Wrong on Timetables
The Democratic Congress doesn't understand what is going on in Iraq.
by William Kristol & Frederick W. Kagan
04/02/2007, Weekly Standard, Volume 012, Issue 28
Let's give congressional Democrats the benefit of the doubt: Assume some of them earnestly think they're doing the right thing to insist on adding to the supplemental appropriation for the Iraq war benchmarks and timetables for withdrawal. Still, their own arguments--taken at face value--don't hold up.
Democrats in Congress have made three superficially plausible claims: (1) Benchmarks and timetables will "incentivize" the Maliki government to take necessary steps it would prefer to avoid. (2) We can gradually withdraw over the next year so as to step out of sectarian conflict in Iraq while still remaining to fight al Qaeda. (3) Defeat in Iraq is inevitable, so our primary goal really has to be to get out of there. But the situation in Iraq is moving rapidly away from the assumptions underlying these propositions, and their falseness is easier to show with each passing day.
(1) The Iraqi government will not act responsibly unless the imminent departure of American forces compels it to do so. Those who sincerely believe this argument were horrified by the president's decision in January to increase the American military presence in Iraq. It has now been more than ten weeks since that announcement--long enough to judge whether the Maliki government is more or less likely to behave well when U.S. support seems robust and reliable.
In fact, since January 11, Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki has permitted U.S. forces to sweep the major Shiite strongholds in Baghdad, including Sadr City, which he had ordered American troops away from during operations
in 2006. He has allowed U.S. forces to capture and kill senior leaders of Moktada al-Sadr's Mahdi Army--terrifying Sadr into fleeing to Iran. He fired the deputy health minister--one of Sadr's close allies--and turned a deaf ear to Sadr's complaints. He oversaw a clearing-out of the Interior Ministry, a Sadrist stronghold that was corrupting the Iraqi police. He has worked with coalition leaders to deploy all of the Iraqi Army units required by the Baghdad Security Plan. In perhaps the most dramatic move of all, Maliki visited Sunni sheikhs in Ramadi, the capital of Anbar province and formerly the base of al Qaeda fighters and other Sunni Arab insurgents against his government. The visit was made possible because Anbar's sheikhs have turned against al Qaeda and are now reaching out to the government they had been fighting. Maliki is reaching back. U.S. strength has given him the confidence to take all these important steps.
(2) American forces would be able to fight al Qaeda at least as well, if not better, if they were not also engaged in a sectarian civil war in Iraq. The idea of separating the fight against al Qaeda from the sectarian fighting in Iraq is a delusion. Since early 2004, al Qaeda in Iraq (AQI) has sought to plunge Iraq into sectarian civil war, so as to critically weaken the government, which is fighting it. AQI endeavors to clear Shiites out of mixed areas, terrorize local Sunnis into tolerating and supporting AQI, and thereby establish safe havens surrounded by innocent people it then dragoons into the struggle. Now, heartened by the U.S. commitment to stay, Sunni sheikhs in Anbar have turned on AQI. In response, AQI has begun to move toward Baghdad and mixed areas in Diyala, attempting to terrorize the locals and establish new bases in the resulting chaos. The enemy understands that chaos is al Qaeda's friend. The notion that we can pull our troops back into fortresses in a climate of chaos--but still move selectively against al Qaeda--is fanciful. There can be no hope of defeating or controlling al Qaeda in Iraq without controlling the sectarian violence that it spawns and relies upon.
(3) Isn't it too late? Even if we now have the right strategy and the right general, can we prevail? If there were no hope left, if the Iraqis were determined to wage full-scale civil war, if the Maliki government were weak or dominated by violent extremists, if Iran really controlled the Shiites in Iraq--if these things were true, then the new strategy would have borne no fruit at all. Maliki would have resisted or remained limp as before. Sadr's forces would have attacked. Coalition casualties would be up, and so would sectarian killings. But none of these things has happened. Sectarian killings are lower. And despite dramatically increased operations in more exposed settings, so are American casualties. This does not look like hopelessness.
Hope is not victory, of course. The surge has just begun, our enemies are adapting, and fighting is likely to intensify as U.S. and Iraqi forces begin the main clear-and-hold phase. The Maliki government could falter. But it need not, if we do not. Unfortunately, four years of setbacks have conditioned Americans to believe that any progress must be ephemeral. If the Democrats get their way and Gen. Petraeus is undermined in Congress, the progress may indeed prove short-lived. But it's time to stop thinking so hard about how to lose, and to think instead about how to reinforce and exploit the success we have begun to achieve. The debate in Washington hasn't caught up to the realities in Baghdad. Until it does, a resolute president will need to prevent defeatists in Congress from losing a winnable war in Iraq.
--Frederick W. Kagan and William Kristol
Saturday, March 24, 2007
In response to Republican Ric (Lawn Boy) Keller's remarks that our involvement in Iraq is like mowing your neighbor's lawn. It is preposterous that he doesn't get it. He is a Republican, sworn to protect and serve...and not a Democrat that typically tries to "stuff" President Bush and to win the 2008 election at all costs. He would have an excuse as a Dem, not as a Republican.
At Victory Caucus ( http://victorycaucus.com ) there was a contest that I wanted to drop a Photoshop Lawn Boy pic....I don't think their server got it up, so it is here...just a little thought Ric...
(From Paul Mirengoff, Powerline) http://powerlineblog.com/
What country does Zbigniew Brzezinski live in?
Zbigniew Brzezinski was the national security adviser to Jimmy Carter. Given the disastrous foreign policy of those harrowing years, you wonder how anyone can take him seriously, and it's questionable whether, for decades, many people did. These days, however, Brzezinski is attempting rather successfully to ride hatred of President Bush back into the national debate.
In his latest contribution, Brzezinski claims that our nation is "terrorized" by the war on terror. I fear the old boy doesn't get out much among his fellow Americans. As one who rides at least twice a day nearly every day on the Washington D.C. subway (Metro) -- a known target of terrorists -- I can assure Brzezinski that there is an utter absence of terror in that venue. Nor do I detect the slightest trace of fear when I visit key buildings such as the Pentagon (which was attacked on 9/11) and the U.S. Capitol (which might have been). As far as I can tell, the same is true at the nation's airports, except when imams start praising Osama bin Laden and ordering spare equipment they don't need.
This absence of fear is due in part to the human spirit and its American incarnation. But it's also due to the fact that we haven't been attacked at home for more than five years. And, unless one believes in the tooth fairy, it's counterintuitive to deny that this happy state of affairs owes much to the fact that our government took the threat of terrorism seriously and acted aggressively to thwart terrorists. In short, our government has been preoccupied with the threat of terrorism so we wouldn't have to be.
The only Americans I know who are living in fear are folks like Brzezinski whose partisanship and hatred of the president has caused them to suffer from a strange form of hysteria.
What country does Zbigniew Brzezinski live in?
Zbigniew Brzezinski was the national security adviser to Jimmy Carter. Given the disastrous foreign policy of those harrowing years, you wonder how anyone can take him seriously, and it's questionable whether, for decades, many people did. These days, however, Brzezinski is attempting rather successfully to ride hatred of President Bush back into the national debate.
In his latest contribution, Brzezinski claims that our nation is "terrorized" by the war on terror. I fear the old boy doesn't get out much among his fellow Americans. As one who rides at least twice a day nearly every day on the Washington D.C. subway (Metro) -- a known target of terrorists -- I can assure Brzezinski that there is an utter absence of terror in that venue. Nor do I detect the slightest trace of fear when I visit key buildings such as the Pentagon (which was attacked on 9/11) and the U.S. Capitol (which might have been). As far as I can tell, the same is true at the nation's airports, except when imams start praising Osama bin Laden and ordering spare equipment they don't need.
This absence of fear is due in part to the human spirit and its American incarnation. But it's also due to the fact that we haven't been attacked at home for more than five years. And, unless one believes in the tooth fairy, it's counterintuitive to deny that this happy state of affairs owes much to the fact that our government took the threat of terrorism seriously and acted aggressively to thwart terrorists. In short, our government has been preoccupied with the threat of terrorism so we wouldn't have to be.
The only Americans I know who are living in fear are folks like Brzezinski whose partisanship and hatred of the president has caused them to suffer from a strange form of hysteria.
Sunday, March 11, 2007
The 'Surge' Is Succeeding
By Robert Kagan (Washington Post)
Sunday, March 11, 2007; Page B07
A front-page story in The Post last week suggested that the Bush administration has no backup plan in case the surge in Iraq doesn't work. I wonder if The Post and other newspapers have a backup plan in case it does.
Leading journalists have been reporting for some time that the war was hopeless, a fiasco that could not be salvaged by more troops and a new counterinsurgency strategy. The conventional wisdom in December held that sending more troops was politically impossible after the antiwar tenor of the midterm elections. It was practically impossible because the extra troops didn't exist. Even if the troops did exist, they could not make a difference.
Four months later, the once insurmountable political opposition has been surmounted. The nonexistent troops are flowing into Iraq. And though it is still early and horrible acts of violence continue, there is substantial evidence that the new counterinsurgency strategy, backed by the infusion of new forces, is having a significant effect.
Some observers are reporting the shift. Iraqi bloggers Mohammed and Omar Fadhil, widely respected for their straight talk, say that "early signs are encouraging." The first impact of the "surge," they write, was psychological. Both friends and foes in Iraq had been convinced, in no small part by the American media, that the United States was preparing to pull out. When the opposite occurred, this alone shifted the dynamic.
As the Fadhils report, "Commanders and lieutenants of various militant groups abandoned their positions in Baghdad and in some cases fled the country." The most prominent leader to go into hiding has been Moqtada al-Sadr. His Mahdi Army has been instructed to avoid clashes with American and Iraqi forces, even as coalition forces begin to establish themselves in the once off-limits Sadr City.
Before the arrival of Gen. David Petraeus, the Army's leading counterinsurgency strategist, U.S. forces tended to raid insurgent and terrorist strongholds and then pull back and hand over the areas to Iraqi forces, who failed to hold them. The Fadhils report, "One difference between this and earlier -- failed -- attempts to secure Baghdad is the willingness of the Iraqi and U.S. governments to commit enough resources for enough time to make it work." In the past, bursts of American activity were followed by withdrawal and a return of the insurgents. Now, the plan to secure Baghdad "is becoming stricter and gaining momentum by the day as more troops pour into the city, allowing for a better implementation of the 'clear and hold' strategy." Baghdadis "always want the 'hold' part to materialize, and feel safe when they go out and find the Army and police maintaining their posts -- the bad guys can't intimidate as long as the troops are staying."
A greater sense of confidence produces many benefits. The number of security tips about insurgents that Iraqi civilians provide has jumped sharply. Stores and marketplaces are reopening in Baghdad, increasing the sense of community. People dislocated by sectarian violence are returning to their homes. As a result, "many Baghdadis feel hopeful again about the future, and the fear of civil war is slowly being replaced by optimism that peace might one day return to this city," the Fadhils report. "This change in mood is something huge by itself."
Apparently some American journalists see the difference. NBC's Brian Williams recently reported a dramatic change in Ramadi since his previous visit. The city was safer; the airport more secure. The new American strategy of "getting out, decentralizing, going into the neighborhoods, grabbing a toehold, telling the enemy we're here, start talking to the locals -- that is having an obvious and palpable effect." U.S. soldiers forged agreements with local religious leaders and pushed al-Qaeda back -- a trend other observers have noted in some Sunni-dominated areas. The result, Williams said, is that "the war has changed."
It is no coincidence that as the mood and the reality have shifted, political currents have shifted as well. A national agreement on sharing oil revenue appears on its way to approval. The Interior Ministry has been purged of corrupt officials and of many suspected of torture and brutality. And cracks are appearing in the Shiite governing coalition -- a good sign, given that the rock-solid unity was both the product and cause of growing sectarian violence.
There is still violence, as Sunni insurgents and al-Qaeda seek to prove that the surge is not working. However, they are striking at more vulnerable targets in the provinces. Violence is down in Baghdad. As for Sadr and the Mahdi Army, it is possible they may reemerge as a problem later. But trying to wait out the American and Iraqi effort may be hazardous if the public becomes less tolerant of their violence. It could not be comforting to Sadr or al-Qaeda to read in the New York Times that the United States plans to keep higher force levels in Iraq through at least the beginning of 2008. The only good news for them would be if the Bush administration in its infinite wisdom starts to talk again about drawing down forces.
No one is asking American journalists to start emphasizing the "good" news. All they have to do is report what is occurring, though it may conflict with their previous judgments. Some are still selling books based on the premise that the war is lost, end of story. But what if there is a new chapter in the story?
Robert Kagan, a senior associate at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and transatlantic fellow at the German Marshall Fund, writes a monthly column for The Post. His latest book is "Dangerous Nation," a history of American foreign policy.
By Robert Kagan (Washington Post)
Sunday, March 11, 2007; Page B07
A front-page story in The Post last week suggested that the Bush administration has no backup plan in case the surge in Iraq doesn't work. I wonder if The Post and other newspapers have a backup plan in case it does.
Leading journalists have been reporting for some time that the war was hopeless, a fiasco that could not be salvaged by more troops and a new counterinsurgency strategy. The conventional wisdom in December held that sending more troops was politically impossible after the antiwar tenor of the midterm elections. It was practically impossible because the extra troops didn't exist. Even if the troops did exist, they could not make a difference.
Four months later, the once insurmountable political opposition has been surmounted. The nonexistent troops are flowing into Iraq. And though it is still early and horrible acts of violence continue, there is substantial evidence that the new counterinsurgency strategy, backed by the infusion of new forces, is having a significant effect.
Some observers are reporting the shift. Iraqi bloggers Mohammed and Omar Fadhil, widely respected for their straight talk, say that "early signs are encouraging." The first impact of the "surge," they write, was psychological. Both friends and foes in Iraq had been convinced, in no small part by the American media, that the United States was preparing to pull out. When the opposite occurred, this alone shifted the dynamic.
As the Fadhils report, "Commanders and lieutenants of various militant groups abandoned their positions in Baghdad and in some cases fled the country." The most prominent leader to go into hiding has been Moqtada al-Sadr. His Mahdi Army has been instructed to avoid clashes with American and Iraqi forces, even as coalition forces begin to establish themselves in the once off-limits Sadr City.
Before the arrival of Gen. David Petraeus, the Army's leading counterinsurgency strategist, U.S. forces tended to raid insurgent and terrorist strongholds and then pull back and hand over the areas to Iraqi forces, who failed to hold them. The Fadhils report, "One difference between this and earlier -- failed -- attempts to secure Baghdad is the willingness of the Iraqi and U.S. governments to commit enough resources for enough time to make it work." In the past, bursts of American activity were followed by withdrawal and a return of the insurgents. Now, the plan to secure Baghdad "is becoming stricter and gaining momentum by the day as more troops pour into the city, allowing for a better implementation of the 'clear and hold' strategy." Baghdadis "always want the 'hold' part to materialize, and feel safe when they go out and find the Army and police maintaining their posts -- the bad guys can't intimidate as long as the troops are staying."
A greater sense of confidence produces many benefits. The number of security tips about insurgents that Iraqi civilians provide has jumped sharply. Stores and marketplaces are reopening in Baghdad, increasing the sense of community. People dislocated by sectarian violence are returning to their homes. As a result, "many Baghdadis feel hopeful again about the future, and the fear of civil war is slowly being replaced by optimism that peace might one day return to this city," the Fadhils report. "This change in mood is something huge by itself."
