No questions about whether the cult of the Tom Selleck mustache actually drives the perceived machismo of the Arab world, but otherwise, this Bill Ardolino interview with a Fallujan interpreter is rather revealing. A taste:
Leo: I think it was maybe … 10 months ago? Ten months, one year, that’s it. And everything began in Ar Ramadi, the Awakening of the al Anbar tribes. And when we see it’s working, Fallujans talked about the same actions and tried to save the people and save Fallujah from al Qaeda.
INDC: And what did al Qaeda do that was so bad, specifically?
Leo: Specifically, they targeted our mosques, our imams.
[…]
INDC: But what motivated al Qaeda to do that though? Why would they start killing those innocent people?
Leo: I think the major goal was chaos … to make big chaos. And everyone knows [that the radical mujahadeen] were pushed [into Iraq] from beyond the borders: Iran particularly, Syria, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait. Nobody wants Iraq to stabilize, to be a good country and a democratic country, because democracy will affect them, and they are dictatorships. There is a prince in Kuwait, there is a King in Arabia, there is what everyone calls a republic, but it’s not a republic, it’s a kingdom in Jordan. And Iran, Iran wants to take over the whole area, if possible. So they see an opportunity to take over Iraq, and they take it. That’s what everyone thinks […]
Rest the rest here.
But take it all with a grain of salt. After all, “Leo’s” assessment is a bit too close to that of Petraeus and Crocker (and Yon, and Ardolino, and those Democratic Congressman recently home from Iraq) — not to mention more than a few “neocon” analysts — so my guess is that either he’s been compromised, or Ardolino has. Alternately, someone from the White House got a hold of Bill’s interview notes and “massaged” the final draft.
Either that, or “Leo” is really CIA.
And not the good, Valerie Plame-kind, either.
Just another layer in this endless tissue of lies that is Iraq…
Which makes me wonder, cover-ups and conspiracies should require a ton of people, which means that the CIA, the Military chain of command, the NSA, etc are full of co-conspirators.
These will be massive firings and hearings when the skies part and Pres. Hillary descends from on high in 2009, right? I mean, literally thousands of people will have to be fired and charged w/ helping Chimpy’s shams, right?
Well the endless tissues will help dry the tears of the Big Hearted ™ People ™ of the People Powered People’s Movement ™ [Visa and Mastercard accepted] when they weep tears over the bodies of Lebanese/Palestinian/Iraqi/Iranian Children/Repositioned Corpses/Al Qaeda Operatives lost in this unjust policing action/war/trip to the deli.
The post title made me laugh out loud, by the way.
It’s almost like an epidemic of questionable accuracy, Jeff. Thank God the Reality-Based Community hasn’t been exposed to…reality, yet.
not to mention more than a few “neocon†analysts
The NON-expert experts from LEFT leaning Brooking’s you mean? Man, watching the left de-expert and anoint them as neo-cons was HILARIOUS given the left’s idea of an expert on all things terror, Iraq and intelligence comes from 3 CIA years in the 80’s, Larry Johnson, who’s embarrassing no terror threat op-ed speaks for itself.
If all of Iraq’s neighbors want its democratic experiment to fail, and its current government is proving ineffective at uniting the country, what are the chances of the kind of victory that we have to achieve before we can, in good conscience, pull out our troops? Because if Leo is correct, tissue of lies aside, what are the odds of success for the American strategy? It sounds, from his description, like we’re not only fighting a counter-insurgency, but also a proxy war with the entire region, and we would need to send a surge to the entire Middle East in order to grant Maliki the breathing room he needs to put his country back together. It sounds like a much more hopeless situation than the Democrats are claiming (i.e. that things will improve if we leave). If the silver lining of that situation is that the Democrats are wrong about something, that seems to me like a pretty shitty silver lining.
Gabriel, yes, it is a far more hopeless situation than they can imagine. But that is also because they do not realize we have fought through and attained victory with even worse odds.
If we lose, the silver lining is that we will probably be shot or bombed before we can be tortured or beheaded with a rusty knife. Not so for the Christians and others who live in those radicalizing regions.
