I Love A Man In A Uniform

General David Howard Petraeus

By now everyone who spends any time at all on the Internet knows that the right-wing blogosphere is screaming that MoveOn.org labeled General David Petraeus a "traitor" in a recent New York Times advert.

In fact, they did no such thing, as can be seen by reading the ad itself, here (pdf). Bear in mind that MoveOn.org is no fan of military men, while, we - and I include my many military veteran readers - are either ambivalent or else downright supportive of a dude in a sharp-looking uniform such as the general, or even (God help us) that lying punk Lt Col Oliver North.

Meanwhile, reports are popping up - rather belatedly, one might righteously think - that the good general might not be the right guy for the job in Iraq after all; in fact, he's being painted by some as a "sycophant" and, um, an "ass-licker," and a "chickensh*t." These reports are somewhat shaky, however, being suspiciously vague as to their sources.

Well, far be it from me to refer to a commissioned officer with a bad word, but as a veteran, I can recall more than one instance of a higher rank being referred to derogatorily. (But really, is there any other way for a righteous grunt to refer to a superior officer, at least in private?) In any case, I think it's more than fair to say that Petraeus is no General Grant; more of a McClellan, if you will.

Which is to say, to hell with the uniform, the PhD, the book on counterinsurgency warfare; the fact is Petraeus isn't doing shit in Iraq. The state of our occupation of Iraq sucks, big time. Every independent study of the Iraq situation strongly disagrees with the general. See here, here, and here.

Before I go, a little dose of (un)common sense might be in order:

“Having admitted, however, that the odds of a military success in Iraq are almost impossibly long, Chaos Hawks nonetheless insist that the U.S. military needs to stay in Iraq for the foreseeable future. Why? Because if we leave the entire Middle East will become a bloodbath. Sunni and Shiite will engage in mutual genocide, oil fields will go up in flames, fundamentalist parties will take over, and al-Qaeda will have a safe haven bigger than the entire continent of Europe.

“Needless to say, this is nonsense. Israel has fought war after war in the Middle East. Result: no regional conflagration. Iran and Iraq fought one of the bloodiest wars of the second half the 20th century. Result: no regional conflagration. The Soviets fought in Afghanistan and then withdrew. No regional conflagration. The U.S. fought the Gulf War and then left. No regional conflagration. Algeria fought an internal civil war for a decade. No regional conflagration.

“So where does this bogeyman come from? Hard to say. Probably a deep-seated unwillingness to confront the fact that the United States can’t really influence a course of events we originally set in motion. But Iraq is already fighting a civil war, and that civil war will continue whether we stay or go. If we go it will likely become more intense, but also shorter lived. The eventual result, however, will almost certainly be the same: a de facto independent Kurdistan in the north and a Shiite theocracy in the south. The rest of the Middle East will, as usual, watch events unfold without doing much of anything about them, and will accept the inevitable results. The U.S., for its part, will remain in the north to protect Kurdistan, in the east in Afghanistan, in the west in the Mediterranean, and in the south in its bases in the Gulf. We’ll hardly be absent from the region.

“I think it’s worthwhile for proponents of withdrawal to be honest about the likely aftermath of pulling out: an intensified civil war that will take the lives of tens of thousands and end in the installation, at least in the short-term, of an Iran-friendly theocracy. This is obviously not a happy outcome, but neither is it the catastrophe the Chaos Hawks peddle. The alternative is to babysit the civil war with American troops, spilling blood and treasure along the way, without truly affecting the course of events in any substantial measure."

Have a nice day. (And keep your powder dry.)


current-events

Imperial fortress beside the Tigris

The US Imperial embassy rises beside the Tigris River in Baghdad. The largest embassy of any nation in the world, larger than Vatican City and built as a fortress, it puts the lie to the claim that we are not intent on remaining in Iraq indefinitely.

At 104 acres, the US embassy under construction in Baghdad is roughly half the size of China's Forbidden City (177 acres), but still larger than the Vatican City.

Amazingly, the $592 million (!) project is coming along nicely, on time and under budget, according to informed sources. Not so amazingly, part of the reason is that the construction firm, Berger Devine Yaeger, Inc of Kansas City, MO, is using imported labor, which has raised some interesting questions.

