February 19, 2007

Asking the Hard Question

I have been reliably informed that my posting of late has been rather dark. That's probably true, in no small part because it seems that no matter where I turn, I end up reading things like this:

The goal of Democrats -- and their allies -- over the next two years should not and cannot be to stop the war cold turkey. The goal should be to politicize the issue in preparation for 2008.

I may not agree with the assessment of the far left, but at least they're honest. They think we've lost in Iraq and that we should get out now. Contrast that with those who see in Iraq a wonderful opportunity to win more seats for their party, like publius. It pleases me to no end that if I end up getting killed in Iraq, at least my wife can take comfort in knowing my death may help the Democrats win the White House in 2008. Really, that makes it all worthwhile.

Harsh? Absolutely. And I realize that publius' motives are sincere. But while the odds are pretty good I'll live through my trip to Iraq, the fact remains that too many of my comrades will die in Iraq between now and the day a new President takes office in January 2009. If people think that we have lost in Iraq, then they have a duty to say so and do what they can to get us out of Iraq, not position themselves to be in better shape to do so in two years. The idea that Congress cannot stop this war flies in the face of the facts. Congress can quite easily end the war within six months if they so choose. No money equals no war, and while the Democrats aren't strong enough to pass a resolution rescinding the Authorization to Use Military Force, they are certainly strong enough not to pass a budget funding further operations in Iraq. Yes, six months is a long time and more people will die, but that eighteen month window means perhaps 1,000 more dead soldiers and many times more soldiers whose lives will be forever changed by the wounds they receive there.

Of course, doing so would probably be politically devastating to the Democrats. The Republicans would use such a move as ammunition for scurrilous demagoguery, carefully avoiding the questions they've mostly been able to dodge over the past four years about their responsibility for the war. But the war would still end, and while it might hurt the Democrats initially, given that their actions would come roughly a year before the next election, who knows how they might look in the fall of 2008 when American soldiers are no longer coming home in caskets; President George H.W. Bush looked nigh-unbeatable a year before the 1992 election; I assume we all remember how that one turned out.

More to the point, it seems to me that it is the right thing to do, if you believe we should be getting out of Iraq. If you think the surge cannot work and that we've lost, I fail to see how you can justify waiting an additional 18 months because the politics aren't right. John Kerry once asked how you can ask someone to be the last man to die for a mistake. It would appear that for a lot of Democrats, that question is easier to answer than Kerry thought.

Posted at 02:37 PM · Politics • · War · Comments (8) · TrackBack (0)

February 16, 2007

They Killed Kenny!

You bastards!

Yes, I'm pleased that yet another terrorist is in paradise eating his 72 raisins, and the fact it was the Iraqi police who may have wounded al Qaeda in Iraq's current leader and killed his aide is good news. But killing al-Zarqawi didn't make Iraq safe. Capturing Saddam didn't make Iraq safe. Killing Saddam's sons didn't make Iraq safe. So it's unlikely that this is going to make Iraq safe either.

Good news? Absolutely, if it indicates that the Iraqi police are improving in their ability to take on the insurgency. But it will take more than one report to show where we are on that path, and until then, one suspects that, like Kenny, we'll see the head terrorist again.

Posted at 06:39 AM · War · Comments (1) · TrackBack (0)

February 15, 2007

Fish or Cut Bait

I've talked about why the Democratic Party has a bad reputation among the troops before. Sadly, it appears that they're planning on reinforcing, rather than overcoming, that image. It appears that, since they cannot get the votes for a resolution to end the Iraq war (although they have managed to burn two weeks on a nonbinding resolution), the Democrats are going to try to end the war via the back door.

The Democratic concept seems to be making it harder and harder for the President to fight the war, which will eventually force him to give up. Representative John Murtha, perhaps best known for his innovative plan to redeploy American troops to somewhere close to Iraq, like Okinawa, wants to prevent the military from deploying troops to Iraq unless they are properly trained and equipped. This sounds like a reasonable restriction, but the devil is in the details. Murtha seems to think that no Army units meet this criteria, and it's a safe bet the legislation he crafts will be designed to make sure that few, if any, units can meet it. Presumably the Democrats think they will be able to have their cake and eat it this way, 'supporting' the troops while preventing the Army from relieving any of the troops in country.

The result, however, while it may be great for troops who aren't in Iraq when the legislation is passed, means that those troops still over there will suffer higher casualties and longer tours. Not the kind of support I'd ask for. If these requirements are tacked onto deployments, the Army will have little choice but to attempt to meet them, which will mean that units currently in Iraq will have to stay longer because it now requires more work to get their replacements into country. Further, whatever hope there is for defeating the insurgency depends on getting additional boots on the ground. By preventing that, the Democrats will establish a worst-of-both-worlds situation where we won't send additional troops to improve the situation, but we won't bite the bullet and pull those we have out.

If the Democrats believe we've lost in Iraq, they should vote to pull the troops out. Yes, it would probably be vetoed, but at least they would have made a stand for their principles, and come the fall they could end the war the hard way by refusing to provide funds for the troops in Iraq. If they really believe that the only good option is to get out of Iraq, then they have no excuse for not doing everything in their power to make that happen. Every day they choose to pussyfoot around the issue is another day when American troops are killed or maimed in performance of their duties in Iraq. John Kerry infamously asked how you ask a man to be the last person to die for a mistake. If the Democrats really believe remaining in Iraq is a mistake, how can they reconcile that with asking more American soldiers to die because ending the war is politically inconvenient for them?

The Democrats own Congress now. That means they can't just carp from the sidelines anymore. They bear equal responsibility with the President for what happens in Iraq from now on. They need to make a decision to stay or go in Iraq, and if the answer is go, then they need to make it happen. Otherwise there is little difference between them and the Republicans who started the war. Actually, there is one key difference: the Republicans who started the war believed it could be won. They didn't ask troops to stay in harm's way because it might damage their reelection chances.

Posted at 06:17 AM · Politics • · War · Comments (3) · TrackBack (0)

February 10, 2007

Considering Consequences

Let us imagine, for a moment, that it is summer 1944. Allied armies are rolling across France towards the Low Countries and the German border. Assume also that we are in charge of determining the Allied response to a surprise twist in the war: Spain is providing support to the Axis powers. They have not entered the war, but they are shipping supplies across the western Mediterranean into northern Italy. These supplies are helping the Germans to hold the Gothic Line and are freeing German troops being shifted to the Siegfried Line, which means the Allied advance will soon run into a tough defensive which will result in the deaths of many additional Allied troops. You have no doubt that the Spanish aid is occurring. What do you do?