Apparently some American journalists see the difference. NBC's Brian Williams recently reported a dramatic change in Ramadi since his previous visit. The city was safer; the airport more secure. The new American strategy of "getting out, decentralizing, going into the neighborhoods, grabbing a toehold, telling the enemy we're here, start talking to the locals -- that is having an obvious and palpable effect." U.S. soldiers forged agreements with local religious leaders and pushed al-Qaeda back -- a trend other observers have noted in some Sunni-dominated areas. The result, Williams said, is that "the war has changed."
It is no coincidence that as the mood and the reality have shifted, political currents have shifted as well. A national agreement on sharing oil revenue appears on its way to approval. The Interior Ministry has been purged of corrupt officials and of many suspected of torture and brutality. And cracks are appearing in the Shiite governing coalition -- a good sign, given that the rock-solid unity was both the product and cause of growing sectarian violence.
There is still violence, as Sunni insurgents and al-Qaeda seek to prove that the surge is not working. However, they are striking at more vulnerable targets in the provinces. Violence is down in Baghdad. As for Sadr and the Mahdi Army, it is possible they may reemerge as a problem later. But trying to wait out the American and Iraqi effort may be hazardous if the public becomes less tolerant of their violence. It could not be comforting to Sadr or al-Qaeda to read in the New York Times that the United States plans to keep higher force levels in Iraq through at least the beginning of 2008. The only good news for them would be if the Bush administration in its infinite wisdom starts to talk again about drawing down forces.
No one is asking American journalists to start emphasizing the "good" news. All they have to do is report what is occurring, though it may conflict with their previous judgments. Some are still selling books based on the premise that the war is lost, end of story. But what if there is a new chapter in the story?
Robert Kagan, a senior associate at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and transatlantic fellow at the German Marshall Fund, writes a monthly column for The Post. His latest book is "Dangerous Nation," a history of American foreign policy.
Saturday, March 03, 2007
All Alone on the Long View in Iraq?
(another in the series of letters from Marine Col. Mike Walker, retired)
Marines,
I freely admit to being a fellow traveler within the
rank and file of the small minority who are optimistic
about Iraq. I blame this on three personal flaws.
First, it was my misfortune to have gained most of my
insights about Iraq by serving there (2003 & 2004).
Alas, you read that correctly, I was one of those poor
souls “stuck” over there despite having an
undergraduate degree from Marquette University and
graduate degree from Harvard University and a nice
civilian job back in the States. I was given every
opportunity to make it in correct society but somehow
wound up in the Marine Corps. I will try to do better
next time.
Second, I must confess to being a loner even within my
generation of fellow service members in that during my
career in the Marines I spent a good deal of time
studying insurgencies and/or modern civil wars which,
even within the military, was a subject largely
eschewed due to the trauma of the Vietnam War.
Finally and perhaps most damning, I have never been
able to catch on the to “I want it now, 24-7” mindset
of most of my friends and acquaintances. I am slow in
this regard. I actively seek to become more patient
and take a broader view amidst an American society
that is seemingly evermore cramming yet something else
into each and every day so it can readily chase after
the next “shiny object.” Iraq and war on terror are
not social unpleasantries to me. They are not
something to be done with because I have grown tired
of them and need to “move on.”
Given all those handicaps, I have been sadly compelled
to think this through for myself having to forego the
blissful privilege of being told what to think by
various combinations of the US “Big Media,”
politicians (of all manner of persuasion, and party),
and/or water cooler/cocktail party/barroom pundits.
Here is what I have concluded:
I believe we are winning in Iraq. I am flawed indeed.
But it gets worse.
I think we have (finally) put all the pieces in place
to assure our victory. Of course, we must give credit
where credit is due and thank the Saddamists for
running both a lousy conventional war in early-to-mid
2003 and an equally inept insurgency since. If your
“Capo di tutti Capo” guy winds up with his neck in a
noose, you are hated by the Kurdish minority, and the
Shi’a majority is screaming for your blood rather than
your return to power, then you certainly can’t take
much pride in your accomplishments.
But things are not as simple as that summary. For
example, in an insurgency, the political strategy is
superior to the military. The Saddamists relied
almost exclusively on the military solution, i.e.
trying to kill off an ever growing list of “enemies.”
First it was Coalition Forces then they added
“collaborators,” then they added in the Iraqi Security
Services centered on an Iraqi Army (when we finally
got past our own sorry reasoning opposing its
creation) and finally they added the Shi’a population
in toto, every man woman and child. Gee whiz, Hitler
and Stalin would have been impressed. But where was
the enemy’s political strategy? Missing and still
missing. They can never win without one but they have
created so many enemies that it is now pretty much
hopeless.
What about the Shi’a? I am optimistic about them too.
We need to take some specific steps such as removing
Muqtada Sadr as a military threat and suppressing the
militias but the overall strategy is working. The
Shi’a led government is off the ideal but as much as
it wheezes and gasps, moves in fits and starts, at the
end of the day it is good enough to get the job done.
Look, we worked to introduce “democracy” into South
Korea beginning in the late 1940’s (even before the
war there began) but it really did not flower until
the 1990’s, it took over half a century for the roots
to really sink in but they did. Never underestimate
the power of an idea or the strength of a
constitutional government. As recent polling has
shown, the Iraqi people are moving towards a
democratic government rather than walking away.
This brings up a final lesson I learned in Iraq.
There is a complex insurgency in Iraq but the Iraqis
are a far more resilient and capable people than most
give them credit for. The will of the Iraqi people
will not allow failure even if we lose ours. I left
with a deep degree of respect and admiration for the
Iraqis I knew over there, from all walks and
ethnicity. One of the most frustrating issues I have
in discussing Iraq with my fellow Americans is real
lack of knowledge about how good the Iraqi people are
and how successful they will continue to be in the
future, if we give them a fair chance. My unshakable
conclusion is that the Iraqi people are going to win
this war for themselves. With our continued support,
it will happen quicker, with less loss of life and one
that will strengthen the position of the United States
in the region and weaken that of our enemies, but in
any case, the Iraqi people will prevail.
The lesson is that it takes time.
Let us look at a timeline for the insurgency in Iraq
as compared to some other historical examples. The
insurgency in El Salvador that began in 1980 took 14
years to end. The Communist insurgency in the
Philippines began 1968 and peaked in 1986 before
becoming ineffective in the early 1990’s, over twenty
years later. Perhaps the best example comes from
Malaya.
In 1948, the Communist Party in Malaya began an
insurgency there. At that time it was a British
colonial possession. The British won the war in 1960.
That war took “only” twelve years to win. Noel Barber
wrote the definitive book on the conflict entitled
“The War of the Running Dogs, How Malaya Defeated the
Communist Guerrillas 1948-1960.” As he reports, the
first four years were a seesaw struggle and the path
to victory took a further eight years. The fight was
tough. Barber admits that the early years were
“tragic and wasted” but they won nonetheless because
they had the will and the vision to take the long
view. It also required a strong financial commitment.
It demanded a strong military presence, some “40,000
troops and 25,000 police and 50,000 special
constables” in order to pull it off in a country with
a population that was less than one fourth of Iraq’s.
They won the political war by giving the Malay people
control of their government (which was not a pretty
thing to see when it first began just as the workings
of the government in Baghdad is sometimes hard to
watch now) and they ensured that the large ethnic
minorities had a sufficiently strong economic and
political voice to win them over as is the case in
Iraq.
If all you looked at were the monthly number of
terrorist attacks and the casualties you could never
have seen the “mess” in Malaya as anything resembling
a victory because it took nearly 12 years to win. We
Americans seem to have no patience for those types of
timelines. For too many it is not a matter of winning
or losing but only a matter of it being too long.
That we would consider basing our national policy on
the rule “if it will take too long then declare
failure and quit” is disheartening to contemplate.
Now I am not suggesting that we need to have 130,000
American soldiers in Iraq for 12 years, quite the
contrary in fact. While many Marines knew in January
2004 that the war in Iraq would probably still be
going on in 2014, we also knew the Iraqis would no
longer need us after several years providing we
ensured the establishment of a constitutional
government and security services centered on the Iraqi
Army. The critical components of that task should be
completed later this year or early next year. So I
too am a member of the majority that thinks the US can
start a major redeployment out of Iraq in the next
12-18 months. By then, there will be an Iraqi
government and security force in place that can do the
heavy lifting for the next seven or eight years that
it will take to finish the war.
But that means the US cannot walk away from Iraq in
2008. We need to stand firm as we did by staying
engaged in Western Europe after 1945 and Korea after
1953 during the Cold War. We may still need to
conduct some combined operations over the next two or
three years where the US provides support to Iraqi
ground forces. We will still need military advisors
to work with the Iraqis for the next four or five
years. We will need to place Iraq high on the list of
countries that we provide foreign aid to for the next
decade or so. We will also need to vouchsafe the
borders of Iraq from a military invasion by Iran
and/or Syria. If we do all that then Iraq will be as
much of a success story as the Marshall Plan and the
Korean Intervention were in the last century.
Or we can sit back, tune into “Big Media,” turn off
our brains, take counsel of our own fears, and cut and
run.
…and if we cut and run now we will conduct, in due
course, a witch hunt to determine “Who Lost Iraq?” and
then throw out all the bums in Washington from both
parties. It will be their just deserves.
Semper Fi,
Mike
(another in the series of letters from Marine Col. Mike Walker, retired)
Marines,
I freely admit to being a fellow traveler within the
rank and file of the small minority who are optimistic
about Iraq. I blame this on three personal flaws.
First, it was my misfortune to have gained most of my
insights about Iraq by serving there (2003 & 2004).
Alas, you read that correctly, I was one of those poor
souls “stuck” over there despite having an
undergraduate degree from Marquette University and
graduate degree from Harvard University and a nice
civilian job back in the States. I was given every
opportunity to make it in correct society but somehow
wound up in the Marine Corps. I will try to do better
next time.
Second, I must confess to being a loner even within my
generation of fellow service members in that during my
career in the Marines I spent a good deal of time
studying insurgencies and/or modern civil wars which,
even within the military, was a subject largely
eschewed due to the trauma of the Vietnam War.
Finally and perhaps most damning, I have never been
able to catch on the to “I want it now, 24-7” mindset
of most of my friends and acquaintances. I am slow in
this regard. I actively seek to become more patient
and take a broader view amidst an American society
that is seemingly evermore cramming yet something else
into each and every day so it can readily chase after
the next “shiny object.” Iraq and war on terror are
not social unpleasantries to me. They are not
something to be done with because I have grown tired
of them and need to “move on.”
Given all those handicaps, I have been sadly compelled
to think this through for myself having to forego the
blissful privilege of being told what to think by
various combinations of the US “Big Media,”
politicians (of all manner of persuasion, and party),
and/or water cooler/cocktail party/barroom pundits.
Here is what I have concluded:
I believe we are winning in Iraq. I am flawed indeed.
But it gets worse.
I think we have (finally) put all the pieces in place
to assure our victory. Of course, we must give credit
where credit is due and thank the Saddamists for
running both a lousy conventional war in early-to-mid
2003 and an equally inept insurgency since. If your
“Capo di tutti Capo” guy winds up with his neck in a
noose, you are hated by the Kurdish minority, and the
Shi’a majority is screaming for your blood rather than
your return to power, then you certainly can’t take
much pride in your accomplishments.
But things are not as simple as that summary. For
example, in an insurgency, the political strategy is
superior to the military. The Saddamists relied
almost exclusively on the military solution, i.e.
trying to kill off an ever growing list of “enemies.”
First it was Coalition Forces then they added
“collaborators,” then they added in the Iraqi Security
Services centered on an Iraqi Army (when we finally
got past our own sorry reasoning opposing its
creation) and finally they added the Shi’a population
in toto, every man woman and child. Gee whiz, Hitler
and Stalin would have been impressed. But where was
the enemy’s political strategy? Missing and still
missing. They can never win without one but they have
created so many enemies that it is now pretty much
hopeless.
What about the Shi’a? I am optimistic about them too.
We need to take some specific steps such as removing
Muqtada Sadr as a military threat and suppressing the
militias but the overall strategy is working. The
Shi’a led government is off the ideal but as much as
it wheezes and gasps, moves in fits and starts, at the
end of the day it is good enough to get the job done.
Look, we worked to introduce “democracy” into South
Korea beginning in the late 1940’s (even before the
war there began) but it really did not flower until
the 1990’s, it took over half a century for the roots
to really sink in but they did. Never underestimate
the power of an idea or the strength of a
constitutional government. As recent polling has
shown, the Iraqi people are moving towards a
democratic government rather than walking away.
This brings up a final lesson I learned in Iraq.
There is a complex insurgency in Iraq but the Iraqis
are a far more resilient and capable people than most
give them credit for. The will of the Iraqi people
will not allow failure even if we lose ours. I left
with a deep degree of respect and admiration for the
Iraqis I knew over there, from all walks and
ethnicity. One of the most frustrating issues I have
in discussing Iraq with my fellow Americans is real
lack of knowledge about how good the Iraqi people are
and how successful they will continue to be in the
future, if we give them a fair chance. My unshakable
conclusion is that the Iraqi people are going to win
this war for themselves. With our continued support,
it will happen quicker, with less loss of life and one
that will strengthen the position of the United States
in the region and weaken that of our enemies, but in
any case, the Iraqi people will prevail.
The lesson is that it takes time.
Let us look at a timeline for the insurgency in Iraq
as compared to some other historical examples. The
insurgency in El Salvador that began in 1980 took 14
years to end. The Communist insurgency in the
Philippines began 1968 and peaked in 1986 before
becoming ineffective in the early 1990’s, over twenty
years later. Perhaps the best example comes from
Malaya.
In 1948, the Communist Party in Malaya began an
insurgency there. At that time it was a British
colonial possession. The British won the war in 1960.
That war took “only” twelve years to win. Noel Barber
wrote the definitive book on the conflict entitled
“The War of the Running Dogs, How Malaya Defeated the
Communist Guerrillas 1948-1960.” As he reports, the
first four years were a seesaw struggle and the path
to victory took a further eight years. The fight was
tough. Barber admits that the early years were
“tragic and wasted” but they won nonetheless because
they had the will and the vision to take the long
view. It also required a strong financial commitment.
It demanded a strong military presence, some “40,000
troops and 25,000 police and 50,000 special
constables” in order to pull it off in a country with
a population that was less than one fourth of Iraq’s.
They won the political war by giving the Malay people
control of their government (which was not a pretty
thing to see when it first began just as the workings
of the government in Baghdad is sometimes hard to
watch now) and they ensured that the large ethnic
minorities had a sufficiently strong economic and
political voice to win them over as is the case in
Iraq.
If all you looked at were the monthly number of
terrorist attacks and the casualties you could never
have seen the “mess” in Malaya as anything resembling
a victory because it took nearly 12 years to win. We
Americans seem to have no patience for those types of
timelines. For too many it is not a matter of winning
or losing but only a matter of it being too long.
That we would consider basing our national policy on
the rule “if it will take too long then declare
failure and quit” is disheartening to contemplate.
Now I am not suggesting that we need to have 130,000
American soldiers in Iraq for 12 years, quite the
contrary in fact. While many Marines knew in January
2004 that the war in Iraq would probably still be
going on in 2014, we also knew the Iraqis would no
longer need us after several years providing we
ensured the establishment of a constitutional
government and security services centered on the Iraqi
Army. The critical components of that task should be
completed later this year or early next year. So I
too am a member of the majority that thinks the US can
start a major redeployment out of Iraq in the next
12-18 months. By then, there will be an Iraqi
government and security force in place that can do the
heavy lifting for the next seven or eight years that
it will take to finish the war.
