Brad DeLong's Semi-Daily Journal (2004)

so it *is* just like Vietnam...

I don't see why this is depressing. It's a necessary first step. When nothing very terrible happens to Iraqis in large swathes of Anbar province, then the next step will be to stop patrolling some of the other violent areas. From that, it is a fairly small step for the US Army to do the sensible thing, which is to point the trucks in the direction of Orlando and keep them rolling until they reach a hero's welcome in Disney World. I know that some people favour the "flypaper theory", a rather cynical piece of realpolitik which suggests that while the American Army is bogged down in Iraq it can't be doing any harm anywhere else, but I've never relly found this convincing.

K-R has been very strong in reporting on Iraq. Too bad they fell out of the all-in-one desk-top delivery of financial information, but their reporting is still top notch.

Talk about disengenous "news articles". Let's parse this piece of s**t:

The backstory is that twenty days prior to the dateline of this garbage, the US of A transferred sovereinty to the Iraqis -- and announced (and has followed through with) the turnover of security to the new government. We're not going to do independent patrols ANYWHERE in Iraq.

And this SOB, Lasseter, wrote out this story out of his own imagination and interwove some words that Maj. Neemeyer spoke completely out of context.

Read it again, morons.

As opposed to the American political aim, which is apparantly to kill Iraqis.

Charles

Norman Rogers:

Are you saying that this reporter has distorted a success story into one of failure?

If so, where is the success? Is the current state of Iraq what was visualized and desired at the time of the invasion? Or at the time the "turnover of sovereignty" was announced?

Norman Rogers, you apparently have missed the central point which is that the US forces in Anbar aren't doing enough joint patrols, they've turned large areas over to the guerrillas. And the marines especially are upset about it. Instead of defeating the enemy they are restricted to running reduced patrols and checkpoints where they get attacked and mostly don't get to hit back. That sucks.

This parallels our vietnamization experience in vietnam, but it's going *much* faster here.

The natural approach is to withdraw from Anbar entirely and only cross it in heavily-armed convoys going elsewhere. Traditionally that would be very bad, it would give them staging areas to attack other provinces. But they'd have the choice between going it alone versus getting a voice in a bigger government, and they might choose to vote and send representatives to the federal government, and getting a degree of autonomy like the kurds might seem better than trying to conquer the whole contry again. But we'd feel bad about them claiming they beat the US Army. Particularly the Marines would feel bad about that.

I looked at the full article and found the evidence of the turnover strategy, right there in black and white. Here it is:

"When the governor of Anbar left town last month, the head of the national guard, who since has been replaced, took part in an attempt to overthrow him. National guardsmen in town have refused to go on patrols either alone or with the Americans. The 2,886 national guardsmen in Ramadi so far have detained just one person."

Reassuring, isn't it?

Dear Norman Rogers:

Good God, man. A Major in the US military is quoted as saying "We don't go into that area anymore, (...) Why go there when all that happens is we get hit?" These are not the words of victory. More to the point, we have 120,000 troops in Iraq: what do you think they are doing there if not patrolling? There isn't any real Iraqi police or army yet to turn patrol duties over to. We're losing, you jack-ass, and it's the president's fault for screwing up so badly. If people like you had listened to people like us, we might have had a chance of winning. But you all didn't, and now 1,000 americans are dead. Sleep well.

Sorry, meant "evidence of the success of the turnover strategy."

Now let's not be too hard on Norman Rogers--he is just invoking a an American tactic made famous in Vietnam: Declare Victory and Leave.

http://www.realcities.com/mld/krwashington/9199668.htm?template=contentModules/printstory.jsp:
"We've lost a lot of Marines there and we don't ever go in anymore. If they want it that bad, they can have it." ... "I'm sure they are beating their chests and saying they drove us out, but what have they driven us out of? Rural farmland that's not tactically important. ... If they want to call that victory, that's fine." ... "We don't go into that area anymore," he said. "Why go there when all that happens is we get hit?"

I canot beleive it. Even Soviets in Afghanistan weren't demoralized so quickly - and they had higher casualties.

This is the bugout strategy. Bugout from Fallujah. Bugout from Ramadi. Bugout from the whole province. And, as dsquared so aptly points out, before you know it, you're rolling into Orlando amid the tickertape.

