@Nemo
No joy for the hawks on Iran. No US support for an Israeli first strike – not least because the mission itself isn’t do-able. Iranian talk of preemtion or retaliation for such a strike is just that… talk. The Iranians know, like the North Koreans, that they’re not on a hit list – and that neocon/neolib wishes don’t give birth to horses. Hell, we can’t even gin up widespread support for sanctions, nevermind military action. Iran is sitting pretty.
The road to Baghdad that was the centerpiece of this administration’s Greater Middle East initiative is, in reality, a road to nowhere. The first Middle East domino to fall by our hand is also the last – which is why the War Party no longer puts out essays on grand strategic ambitions. Its designs have shrunk to pseudo-humanitarian missions in African backwaters.
Why do some idiots yammer on about confronting Iran? Because our unfinished business with al Qaeda is largely off the radar. They’ll shut up (for awhile) when the shit hits the fan.
And hit the fan it will.
Posted by: Pat | Aug 22 2004 23:00 utc | 101
Worshippers – inside and outside the Shrine of Imam ‘Ali, An Najaf
Bismillah – Inside the shrine at Najaf – August 22nd
‘In the name of God’ – Catholic Mass for US troops, Najaf, August 15th. Celebrant Lieutenant-Commander Paul Shaughnessy, a Marine chaplain
Posted by: Nemo | Aug 22 2004 23:18 utc | 102
@Alabama
If this were a real war, the mosque would have long ago become a smoking hole in the ground and al Sadr would be dead. Najaf and Fallujah would have largely ceased to exist – or, at the very least, their male inhabitants either killed or carted off in massive ‘police calls’ after evacuations of women and children. But it isn’t a real war, is it? It’s a joke, albeit not a particularly funny one to those who have to do the daily dying in this half-assed, half-baked, completely useless, thoroughly arbitrary, never ending Bush operation.
It’s bad enough to pick a war where you don’t need one. It’s worse to be a pussy about it when you do. That’s what this mock-tough administration has written all over it.
Posted by: Pat | Aug 22 2004 23:41 utc | 103
@Pat 0741PM:
I can see what you say there very, very clearly>
Why can’t others of my kind see this too?
Posted by: The Village Idiot | Aug 23 2004 0:35 utc | 104
Iraqi liberation
Al-Mehdi militia attack prison in Amara, southern Iraq, release prisoners
Posted by: Nemo | Aug 23 2004 1:51 utc | 105
Yes, Pat. Was it ever a real war? Real soldiers fight real wars, and really fight them. They get men and materiel into place, they game out the things that go wrong, and they never move until they’ve answered the following questions: “if we take it, can we hold it? If so, for how long? How to treat the population if we have to hold the territory and lack the resources to keep the peace? Who do we buy, who do we kill, who do we export, and who do we rape (rape can minimize the loss of life–it has this peculiar capacity to terrify everyone, especially when ordered by commanders)? Most of all, can we stabilize things long enough so that the locals will accept us for a particular while (the Germans did this rather well in Normandy, and not so very well in other places)?” (more to come).
Posted by: alabama | Aug 23 2004 2:08 utc | 106
These are terrible questions, and I’ve never been sure that the training of a career officer can ever school him or her in ways that minimize the loss of life. Though we didn’t do badly in Korea, we didn’t do well in Viet Nam. But Iraq? What kind of obscenity is this? Who let the fantasists take control? Did 9/11 actually cost us our civil courage? This breakdown has wounded me in ways that will never heal. I have friends abroad who will never truly trust me for the rest of my life, and I miss them with all my heart.
Posted by: alabama | Aug 23 2004 2:12 utc | 107
@alabama/pat
so help me here, are you saying that Bush(&co) are contemptuous because he is but a drugstore cowboy?
Posted by: anna missed | Aug 23 2004 3:17 utc | 108
@anna missed:
I will answer your question on the other thread, in a day or so, If I can get Bernhard’s
permission. It is somewhat amusing and very painful to be slimed by anonymous people about your military service. A more complete answer if Bernhard will allow it.
If you are still there, let’s just discuss Pat’s most recent post.
Posted by: Flash Harry | Aug 23 2004 3:29 utc | 109
@FlashHarry
Well I am just a little mystified by the Pat/Alabama discussion above, I’m fine with whats on the other thread, though will apologize in advance if you took it personally, the comment was directed at those making the charges toward Kerry.
