keep in mind that the whole purpose of still having our military in Iraq is to stand up the Iraq military and with them, to provide a secure setting for Iraqi politicians to get their shit together.

I don’t think militarily imposed peace and quiet is the answer. After all, Saddam’s Iraq had little or no violence between sects. The only reasonable answer is for Sunni, Shi’ite and Kurd to reach an accomodation that allows each of them to live in peace.

Pointing to military success is futile unless it is used to reach political accomodation.

How long do you suppose that will take?

107

It’s hard to do anything with the current level of violence. For example, to cure the unemployment, you might hypothetically start a public works project to fix the electrical and water infrastructure, or attempt to train engineers or repair neighborhoods or something. But you can’t, because they would be bombed, shot at, and killed in their sleep for working with the enemy. So you need peace and quiet for something like that to happen.

108

All the generals get the highly respected rating until they come into disagreement with the latest ideas of Bush ,Cheney and Rummy. Casey was broomed out of Iraq for disagreeing with the surge. That is the point All the others were retired thats a good enough trend for me. Toss in Tagawa . He was asked to investigate Abu Grahib and he did. When he found evil doing ,he was retired.
Pataeus does not get any special respect . Just another general until he disagrees with the Shrub .Then history.

109

It remains to be seen if GeeDubya is right, as far as that goes, and whether he is allowed to do what he plans without political interference. So I guess I don’t quite take your point. Many of us have formed opinions on that. You amongst us.

A hippy may seem like that last possible person to consider miltary matters, but I’ve played Civ and read Thucididyes (well…only in translation…) so I am fool enough to hazard a skepticism.

The plan centers around leaving “eclaves” in pacified territory, to support a sense of trust and stability amongst the locals, by remaining a permanent presence. This is, of course, very different from the ancient plan of leaving garrisons. Very different. Not the same, at all.

Because leaving garrisons saps the strength, soldiers must man garrisons. They tend to be the soldiers less useful in situations of direct combat: the older, the married, the sane. Even if it is unintended, the dynamic works: the combat soldiers want to leave garrison duty, the rest of us prefer it. The combat non-comm searches for the men he needs, he searches in the garrisons. Sooner or later, the garrisons are the weakest of the soldiers. Inevitably, the enemy figures this out. Duh.

And, of course, a garrison is classicly a salient, a protrusion into enemy territory that is therefore vulnerable. Even an undermanned enemy can amass force in one location, if the propaganda and morale benefits are worth it. Of course, the garrisoning force can react with overwhelming firepower, if they possess such. Which we do. So if the enemy amasses his force on a salient, we rely on our overwhelming air and firepower to make the effort costly. The effect of collateral damage on the indigenous personnel is calculated, and found acceptable.

In this scenario, the garrison is basicly bait. And, of course, the enemy may be prudent, may not risk it. In which case, the enclave holds for as long as the enemy will tolerate it. A win-win when it works, a Dien Ben Phu when it doesn’t.

And if I can figure this out, what makes you think that they can’t?

110

If you have the stomach, watch this. And then tell us why you’re still trying to justify occupying/taking-over Iraq:

July 23rd Salee Story

Afterwards, I’d like to hear XT pipe-up again on the reasons most of us are against this carnage due to partisan Oped’s and disgruntled generals.

111

Y’know, claiming that a poster’s “education did not take” and then providing a simple dictionary definition after that same poster has provided a citation to a report that notes the difficulty that real life people and courts of law have had wrestling with the real world application of the word is rather silly.

Your snide comment is not moving the discussion forward and your dictionary definition really provides no rebuttal–the more so since, of all the definitions open to you, you chose to rely on the etymological dictionary. Now, there is no one on this board with a greater love of etymology than I, (some love it as much), but an abbreviated etymology only shows origins, not specifically current usage.

112

I don’t know if any polls were conducted. But I’d imagine we weren’t real popular in Germany or Japan in 1945. However, our actions there convinced the local populations that we were doing good and eventually won them over.

That’s something so many of the “blind support” crowd seem to not understand. We’re not opposed to any occupation - we’re opposed to this occupation. We’re not opposed to any war - we’re opposed to this war. We’re not opposed to any president - we’re opposed to this president. We aren’t simply opposing anything that the Bush administration says about Iraq just for the sake of opposition - we’ve looked at the situation and we’re rendering judgement on what’s happened. We’re calling the Bush administration liars because they have repeatedly lied and we’re calling them failures because they have repeatedly failed. And we’re angry because the soldiers in Iraq are the ones who are paying the price for the lies and failures of the politicians in the White House.

113

They argued that things are rosy in Iraq?

Yes, I can see how you got ‘things are rosy’ out of that.

My attitude is simple: Leaving Iraq precipitously could have dramatic consequences, as in world-changing consequences. It is worth trying everything possible to avoid that. Everything. The current situation truly sucks, and the odds of success are not good. But they’re also not zero.

My take on the current situation is that for years Donald Rumsfeld managed the war idiotically. Petraeus is far from being Bush’s man. He was basically ousted by Rumsfeld because he didn’t agree with Rumsfeld’s ‘whack a mole’ strategy, which just enraged the population without doing a damned thing about the violence except maybe adding to it.

