There is no truth about war that isn't ugly. Indiviudal soldiers with narrow perspectives will have individual opinions, so you accept them for what they are. All the terrorists have to do for us to leave is quit shooting and blowing people up and allow the Iraqi government to be constituted. Every Iraqi wants us to leave, Gene, but the majority understand our temporary presence is needed. You can believe Al Qaeda has nothing to do with the terrorist acts in Iraq if you wish, but that would be a foolish belief.

In other news, we have learned that ~95% of eligible Sunnis have registered to vote in the upcoming elections.

Cheers,
Daiwa

Today the Philadelphia Inquirer has a story by Tom Lasseter about the situation in Iraq which is more accurate and anything we are hearing from the Bush administration.

I'm impressed. How did you discover that that particular story is more accurate than anything we are hearing from the administration?

Did it just happen to match your expectations?

Col. Tukhachevsky, I agree with you that the War is a nightmare. Even more disheartening is the news that now only one battallion of Iraqis is capable of operating independently of US forces. I haven't yet heard a solution from you, however. My solution would be to declare to Jafaari privately that we intend to withdraw very soon from Iraq, and he better get his act together or he's SOL. Then launch sweeping offensives against ALL major Sunni centers simultaneously. Fallujah, Ramadi, Samarra, etc. The only problem is it can't be done with 135,000 troops, of whom probably only half are even combat troops. At least 350,000 and maybe more than 500,000. The problem is our military isn't big enough for that task. What can be more frustrating than to fight for a city, to later abandon it, and for it to fall under enemy control again because there aren't enough troops? And also unacceptable, at least to me, is that Baghdad is not secure. Even in Vietnam Saigon wasn't like this.

Real Conservative thought on Iraq


Another article

Bush’s folly: adopting transcendental global aims, while shrinking the military Mark Helprin, one of the tiny minority of mainstream conservatives who is not a yes-man to President Bush, seems to have some special dispensation whereby the Wall Street Journal gives him free reign to attack the president’s disastrously inadequate policies in the war on terror. The main idea of his current article is that the U.S. has unnecessarily and foolishly shrunk its military establishment way below what is needed to cope with our challenges: “The current $400 billion defense budget is a twelfth of [WWII levels of spending] and only 3.2% of GDP, as opposed to the average of 5.7% of GNP in the peacetime years between 1940 and 2000.” All our military planning and distribution of our forces, particularly the inadequate numbers used in the invasion and occupation of Iraq, have been a function of this reduced military. Our inadequate defense forces not only encourage terrorists, but leave an opening to the expanding threat of China. Here are some excerpts from the article: ... The instant the Arab world realized that the promised shock and awe had not materialized, the insurgency was born. We then nurtured it by deploying a fraction of the ratio (10:1) long experience indicates is necessary for suppression; by dismissing the enemy as mere “thugs,” when, although they are thugs and worse, they have the thousand-year motivation of their civilization defending its heartland from Persians, Mongols, Shiites, and now Christians; and by gratuitously elevating our aims from the purely defensive to the transcendental, while steadily diluting the little power we have in the hope of forcing the entire Arab and Muslim worlds to a new politics. From a country where they have been held down in their beleaguered enclaves for two-and-a-half years, how are 140,000 soldiers to transform the highly aggressive and deeply rooted political cultures of 1.2 billion people?... The war in Iraq has been poorly planned and executed from the beginning, and now, like a hurricane over warm water, the insurgency is in a position to take immense energy from the fundamental divisions in that nation. The rise of Chinese military power, although lately noted, has met with no response. America’s borders are open, its cities vulnerable, its civil defense nonexistent, its armies stretched thin. We have taken only deeply inadequate steps to prepare for and forestall a viral pandemic that by the testimony of experts is a high probability and could kill scores of millions in this country alone. That we do not see relatively simple and necessary courses of action, and are not led and inspired to them, represents a catastrophic failure of leadership that bridges party lines. Perhaps this and previous administrations have had an effective policy just too difficult to comprehend because they have ingeniously sheltered it under the pretense of their incompetence. But failing that, the legacy of this generation’s presidents will be promiscuous declarations and alliances, badly defined war aims, opportunities inexplicably forgone, ill-supported troops sent into the field, a country at risk without adequate civil protections, and a military shaped to fight neither the last war nor this one nor the next. Posted by Lawrence Auster at September 09, 2005 10:03 AM

The truth, I fear, is MUCH closer to what these two battle hardened soldiers are saying then what President Bush is telling the American people.

