Also at DKos.
We often hear that there is no military solution in Iraq, but seldom hear anyone explain why that is. I doubt you'll find any two military "experts" who agree on this subject (or anything else concerning warfare, for that matter), but here's my take.
Matters of Gravity
"Center of gravity" is one of those warfare terms so ubiquitous, defined so broadly and so consistently misused that it's almost meaningless. Nonetheless, I believe the center of gravity concept is critical to understanding our situation in Iraq.
"Center of gravity" is the common interpretation of the German word Schwerpunkt, which 19th century Prussian military philosopher Carl von Clausewitz described as "the hub of all power and movement, on which everything depends." He described major battles "…a collision between two centers of gravity; the more forces we can concentrate in our center of gravity, the more certain and massive the effect will be."
The problem with most guerrilla style forces is that their weight is distributed so broadly they don't present a "center" that can be defeated in a major, decisive battle. In Iraq, we don't just face a guerilla force; we face several of them. Some of them are at war with each other, but all of them have one common enemy--us.
Every time we go after one militia or another, we expose ourselves to attrition in an effort that will not defeat the target group, but can create (and has created) a shift in the balance of power among rival factions that allows one or more of them to renew their destructive efforts on the faction we just weakened.
Some have referred to this phenomenon as "Whack-a-Mole." I call it a "cat stampede," and there aren't enough cowboys in the world to herd all those critters back in the corral.
Initiave, OODA Loops and Moebius Strips
The OODA Loop model (observe, orient, decide, act) was devised by the late Air Force Colonel John Boyd. Boyd, considered brash even by fighter pilot standards, based his decision cycle model on his experiences in air-to-air combat, where the objective is to get inside the enemy aircraft's "circle" and arrive at a point where you can shoot it down from behind.
At the operational and strategic levels of our war in Iraq, the enemy has stayed comfortably inside of our decision/action circle since the staged fall of Saddam Hussein's statue. Whatever we do or don't do, our dispersed enemy manages to maintain the initiative, and that, more than any other factor, is the key to success in warfare.
They adapt and we adapt and they adapt and we adapt, but at the end of the day, they make progress while we continue to track on a Moebius strip, constantly changing directions and orientations, but always arriving back at the same place.
The Decisive Point?
The New York Times reports that the kick off of the third Battle of Baghdad has been announced. The Iraqi general in charge of the security operation took command on Monday, but decided to wait until Wednesday to make an official announcement.
I noted on Tuesday that they appeared to have launched the operation without sufficient forces to execute. It look I'm not the only one concerned about that.
Delays have been numerous. Iraqi Army units from other parts of the country failed to arrive in Baghdad as scheduled. Iraqi politicians and military officers argued over who would command what units and control what parts of the city. Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki began feeling political pressure to kick off the operation, but didn't want to start it prematurely. Sadiq al-Rikabi, one of Maliki's advisers, said, “It could be like an abortion for this operation, finishing it before it starts.”
But has Maliki gone off half-cocked? It will take time to phase in the additional 17,000 U.S. "surge" troops, and that's assuming Congress doesn’t stop Mr. Bush from sending them.
Time will tell. I'd frankly like to see the Iraqi forces clear and hold the city on their own. That would be a major confidence builder, proving to themselves that they can actually execute operations and achieve their objectives.
But Baghdad is not a center of gravity in the Clausewitzean sense. Running the militias, terrorists and criminals out of town, if that can be done, won't "win" the war. It will still be up to the various factions within the country to learn to live at peace with each other.
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Commander Jeff Huber, U.S. Navy (Retired) writes from Virginia Beach, Virginia. Read his commentaries at Pen and Sword.
Wednesday, February 07, 2007
Tuesday, February 06, 2007
Groundhog Day in Iraq
Also at DKos.
Every battle is won before it is fought
-- Sun Tzu
The battle for Baghdad appears to be lost even as it starts. From Damien Cave and Richard A. Oppel Jr. of the New York Times:
They started the battle without the additional troops they said they needed to fight it. Hmm. Where have we seen that happen before?
And they took down significant portions of the Mahdi Army who were protecting the Shiite neighborhoods without enough regular forces to fill the security void. The U.S. "surge" is moving too slowly and, according to Naeem al-Kabbi, the deputy mayor of Baghdad, "the Iraqi Army is not ready."
The Iraqi Army is not ready?
Is this Iraq fiasco starting to look like the movie Groundhog Day or what?
Patience, Camille
From the Times:
There's that word "patience" again. I'm out of patience with it.
The "enemy" has adopted new tactics, so we're adopting new tactics. We've been hearing about our new tactics to counter their new tactics since 2003.
The "enemy" is complex: Shia militias, Sunni militias, al-Qaeda, death squads and crime gangs. You know: the same complex enemy it's been all along.
The new U.S. commander in Iraq, General David Petraeus, is putting together a panel of experts to help reverse the situation. His predecessor, General George W. Casey, did that too. So did Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman General Peter Pace.
Pundits and politicians alike have been telling us for years that there is no military solution in Iraq, yet the administration and the Pentagon continue to seek a military solution. Nothing new there.
The method to the madness
Nor is there anything new about this warfare-centric administration kicking off a military operation by shooting itself in the foot, but good golly, will they ever learn?
It doesn't take a Clausewitz to figure out that you don't initiate actions with fewer troops than you know you need and is dependent on an ally--in this case the Iraqi government and its security forces--meeting benchmarks that it's already failed to meet.
In Mark Helprin's magnificent novel A Soldier of the Great War, someone asks why a madman is being allowed to run Italy's World War I strategy. The answer: "Because we're winning."
The madmen behind the curtain in our present war--Dick Cheney, Bill Kristol, Fred Kagan and the rest of the neoconservative cabal--are losing. Losing large. And yet they're still in charge.
My crystal ball is no clearer than anyone else's, but here's how I think is going on behind the scenes, and this scenario will play out.
The madmen have already said they'll execute the escalation strategy regardless of what Congress tries to do stop them, and they've already started the escalation without the troops they supposedly need to pull it off. By turning the situation into a bigger quagmire than it already is, they'll argue that the "Defeatocrats" need to go along with the troop increase to bail out the troops already in the soup or they won't be supporting the troops.
In other words, this half-cocked, premature launch of the Battle of Baghdad is a stratagem to blackmail Congress into giving the administration what it wants.
Again, nothing new.
In all, the main differences between the Iraq War and Groundhog Day are 1) Groundhog Day was fiction, 2) Groundhog Day was funny, 3) the main protagonist of Groundhog Day learned from his past mistakes, 4) Groundhog Day made more money than it cost to make and 5) in Groundhog Day, nobody got permanently maimed or killed.
#
Commander Jeff Huber, U.S. Navy (Retired) writes from Virginia Beach, Virginia. Read his commentaries at Pen and Sword.
Every battle is won before it is fought
-- Sun Tzu
The battle for Baghdad appears to be lost even as it starts. From Damien Cave and Richard A. Oppel Jr. of the New York Times:
BAGHDAD, Feb. 5--A growing number of Iraqis are saying that the United States is to blame for creating conditions that led to the worst single suicide bombing in the war, which devastated a Shiite market in Baghdad on Saturday. They argued that the Americans had been slow in completing the vaunted new American security plan, making Shiite neighborhoods much more vulnerable to such horrific attacks.
They started the battle without the additional troops they said they needed to fight it. Hmm. Where have we seen that happen before?
And they took down significant portions of the Mahdi Army who were protecting the Shiite neighborhoods without enough regular forces to fill the security void. The U.S. "surge" is moving too slowly and, according to Naeem al-Kabbi, the deputy mayor of Baghdad, "the Iraqi Army is not ready."
The Iraqi Army is not ready?
Is this Iraq fiasco starting to look like the movie Groundhog Day or what?
Patience, Camille
From the Times:
Maj. Gen. William B. Caldwell IV, the American military spokesman in Iraq, called for patience as the new security plan rolls out. “Give the government and coalition forces a chance to fully implement it,” he said in remarks carried by several news agencies.
There's that word "patience" again. I'm out of patience with it.
The "enemy" has adopted new tactics, so we're adopting new tactics. We've been hearing about our new tactics to counter their new tactics since 2003.
The "enemy" is complex: Shia militias, Sunni militias, al-Qaeda, death squads and crime gangs. You know: the same complex enemy it's been all along.
The new U.S. commander in Iraq, General David Petraeus, is putting together a panel of experts to help reverse the situation. His predecessor, General George W. Casey, did that too. So did Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman General Peter Pace.
Pundits and politicians alike have been telling us for years that there is no military solution in Iraq, yet the administration and the Pentagon continue to seek a military solution. Nothing new there.