But that means the US cannot walk away from Iraq in
2008. We need to stand firm as we did by staying
engaged in Western Europe after 1945 and Korea after
1953 during the Cold War. We may still need to
conduct some combined operations over the next two or
three years where the US provides support to Iraqi
ground forces. We will still need military advisors
to work with the Iraqis for the next four or five
years. We will need to place Iraq high on the list of
countries that we provide foreign aid to for the next
decade or so. We will also need to vouchsafe the
borders of Iraq from a military invasion by Iran
and/or Syria. If we do all that then Iraq will be as
much of a success story as the Marshall Plan and the
Korean Intervention were in the last century.
Or we can sit back, tune into “Big Media,” turn off
our brains, take counsel of our own fears, and cut and
run.
…and if we cut and run now we will conduct, in due
course, a witch hunt to determine “Who Lost Iraq?” and
then throw out all the bums in Washington from both
parties. It will be their just deserves.
Semper Fi,
Mike
Tuesday, February 27, 2007
By John Hinderacker, PowerLine
Follow That Armadillo!
One of the early articles that Scott and I wrote was called, with characteristic understatement, "The Global Warming Hoax." It appeared in the Minnesota Journal of Law and Politics in late 1992. One of the things we wrote about was the global cooling scare of the 1970s; we quoted articles from Time and Newsweek about fears that we humans were about to cause another ice age.
This has been on my mind of late, especially since the global warming-themed Oscar event Sunday night. Coincidentally, earlier tonight a friend put into my locker in the gym a copy of the very Time article, dated June 24, 1974, that we quoted in 1992. The memories came flooding back:
As they review the bizarre and unpredictable weather pattern of the past several years, a growing number of scientists are beginning to suspect that many seemingly contradictory meteorological fluctuations are actually part of a global climatic upheaval. However widely the weather varies from place to place and time to time, when meteorologists take an average of temperatures around the globe they find that the atmosphere has been growing gradually cooler for the past three decades. The trend shows no indication of reversing. Climatological Cassandras are becoming increasingly apprehensive, for the weather aberrations they are studying may be the harbinger of another ice age.
Telltale signs are everywhere--from the unexpected persistence and thickness of pack ice in the waters around Iceland to the southward migration of a warmth-loving creature like the armadillo from the Midwest. Since the 1940s the mean global temperature has dropped about 2.7 degrees F. ... When Climatologist George G. Kukla of Columbia University's Lamong-Doherty Geological Observatory and his wife Helena analyzed satellite weather data for the Northern Hemisphere, they found that the area of the ice and snow cover had suddenly increased by 12% in 1971 and the increase has persisted ever since. Areas of Baffin Island in the Canadian Arctic, for example, were once totally free of any snow in summer; now they are covered year round.
To its credit, Time noted that cooler weather was probably due to less energy reaching the Earth from the Sun. But:
Man, too, may be somewhat responsible for the cooling trend. The University of Wisconsin's Reid A. Bryson and other climatologists suggest that dust and other particles released into the atmosphere as a result of farming and fuel burning may be blocking more and more sunlight from reaching and heating the surface of the earth.
Time closed with grim predictions of the future global cooling could bring: Warns [Climatologist Kenneth] Hare: "I don't believe that the world's present popuation is sustainable is there are more than three years like 1972 in a row."
Fortunately, things warmed up a bit. Here in Minnesota, the prospect of another ice age is one to be taken seriously; the last one left 15,000 lakes behind. Over the weekend, we got a foot of snow. It isn't exactly an ice age, to be sure, but here is the snow pile in the street in front of my house; it's about ten feet high:
Snow is expected to start falling again tomorrow (Feb 28), with another foot or more due by Friday. The kids are hoping for a snow day, and there isn't an armadillo in sight.
Follow That Armadillo!
One of the early articles that Scott and I wrote was called, with characteristic understatement, "The Global Warming Hoax." It appeared in the Minnesota Journal of Law and Politics in late 1992. One of the things we wrote about was the global cooling scare of the 1970s; we quoted articles from Time and Newsweek about fears that we humans were about to cause another ice age.
This has been on my mind of late, especially since the global warming-themed Oscar event Sunday night. Coincidentally, earlier tonight a friend put into my locker in the gym a copy of the very Time article, dated June 24, 1974, that we quoted in 1992. The memories came flooding back:
As they review the bizarre and unpredictable weather pattern of the past several years, a growing number of scientists are beginning to suspect that many seemingly contradictory meteorological fluctuations are actually part of a global climatic upheaval. However widely the weather varies from place to place and time to time, when meteorologists take an average of temperatures around the globe they find that the atmosphere has been growing gradually cooler for the past three decades. The trend shows no indication of reversing. Climatological Cassandras are becoming increasingly apprehensive, for the weather aberrations they are studying may be the harbinger of another ice age.
Telltale signs are everywhere--from the unexpected persistence and thickness of pack ice in the waters around Iceland to the southward migration of a warmth-loving creature like the armadillo from the Midwest. Since the 1940s the mean global temperature has dropped about 2.7 degrees F. ... When Climatologist George G. Kukla of Columbia University's Lamong-Doherty Geological Observatory and his wife Helena analyzed satellite weather data for the Northern Hemisphere, they found that the area of the ice and snow cover had suddenly increased by 12% in 1971 and the increase has persisted ever since. Areas of Baffin Island in the Canadian Arctic, for example, were once totally free of any snow in summer; now they are covered year round.
To its credit, Time noted that cooler weather was probably due to less energy reaching the Earth from the Sun. But:
Man, too, may be somewhat responsible for the cooling trend. The University of Wisconsin's Reid A. Bryson and other climatologists suggest that dust and other particles released into the atmosphere as a result of farming and fuel burning may be blocking more and more sunlight from reaching and heating the surface of the earth.
Time closed with grim predictions of the future global cooling could bring: Warns [Climatologist Kenneth] Hare: "I don't believe that the world's present popuation is sustainable is there are more than three years like 1972 in a row."
Fortunately, things warmed up a bit. Here in Minnesota, the prospect of another ice age is one to be taken seriously; the last one left 15,000 lakes behind. Over the weekend, we got a foot of snow. It isn't exactly an ice age, to be sure, but here is the snow pile in the street in front of my house; it's about ten feet high:
Snow is expected to start falling again tomorrow (Feb 28), with another foot or more due by Friday. The kids are hoping for a snow day, and there isn't an armadillo in sight.
Sunday, February 04, 2007
Step up Republicans...
A Terrible Ignominy
How many Republicans will desert the troops?
by William Kristol
02/12/2007, Volume 012, Issue 21
the Weekly Standard
Perhaps the shade of the great Yeats will forgive me:
I write it out in a verse--
Warner and Smith
And Collins and Snowe
Now and in time to be,
Wherever Reagan is remembered,
Are changed, changed utterly:
A terrible ignominy is born.
John Warner of Virginia, Gordon Smith of Oregon, and Susan Collins and Olympia Snowe of Maine are the four Republican senators (in addition to Nebraska's Chuck Hagel) currently signed on to the Democrats' anti-surge, anti-Petraeus, anti-troops, and anti-victory resolution. (I give Hagel a pass--perhaps undeserved--in my roster of ignominy, since he has been a harsh critic of the war for quite some time.) Three of the four are up for reelection in 2008--Warner, Collins, and Smith. Collins and Smith will be running in states Bush lost in 2004. Warner will be standing in a state where an antiwar Democrat won in 2006.
Now, politicians are entitled to be concerned about their political survival. They're even entitled to make foolish and shortsighted political judgments--for example, that voting for this resolution in February 2007 will help their electoral prospects if the Bush administration's foreign policy is in shambles in November 2008. Indeed, they're entitled to ignore the fact that voting for this resolution somewhat increases the chances of a shambolic outcome to Bush's foreign policy, and therefore may not be in their own interest.
But of course these senators won't acknowledge they're influenced by the electoral cycle. Consider John Warner. Is he worried about 2008? No. It's memories of Vietnam that suddenly haunt him. As the Washington Post reported onits front page recently:
"I regret that I was not more outspoken" during the Vietnam War, the former Navy secretary said in an interview in his Capitol Hill office. "The Army generals would come in, 'Just send in another five or ten thousand.' You know, month after month. Another ten or fifteen thousand. They thought they could win it. We kept surging in those years. It didn't work."
In fact, John Warner was Richard Nixon's undersecretary of the Navy from 1969 to 1972, then Navy secretary until 1974. No admiral (or Army general) showed up in either his undersecretarial or secretarial office in those years to urge more troops for Vietnam--because we were then drawing down as part of Vietnamization. So Warner would seem to be making up these conversations with foolishly optimistic Army generals--unless they visited him before 1969 in his office at the law firm of Hogan and Hartson, where he was ensconced during the period of the Vietnam buildup.
I presume Smith, Collins, and Snowe aren't rewriting history to justify their votes to disapprove of Bush's new effort in Iraq. Still, we have yet to hear a coherent explanation of their position: They are (understandably) unhappy with how Bush has prosecuted the war over the last couple of years, under the guidance of Rumsfeld, Abizaid, and Casey. So they now are supporting a resolution that precisely embodies the Rumsfeld-Abizaid-Casey approach: no new strategy, no more troops, and continuing pressure to turn things over to the Iraqis as quickly as possible. These senators dislike the status quo in Iraq--and are supporting a resolution that condemns Bush's attempt to change the status quo.
Some seven GOP senators are said to be wavering between the Democratic resolution and the McCain Graham-Lieberman alternative supporting Gen. Petraeus and the troops. They are Lamar Alexander of Tennessee, Sam Brownback of Kansas, Norm Coleman of Minnesota, Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania, John Sununu of New Hampshire, and George Voinovich of Ohio. Alexander, Coleman, and Sununu are up for reelection in 2008. Some or all of the seven may still choose to stand with the president and the troops, and to give Petraeus a chance. This would leave the Democratic resolution short of the 60 votes needed to end debate. Perhaps the four ignominious ones could even reconsider and sign on with McCain, Graham, and Lieberman (whose resolution of support includes, incidentally, "benchmarks" of performance that the Iraqi government is expected to meet).
In any case, Republican senators up for reelection in 2008 might remember this: The American political system has primaries as well as general elections. In 1978 and 1980, as Reagan conservatives took over the party from détente-establishment types, Reaganite challengers ousted incumbent GOP senators in New Jersey and New York. Surely there are victory-oriented Republicans who might step forward today in Nebraska, Virginia, Oregon, and Maine--and, if necessary, in Tennessee, Minnesota, and New Hampshire--to seek to vindicate the honor, and brighten the future, of the party of Reagan.
--William Kristol
A Terrible Ignominy
How many Republicans will desert the troops?
by William Kristol
02/12/2007, Volume 012, Issue 21
the Weekly Standard
Perhaps the shade of the great Yeats will forgive me:
I write it out in a verse--
Warner and Smith
And Collins and Snowe
Now and in time to be,
Wherever Reagan is remembered,
Are changed, changed utterly:
A terrible ignominy is born.
John Warner of Virginia, Gordon Smith of Oregon, and Susan Collins and Olympia Snowe of Maine are the four Republican senators (in addition to Nebraska's Chuck Hagel) currently signed on to the Democrats' anti-surge, anti-Petraeus, anti-troops, and anti-victory resolution. (I give Hagel a pass--perhaps undeserved--in my roster of ignominy, since he has been a harsh critic of the war for quite some time.) Three of the four are up for reelection in 2008--Warner, Collins, and Smith. Collins and Smith will be running in states Bush lost in 2004. Warner will be standing in a state where an antiwar Democrat won in 2006.
Now, politicians are entitled to be concerned about their political survival. They're even entitled to make foolish and shortsighted political judgments--for example, that voting for this resolution in February 2007 will help their electoral prospects if the Bush administration's foreign policy is in shambles in November 2008. Indeed, they're entitled to ignore the fact that voting for this resolution somewhat increases the chances of a shambolic outcome to Bush's foreign policy, and therefore may not be in their own interest.
But of course these senators won't acknowledge they're influenced by the electoral cycle. Consider John Warner. Is he worried about 2008? No. It's memories of Vietnam that suddenly haunt him. As the Washington Post reported onits front page recently:
"I regret that I was not more outspoken" during the Vietnam War, the former Navy secretary said in an interview in his Capitol Hill office. "The Army generals would come in, 'Just send in another five or ten thousand.' You know, month after month. Another ten or fifteen thousand. They thought they could win it. We kept surging in those years. It didn't work."
In fact, John Warner was Richard Nixon's undersecretary of the Navy from 1969 to 1972, then Navy secretary until 1974. No admiral (or Army general) showed up in either his undersecretarial or secretarial office in those years to urge more troops for Vietnam--because we were then drawing down as part of Vietnamization. So Warner would seem to be making up these conversations with foolishly optimistic Army generals--unless they visited him before 1969 in his office at the law firm of Hogan and Hartson, where he was ensconced during the period of the Vietnam buildup.
I presume Smith, Collins, and Snowe aren't rewriting history to justify their votes to disapprove of Bush's new effort in Iraq. Still, we have yet to hear a coherent explanation of their position: They are (understandably) unhappy with how Bush has prosecuted the war over the last couple of years, under the guidance of Rumsfeld, Abizaid, and Casey. So they now are supporting a resolution that precisely embodies the Rumsfeld-Abizaid-Casey approach: no new strategy, no more troops, and continuing pressure to turn things over to the Iraqis as quickly as possible. These senators dislike the status quo in Iraq--and are supporting a resolution that condemns Bush's attempt to change the status quo.
Some seven GOP senators are said to be wavering between the Democratic resolution and the McCain Graham-Lieberman alternative supporting Gen. Petraeus and the troops. They are Lamar Alexander of Tennessee, Sam Brownback of Kansas, Norm Coleman of Minnesota, Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania, John Sununu of New Hampshire, and George Voinovich of Ohio. Alexander, Coleman, and Sununu are up for reelection in 2008. Some or all of the seven may still choose to stand with the president and the troops, and to give Petraeus a chance. This would leave the Democratic resolution short of the 60 votes needed to end debate. Perhaps the four ignominious ones could even reconsider and sign on with McCain, Graham, and Lieberman (whose resolution of support includes, incidentally, "benchmarks" of performance that the Iraqi government is expected to meet).
In any case, Republican senators up for reelection in 2008 might remember this: The American political system has primaries as well as general elections. In 1978 and 1980, as Reagan conservatives took over the party from détente-establishment types, Reaganite challengers ousted incumbent GOP senators in New Jersey and New York. Surely there are victory-oriented Republicans who might step forward today in Nebraska, Virginia, Oregon, and Maine--and, if necessary, in Tennessee, Minnesota, and New Hampshire--to seek to vindicate the honor, and brighten the future, of the party of Reagan.
--William Kristol
Saturday, January 27, 2007
Posted on PowerLine... John Kerry has always been a traitor.
John Kerry disgraced himself yet again earlier today, when he launched a salvo against the Bush administration at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. (What is it about Davos that brings out the worst in temporarily expatriate Americans?) This Power Line Forum thread addresses Kerry's latest folly. You could spend a long time taking apart Kerry's attack on President Bush, but let's just focus on one aspect of it:
“When we walk away from global warming, Kyoto, when we are irresponsibly slow in moving toward AIDS in Africa, when we don’t advance and live up to our own rhetoric and standards, we set a terrible message of duplicity and hypocrisy,” Kerry said.