Posted by: anna missed | Aug 23 2004 4:10 utc | 110
No, anna missed, that’s not what I was trying to say, though I can see where I might have expressed myself a whole hell of a lot better. It’s like this: war happens–and not often for just causes, either. But it does happen, like any enterprise, and hence the standing army, navy, air force, etc. Now let’s just say that a war comes along–the “Korean peace action,” for example. Up to a point, this war was fought well by the “UN forces” (meaning us). Then came a tempting opportunity–to run straight up the peninsula to the Chinese border (the North Koreans were folding). This we did in November of 1950, if memory serves, and we did it disastrously, because we overextended our supply lines on the premise that the Chinese would stand idly by. They didn’t, of course, and so our troops had to beat a hasty retreat through winter weather and rugged terrain, all the way back to the “Pusan perimeter” (just across from Japan). (more)
Posted by: alabama | Aug 23 2004 4:49 utc | 111
The error here–really a mark of incompetence–was the decision to run up to the Yalu without a carefully martialed campaign, one in which it was made very clear, mile by mile, that the military was in complete control of the terrain (having made at least some of those dreadful decisions mentioned above, and acted on them). But MacArthur wanted a quick fix, and thought he could pull it off, so he abandoned the level of care required, and raced right up to the Yalu. (more)
Posted by: alabama | Aug 23 2004 4:54 utc | 112
In an Iraqi graveyard death came quickly – exploding the myth of invincible technology
NAJAF, Iraq — To his buddies, 2nd Lt. Mike Goins looked indestructible atop his Abrams tank as he maneuvered through Najaf’s besieged cemetery.
His command of the 69-ton machine in the maze-like graveyard led a superior to dub the 6-foot-3-inch soldier his “killer tanker.”
“He loved that tank and believed he was invincible in it,” said Capt. Kevin Badger, commander of the “Mad Dogs” company of the 2nd Battalion, 12th Cavalry Regiment. “He believed his training and his equipment could defeat the enemy.”
But a week ago, Goins and his loader, Spc. Mark Zapata, fell victim to a surprise attack that stunned soldiers at the military base here for both its simplicity and audacity. A member of rebel cleric Muqtada Sadr’s Al Mahdi militia quietly scaled the back of the tank in broad daylight with an AK-47, shot the men at point-blank range through the open hatch, and fled.
Both soldiers were killed.
The attack exposed one of the tank’s few vulnerabilities and served as a reminder of the urban warfare risks U.S. soldiers face as they fight Sadr’s followers in Najaf….
Militia found a gap in US armor
Posted by: Nemo | Aug 23 2004 5:24 utc | 113
The terrible disaster in Iraq is not so different from the calamity in Korea, but with this major distinction: our military learned from WWII, Korea, and even Viet Nam, exactly how carefully, patiently and thoroughly a war has to be fought. It’s a serious and boring affair. So along came the decision–don’t ask me why–to wage a war in Iraq. This decision was Bush’s, and though I know of no responsible general who thought it was a good one, they still took their marching orders from the Boy King–except that the Boy King hadn’t learned any of the hard lessons of preparation and occupation, things so hard to do well that they often give rise to war crimes (consider the conduct of the Germans in the Ukraine at the start of WWII, when they didn’t have the wherewithal to occupy a Ukraine filled with people, so they did what armies sometimes do in that situation, viz., massacre the population. It wasn’t wise, it wasn’t humane, but it apparently pacified the Ukraine for a while. (more)
Posted by: alabama | Aug 23 2004 5:24 utc | 114
You couldn’t make it up
Critics warn of plan to sack 30,000 Iraqi police
$60,000,000 is a lot to pay for a move tantamount to rearranging deckchairs on the Titanic
Posted by: Nemo | Aug 23 2004 5:31 utc | 115
@Anna Missed:
You were speaking of the Macro world; I was speaking of the micro. Hard for Macros and micros to understand each other, although same things happen in both worlds.
I think Pat and BAMA are speaking of the DOG-EAT-DOG world. And their world is a very real one
too.
Take Care Friend.
It’s really hard to watch a three ring circus of human folly.
Posted by: Flash Harry | Aug 23 2004 5:34 utc | 116
When Pat speaks about “being a pussy about fighting a war,” she means exactly what we’ve been doing in Iraq. If we were serious, we’d have sent an expeditionary force of 500,000 troops over there, who would have had the wherewithal to capture Fallujah at a terrible price. But Bush never gave them the wherewithal to do anything, and so the whole affair has ended up looking terrible.