Col, why don't you listen to the "battle hardened" soldiers who support the war, and report the progress that is being made in Iraq?

Don't you use the words "truth" and "Iraq War" in the same post unless you start commenting on the good news that people like shadowar posts. That article is full of bs just like col's blogs.

Daiwa

I too saw the article about 95% of the Sunnis have registered. If they vote aginst the new constitution, which may be the reason the Sunnis are registering, we have a MAJOR problem. If this government fails to be established, it will be time to back out and let the Iraqes deal with it. There are many who believe the real problem is trying to contiinue to FORCE three very incompatible elements into a single country. If the question on the ballot would allow the Iraqei people to choose if they wanted a single country or three separate countries the answer may be to split Iraq into three sections and not try and maintain the single countrty concept. I believe England forced the thee factions into a single country and they do not seen no be able to get along over a 100 years later. Saddam kept them together by FORCE.

Brehm

That is what many of the CIA officials have been saying. The issue of a non Moslem country, especially the US , occupying Iraq is more of an issue in Iraq and the Moslem world then the evil of Saddam. In other words, although many Moslems agree Saddam was evil they do not support our invasion and occupation of ANY Moslem nation. That is what according to some CIA experts is causing us more harm then good. If the end result is that after we leave, Iraq goes in to Civil war or the new government falls, the adverse impact of the Iraq war on terrorism will be significant.

Support for terrorism, including suicide bombings, has declined substantially in several Muslim countries in the past two years, according to a survey conducted earlier this year.

The survey, commissioned by the Pew Global Attitudes Project, found that in almost all of the Muslim countries where the poll was taken, including Turkey, Indonesia, Pakistan and Morocco, there was less support for suicide bombing as a means to defend Islam against its enemies than there had been in past years. The only exception was Jordan.

The survey also shows that the public in several Muslim countries share the widespread belief in Europe and North America that Islamic extremism is a threat. In Morocco, 73 percent of respondents expressed a worry about Islamic extremism, while roughly half of the respondents in Pakistan, Turkey and Indonesia, three of the world's most populous Muslim countries, shared that concern.
[/uote]

Key Findings of the Poll: * For the first time ever in a major Muslim nation, more people favor US-led efforts to fight terrorism than oppose them (40% to 36%). Importantly, those who oppose US efforts against terrorism have declined by half, from 72% in 2003 to just 36% today. * For the first time ever in a Muslim nation since 9/11, support for Osama Bin Laden has dropped significantly (58% favorable to just 23%).