Speaking of duplicity and hypocrisy...Kerry himself has actually had the opportunity to vote on the Kyoto carbon emissions treaty. Forum member ironman administers the coup de grace:
this says it all…
U.S. Senate Roll Call Votes 105th Congress - 1st Session
Vote Date: July 25, 1997, 11:37 AM
Question: On the Resolution (s.res.98 )
Declares that the United States should not be a signatory to any protocol to, or other agreement regarding, the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change of 1992, at negotiations in Kyoto in December 1997 or thereafter which would: (1) mandate new commitments to limit or reduce greenhouse gas emissions for the Annex 1 Parties, unless the protocol or other agreement also mandates new specific scheduled commitments to limit or reduce greenhouse gas emissions for Developing Country Parties within the same compliance period; or (2) result in serious harm to the U.S. economy.
YEAs 95
NAYs 0
Not Voting 5
Kerry (D-MA), Yea
Duplicitous and hypocritical: that pretty well sums up John Kerry.
John Kerry disgraced himself yet again earlier today, when he launched a salvo against the Bush administration at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. (What is it about Davos that brings out the worst in temporarily expatriate Americans?) This Power Line Forum thread addresses Kerry's latest folly. You could spend a long time taking apart Kerry's attack on President Bush, but let's just focus on one aspect of it:
“When we walk away from global warming, Kyoto, when we are irresponsibly slow in moving toward AIDS in Africa, when we don’t advance and live up to our own rhetoric and standards, we set a terrible message of duplicity and hypocrisy,” Kerry said.
Speaking of duplicity and hypocrisy...Kerry himself has actually had the opportunity to vote on the Kyoto carbon emissions treaty. Forum member ironman administers the coup de grace:
this says it all…
U.S. Senate Roll Call Votes 105th Congress - 1st Session
Vote Date: July 25, 1997, 11:37 AM
Question: On the Resolution (s.res.98 )
Declares that the United States should not be a signatory to any protocol to, or other agreement regarding, the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change of 1992, at negotiations in Kyoto in December 1997 or thereafter which would: (1) mandate new commitments to limit or reduce greenhouse gas emissions for the Annex 1 Parties, unless the protocol or other agreement also mandates new specific scheduled commitments to limit or reduce greenhouse gas emissions for Developing Country Parties within the same compliance period; or (2) result in serious harm to the U.S. economy.
YEAs 95
NAYs 0
Not Voting 5
Kerry (D-MA), Yea
Duplicitous and hypocritical: that pretty well sums up John Kerry.
Thursday, January 25, 2007
I have been sharing letters written by Mike Walker, an ex-Marine Colonel who spent multiple tours in Bosnia and Iraq. Today there is one more and an important read concerning the perceptions of our "new" government and Iraq.
All,
Clueless in the Capitol
Mike
Clueless in the Capitol
Let me see if I got this right? The folks arguing
that the only solution to what they insist on calling
the “unwinnable” war in Iraq is by cutting and running
because:
1. We are putting US soldiers into the middle of a
civil war.
2. Our intervention into an Islamic country ruled by a
ruthless authoritarian regime, once suspected of
having WMD and ties to al Qaeda has weakened the US
abroad.
3. We have grown very uneasy over all the deaths
associated with the civil war.
4. The country of Iraq is a mess. There is
wide-spread lawlessness, corruption, and an
ineffective police. The infrastructure is in
disarray. There are thousands of invaluable
archeological artifacts that are being looted. There
are radical Islamists preaching a “Hate America”
message from their mosques across the country. It is a
breeding ground for al Qaeda.
5. Even though the United Nations had failed in all
its previous attempts to bring about a peaceful
resolution it was a mistake for the US to take the
lead in pushing through a resolution in that body that
allowed us to act.
So when I saw the whole of Congress, both those in the
Senate and the House, give a standing ovation when
President Bush spoke to “…save the people of Darfur”
during the State of Union Address, it was enough to
make the hairs on the back of my neck stand up.
What did you know about Iraq in 2002? Were you all up
on Muqtada Sadr, Shi’a, Sunni, Kurds? Basra and
Baghdad, Mosul and Fallujah? How about al Anbar, an
Najaf or an Fal? Did you know about IED’s and
Oil-for-Food?
So what do you know about Darfur in 2007? Gee, your
response to that question alone should be enough to
give us all a long pause before we contemplate
intervening there.
I bet you don’t know about the Darfar Liberation
Front, the Sudan Liberation Army, the Sudan Liberation
Movement, or the Sudan People's Liberation Army? How
about anamism, the Umma party, janjaweed, Baggara,
Masalit?
Here is some more information about Darfur, based on
the five points made above about Iraq, which should
make you wonder about the competency of the whole mob
in Washington DC:
1. We will be putting US soldiers into the middle of
an Islamic civil war in the Sudan that began in
February 2003 and is still raging. Hmmm, sound
familiar, don’t it? Oh, and don’t let this civil war
in the Sudan confuse you with the First Sudan Civil
War (1955-1972) or the Second Sudan Civil War
(1983-2001). Might need a score card.
2. So let me get this straight, intervening into the
Sudan, an Islamic country ruled by a ruthless
authoritarian regime, once suspected of having WMD
(President Clinton ordered the bombing of a suspected
WMD facility there in August 1998) and ties to al
Qaeda (Usama bin Laden had his headquarters there
before he move to Afghanistan) will not weaken the US
abroad while, to repeat myself, intervening in Iraq,
an Islamic country ruled by a ruthless authoritarian
regime, once suspected of having WMD and ties to al
Qaeda has weakened the US abroad? Hard to follow that
one…
3. We have grown very uneasy over all the deaths
associated with the civil war. In January 2007, the
UN Assistance Mission in Iraq stated they believed
over 34,000 Iraqis died during the fighting there in
2006. In the Darfur region of the Sudan, the UN
reported 50,000 killed there in 2004 and in September
2006 the UN News Service put the number at 400,000.
It seems that the Sudan civil war is far more violent
and deadly than the war in Iraq. So let me see if I
can follow this logic, if 34,000 die in a civil war in
a year we are supposed to begin a phased withdrawal of
the Marines but if 50,000 or more die in a year in a
civil war we are supposed to send in the Marines?
Does that mean that the Congress will rally around a
troop build-up in Iraq if the number of civilian
casualties can just break the 50,000 per annum mark?
4. The country of the Sudan is a mess. There is
wide-spread lawlessness, corruption, and an
ineffective police. The infrastructure is in
disarray. There are thousands of invaluable
archeological artifacts that are being looted. There
are radical Islamists preaching a “Hate America”
message from their mosques across the country. It is
a breeding ground for al Qaeda.
This is a more than apt description of the situation
in the Sudan and the Darfur region. Heck, the Sudan is
so broken that it makes Iraq look downright modern and
efficient. Also add in that it has a thriving market
in buying and selling human beings, it used to be
called slavery. When we go into the Sudan are we
going to take on that “nation building” problem too?
5. Even though the United Nations had failed in all
its previous attempts to bring about a peaceful
resolution it was a mistake for the US to take the
lead and to push through a resolution in that body
that allowed us to act in Iraq. As for the Sudan there
have been repeated UN Security Council Resolutions,
reports, briefings, studies have been made ad nauseum
and UN nabobs have come and gone (déjà vu all over
again, Yogi?), but now, says the cheering Congress, we
need to go into the Sudan? Oh yeah, did you also know
the Chinese have quietly shut down every robust UN
proposal on the Sudan and they have the “Veto.” The UN
can’t even use the word “genocide” in regards to the
Sudan.
So is the “Quit Iraq Now” crowd urging the US to take
the lead in pushing through a UN resolution that will
allow us to intervene in the Sudan? I guess they also
need to get to work on making some “Quit the Darfar
Now” placards for use in the near future.
We do need to look seriously at the situation in the
Sudan and perhaps we will find that the best solution
is to intervene there, but this time let us do our
homework before putting more Americans into harm’s
way.
If “saving the people of Darfar” brings Congress to
its feet in cheers but when the President speaks to a
similar goal in Iraq we find them sitting mutely, then
“Clueless in the Capitol” ought to be the new motto
for that organization.
All,
Clueless in the Capitol
Mike
Clueless in the Capitol
Let me see if I got this right? The folks arguing
that the only solution to what they insist on calling
the “unwinnable” war in Iraq is by cutting and running
because:
1. We are putting US soldiers into the middle of a
civil war.
2. Our intervention into an Islamic country ruled by a
ruthless authoritarian regime, once suspected of
having WMD and ties to al Qaeda has weakened the US
abroad.
3. We have grown very uneasy over all the deaths
associated with the civil war.
4. The country of Iraq is a mess. There is
wide-spread lawlessness, corruption, and an
ineffective police. The infrastructure is in
disarray. There are thousands of invaluable
archeological artifacts that are being looted. There
are radical Islamists preaching a “Hate America”
message from their mosques across the country. It is a
breeding ground for al Qaeda.
5. Even though the United Nations had failed in all
its previous attempts to bring about a peaceful
resolution it was a mistake for the US to take the
lead in pushing through a resolution in that body that
allowed us to act.
So when I saw the whole of Congress, both those in the
Senate and the House, give a standing ovation when
President Bush spoke to “…save the people of Darfur”
during the State of Union Address, it was enough to
make the hairs on the back of my neck stand up.
What did you know about Iraq in 2002? Were you all up
on Muqtada Sadr, Shi’a, Sunni, Kurds? Basra and
Baghdad, Mosul and Fallujah? How about al Anbar, an
Najaf or an Fal? Did you know about IED’s and
Oil-for-Food?
So what do you know about Darfur in 2007? Gee, your
response to that question alone should be enough to
give us all a long pause before we contemplate
intervening there.
I bet you don’t know about the Darfar Liberation
Front, the Sudan Liberation Army, the Sudan Liberation
Movement, or the Sudan People's Liberation Army? How
about anamism, the Umma party, janjaweed, Baggara,
Masalit?
Here is some more information about Darfur, based on
the five points made above about Iraq, which should
make you wonder about the competency of the whole mob
in Washington DC:
1. We will be putting US soldiers into the middle of
an Islamic civil war in the Sudan that began in
February 2003 and is still raging. Hmmm, sound
familiar, don’t it? Oh, and don’t let this civil war
in the Sudan confuse you with the First Sudan Civil
War (1955-1972) or the Second Sudan Civil War
(1983-2001). Might need a score card.
2. So let me get this straight, intervening into the
Sudan, an Islamic country ruled by a ruthless
authoritarian regime, once suspected of having WMD
(President Clinton ordered the bombing of a suspected
WMD facility there in August 1998) and ties to al
Qaeda (Usama bin Laden had his headquarters there
before he move to Afghanistan) will not weaken the US
abroad while, to repeat myself, intervening in Iraq,
an Islamic country ruled by a ruthless authoritarian
regime, once suspected of having WMD and ties to al
Qaeda has weakened the US abroad? Hard to follow that
one…
3. We have grown very uneasy over all the deaths
associated with the civil war. In January 2007, the
UN Assistance Mission in Iraq stated they believed
over 34,000 Iraqis died during the fighting there in
2006. In the Darfur region of the Sudan, the UN
reported 50,000 killed there in 2004 and in September
2006 the UN News Service put the number at 400,000.
It seems that the Sudan civil war is far more violent
and deadly than the war in Iraq. So let me see if I
can follow this logic, if 34,000 die in a civil war in
a year we are supposed to begin a phased withdrawal of
the Marines but if 50,000 or more die in a year in a
civil war we are supposed to send in the Marines?
Does that mean that the Congress will rally around a
troop build-up in Iraq if the number of civilian
casualties can just break the 50,000 per annum mark?
4. The country of the Sudan is a mess. There is
wide-spread lawlessness, corruption, and an
ineffective police. The infrastructure is in
disarray. There are thousands of invaluable
archeological artifacts that are being looted. There
are radical Islamists preaching a “Hate America”
message from their mosques across the country. It is
a breeding ground for al Qaeda.
This is a more than apt description of the situation
in the Sudan and the Darfur region. Heck, the Sudan is
so broken that it makes Iraq look downright modern and
efficient. Also add in that it has a thriving market
in buying and selling human beings, it used to be
called slavery. When we go into the Sudan are we
going to take on that “nation building” problem too?
5. Even though the United Nations had failed in all
its previous attempts to bring about a peaceful
resolution it was a mistake for the US to take the
lead and to push through a resolution in that body
that allowed us to act in Iraq. As for the Sudan there
have been repeated UN Security Council Resolutions,
reports, briefings, studies have been made ad nauseum
and UN nabobs have come and gone (déjà vu all over
again, Yogi?), but now, says the cheering Congress, we
need to go into the Sudan? Oh yeah, did you also know
the Chinese have quietly shut down every robust UN
proposal on the Sudan and they have the “Veto.” The UN
can’t even use the word “genocide” in regards to the
Sudan.
So is the “Quit Iraq Now” crowd urging the US to take
the lead in pushing through a UN resolution that will
allow us to intervene in the Sudan? I guess they also
need to get to work on making some “Quit the Darfar
Now” placards for use in the near future.
We do need to look seriously at the situation in the
Sudan and perhaps we will find that the best solution
is to intervene there, but this time let us do our
homework before putting more Americans into harm’s
way.
If “saving the people of Darfar” brings Congress to
its feet in cheers but when the President speaks to a
similar goal in Iraq we find them sitting mutely, then
“Clueless in the Capitol” ought to be the new motto
for that organization.
Friday, January 05, 2007
Gentlemen,
I supported the changes that took place in the
November elections and voted accordingly because I was
led to believe that we would have a unified leadership
that ensured a broader debate on and greater oversight
over how to win the global war on terrorism to include
Iraq and Afghanistan.
But, despite some solid actions on the domestic front,
these so called first 100 hours are a major
disappointment as it regards the global war on
terrorism:
By ROBERT BURNS, AP Military Writer:
“Even as the White House announced Bush's plans,
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and House Speaker
Nancy Pelosi released a letter to the president urging
him to begin pulling troops out of Iraq in four to six
months.”
Most Americans I know supported change in order to WIN
not change to CUT AND RUN.
I do not belong to any political party so I am not
obligated to be loyal to any party or any one of its
office holders for sake of being loyal. As one of
those who fought in this war I can tell you I feel
betrayed by the comments made by the political leaders
above.
As another aside, while I have been frank and frequent
in my criticism of the way President Bush has handled
parts of the war he still deserved the respect from
the press that is afforded to any President. If
"Senate Majority Leader" and "House Speaker" are
written with capitals then the lousy AP editors and
Mr. Robert Burns should show a modicum of
professionalism and capitalize the word "President."
Semper Fi,
Mike (Mike Walker, USMC Col. retired)
I supported the changes that took place in the
November elections and voted accordingly because I was
led to believe that we would have a unified leadership
that ensured a broader debate on and greater oversight
over how to win the global war on terrorism to include
Iraq and Afghanistan.
But, despite some solid actions on the domestic front,
these so called first 100 hours are a major
disappointment as it regards the global war on
terrorism:
By ROBERT BURNS, AP Military Writer:
“Even as the White House announced Bush's plans,
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and House Speaker
Nancy Pelosi released a letter to the president urging
him to begin pulling troops out of Iraq in four to six
months.”