The method to the madness
Nor is there anything new about this warfare-centric administration kicking off a military operation by shooting itself in the foot, but good golly, will they ever learn?
It doesn't take a Clausewitz to figure out that you don't initiate actions with fewer troops than you know you need and is dependent on an ally--in this case the Iraqi government and its security forces--meeting benchmarks that it's already failed to meet.
In Mark Helprin's magnificent novel A Soldier of the Great War, someone asks why a madman is being allowed to run Italy's World War I strategy. The answer: "Because we're winning."
The madmen behind the curtain in our present war--Dick Cheney, Bill Kristol, Fred Kagan and the rest of the neoconservative cabal--are losing. Losing large. And yet they're still in charge.
My crystal ball is no clearer than anyone else's, but here's how I think is going on behind the scenes, and this scenario will play out.
The madmen have already said they'll execute the escalation strategy regardless of what Congress tries to do stop them, and they've already started the escalation without the troops they supposedly need to pull it off. By turning the situation into a bigger quagmire than it already is, they'll argue that the "Defeatocrats" need to go along with the troop increase to bail out the troops already in the soup or they won't be supporting the troops.
In other words, this half-cocked, premature launch of the Battle of Baghdad is a stratagem to blackmail Congress into giving the administration what it wants.
Again, nothing new.
In all, the main differences between the Iraq War and Groundhog Day are 1) Groundhog Day was fiction, 2) Groundhog Day was funny, 3) the main protagonist of Groundhog Day learned from his past mistakes, 4) Groundhog Day made more money than it cost to make and 5) in Groundhog Day, nobody got permanently maimed or killed.
#
Commander Jeff Huber, U.S. Navy (Retired) writes from Virginia Beach, Virginia. Read his commentaries at Pen and Sword.
Monday, February 05, 2007
They're picking on poor Condi Rice
Should we feel sorry for our Secretary of State? Helene Cooper of the New York Times notes that Condi Rice now feels the kind of heat once aimed at Donald Rumsfeld.
She caught holy Hezbollah in recent congressional hearings. Former Secretary of State James Baker has said of her tenure in his old job that back in his day, “We practiced diplomacy full time, and it paid off.” A January 18 piece by Kevin Kallaugher in The Economist titled "A falling star" described Condi as "not the woman she once was."
Poor kid.
The woman she never was
Condi was drafted into the Bush administration from the neoconservative brain trust. She's still listed as a fellow at Stanford University's Hoover Institution, whose membership includes conservative luminaries like Thomas Sowell, New Gingrich and Ed Meese. Referring to her tenure as National Security Adviser, Kallaugher states that "Her fingerprints are on some of the worst mistakes of the first Bush term." But one sensed from the beginning that she was never actually part of the policy team. As Kallaugher says, "When Ms Rice ran the National Security Council (NSC), it was hopelessly dysfunctional--torn asunder by disputes between the hawks (Mr. Cheney and Mr. Rumsfeld) and the doves (then secretary of state Colin Powell and his deputy, Richard Armitage)."
Rice's NSC team was also riddled with young Republican bobble-heads who didn't think weapons of mass destruction were a factor in the Cold War and who said things like "Arms control, what's that?"
My strong impression is that Rice, a former professor of political science at Stanford, was brought on board to be George W. Bush's foreign policy tutor and office wife.
Ms. Rice: The blue thing in the middle is the Persian Gulf. The country on the left is Iraq. The country on the right is Iran.
Mr. Bush: Iraq on the left, Iran on the right… Iraq on the left, Iran on the right… Okay, got it!
Ms. Rice: You're so smart!
Mr. Bush: Enough book learnin' for one day, let's hit the gym.
Madam Secretary
Condi was a natural choice to replace Colin Powell. The neocons in the Cheney gang wanted to make sure it never again had to deal with a Secretary of State who might actually want to take charge of foreign policy. And just to make absolutely, positively certain she didn't conduct anything that might resemble actual diplomacy behind their backs, they inserted John Bolton as the U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations.
As Secretary of State, Rice has been responsible for two of the biggest diplomatic gaffes in American history. First was the insistence that the U.S. would not conduct direct talks with Iran until that country ceased its pursuit of an independent uranium refinement capability, an "inalienable right" guaranteed by the U.N Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty, a treaty to which both Iran and the U.S. are ratified signatories. In some circles this sort of thing is called "make them an offer they can't accept," an allusion to the catch line from The Godfather referring to a false show of diplomatic effort that ensures diplomacy will fail.
Iran was bad enough, but Condi pulled her skirt over her head during last summer's Israel/Lebanon crisis. She was all against establishing a cease-fire until the Israeli Defense Force (IDF) had a chance to kick the stuffing out of Hezbollah, but was all for calling a cease-fire when it looked like Hezbollah had stuck an exploding potato up the IDF's tailpipe. That permanently destroyed her credibility as an honest broker.
Stupid or duped?
Condi's not the kind of secretary who heads a cabinet department and dictates policy. She's the kind of secretary who takes dictation from the front office. Venezuela's President Hugo Chavez recently referred to her as "Missy." He might more accurately have called her "Patsy."
Dick Cheney's the guy who runs foreign policy and tells the decider what to decide. The thousand-yard stare Condi displays on television whenever she's pushed to defend any nonsensical administration initiative tells me that at some level of her awareness, she knows she's the administration's fall girl.
Now she's trying to work the Palestine issue, but Russia and Germany don't like her rules. They want to talk to Syria and Hamas. Condi insists she won't (because Cheney won't let her).
No, Condi's not doing a very good job. But she doesn't have a very good job, and she doesn’t work for very good people. And yes, it's hard to conduct diplomacy when you're not allowed to talk to anybody, but I don't feel too sorry for Ms. Rice.
She needs to put her foot down. If Bush and Cheney won't let her act like a Secretary of State, she should stop pretending to be one and go back to Stanford.
If Stanford will still have her.
#
Commander Jeff Huber, U.S. Navy (Retired) writes from Virginia Beach, Virginia. Read his commentaries at Pen and Sword.
She caught holy Hezbollah in recent congressional hearings. Former Secretary of State James Baker has said of her tenure in his old job that back in his day, “We practiced diplomacy full time, and it paid off.” A January 18 piece by Kevin Kallaugher in The Economist titled "A falling star" described Condi as "not the woman she once was."
Poor kid.
The woman she never was
Condi was drafted into the Bush administration from the neoconservative brain trust. She's still listed as a fellow at Stanford University's Hoover Institution, whose membership includes conservative luminaries like Thomas Sowell, New Gingrich and Ed Meese. Referring to her tenure as National Security Adviser, Kallaugher states that "Her fingerprints are on some of the worst mistakes of the first Bush term." But one sensed from the beginning that she was never actually part of the policy team. As Kallaugher says, "When Ms Rice ran the National Security Council (NSC), it was hopelessly dysfunctional--torn asunder by disputes between the hawks (Mr. Cheney and Mr. Rumsfeld) and the doves (then secretary of state Colin Powell and his deputy, Richard Armitage)."
Rice's NSC team was also riddled with young Republican bobble-heads who didn't think weapons of mass destruction were a factor in the Cold War and who said things like "Arms control, what's that?"
My strong impression is that Rice, a former professor of political science at Stanford, was brought on board to be George W. Bush's foreign policy tutor and office wife.
Ms. Rice: The blue thing in the middle is the Persian Gulf. The country on the left is Iraq. The country on the right is Iran.
Mr. Bush: Iraq on the left, Iran on the right… Iraq on the left, Iran on the right… Okay, got it!
Ms. Rice: You're so smart!
Mr. Bush: Enough book learnin' for one day, let's hit the gym.
Madam Secretary
Condi was a natural choice to replace Colin Powell. The neocons in the Cheney gang wanted to make sure it never again had to deal with a Secretary of State who might actually want to take charge of foreign policy. And just to make absolutely, positively certain she didn't conduct anything that might resemble actual diplomacy behind their backs, they inserted John Bolton as the U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations.
As Secretary of State, Rice has been responsible for two of the biggest diplomatic gaffes in American history. First was the insistence that the U.S. would not conduct direct talks with Iran until that country ceased its pursuit of an independent uranium refinement capability, an "inalienable right" guaranteed by the U.N Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty, a treaty to which both Iran and the U.S. are ratified signatories. In some circles this sort of thing is called "make them an offer they can't accept," an allusion to the catch line from The Godfather referring to a false show of diplomatic effort that ensures diplomacy will fail.
Iran was bad enough, but Condi pulled her skirt over her head during last summer's Israel/Lebanon crisis. She was all against establishing a cease-fire until the Israeli Defense Force (IDF) had a chance to kick the stuffing out of Hezbollah, but was all for calling a cease-fire when it looked like Hezbollah had stuck an exploding potato up the IDF's tailpipe. That permanently destroyed her credibility as an honest broker.