That is not the belief of the experts and most CIA staff that have expressed their views. The Iraq War has enablen the Moslem faction that hate us to acquire more support from the more moderate Moslems. That increased the number of people that are willing to inflect another 9/11 on us and on other countries. . The Boston Globe Study cites seeds of terror in Iraq War radicalized most, probes find By Bryan Bender, Globe Staff | July 17, 2005 WASHINGTON -- New investigations by the Saudi Arabian government and an Israeli think tank -- both of which painstakingly analyzed the backgrounds and motivations of hundreds of foreigners entering Iraq to fight the United States -- have found that the vast majority of these foreign fighters are not former terrorists and became radicalized by the war itself. Article Tools * PRINTER FRIENDLYPrinter friendly * SINGLE PAGESingle page * E-MAILE-mail to a friend * RSS FEEDSWorld RSS feed * RSS FEEDSAvailable RSS feeds * MOST E-MAILEDMost e-mailed * REPRINTS/PERMISSIONSReprints/permissions More: * Globe World stories | * Latest world news | * Globe front page | * Boston.com * Sign up for: Globe Headlines e-mail | * Breaking News Alerts The studies, which together constitute the most detailed picture available of foreign fighters, cast serious doubt on President Bush's claim that those responsible for some of the worst violence are terrorists who seized on the opportunity to make Iraq the ''central front" in a battle against the United States. ''The terrorists know that the outcome [in Iraq] will leave them emboldened or defeated," Bush said in his nationally televised address on the war at Fort Bragg in North Carolina last month. ''So they are waging a campaign of murder and destruction." The US military is fighting the terrorists in Iraq, he repeated this month, ''so we do not have to face them here at home." However, interrogations of nearly 300 Saudis captured while trying to sneak into Iraq and case studies of more than three dozen others who blew themselves up in suicide attacks show that most were heeding the calls from clerics and activists to drive infidels out of Arab land, according to a study by Saudi investigator Nawaf Obaid, a US-trained analyst who was commissioned by the Saudi government and given access to Saudi officials and intelligence. A separate Israeli analysis of 154 foreign fighters compiled by a leading terrorism researcher found that despite the presence of some senior Al Qaeda operatives who are organizing the volunteers, ''the vast majority of [non-Iraqi] Arabs killed in Iraq have never taken part in any terrorist activity prior to their arrival in Iraq." ''Only a few were involved in past Islamic insurgencies in Afghanistan, Bosnia, or Chechnya," the Israeli study says. Out of the 154 fighters analyzed, only a handful had past associations with terrorism, including six who had fathers who fought the Soviet Union in Afghanistan, said the report, compiled by the Global Research in International Affairs Center in Herzliya, Israel. American intelligence officials, speaking on the condition of anonymity, and terrorism specialists paint a similar portrait of the suicide bombers wreaking havoc in Iraq: Prior to the Iraq war, they were not Islamic extremists seeking to attack the United States, as Al Qaeda did four years ago, but are part of a new generation of terrorists responding to calls to defend their fellow Muslims from ''crusaders" and ''infidels."

That is not the belief of the experts and most CIA staff that have expressed their views.

I am laughing so hard at you col. Now you are ignoring a poll? I thought you loved polls and everything you post is based on them. But now they are not accurate. Hypocrit.

There is a big difference in a poll to see of Americans agree with the policies of Bush and a poll on the impact of the war. You would have to poll the terrorists in question which is unlikely. Again, believe that the majority support Bush if that makes you happy. That is NOT the case.

It does not matter what the facts show or what experts say, if it does not support Bush they are wrong according to you Bush supporters. That will not prevent the damage he has done to this country.

Let's see, now; Island Dog's orignal post consisted of letters from soldiers actually IN the region and fighting the war, and seeing for themselves what is really happening in the day-to-day events as they occur.
Your hastily composed, highly derivative article, conjured no doubt from your vast database of the purely negative in a pitiful and crass effort to refute the other more upbeat article, consisted of reports and opinions expressed in and from the MSM.

What's wrong w/this picture, Gene? You just don't see it, do you?

That is not the belief of the experts

By Bryan Bender, Globe Staff

Yet, the Boston Globe Staff are experts?

Aaaah, one my favorite newspapers. The one that places OpEd pieces as front page headlines and retrace them a week later on page 45 (small print).

most CIA staff

One disgruntled CIA agent, does not count as most.

Col, can you please post some of the Sniper story. I am not to hot on paying for a online subscription to a Newspaper called the Inquirer.