Before you answer, let's note a few facts. One, the Spanish involvement is a legitimate casus belli. The Spanish are violating a blockade and are providing war materiel to a combatant, a clear violation of their claim of neutrality. Conversely, the Spanish military is not involved in the war as yet, and if they enter the war fully it will require a sizable fraction of the Allied armies to invade and occupy Spain. While an invasion of Spain may eliminate the source of materiels to Germany, the total death toll among the Allies will almost certainly be higher after an invasion than if the smuggling is permitted to continue. Now what do you do?

Obviously I'm not really talking about World War II, but the current situation in Iraq. I haven't examined the evidence in detail, but it would not surprise me to learn that the various factions jockeying for control of Iraq are getting outside aid from various nations. Iran and Syria have reason to want to see the U.S. pinned down in Iraq for a long time, as it helps to prevent the U.S. from interfering with them. Saudi Arabia isn't likely to stand by and watch Iraq's Sunni minority get stamped out by the Kurds and Shia of Iraq, as the last thing the Saudis want is an Iran on their northern border. It comes as no surprise to me that the U.S. may have evidence that links Iran to some military materiel in Iraq. But even if we stipulate the truth of that (and Jim Henley has a good series noting just what evidence the administration should be required to provide), is an invasion or bombing campaign against Iran a wise plan?

Iran is about four times larger than Iraq in total landmass, with a bit less than three times the population. At the risk of being tarred a loser-defeatist, I think I can fairly say that we don't really have enough troops on the ground in Iraq right now to prevent unacceptable levels of violence in that country. And that's after three years of training the Iraqi Army to help us do the job. So if we don't have enough people to keep Iraq calm with the aid of the local army, it seems safe to assume that we'll need at least four to five times as many soldiers in Iran as we have in Iraq, and that's lowballing the estimate. Back of the envelope math says that comes to some 600,000 troops at a minimum to occupy Iran. Add in the 130,000 we have in Iraq now and we're well in excess of the entire available active duty force, meaning we'll need to dip pretty heavily into the reserves, probably to the level of general mobilization, in order to even put that big a force on the ground in Iran, let alone maintaining it over a five or ten year period. I don't think that's feasible.

So let's say we just bomb the heck out of Iran. That just requires air power, and we are the indisputed kings of the world when it comes to air power at the moment. However, even if we assume a flawless air campaign, history tells us that Iran will not surrender to air power alone. We may be able to damage their nuclear program and exact some form of primitive payment for their actions, but we will not be able to stop them with air power alone. And with the threat of attack having been put into play, there will be nothing to prevent Iran from doing everything in its power to strike back at us. Whether or not they can reach these shores, as long as there are U.S. forces in Iraq they don't need to do much more than smuggle more and more sophisticated weapons systems to those we already fight in Iraq to hurt us. Imagine an insurgency armed with surface-to-air missiles and as many explosively formed penetrator IEDs they want. The losses we're taking in Iraq now would pale in comparison to those we would face if we went to war with Iran. Is striking at Iran worth that risk?

I sympathize with those who want to lash out at Iran. I happen to believe that the Iranian government is providing some degree of aid to our enemies in Iraq. But aside from whatever emotional satisfaction there might be in seeing the mullahs humbled or killed, and I'll admit there would be some, I have to weigh that against the actual benefit we might accrue from attacking Iran. I think it is highly unlikely we would be able to do more than minor damage to their budding nuclear program, perhaps slowing it down by a few years, but little more. We would not stop them from aiding our enemies, but in fact would encourage them to provide more devastating weapons to them. And we would likely set back Iran's burgeoning democratic movement by years if not decades. A small frisson of emotional satisfaction is not worth these things. We need to start planning our foreign policy based on more realism and less emotionalism.

Update: Josh Marshall has a good take on how to assess the situation even if the administration claims are correct.

Posted at 09:28 PM · War · Comments (10) · TrackBack (0)

February 08, 2007

Choices

"For a warrior there is no other end to the journey."

-- Alyt Neroon, Babylon 5

Geez, I'm sick for a few days and I miss a thread where I'm actually a featured player. I'm going to lose my egotist's society membership card if I'm not careful. Fortunately, I'm firmly of the belief that it's never to late to talk about myself, and since the thread dovetailed rather neatly with some thoughts of my own that I've been kicking around for some time, I just couldn't resist.

As many readers are probably aware, the court martial for First Lieutenant Ehren Watada began on Monday (although it has since been delayed due to a mistrial and is now scheduled for another attempt in mid-March). 1LT Watada will be on trial for missing movement and conduct unbecoming an officer, the first for his decision not to deploy with his unit to Iraq, the second for comments he has made about the President in the course of his arguments against the war. 1LT Watada is something of a hero among many who oppose the war for his refusal to go to Iraq; he says that the war is illegal and that he is justified in not going because he cannot legally be ordered to fight an illegal war (which is true if the war is illegal).

I respect 1LT Watada's willingness to risk jail and a dishonorable discharge for his beliefs. It takes courage to stand up for a position that, among Watada's peers, has to be incredibly unpopular.
Unfortunately, I do not believe 1LT Watada's arguments hold water. I am not a lawyer, but I believe that Massachusetts v. Laird established that Congress does not have to pass a formal declaration of war in order to meet the Constitutional requirement for so doing (where are those strict constructionists when you need them?). Nor do I think that appeals to international law establish the illegality of the Iraq war. Iraq was in breach of the 1991 cease fire agreement for the better part of a decade. Because the agreement was a cease fire and not a peace treaty, the United States had every right to resume the war begun in 1991. The war was many things, but I do not believe 1LT Watada has a case if his defense rests solely on the argument Iraq is an illegal war.

Still, as Bob McManus pointed out, if enough soldiers would refuse to go, it would eventually force the United States to end the war for lack of manpower. While the war is not illegal, it is, in my opinion, a disaster that is almost certainly going to end with the U.S. leaving Iraq to work out its problems on its own and with the aid of its neighbors. Isn't it worth it, then, to work to bring that about sooner rather than later by doing what we can to stop the war? To some degree, I think the answer to that question is yes. I respect the willingness of those who attend protest marches and who harangue their Representatives and Senators to do more to bring the war to a close. But I cannot bring myself to join those ranks.

The writers of the Constitution were very careful to establish civilian control over the military. They were well aware of the dangers of a standing army, dangers I believe we would do well to remember today, and they wanted to make sure that there would be no Napoleons making mischief in North America (note to pedants: yes, I know Napoleon hadn't yet caused any mischief when the Constitution was written, but he serves to make the point better than some lesser-known figure). Even during the American Civil War, when there were calls for American generals, particularly George McClellan, to set themselves up as dictator to win the war, no general ever gave it serious thought that I am aware, and in the 20th century the extremely popular General Douglas MacArthur did not attempt to defy President Truman when Truman relieved him. This does not mean that soldiers do not or can not be permitted personal opinions; as a survey of milblogs today or a review of soldiers' diaries from past conflicts can quickly reveal, American soldiers have always had their own strongly-held views about what the government ought to be doing with them. But when push comes to shove, they shut up and do what they're told. It has to be that way.