Stupid or duped?
Condi's not the kind of secretary who heads a cabinet department and dictates policy. She's the kind of secretary who takes dictation from the front office. Venezuela's President Hugo Chavez recently referred to her as "Missy." He might more accurately have called her "Patsy."
Dick Cheney's the guy who runs foreign policy and tells the decider what to decide. The thousand-yard stare Condi displays on television whenever she's pushed to defend any nonsensical administration initiative tells me that at some level of her awareness, she knows she's the administration's fall girl.
Now she's trying to work the Palestine issue, but Russia and Germany don't like her rules. They want to talk to Syria and Hamas. Condi insists she won't (because Cheney won't let her).
No, Condi's not doing a very good job. But she doesn't have a very good job, and she doesn’t work for very good people. And yes, it's hard to conduct diplomacy when you're not allowed to talk to anybody, but I don't feel too sorry for Ms. Rice.
She needs to put her foot down. If Bush and Cheney won't let her act like a Secretary of State, she should stop pretending to be one and go back to Stanford.
If Stanford will still have her.
#
Commander Jeff Huber, U.S. Navy (Retired) writes from Virginia Beach, Virginia. Read his commentaries at Pen and Sword.
Saturday, February 03, 2007
Iraq: it's not just a civil war anymore
Also at DKos.
Despite what you read in some headlines or hear in the electronic media, the recently released National Intelligence Estimate does not call the situation in Iraq a "civil war." It describes the scenario as something much worse.
National Security Adviser Steven Hadley reflected the Bush administration's refusal to accept the term "civil war." "We need to get across the complexities of the situation we face in Iraq and what is our strategy to deal with that, and simple labels don't do that," he said.
I have a perfect simple label for the Iraq fiasco, one I started applying some time ago: "Hobbesian conflict."
Secretary of Defense Bob Gates thinks "…there are four wars going on in Iraq right now." I'd say that's a gross underestimate. The conflict in Iraq has more sides than the Pentagon. Gates cites: "…a Shia-on-Shia conflict in the south, sectarian violence particularly in Baghdad but also in Diyala and a couple of other provinces, an insurgency, and al-Qaida."
Gates left out a few other angles of the conflict: Shias-on-U.S. forces, the other Shias on U.S. forces, the Sunnis on U.S. forces, insurgents on U.S. forces, and al-Qaeda on U.S. forces.
And oh, yeah, the Iranians are stirring the pot too. Maybe.
Iran Away
The administration was all set to present "proof" that Iran is behind the troubles in Iraq, but they backed down. From the Los Angeles Times:
In other words, they're out of feathers to blow up our skirts because they've run out of bulls to pluck.
Or have they?
On Friday, Gates said, "The president has made clear, the secretary of State has made clear, I've made clear…we are not planning for a war with Iran."
But as Seymour Hersh of The New Yorker and Larisa Alexendrovna of Raw Story and others have revealed, the Iran war plan has been in the can for quite some time.
And why the so-called naval buildup in the Gulf region as a "warning" to Iran if the warning is "Don't worry, we're just playing patty cake?"
It's little wonder that China, Russia and Europe don't back our Middle East policies. Even the Englishmen won't go out in the midday sun with us any more.
#
Commander Jeff Huber, U.S. Navy (Retired) writes from Virginia Beach, Virginia. Read his commentaries at Pen and Sword.
Despite what you read in some headlines or hear in the electronic media, the recently released National Intelligence Estimate does not call the situation in Iraq a "civil war." It describes the scenario as something much worse.
The Intelligence Community judges that the term “civil war” does not adequately capture the complexity of the conflict in Iraq, which includes extensive Shia-on-Shia violence, al-Qa’ida and Sunni insurgent attacks on Coalition forces, and widespread criminally motivated violence.
National Security Adviser Steven Hadley reflected the Bush administration's refusal to accept the term "civil war." "We need to get across the complexities of the situation we face in Iraq and what is our strategy to deal with that, and simple labels don't do that," he said.
I have a perfect simple label for the Iraq fiasco, one I started applying some time ago: "Hobbesian conflict."
Secretary of Defense Bob Gates thinks "…there are four wars going on in Iraq right now." I'd say that's a gross underestimate. The conflict in Iraq has more sides than the Pentagon. Gates cites: "…a Shia-on-Shia conflict in the south, sectarian violence particularly in Baghdad but also in Diyala and a couple of other provinces, an insurgency, and al-Qaida."
Gates left out a few other angles of the conflict: Shias-on-U.S. forces, the other Shias on U.S. forces, the Sunnis on U.S. forces, insurgents on U.S. forces, and al-Qaeda on U.S. forces.
And oh, yeah, the Iranians are stirring the pot too. Maybe.
Iran Away
The administration was all set to present "proof" that Iran is behind the troubles in Iraq, but they backed down. From the Los Angeles Times:
U.S. can't prove Iran link to Iraq strife: Despite pledges to show evidence, officials have repeatedly put off presenting their case.
WASHINGTON--Bush administration officials acknowledged Friday that they had yet to compile evidence strong enough to back up publicly their claims that Iran is fomenting violence against U.S. troops in Iraq.
In other words, they're out of feathers to blow up our skirts because they've run out of bulls to pluck.
Or have they?
On Friday, Gates said, "The president has made clear, the secretary of State has made clear, I've made clear…we are not planning for a war with Iran."
But as Seymour Hersh of The New Yorker and Larisa Alexendrovna of Raw Story and others have revealed, the Iran war plan has been in the can for quite some time.
And why the so-called naval buildup in the Gulf region as a "warning" to Iran if the warning is "Don't worry, we're just playing patty cake?"
It's little wonder that China, Russia and Europe don't back our Middle East policies. Even the Englishmen won't go out in the midday sun with us any more.
#
Commander Jeff Huber, U.S. Navy (Retired) writes from Virginia Beach, Virginia. Read his commentaries at Pen and Sword.
Friday, February 02, 2007
CENTCOM Follies: Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan, Somalia
Also at DKos.
The Bush administration and its echo chamberlains continue the push to make Iran the cause of all things wrong in Iraq. But they're having trouble getting the story straight.
Iran got tired of all the accusations and said, "Prove it." We said, "Okay, give us a week and we will."
Then Iran got blamed for the attack on U.S. troops in Karbala.
But then it turned out a couple of senior Iraqi generals might have been behind the attacks.
And when it came time to produce all that proof we had of Iranian meddling in Iraq, we decided our proof wasn't good enough to release to the public.
Purge and Surge, Bait and Switch
On Thursday, the Senate Foreign Relations Committee voted to send a resolution of disapproval of Mr. Bush's escalation strategy to the Senate floor next week.
The new Secretary of Defense Robert Gates and the new commander of U.S. Forces in Iraq General David Petraeus have criticized the non-binding initiative, saying it will "embolden" the enemy and send the wrong signal to our troops. What would expect of them? They're Bush political appointees.
Mr. Bush's proposed "surge" was advertised as 21,500 additional troops to Iraq, but the Congressional Budget Office thinks the real number will be more that twice that--as high as 48,000. That's because the combat troops will need to be accompanied by support personnel. Here I thought the 21,500 figure included the support personnel. Silly me, taking anything Bush says at face value. I should know better by now. We all should.
Hold That Tiger?
Senators John McCain (R-AZ) and Lindsey Graham (R-SC) are trying to block any and all disapproval resolutions. They're proposing a bill that essentially gives Bush another blank check to do whatever he wants in Iraq. It establishes benchmarks for the Iraqis to meet, but doesn't list any consequences if the Iraqis fail to meet the benchmarks, nor does it dictate any timetables or deadlines. It expresses confidence in General Petraeus, and pledges that he will have all the resources he needs to complete the mission. Whatever the mission is.
At the end of the day, it probably won't matter what does or doesn't get passed by the Senate or the House. Dick Cheney has already said the administration is going "full speed ahead" with its policy. Public opinion, election results, legislation: none of that matters to the White House. In a November interview, Cheney told ABC's George Stephanopoulos that "We've got the strategy right." If old "Last Throes" thinks the strategy is "right," you know it has to be a Betty Crocker disaster.
Some members of Congress also want to keep Bush from attacking Iran without the legislature's permission. Good luck with that. The heated rhetoric between Tehran and Washington, combined with the U.S. naval buildup in the Gulf region, are a surefire formula for a repeat of the Tonkin Gulf incident that Lyndon Johnson used to justify escalation of U.S. involvement in the Vietnam Conflict.