There are many ways to fight a proxy war, Gabriel. And my own thought is that once a certain point is reached, and the momentum moves toward the desired outcome, there won’t be much those other countries can do about it. They wouldn’t dare attack Iraq militarily, if we are allied with the country, so all they can do is hope to continue the terror campaign.
But, aside from the effect it is having here on Democrats and Ron Paul, such a plan is showing minimal returns inside Iraq.
But it just so happens I was IMing with Bill when I read your comment, and I passed it along to him to get his thoughts.
He said he’ll be by shortly.
Worse odds? Since the advent of the nuclear bomb? I just don’t see how fighting is going to solve our predicament. If Leo’s characterization is apt, then we would have to stay in Iraq indefinitely (which no one seems to be willing to say out loud on Capitol Hill) or until some other sea change takes place in the region, or we would have to build Iraq up into the kind of muscular regional superpower that Israel has had to become to insure its survival. Indefinite involvement at current levels is impractical (unless we divide it up into vague six month intervals!) and the prospect of dumping Israeli-quality weaponry onto the Iraqi army is not especially appetizing, so the only strong move would be to attempt to foment some sort of political change in the other big regional players, like Iran and Syria. But if we do that (and I know we are doing that) we then grant those players a rational pretext for continuing their investment in a failed Iraq. In short, we’re not really in a position of strength, we’re essentially gambling our military strength and international credibility on some sort of deus ex machina political upheaval in the Middle East. Kind of long odds to be betting the farm on, no?
Gabriel – See Korean Peninsula for long odds and consequences of not finishing a job and/or settling for stalemate.
Okay, but Korea is not the same sort of problem as Iraq, because we were fighting a proxy war with one country, not with three or four countries and several malevolent non-state organizations. Korea, at the very least, was geographically isolated, and thus neither as strategically important nor prone to leaky borders. We could establish a front there, which is not as easy to do in Iraq, and it was not the magnet for anti-American adventurism that Iraq is.
Just to take a break from the fatalism here, I think that our best chance for success in the kind of situation Leo describes would be a renewed diplomatic offensive in the neighbor countries. The trouble with that is that I don’t think Bush can do it, I think it requires a new face, just to make a symbolic break with the whole group responsible for “axis of evil,” “bring it on” and other similarly blunt pronouncements.
Gabriel –
Iraqis believe that they are being stymied by outside influences, and they are right, but many overstate the case.
In any event, no, a regional war is not necessary. As the example in Anbar is showing, Iraqis can police their own areas, if they become interested and if the United States provides military and material support. The end state is getting the Iraqi government to achieve political reconciliation which motivates and enables them to provide such support to all areas of the country, as well as teaches the government how to function. No small challenge in Iraq is getting the bureaucracies and institutions to function properly. These institutions and processes were broken before the US invasion, and many are worse now as inexperienced, corrupt officials mismanage them.
It’s a difficult process, but I’ve seen progress I wouldn’t have predicted 7 months ago in some of these areas.
You are assuming that the solution is regional war, that the current situation is an all-out war via proxy, when (one of) the problem(s) is really a low-grade insurgency fomented by outsiders and embraced by some local players. And the solution is much closer to Iraq being able to police its borders and cities than the WW III which you suggest.
Draw-down of US forces in Iraq will be possible if security gains continue the current trend, but US advisorship and military support will be necessary for some degree for some time. If you think Iraq is worth it.
Both strategically and from a humanitarian perspective, I believe that Iraq is worth it. Many Iraqis like Leo just want to live in peace, preferably not the peace of Saddam Hussein, Iranian influence or partition of the country.
Thanks Bill. Do you think that the task of political reconciliation is so arduous that the end result will be a much looser sort of federalism than is currently being imagined? The “soft partition” that occasionally gets tossed around here in DC? Because the security gains associated with the “surge” look (from my perspective) to be unique to their localities, such as the Anbar Sunnis’ rejection of Al Qaeda that pointedly does not include reconciliation with the Shiite government in Baghdad; might the eventual political order be of the same nature, i.e. regionally organized, in your opinion? Because if so, it suggests to me that the Kurdish north, for example, should it provoke a Turkish attack, could not expect much assistance from these Anbari tribes, and similarly if a Sunni enclave were picked at by Iranian forces, it would not get much help from the peshmirga.