Most Americans I know supported change in order to WIN
not change to CUT AND RUN.
I do not belong to any political party so I am not
obligated to be loyal to any party or any one of its
office holders for sake of being loyal. As one of
those who fought in this war I can tell you I feel
betrayed by the comments made by the political leaders
above.
As another aside, while I have been frank and frequent
in my criticism of the way President Bush has handled
parts of the war he still deserved the respect from
the press that is afforded to any President. If
"Senate Majority Leader" and "House Speaker" are
written with capitals then the lousy AP editors and
Mr. Robert Burns should show a modicum of
professionalism and capitalize the word "President."
Semper Fi,
Mike (Mike Walker, USMC Col. retired)
Friday, December 29, 2006
Bob's Human
One down, one to go....Mike Walker, USMC, Col. (retired)
Marines,
Although there is no joy in my heart over the death of
Saddam Hussein, I find that justice has been served
and if you too had served two tours in Iraq and seen
first hand the horrors wrought upon the Iraqi people
by his evil deeds then you would probably feel the
same.
Saddam well deserves to stand amidst the ranks of the
hundreds of thousands of his victims, Iraqis from all
walks of life who died, often horrifically, as a
direct result of his actions.
But the job is not finished. There is another who now
needs to feel the full weight of justice in Iraq:
Muqtada Sadr.
In the summer of 2003, just weeks after the end of the
conventional war, the Marines wished to move against
Muqtada Sadr for directing the assassination of an
Iraqi who had opposed him. He eluded justice at that
time which is squarely our fault.
Later, in August 2004, Muqtada Sadr seized the Shrine
of Ali in an Najaf, the world's holiest site for Shi'a
Muslims. We was surrounded by Coalition Forces (US
Marines and Iraqi army units). His militia was
soundly defeated and ultimately surrendered en masse.
During the fighting, Muqtada Sadr used the Shrine for
his headquarters. He and his Mahdi army "troops"
desecrated the Shrine to a degree unequaled in all the
centuries of its existence. There were literally
dozens and dozens of bottles of alcohol littered about
various parts of the holy Shrine, the after effects of
this thugs getting some "liquid courage" before they
could face the Marines and Iraqi army units.
Sadr also established torture chambers and conducted
summary executions of his "enemies" while occupying
the Shrine. His sins before man and God during that
period in 2004 is to the everlasting shame of Muqtada
Sadr and his Mahdi army. Muqtada Sadr is often
identified as a Muslim cleric? In a pig's eye. Yet
PM Ayad Allawi allowed him to walk away. Shame on
him.
Muqtada Sadr must be brought to justice if there is to
be peace in Iraq. Now is the time for this megalomaniac to face the
court and if need be to follow in Saddam's footsteps,
right up the gallows's stairs and into the hangman's
noose. God willing.
Semper Fi,
Mike
P.S. While abusing alcohol in a Mosque seemed to be
the preferred method of getting high in battle for the
Mahdi army, the only similar drug use I ever
encountered in Iraq was that done by the Sunni guys in
the al Anbar fighting the Marines, a fairly common
occurrence. I guess if Oliver Stone is going to make
a movie about drug-crazed soldiers in Iraq he will
have to cast the actors as the enemy because the US
soldiers and Marines serving in Iraq make a lie of his
"Platoon" image of American fighting men and women at
war.
One down, one to go....Mike Walker, USMC, Col. (retired)
Marines,
Although there is no joy in my heart over the death of
Saddam Hussein, I find that justice has been served
and if you too had served two tours in Iraq and seen
first hand the horrors wrought upon the Iraqi people
by his evil deeds then you would probably feel the
same.
Saddam well deserves to stand amidst the ranks of the
hundreds of thousands of his victims, Iraqis from all
walks of life who died, often horrifically, as a
direct result of his actions.
But the job is not finished. There is another who now
needs to feel the full weight of justice in Iraq:
Muqtada Sadr.
In the summer of 2003, just weeks after the end of the
conventional war, the Marines wished to move against
Muqtada Sadr for directing the assassination of an
Iraqi who had opposed him. He eluded justice at that
time which is squarely our fault.
Later, in August 2004, Muqtada Sadr seized the Shrine
of Ali in an Najaf, the world's holiest site for Shi'a
Muslims. We was surrounded by Coalition Forces (US
Marines and Iraqi army units). His militia was
soundly defeated and ultimately surrendered en masse.
During the fighting, Muqtada Sadr used the Shrine for
his headquarters. He and his Mahdi army "troops"
desecrated the Shrine to a degree unequaled in all the
centuries of its existence. There were literally
dozens and dozens of bottles of alcohol littered about
various parts of the holy Shrine, the after effects of
this thugs getting some "liquid courage" before they
could face the Marines and Iraqi army units.
Sadr also established torture chambers and conducted
summary executions of his "enemies" while occupying
the Shrine. His sins before man and God during that
period in 2004 is to the everlasting shame of Muqtada
Sadr and his Mahdi army. Muqtada Sadr is often
identified as a Muslim cleric? In a pig's eye. Yet
PM Ayad Allawi allowed him to walk away. Shame on
him.
Muqtada Sadr must be brought to justice if there is to
be peace in Iraq. Now is the time for this megalomaniac to face the
court and if need be to follow in Saddam's footsteps,
right up the gallows's stairs and into the hangman's
noose. God willing.
Semper Fi,
Mike
P.S. While abusing alcohol in a Mosque seemed to be
the preferred method of getting high in battle for the
Mahdi army, the only similar drug use I ever
encountered in Iraq was that done by the Sunni guys in
the al Anbar fighting the Marines, a fairly common
occurrence. I guess if Oliver Stone is going to make
a movie about drug-crazed soldiers in Iraq he will
have to cast the actors as the enemy because the US
soldiers and Marines serving in Iraq make a lie of his
"Platoon" image of American fighting men and women at
war.
Thursday, November 30, 2006
A little late, I apologize. This is taken from an ongoing series of letters from Col. Mike Walker (retired) to Marine Corps associates...
Marines,
It would be grand if Muqtada Sadr keeps his promise to leave the government and takes all his minions with him over the Amman meeting this week but he is such an incorrigible liar that I doubt it. If he does it will present a great opportunity to advance the cause of peace in Iraq if Prime Minister Malaki and the Coalition have the courage to take advantage of the situation.
Tell the resigning members of Muqtada’s cabal “Thank you for your service. Your resignations are accepted effective immediately.” The President of Iraq should refrain from any calls for the government to collapse or for new elections to be held. He should charge the Prime Minister to form a transcendental cabinet to see the country through the emergency.
As for the legislature, keep those who remain for they will better represent the Iraqis who want to move forward, who are willing to put country ahead of sectarianism. It can also strengthen the position of the Sunnis within the government which will serve to unify rather than further divide the country.
Then the Iraqi Security Forces allied with the Multi-National Forces in Iraq need to get rid of the Madhi Army once and for all. If Muqtada Sadr wishes to martyr himself at its head then so be it. He is a pawn of Iran. Iran’s strategy for Iraq is neither sophisticated nor novel. All one has to do is look to Lebanon. Substitute Muqtada Sadr for Hassam Nasrallah and the Madhi Army for Hezbollah and you have it. In Sadr they hope, in the near future, to have a political force through which Iran can directly influence events in Iraq and if political action fails they can achieve their ends military through Sadr’s private army.
Iraqi democracy is and will continue to be an unappetizing thing to watch but that is to be expected. We helped to establish democratic roots in South Korea in the 1950’s. That seed grew slowly despite many setbacks. It withstood many strong attacks that often threatened to kill it. But it survived because the democracy is a powerful idea. Korean democracy only began to thrive in the 1990’s, forty years later. The situation in Iraq is similar. The democracy is a fledgling undertaking in Iraq today, but it is worth our effort to stick with it in the full knowledge that it may well take two generations before it fully takes hold.
One other note on the meeting in Amman this week, some have argued that it should have been in Baghdad. Perhaps, but two thoughts on why Amman is possibly better, first it is an ideal place to advance the regional issues that have prolonged the war in Iraq. King Abdullah of Jordan recognizes that the Islamic world is in a great upheaval and that three Muslim on Muslim wars on his borders are a real possibility (Hamas v Palestinian Authority/Fatah, Sunni(+Christians) v Shi'a (Hezbollah) in Lebanon, Sunni (Saddamists/al Qaeda) v Shi'a (Madhi Army) in Iraq. Second, it will be far easier for those representing the Sunni insurgents to have their voice heard in neutral Amman than it would in any location in Iraq. Having that voice heard is critical. Wars do not end until those warring effectively communicate.
Semper Fi,
Mike Walker
Marines,
It would be grand if Muqtada Sadr keeps his promise to leave the government and takes all his minions with him over the Amman meeting this week but he is such an incorrigible liar that I doubt it. If he does it will present a great opportunity to advance the cause of peace in Iraq if Prime Minister Malaki and the Coalition have the courage to take advantage of the situation.
Tell the resigning members of Muqtada’s cabal “Thank you for your service. Your resignations are accepted effective immediately.” The President of Iraq should refrain from any calls for the government to collapse or for new elections to be held. He should charge the Prime Minister to form a transcendental cabinet to see the country through the emergency.
As for the legislature, keep those who remain for they will better represent the Iraqis who want to move forward, who are willing to put country ahead of sectarianism. It can also strengthen the position of the Sunnis within the government which will serve to unify rather than further divide the country.
Then the Iraqi Security Forces allied with the Multi-National Forces in Iraq need to get rid of the Madhi Army once and for all. If Muqtada Sadr wishes to martyr himself at its head then so be it. He is a pawn of Iran. Iran’s strategy for Iraq is neither sophisticated nor novel. All one has to do is look to Lebanon. Substitute Muqtada Sadr for Hassam Nasrallah and the Madhi Army for Hezbollah and you have it. In Sadr they hope, in the near future, to have a political force through which Iran can directly influence events in Iraq and if political action fails they can achieve their ends military through Sadr’s private army.
Iraqi democracy is and will continue to be an unappetizing thing to watch but that is to be expected. We helped to establish democratic roots in South Korea in the 1950’s. That seed grew slowly despite many setbacks. It withstood many strong attacks that often threatened to kill it. But it survived because the democracy is a powerful idea. Korean democracy only began to thrive in the 1990’s, forty years later. The situation in Iraq is similar. The democracy is a fledgling undertaking in Iraq today, but it is worth our effort to stick with it in the full knowledge that it may well take two generations before it fully takes hold.
One other note on the meeting in Amman this week, some have argued that it should have been in Baghdad. Perhaps, but two thoughts on why Amman is possibly better, first it is an ideal place to advance the regional issues that have prolonged the war in Iraq. King Abdullah of Jordan recognizes that the Islamic world is in a great upheaval and that three Muslim on Muslim wars on his borders are a real possibility (Hamas v Palestinian Authority/Fatah, Sunni(+Christians) v Shi'a (Hezbollah) in Lebanon, Sunni (Saddamists/al Qaeda) v Shi'a (Madhi Army) in Iraq. Second, it will be far easier for those representing the Sunni insurgents to have their voice heard in neutral Amman than it would in any location in Iraq. Having that voice heard is critical. Wars do not end until those warring effectively communicate.
Semper Fi,
Mike Walker
Sunday, November 19, 2006
Why is this so hard to see? Mark states what we all know very well. If we don't see it then I'm afraid that we are doomed. We will assuredly slide down that loose shale that France and Germany have been sliding on to their growing despair.
U.S. must prove it's a staying power
November 12, 2006
BY MARK STEYN Sun-Times Columnist
On the radio a couple of weeks ago, Hugh Hewitt suggested to me the terrorists might try to pull a Spain on the U.S. elections. You'll recall (though evidently many Americans don't) that in 2004 hundreds of commuters were slaughtered in multiple train bombings in Madrid. The Spaniards responded with a huge street demonstration of supposed solidarity with the dead, all teary passivity and signs saying "Basta!" -- "Enough!" By which they meant not "enough!" of these murderers but "enough!" of the government of Prime Minister Aznar, and of Bush and Blair, and troops in Iraq. A couple of days later, they voted in a socialist government, which immediately withdrew Spanish forces from the Middle East. A profitable couple of hours' work for the jihad.
I said to Hugh I didn't think that would happen this time round. The enemy aren't a bunch of simpleton Pushtun yakherds, but relatively sophisticated at least in their understanding of us. We're all infidels, but not all infidels crack the same way. If they'd done a Spain -- blown up a bunch of subway cars in New York or vaporized the Empire State Building -- they'd have re-awoken the primal anger of September 2001. With another mound of corpses piled sky-high, the electorate would have stampeded into the Republican column and demanded the U.S. fly somewhere and bomb someone.
The jihad crowd know that. So instead they employed a craftier strategy. Their view of America is roughly that of the British historian Niall Ferguson -- that the Great Satan is the first superpower with ADHD. They reasoned that if you could subject Americans to the drip-drip-drip of remorseless water torture in the deserts of Mesopotamia -- a couple of deaths here, a market bombing there, cars burning, smoke over the city on the evening news, day after day after day, and ratcheted up a notch or two for the weeks before the election -- you could grind down enough of the electorate and persuade them to vote like Spaniards, without even realizing it. And it worked. You can rationalize what happened on Tuesday in the context of previous sixth-year elections -- 1986, 1958, 1938, yada yada -- but that's not how it was seen around the world, either in the chancelleries of Europe, where they're dancing conga lines, or in the caves of the Hindu Kush, where they would also be dancing conga lines if Mullah Omar hadn't made it a beheading offense. And, as if to confirm that Tuesday wasn't merely 1986 or 1938, the president responded to the results by firing the Cabinet officer most closely identified with the prosecution of the war and replacing him with a man associated with James Baker, Brent Scowcroft and the other "stability" fetishists of the unreal realpolitik crowd.
Whether or not Rumsfeld should have been tossed overboard long ago, he certainly shouldn't have been tossed on Wednesday morning. For one thing, it's a startlingly brazen confirmation of the politicization of the war, and a particularly unworthy one: It's difficult to conceive of any more public diminution of a noble cause than to make its leadership contingent on Lincoln Chafee's Senate seat. The president's firing of Rumsfeld was small and graceless.
Still, we are all Spaniards now. The incoming speaker says Iraq is not a war to be won but a problem to be solved. The incoming defense secretary belongs to a commission charged with doing just that. A nostalgic boomer columnist in the Boston Globe argues that honor requires the United States to "accept defeat," as it did in Vietnam. Didn't work out so swell for the natives, but to hell with them.
What does it mean when the world's hyperpower, responsible for 40 percent of the planet's military spending, decides that it cannot withstand a guerrilla war with historically low casualties against a ragbag of local insurgents and imported terrorists? You can call it "redeployment" or "exit strategy" or "peace with honor" but, by the time it's announced on al-Jazeera, you can pretty much bet that whatever official euphemism was agreed on back in Washington will have been lost in translation. Likewise, when it's announced on "Good Morning Pyongyang" and the Khartoum Network and, come to that, the BBC.
For the rest of the world, the Iraq war isn't about Iraq; it's about America, and American will. I'm told that deep in the bowels of the Pentagon there are strategists wargaming for the big showdown with China circa 2030/2040. Well, it's steady work, I guess. But, as things stand, by the time China's powerful enough to challenge the United States it won't need to. Meanwhile, the guys who are challenging us right now -- in Iraq, Afghanistan, Iran, North Korea and elsewhere -- are regarded by the American electorate like a reality show we're bored with. Sorry, we don't want to stick around to see if we win; we'd rather vote ourselves off the island.