Look, schools are good. But anarchy is not. Once the troops leave one area, the insurgents and terrorists move back in. Only one battallion of Iraq soldiers is capable of operating without US assistance. And this is 30 months after the War began, and only 500 Iraqi soldiers can operate without US assistance. Casualty rates for American troops are not going down. We don't have the manpower to conduct an effective counter-insurgency in country. Liberal Western-Style Democracy among an ass-backwards, savage (especially Arab --Wahhabi and Salafi) Mohammedan population is not going to happen. Let's put some realistic options on the table. First begin by scrapping the original notion that democracy will heal all the world's ills. A democracy can only be as good as the culture that employs it. Iraq is far too tribal, fragmented by religious-ethnic sectarianism, and intolerant.

As Randall Parker wrote this back on May 4, 2004:

Please click this link to see the article

2004 May 04 Tuesday Unilaterally Withdraw From Iraq Or First Partition? William E. Odom, retired US Army Lt. Gen., former director of the National Security Agency under Ronald Reagan, and currently at the Hudson Institute has told the Wall Street Journal that the best the United States could do in Iraq is to withdraw rapidly. (same article here) It was hard to disagree with Odom's description of Mr. Bush's vision of reordering the Middle East by building a democracy in Iraq as a pipedream. His prescription: Remove U.S. forces "from that shattered country as rapidly as possible." Odom says bluntly, "we have failed," and "the issue is how high a price we're going to pay - less, by getting out sooner, or more, by getting out later." At best, Iraq will emerge from the current geopolitical earthquake as "a highly illiberal democracy, inspired by Islamic culture, extremely hostile to the West and probably quite willing to fund terrorist organizations," Odom explained. If that wasn't enough to erode support for the war, Odom added, "The ability of Islamist militants to use Iraq as a beachhead for attacks against American interests elsewhere may increase." Odom sees Bush Administration Iraq policy as an unmitigated disaster. Strong stuff coming from someone with his record. Democracy scholar Larry Diamond has decided not to return to work for the Coalition Provisional Authority in Iraq because Diamond thinks the attempt to establish a democracy in Iraq is a lost cause. "We just bungled this so badly," said Diamond, a 52-year-old senior fellow at Stanford University's Hoover Institution. "We just weren't honest with ourselves or with the American people about what was going to be needed to secure the country." ... "You can't develop democracy without security," he said. "In Iraq, it's really a security nightmare that did not have to be. If you don't get that right, nothing else is possible. Everything else is connected to that." Noah Millman of Gideon's Blog asks what is the Bush Administration's plan and what alternatives are there to whatever it is? Perhaps the best way of talking about Iraq is not in terms of democracy or stability but legitimacy: how can we constitute authority that will be legitimate in Iraqi eyes and congruent with American interests? Elections, even if they lead to a questionably liberal result, would certainly do more to assure legitimacy than other methods of choosing a government, as Mickey Kaus points out. But his questions beg another question: alernative to what plan? What, precisely, is the plan that gets us to stable, democratic legitimacy in Iraq? Is there one? Does Kagan have a suggestion beyond keeping on keeping on? Would he have reduced Fallujah to rubble, damn the consequences, to teach the jihadis a lesson? Does he think we're giving al-Sadr too much rope - or just enough to hang himself with? Shouldn't he have to lay this out in the same kind of detail that he demands of the cut-and-run set, or do idealists get a pass here? If he knows better than Paul Bremmer how to do his job, oughtn't he to enlighten us? Millman makes clear his uncertainty as to what the next US move should be. What he and other analysts need to do is to stop asking how to achieve various goals and instead ask what (very modest) goals can actually be achieved. The very first and absolutely necessary step is to develop an understanding of just why any realistic goals must be very modest. Before the war Stanley Kurtz laid out a case for why the the time needed to develop conditions favorable for democracy in Iraq is on the scale of decades or longer. The American elite and people obviously do not have the patience for an imperial rule of Iraq long enough to make that happen. Since Kurtz wrote his article I've accumulated an even longer list of reasons why I think democracy isn't achievable in Iraq. See my recent post High Costs And Dismal Prospects In Iraq: How To Derive Benefit? for