What I still haven't figured out is why nobody in Congress or the media is asking what in the wide world of sports, arts and sciences we're doing in Somalia. In early January, our forces conducted at least two air strikes in southern Somalia, supposedly targeting members of al-Qaeda who were allegedly responsible for the bombing of two U.S. embassies in East Africa in 1998.
We have stepped into the middle of a third civil war in the Central Command area of responsibility. Under what authority? I haven't heard an answer to that question. I haven't even heard anyone ask it.
One Tin Sailor
Lest we forget Afghanistan…
Radio Free Europe reports that the lower chamber of Afghanistan's parliament has passed a bill that will grant immunity to all Afghans involved in war crimes over the last 25 years. One of the bill's sponsors is Mohammad Mohaqeq, who has himself been accused of committing war crimes.
Afghan analyst Amin Tarzi predicts that the upper chamber will pass the bill in its current form, and that Afghan President Hamid Karzai will not veto it because "Karzai's plan is to offer an olive branch to the Taliban."
This would be the same Taliban we supposedly went into Afghanistan to eliminate.
One Bush nominee who hasn't blown too much in the standard line of administration bull feathers is Admiral William J. Fallon, who is on tap to succeed General John Abizaid as head of Central Command. Fallon has a reputation for being a no-nonsense kind of guy. I've heard him described as "completely humorless," at least in his public persona, but that's fine. The last thing we need right now is a funny man in charge of Central Command. We have enough clowns running around the White House and the Pentagon as it is.
And Fallon faces a deadly somber prospect. His predecessor, Abizaid, is the first American general to "not win" two wars. Fallon is staring down the barrel at the possibility of being the first American admiral to not win four of them.
#
Commander Jeff Huber, U.S. Navy (Retired) writes from Virginia Beach, Virginia. Read his commentaries at Pen and Sword.
The Bush administration and its echo chamberlains continue the push to make Iran the cause of all things wrong in Iraq. But they're having trouble getting the story straight.
Iran got tired of all the accusations and said, "Prove it." We said, "Okay, give us a week and we will."
Then Iran got blamed for the attack on U.S. troops in Karbala.
But then it turned out a couple of senior Iraqi generals might have been behind the attacks.
And when it came time to produce all that proof we had of Iranian meddling in Iraq, we decided our proof wasn't good enough to release to the public.
Purge and Surge, Bait and Switch
On Thursday, the Senate Foreign Relations Committee voted to send a resolution of disapproval of Mr. Bush's escalation strategy to the Senate floor next week.
The new Secretary of Defense Robert Gates and the new commander of U.S. Forces in Iraq General David Petraeus have criticized the non-binding initiative, saying it will "embolden" the enemy and send the wrong signal to our troops. What would expect of them? They're Bush political appointees.
Mr. Bush's proposed "surge" was advertised as 21,500 additional troops to Iraq, but the Congressional Budget Office thinks the real number will be more that twice that--as high as 48,000. That's because the combat troops will need to be accompanied by support personnel. Here I thought the 21,500 figure included the support personnel. Silly me, taking anything Bush says at face value. I should know better by now. We all should.
Hold That Tiger?
Senators John McCain (R-AZ) and Lindsey Graham (R-SC) are trying to block any and all disapproval resolutions. They're proposing a bill that essentially gives Bush another blank check to do whatever he wants in Iraq. It establishes benchmarks for the Iraqis to meet, but doesn't list any consequences if the Iraqis fail to meet the benchmarks, nor does it dictate any timetables or deadlines. It expresses confidence in General Petraeus, and pledges that he will have all the resources he needs to complete the mission. Whatever the mission is.
At the end of the day, it probably won't matter what does or doesn't get passed by the Senate or the House. Dick Cheney has already said the administration is going "full speed ahead" with its policy. Public opinion, election results, legislation: none of that matters to the White House. In a November interview, Cheney told ABC's George Stephanopoulos that "We've got the strategy right." If old "Last Throes" thinks the strategy is "right," you know it has to be a Betty Crocker disaster.
Some members of Congress also want to keep Bush from attacking Iran without the legislature's permission. Good luck with that. The heated rhetoric between Tehran and Washington, combined with the U.S. naval buildup in the Gulf region, are a surefire formula for a repeat of the Tonkin Gulf incident that Lyndon Johnson used to justify escalation of U.S. involvement in the Vietnam Conflict.
What I still haven't figured out is why nobody in Congress or the media is asking what in the wide world of sports, arts and sciences we're doing in Somalia. In early January, our forces conducted at least two air strikes in southern Somalia, supposedly targeting members of al-Qaeda who were allegedly responsible for the bombing of two U.S. embassies in East Africa in 1998.
We have stepped into the middle of a third civil war in the Central Command area of responsibility. Under what authority? I haven't heard an answer to that question. I haven't even heard anyone ask it.
One Tin Sailor
Lest we forget Afghanistan…
Radio Free Europe reports that the lower chamber of Afghanistan's parliament has passed a bill that will grant immunity to all Afghans involved in war crimes over the last 25 years. One of the bill's sponsors is Mohammad Mohaqeq, who has himself been accused of committing war crimes.
Afghan analyst Amin Tarzi predicts that the upper chamber will pass the bill in its current form, and that Afghan President Hamid Karzai will not veto it because "Karzai's plan is to offer an olive branch to the Taliban."
This would be the same Taliban we supposedly went into Afghanistan to eliminate.
One Bush nominee who hasn't blown too much in the standard line of administration bull feathers is Admiral William J. Fallon, who is on tap to succeed General John Abizaid as head of Central Command. Fallon has a reputation for being a no-nonsense kind of guy. I've heard him described as "completely humorless," at least in his public persona, but that's fine. The last thing we need right now is a funny man in charge of Central Command. We have enough clowns running around the White House and the Pentagon as it is.
And Fallon faces a deadly somber prospect. His predecessor, Abizaid, is the first American general to "not win" two wars. Fallon is staring down the barrel at the possibility of being the first American admiral to not win four of them.
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Commander Jeff Huber, U.S. Navy (Retired) writes from Virginia Beach, Virginia. Read his commentaries at Pen and Sword.
Thursday, February 01, 2007
Iraq, Iran, I Wonder What's Next
How fast is this story going to change?
For a long time, we heard that Iran was a threat because it was actively pursuing a nuclear weapons program. Iran has consistently avowed that in only wants to develop nuclear technology for peaceful purposes. Despite machinations by Dick Cheney's Iran Directorate--an intelligence crock pot that serves the same purpose that Cheney's Office of Special Plans did during the run up to the Iraq invasion--no proof that Iran is lying about its nuclear intentions has emerged.
A couple weeks ago, around the time the U.S. naval buildup in the Gulf region was announced and Admiral William Fallon was nominated to take charge of Central Command, the story on Iran changed. The problems in Iraq weren't being caused so much by that pesky al Qaeda as they were by those dadburned meddling Iranians.
On Wednesday, CNN.com International ran a story that cited two unnamed "officials" in the U.S. government as saying the Pentagon was "investigating whether the attack on a military compound in Karbala was carried out by Iranians or Iranian-trained operatives" and that "We believe it's possible the executors of the attack were Iranian or Iranian-trained."
Come Thursday, lo and behold, Fox News (of all media outlets) reported that the Pentagon has detained several Iraqis for questioning in the Karbala attacks, including two senior Iraqi generals. The money quote:
The loyalty and trustworthiness of high-level Iraqi military officers is questionable? Get out!
The Burden of Proof Goes Poof!
Last month, Iran's ambassador to Iraq Hassan Kazemi-Qomi challenged U.S. officials to show "any shred of evidence" of Iranian meddling in Iraq. Zalmay Khalilzad, U.S ambassador to Iraq and charter member of the neoconservative think tank Project for the New American Century, promised last week to produce that evidence. American officials initially planned to produce the dossier on Tuesday.
But…
As the Los Angeles Times reported on Thursday, the Bush administration has decided to postpone making proof of its allegations public "amid internal divisions over the strength of the evidence."
People aren't going to be skeptical. People--at least the ones who can spell their own names correctly--already are skeptical. In fact, they're downright incredulous.
And speaking of incredulous…
Chirac Takes It Back
French president Jacques Chirac pulled a Biden-class gaffe on Monday when he told the international press "I would say that what is dangerous about this situation is not the fact of having a nuclear bomb - having one, maybe a second one a little later, well that's not very dangerous."
The bomb would be of no use to Iran, Chirac continued. "Where will it drop it this bomb? On Israel? It would not have gone 200m into the atmosphere before Tehran would be razed to the ground."
Chirac later called a second press conference to take back his statement, saying that he assumed his earlier remarks--made to a recorded interview with the New York Times, the International Herald Tribune and the Nouvel Observateur, were "off the record."
You thought your comments were off the record my derrière, Frere Jacques.