Nobody in their right mind wants to go into combat for the sake of going into combat. While I cannot speak from experience, I believe I am on safe ground in saying that war is a horrible, dehumanizing, degrading experience that does terrible things to all who experience it. Given a choice, many soldiers would opt out of combat; indeed, even during truly existential wars in our history, our government has had to rely on a draft to muster sufficient combat power to win. Today, however, all of our soldiers are volunteers, and except for perhaps a very thin slice of them, all have had the opportunity to opt out of the service since the war began. Why they have not done so varies from individual to individual. Some may have been tempted by the large reenlistment bonuses available to them. Others may enjoy the military and are willing to suffer the occasional deployment as a cost of that life. Others may not want to let down their comrades in arms. There are probably as many reasons as there are soldiers who have made those choices, in fact. And I have no doubt that one factor that prevents more people from bailing out when the time comes for them to deploy is the knowledge that they would face legal charges if they did so, as they should.

As has been noted many times before, the United States is not a democracy. It is a republic. We elect men and women to make decisions for us. As long as they make those decisions in accordance with the framework we have set out, we are bound by law to respect those decisions. It doesn't matter if someone personally believes that the income tax is unconstitutional: our system has determined that it is, and if you choose not to pay it, you will suffer the consequences. This system works, in large part, because we all implicitly agree to it. There are many more citizens than there are police and soldiers; if enough people disobey the law, it is almost impossible for the government to enforce it (see speed limit laws as a textbook example, where enforcement is generally used more as a fund raiser than anything else). Of course, if enough people choose not to go along with it, the system breaks down and we all get to start over again. Given that Adams and Madison are long dead and I can't think of a single modern politician who stacks up to either of those gentlemen, I'm not overly enamored of such a result.

I happen to think that, for Congress to meet its Constitutional requirement of declaring war, they ought to have to formally declare that a state of war exists between the United States and whatever nation or group we're supposed to be fighting. But I cannot be the arbiter of what is constitutional, because if I can, than we all can and we no longer have a constitution. We have to subordinate our own beliefs to our system or the system simply doesn't work. And while I am libertarian in many of my beliefs, I am not of the belief that we can get by without government at all. The system only works if we agree to be bound by it. Therefore I, and every other soldier who volunteers to serve, have to be willing to abide by the results of our system. And our system, our government, says that this war is a legal war and that we must fight it.

I suspect that some will argue that there are some things that are worth tearing everything down for. I concur with that belief, but I do not think it obtains in this case. Our situation is not yet so grim that we need to tear down the very foundations of our republic in order to set things right. Perhaps it will yet come to that. But we're not there yet. I hope we never reach such a point. Until then, I cannot escape the conclusion that it is the duty of soldiers to obey their orders and fight where and when their government tells them to fight.

Posted at 08:14 AM · Personal • · Philosophy • · War · Comments (3) · TrackBack (0)

February 07, 2007

The Tipping Point?

Successful insurgencies eventually move away from terrorism to full participation on the battlefield. Are we beginning to see that in Iraq?

Maintaining an insurgency is child's play. If you can detonate a car bomb a day somewhere in Iraq, the insurgency goes on, and that requires only 365 bombs. Even a relatively small group can maintain the illusion of general discontent without a great deal of effort, particularly given the amount of ordnance floating around Iraq. But while those actions can disrupt the country's stability, they are insufficient to actually turn the country in the insurgency's favor.

So, sooner or later, insurgencies turn to conventional military action or they fail. In recent weeks, the military has lost five helicopters, all apparently to enemy action. The last four months have been the deadliest period yet in Iraq for American troops. Last week the U.S. and Iraqi governments claimed to win a battle in which approximately 300 insurgents were killed, a claim which, if true, indicates the insurgency moving towards larger formations which are better suited to direct confrontation with government troops than insurgency. Put that all together and it's hard not to wonder if the situation on the ground in Iraq isn't a lot worse than we might think.

I don't know what the facts in Iraq are. It's possible the casualties and helicopters are just cyclical and the '300 militants' was a major exaggeration intended to buff the credentials of the Iraqi Army. But it is also possible we are seeing a turning point in the fight for Iraq as both the U.S. and some members of the insurgency move to try and tip the balance in their favor. The events of the next few weeks should be watched very closely, as they may indicate the ultimate fate of Iraq and our battle there.

Posted at 08:17 AM · War · Comments (2) · TrackBack (0)

February 05, 2007

Preemptive Action I Can Support

It would appear that the Senate is not going to pass even a nonbinding resolution on Iraq, because the Republicans refuse to do anything to reduce President Bush's authority (Democratic version)/because the Democrats won't permit an alternate resolution to come to the Senate floor for a vote (Republican version).

While I think it's a shame that Congress doesn't bring a binding resolution to the floor, even thought it certainly couldn't get a veto-proof level of support, there is some justice to the position of those who argue that 435 congresscritters shouldn't try to take away the executive's constitutionally-granted powers as Command in Chief of the armed forces. The surge is going to happen, even if the Democratic majority were to ram through a resolution to cut funding for the troops in Iraq, because the President would veto such a bill. The best Congress can do at this juncture as regards Iraq is to refuse to fund the war to the level the President resuests, forcing a drawdown no sooner than later this year. Even that isn't going to happen, because the Democrats fear being demagogued for not supporting the troops (and rightfully so, as the Republicans certainly would make such a claim).

There is something Congress can do that would at least help to make sure that the situation in the Middle East doesn't get any worse on our account: deny the President the authority to make war on Iran. I am not as certain as many on the left that the President is, in fact, preparing for such a war, but I am quite favorably disposed to making sure that it doesn't happen regardless of the odds.

There are legitimate reasons to go to war with Iran. They are aiding those who kill our forces in Iraq, possibility even directly intervening in the conflict. If the latter is true, their is a clear casus belli.

Going to war requires more than a legitimate reason for doing so, however. Iran may be the most notorious among those who are aiding the insurgent in Iraq, but they are far from alone. Syria and Saudi Arabia alike are suspected of providing men and materiel to the insurgency, and it's quite possible that many other majority-Sunni nations will or are doing so in an attempt to aid their co-religionists in Iraq. While there may be some people who favor going to war with anyone who aids our enemies, there are practical limits to how much more our armed forces can do short of general mobilization or the use of nuclear weapons (and let's all pray nobody gets crazy enough to break those out).