Two weeks ago, you may remember, I reported on a meeting with the president, in which I'd asked him the following: "You say you need to be on the offense all the time and stay on the offense. Isn't the problem that the American people were solidly behind this when you went in and you toppled the Taliban, when you go in and you topple Saddam. But when it just seems to be a kind of thankless semi-colonial policing defensive operation with no end . . . I mean, where is the offense in this?"
On Tuesday, the national security vote evaporated, and, without it, what's left for the GOP? Congressional Republicans wound up running on the worst of all worlds -- big bloated porked-up entitlements-a-go-go government at home and a fainthearted tentative policing operation abroad. As it happens, my new book argues for the opposite: small lean efficient government at home and muscular assertiveness abroad. It does a superb job, if I do say so myself, of connecting war and foreign policy with the domestic issues. Of course, it doesn't have to be that superb if the GOP's incoherent inversion is the only alternative on offer.
As it is, we're in a very dark place right now. It has been a long time since America unambiguously won a war, and to choose to lose Iraq would be an act of such parochial self-indulgence that the American moment would not endure, and would not deserve to. Europe is becoming semi-Muslim, Third World basket-case states are going nuclear, and, for all that 40 percent of planetary military spending, America can't muster the will to take on pipsqueak enemies. We think we can just call off the game early, and go back home and watch TV.
It doesn't work like that. Whatever it started out as, Iraq is a test of American seriousness. And, if the Great Satan can't win in Vietnam or Iraq, where can it win? That's how China, Russia, Iran, North Korea, Sudan, Venezuela and a whole lot of others look at it. "These Colors Don't Run" is a fine T-shirt slogan, but in reality these colors have spent 40 years running from the jungles of Southeast Asia, the helicopters in the Persian desert, the streets of Mogadishu. ... To add the sands of Mesopotamia to the list will be an act of weakness from which America will never recover.
©Mark Steyn, 2006
U.S. must prove it's a staying power
November 12, 2006
BY MARK STEYN Sun-Times Columnist
On the radio a couple of weeks ago, Hugh Hewitt suggested to me the terrorists might try to pull a Spain on the U.S. elections. You'll recall (though evidently many Americans don't) that in 2004 hundreds of commuters were slaughtered in multiple train bombings in Madrid. The Spaniards responded with a huge street demonstration of supposed solidarity with the dead, all teary passivity and signs saying "Basta!" -- "Enough!" By which they meant not "enough!" of these murderers but "enough!" of the government of Prime Minister Aznar, and of Bush and Blair, and troops in Iraq. A couple of days later, they voted in a socialist government, which immediately withdrew Spanish forces from the Middle East. A profitable couple of hours' work for the jihad.
I said to Hugh I didn't think that would happen this time round. The enemy aren't a bunch of simpleton Pushtun yakherds, but relatively sophisticated at least in their understanding of us. We're all infidels, but not all infidels crack the same way. If they'd done a Spain -- blown up a bunch of subway cars in New York or vaporized the Empire State Building -- they'd have re-awoken the primal anger of September 2001. With another mound of corpses piled sky-high, the electorate would have stampeded into the Republican column and demanded the U.S. fly somewhere and bomb someone.
The jihad crowd know that. So instead they employed a craftier strategy. Their view of America is roughly that of the British historian Niall Ferguson -- that the Great Satan is the first superpower with ADHD. They reasoned that if you could subject Americans to the drip-drip-drip of remorseless water torture in the deserts of Mesopotamia -- a couple of deaths here, a market bombing there, cars burning, smoke over the city on the evening news, day after day after day, and ratcheted up a notch or two for the weeks before the election -- you could grind down enough of the electorate and persuade them to vote like Spaniards, without even realizing it. And it worked. You can rationalize what happened on Tuesday in the context of previous sixth-year elections -- 1986, 1958, 1938, yada yada -- but that's not how it was seen around the world, either in the chancelleries of Europe, where they're dancing conga lines, or in the caves of the Hindu Kush, where they would also be dancing conga lines if Mullah Omar hadn't made it a beheading offense. And, as if to confirm that Tuesday wasn't merely 1986 or 1938, the president responded to the results by firing the Cabinet officer most closely identified with the prosecution of the war and replacing him with a man associated with James Baker, Brent Scowcroft and the other "stability" fetishists of the unreal realpolitik crowd.
Whether or not Rumsfeld should have been tossed overboard long ago, he certainly shouldn't have been tossed on Wednesday morning. For one thing, it's a startlingly brazen confirmation of the politicization of the war, and a particularly unworthy one: It's difficult to conceive of any more public diminution of a noble cause than to make its leadership contingent on Lincoln Chafee's Senate seat. The president's firing of Rumsfeld was small and graceless.
Still, we are all Spaniards now. The incoming speaker says Iraq is not a war to be won but a problem to be solved. The incoming defense secretary belongs to a commission charged with doing just that. A nostalgic boomer columnist in the Boston Globe argues that honor requires the United States to "accept defeat," as it did in Vietnam. Didn't work out so swell for the natives, but to hell with them.
What does it mean when the world's hyperpower, responsible for 40 percent of the planet's military spending, decides that it cannot withstand a guerrilla war with historically low casualties against a ragbag of local insurgents and imported terrorists? You can call it "redeployment" or "exit strategy" or "peace with honor" but, by the time it's announced on al-Jazeera, you can pretty much bet that whatever official euphemism was agreed on back in Washington will have been lost in translation. Likewise, when it's announced on "Good Morning Pyongyang" and the Khartoum Network and, come to that, the BBC.
For the rest of the world, the Iraq war isn't about Iraq; it's about America, and American will. I'm told that deep in the bowels of the Pentagon there are strategists wargaming for the big showdown with China circa 2030/2040. Well, it's steady work, I guess. But, as things stand, by the time China's powerful enough to challenge the United States it won't need to. Meanwhile, the guys who are challenging us right now -- in Iraq, Afghanistan, Iran, North Korea and elsewhere -- are regarded by the American electorate like a reality show we're bored with. Sorry, we don't want to stick around to see if we win; we'd rather vote ourselves off the island.
Two weeks ago, you may remember, I reported on a meeting with the president, in which I'd asked him the following: "You say you need to be on the offense all the time and stay on the offense. Isn't the problem that the American people were solidly behind this when you went in and you toppled the Taliban, when you go in and you topple Saddam. But when it just seems to be a kind of thankless semi-colonial policing defensive operation with no end . . . I mean, where is the offense in this?"
On Tuesday, the national security vote evaporated, and, without it, what's left for the GOP? Congressional Republicans wound up running on the worst of all worlds -- big bloated porked-up entitlements-a-go-go government at home and a fainthearted tentative policing operation abroad. As it happens, my new book argues for the opposite: small lean efficient government at home and muscular assertiveness abroad. It does a superb job, if I do say so myself, of connecting war and foreign policy with the domestic issues. Of course, it doesn't have to be that superb if the GOP's incoherent inversion is the only alternative on offer.
As it is, we're in a very dark place right now. It has been a long time since America unambiguously won a war, and to choose to lose Iraq would be an act of such parochial self-indulgence that the American moment would not endure, and would not deserve to. Europe is becoming semi-Muslim, Third World basket-case states are going nuclear, and, for all that 40 percent of planetary military spending, America can't muster the will to take on pipsqueak enemies. We think we can just call off the game early, and go back home and watch TV.
It doesn't work like that. Whatever it started out as, Iraq is a test of American seriousness. And, if the Great Satan can't win in Vietnam or Iraq, where can it win? That's how China, Russia, Iran, North Korea, Sudan, Venezuela and a whole lot of others look at it. "These Colors Don't Run" is a fine T-shirt slogan, but in reality these colors have spent 40 years running from the jungles of Southeast Asia, the helicopters in the Persian desert, the streets of Mogadishu. ... To add the sands of Mesopotamia to the list will be an act of weakness from which America will never recover.
©Mark Steyn, 2006
Sunday, October 22, 2006
( I am sending this letter from Mike Walker, Col. USMC retired, to share an answer that he had written to a friend who had asked Mike, "Can we win in Iraq?")
All,
"Can we win in Iraq?"
This was a response to a friend who posed the question
above. Attachment is the same as below.
Semper Fi,
Mike
A long answer:
I. Can we win?
Tough question but the answer is “Yes,” the war is
still ours to win or lose. I feel we finally found
the complete answer on how to win in mid-to-late
2004. By complete answer it is meant that to win in an
insurgency, you must win along two lines of operation,
one winning the political battle in Iraq and the
other winning the military battle in Iraq, ignoring/putting
aside for now the need to win the political battle in
the United States. Of the two, the political fight in
Iraq, as in almost all insurgencies, is more important
than the military fight.
By not adopting the right military course of action,
establishing a strong Iraqi security force centered on
the army and directed by an Iraqi national command
authority, we muffed the ball early in the game. Even
worse, we did not start with a clean slate in
mid-to-late 2004 but instead had to play catch-up to
get us back to where we should have been in
mid-to-late 2003. In other words, welost/squandered
more than a year in winning the military fight, in my
opinion.
II. The Record on Winning the Political Fight
I have to give Ambassador Bremer very high marks for
providing a decisive victory over the Saddamists in
the political fight. He made a misstep by not
getting rid of Muqtada Sadr in regards to the Shi'a but it
was not a fatal error as the Shi'a were for the first
time given a say in ruling Iraq commensurate with their
position in the country. He also masterfully
avoided a civil war by keeping the Kurds from seceding from
Iraq.
The Saddamists made a fatal miscalculation when they
assumed that the Shi’a, Kurds, and “traitor” Sunni’s
would be unable to set up a government. With the
abolishment the CPA occupation regime in June 2004
concurrent with creation of the Iraqi interim
government as directed by UNSCR 1546, the concept
that the Iraqis could rule themselves without the
Saddamists was put to the test. In reality, the
hospitals ran, school were open and, in general, the
government functioned quite well. They passed the
test with flying colors and the momentum only grew.
Working to completely fill the requirements of UNSCR
1546, elections were held in December of 2004 which
led the formation of the transitional Iraqi
government and to the subsequent ratification of the Iraqi
constitution in October 2005. Building upon these
successes, the January 2006 elections culminated in
the establishment of a sovereign Iraqi government in
June 2006. These results have yielded a great
victory for the people of Iraq and have made a shambles of
the political strategy of the enemy.
As the Nobel winner and famed political economist
Douglass North has argued, governmental institutions
as political bodies are critical in shaping a
nation. In Iraq we have achieved “winning the hearts and
minds” democratic and political reforms to an extent
never reached during the Korean War, the Vietnam
War, or the involvements in East Timor, Haiti, Somalia,
or Lebanon. Even the lauded successes in the Balkans
pale in comparison to the political/governmental
successes reached in Iraq, and for that matter, also
in Afghanistan. This result is equally or more so a
tribute to the determined will of the Iraqi people
to rid themselves of their Saddamist past and their
asymmetrical “Cannot be Stopped, Will not be Stopped”
strategy, as it is to the remarkable efforts of the
United Nations and the Multi-National Forces in
Iraq.
III. The Record on Winning the Military Fight
As stated above, we “goofed” this one up right from
the start. That story is for another time. What
needs to be addressed is that we finally got it
right.
When I was in al Anbar in 2004 on my second tour in
Iraq, there were NO Iraqi Army units in the governorate.
The entire Iraqi Army ground forces in April 2004 consisted of one
“special forces” battalion and two infantry battalions, the
three of which barely totaled 2,000 troops. They
didn’t have a single tank in the whole outfit. In
April 2004, there was no functioning Iraqi national
military chain of command, no Iraqi command, control, and
communications system, no Iraqi military strategy,
no Iraqi general staff, only an ineffective ministry of
defense. The local paramilitary troops, called the
Iraqi Civil Defense Corps (ICDC), were locally
recruited, 100% Sunni units, and completely
infiltrated and compromised by the Saddamists. When
the fighting started they stayed in their barracks,
went home, or went over to the enemy. They had to
be disbanded. Today there is a full Iraqi Army
Division in al Anbar with more than a dozen combat
battalions, supported by Iraqi armor. Even more surprising is
that units are officers by Shi’a, Kurd, and Sunni
officers. No Shi’a Army General has ever held a
position of authority in al Anbar, ever, until now
that is.
We are finally on the road of having an effective
Iraqi Security force centered on a strong army that
can defend itself against its neighbors. It is
security force that is subordinate to the elected
government and that has a national command authority
which is carrying out a national defense strategy
that is implemented through a national command, control,
and communications system. It has been a painful
two years since the “light finally went on” in 2004, but
it is the road to success.
IV. How long will it take?
The truth is that we will not be able to leave until
the Iraqi security forces take over. That won’t
happen until late 2007 or early 2008 at the
earliest. The Iraqis will probably fighting for years after
that before the insurgency is finally crushed. This is
also a tough message to accept. It is going to be
along fight.
Perhaps citing some historical precedents will help.
It seems every century or two there is a violent
movement of Jihad/Crusade that moves across the
Islamic world. It began in 7th -8th centuries and
continued through the Christian crusades. It reared
its head again with the fall of Byzantine Empire and
subsequent invasion of southeastern Europe in the
Middle Ages and was also prevalent in the 19th and
20th centuries:
The Barbary Wars ran from 1801-1816, the first time
the US entered a fight against an Islamic state.
The Quing Dynasty in China fought repeated Islamic
uprisings in Yunan Province from 1821 to 1855 to
1873. The Quing fought against an Islamic Jihad in
Turkmenistan which they annexed to their empire
renaming the region Sinkiang or New Province in the
1840’s. They also fought Islamic Jihads in Shensi
Province from 1862-1877.
The Russians fought against an Islamic Jihad in
Chechnya from 1834-1859.
The British fought a losing campaign in Afghanistan
against a Jihad there from 1839-1842 before
returning for a successful campaign in 1878-1880. They fought
the Mahdi Army (if that name sounds familiar is
should, it is what Muqtada Sadr has named his
militia in Iraq) in the Sudan from 1883-1898. During the
Iraq Mandate period from 1920-1932, the British Army had
to put down Islamic uprisings in 1920, 1921-22,
1927-28, and 1930-31.
The Italians fought against a Jihad called by a
Mullah in Somalia from 1899-1905. They fought against a
Jihad in Libya from 1921-931.
The Spanish and French fought a Jihad in the Rif
Mountains of Morocco from 1921 through 1925
suffering over 10,000 killed in action.
The point here is not to weigh the merits of the
wars above but to point out that these were all long
fights, ranging from four to twenty-five years in
length with most lasting over a decade. We should
expect the global war on terrorism to last quite a
while
V. Four things we need to do to close this out:
A. Reinforce Success both Politically and
Economically
This has been an area of great accomplishments. The
political campaign is always superior to that of the
military in an insurgency. Our successes to date
have put us, not the insurgents, on the road to victory.
We cannot afford to let up on our support to the
Iraqi people in the areas of economics, governance, and
democracy. We have achieved great success on the
political front. We need to work harder in the
economic arena, especially in private sector
development. There can be no political freedom if
the people have no economic freedom.
