Gen. David Petraeus to Capitol Hill today. I find the whole spectacle hard to contemplate watching. We're going to keep troop levels at 160K for the rest of the year, hoping that something will turn up. Did any of us think last year when the surge was announced that it would not be a surge, but a permanent deployment of extra troops? And I wonder what's got to happen for the US to walk away? We keep setting benchmarks the Iraqis fail to meet, and then we forgive them and recommit ourselves. We keep talking about how well the training of Iraqi forces is going, but we've spent $22 billion on that project so far, and the best we can do is field a bunch of badly led soldiers who get their butts kicked at Basra. What an amazing day it is when Frank Rich -- Frank Rich! -- is one of the more sensible commentators on the Iraq debacle.
I hope somebody bothers to put to the general Andy Bacevich's questions:
1. General Petraeus, in the spring of 2003, on your first tour of duty in Iraq, you remarked to a reporter, “Tell me how this ends.” You are now on your third tour and the war is in its sixth year. Please tell us how this war ends.2. In addition, please provide an approximation of when it will end. With the war costing the United States $3 billion per week and 30 to 40 American lives per month, how many more years (or decades) will elapse before one of your successors is able to report that the mission in Iraq has been accomplished?
3. Members of the Joint Chiefs of Staff have openly expressed their concern that the Army and Marine Corps are badly overstretched. How much longer can our ground forces sustain these demands and what actions would you propose to alleviate the pressure?
I was out in the front yard yesterday talking to Esperanza, my neighbor. She's got two granddaughters in the military, both about to deploy to Iraq. One had a baby in November, but she and her husband (also military) are both headed to Iraq this week; Esperanza's other daughter flew to Germany to pick the newborn up.
"I don't understand why we're still doing this," she told me. "Those people aren't going to live in freedom like we know it. How long do you think this thing is going to go on?"
A long time, I said. We agreed that most Americans don't really care, except in a notional sense, because they don't know anybody fighting over there. Sorry, but I'm really down about this, and by this point tired of hearing the bullsh*t about "defining moments" and how we're just about to turn the corner. If the success of the surge depends on the good will of Muqtada al-Sadr, nothing is settled.
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We kinda upset the boat the day we invaded, the rest is details. We've killed thousands of combatants who opposed us as Sadr has done for 5 years. Assissination is exactly what we did to Saddam and his sons and numerous Al Qaeda guys, and all was arguably entirely justified as part of this war. Why would seeking out and killing Sadr be any different? What is war but killing the bad guys? And if the Iraqis are running down the clock as you say,why are we still there at all? Is this a war or a pageant? Which brings things full circle; we are no longer serious, and everyone knows it. Why should any American be put in harm's way for the idiocy Iraqi internal politics(which appears to be like 6th graders but with guns).
It is different because it pulls the rug from under the idea that the war has anything to do with democracy. You can not be seen to assassinate the leader of a political party with ministers in the government and play that card. Even with his withdrawal from the government it still undermines the democratic justification/excuse. You can still try to take him out with a black op but not in public.
War isn't about killing people it is about achieving some defined goal. America can and does kill a lot of people in Iraq. Achieving goals is harder to know unless you can agree what they were and what they are.
Bugg I see your larger strategic point, questioning even being involved in it. But from the ground level it makes sense not to kill Sadr. His own father was killed by the former regime and he is venerated a martyr and a saint because of it. It might not do much good to kill him.
This is a different kind of war. We are not fighting for literal high ground but psychological high ground. In addition to securing physical terrain, we have to secure the populace. A portion of the civilians are for us, a portion against us, and a portion are neutral - they can change their minds. Sadr has enormous influence. Any Sheikh or leader of influence is worth negotiating with, because if you win them, you will win a lot of the people they influence.
That's the kind of war we are in here. It's convoluted, it takes compromise, things are rarely clear. It's ambiguity defined. Like I said you can question the utility of fighting this thing at all, but the tactics being used ARE sound.
In war the goal to make the enemy conform to your will. In "conventional" war, this generally involves killing enough people & breaking enough things that the enemy accedes to your demands.
In counterinsurgency, one can take this approach, but only if one is willing to employ utterly ruthless tactics - as were used, e.g., by the Romans, the Germans, the Ottomans, and Hussein himself. Authorities differ on the efficacy of such tactics; irregardless, Americans aren't currently willing to use them, for obvious reasons.
The other approach to counterinsurgency is "winning hearts & minds", trying to convince the populace that you're their friend, not their enemy. This typically involves a "lighter touch" than soldiers normally employ in conventional warfare. From what I can gather, this is the approach US forces are currently employing in Iraq.
How many times have Islamic terrorists struck the United States in the past six years?
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