Given our clear inability to provide security in Iraq and Afghanistan, what makes anyone think we would suddenly be better off if we went to war with Iran? Even assuming we didn't attempt to invade and occupy Iran, open was with Iran would grant them carte blanche to provide the Iraqi insurgency with as many weapons and personnel as they could slip across the long Iran-Iraq border. Then there's the possibility Iran might decide to launch terror strikes here in the United States/. Their attack on the Israeli embassy in Argentina demonstrates their ability to project force. Do we really want to give them a reason to do so in the continental United States? What would we hope to gain?

Doubling down on our bets in the Middle East is a recipe for disaster. If we want to stabilize Iraq, our best bet is probably to leave, since without our presence there the various factions struggling for control will be free to work out their differences. It will be bloody, but they'll do it, particularly as many of the outside support currently flowing to the insurgents will dry up once it can no longer be used against the United States. I'm not advocating that, but it has a better chance of success than further stirring up the hornet's next by bringing Iran fully into the war.

Congress may be politically constrained from ending the war in Iraq, but it has the power to prevent a war in Iran. They would be wise to act now to do so.

Posted at 05:10 PM · War · Comments (6) · TrackBack (0)

Twain Was Right

I said that we were going to see soldiers start to get demonized more as opposition to the war gets more heated, and I stand by that. Today's example: Mona, who has been posting at Unqualified Offerings of late. She has decided to jump into the Arkin fray by explaining to all us poor dumb soldiers that we really are mercenaries after all.

Now, I'll grant you that in today's Humpty Dumpty world, you can probably find a definition of mercenary somewhere that would cover American troops. But under common definitions of mercenary, or the legal definition of mercenary, soldiers don't really qualify.

But Mona, as is her wont, dips into the Argument from Authority to prove her point, [Update: see below and Mona's post for what she was attempting to do.] noting that no less an authority than William Westmoreland thought of paid soldiers as mercenaries, and that Milton Friedman agreed with him. Reading the actual quote, however, it's pretty clear that Mona doesn't quite understand what Friedman was trying to say.

“In the course of his [General Westmoreland’s] testimony, he made the statement that he did not want to command an army of mercenaries. I [Milton Friedman] stopped him and said, ‘General, would you rather command an army of slaves?’ He drew himself up and said, ‘I don’t like to hear our patriotic draftees referred to as slaves.’ I replied, ‘I don’t like to hear our patriotic volunteers referred to as mercenaries.’ But I went on to say, ‘If they are mercenaries, then I, sir, am a mercenary professor, and you, sir, are a mercenary general; we are served by mercenary physicians, we use a mercenary lawyer, and we get our meat from a mercenary butcher.’ That was the last that we heard from the general about mercenaries.” - Milton and Rose Friedman, Two Lucky People Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1998, p. 380.

Yes, Westmoreland did refer to volunteer soldiers as mercenary. Which only means that he didn't understand the definition any better than Mona. But to interpret that quote as claiming that Friedman agreed with Westmoreland is, to be charitable, an interesting reading. It seems pretty clear to this observer that Friedman was demonstrating to Westmoreland that calling the soldiers mercenary simply because they were to be paid for their service was to debase the term and make it meaningless, since by that definition, every profession is made up of mercenaries.

That's not the important thing for these people, though. Accuracy always places a distant second place in politics, and that's what this is about. Soldiers, by and large, still support the war to a much greater degree than the average American. Add to that their volunteer status, and you have a group of people in need of demonization by the antiwar types in order to strengthen their case. Mark my words: the longer this war goes on, the nastier the antiwar side is going to get towards soldiers.

Update: Mona objects to my characterization of her post, noting that she was attempting to point out that the use of the term mercenary is not limited to the far-left. Fair enough, although somebody a bit more recent than Westmoreland might have been a better example of the right. She also objects to being painted as anti-military. She says she is not and I take her at her word. But however she uses the term mercenary, the fact remains that it is a pejorative term, and its advancement will be used to demonize the troops regardless of Mona's personal desires. This, I should note, does not mean that Mona shouldn't say what she thinks. My intent in highlighting her post was simply to note the spread of this issue. As I said before, this will get worse before it gets better.

Posted at 07:44 AM · Military • · Politics • · War · Comments (4) · TrackBack (0)

February 03, 2007

Laying Blame

I'm late to the game on Charles Krauthammer's latest, but I just can't let it pass without comment. For those who haven't read it, Krauthammer's argument is that the civil war in Iraq isn't the fault of the U.S., that the U.S. offered Iraq a shot at freedom and they chose civil war. While that does have some elements of truth to it, It's a remarkably convenient argument for those who supported the war to explain why things have gone so wrong in Iraq.

Iraq, like a lot of Third World countries, exists in no small part thanks to colonialism. For centuries the European powers divvied up the world based on what they could grab, regardless of what the locals wanted. The world has been dealing with the problems resulting from that practice ever since. For comparison's sake, Europe's boundaries, with some exceptions, have come about over time from a combination of demographics and geography. Similar people have, by and large, ended up living together. Thanks to colonialism, much of Asia and Africa is instead divided along arbitrary lines created by outside powers with little to no concern for the facts on the ground. Iraq is a textbook example of this, a country that includes three major ethnic groups plus some Turkomens and others about the fringe. These groups were forced together and left to work out their own differences. The result should have been quite predictable, especially for Americans.

When the United States came into being, it was divided by the institution of slavery. America leaders struggled for some eighty years to reconcile their differences peacefully. America's two founding documents, the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution, were both tainted by the need to compromise on slavery. Even as the country expanded, each new generation had to deal with the problems of slavery, for each side recognized the delicate balance of power that existed between them. The South feared, possibly rightly, that if the North was able to gain control of the federal government, they would use that power to abolish slavery. In order to protect their 'peculiar institution,' the South continually pushed to ensure that enough new states were slave states to protect their interests. When Abraham Lincoln managed a narrow victory in the election of 1860, his party's base of abolitionists and his own former words convinced the South that the moment they feared had arrived. To avoid seeing the federal government destroy slavery, the South seceded, putting in motion the very events they hoped to avoid.

Republican government is a terrific invention, but one of it's biggest flaws is that people tend to be wary of what may happen when the other side takes power. What other side? There's always another side. I think it's just human nature. Even in our own relatively stable U.S.A., the rhetoric regarding what will happen if the Democrats/Republicans take power would be funny if it weren't taken so seriously. In someplace like Iraq, where the level of trust makes the U.S. look like paradise, republican government really might be a threat to some elements of Iraq. You've got three big groups, all of whom have different goals and whose goals conflict in ways they cannot be reconciled through compromise. Which, just like slavery, is a recipe for civil war.