Mr. Rogers should consider that for America to win in Iraq, it must accomplish something extraordinarily difficult: it must restore security and prosperity. It must also create some form of system of orderly political succession (elections, perhaps) for a country that has not had it.

All the insurgents need to do to win is to raise Cain.

They seem to be doing this fairly successfully.

(The other Charles)

Folks, just as a little note for those of us who know the hateful little being that is norman rogers from political animal, he isn't worth the time of day. He certainly isn't worth engaging in discussion. And above all, he isn't worth being taken seriously....

A couple of days ago, a Muslim colleague of mine was arguing that the US, for all its real military might, has simply lost this war. I didn't know whether I should aggree with him completely; now I do. The last tiny piece of hope is that, with a Kerry-Edwards administration... But, at this rate, what will Irak look like in December and beyond? Afghanistan? Or worse? In fact, there is a good chance, that this war will turn out to be a *far* worse disaster than Vietnam, not so much in terms of the number of body bags coming back home, but in terms of geopolitical costs for the US and consequences for the real war in terrorism. We sort of know it already, but I don't we have fully awakened yet to the likely consequences of a failed state in Irak controlled by a mosaic of Islamist militias. It is time to hope that Professor DeLong was wrong when he said that the US should secure all of Irak's WMDs right after the "initial operations" ended (Mission Accomplished!) We don't think there were any. But assume for a minute that some crazy Islamist group that we will never ever be able to control or find out before it's too late have put their hands on some small but lethal amount thereof*...

And this is, ladies and gents, what George W Bush has done for your country...

* Note for boneheaded right-wingers: the point is that it was infinitely easier to contain Irak under Sadam Hussein and his possible WMDs than to try to track these weapons when they are possibly in the possession of some shadow militia group. Would this Administration have succeeded in his hubris democratisation plans, it would have been semi-realistic to disarm these groups, but since they have done their utmost to fail to win the hearts and minds of Irakis...

From news sources available on the web, especially foreign, it looks like the Iraq War daily gets far far worse, although the Bush Administration has succeeding in getting the worst of it off the U.S. front pages since the midnight hand-over of “sovereignty,” so some Americans may be misled.

And since Allawi is restricting press freedom, the world public may soon not know much of what goes on there, as already in Afganistan and other controlled, or wild, places.

In Shalikashvili's remarkable apppearance at the Dem convention last night , that noble man pointed the way toward the general strategy for the "war on terror", which Bush has begun with a faulty, indeed fatal, psychological premise.

But it's uncertain how this new face to combat “terror” would help us a SIMPLE way in Iraq, because the whole place is one big tactical error, too far gone: now we’re restricted to safe zones, the enemy is driving bombs up to the gates, and the international community is reluctant to step in, at least while we have our current President.

It seems possible that we are going to station troops in Iraq, behind walls, for a generation, while the whirlwind of Islam ignores our admonitions, and occasionally attempts to expunge us.

Meanwhile we’re going to have to work on an international front to get world Islam to the table, vet its problems, fix them.

In other words: we may have to join and solve every OTHER major Muslim grievance in the world (not least, Israel-Palestine, and now, the injustice at Abu Ghraib), as the psychological precondition for bringing peace to Iraq! Which would be a delicious inversion of symmetry, since Bush hoped peace would radiate outward, from an easy win, there.

I've begun to notice lately that Knight-Ridder's been sponsoring some of the best Iraq coverage lately. Bully for them!

RT, Knight-Ridder also had some of the very best prewar coverage, particularly of the hype-laden nature of the administration's claims and the physical pain this was causing actual, authentic intel analysts....

Typical honest reporting that doesn't even begin to draw the conclusions that we have all but one seemingly arrived at: the writing is on the wall- we will be pulling out of Iraq after the election- no matter who wins. Oh yeah, and Iraq will be divided into three parts- as I stated over a year ago. Let the Islamic fundies rot- they can try their hand at ruling their own cauldron of hatred and lies- with more gas poured on by their neighbors and continual slow to insignificant progress. Even Saudi is fairly backward for such a rich country. They are not our responsibility, and they do not wish to contribute to the west, nor support any western ideals. So let them be.