This aerial plan shows that the embassy will be, in fact, a small city, albeit heavily fortified. Residents of the present-day embassy in the Green Zone (a former Sadaam Hussein palace) are required to wear flak jackets and helmets when going out of doors. The present embassy operations involve about 1,000 staff, and an annual budget of over $1.2 billion. God only knows what they do.

From these virtual images, the embassy looks for all the world like a prison complex. Note the blast-resistant walls running around the entire compound.

These images were pulled from the Arthur Magazine website, as the same images on the BDY site were pulled at the request of the State department, for "reasons of security." An images request at BDY's site results in 404 error messages.

"In total, the 104-acre compound will include over twenty buildings, including one classified secure structure and housing for over 380 families," the Web site says. The compound will include the embassy building, housing, a PX, commissary, cinema, retail and shopping areas, restaurants, schools, a fire station, power and water treatment plants as well as telecommunications and wastewater treatment facilities.

One assumes that the brig facilities will be outsourced. Probably to Uzbekistan.


current-events

Surge more like tidal wave

At first I thought that the "surge" proposed by the Shrub (21,500 men and women) was the total number of troops to be thrown into Iraq. One would normally divide this figure by two or even three to arrive at the actual number of fighting forces, with the rest as support personnel (motor pool, intel, quartermaster corps, etc.) to arrive at a real total of shooters of about four to six thousand. It turns out that anybody who was assuming that 21 thousand plus is the total number of troops to be sent to Iraq is flat out mistaken.

From TPM MUckraker.com:

An analysis released today by the Congressional Budget Office shows that the administration, in its public comments, has vastly underestimated the actual number of extra troops that will be deployed to Iraq under the president's "surge" plan.

The administration's estimate of approximately 21,000 extra troops only counts combat units, according to the analysis, and because combat units require support forces, the actual number of additional troops who will be in Iraq will likely exceed 35,000.

So not only are we expected to put an additional 21 thousand plus ground pounders at risk, we're adding an extra 12 to 14 thousand troops as potential targets.

Which still leaves unanswered, where the hell are we going to get these folks from?

The nightmare isn't over

Reports are coming in from around the world that the Bush administration is planning an attack on Iran very soon. Recall the movement of another US aircraft carrier to the Persian Gulf region and the replacement of General Abizaid with Admiral Willaim Fallon to command the Middle East theatre.

We have already seen a ramp-up in the mentioning of Iranian combatants in Iraq as Bush has several times recently referred to "Iranian attacks on US troops." Which is true, but Iranians Shiite guerillas have been involved in Iraq since almost the beginning, as is widely known. Many experts have pointed out that Bush's calling to our attention to iranian involvement in Iraq is part of the propaganda softening-up process.

From ICH Blog.com, Paul Craig Roberts reports from the Davos, Switzerland meeting of the World Economic Forum, January 24:

Writing for Global Research (January 24), General Leonid Ivashov, vice president of the Academy on Geopolitical Affairs and former Joint Chief of Staff of the Russian Armies, forecast an American nuclear attack on Iran by the end of April. General Ivashov presented the neoconservative reasoning that is the basis for the attack and concluded that the world’s protests cannot stop the US attack on Iran.

There will be shock and indignation, General Ivashov concludes, but the US will get away with it. He writes:

“Within weeks from now, we will see the informational warfare machine start working. The public opinion is already under pressure. There will be a growing anti-Iranian militaristic hysteria, new information leaks, disinformation, etc. . . . The probability of a US aggression against Iran is extremely high. It does remain unclear, though, whether the US Congress is going to authorize the war. It may take a provocation to eliminate this obstacle (an attack on Israel or the US targets including military bases). The scale of the provocation may be comparable to the 9-11 attack in NY. Then the Congress will certainly say “Yes” to the US President.”

Update: Some more on Bush's Iran war pimping from Robert Dreyfuss at TomPaine.com.