B. No Justice – No Peace
Saddam and his henchmen must feel the full weight of
justice in Iraq. His regime must be seen for what
it was, a brutal and murderous tyranny. There cannot
be an unhindered progressive advance in a new Iraq
until the crimes of the past are dealt with. All of
the Saddamists’ false trappings of legitimacy must be
discredited and removed from the body politic in
Iraq. We must make a concerted effort to publish the
large quantity of documentary evidence (video, photo, etc)
that detail in the most horrible way the crimes of
the Saddamist regime. We are helping to lose the war by
failing to do this.
C. The Iraqi Security Forces must lead the Way
The Iraqi Army must be returned to its proper place
in society. We were tardy in making this happen but to
again quote Sir Winston Churchill, "Americans can
always be counted on to do the right thing...after
they have exhausted all other possibilities." We
need to continue to support the
staffing, equipping, and training of a national army. There
must be a strong emphasis on combat operations
defined by human intelligence vice firepower. It must be a
professional army whose sole purpose is to protect
and defend Iraq first before any ethnic or religious
loyalties. We must work to instill a military
culture that embraces subordination to constitutionally
empowered civil authority.
D. Both Fight and Negotiate for a Better Future
This war will end at a “tipping point” when our
enemies realize that the gains possible through
peace will greatly outweigh any potential gains brought by
war. To reach that point we must exploit the
fractious nature of the insurgency. This dictates a
diverse and sophisticated solution to end the
fighting. We need to support the Iraqi government
asit exploits the gaps and seams in the insurgent
mosaic. This will require an amnesty policy that it
done properly will be distasteful to all parties.
We need to eliminate al Qaeda in Iraq.
We need to eat this insurgent elephant one bite at a
time. This can be done by region, by city or town,
byinsurgent group or groups, but must be done within a
framework of Iraqi national unity and progress.
The Iraqi government, the ISF, and MNF-I must couple the
besting of the enemy on the battlefield by
continuing with a dialogue of engagement in the pursuit of
peace. That dialogue must be built upon the maxim that all
wars end and that all parties can ill afford to
waste more lives and time in putting off the real job
facing us in creating a new, democratic, peaceful, and
prosperous Iraq.
Semper Fi and God Bless,
Mike
All,
"Can we win in Iraq?"
This was a response to a friend who posed the question
above. Attachment is the same as below.
Semper Fi,
Mike
A long answer:
I. Can we win?
Tough question but the answer is “Yes,” the war is
still ours to win or lose. I feel we finally found
the complete answer on how to win in mid-to-late
2004. By complete answer it is meant that to win in an
insurgency, you must win along two lines of operation,
one winning the political battle in Iraq and the
other winning the military battle in Iraq, ignoring/putting
aside for now the need to win the political battle in
the United States. Of the two, the political fight in
Iraq, as in almost all insurgencies, is more important
than the military fight.
By not adopting the right military course of action,
establishing a strong Iraqi security force centered on
the army and directed by an Iraqi national command
authority, we muffed the ball early in the game. Even
worse, we did not start with a clean slate in
mid-to-late 2004 but instead had to play catch-up to
get us back to where we should have been in
mid-to-late 2003. In other words, welost/squandered
more than a year in winning the military fight, in my
opinion.
II. The Record on Winning the Political Fight
I have to give Ambassador Bremer very high marks for
providing a decisive victory over the Saddamists in
the political fight. He made a misstep by not
getting rid of Muqtada Sadr in regards to the Shi'a but it
was not a fatal error as the Shi'a were for the first
time given a say in ruling Iraq commensurate with their
position in the country. He also masterfully
avoided a civil war by keeping the Kurds from seceding from
Iraq.
The Saddamists made a fatal miscalculation when they
assumed that the Shi’a, Kurds, and “traitor” Sunni’s
would be unable to set up a government. With the
abolishment the CPA occupation regime in June 2004
concurrent with creation of the Iraqi interim
government as directed by UNSCR 1546, the concept
that the Iraqis could rule themselves without the
Saddamists was put to the test. In reality, the
hospitals ran, school were open and, in general, the
government functioned quite well. They passed the
test with flying colors and the momentum only grew.
Working to completely fill the requirements of UNSCR
1546, elections were held in December of 2004 which
led the formation of the transitional Iraqi
government and to the subsequent ratification of the Iraqi
constitution in October 2005. Building upon these
successes, the January 2006 elections culminated in
the establishment of a sovereign Iraqi government in
June 2006. These results have yielded a great
victory for the people of Iraq and have made a shambles of
the political strategy of the enemy.
As the Nobel winner and famed political economist
Douglass North has argued, governmental institutions
as political bodies are critical in shaping a
nation. In Iraq we have achieved “winning the hearts and
minds” democratic and political reforms to an extent
never reached during the Korean War, the Vietnam
War, or the involvements in East Timor, Haiti, Somalia,
or Lebanon. Even the lauded successes in the Balkans
pale in comparison to the political/governmental
successes reached in Iraq, and for that matter, also
in Afghanistan. This result is equally or more so a
tribute to the determined will of the Iraqi people
to rid themselves of their Saddamist past and their
asymmetrical “Cannot be Stopped, Will not be Stopped”
strategy, as it is to the remarkable efforts of the
United Nations and the Multi-National Forces in
Iraq.
III. The Record on Winning the Military Fight
As stated above, we “goofed” this one up right from
the start. That story is for another time. What
needs to be addressed is that we finally got it
right.
When I was in al Anbar in 2004 on my second tour in
Iraq, there were NO Iraqi Army units in the governorate.
The entire Iraqi Army ground forces in April 2004 consisted of one
“special forces” battalion and two infantry battalions, the
three of which barely totaled 2,000 troops. They
didn’t have a single tank in the whole outfit. In
April 2004, there was no functioning Iraqi national
military chain of command, no Iraqi command, control, and
communications system, no Iraqi military strategy,
no Iraqi general staff, only an ineffective ministry of
defense. The local paramilitary troops, called the
Iraqi Civil Defense Corps (ICDC), were locally
recruited, 100% Sunni units, and completely
infiltrated and compromised by the Saddamists. When
the fighting started they stayed in their barracks,
went home, or went over to the enemy. They had to
be disbanded. Today there is a full Iraqi Army
Division in al Anbar with more than a dozen combat
battalions, supported by Iraqi armor. Even more surprising is
that units are officers by Shi’a, Kurd, and Sunni
officers. No Shi’a Army General has ever held a
position of authority in al Anbar, ever, until now
that is.
We are finally on the road of having an effective
Iraqi Security force centered on a strong army that
can defend itself against its neighbors. It is
security force that is subordinate to the elected
government and that has a national command authority
which is carrying out a national defense strategy
that is implemented through a national command, control,
and communications system. It has been a painful
two years since the “light finally went on” in 2004, but
it is the road to success.
IV. How long will it take?
The truth is that we will not be able to leave until
the Iraqi security forces take over. That won’t
happen until late 2007 or early 2008 at the
earliest. The Iraqis will probably fighting for years after
that before the insurgency is finally crushed. This is
also a tough message to accept. It is going to be
along fight.
Perhaps citing some historical precedents will help.
It seems every century or two there is a violent
movement of Jihad/Crusade that moves across the
Islamic world. It began in 7th -8th centuries and
continued through the Christian crusades. It reared
its head again with the fall of Byzantine Empire and
subsequent invasion of southeastern Europe in the
Middle Ages and was also prevalent in the 19th and
20th centuries:
The Barbary Wars ran from 1801-1816, the first time
the US entered a fight against an Islamic state.
The Quing Dynasty in China fought repeated Islamic
uprisings in Yunan Province from 1821 to 1855 to
1873. The Quing fought against an Islamic Jihad in
Turkmenistan which they annexed to their empire
renaming the region Sinkiang or New Province in the
1840’s. They also fought Islamic Jihads in Shensi
Province from 1862-1877.
The Russians fought against an Islamic Jihad in
Chechnya from 1834-1859.
The British fought a losing campaign in Afghanistan
against a Jihad there from 1839-1842 before
returning for a successful campaign in 1878-1880. They fought
the Mahdi Army (if that name sounds familiar is
should, it is what Muqtada Sadr has named his
militia in Iraq) in the Sudan from 1883-1898. During the
Iraq Mandate period from 1920-1932, the British Army had
to put down Islamic uprisings in 1920, 1921-22,
1927-28, and 1930-31.
The Italians fought against a Jihad called by a
Mullah in Somalia from 1899-1905. They fought against a
Jihad in Libya from 1921-931.
The Spanish and French fought a Jihad in the Rif
Mountains of Morocco from 1921 through 1925
suffering over 10,000 killed in action.
The point here is not to weigh the merits of the
wars above but to point out that these were all long
fights, ranging from four to twenty-five years in
length with most lasting over a decade. We should
expect the global war on terrorism to last quite a
while
V. Four things we need to do to close this out:
A. Reinforce Success both Politically and
Economically
This has been an area of great accomplishments. The
political campaign is always superior to that of the
military in an insurgency. Our successes to date
have put us, not the insurgents, on the road to victory.
We cannot afford to let up on our support to the
Iraqi people in the areas of economics, governance, and
democracy. We have achieved great success on the
political front. We need to work harder in the
economic arena, especially in private sector
development. There can be no political freedom if
the people have no economic freedom.
B. No Justice – No Peace
Saddam and his henchmen must feel the full weight of
justice in Iraq. His regime must be seen for what
it was, a brutal and murderous tyranny. There cannot
be an unhindered progressive advance in a new Iraq
until the crimes of the past are dealt with. All of
the Saddamists’ false trappings of legitimacy must be
discredited and removed from the body politic in
Iraq. We must make a concerted effort to publish the
large quantity of documentary evidence (video, photo, etc)
that detail in the most horrible way the crimes of
the Saddamist regime. We are helping to lose the war by
failing to do this.
C. The Iraqi Security Forces must lead the Way
The Iraqi Army must be returned to its proper place
in society. We were tardy in making this happen but to
again quote Sir Winston Churchill, "Americans can
always be counted on to do the right thing...after
they have exhausted all other possibilities." We
need to continue to support the
staffing, equipping, and training of a national army. There
must be a strong emphasis on combat operations
defined by human intelligence vice firepower. It must be a
professional army whose sole purpose is to protect
and defend Iraq first before any ethnic or religious
loyalties. We must work to instill a military
culture that embraces subordination to constitutionally
empowered civil authority.
D. Both Fight and Negotiate for a Better Future
This war will end at a “tipping point” when our
enemies realize that the gains possible through
peace will greatly outweigh any potential gains brought by
war. To reach that point we must exploit the
fractious nature of the insurgency. This dictates a
diverse and sophisticated solution to end the
fighting. We need to support the Iraqi government
asit exploits the gaps and seams in the insurgent
mosaic. This will require an amnesty policy that it
done properly will be distasteful to all parties.
We need to eliminate al Qaeda in Iraq.
We need to eat this insurgent elephant one bite at a
time. This can be done by region, by city or town,
byinsurgent group or groups, but must be done within a
framework of Iraqi national unity and progress.
The Iraqi government, the ISF, and MNF-I must couple the
besting of the enemy on the battlefield by
continuing with a dialogue of engagement in the pursuit of
peace. That dialogue must be built upon the maxim that all
wars end and that all parties can ill afford to
waste more lives and time in putting off the real job
facing us in creating a new, democratic, peaceful, and
prosperous Iraq.
Semper Fi and God Bless,
Mike
Saturday, April 29, 2006
Yesterday I learned that a former student in my 5th grade classroom was killed in Fallujah in early January. It has been a sobering day.
Brett Lundstrum was a Marine who followed in his father's footsteps in more ways than being a Marine. His father, Ed, is a retired Marine Major and a decendant of White Cloud, the Oglala Sioux chief. Brett understood what duty to family, community, and nation ment. He also knew the dangers in his "standing-up". He has paid a price for that with his life. For this, more than our elementary school history, I'll always hold his memory dear to my heart. I still remember his easy smile, his graciousness with others, the effort that he put into his work, but something has replaced that and that is an image of a lone warrior standing strongly on a ridge guarding his family and friends. Remember his name, Brett Lundstrum, remember too that he placed himself in harm's way to protect all of us.
Wake for an Indian warrior
Oglala Sioux bestow a lasting tribute - a name - to first tribal
fatality in Iraq By Jim Sheeler, Rocky Mountain News
January 21, 2006
KYLE, S.D. - Two miles from the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation the car
radio crackled, then locked onto the signal. "I understand they are
currently escorting Brett's body back," the disc jockey said. "There
are several police cars, followed by the hearse and
vans filled with Marines. We'll let you know when they are on the
reservation." Inside their rental car, two Marines from Colorado
stared out at the road, winding through the rolling brown grass of the
desolate Badlands. A few cars ahead, through the back window of the
hearse, they could see the flag-draped casket of the first Oglala Sioux
fatality of the war in Iraq. A few minutes later, the disc jockey
broke in again. "Right now they are at the reservation line with the
body of Corporal Brett Lundstrom," she said. "I've got eight songs
queued up here, and we will play them back to back. So here they are,
going out to Corporal Lundstrom . . ." She started with a spoken word
piece that began just as the procession rolled across the reservation
line.
"Throughout time, American Indians have had to defend themselves and
their way of life," said the solemn voice of songwriter Wil Numkena.
"American Indian warriors have a long tradition of protecting their
families, tribe and nation . . " The Marines listened as they drove
past weather-beaten wooden houses and lone mobile homes, through the
second poorest county in the United States, toward the geographic
center of the 2 million-acre reservation. "By tradition, American
Indian people have always embraced their warriors upon their return
from battle," the voice on the radio said.
"Embraced them in heart, embraced them in spirit . ."
Since arriving at the home of Cpl. Lundstrom's mother in nearby Black
Hawk to inform her of her son's death, Marines from Buckley Air Force
Base in Aurora had spent two days helping with plans for a nonstop,
42-hour wake on the reservation - the beginning of nearly five full
days of traditional honors.
As the procession advanced, residents poured from their homes. The
hearse passed families sitting on the hoods of their cars, their
children wrapped in colorful blankets. One couple stood at the side of
the road, their heads bowed. A boy on horseback watched with his dog
near a barbed-wire fence. A man in a rusty pickup stared from atop a
grassy hill. The procession continued to grow as cars from the side
of the road pulled in, stretching the line for more than five miles.
On their car radios, the tribute continued.
"We mourn, but honor the warriors who have given of their lives in the
field of battle. We embrace their spirit, for they are our very breath
of life. "Great Spirit, we ask of you to receive our warriors."
From hearse to wooden wagon Three tribal chiefs in feathered
headdresses waited on horseback off to the side of the road, along with
a dozen other riders and a small empty wooden wagon. The procession
arrived from over a hill, and as the Marines got out, the two bands of
warriors nodded to each other. The Marines lifted the flag-draped
casket from the new Cadillac hearse,
transferred it to the old pinewood wagon, and fell in line, issuing
clipped commands under their breath. They stood at attention in
spotless dress blue uniforms, white gloves and shiny black dress shoes.
The Oglala Sioux escorts wore blue jeans, Windbreakers and dusty boots.
They spoke to their horses in the Lakota language. "Unkiyapo," someone
said. "Let's go." They walked together, the Marines marching in crisp
formation behind the chiefs.
The last horse in the procession - an old paint - ambled along behind
them all. In a funeral tradition that goes back generations, its
saddle was empty. The procession was quiet, other than occasional war
whoops and horse whinnies, until it reached the gym at Little Wound
High School. At the parking lot of the school, one woman sat alone in
her car, crying.
Then the drumbeat began.