Petraeus is there now because Rumsfeld got cashiered. And he got cashiered largely because the left pushed for it. And good on ya. You were right. I was a Rumsfeld fan in the very early days of the administration, but it became clear to me that he was pushing an ideology ahead of the facts. So you helped get rid of him.

And now we have Petraeus. This is the guy who literally wrote the book on counterinsurgency operations - the book that Rumsfeld ignored. So Rumsfeld goes, and Petraeus gets his shot to do it ‘by the book’.

The results, so far, look guardedly promising. Sectarian violence is down, civilian deaths are down by a third, American casualty rates could be dropping (although I’ll concede that it could be statistical noise we’re seeing, and not a real trend.

The political situation sucks. I think Malaki is playing a stalling game. He controls the majority government, and if he can wait out the Americans, he wins. So he has no real incentive to work for political accomodation. This is a big freaking problem. Perhaps The Nation is right, and the U.S. should switch support to Allawi. The other hope is that if the security situaton improves enough, there may be enough people on both the Shia and Sunni side who are willing to work together to achieve a peace. As people’s lives improve, they have more to lose from a civil war, and they tend to oppose it. Civil wars are waged by the desperate, so anything the U.S. can do to improve the security situation helps to defuse tension.

In any event, the guy says he’ll report in September. I think he’s earned the right to have at least that long, based on his reputation, proven history of success, and the preliminary results so far. Why are you so desperately against giving him another two months? Hell, that’s only a third of a Friedman unit.

114

Well, nothing is going to happen in Congress until then anyway. My problem is that I’m more interested in what Ambassador Crocker has to say than what Peteaeus has to say. And much like our Congress, nothing is going to happen in the Iraqi Parliament between now and the Sept. report.

115

The Iraqi Parliament going into recess is a disgrace. To me, it seems like more of Malaki’s stalling tactics - Iraqi politicians are saying they might as well recess because the Malaki government hasn’t produced anything for them to discuss.

So as far as I’m concerned, some of the moral burden for the outcome of this has shifted to the Iraqis. So I think we should let Petraeus report, and find out where things stand. Then hopefully there will be some clarity on the options available. If the security situation improves further, and the political conditions on the ground shift, we can hope there may be an opening to either pressure the Malaki government, or throw support somewhere else, and further improve the situation.

On the other hand, if the violence goes up, Iraqi opinion continues to increase against the U.S., and the tribal leaders start shifting away from the U.S. again, it’s time to get out.

116

It depends on who is being asked. For some, the metric is simply “as close to right now as possible”, without any calculation about what the ramifications of that versus say the ramifications of leaving a year from now. If your metric is, as Red Fury seems to use, reducing the number of deaths, then one need assess what the death toll would be upon our leaving now and whether it might be less if we left in two months, one year, five years, or ten.

I was using good and bad in a relative sense. I should have said “better” and “worse”, but it didn’t seem to work as well with the “tick marks”. But to answer you, I don’t know “when” the best time is. Unlike the army of generals on this board and elsewhere on the left, I don’t know enough of the facts to make an reliable assessment. I will say that it appears that leaving three months from now will be better than had we left three months ago.

And even if I were Patreus and knew all that was going on and thought that based on his metrics and the knowledge he has of progress (or lack thereof) that December 1 would be a good date, I hardly would view that date as etched in stone. It’s war, shit happens, stuff gets screwed up, plans get fucked for whatever reason. When that happens you reassess, you just don’t stick to some date because it seemed like a good idea four months ago.

117

Surprise of surprises, we disagree. I chose the etymological dictionary definition because he was alreaqdy supplied a general dictionary definition and I thought that seeing where the phrase came from clarify thiings further. It’s not as if its origin is ancient. It’s rather current, relevant, and in line with how people who are not trying to continually piss on the war or Bush understand the term.

And I don’t see how either of those cites changes anything. The first one tasks itself with defiingin it as genocide, the second merely states that the term is sometimes wanting. But the articles broader guidelines do not push our role in Iraq into it. For one, we are actually trying to help the Iraqi people. Or are you one of those who shares the “insightful” views of Der Trihs, et al.

118

Against all odds the poor bastards beat South Korea and win the Asia Cup and two suicide bombers killed 50 celebrators. It reminds me of this Onion article.

119

A couple more Friedman units ought to do it.

120

Still making all comments personal, I see, even though the specific point of my earlier post was that such behavior was counterproductive.

So when RedFury explicitly notes that the dictionary definitions are not useful in the current context, providing a citation to demonstrate where the professionals at law are having difficulty with it, you simply turn it into an insult that the (actually inadequate) “education did not take” and when I point out the problem with your behavior, you attempt to make it personal by trying to lump me in with the attitudes of other posters.

As long as you continue to resort to ad hominem attacks on other posters while ignoring the actual points of discussion, you are going to make your arguments irrelevant to this (or any) discussion.
I do not even particularly agree with RedFury’s use of “genocide,” but dismissing his arguments by resorting to a dictionary, then compounding that avoidance of discussion by making framing your response as a personal insult fails to establish a valid discussion point and renders your posts counterproductive.

Stop turning these discussions into personality feuds.