Chirac was saying what any sane political scientist knows. Even if Iran does produce a nuclear weapon--and that's a big if--it would never dare use it except as a desperate defensive measure. Chirac is expected to step down as president in May. Good on him for telling the press what needed to be heard and then saying Merde, I forgot I was talking to the press (heh, heh).
Springtime's End for Dubya?
We had one Hitler in the 20th century. How many will we have in the 21st? Osama bin Laden was Hitler after 9/11. Saddam Hussein was Hitler during the run up to the Iraq invasion. Now, Iran's President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is Hitler. If Ahmadinejad gets run out of power, who will we Hitlerize next?
I don't know, but it's a safe bet that somebody in Dick Cheney's office is already working on the problem.
It's just possible that the leaves are starting to turn orange on Mr. Bush's springtime. The L.A. Times identifies one of the officials who want to hold off on releasing the "proof" of Iranian interference in Iraq is Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice. Maybe Bush's favorite office wife has decided she doesn't want to get bent over the kitchen table like her predecessor Colin Powell was when he got tapped to present bad intelligence on Iraq to the United Nations.
But maybe she's just part of a stratagem that will say "See, we double checked this time!"
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Commander Jeff Huber, U.S. Navy (Retired) writes from Virginia Beach, Virginia. Read his commentaries at Pen and Sword.
For a long time, we heard that Iran was a threat because it was actively pursuing a nuclear weapons program. Iran has consistently avowed that in only wants to develop nuclear technology for peaceful purposes. Despite machinations by Dick Cheney's Iran Directorate--an intelligence crock pot that serves the same purpose that Cheney's Office of Special Plans did during the run up to the Iraq invasion--no proof that Iran is lying about its nuclear intentions has emerged.
A couple weeks ago, around the time the U.S. naval buildup in the Gulf region was announced and Admiral William Fallon was nominated to take charge of Central Command, the story on Iran changed. The problems in Iraq weren't being caused so much by that pesky al Qaeda as they were by those dadburned meddling Iranians.
On Wednesday, CNN.com International ran a story that cited two unnamed "officials" in the U.S. government as saying the Pentagon was "investigating whether the attack on a military compound in Karbala was carried out by Iranians or Iranian-trained operatives" and that "We believe it's possible the executors of the attack were Iranian or Iranian-trained."
Come Thursday, lo and behold, Fox News (of all media outlets) reported that the Pentagon has detained several Iraqis for questioning in the Karbala attacks, including two senior Iraqi generals. The money quote:
Because high-level generals were possibly involved, the Pentagon said, it raises questions about the loyalty and trustworthiness of Iraqi military officers at the highest levels.
The loyalty and trustworthiness of high-level Iraqi military officers is questionable? Get out!
The Burden of Proof Goes Poof!
Last month, Iran's ambassador to Iraq Hassan Kazemi-Qomi challenged U.S. officials to show "any shred of evidence" of Iranian meddling in Iraq. Zalmay Khalilzad, U.S ambassador to Iraq and charter member of the neoconservative think tank Project for the New American Century, promised last week to produce that evidence. American officials initially planned to produce the dossier on Tuesday.
But…
As the Los Angeles Times reported on Thursday, the Bush administration has decided to postpone making proof of its allegations public "amid internal divisions over the strength of the evidence."
We don't want a repeat of the situation we had when [then-Secretary of State] Colin L. Powell went before the United Nations," said one U.S. official, referring to Powell's 2003 presentation on then-Iraqi President Saddam Hussein's unconventional weapons program that relied on evidence later found to be false. "People are going to be skeptical."
People aren't going to be skeptical. People--at least the ones who can spell their own names correctly--already are skeptical. In fact, they're downright incredulous.
And speaking of incredulous…
Chirac Takes It Back
French president Jacques Chirac pulled a Biden-class gaffe on Monday when he told the international press "I would say that what is dangerous about this situation is not the fact of having a nuclear bomb - having one, maybe a second one a little later, well that's not very dangerous."
The bomb would be of no use to Iran, Chirac continued. "Where will it drop it this bomb? On Israel? It would not have gone 200m into the atmosphere before Tehran would be razed to the ground."
Chirac later called a second press conference to take back his statement, saying that he assumed his earlier remarks--made to a recorded interview with the New York Times, the International Herald Tribune and the Nouvel Observateur, were "off the record."
You thought your comments were off the record my derrière, Frere Jacques.
Chirac was saying what any sane political scientist knows. Even if Iran does produce a nuclear weapon--and that's a big if--it would never dare use it except as a desperate defensive measure. Chirac is expected to step down as president in May. Good on him for telling the press what needed to be heard and then saying Merde, I forgot I was talking to the press (heh, heh).
Springtime's End for Dubya?
We had one Hitler in the 20th century. How many will we have in the 21st? Osama bin Laden was Hitler after 9/11. Saddam Hussein was Hitler during the run up to the Iraq invasion. Now, Iran's President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is Hitler. If Ahmadinejad gets run out of power, who will we Hitlerize next?
I don't know, but it's a safe bet that somebody in Dick Cheney's office is already working on the problem.
It's just possible that the leaves are starting to turn orange on Mr. Bush's springtime. The L.A. Times identifies one of the officials who want to hold off on releasing the "proof" of Iranian interference in Iraq is Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice. Maybe Bush's favorite office wife has decided she doesn't want to get bent over the kitchen table like her predecessor Colin Powell was when he got tapped to present bad intelligence on Iraq to the United Nations.
But maybe she's just part of a stratagem that will say "See, we double checked this time!"
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Commander Jeff Huber, U.S. Navy (Retired) writes from Virginia Beach, Virginia. Read his commentaries at Pen and Sword.
Wednesday, January 31, 2007
Iran: Here We Go Again, Mainstream Media and All
In case you hadn't noticed, we're being manipulated toward another war. The run-up to an attack on Iran is in full swing, and the justification for it is shifting as fast as the justification for invading Iraq did. And it appears that the media is being as compliant in echoing the Bush administration's message on Iran as it was in supporting their Iraq propaganda.
Thanks to Steven D of Booman Tribune for calling our attention to this scintillating piece of propaganda from a CNN report posted on Wednesday:
We've become so inured to hearing from "unnamed sources" that we hardly question any more why the sources are left unidentified or how credible they are, or what their motivations in talking to the media might be.
One thing we can be fairly certain of is that the "two officials" cited in this story are not whistle blowers. Whistle blowers don't make statements that support administration policies, nor do they couch their language in disclaimers. Notice how every allegation of Iranian involvement in the Karbala attacks is accompanied with modifying language: the Pentagon is investigating, people are looking at it seriously, we believe it's possible…
The CNN article later states that "Some Iraqis speculate that the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps carried out the attack in retaliation for the January 11 capture by U.S. forces of five of its members in Irbil."
Who would those "some Iraqis" be, and who told the author of this article that they speculate Iran's Revolutionary Guard carried out the Karbala attack? For that matter, why doesn't the author's name appear in a byline? Yes, big news agencies often publish stories without crediting their staff writers, but this story contains serious political content attributable to no virtually no one. The only person it specifically cites is Mr. Bush, and that was in a specific reference to a statement he made in a Monday interview with National Public Radio. It's kind of hard to quote a public statement the president of the United States and hide the source of the statement.
"I Believe"
Masters of manipulation who use misinformation, disinformation, false propaganda and other rhetorical means of mass mind control know how to both exploit the abstraction aspects of the communication process and couch their language in a way that covers the territory above their fetlocks.
They know that as a message works its way through the echo chamber, the qualifying language will fade below the noise threshold while the "message" will continue to reverberate loudly and clearly. They know that "We believe it's possible the executors of the attack were Iranian or Iranian-trained" will eventually be rebroadcast as "The executors of the attack were Iranian or Iranian-trained."
But by having included the disclaimers in their original statements, they can always disavow culpability for having deliberately misled the public. Keep that in mind when you hear the likes of Messrs. Bush and Cheney say they firmly "think" or "believe" something to be true about Iraq, Iran or any other "factual" information they use to justify their foreign policy decisions.
Were irony alive and with us, it would roll its eyes at the mainstream media's willingness to echo the administration's pro-Iranian war propaganda even as Judith Miller, the former New York Times reporter now testifying in the I. Lewis Libby trial, tries to defend her role in the Bush administration's media manipulation that led to the Iraq invasion.
MSNBC just ran a piece by notably unreliable source Jim Miklashevski that talked about claims that Iran is behind all the recent violence in Iraq. After Micklashevski's segment, the pretty talking head admitted than nothing Mick had said had been proven, but I doubt anybody heard what she said.
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Commander Jeff Huber, U.S. Navy (Retired) writes from Virginia Beach, Virginia. Read his commentaries at Pen and Sword.