Inside the gymnasium - "Home of the Mustangs" - a 30-foot-tall tepee
dominated one end of the hardwood floor. The Marines brought the
flag-draped casket to the front of the tepee, then two of them took
their post at each end, beginning a shift that would last for the next
two days. Several rows of elderly men moved forward slowly, some
supported by gnarled canes. Many had pulled their hair into dark gray
ponytails, framing faces that looked like the landscape. Many of them
wore old caps and uniforms emblazoned with distinctive patches:
Airborne, Special Forces and the revered combat infantry badge - along
with dozens of gleaming medals. On the back of their caps, some also
wore a single eagle feather. At the front of the tepee, a funeral
director opened the casket.
Descendant of Chief Red Cloud
Cpl. Brett Lee Lundstrom grew up in the wake of warriors. Among his
distant relations was Dewey Beard, also known by the Indian name Iron
Hail, who fought in the Battle of the Little Bighorn, and who also
survived the 1890 massacre at nearby Wounded Knee. A grandfather on his
father's side was Red Cloud, one of the great Lakota leaders of the
1800s. More recently, his great-uncle, Charlie Underbaggage, was
killed at the Battle of the Bulge during World War II. Another
great-uncle, Alfred Underbaggage, was killed in Korea. He has relatives
at Pine Ridge who served in Vietnam and Desert Storm. His father, Ed,
was a career Marine, and retired recently as a Major. At the time of
Brett's death, his brother, Eddy - his only other sibling - was serving
in the Army, stationed in the Iraqi hot spot of Tikrit.
"He was born to be a Marine," said Philip Underwood, who first met
Brett when they were teenagers. By then, Lundstrom had long since
decided to join the armed forces. The two friends spent the bulk of
their time razzing each other, rarely serious - until it came to the
Corps, which spawned a conversation that's rarely spoken, even among
the best of friends. "As a friend, he told me one time, 'I will die
for you,' " Underwood said. Lundstrom's parents grew up on and around
reservations - his father at nearby Rosebud, his mother at Pine Ridge -
but due to Ed Lundstrom's job with the Marines the family moved around
the country, spending most of their time in Virginia. Though the
family returned to the reservation only periodically - primarily when
Brett was young - Brett retained an interest in Indian tradition.
In January 2003 he enlisted, not only in the Marines, but in the most
dangerous job in the Corps - one that would almost certainly send him
into battle. "I always told him he volunteered twice. Not only did he
volunteer as a Marine, he volunteered to be infantry," Ed Lundstrom
said. "I tried to talk him out of it. He had so many other options
besides enlisting. But he knew what he was getting into. He went into
it eyes wide open," he said. Brett served three months in Afghanistan
in 2004. Nine months later, in September 2005, he headed to Iraq with
the 2nd Battalion, 6th Marines, 2nd Marine Division based at Camp
Lejeune, N.C.
One result of his frequent moves to new towns: The strapping 6-foot-2-
inch tall Marine with the wide grin had no problem making new friends.
The last entry on his Web page - written from Iraq - said, "I'm outta
here in three months and I can't wait to come to Colorado." His
parents recently divorced, and his mother, Doyla Underbaggage
Lundstrom, planned to move to the Denver area this month. After his
hitch was up with the Marines, Lundstrom had talked of settling near
her, and becoming a Broomfield police officer.
On one of his last nights in Colorado, Brett had spent the night in his
aunt and uncle's home in Thornton, in the same room as his cousin,
13-year-old Richard Munoz. Before he crashed on the couch that night,
Richard said, the Marine left him with his last words. He said,
'Live life while you can,' " the boy remembered. "Then he went to
sleep."
Cpl. Lundstrom was killed by small-arms fire Jan. 7 in Fallujah. He
was 22.
His people bestow feather. Next to the casket in the Pine Ridge gym
stood a tall staff crested with buffalo hair and lined with eagle
feathers to represent local members of the tribe stationed in Iraq. The
middle of the staff was pinned with photos of their faces. A similar
memorial was set up in the school's cafeteria, by mothers who formed a
support group. Every Wednesday, they huddle in a sweat lodge, where they
pray for their deployed children. "Sophia Young Bear" . . . "Jason
Brave Heart," their names read, in part, "Kimberly Long Soldier" . . .
"Lisa White Face" . . . Atop them all was the photo of Brett
Lundstrom.
Upon their return from Iraq, tribe members receive the highest honor
for bravery: an eagle feather. If they are injured in combat, the
feather may be stained red with blood. Before the first night's
ceremony began, a 65-year-old Vietnam veteran named John Around Him
looked at the staff, and then at Brett Lundstrom's flag-draped casket.
"He earns the American flag from his government," he said. "He earns
the eagle feather from his people." Near 11 on Saturday night, the
gymnasium fell silent. Along with his first and last eagle feather,
Cpl. Lundstrom was about to receive something even more enduring.
"This evening I want to take a few minutes of your time to name my
grandson," said Birgil Kills Straight, Cpl. Lundstrom's great-uncle.
"Before he enters the spirit world, it's important for him to have an
Indian name, because that's how the ancestors will know him," he said.
Earlier that night, Kills Straight had gone to an Inipi, a sweat lodge,
to pray for the name, and to ask the spirits to guide the fallen
warrior. After the ceremony, long after midnight, the Marines would
take Lundstrom's body into the tepee, where Lakota beliefs hold that
the spirits of Lundstrom's ancestors would communicate with his.
First, Kills Straight said, they needed to know who he was. "His name
is Wanbli Isnala," Kills Straight said, and then translated: "Lone
Eagle." With that, he took the eagle feather, walked to the open
casket, and placed it on the Marine's chest. "He, alone, above
everything else, is an eagle," Kills Straight said. "He will fly to
the highest reaches of the universe. He may bring back news to us in
our dreams." He looked to the stands of the stadium, and spoke of
Lundstrom's well- known warrior ancestors.
"The blood of these people you've probably heard of runs in the blood
of Brett . . . this is who Brett is," Kills Straight said. "He is a
warrior." After placing ceremonial grasses in the casket and offering
prayers in Lakota, he turned again to the crowd.
"Now I want to name my other grandson," he said. From the back of the
room, Pfc. Eddy Lundstrom walked in wearing his desert camouflage
uniform, the one he was wearing only a week earlier in Tikrit, when
told of his brother's death. As the only surviving son in the family,
he had the option to spend the rest of his tour stateside. Instead, he
plans to leave Tuesday to go back to Iraq. In the days leading up to
the naming ceremony, as Birgil Kills Straight searched for the proper
names to bestow on the two brothers, he said he specifically wanted a
name that might help ensure Eddy's safe return.
As the 21-year-old private stood at attention, his shoulders straight,
his fingers curled slightly at his sides, Kills Straight took out
another eagle feather. "His name is Wicahci Kailehya," he said
finally. "Shining Star."
Anguished cry wonders why American Indians have the highest per-capita
participation in the armed services of any ethnic group. According to
the Web site icasualties.org, 23 American Indians and Alaska Native
Americans have died in Iraq as of the end of last year. "People always
ask, why do the Indian people, who were treated so badly, step forward
to serve their country?" said James Shaw Sr. during one of the
ceremonies. "It's that good old nation pride." For John Around Him, an
Army combat infantry veteran who served in Vietnam and whose son
recently returned from Iraq, the bond is more tangible. "In 1876, the
Lakota Sioux took that flag from Custer," he said, nodding toward the
U.S. flag near the casket. "So that flag is ours, too."
Still, after so many centuries of battle, they also know the
consequences all too well. "I saw his name on CNN and I let out a war
whoop," said Velma Killsback - whose daughter served in Iraq - as she
looked at the casket that held Cpl. Lundstrom. "I sat here in
disbelief, wondering why. For a war that shouldn't go on."
On the reservation, where registered Democrats outnumber Republicans
9-1, the war in Iraq is largely unpopular. The men and women fighting
it, however, never are. "When we would have late-night talks, he would
tell me how he was fighting for me to do the things I do in everyday
life," said Brett's cousin Amanda Munoz. "No matter how much I was
against it, I gradually understood. No matter how much I hated it, and
said, 'Please Brett, don't go,' he was doing what he wanted to do. It
was his calling."
Generosity of the star quilts By the time the wake entered its 30th
hour, eyes had begun to sag, clothes had rumpled and stubble covered
the faces of many male mourners. The energy level never waned.
Periodically, drum groups formed circles that pulled the drowsy from
the bleachers. Visitors ate buffalo soup and fry bread. While most
tribe members left each night to return home, some slept near family
members on the floor of the gym, or under the bleachers, refusing to
leave the man few of them had ever met. All the while, the group of 12
young Marines from Colorado - most of whom had never visited an Indian
reservation - continued to post watch in 30-minute shifts. They stood
without flinching, listening to relatives cry over the open casket, and
as friends and family members placed letters, a rose and sports jerseys
alongside his body. On Saturday night, while many of their friends
back in Colorado concerned themselves with the outcome of the Denver
Broncos playoff game, the Marines watched as the family showed
childhood photos of Brett Lundstrom's life, projected on a screen next
to his open casket. After the ceremony on the reservation, they would
head back to Colorado for Lundstrom's burial at Fort Logan National
Cemetery.
"I hope they will take this message back, that they'll say, 'We went to
Pine Ridge, and it was one of the greatest honors we've ever seen,' "
John Around Him said. "They're witnesses, to take this honor and share
it." According to Staff Sgt. Kevin Thomas, they have no choice. "I was
a history major. I learned about the Western expansion, I learned about
the Indians," Thomas said. "But I never really understood." As the
ceremony progressed, many of the mourners brought handmade gifts,
including elaborate dreamcatchers, miniature illuminated tepees and
traditional star quilts. By Sunday night, more than 50 of the quilts -
which can take weeks to make and can sell for between $300 and $600
each - lined an entire wall of the gymnasium. Then, as is customary,
the family gave them all away. "Value doesn't mean nothing to the
family - earthly property, it doesn't mean nothing right now - it's
life that has worth," said 82-year-old Sylvester Bad Cob, a World War
II and Korean War veteran. "They give it out now, but they'll get it
back someday." One by one, the family called up everyone who had
helped organize the ceremony, and presented them with one of the
elaborate star quilts.
They began with the Marines. "I had a picture of this in my mind, but
to actually see it . . . It's just overwhelming," said Capt. Chris
Sutherland, shortly after Doyla and Ed Lundstrom wrapped him in one of
the quilts, and - as they did with each of his Marines - sealed their
gift with a hug. "If you think about it, in our culture, we give
thank-you notes," Sutherland said, shaking his head. "Just thank-you
notes." Once the gifting ceremony was over, however, the Lundstroms
found out that Sutherland also had something to return. As the gym
once again quieted, Sutherland took out a small red velvet bag, and
walked toward the Marine's parents. He dropped to one knee and tilted
the bag. He then pulled out a watch - the same one that the corporal
was wearing when he was killed. He handed it to Ed Lundstrom, who
hadn't slept for the past 36 hours, while remaining near his son's
casket. The former Marine major held tight to the watch, then crumbled
in tears. Sutherland tipped the bag again, and softly folded the
remaining contents into the hands of Brett Lundstrom's mother:
Her son's dog tags.
Sunday night near midnight, 65-year-old Regina Brave stood up from the
bleachers and made her way to the floor.
"As a rule, I don't go to wakes, I don't go to funerals. But for some
reason, I had to come to this one," she said. "After I heard about him,
I knew I had to be here. I walked for a long time."
Two days earlier, Brave had hitchhiked more than 100 miles across the
reservation to attend the wake. For the entire journey, the Navy
veteran carried one of her handmade star quilts, in memory of her son,
a Marine who served during the first Gulf War. Earlier that night, the
family gave the quilt away with all the others.
"My father told me, 'Everywhere you go, you're there for a reason,' "
she said. " 'You're either there to help somebody, or they're there to
help you.' "
Inside the gymnasium, Brave joined more than a hundred men and women
who lined up behind the Colorado Marines, for the last official ceremony
of the wake, the "Final Roll Call." She was soon joined by men and
women from all services, ages 19 to 90.
Some hobbled in walkers, others stood in desert camouflage, some wore
the same clothes they had for the past two days. As Sunday stretched
into Monday, they came to attention. For the next 15 minutes, they
all waited for their name, and then barked
the same response: "Here, Sir." "Here, Sir." "Here, Sir . . "
each of them said, one after another, until they reached the last
veteran in the building. "Corporal Brett Lee Lundstrom . .
"Corporal Brett Lee Lundstrom . . . "Corporal Brett Lee Lundstrom."
Finally, Capt. Sutherland answered for the Marine who never would.
"Not here, Sir," he said. As the Lakota warrior songs began, John
Around Him took the microphone once more. "This ceremony will continue
on - because in the past, in our history
with our great warriors, and how they defended our land, their culture
and their way of life - it passes on, generation after generation," he
said. "These veterans, they love us. They care for us." He looked
over at the groups of old men and women, the groups of young ones, and
thought of all the wars in between. "To all the veterans who are here
tonight, welcome home," he said. He then looked over at the open
casket at the man with a feather on his chest, and said it again,
"Welcome home."
Sunday, March 05, 2006
Unhinged high school propagandist in Denver... I am a high school teacher and I take my job seriously. When I read this kind of story, it makes my blood boil. Unfortunately most high school teachers that I know are quite liberal, occasionally I hear that so-and-so said this or that in class but most of the time even the liberals I know try to keep the information they present and the questions they pose as balanced as possible. There are jerks, obviously this guy is one... he believes it is his reponsibility to set students straight with his very biased and absurd logic. Most of his points seem to be made through his vocal inflection rather than verifiable facts.... a dangerous man for an idiot. Read Michelle Malkin's angle on this nut... here.
Bad news today.....NOT... Looks like Al Franken's main megaphone will be lost to us...yes, Air America has rolled on it's back exposing it's white underbelly. Brian Maloney has more ...here.
I'll always remember Old Al in the kick-off Democratic event (before the last election) in Central Park as the celebrated defacto "mouth piece" for the Demoncratic Parity started the event with a rousing "F... George Bush, F... George Bush,F... George Bush..." Gee, do you think that voters were paying attention? Isn't that a way to begin a national debate? I know Al supports abortions, don't we wish his mother had? Think of all the Al-like creatures that we have been rescued from...
I'll always remember Old Al in the kick-off Democratic event (before the last election) in Central Park as the celebrated defacto "mouth piece" for the Demoncratic Parity started the event with a rousing "F... George Bush, F... George Bush,F... George Bush..." Gee, do you think that voters were paying attention? Isn't that a way to begin a national debate? I know Al supports abortions, don't we wish his mother had? Think of all the Al-like creatures that we have been rescued from...
Over at Captain's Quarters the Captain does his usual thorough dissection of the New York Times Editor Bill Keller's approach to "what's not good for the goose is good for the gander"... "fair and balanced" news reporting. The question looms in my mind, "How long do we have to suffer the absolute biased day to day operations of our major news sources?" Then, I wake up and realize it is only a bad dream, reality shows that all of the worst media actors are being driven from the stage anyway through loss of readership and advertising revenue... the death nell of conniving... read the Caps work here...
David Gregory, the indignant, shows in so many ways why he and many other MSM journos don't deserve our attention or respect. Without guile, they will shade stories, misrepresent facts, and pursue their quarry into the ground. At the end of the day, what have they accomplished beyond crass political posturing? Carol Liebau has more here...
This image refers to Davids tipsy call into the Imus Show from India... How does he get away with it?
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