Petraeus testifies

My concern is that Petraeus mostly advanced in the Pentagon not on any great military exploits(in fact until the invasion of Iraq he had no combat experience) but by being a good boy and telling his bosses in DoD what they wanted to hear. Wesley Clark is another example of a guy riding his desk and a sunny disposition to career advancement by singing a happy tune to his bosses; don't tell us the truth, son, tell us what we want to hear. Petraeus is not going to show up now and tell the truth if it makes the Adminsitration look bad(or should I say worse than usual).

Eric Shineski told Bush and Rumslfed that their plans for invasion were woefully undermanned. He was given a gold watch and a ticket out of town.

And nobody seems to answer the core question-why are we bothering? Trying to turn Iraq (or any Islamic culture) into Western democracy is like planting corn in asphalt. It's not gonna work, and all the happytalk in the world aren't going to change that. No American servicemen or women should be asked to risk anything for this folly.

I have no bright ideas this a.m. about the end-game in Iraq, but what in blazes are we doing having the mother of a three-year old in the Army, deploying to a combat zone?

Rule No. 1: The children come first.

Nemesis, I fear, awaits us.

Recall the Weinberge doctrine of the 1980's (later called the Powell doctrine in the Gulf War). This was a group of statements specifying the conditions under which the US would go to war. Whatever happened to this? It seems Iraq and Afghanistan (don't forget Afghanistan as it's in the same situation as Iraq) violate just about all of these common-sense points. From Wikipedia, here are the statements of the Weinberge Doctrine:

The United States should not commit forces to combat unless the vital national interests of the United States or its allies are involved.

U.S. troops should only be committed wholeheartedly and with the clear intention of winning. Otherwise, troops should not be committed.

U.S. combat troops should be committed only with clearly defined political and military objectives and with the capacity to accomplish those objectives.

The relationship between the objectives and the size and composition of the forces committed should be continually reassessed and adjusted if necessary.

U.S. troops should not be committed to battle without a "reasonable assurance" of the support of U.S. public opinion and Congress.
The commitment of U.S. troops should be considered only as a last resort.

but what in blazes are we doing having the mother of a three-year old in the Army

Having a mother of a three-year old in the army lets Rod stay home, eat English butter out of a tub, and tell all the amputees how immoral they are for not believing like he does.

Daniel @ 11:24 AM:

We have the parents of the three-year-old in the Army for three reasons.

1) Radical feminists and their corporate-media allies have scared Congress and the Pentagon into believing that their PR would suffer without the "equality"-based notion of females serving in combat zones.

2) Richard Nixon ended the draft, at the behest of millions of hippies and other assorted rabble. This produced manpower shortages.

3) Politicians of BOTH parties have decided that an internationalist, interventionist foreign policy makes them look better on the TV news and in TV interviews, and thus helps ensure their re-election and tenure in office.

The solution is clear enough: bring the troops home from Iraq/Afghanistan and from everywhere else we do not have a clear security interest in protecting. (Actual translation: keep them within and along our own borders, please.) Withdraw from the post-WW2 treaties binding us to station troops in Europe, Japan and the Middle East. What genyush shstatesmun decided we need to be under a treaty obligation to defend the Ukraine and Romania ? Build up the manpower and resources available to our Coast Guard and establish an effective Border Guard as its own branch of the services.

Finally, demand that our civilian leadership cadres actually KNOW something about the history, economics and politics of the regions they are considering sending troops to.

Once we've got our own security problems under control, then and ONLY then can we think about sticking our noses in places far foreign where they don't belong.

Thinking about the above, and while waiting for pigs to line up to buy airline tickets in the process, I have the honor to remain,

Your servant,

Lord Karth

Rod,

Without arguing over interpretations and opinions (I'll just note that I continue to respectfully disagree with much of what you write about Iraq these days), I'm commenting to suggest that you've made an error when you wrote, "We're going to keep troop levels at 160K for the rest of the year . . ."

From an AP story this morning:

"Under questioning by Sen. Carl Levin, D-Mich., chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, Petraeus said he could not predict when troop reductions would be resumed or how many U.S. troops were likely to remain in Iraq by the end of this year. There currently are 160,000 U.S. troops in Iraq, and the Pentagon has projected that when the scheduled troop withdrawals are completed in July there will be about 140,000 troops there."

As I understand it, the plan is to pause once the currently-planned troop reductions have occurred, meaning that from July on, the anticipated troop level is 140K.

(I don't even want to get into whether that's a significant difference; just making a point of fact.)