I seriously doubt whether we will leave Iraq without a clear idea of what sort of army would arise, and how it would regard the U.S. That would be against basic geographical tactics. We can easily withstand them for a long while, because they do not have heavy armaments like the North Vietnamese (their most powerful stuff is...RPG's?). We will remain within walls, watch, take incoming potshots, retaliate, watch. I'll bet the Pentagon to a man agrees withdrawal isn't quite yet. "Talking" about withdrawal, that's just the allowed part of the domestic U.S. scene, because there's freedom of speech, whatever. The political structure of Iraq--three units or one, whatever--will be also be secondary, until of course that actual moment when it becomes decisive. Making an historic strategic error such as Bush did, just makes the U.S. military smarter, because it gets to think about more total situations.

I predict that US forces will be out of Iraq by next July. Indeed, the collapse could be sooner. I don't think this will be a matter of choice.

We won't take many casualties from random mortars on bases, and if the bases aren't in mortar-range of population centers we can kill the guys who do that.

So the question would be, can they cut off our supply routes. And if they're willing to make the effort, they can. They could make us move everything in armored trucks, and send enough armor with each convoy that it doesn't work. But we could handle that by building our own roads that bypass population centers. We could put minefields around the roads to reduce the IEDs, and make them freefire zones where anybody who comes too close is assumed an enemy and killed.

The iraqis can't beat us militarily, not unless they get a lot of hi-tech help from outside. And nobody would be stupid enough to do that to us.

The russians wouldn't provide military aid to insurgents. Not after we did to them in afghanistan. They'd see it's a losing tactic, that never works. The international community would despise them if they did that, there would be all sorts of retaliation. They'd never try it, not in a million years.

JT, you're assuming that state sponsors are necessary. Having contacts in governments which are willing to look the other way might be enough. That could gain them access to medium-grade weapons (shoulder-fired SAM's, heavy anti-tank weapons, light artillery and rockets, and *a lot* of explosives and mines).

912 dead kids so a cokehead, dry drunk cowboy can sport a pair of pistols is not my definition of victory.

Now we hear Powell say that Bush is going to create jobs in Iraq. He can't create them here let alone Iraq. But then I suppose 70% unemployment in Iraq isn't bad. Maybe it is "historically low." Maybe the Iraqi economy is getting "stronger and improving."

Dear Norman, Iraq will go down as the worst decision in political and military history.

Well, far from that. Hitler's invasion of the USSR has got to be that (because he had Napoleon's example, where Napolean didn't).

But it will be a good bad example for students of politics and military history to chew on.

This article actually indicates a continuing and alarming trend. For purposes of the election, Bush and the army are retreating from doing necessary patrols, in order to reduce casualties. This article indicates that a "liberated zone" that originally only existed in Fallujah has been expanded to include a region. It used to be that we would here a quote something like, "it not necessary that they like us only that they fear us." No one is saying that anymore. Now it is duck and cover because somehow we have turned over "power" to a the Iraqi's.
In reality there is no "power," no functioning Irtaqi military or police, or economy, or security. There is merely a series of meetings and actors playing like it exists. And the abscence of power means something really, really scarey-That Iraq is becoming a failed state.

Barry, I guess you're right. They could get a lot of advanced weapons without state sponsorship, all that's needed is somebody providing the money.

But they have to get the weapons across the border. We're starting to concentrate on patrolling the borders. And whichever border the weapons cross, syria or iran (or turkey or jordan or even kuwait or saudi arabia) then we "pressure" that country to patrol their side of the border and stop it.

Of course, we already have sanctions on syria. I guess the next step would be to invade them. And we're already being pretty unfriendly to iran, they seem to expect we're going to invade pretty soon. They might not think they have a lot to lose by letting advanced weapons through to iraq. And then if it comes to shipping weapons into iran, there's turkmenistan which is nominally our new ally but which looks like enough of a kleptocracy they might take bribes from both sides.

It might be an issue that we don't exactly have any friends in the region. For that matter, how many nations in the world would be upset if we got taken down a peg or two? As long as we didn't choose them to punish for it....

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