Why Abizaid has to go

Lots of waterfront property here

As the House Democrats pound the committee room tabletops and demand of Condi Rice what the hell she really thinks the word "surge" means (the Dems are in fine rhetorical form, now that the Republicans have had to relinquish important committee leadership positions to the Dems), one important detail that has slipped under their radar is the replacement of Gen. John Abizaid (a ground-pounding Army commander and head of U.S. Central Command in the Middle East) with Adm. William Fallon, currently the commander of the Pacific Command (PACOM), a Navy avaitor guy.

Several commentators have picked up on this odd move, but I think that Michael T. Klare over at The Nation has the best heads up.

The choice of Fallon to replace Abizaid was highly unusual in several respects. First, this is a lateral move for the admiral, not a promotion: As head of Pacom, Fallon commanded a larger force than he will oversee at Centcom, and one over which he will exercise less direct control since all combat operations in Iraq will be under the supervision of Gen. Dave Petraeus, the recently announced replacement for Gen. George Casey as commander of all US and allied forces. Second, and more surprising, Fallon is a Navy man, with experience in carrier operations, while most of Centcom's day-to-day work is on the ground, in the struggle against insurgents and warlords in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Part of the explanation for this move, of course, is a desire by the White House to sweep away bitter ground-force commanders like Abizaid and Casey who had opposed an increase in US troops in Iraq and argued for shifting greater responsibility for the fighting to Iraq forces, thereby permitting a gradual American withdrawal. "The Baghdad situation requires more Iraqi troops,"
not more Americans, Abizaid said in a recent interview with the New York Times.

For this alone, Abizaid had to go.

But there's more to it. Abizaid, who is of Lebanese descent and served a tour of duty with UN forces in Lebanon, has come to see the need for a regional solution to the crisis in Iraq--one that inevitably requires some sort of engagement with Iran and Syria, as recommended by the Iraq Study Group. "You have to internationalize the problem, you have to attack it diplomatically, geo-strategically," he told the Times. "You just can't apply a microscope on a particular problem in downtown Baghdad...and say that somehow or another, if you throw enough military forces at it, you are going to solve the broader issues in the region of extremism."

If engagement with Iran and Syria was even remotely on the agenda, Abizaid is exactly the man you'd want on the job at Centcom overseeing US forces and strategy in the region. But if that's not on the agenda, if you're thinking instead of using force against Iran and/or Syria, then Admiral Fallon is exactly the man you'd want at Centcom.

Why? Because combined air and naval operations are his forte. Fallon began his combat career as a Navy combat flyer in Vietnam, and he served with carrier-based forces for twenty-four years after that. He commanded a carrier battle wing during the first Gulf War in 1991 and led the naval group supporting NATO operations during the Bosnia conflict four years later. More recently, Fallon served as vice chief of naval operations before becoming the head of Pacom in 2005. All this means that he is primed to oversee an air, missile and naval attack on Iran, should the President give the green light for such an assault--and the fact that Fallon has been moved from Pacom to Centcom means that such a move is very much on
Bush's mind.

The recent replacement of General Abizaid by Admiral Fallon, along with other recent moves announced by the Defense Secretary, should give deep pause to anyone concerned about the prospect of escalation in the Iraq War.

Contrary to the advice given by the Iraq Study Group, Bush appears to be planning for a wider war--with much higher risk of catastrophic failure--not a gradual and dignified withdrawal from the region.

Make no mistake, Gentle Readers, this president has shown time and again that he has his own agenda, and regardless of the wishes and desires of the Ameircan people, he will kill as many Arabs (even though Iran is actually full of Aryans, not Arabs) as he possibly can before he is dragged off the stage of history, his legacy of death fully secured in the history books, and let the next guy clean up the mess.

Update: David Corn has a rumor to pass on:

The Abizaid ousting reminded me of a story a retired Army colonel told me last spring. This source still spends much time with Army commanders, occasionally as a consultant and as a participant in strategic discussions held at the Army's various institutions. He noted that he had recently been talking to Army commanders at a military war college. His colleagues said that Abizaid routinely visited their institution and would "walk the halls" complaining that he had no options in Iraq, that he did not know where to aim his guns, where to dispatch his troops. He was wringing his hands. This description made it seem that Abizaid had concluded that Bush's war was probably lost and that Abizaid was (justifiably) depressed. Which would mean that he was living in a reality-based hell. No wonder he had to go.