Hillary Clinton posed an interesting question. I'm probably reduced to paraphrasing since I heard this two hours ago at the end of another 12 hour shift of brain-eating ceaseless work:

Those who support the current plans dwell a lot on the cost of pulling out of Iraq, in terms ethnic and sectarian violence and of regional instability, but they rarely discuss the costs of staying.

She went on to quote some statistics on Army mental health (oh boy and there's more than a few of us no longer mentally healthy) and also on the risk inherent in that pretty much all of our line units are in Iraq, Afghanistan, or not rated ready to fight.

Unfortunately, she then started quoting the tired lines of "the strategy is not working," when clearly it is. The question is is no longer is the strategy working, but can it continue to work, at what cost, and is it worth that cost?

Simple answer is, you can't trust any of them 100%. The old Bedouin saying goes, "Me and my brother against my cousin, me and my cousin against the world." If you're not kin, you're not really in. You can make pragmatic deals with these people which will benefit both parties. You can rely (usually) on their honor. But understand that their first loyalty is to their own.

Being on guard constantly has always been the norm in a combat zone. You don't realize you're even in that state until you get home and you hear your first engine backfire or God forbid decide to go and watch fireworks. Bad plan, that last one. :) Those things sound like real rockets.

Michael Hirsch in Newsweek -- not exactly a shill for the Bush & Co. -- writes:

"The outcome of the Battle of Basra is still unclear. But as things stabilize in that critical city—the southern gateway to Iraq's oil wealth—Basra may well turn out to be Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki's Kasserine Pass. That notorious battle, which took place in Tunisia in late February 1943, marked the first large-scale encounter between untested American troops and the battle-hardened Germans. The Americans, to put it mildly, did not do well. But they quickly fired incompetent commanders, adjusted in tactics, and never lost another major battle. In Basra the nascent Iraqi Army—also riddled with incompetence and self-doubt—actually came out looking better against Iraq's well-established militias than the American Army had 65 years earlier against the entrenched Nazis, says retired Army Gen. Barry McCaffrey. "At Kasserine we got our asses kicked. These people didn't," McCaffrey says.

Despite a spate of early grim assessments of Basra in the U.S. media, U.S. military observers on the ground in Iraq are more sanguine, says McCaffrey, who has long been a critic of the war. Yes, Moqtada al-Sadr's Mahdi Army militia has held on to its weapons and much of its turf. But Iraqi forces appear to be largely in control of the city and its ports, and Basra is still mostly calm. Even more important, the Iraqi security forces have remained mostly intact. Rather than bolting or deserting in droves, as happened so many times in the past, only in relatively small numbers did some Iraqis desert to the other side, McCaffrey told me. That's a big step forward. "On balance it appears as if the Iraqi security forces for the first time stepped up, largely independently of the United States, and tried to establish law and order in the most important city in the country save Baghdad," says McCaffrey, who recently canvassed top U.S. military commanders in Iraq."

Maybe McCaffrey and Hirsch have gone over to the evil neo-cons. Or maybe Frank Rich isn't the only guy to read re how things went in Basra.

Apathy? At last count I think they had 28 militias. Syria and Iran sit to either side. Foreigners occupy/liberate their country, which was put together by foreigners anyway. They have no real history of self-rule. Their culture intertwines religion and politics. They lived under a harsh dictator who lead them to a loss against a war with Iran shortly before Gulf War One. Millions have left the country or left Baghdad. So, apathetic or shell-shocked?

If we,as a country, had decided to triple the size of our military and embark on a 50 year project to turn Iraq into a real democracy we might have had a chance of doing this. Even then im not sure. Iran has such close ties there that we just dont relate to as Americans. How many of us make pilgrimages to holy sites on a yearly basis?

Steve

Here's the main point. This is a war, right-killing bad guys and blowing up their stuff? Sadr has been the enemy and troublemaker since the fall of Baghdad,and yet he is still walking around with his head attached to the rest of his body. I'm not McArthur, but damn if that seems like an indication of how unserious our leadership is. He and his militias and thugs fought us, he's fought the Maliki government, he's caused grief all over the country. American servicemen are dead because of him and his actions. And instead of making a point of obliterating and yes, killing him(still what we train our soldiers to do), we play games. What lesson can any would be Sadr draw except that whether we withdraw tomorrow or 50 years from now, we can be waited out, we aren't serious, we are no threat to their fun and games.If we cannot whack Public Enemy#1, what can we really do at all to change things for the better with our troops?

This isn't even a war, it's silliness. Ans the sooner our servicemen and women leave that horror show of a place, the better.

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).

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.

How many times have Islamic terrorists struck the United States in the past six years?