We knew all that going in, although a lot of us failed to put all the pieces together. Saddam Hussein, for all his faults, was keeping the Iraqis from making war on one another. But the conflict was still there, however suppressed, and when Hussein was removed, the conflict had a chance to be resolved. Maybe we could have found a way to get the Iraqis to work out their differences peacefully, had we maintained order and kept a tight lid on things while we were helping them build a new government. But we didn't, and at this point, so much blood has been spilled I suspect that the only way Iraq is going to resolve its differences is through a war. That may have been inevitable; when Hussein died, this all might have happened anyhow. But we removed Hussein, and failed to replace him with a government that could either prevent the violence from occurring or working out the underlying problems of Iraq. So pretending that all this isn't our fault, while perhaps comforting to those whose intentions were pure, elides our responsibility for the disaster and, perhaps worse, allows people to think that it might be a good idea to try something like this again.

I've noted many times that I'm not overly interested in affixing blame, and I stand by that. I am far more interested in finding ways to fix problems than in pointing fingers at who got us into the problems. But understanding how we got where we are is rather important if we're to avoid similar mistakes in the future, and Krauthammer's attempt to blame the Iraqi people for what has occurred in Iraq without admitting that the U.S. had a hand in the problem as well will just lead to us making the same mistake again.

Posted at 08:42 AM · War · Comments (5) · TrackBack (0)

January 31, 2007

Here It Comes Again

Thus war in this war, we as soldiers have been pretty lucky. Sure, there are those who express disdain and even hatred towards soldiers, but as a rule people's anger has been focused mostly on the Bush administration. This has been a pretty nice change from Vietnam, when soldiers were called babykillers (an epithet aimed at me when I was in college, in fact) and worse by people who blamed the soldiers for the war. But that could only last so long, I think, and this column by William Arkin (hat tip to Blackfive, who has some wise words of his own) seems a good a spot as any to mark the end of that pleasant time.

Arkin, assuming he didn't just do this in order to get attention, makes quite a statement about the American troops. His basic point seems to be that the troops need to shut up and be grateful that they treated so well. After all, argues Arkin, the soldiers haven't been blamed for Abu Ghraib or Haditha and every other 'rape and murder,' which are apparently so common Arkin doesn't need to be specific, when it seems Arkin believes that they should. Never mind that, while it's true the higher-ups at Abu Ghraib did get away scot free, the soldiers involved went to jail and that we don't yet know what happened at Haditha but the investigation is continuing. Nope, soldiers ought to be grateful they're not getting the blame they should for those events.

Next Arkin explains how we pay soldiers a decent wage and take care of their families, continuing his theme of how grateful soldiers ought to be. I'm not sure what Arkin defines as a decent wage, but I'll bet dollars to donuts he wouldn't do what soldiers do for the money they receive. Officers are paid pretty well, but enlisted soldiers don't do what they do for the money, because you can do a lot better in civilian life than you can as a soldier. As for the 'vast social support system' and 'obscene amenities' soldiers get, well I guess Mr. Arkin has a different meaning for those terms than the average American.

And Arkin closes it out by explaining that our soldiers are really mercenaries. That really says it all, doesn't it. Soldiers aren't going to Iraq because they are patriotic or because they think that some people have an obligation to serve. No, we're just mercenaries, and apparently vastly overcompensated mercenaries at that. Mr. Arkin is fortunate he doubtless lives far from any of those 'mercenaries,' because I can assure him that were I to meet him on the street, I'd beat the man to within an inch of his life [Update: see below] for the insults he's offered me and my fellow soldiers. But, I'm sure Arkin lives somewhere soldiers cannot afford to live, and he is well-insulated from ever actually having to meet any of the soldiers he apparently delights in running down.

Worse, I suspect that Arkin speaks for a growing number of antiwar Americans, and that his comments are merely the beginning of a backlash against soldiers as dislike for the war grows. After all, many soldiers support the war. We're all volunteers. If we're fighting in Iraq, it's our own fault, right? Many antiwar people will still support the troops, don't get me wrong, but I think we're going to see a nontrivial number of protesters begin to start going after not just the war, but the troops. And I think things will get really ugly before all this is over.

Update: OK, I wouldn't beat Arkin to within an inch of his life were we to meet on the street. I make no promises, however, were he foolish enough to say anything like that to my face.

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January 22, 2007

Weighing the Options

One of the more intriguing questions about human thought is whether we are capable of coming to reasoned decisions, or if we make decisions first and then rationalize them afterwards. While it is far more flattering to believe the former, sometimes it is hard not to wonder about the latter.

I am particularly curious about this because it is difficult not to wonder if my own personal situation may be affecting my assessment of Iraq. I am of the opinion that, because the President has not offered a solution to Iraq's problems that has a decent shot of success, we are better off ending our occupation of Iraq. But is this assessment a logical analysis of our chances in Iraq, or is it an emotional response to the fact I will be heading to Iraq myself soon and therefore will face much more personal consequences from the surge?

It should go without saying that I do not believe that to be the case, but a recent post from Citizen Smash has forced me to ask the question nonetheless. Smash received a petition from a friend asking Congress to cut off funding for Operation Iraqi Freedom, a proposal Smash views with disdain. He wrote back to his friend that our military isn't in the business of quitting, and closed with a harsh question:

America, you know that we will never turn our backs on you. So why are you so ready to turn your backs on us?

Am I turning my back on my brothers in arms by arguing that we should end our involvement in the war? I have been fortunate in this war. Although I have been serving on active duty since it began, the furthest I have been deployed from home is a day's drive when I have been called upon to train others to go into battle. I have seen tens of thousands of soldiers train up and deploy to Iraq and Afghanistan, and I have done my small part to try to prepare them for what they will see there. (An amusing variant on the old adage about those who can't do, until now.) By arguing that they should come home now, with the mission yet to be accomplished, it is clear that some of them believe that I am stabbing them in the back. I do not see it that way, but I can understand that position.

Service people do not sign up in order to fail. When we fail, not only are lives at stake, but our country may be put at risk. That is the case in Iraq, whether we like it or not. If we cannot leave Iraq a reasonably secure and stable government to carry on in our absence, our enemies will be able to use that to recruit others to strike back at the West and our supposed weakness. Iraq itself will become a base for terrorists to strike at the U.S. and our allies, to say nothing of the absolute hell the Iraqi people will endure for the foreseeable future. And there is also the question of the lives we have lost as well. I am as familiar with the concept of spent costs as anyone, but the fact remains that the average person is unlikely to be sanguine about writing off 3,000+ deaths as sunk costs regardless of the logic of that position. I am not of the opinion that the lives of the men and women we have lost in Iraq to date will have been wasted if we do not win in Iraq, but I suspect that is a minority opinion.