Iraq - A History Lesson

Map by GlobalSecurity.org

The following is an excerpt from "Winston Churchill Strikes Again: The Map of Iraq," Encyclopedia Idiotica: history’s worst decisions and the people who made them, Stephen Weir (Barron’s Educational Series, 2005)

One result of World War I was that the Ottoman’s foolish last-minute alliance with the Kaiser and the Austrians led to the almost complete dismemberment of their empire. Turkey itself, empowered to some extent by the victory in the Dardanelles became a secular state bridging Europe and Asia. The rest of the empire was left without rule, but not entirely in chaos. The Byzantine nature of the empire meant that provinces were to some extent self-governing and could soldier along on their own…The new nationalisms that had exploded in the Balkans and had begun the whole decline of the Ottoman Empire swiftly spread into the newly-liberated Ottoman provinces, and bitter riots against any attempt at British rule began. The home audience had no stomach for this:

"How much longer are valuable lives to be sacrificed in the vain endeavor to impose upon the Arab population and elaborate and expensive administration which they never asked for and do not want?" asked The Times.

…Perhaps the only one who really did care was Sir Mark Sykes appointed by General Kitchener in 1915 as his personal representative to a prime ministerial committee to determine the future of the Middle East. He worked tirelessly to establish proper British control in the region…but in 1919 Sykes unexpectedly died [and was replaced] by Winston Churchill.

Churchill had no time for any of this policy. He wanted the army demobilized: he wanted the Arabs rebellions put down, and the map redrawn…A British protectorate was finally set up in 1917, but the hold on Iraq was tenuous…There was strong opposition to British rule… The Ottomans had divided the region into three provinces, more or less ethnically centered around Mosul, Baghdad, and Basra in an attempt to keep the warring Sunni and Shiite populations apart…

By 1920 all of this had boiled over into full-scale revolt across the region. Horrifically, Churchill was not the least bit interested in working out what to do with whom. His view was …"I do not understand the squeamishness about the use of gas. I am utterly in favour of using poisoned gas against uncivilized tribes." … [P]oison gas was used regularly across the region to put down the revolt…Airpower, the dropping of bombs containing gas, was used extensively for almost the first time in history to save ground forces and expense; indeed, the whole revolt was put down with the loss of 2,000 British soldiers.

The problem remained of what to do with Iraq once the revolt had been put down. Essentially, the decision was made to hand over all of Arabia to whatever local strongmen could be relied on to support British rule in return for being allowed unlimited control over local populations. It didn’t really matter which populations, whether they wanted to be under that leader, or who their new countrymen might be. The careful planning of Sykes was all for naught. Churchill held a 10-day conference at the Semiramis Hotel in Cairo on March 12, 1921, to work out the new frontiers…[Ibn Saud was given] the heart of Arabia…the Ottoman provinces of Mosul, Baghdad, and Basra were no longer separate but were thrown together into the new state of Iraq…Local observers were horrified. An American missionary noted, "You are flying in the face of four millennia of history." The British civil commissioner in Baghdad, Captain Arnold Wilson, warned that it was a recipe for disaster because the enduring Shia-Sunni conflict would result in the "antithesis of democratic government."…The Kurds were lured into the new kingdom, rather than becoming a part of Turkey, by promises of self-rule, not the first or last time such a promise from the West was instantly broken.

The conference blithely gave a large portion of what should have been Saudi Arabia – west of the Euphrates – to Iraq. In return, Ibn Saud was given control of most of the historic Kuwaiti kingdom, all but cutting off Iraq from…access to the Persian Gulf.

The consequences are all too apparent today. Rivalry between Saudi Arabia and Iraq remains. Three times Iraq has laid claim to Kuwait and been thrown back, most recently precipitating the First Gulf War. The total lack of interest in laying down sensible borders for the country resulted in what was at the time predicted – never-ending rivalry between the Shiites and the Sunni. This was complicated by the uncomfortable and unwanted presence of the Kurds, and the imposition of someone who was considered an outsider as king; and the lack of interest on behalf of the British in imposing anything other than a sphere of influence or proper governmental systems to replace the Ottomans. This resulted in the internal catastrophe and the endless successions of coups that led to the coming to power of Saddam Hussein.