links to a number of reasons why liberal democracy is not going to succeed in Iraq. Here's a brief summary. -Democracy always fails in low per capita income countries. -Consanguineous marriage creates conflicting loyalties that work against the development of a civil society. -Islam creates highly motivated and legitimate extremist rivals to secular authority. -The Kurds and Sunnis do not trust democracy because they are afraid of becoming oppressed minorities under majority Shia rule. -The practice of polygamy creates a "winner take all" ethos where people see all relationships as characterised by dominance and submission and those characteristics are not compatible with liberalism. -Liberal social and political values are not in-born and take decades or centuries for a society to absorb. Having laid out the reasons why our goals must necessarily be modest let me repeat once again what is likely our best option: Partition Iraq. There are compelling arguments for partition. De facto partitioning is already underway as Arabs are being ethnically cleansed from Northern Iraq. Currently the Kurds are far more favorably disposed toward the United States than the Shia Arabs and Sunni Arabs. It is unlikely we can do much to alter Shia or Sunni Arab views toward the United States for the better. But we could manage to destroy the good will that Kurds have toward the United States. How? By forcing the Kurds to join a national Iraqi government that may well end up becoming as corrupt and cruel as Saddam's regime. One of our chief goals should be to leave the Kurds in a position where they will not eventually be screwed over by the Arabs. The only reliable way to accomplish this goal is a partition of Iraq that creates a new sovereign Kurdish state. I see less downside from helping the Kurds set up their own country than I do from trying to turn all of Iraq into a federal democracy. The Turks will be unhappy and concerned that a Kurdish state will embolden their own Kurds to try to secede. But a free Kurdistan would be friendly toward the United States and desirous of US help in maintaining its security. Will the Shias and Sunnis dislike the US any more as a result of our spinning off Kurdistan into a separate country? Perhaps. But if the Sunnis were simultaneously given their own slice of Iraq to govern as their own country they might see that as a net gain for them versus the alternative of being ruled by a Shia majority. The American elites and populace are unwilling to brutally put down all opposition and send hundreds of thousands of troops to rule Iraq with an iron fist for decades while successive generations are educated to create a semi-liberal ruling elite. Therefore no deep cultural change will be made that is of the sort needed to cause lasting political changes that would make Iraq less dangerous to US interests. The best we can hope to do is to break Iraq up into smaller pieces that will each be less capable of being a threat and more inclined to turn to the US for help in security matters. One question I have at this point: Will the US kill Saddam before allowing the new Iraqi government to take possession of him? If the US doesn't kill Saddam then what are the odds that Saddam might manage to make it back into power once again? Update: Aside from my reluctance (for both moral and strategic reasons) to see the Kurds left at the mercies of the Iraqi Arabs I have one other reason for being opposed to unilateral withdrawal at this point: Osama Bin Laden saw US withdrawal from Beirut and Somalia after taking casualties as a sign of decadence and this emboldened him to attack us. We have to follow a path that will not be perceived as simple retreat. A partition of Iraq followed by withdrawal from any part whose government wants to go forward without a US presence (the Kurds will likely want us to stay to defend them) will make our withdrawal a logical conclusion to a series of deliberate steps to remake Iraq. The other factor that partition has going for it is that it effectively greatly reduces at least one factor (distrust between Kurds, Shias, and Sunnis) that weighs against successful democracy. Fixing that one problem still leaves all the other problems. The Sunni and Shia countries may still become dictatorships after their initial rounds of elections. But the Kurds will probably manage to make a go of maintaining a democratic system. By Randall Parker at 2004 May 04 03:08 AM Iraq | TrackBack

Prior to any withdrawal (I also prefer only withdrawing to Kurdistan and offshore in the Gulf), we'll have to hit the insurgents and terrorists across the entire country so hard and mercilessly, so hard it may actually make some Americans sick. Just to let them know they didn't force us to leave. And any pro-Islamic parades and celebrations afterwards suggesting they "expelled the infidel Crusaders" should be decorated with a couple 2000 lbs. JDAMS.