“Do you think that the task of political reconciliation is so arduous that the end result will be a much looser sort of federalism than is currently being imagined?”
Maybe. I’d be lying if I said I could predict what it will look like, though Maliki just plegded $150 million to Sunni Anbar.
“Because the security gains associated with the “surge†look (from my perspective) to be unique to their localities, such as the Anbar Sunnis’ rejection of Al Qaeda that pointedly does not include reconciliation with the Shiite government in Baghdad”
See this post on ground up political changes:
http://www.indcjournal.com/archives/003057.php
The Anbar Awakening predates the surge, and seems to be attributable more to the Sunnis’ recognition of their own best interests than to the additional troops we’ve sent to Iraq. From Bill’s piece:
It wouldn’t be surprising to see an outcome in which the provinces of Iraq function much like US states.
And as for staying there forever goes… aren’t we talking about a draw-down of troop levels over five years? Five years seems reasonable to me, even though every so often I say things like, “Success in Iraq will be when it becomes an accompanied tour.” ;-)
The corrupt officials and ethnic strife seem utterly discouraging until a person realizes that it’s not at all unique to Iraq. If most other countries in the world manage to carry on while being run by corrupt self-servers while citizen groups distrust each other, well, why not Iraq? (I particularly liked the subject title.)
ust to take a break from the fatalism here, I think that our best chance for success in the kind of situation Leo describes would be a renewed diplomatic offensive in the neighbor countries. The trouble with that is that I don’t think Bush can do it, I think it requires a new face, just to make a symbolic break with the whole group responsible for “axis of evil,†“bring it on†and other similarly blunt pronouncements.
You’re making an extraordinary assumption here. You are assuming they want what you want. They don’t. The Islamic fundamentalists and Iran want you dead, and a world ruled by muslim law.
Gabriel:
http://miserabledonuts.blogspot.com/2007/09/never-again.html
I just don’t see how fighting is going to solve our predicament.
It won’t solve all of the predicaments. It won’t make Sunni and Shia suddenly love each other. It won’t make the Ba’thists into saints.
The point of fighting is to kill off or capture as many of the malefactors as possible and deprive them of their supplies, both in terms of morale and materiel.
The point of fighting is to make the malefactors stop wanting to pursue their goals because it is just too expensive to keep going. That’s what they’re trying to do to us, BTW, and that’s why we’re so pissed off at the Left when all they can do is freak out at the cost and say IT’S TOO MUCH! STOP!
Especially given that the vast majority of them have lost or sacrificed absolutely nothing in this war.
The trouble with that is that I don’t think Bush can do it, I think it requires a new face, just to make a symbolic break with the whole group responsible for “axis of evil,” “bring it on” and other similarly blunt pronouncements.
I don’t think that middle easterners are as troubled by Bush’s pronouncements are you are. In their culture, trash talk and sabre rattling are part of the game. For them, what matters is whether Bush threatens them with the business end of a bayonet, so to speak. All else is just hot air.
“I don’t think that middle easterners are as troubled by Bush’s pronouncements are you are. In their culture, trash talk and sabre rattling are part of the game.”
Good point.
Very true. Most of what comes out of the mouth of the middle-east folks is saber-rattling – but you can’t ignore it. Sometimes it is only saber-rattling because they don’t currently have the ability to execute that plan. There’s a bunch of strategies involving misdirection, and there’s no guarantee that they are just brandishing to get us the leave them alone or some good reason. When you distract your enemy there’s plenty of nasty things you can do while his back is turned. For them, especially the Iranians at this moment, what is going to be done depends on what they are capable of doing. When the long game looks like the Inevitable Caliphate, the short game will probably be pretty ugly.
I don’t study Iraq too closely, it seems like any statement I make even based on data could be turned around the next week. I’ll leave that to folks with more time and a greater intent to understanding the situation there. – And more time issue corrections.
I appreciate the work you’re doing, Bill, even if it is a small thing.