The bottom line for me remains the same: if we are going to fight to win, then I believe we should do so. But if we are just going to make gestures that have little to no realistic chance of improving the situation, then I fail to see the logic in sending more men and women to die. And that is how I view the surge, for reasons that Jonathan Rauch explains here. Beating an insurgency requires, above all, time. You've got to establish security and maintain it long enough for people to begin to have faith in their government. That isn't going to happen in six months, and it may not happen in six years. It certainly isn't going to happen with the number of troops we're putting into Baghdad. We may be able to clear and hold some areas, but unless the Iraqi troops make a quantum leap forward (which they may, under my tutelage, of course), there aren't enough troops on the ground to keep Baghdad secure. Which means that we will still see the steady drip-drip of atrocities by the insurgency, support for the war will continue to slide, and we will still end up leaving as losers. I don't like that fact, but we're not being asked to choose between a strategy with a realistic hope of winning and losing. We're choosing between losing now and losing in another year or two. Waiting does not seem the better option in this case.

Or do I just believe that because I may be one of the troops who dies over the next two years? Smash and those who disagree with me are not fools. Has my assessment come out this way because I'm right and they're wrong, or because this answer is to my advantage? Any way you cut it, that's a pretty tough question to answer and be certain you're right.

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January 18, 2007

Getting Things Right

Tying together recent posts about the Fairness Doctrine and the argument over whether people were right for the right reasons regarding Iraq, here's a link to an Al Gore speech from September 23, 2002. While there are areas where I think Mr. Gore was and remains incorrect, we would have done well to heed his warnings, as he got several important areas right here.

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January 12, 2007

Small Change, Big Consequences

The Pentagon is changing the rules for reservists. Up until now, a reserve component soldier (this includes National Guard and Reserves) at least knew that after he or she served two years on active duty, their time was up. Now, any RC soldier can be called up to serve a two-year tour, demobilize, then repeat.

The Pentagon is claiming they hope to keep tours to 12 months, but that's not really possible without significant changes to how we operate. Right now, a unit mobilizes, moves to a mobilization station for training that usually lasts two or three months, then deploys to theater for twelve months. Tack on a month to bring them home and demobilize them and you're talking 15-18 month tours as a more likely number, assuming they don't allow RC units to serve shorter tours in Iraq and Afghanistan.

I don't know what this will do to retention in the reserve component, but I believe it's realistic to expect it to hurt it. It's not unreasonable to expect the reserve component to have to serve a single two-year tour on active duty while the nation is at war. Expecting them to do so repeatedly is likely sufficient to have reservists asking why they shouldn't either go full time or get out, since they're going to spend such a great deal of time mobilized in any case. This may actually provide some small assistance to the active force, as many reservists decide, as I did, that they want to return to the active force. But I'm concerned about how this may undermine the reserve component as it currently exists.

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January 11, 2007

A Proposal for the Democrats

I will begin by noting that I am in complete agreement with hilzoy's proposal. And I sympathize with the Democrats who are gun shy about being unfairly accused of being against the troops because they want to end America's involvement in the Iraq war to a limited extent. It's never any fun being the guy who points out that the party's over and you can see the flashing blue lights from the front yard already, and even less fun when someone wrongfully claims you were the one who called the cops. So, to bolster the Democrats' credentials on national security, I have a suggestion.

To minimize the surge and get U.S. troops out of Iraq, Congress needs to pass funding bills that deny the President to spend the money on troops in Iraq above a certain, downward-trending number. Setting this number would be done best by holding hearings (real ones, not made-for-TV ones) at which the Democrats ask a number of military experts for help developing a reasonable timeline for withdrawing U.S. forces from Iraq. This will help to undermine claims the Democrats are trying to tell the President how to fight the war by establishing a glide path vetted by military experts. I do like Abrams' proposal as well, although that might be one to hold until after the White House has attempted to get around the initial restrictions Congress has set. This is what hilzoy has already laid out, of course, I'm just embellishing it a bit.

The next step is to get on the airwaves to establish why the Democrats are doing this: because the President doesn't have a plan to win the war in Iraq, and the Democrats aren't willing to allow American troops to continue to die just because the President isn't willing to fish or cut bait. The President's plan includes no metrics to measure success, no end state that tells us what we want to see as a result of this surge, and no alternatives if it fails (doubtless in part because there's no way to actually measure the plan on its own merits). Given the President's failure, the Democrats have no choice but to insist on the withdrawal of American troops from Iraq to end America's never-ending stream of casualties without result.

The Democrats then need to make the defense budget for 2008 their first priority, and pack it full of the spending required to rebuild the military. That includes money for maintenance, for new vehicles like the Cougar and the M1117, other new equipment that would be of use in a future Iraq-style operation, money for medical care (physical and mental), and funds to train the force on its new equipment and doctrine. I realize that a lot of people won't like the idea of buying the military better counterinsurgency tools, but by doing so the Democrats will be able to demonstrate their seriousness about national security, and that they are backing up their complaints about the shortfalls in equipment during the war by acting to resolve those problems. Speaker Pelosi and Senator Reid ought to be able to go on national television and tell the American people that 'Hopefully American soldiers will never again have to fight this kind of battle. But if they do, the Democratic Party is making sure that they will be properly equipped and trained and that no American soldier will have to go into combat with body armor they purchased themselves or with scrap metal bolted onto their vehicles in lieu of vehicles built for the purpose of protecting them from IEDs.' They shouldn't do this all at once and break the budget, I'll note, but they need to do enough of it to demonstrate their seriousness about the issue. This will severely undercut any claims on the right that the Democrats are trying to undercut the troops, as they will have very concrete proof of just what they have done to support the troops.

This is not to suggest that this will make things easy for the Democrats. We leave in a demagogocracy, so the fact remains that people will make claims about each side regardless of the facts. But this plan puts the facts firmly in the Democrats' corner, particularly if they sell this issue as one of doing this because the President has not offered a plan for victory rather than a pullout because it's the best available option (although it may be). Democrats need to be sad that the President has pushed them to this move, and they need to at least look like they mean it. Americans don't like losing wars, and while I believe that by selling the plan in this manner they will garner reasonable respect for their plan, how it is handled will have a major effect on how people view it.

I provide this advice (which, like most advice, is worth precisely what you paid for it) not because I want us to leave Iraq right now. I shudder to think what will happen in Iraq when we leave, and there's no doubt in my mind it will be bad and it is our fault. But the President has failed in his duty to offer a plan that has any reasonable chance at victory. That leaves the Democrats with two unpalatable choices: allow the President to continue an aimless war, or cut it off. (I may be accused of creating a false choice here, but I think this is legitimate. Congress has only blunt instruments for adjusting how we fight a war.) It is not difficult for me to choose between those options.

