Stunning recap of how Bush's approach to Iraq failed, and the idiocy of escalation.

[ProSense]

Sunday, March 18, 2007

Kahl: The US Military and Counter-Insurgency in Iraq

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Phase 1: Denial. This period lasted from the fall of the regime until April 2004...

Phase 2: Learning curve. From the spring of 2004 to the late summer of 2005, the U.S. military woke up to the seriousness of the insurgency...

Phase 3: Getting it. By the late summer and early fall of 2005, the mindset of the U.S. military had changed substantially...Still, despite some limited efforts to implement this new approach in a handful of areas and the November 2005 announcement by the White House of a new “National Strategy for Victory in Iraq” designed around the intent to “clear, hold, and build” Iraqi population centers, the ability to effectively implement these changes in much of the country was complicated by a number of factors.

...Throughout 2006, most American forces remained hunkered down in large bases rather than nested within communities to provide local security, and plans were made to consolidate forces further.

...But, due to a mix of incompetence and infiltration by insurgent and militia groups, Iraq’s fledgling security forces were not up to the task. The resulting security vacuum, especially in Baghdad, accelerated the action-reaction spiral between Sunni insurgents and Shia militias that tipped Iraq into all-out sectarian warfare in the spring of 2006.

Phase 4: Doing it. None of this changed until January 2007, when Bush announced his intention to “surge” 17,500 additional forces to Baghdad (and 4,000 more to Anbar). More support troops have since been tapped to also go to Iraq. But, it is vital to remember, the surge is not the strategy -- it is a means to implement a strategy. The strategy is to to provide actual population security, tamp down sectarian violence, and create space for national reconciliation and reconstruction. To implement this strategy, Bush replaced Casey with Petraeus, who appears committed to implementing the COIN manual he co-sponsored, spreading American troops out into smaller bases from which they can work with Iraqi forces to provide local security. Moreover, even Odierno, the new MNC-I commander, appears to have learned something from his early mistakes, and he seems to be committed to treating the Iraqi population as the focus of operations.

. . . This shift makes sense from the perspective of COIN best practices and the new COIN field manual. There are other successful approaches to COIN, including what the briefing calls "the Roman Strategy" ("make a desert and call it peace"), which was basically the approach Saddam used to prevent sustained insurgency in Iraq. But, as the briefing properly notes, adopting this approach (or even somewhat softer, but still highly coercive COIN practices, such as those used by the Americans effectively in the Philippines between 1899-1902), is incompatible with norms against targeting civilians embraced by the U.S. military and political leadership. So, with the Roman strategy off the table, that leaves the "clear, hold, and build" option. However, as the briefing makes clear, this strategic shift may simply be too little, too late. What the briefing doesn't say is that it is also unclear whether employing COIN best practices will work in the context of not only a raging insurgency (in Baghdad, Anbar, Diyala), but also a sectarian civil war (in Baghdad, Diyala, and increasingly Kirkuk), diffuse criminal anarchy and militia rivalry (in the South), and endemic separatist tendencies (in Kurdistan). . .

Summary: After a year of denial and years of ignoring diplomacy in favor of a military solution, the Bush admin now wants to implement a military solution. Problem the insurgency is "raging" in Baghdad, Anbar, Diyala, "sectarian civil war" has gripped most of Iraq and spread to Kirkuk, criminal anarchy and militia rivalry is rampant in the South, and all further complicated by "endemic separatist tendencies" in Kurdistan.

[ProSense]

1. WaPo editorial spins "Lessons of War."

The lies of today's WaPo editorial, "Lessons of War" dissected...

here:

One wonders if the Washington Post was ever tempted to say, after four years of "breathtaking and infuriating arrogance, ignorance and insouciance," after four years of following the same course with only the slogans changing, after four years of unending violence and death, the time for patience is long past.

and here:

Washington Post: Stupidity Got Us Into This Mess Stupidity will get us out.

This editorial is a festival of weasel words - an attempt to be on all sides of an issue about which there are two sides: you are with George Bush and his policy of invading Iraq as the means to fix America's economic problems and establish a permanent Republican Party State, or you are against them. Bush has shown that he will take any grant of power, and use it as he sees fit. Iraq is simply one example, the use of a PATRIOT Act provision to fire attorney's who were not partisan enough is another good example. The Washington Post editorial rationalizes, lies, engages in logical fallacies and has, as its premise, the undemocratic assumption that elites, now matter how badly the lie, cheat, steal, bungle or just out right fuck up - are supposed to be in charge, and the question is how to pass the ruin on to others. This is an attitude that leads to the collapse of a powerful nation, and eventually to revolution, of the violent kind. Either the ordinary people of a country are so spineless and stupid as to march over the cliff - or they rebel and slaughter the elites that they blame for what happen. History has shown the revolutions often target the wrong people as much as the right ones.

[Joe Chi Minh]

2. I thik Thatcher ended up with mixed feelings about involuntary regime-change.

But her daughter, Carol recounted that on her recent trip to Argentina, a weeping woman whose husband was a Belrano victim, asked her, "How is your mother keeping? One day God will punish her."

[ProSense]

3. U.S. troop deaths show Sunni resilience

U.S. troop deaths show Sunni resilience

By STEVEN R. HURST, Associated Press Writer 55 minutes ago

BAGHDAD - Sunni insurgents, resilient despite the five-week security crackdown in the capital, killed at least six more U.S. troops over the weekend. A Sunni car bomber hit a largely Shiite district in the capital Sunday, killing at least eight people.

The American military said four U.S. soldiers died and one was wounded when the unit was struck by a roadside bomb in western Baghdad. During the ongoing security sweep in the capital and surrounding regions, the battalion had found eight weapons caches and two roadside bombs and helped rescue a kidnap victim, the military said.

A fifth soldier was killed in an explosion in Diyala, an increasingly volatile province just northeast of the capital. A Marine died in fighting the same day in Anbar province, the vast, largely desert region that sprawls west of Baghdad to the Saudi Arabian, Jordanian and Syrian borders. The regions are controlled by the Sunni insurgency.

All of the U.S. victims were killed on Saturday, the military said in a series of statements that also reported that a seventh soldier died from non-combat injuries but gave no other details. While U.S. and Iraqi troops have flooded the Baghdad streets and a heavily armored American column was sent north to adjacent Diyala province, attacks on American and Iraqi forces have been robust.

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