Well hold on Rusty, I don’t think that’s entirely true. Iran is not the monolithic killbot state you described, it’s every bit as internally conflicted about us as we are about it. Also, there are basic desires that trump long-term political calculations (such as the caliphate thing) that can be used as a basis for diplomatic engagement. Bush has often declared that his idea here is going to work because freedom is a universal goal, so by that logic there is a potential relationship between us and them, right? And if we’re looking long-term here, we’re not trying to set up a proxy state in Iraq to balance out the assumed malignance of Iran, we’re trying to set up a proxy state that is capable of dealing with Iran in a civilized manner, because it is through engagement that our values can infect the parts of their society with whom we are in conflict, not through cold war.
So if closer diplomatic engagement is an eventuality, and there is reason to believe that there are benefits to be gained from it immediately (if we’re blaming Iran for Iraqi destabilization), we should be investing in it now, in my opinion. And as far as Bush’s sabre-rattling goes, they can take its meaning in our cultural context just as easily as we can take it in theirs; you don’t think there’s anyone in Iran saying “Yes, but in their culture that is how you signal the end of negotiations, not the beginning” or words to that effect? And I was sort of being nice (read: courteously dishonest) about that, as well. I don’t think Bush has the talent or personality for the kind of negotiation we would need. Khalilzad, maybe, but not Bush. He’s a little inflexible, to put it gently.
Yeah but Dicentra, the left isn’t saying only “stop it’s already too expensive,” we’re saying “these methods are creating more malefactors as quickly as they are eliminating the old ones” which is why it is foreseeably too expensive. Petraeus’s strategy is certainly a step up from the previous methods, but there is a distinct possibility that the flipside of Jeff’s tipping point idea is already in play, i.e. that Iraq has irreversibly become a cause celebre for anti-American terrorists, and thereby we have manufactured the will for them to continue while simultaneously sapping not only the will but also the military resources of the United States. The “surge” is called that because it is not sustainable. When April rolls around and we’re still in the same position we’re in now, with only cause for optimism where we ought to have positive results, we’re going to be out of options. Again. Just like we have been after every Friedman Unit for the past four years. At what point do we admit that our nation-building efforts at the outset of this exercise were so ham-fisted that the path of least long-term harm for both us and them is to withdraw? Never? We just keep putting off the eventuality of uncomfortable withdrawal, leaving ourselves militarily short-handed the entire time? It just seems to me that this exercise is actively harming our capability to enforce the “never again” that Maj. John speaks of, that the damage to the perception of American good intentions and wherewithal (not through the idea behind deposing Saddam Hussein and democratizing Iraq, but through the bungled realization of that idea) is what really tips this war into the “not worth it” category.
“…we’re saying “these methods are creating more malefactors as quickly as they are eliminating the old ones†which is why it is foreseeably too expensive.”
And that isn’t reasonable. The enemy are convinced that Allah is on their side, that is how they recruit. Which behavior by us is going to reinforce that message: if we continue to stay there and kill 100 of them for everyone of us they kill, or if we tuck our tails and run and let them have free reign over the land and people? How can you possibly think the later would result in less recruits?
By believing if we leave they won’t follow.
Which, the neighbors of radical mosques in Europe, or Britain, or even here in the U.S., might not find that quite so easy to believe.
This all goes back to the jihadis being nothing but peaceful goat fuckers prior to the imperialist Zionist Americans invading an Arab land.
Because if you’re convinced that God is on your side, you’re already long past rational deliberation. Our actions are irrelevant to that sort of mindset. While we are present, however, even the shortest attention spans have an immediate target on which to project their insecurities and delusions. When we are gone, the easy choice (resist the American oppressor) is gone and the immediate enemy is the factions who promote instability, be it AQI, SCIRI, Iran, etc. We’re a big enough nation that we can shrug off the celebrations of delusional partisans so long as we achieve our objectives, right? Because trying to convince religious nuts that their god has abandoned them is an exercise in futility; their capacity for rationalization knows no bounds. I can’t guarantee that leaving would work, but I don’t regard it as any more of a gamble than staying in, and the ancillary benefits (allowing the military to rest and repair, regaining some international political capital) are alluring.