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January 06, 2007

Iran's Nukes

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December 20, 2006

A Bad Year for Everyone

With a little more than a week to go in 2006, I see that the year saw some 32 journalists killed in Iraq this year. As a blogger, of course, it's my bounden duty to be hard on the media, and I make no apologies for that. The media have a huge platform from which to inform the world; it's important that people keep a wary eye on what they're telling us. But it is also important to recognize the work that they do, and the sacrifices they make in their attempts to keep us informed. The men and women who voluntarily travel to places like Iraq and Afghanistan deserve some recognition for the risks they run simply to do a job, particularly the vast majority who we never see on TV.

Journalists are on the front lines in modern warfare because so much of modern warfare involves information operations. The insurgency in Iraq cannot defeat our military on the battlefield due to our overwhelming advantages in firepower. Therefore, rather than trying to do so, they have changed the conditions: by rendering Iraq ungovernable, they ensure that we cannot leave with a victory in hand, and the ongoing violence makes it increasingly likely we will eventually admit defeat and return home, providing the enemy with the opportunity to face a foe they can defeat in more conventional combat. Journalists can play an important role in attacking our national will by reporting how bad the situation is in Iraq, and the insurgency can make it appear even worse by directly targeting journalists. Like anyone else, journalists tend to extrapolate their own experiences to the world, so if journalists know that their lives are at risk on a daily basis in Iraq, they will assume that to be a generally universal condition, and their reporting will reflect that. This is not to say the situation isn't bad in Iraq, but only that the insurgency can make it appear even worse by targeting reporters.

That makes those reporters still willing to go in harm's way some pretty brave customers. Like all of us, they make errors, but that shouldn't undercut the courage they show in trying to report on this war.

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December 16, 2006

Blogging Colloquium

Dave Shuler of The Glittering Eye is holding a rather impressive blogging colloquium on Iraq. I'm not sure if I'll try to contribute, as I'm not certain I have anything new to contribute, but Dave has collected a good group of links to some interesting ideas for the situation in Iraq.

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December 14, 2006

About Time

While I'm sure there will be many things about a Democratic Congress I will dislike, I'm pleased to see that at least they're going to do one of the things that convinced me to vote for them: provide some oversight of the executive branch. More precisely, they're going to take a closer look at defense spending on Iraq and Afghanistan, an issue that was shamefully ignored by the Republicans over the past three years.

Military activities often require unexpected expenses, and there is a place for emergency appropriations during a time of war. But the Bush administration has abused the privilege, refusing to account for any of the costs of the war in the budget they submit each year, instead insisting that Congress approve emergency spending bills as necessary to finance the war. In 2003 that might have been acceptable. In 2007, it most certainly is not. Part of the DoD's budget ought to include what the administration expects to spend on the war. If it turns out they need more money, they can go back to Congress, explain precisely why their budget was incorrect, and Congress can determine whether or not to provide the additional funds.

I'm sure this will be spun by Republicans as threats to cut off funds to the troops, and the administration will push that line hard in order to gain political advantage. But whether the Bush administration likes it or not, Congress is not a subordinate branch of government; if anything, Congress is the superior branch of government. That is why the Constitution opens with the establishment of the Congress before moving on to the executive. As at least a co-equal branch of governmnet, Congress not only has the right to know how the people's money is being spend, it has an obligation to make sure that it is being spent wisely. The Bush administration has gotten away with no oversight for far too long, and if it takes Congress not giving the President everything he wants for a few months or a year to reestablish the proper relationship between the two branches, so be it. Despite the warnings you'll no doubt hear, I'm sure Congress will provide sufficient funds to keep the military operational.

The American government was established as a republic. An executive was seen as necessary to execute the laws, but the power to make laws has always resided in the Congress. It's time the Bush administration was reminded of that fact.

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December 12, 2006

Marking Time

Prediction, Andre Gide once observed, is very difficult, especially about the future. That is certainly the case in Iraq, where the situation remains grim while President Bush considers suggestions for new courses of action. Hilzoy at Obsidian Wings is upset that President Bush is dithering while Iraq burns, noting that "[w]e do not have all the time in the world in which to figure out what to do." This is certainly true, although there is a corollary, which is that doing the wrong thing may well do more harm than good.

As should be obvious, as bad as the situation in Iraq currently is, it could get much worse. Low-level warfare could expand to open warfare, for example. The insurgency might attempt to place a full-court press on American forces in Iraq, attempting to infiltrate a FOB in conjunction with a direct attack. Things could get a lot more ugly in Iraq before all is said and done. The new direction American forces take in Iraq therefore needs to at least be sure we don't make things still worse. Of course, the trouble with that is, doing nothing might still make things worse.

The only chance we have of salvaging some degree of success in Iraq is if the constituency of Iraqis interested in maintaining a relatively democratic and intact Iraq win the civil war. The problem with that is, as near as can be determined from this distance, that constituency is minimal at best. The other contestants for control of Iraq include the Kurds, who are willing to be loosely affiliated with Iraq as long as they can run things as they like in their area, to include Kirkuk, the Baathists who want to return to the good old days when they were in charge, Sunnis who are willing to share power but who want assurances they won't be overwhelmed by the Shia and Kurds, Shia who know that they're the biggest power in Iraq and want the power commensurate with that, Shia who would like to ally themselves with Iran, non-Iraqis who want to take advantage of the current situation to install a favored government, and doubtless other groups I haven't thought of. And as long as any of those groups are willing to fight rather than submit to the government (whatever government ends up in charge) and are strong enough to stand up to the government, the war will continue.

That is what has been driving the American attempts to develop the Iraqi Army. If Iraq's Army is built up to the degree necessary to make it the toughest force in Iraq, it can determine who runs the show. Unfortunately, there's a lot of evidence to suggest that most units in the Iraqi Army continue to see themselves as Shia or Sunni first, and Iraqis second, which means the government cannot use the army to establish itself as the dominant force in Iraq. Unless that obstacle can be overcome, that means that training and equipping the Iraqi Army is simply providing additional weapons and expertise to be used in the civil war. I think we can all agree that that would fall under making the situation worse as noted above (and this may be part of the reason why the U.S. has been oddly delinquent in making the Iraqi Army self-sufficient).

I have little doubt that this is why the road ahead is so unclear. If the Iraqi Army cannot be built up to the degree necessary to restore order, there aren't any particularly good alternatives available to us. Staying in Iraq may help to keep a ceiling on the violence, but that is a ticket to an indefinite presence in Iraq that will not only mean neverending losses for both our forces and Iraqi civilians, but an ongoing goad to Islamists who will seek to strike us in the United States in retribution for our occupation of Iraq. Leaving Iraq may open the floodgates to a level of violence that would make the current carnage a fond memory.