That’s all I have to say right now, so I’ll sign off with a warm salute to ya’ll……
Posted by: alabama | Aug 23 2004 5:36 utc | 117
The terrible disaster in Iraq is not so different from the calamity in Korea, but with this major distinction: our military learned from WWII, Korea, and even Viet Nam, exactly how carefully, patiently and thoroughly a war has to be fought. It’s a serious and boring affair. So along came the decision–don’t ask me why–to wage a war in Iraq. This decision was young Bush’s, and though I know of no responsible general who thought it was a good one, they still took their marching orders from the Boy King–except that the Boy King hadn’t learned any of the hard lessons of preparation and occupation, things so hard to do well that they often give rise to war crimes (consider the conduct of the Germans in the Ukraine at the start of WWII, when they didn’t have the wherewithal to occupy a Ukraine filled with people, so they did what armies sometimes do in that situation, viz., massacre the population. It wasn’t wise, it wasn’t humane, but it apparently pacified the Ukraine for a while. (more)
Posted by: alabama | Aug 23 2004 5:45 utc | 118
We went into this war with total contempt for the enemy, and even for the terrain. No preparation, no plan for occupation, no rational preparation for suppy-lines….the list is really endless. And while losing sure isn’t fun, I find it always very instructive…..
Posted by: alabama | Aug 23 2004 5:51 utc | 119
We went into this war with total contempt for the enemy, and even for the terrain. No preparation, no plan for occupation, no rational preparation for suppy-lines….the list is really endless. And while losing sure isn’t fun, it’s certainly rather instructive. But the folks in the White House can’t learn, and so the lesson’s completely lost on them. Which is why we aren’t just voting them out in November–we’re going to communicate to them, through numbers they’ve never dreamed of, that they’ve failed utterly as leaders, soldiers and ordinary human beings. And if we could only learn from our betters–and the Muslims, right now, are our betters–we would also see their heads chopped off in a public square with the biggest, brightest scimitar ever cast in steel, wielded, of course, by the finest, the strongest, the most surehanded headsmen the Wahabis are willing to provide.
Posted by: alabama | Aug 23 2004 6:02 utc | 120
Thanks Alabama, To clear up the last bit of my confusion, and you need’nt have to answer for Pat, but I’m seeing the issue you raise, as a serious one, regarding the general degradation of effectivness of US military action to influence strategic aims. That the the political throttle that has been placed upon the military (in every action since WW2) has in someway (tragically?) reduced its intrinsic willpower and ability to deliver resounding victory.
What I think I hear Pat saying, (un-sarcastically?) is that Bush should be admonished for the continuation, of above said history, if not its intensification.That the most militarily aggressive US foreign policy in decades has beached itself in a mud puddle? Or (sarcastically?) that a genuine, real soldering,” bring it on” military should/would rain holy genocidal hell on all who dare resist or question our clearly stated goals of liberation?
Perhaps somewhere in the equation it should be noted that maybe (in the last 60 years) we’ve had the right military for the wars we never fought and the wrong military for the wars we have fought.
Posted by: anna missed | Aug 23 2004 6:14 utc | 121
@alabama
my above post was to go above the last 2or3 of yours……you’re moving way faster than me here……thanks for the insights
Posted by: anna missed | Aug 23 2004 6:23 utc | 122
Total war – the horror of it
Child soldiers square up to US tanks in Najaf
Posted by: Nemo | Aug 23 2004 6:47 utc | 123
@alabama
In Imperial Hubris, the author lays out pretty well the most striking error in the initial stage of OIF: speed for the sake of speed. We raced to Baghdad and that’s all she wrote. War over. Mission accomplished. Champagne uncorked.
How many in the White House knew that things would go to hell soon afterward? Was Bush ever told that things would go to hell – or did his briefers feed him a lot of nonsense? I’d like to know.
I’d also like to know why in the hell we’re still in Iraq. For the life of me, I cannot fathom what hopes anyone might have for another year, or two, or twenty of Operation Iraqi Freedom. It became apparent last winter that the ambitions for a permanent US troop presence, a la Korea, are unrealistic. The numbers don’t matter anymore; 40,000 or 400,000 – it makes no difference. We aren’t interested in securing the place and counterinsurgency is not our bag. We can’t afford to support a new government there and any government backed by our guns is not long for this world. What’s the point? What’s to be gained? Another Afghanistan? There is no rhyme or reason to it. There’s not even a decent conspiracy theory that can explain it. Why are so many still so willing to support and to associate themselves with such an abysmal failure, such a historical blunder?