Thanks to Steven D of Booman Tribune for calling our attention to this scintillating piece of propaganda from a CNN report posted on Wednesday:
Iranian-U.S. tensions have been ratcheted up recently, with two U.S. officials theorizing about the possibility that Iran was involved in a January 20 attack that killed five U.S. soldiers.
Two officials from separate U.S. government agencies said Tuesday the Pentagon is investigating whether the attack on a military compound in Karbala was carried out by Iranians or Iranian-trained operatives.
"People are looking at it seriously," one of the officials said, adding that the Iranian connection was a leading theory in the investigation.
The second official said: "We believe it's possible the executors of the attack were Iranian or Iranian-trained."
We've become so inured to hearing from "unnamed sources" that we hardly question any more why the sources are left unidentified or how credible they are, or what their motivations in talking to the media might be.
One thing we can be fairly certain of is that the "two officials" cited in this story are not whistle blowers. Whistle blowers don't make statements that support administration policies, nor do they couch their language in disclaimers. Notice how every allegation of Iranian involvement in the Karbala attacks is accompanied with modifying language: the Pentagon is investigating, people are looking at it seriously, we believe it's possible…
The CNN article later states that "Some Iraqis speculate that the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps carried out the attack in retaliation for the January 11 capture by U.S. forces of five of its members in Irbil."
Who would those "some Iraqis" be, and who told the author of this article that they speculate Iran's Revolutionary Guard carried out the Karbala attack? For that matter, why doesn't the author's name appear in a byline? Yes, big news agencies often publish stories without crediting their staff writers, but this story contains serious political content attributable to no virtually no one. The only person it specifically cites is Mr. Bush, and that was in a specific reference to a statement he made in a Monday interview with National Public Radio. It's kind of hard to quote a public statement the president of the United States and hide the source of the statement.
"I Believe"
Masters of manipulation who use misinformation, disinformation, false propaganda and other rhetorical means of mass mind control know how to both exploit the abstraction aspects of the communication process and couch their language in a way that covers the territory above their fetlocks.
They know that as a message works its way through the echo chamber, the qualifying language will fade below the noise threshold while the "message" will continue to reverberate loudly and clearly. They know that "We believe it's possible the executors of the attack were Iranian or Iranian-trained" will eventually be rebroadcast as "The executors of the attack were Iranian or Iranian-trained."
But by having included the disclaimers in their original statements, they can always disavow culpability for having deliberately misled the public. Keep that in mind when you hear the likes of Messrs. Bush and Cheney say they firmly "think" or "believe" something to be true about Iraq, Iran or any other "factual" information they use to justify their foreign policy decisions.
Were irony alive and with us, it would roll its eyes at the mainstream media's willingness to echo the administration's pro-Iranian war propaganda even as Judith Miller, the former New York Times reporter now testifying in the I. Lewis Libby trial, tries to defend her role in the Bush administration's media manipulation that led to the Iraq invasion.
MSNBC just ran a piece by notably unreliable source Jim Miklashevski that talked about claims that Iran is behind all the recent violence in Iraq. After Micklashevski's segment, the pretty talking head admitted than nothing Mick had said had been proven, but I doubt anybody heard what she said.
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Commander Jeff Huber, U.S. Navy (Retired) writes from Virginia Beach, Virginia. Read his commentaries at Pen and Sword.
Tuesday, January 30, 2007
Iran: Once More Unto the Quagmire
James Glanz of the New York Times reports that Iran plans to expand its economic and military ties with Iraq.
Imagine that. Iran, a neighbor of Iraq, a country with which it fought its only modern war, has expressed an interest in being part of the solution to Iraq's security and rebuilding equation. How dare they?
And what subversive, violent steps do the Iranians propose to cement those ties? They want to establish an Iranian national bank branch in Baghdad. Shudder. We better get more troops in Baghdad right away to make sure that doesn't happen.
Mr. Bush says we "will respond firmly" if Iran steps up military actions in Iraq that threaten U.S. troops or Iraqi citizens.
Mr. Bush claims Iran is providing bad guys in Iraq with weapons. He's not real clear about explaining which Iraqi bad guys Iran is giving those weapons to.
Iran's president says his country only wants nuclear capability for peaceful purposes. Mr. Bush tells us Iran wants to develop nuclear weapons. We can't tell for sure which president is telling the truth about Iran's nuclear intentions, but as far as we know, Iran's president hasn't told us a lie yet.
Iran's president says the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty guarantees his country the "inalienable right" to develop nuclear technology for peaceful purposes. This is true.
U.S. Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice has told us that our major allies are united with us in efforts to isolate Iran. This is far from the truth.
China and Russia are Iran's energy partners. European governments are resisting American pressure to apply sanctions on Iran, citing "technical and political problems related to the heavy European economic ties to Iran and its oil industry."
Saudi Arabia is collaborating with Iran in an effort to mediate an agreement to end the violent political crisis in Lebanon.
Saudi writer and academic Khaled al-Dakhil says that "The United States is the first to be blamed for the rise of Iranian influence in the Middle East."
In October, our buddies in Kuwait reneged on a promise to send observers along on a U.S. led naval exercise in the Gulf. A U.S. State Department official said the Kuwaitis were being careful "not to antagonize the Iranians."
Mr. Bush has authorized U.S. troops to kill or capture any member of Iran's Revolutionary Guard or its intelligence services believed to be working with Iraqi militias. Many in the U.S. intelligence agencies and State and Defense Departments are skeptical of this move, fearing it will exacerbate the growing conflict between Tehran and Washington.
Iraq's Deputy Prime Minister Barham Saleh has encouraged the U.S. and Iran to resolve its differences.
Mr. Bush still asserts that he wants to solve U.S. problems with Iran through diplomacy, but he still refuses to have direct diplomatic talks with Iran.
The Bushketeers
Mr. Bush says he doesn't intend to invade Iran. There's one Bush statement we can believe. He doesn't intend to invade Iran because he can't. His ground forces are tied up in Iraq and Afghanistan. But he can bomb the bedazzle out of Iran from the air and the sea, and with each passing day it looks more and more like that's precisely what he intends to do.
The time for dismissing suggestions that Bush has ambitions of expanding his Middle East wars into an apocalyptic global conflict as conspiracy theory is over. The time is coming--and it's coming very soon--where Congress will have to take swift, draconian measures to slam the brakes on the administration's train wreck of a foreign policy.
If Congress can't curb Bush's reckless pursuit of war without end, America will be up the proverbial creek with neither a paddle nor a canoe. The Supreme Court won't stop him. Even if it were inclined to, the judicial system doesn't work fast enough. The media, the supposed fourth estate or our Constitutional system, has crumbled under the weight of neo-Orwellianism. The so-called "liberal media" has become, wittingly or unwittingly, a compliant tool of the Big Brother Broadcast. Just this morning (Tuesday) I listened to MSNBC "correspondents" and "analysts" echo the administration's propaganda on Iran, unfiltered, as if it were proven "fact."
Don't fall for the canard that says Bush can't do any more damage to American power and prestige because he's a "lame duck." If he continues to get his way, we'll be stuck so deep in the quicksand that a herd of elephants and a team of mules together won't be able to haul us out of it.
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Commander Jeff Huber, U.S. Navy (Retired) writes from Virginia Beach, Virginia. Read his commentaries at Pen and Sword.
Imagine that. Iran, a neighbor of Iraq, a country with which it fought its only modern war, has expressed an interest in being part of the solution to Iraq's security and rebuilding equation. How dare they?
And what subversive, violent steps do the Iranians propose to cement those ties? They want to establish an Iranian national bank branch in Baghdad. Shudder. We better get more troops in Baghdad right away to make sure that doesn't happen.
Mr. Bush says we "will respond firmly" if Iran steps up military actions in Iraq that threaten U.S. troops or Iraqi citizens.
Mr. Bush claims Iran is providing bad guys in Iraq with weapons. He's not real clear about explaining which Iraqi bad guys Iran is giving those weapons to.
Iran's president says his country only wants nuclear capability for peaceful purposes. Mr. Bush tells us Iran wants to develop nuclear weapons. We can't tell for sure which president is telling the truth about Iran's nuclear intentions, but as far as we know, Iran's president hasn't told us a lie yet.
Iran's president says the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty guarantees his country the "inalienable right" to develop nuclear technology for peaceful purposes. This is true.
U.S. Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice has told us that our major allies are united with us in efforts to isolate Iran. This is far from the truth.
China and Russia are Iran's energy partners. European governments are resisting American pressure to apply sanctions on Iran, citing "technical and political problems related to the heavy European economic ties to Iran and its oil industry."