The idea that they’ll follow us home sort of DOES presume that the jihadis were peaceful goat-fuckers before we invaded Arab land. I don’t give either one much credence.
[…] a step up from the previous methods, but there is a distinct possibility that the flipside of Jeff’s tipping point idea is already in play, i.e. that Iraq has irreversibly become a cause celebre for anti-American […]
“Because if you’re convinced that God is on your side, you’re already long past rational deliberation.”
You are arguing in circles, if they are already convinced Allah is on their side and we are the enemy, then how are we “creating” them? The only way your previous argument makes sense is if we assume they are not jihadists now but our further presence will make them become jihadists.
“Because trying to convince religious nuts that their god has abandoned them is an exercise in futility; their capacity for rationalization knows no bounds.”
Not that there God has forsaken them, but that their religious leaders are wrong and they need new ones. That capacity for rationalization you speak of is very handy in this regard. Life in a desert tends to pragmatism at its core.
Whatever. The troops, they are staying. This conclusion, it is foregone. Still plenty of time for Harry and Nancy to tackle childhood obesity rates though. For real. Bush has set the bring-the-troops-home-now cookie jar on the way high shelf where Harry and Nancy can’t reach it even if they drag a chair over and stand on a stack of phone books. They can only hurt themselves by trying. I know cause this happened to my little brother once.
yeah, screw morale, at least they’ll be well rested. nothing I love better than to be told that the project I’ve spent time on just ain’t worth it cause it’s “taking too long” even though it’s relatively quick historically speaking. are we there yet?
My last comment was preemptively dismissive, just so we’re clear.
Maggie – You know that one of these Dem Congresscritters, 20 years from now, will claim that their efforts helped create the environment for the most remarkable military victory in history.
B Moe – it’s not a circle unless there’s only one “them” and only one path to and reason for attacking American troops. You can’t separate the weekend warrior whose enthusiasm for IED manufacture is a product of the availability of American targets and/or the accidental shooting of his cousin from the dedicated anti-American mercenary whose enthusiasm for IED manufacture is a product of his belief that Iraq is the central front in the war on the West, unless you remove the Americans.
Is the notion that proximity to American troops could be a radicalizing factor that unreasonable? Occupation breeds resentment, and all the good intentions in the world don’t change that. There are some people who don’t care how many hospitals you build, so long as your army is on their lawn. Most Americans, for example, are that way.
Maggie – your argument assumes that what you’re working on is achievable. If you’re trying to build a card-castle in a windtunnel, and someone steps in and stops you after twenty minutes, your morale is not really the central issue, is it?
Happyfeet – Yeah. I picked up on that.
so your assumption in the other direction is okay then? cause as Jeff pointed out, a lot of the people actually doing the work think it’s acheivable. but maybe they’re too close to the situation.
You see, Gabriel, there are many, including the men and women in the US Armed Forces, that do have that American “can-do” attitude and belief that this is acheivable. That you choose to side with your pessimism over their skill and experience is something that you will have to reconcile.
I’ll allow that it doesn’t EXCLUDE that possibility, but only because they are irrelevant to one another. If the argument is that our leaving will bring peace, the idea that they’ll follow us home (or, more accurately as is the case, ARE ALREADY HERE) undermines that argument.
Whether they were peaceful goat-fuckers before we went into the Middle East is a debate for assigning blame, not for choosing the most practical future course.
…and I keep meaning to change the URI info in this dang comment form, and I keep forgetting. Until now.
thinking on it further, if we’re talking about concern for the well-being of our military, morale is important. just ask someone that was in the military in the late 70’s/early 80’s.
I just don’t see how fighting is going to solve our predicament.
Let’s just say it will do more good than not fighting.
It is though the Left refuses to consider the costs of our inaction.
OUT OF FALLUJAH…
Al`Qaeda is not doing well in Iraq. They used to enjoy support and hiding places in Iraq, they mocked the Americans as ineffective, weak, frightened, buffoonish. They set bombs and hid in the villages, they blended in with the locals and were not turne…