Posted by: Pat | Aug 23 2004 6:53 utc | 124
Pat, at the danger of being hopelessly naive yet again: Is it not, in terms of power politics, expedient that the US keeps a massive military presence in the middle east, esp. in the country with the 2nd/3rd largest known oil reserves? Otherwise, what would stop US-phobic OPEC (and Russia, for that matter) from charging their customers in euros? What kind of favourable conditions would the US get in their hunger for fossilized energy?
Would a withdrawal (I’m not saying we won’t see one in the coming years) not be the beginning of the end of worldwide US military dominance, if not in practice – that is perhaps already the case – then in terms of prestige? OIF has let the cat out of the bag, and more or less the entire Muslim world looks at the US as the ugly America of its worst dreams. In most parts of the world, the image of the US has been better than it is now, to put it mildly.
If the US of A are no longer being feared (and Bushco seems to love to rely on fear), what is left? Hopes for benevolence and warm feelings from those parts of the world the US have treated with unbelievable arrogance over the last years? Focusing on the motherland while the US needs energy resources from far away areas? I’m not saying the US should stay in Iraq, but now that the shit has hit the fan, there seems to be no decent way out that would not harm US interests. (The interests of other nations do not enter into the equation these days, do they?)
Posted by: teuton | Aug 23 2004 7:47 utc | 125
alabama: we didn’t do badly in Korea
I have heard directly from two different Korean vets of mass killings of prisoners and civilians. I don’t think either of them is making it up.
Posted by: eb | Aug 23 2004 8:19 utc | 126
Korea – where real war news took over fifty years to reach America
“We just annihilated them.”
Norman Tinkler,
former machine gunner, U.S. Army
The massacre at No Gun Ri, Korea
‘Massacre in Korea’ – Pablo Picasso (1951) – based upon the No Gun Ri massacre
US military report of the No Gun Ri review – Findings – January 2001 .pdf file
51 years later, Clinton expressed ‘deep regret’ for the massacre at No Gun Ri
Iraqis are telling Americans of war crimes now – but of course the propaganda war is still running at full tilt…
Posted by: Nemo | Aug 23 2004 8:55 utc | 127
@alabama
Since my husband returned I’ve reacquainted myself with the warrior’s way of looking at things, which is useful if you’ve got one handy. And I’ve come back to the estimate I formed of George W. Bush in the weeks after 9-11 – namely, that the man is out his depth in a very serious business with a rapidly shrinking margin for error and no one around him is helping matters much. How much worse can one do, alabama, than losing not one, but two wars within a span of four years – especially given that one of these was an entirely optional campaign?
My mother will be voting for Kerry, with something less than great enthusiasm. Her hope is that the advisers he chooses will be more competent than those who inform and instruct the current president – a hope I do not share, though I’m sympathetic to those who harbor it.
Two months ago I was fairly confident that Bush is on his way out of the White House – pushed by circumstances spiraling out of control. Now I’m not so sure. The Kerry campaign has been depressingly inept. I’m not confident that Bush-loathing is enough, in and of itself, to win him the election, though it has unified a Left otherwise badly in disarray.
Posted by: Pat | Aug 23 2004 9:16 utc | 128
@teuton
“Would a withdrawal (I’m not saying we won’t see one in the coming years) not be the beginning of the end of worldwide US military dominance, if not in practice – that is perhaps already the case – then in terms of prestige?”
If the US withdraws from Iraq it is still the world’s dominant military force. There’s no way to overstate the fact that we are militarily leaps and bounds ahead of everyone else. Would the decline in prestige that a withdrawal brings about be worse than the decline in prestige from sticking to, and failing to bring to a decisive end, our ill-advised and arbitrary operation in Iraq? We can choose to leave on our own terms and according to our own timetable or we can delegate that to really unpleasant circumstance.
Posted by: Pat | Aug 23 2004 10:11 utc | 129
@NEMO:
Thanks for the links to No Gun Ri above.
My best friend was in Korea in ’51, and
he told me that incidents like No Gun happened
more than once or twice.
We’ve both given up trying to make any sense
of the NeoClown muscle-flexing show that is Iraq.
We’ve both almost given up reading about it too:
it makes us too angry.
On the human costs of this war, Richard
Cranium over at All Spin Zone has a hell of a
piece up –from the American point of view of
course.