Saudi Arabia is collaborating with Iran in an effort to mediate an agreement to end the violent political crisis in Lebanon.
Saudi writer and academic Khaled al-Dakhil says that "The United States is the first to be blamed for the rise of Iranian influence in the Middle East."
In October, our buddies in Kuwait reneged on a promise to send observers along on a U.S. led naval exercise in the Gulf. A U.S. State Department official said the Kuwaitis were being careful "not to antagonize the Iranians."
Mr. Bush has authorized U.S. troops to kill or capture any member of Iran's Revolutionary Guard or its intelligence services believed to be working with Iraqi militias. Many in the U.S. intelligence agencies and State and Defense Departments are skeptical of this move, fearing it will exacerbate the growing conflict between Tehran and Washington.
Iraq's Deputy Prime Minister Barham Saleh has encouraged the U.S. and Iran to resolve its differences.
Mr. Bush still asserts that he wants to solve U.S. problems with Iran through diplomacy, but he still refuses to have direct diplomatic talks with Iran.
The Bushketeers
Mr. Bush says he doesn't intend to invade Iran. There's one Bush statement we can believe. He doesn't intend to invade Iran because he can't. His ground forces are tied up in Iraq and Afghanistan. But he can bomb the bedazzle out of Iran from the air and the sea, and with each passing day it looks more and more like that's precisely what he intends to do.
The time for dismissing suggestions that Bush has ambitions of expanding his Middle East wars into an apocalyptic global conflict as conspiracy theory is over. The time is coming--and it's coming very soon--where Congress will have to take swift, draconian measures to slam the brakes on the administration's train wreck of a foreign policy.
If Congress can't curb Bush's reckless pursuit of war without end, America will be up the proverbial creek with neither a paddle nor a canoe. The Supreme Court won't stop him. Even if it were inclined to, the judicial system doesn't work fast enough. The media, the supposed fourth estate or our Constitutional system, has crumbled under the weight of neo-Orwellianism. The so-called "liberal media" has become, wittingly or unwittingly, a compliant tool of the Big Brother Broadcast. Just this morning (Tuesday) I listened to MSNBC "correspondents" and "analysts" echo the administration's propaganda on Iran, unfiltered, as if it were proven "fact."
Don't fall for the canard that says Bush can't do any more damage to American power and prestige because he's a "lame duck." If he continues to get his way, we'll be stuck so deep in the quicksand that a herd of elephants and a team of mules together won't be able to haul us out of it.
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Commander Jeff Huber, U.S. Navy (Retired) writes from Virginia Beach, Virginia. Read his commentaries at Pen and Sword.
Monday, January 29, 2007
Sunday Yak About Iraq
Also at DKos.
The latest round of Sunday political gabfests reinforced my belief that the Iraq escalation plan is a very bad idea. The folks who support Mr. Bush's policy continue to echo the same pocketful of talking points, and those points don't make sense. In all, the essence of the pro-escalation rhetoric now boils down to five basic arguments.
1) We should give the new strategy a chance to succeed.
A parallel and perhaps more honest argument would be that we should give a bad strategy a chance to fail, and just about everybody can see the insanity of that position.
The only thing certain in war is uncertainty, or what Carl von Clausewitz referred to as "fog and friction." No plan, even a superior one, survives first contact with the enemy, and least not in total. No one, including its most ardent proponents, asserts that there's anything "sure fire" about the escalation plan, or even that it has a better than 50-50 chance of succeeding. Heck, they still can't give a cogent definition of what "success" in Iraq might be.
Figuring the odds of success or failure of any given war plan is a dicey proposition (pun intended), but the escalation strategy contains so many inherent flaws that it seems doomed to flop like a grounded trout.
To begin with, the 20 something thousand U.S. troop infusion is, by oncoming U.S. Iraq commander David Petraeus's own estimate, too small to restore order to Baghdad and the al-Anbar province. At his Senate confirmation hearing, Petraeus said that he'll make up the difference with Iraqi troops and American civilian contractor security forces. But wait a minute. Iraqi troops have a significant track record of being unreliable, and American contractor security forces have a reputation for being a battery of loose cannons.
Unity of command will be lacking. The Iraqi forces will fall under a separate chain of command, outside of Petraeus's direct control, and the contracted mercenaries seem to answer to no one. That's a sure-fire recipe for disaster. You can't have unity of effort without unity of command, and without unity of effort, any war plan is toast before it goes into the mixing bowl.
Ultimately, the escalation strategy relies on the Iraqi government meeting certain benchmarks and getting its act together, and that government has shown no ability or inclination to do either of those things.
2) We should support the Commander in Chief.
We did support the Commander in Chief, time and time and time again. He's been wrong every time, and there's no reason to think he's gained any wisdom over the years because he's still listening to the same advisers. The architects of the escalation strategy are the same group of neoconservative's who talked young Mr. Bush into his Iraq misadventure in the first place.
The Constitution makes Bush the Commander in Chief of the military, not the country. It divides war-making powers between the executive and legislative branches. In fact, it places the power to decide to go to war, as well as regulation of the military, in the hands of Congress. The Constitution makes no distinction between the Commander in Chief's "powers" in wartime or peacetime. The only "war powers" law on the books presently applicable is the War Powers Resolution of 1973, and that law was intended to limit presidential power to conduct war, not to expand it.
This Commander in Chief has led us around corners into one blind alley after the next. He's lost all claim to authority to lead us anywhere anymore.
3) Criticism of the policy emboldens the enemy.
The enemy is about as emboldened as it can get. "Shock and Awe" tactics from the mightiest nation in human history didn't defeat them, and there's no indication that it ever will.
As Jim Webb said on Face the Nation, "Who is the enemy?" The conflict in Iraq had more sides than the Pentagon, if not more. To say that open debate on policy and strategy in a supposedly free society will "embolden" a nameless, faceless enemy is to concede that that enemy--who or whatever it is--has already won.
4) Any anti-escalation resolution passed by Congress will send a negative signal to our troops.
This argument is the latest variation of the "support the troops" canard. Hopefully, you've notice that with the exception of John McCain, opponents of the escalation strategy actually served in the military and or have experienced war up close and personally, and proponents of it had "other priorities" when it was their time to serve in a bad American war.
More importantly, though, regardless of who does or doesn't support the escalation, we don't decide policy and strategy based on what the troops like or don't like.
5) If General David Petraeus supports the escalation policy, and the Senate confirmed General David Petraeus to be U.S. commander in Iraq, the Senate must support the escalation policy.
Generals give orders to the troops, not to Congress. Whether Petraeus really supports escalation or is simply marching to his boss's tune, the ultimate policy decision isn't his to make. Whatever orders he eventually receives from Mr. Bush will be the result of the contest of wills between Mr. Bush and Congress.
Last Chance
My overwhelming impression is that pro-escalation types don't really believe the escalation will accomplish anything, and what I hear between the lines is, "It's our last chance, so we have to try it."
That's not a good reason to try something you don't think will succeed, especially something that involves considerable cost and risk.
I've been on the fence about the wisdom of passing non-binding resolutions, but have come around to favoring one. That will give Mr. Bush one last chance to come to his senses before Congress has to pull the money plug.
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Commander Jeff Huber, U.S. Navy (Retired) writes from Virginia Beach, Virginia. Read his commentaries at Pen and Sword.
The latest round of Sunday political gabfests reinforced my belief that the Iraq escalation plan is a very bad idea. The folks who support Mr. Bush's policy continue to echo the same pocketful of talking points, and those points don't make sense. In all, the essence of the pro-escalation rhetoric now boils down to five basic arguments.
1) We should give the new strategy a chance to succeed.
A parallel and perhaps more honest argument would be that we should give a bad strategy a chance to fail, and just about everybody can see the insanity of that position.
The only thing certain in war is uncertainty, or what Carl von Clausewitz referred to as "fog and friction." No plan, even a superior one, survives first contact with the enemy, and least not in total. No one, including its most ardent proponents, asserts that there's anything "sure fire" about the escalation plan, or even that it has a better than 50-50 chance of succeeding. Heck, they still can't give a cogent definition of what "success" in Iraq might be.
Figuring the odds of success or failure of any given war plan is a dicey proposition (pun intended), but the escalation strategy contains so many inherent flaws that it seems doomed to flop like a grounded trout.
To begin with, the 20 something thousand U.S. troop infusion is, by oncoming U.S. Iraq commander David Petraeus's own estimate, too small to restore order to Baghdad and the al-Anbar province. At his Senate confirmation hearing, Petraeus said that he'll make up the difference with Iraqi troops and American civilian contractor security forces. But wait a minute. Iraqi troops have a significant track record of being unreliable, and American contractor security forces have a reputation for being a battery of loose cannons.