Well worth a read.
Posted by: The Village Idiot | Aug 23 2004 11:53 utc | 130
Is it safe to say that the invasion and “war” were being engaged by the USA in terms of the business model, w/ the overriding focus on the next quarter or short term gains and general disregard for much outside of that? That’s my understanding of the role that this CEO-driven administration brings to the pattern. Rummie’s overall restructuring of the military and his objections to more experienced advice portend to this approach. As does the strong PR management, which relies on controlling the daily spin. In short, and setting all ideologies and abstractions aside, perhaps we need only look at who has actually benefited from this crime to identify why it took place…
Posted by: b real | Aug 23 2004 14:45 utc | 131
eb, was there ever a war without rape and massacre? I know about the massacres in Korea, from the air as well as on the ground, and when I say “we didn’t do badly,” I only refer to something like “holding and pacifying the territory gained”. After MacArthur was fired, the military seems to have conducted its affairs in ways really meant to secure the territory held. And no matter how slowly, how patiently and how carefully we might have advanced in the first place, the Chinese would have invaded all the same, but at least we might have held the line as far north as Pyongyang, or, failing that, retreated in an orderly manner (routs are no fun at all). (more)
Posted by: alabama | Aug 23 2004 16:20 utc | 132
teuton, I’m really, passionately, of Pat’s mind on this one. We have to get out of Iraq as fast as we can. The country can reconstitute itself, massacres and all, in a semi-secular manner, and be governed by someone whose name is not Saddam Hussein. It’s our own military that I worry about: I think we could double or triple the size of our expeditionary force there and still get all chewed up–because you don’t win a guerilla war in someone else’s territory. Colonial history teaches us this elementary lesson, and even the Israelis are starting to get the picture. This being so, where the hell do Bush and his people get off ignoring it, especially when their adventure was so utterly pointless in the first place?
Pat, I’m relieved to hear your husband’s back home. I remember he was gone for the 4th of July, and I felt a little uneasy about that.
Posted by: alabama | Aug 23 2004 16:43 utc | 133
@alabama
“(O)ur military learned from WWII, Korea, and even Viet Nam, exactly how carefully, patiently and thoroughly a war has to be fought. It’s a serious and boring affair.”
I don’t think it’s a serious affair anymore – not politically, anyway (and the politically-minded includes many, too many, at the rank of colonel and above).
There are a number of reasons why it isn’t a serious affair – chiefly, I would argue, because with the exception of Afghanistan (which was blown in a big way) our operations have no compelling reason behind them. They aren’t necessary for our security. They’re almost extracurricular activities. Why treat seriously operations that serve no serious cause? This is one thing in, say, Bosnia. It’s another in South Asia and the Middle East. Habits of unseriousness take hold and cling tenaciously even when you find yourself facing real threats and grave challenges.
My father says that lessons learned are, after a time, always forgotten. They always must be painfully relearned. I think he’s right. And I think we will. But not without a terrible price.
I, for one, could do with a little neo-isolationist backlash about now. We could do without the globe-trotting military and regain both our sanity and a little goodwill in the world. But it isn’t going to happen. So damn the torpedoes and to hell with the ankle biters: just get ‘er done, for Christ’s sake.
Posted by: Pat | Aug 23 2004 22:45 utc | 134
Alas, Pat, history shows that you’re Dad is absolutely right: as soon as we have a chance to fight a war, and some folks point to the dangers involved therein, either the dangers eventually prove to be exaggerated, or they prove to be somewhat surprising (as happened in Viet Nam, for example). So no one was prepared in either case, but the second case is arguably the more perverse: folks will be saying today that “we learned our lesson in Viet Nam, and we won’t make that mistake again!” and so they’re really fighting that war a second time, only getting it right this time– except that the current war really isn’t the last one at all, so we’re wrong-footed all over again. And as for the frivolity of this one! Has anyone ever established that you need to own an oilfield in order to capture its oil (Jerome and Roger Valdrin clued us in on this one? This is an exercise of no strategic value that I can see–we sure haven’t captured a lot of terrorists along the way–so the silliness of the thing is at least as shameful as its corruption.
Maybe we shouldn’t just settle for a neo-isolationist backlash. Maybe we should muster out every man and woman in uniform, then wait for all hell to break loose and start all over again, as we did in WW II.
Posted by: alabama | Aug 23 2004 23:58 utc | 135