Unity of command will be lacking. The Iraqi forces will fall under a separate chain of command, outside of Petraeus's direct control, and the contracted mercenaries seem to answer to no one. That's a sure-fire recipe for disaster. You can't have unity of effort without unity of command, and without unity of effort, any war plan is toast before it goes into the mixing bowl.
Ultimately, the escalation strategy relies on the Iraqi government meeting certain benchmarks and getting its act together, and that government has shown no ability or inclination to do either of those things.
2) We should support the Commander in Chief.
We did support the Commander in Chief, time and time and time again. He's been wrong every time, and there's no reason to think he's gained any wisdom over the years because he's still listening to the same advisers. The architects of the escalation strategy are the same group of neoconservative's who talked young Mr. Bush into his Iraq misadventure in the first place.
The Constitution makes Bush the Commander in Chief of the military, not the country. It divides war-making powers between the executive and legislative branches. In fact, it places the power to decide to go to war, as well as regulation of the military, in the hands of Congress. The Constitution makes no distinction between the Commander in Chief's "powers" in wartime or peacetime. The only "war powers" law on the books presently applicable is the War Powers Resolution of 1973, and that law was intended to limit presidential power to conduct war, not to expand it.
This Commander in Chief has led us around corners into one blind alley after the next. He's lost all claim to authority to lead us anywhere anymore.
3) Criticism of the policy emboldens the enemy.
The enemy is about as emboldened as it can get. "Shock and Awe" tactics from the mightiest nation in human history didn't defeat them, and there's no indication that it ever will.
As Jim Webb said on Face the Nation, "Who is the enemy?" The conflict in Iraq had more sides than the Pentagon, if not more. To say that open debate on policy and strategy in a supposedly free society will "embolden" a nameless, faceless enemy is to concede that that enemy--who or whatever it is--has already won.
4) Any anti-escalation resolution passed by Congress will send a negative signal to our troops.
This argument is the latest variation of the "support the troops" canard. Hopefully, you've notice that with the exception of John McCain, opponents of the escalation strategy actually served in the military and or have experienced war up close and personally, and proponents of it had "other priorities" when it was their time to serve in a bad American war.
More importantly, though, regardless of who does or doesn't support the escalation, we don't decide policy and strategy based on what the troops like or don't like.
5) If General David Petraeus supports the escalation policy, and the Senate confirmed General David Petraeus to be U.S. commander in Iraq, the Senate must support the escalation policy.
Generals give orders to the troops, not to Congress. Whether Petraeus really supports escalation or is simply marching to his boss's tune, the ultimate policy decision isn't his to make. Whatever orders he eventually receives from Mr. Bush will be the result of the contest of wills between Mr. Bush and Congress.
Last Chance
My overwhelming impression is that pro-escalation types don't really believe the escalation will accomplish anything, and what I hear between the lines is, "It's our last chance, so we have to try it."
That's not a good reason to try something you don't think will succeed, especially something that involves considerable cost and risk.
I've been on the fence about the wisdom of passing non-binding resolutions, but have come around to favoring one. That will give Mr. Bush one last chance to come to his senses before Congress has to pull the money plug.
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Commander Jeff Huber, U.S. Navy (Retired) writes from Virginia Beach, Virginia. Read his commentaries at Pen and Sword.
Friday, January 26, 2007
"Last Throes" Cheney: Same Old Dick, Same Old Tricks
Also at DKos.
"Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities."
--Voltaire
In an interview with CNN's Wolf Blitzer on Wednesday, Dick Cheney continued to insist that the things are going great guns in Iraq. In a rapidly changing world, it's comforting to see that some things stay the same, huh?
From Peter Baker of the Washington Post:
Only Dick Cheney could claim, with a straighter face than he managed to keep during Mr. Bush's recent State of the Union address, that we have achieved "enormous successes" in Iraq. Maybe he was talking about the enormous gains in his stock options in his old company Halliburton.
Only Dick Cheney, who had "other priorities in the 60s" than fight in the Vietnam conflict, and who avoided serving in a time of war by securing five draft deferments, would accuse his fellow Americans of not having the "stomach" to fight.
But Cheney's not alone in his cynical use of Orwellian rhetoric that blames critics and the media for failures of strategies and policies that he himself helped formulate, execute and support. And he's hardly the only member of the neoconservative echo choir who claims that checks, oversight or criticism of his neoconservative initiatives will be "detrimental" to the troops or "validate the terrorists' strategy."
The Cheney Republic
Not only does Cheney say that Congress "won't stop us" from escalating the war in Iraq. He appears to be creating a situation in which Congress can't stop his military/industrial gravy train from rolling into Iran.
Larisa Alexandrovna and Muriel Kane of Raw Story tell us in a recent article how Cheney's office has been manipulating America toward a war with Iran since before the Bush administration even took power.
According to Seymour Hersh of The New Yorker and others, Cheney was the U.S. official who gave the "green light" to Israel for its recent incursion into Lebanon. Once Cheney gave the thumbs-up to the operation, according to one of Hersh's sources, “…persuading Bush was never a problem, and Condi Rice was on board."
The War Drum Beat Goes On
Cheney also appears to be a key player behind our recent in air strikes in Somalia, supposedly aimed at al-Qaeda leaders but which, by best accounts, failed to kill the al-Qaeda leaders they were targeting. White House Press Secretary Tony Snow said that he was not aware of any White House consultation with Congress prior to the air strikes. I have not heard of anyone in Congress asking what the hell is going on in Somalia?
Our once mighty country is under the control of a man who is part Rasputin, part Svengali and part Machiavelli.
I can't wait to see what he tells Mr. Bush to decide next.
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Commander Jeff Huber, U.S. Navy (Retired) writes from Virginia Beach, Virginia. Read his commentaries at Pen and Sword.
"Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities."
--Voltaire
In an interview with CNN's Wolf Blitzer on Wednesday, Dick Cheney continued to insist that the things are going great guns in Iraq. In a rapidly changing world, it's comforting to see that some things stay the same, huh?
From Peter Baker of the Washington Post:
Vice President Cheney said yesterday that the administration has achieved "enormous successes" in Iraq but complained that critics and the media "are so eager to write off this effort or declare it a failure" that they are undermining U.S. troops in a war zone…
…The pressure is from some quarters to get out of Iraq," he told CNN. "If we were to do that, we would simply validate the terrorists' strategy that says the Americans will not stay to complete the task, that we don't have the stomach for the fight."
…Cheney said the administration would disregard the nonbinding resolution opposing the troop increase and suggested it undermines soldiers in a war zone. "It won't stop us," he said. "And it would be, I think, detrimental from the standpoint of the troops."
Only Dick Cheney could claim, with a straighter face than he managed to keep during Mr. Bush's recent State of the Union address, that we have achieved "enormous successes" in Iraq. Maybe he was talking about the enormous gains in his stock options in his old company Halliburton.
Only Dick Cheney, who had "other priorities in the 60s" than fight in the Vietnam conflict, and who avoided serving in a time of war by securing five draft deferments, would accuse his fellow Americans of not having the "stomach" to fight.
But Cheney's not alone in his cynical use of Orwellian rhetoric that blames critics and the media for failures of strategies and policies that he himself helped formulate, execute and support. And he's hardly the only member of the neoconservative echo choir who claims that checks, oversight or criticism of his neoconservative initiatives will be "detrimental" to the troops or "validate the terrorists' strategy."
The Cheney Republic
Not only does Cheney say that Congress "won't stop us" from escalating the war in Iraq. He appears to be creating a situation in which Congress can't stop his military/industrial gravy train from rolling into Iran.
Larisa Alexandrovna and Muriel Kane of Raw Story tell us in a recent article how Cheney's office has been manipulating America toward a war with Iran since before the Bush administration even took power.
According to Seymour Hersh of The New Yorker and others, Cheney was the U.S. official who gave the "green light" to Israel for its recent incursion into Lebanon. Once Cheney gave the thumbs-up to the operation, according to one of Hersh's sources, “…persuading Bush was never a problem, and Condi Rice was on board."
The War Drum Beat Goes On
Cheney also appears to be a key player behind our recent in air strikes in Somalia, supposedly aimed at al-Qaeda leaders but which, by best accounts, failed to kill the al-Qaeda leaders they were targeting. White House Press Secretary Tony Snow said that he was not aware of any White House consultation with Congress prior to the air strikes. I have not heard of anyone in Congress asking what the hell is going on in Somalia?
Our once mighty country is under the control of a man who is part Rasputin, part Svengali and part Machiavelli.
I can't wait to see what he tells Mr. Bush to decide next.
#
Commander Jeff Huber, U.S. Navy (Retired) writes from Virginia Beach, Virginia. Read his commentaries at Pen and Sword.
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