Ultimately, we have no good choices unless there's a way I'm not aware of to create a national consciousness in the Iraqi Army. As such, while I hate to say it, I think that withdrawal may be the best available option. Yes, the enemy would trumpet that as a success to the high heavens (with some justification, I should note). Yes, we'd be condemning a lot of Iraqis to die (and I believe Hilzoy is correct that we should take in as many Iraqis as want to come if we do leave). Yes, the Middle East would be left all higgledy-piggledy. But there are good sides to withdrawal as well. We could stop the gradual degradation of our armed forces, allowing us to rebuild them in case they are needed elsewhere. We could reestablish a credible deterrent to Iran's nuclear ambitions, while removing a handy means for Iran to threaten us. We would at least reduce the rate at which we're generating new terrorists looking to strike at America for our perceived crimes. Over the longer term we might even remove ourselves from our current position as target number one for the angry and disaffected millions who see our poking around their countries as good reason to return the favor.

I make no pretense that this would be a good answer. I hate the thought of abandoning so many Iraqis to their fates, even if we do attempt to get as many Iraqis as possible to the United States to protect those who have risked so much for us. No matter how many we get out, there will still be plenty left for the slaughter when we're gone. And there's little doubt in my mind that our withdrawal will inspire further attacks on the U.S., so we still need to find a way to deal with that. But maintaining the status quo shows little evidence that it will lead us to a good outcome, and there is good reason to believe it may leave us worse off over the long term. Unless the Bush administration can present a reasonable plan to Congress that is widely seen as offering a reasonable chance of success, rather than simply promising to forestall some feared future doom, it's time to look at how to extract our forces from Iraq with the least amount of risk to them and those Iraqis who have worked with us.

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December 10, 2006

Cats and Dogs, Living Together

In which I agree with Alec Baldwin.

There is an answer to this problem. There is a way to defeat terrorism while building new and better alliances in the Arab world. It will be an enormously complex and difficult diplomatic puzzle. But the first step might be oddly simple. Get rid of the CIA, which has outlived its usefulness and is an embarrassment to this great country, and rebuild and reform US intelligence capabilities to fight this new type of threat. I think our hopes must begin there.

Of course, that's about all Baldwin has to offer, but he's on to something. He and I probably disagree about why the CIA is an embarrassment, but we're agreed that it is, and that it's past time to tear it down and start over.

The CIA dates back to the mid-1940s, built after the Second World War to provide for all of America's intelligence needs. It shouldn't surprise anyone that an organization built some 60 years ago may not be optimally-designed for the requirements we have of it now. That (along with political infighting) has been part of the impetus for the alphabet soup of intelligence agencies the U.S. now has that helped ensure that the September 11 attacks could slip through without anyone connecting the dots. Given the importance of intelligence in an information-age war, perhaps it's time we tried something different.

Tearing down the CIA (and I'd tear all the intelligence agencies down and start over with a single agency) is a radical idea, but I don't think it's as crazy as it sounds. Attempts to reform bureaucracies are fraught with difficulties, as nobody wants to give up the power they've accumulated and it is relatively easy for agencies to delay or even ignore attempts to restructure their organization. Remember that Presidents last only eight years at most, but bureaucrats are forever, and it's child's play for them to hold out until the annoying guy at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue is on the speaking circuit. Furthermore, even when they agree that there is a need for change, people who have been doing things for a very long time tend to have a difficult time changing their ways, preferring to return to what they already know works. Attempts to rebuild an effective institution from the inside are iffy at best.

Starting from scratch, while admittedly posing its own set of challenges, eliminates a vast number of roadblocks and frees the new organization to optimize its form to meet its function. By tearing down the current structure of overlapping agencies, the new organization would reduce or possibly even eliminate the problem of information now flowing to the right people. A new organization would also be free to borrow from the best of those leaving the defunct agencies, while allowing fresh blood and new ideas to enter the business. It would take a very good team of senior leaders to build such a new agency, which tends to militate against letting the Bush administration do this, but with the right people in charge, I think we'd see a major improvement in our intelligence capabilities, albeit after an initial dropoff while the new agency spun up.

It's risky, but the potential payoff is high. And given how poorly we've done in this war thus far, maybe it's time to take a little risk.

Hat tip: Winds of Change.

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December 05, 2006

Solving the Wrong Problem

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December 01, 2006

GWOT: GEN McCaffrey's Observations and the Way Forward

Early last month, GEN (Retired) Barry McCaffrey gave a presentation to the National Defense University during which he offered his assessment on several issues in the Global War on Terror. Inside the Ring has a synopsis of some of McCaffrey's points (last item), and the Army Times followed up on McCaffrey's recommendation to cut U.S. forces in Iraq by one-third.

McCaffrey warned as part of his presentation that we are breaking the Army, and that we need to trim the Iraq force to ten brigades by Christmas. Obviously the latter is not going to happen; if U.S. forces in Iraq draw down, it will not happen before mid to late 2007 at the earliest. This issue is a real one, though, and the problems will only continue to get worse as the administration continues to fight a war without asking for the necessary support for it.

My first instinct on hearing that the Army cannot send more troops to Iraq is to chuckle. We have less than one-third of the active force in Iraq at the moment. Obviously we have a lot more troops to send to Iraq, if we're willing to reduce the amount of time units are out of the combat zone. I know there are a nontrivial number of soldiers, like me, who have yet to reach the combat zone at all, beyond people who could be sent back for an additional tour. During World War II, after all, U.S. units left the country in 1942 and didn't return until late 1945 or 1946. Why is it necessary to pull units in and out of Iraq over and over again, rather than leaving them there until the job is done? The answer lies in the nature of the Iraq war. In World War II, units may have spent four years away from home, but those units were not in combat for more than a fraction of that period. The longest any U.S. Army unit spent in combat was 654 days by the 32d Infantry Division, and it was an outlier. Only six other divisions spent 500 or more days in combat over the course of the war, and only three others spent 400 or more. And because World War II was a conventional war, most units were rotated in and out of the line in order to provide them with the time needed to reconstitute their forces and recuperate from the horrors of the front line. In Iraq, that is a lot harder to do, because there is no front line from which units can be removed. Even in the Green Zone, attacks are not unknown, so work in Iraq, while not necessarily as stressful on a day-to-day basis as life in a combat unit in high-intensity conflict, inflicts are greater cumulative toll on soldiers because it is almost impossible for those soldiers to take breaks by coming off the line. A rotation policy, therefore, provides the only opportunity soldiers really have to decompress. Putting the entire Army into the fight at once is certainly a possibility, but it's one that would come at great cost, and that would break the Army in the short term. That is not to say it can be taken off the table completely, but it is an option that, if used, needs to be used only with the understanding of the damage it will cause.

Simply not putting the whole Army directly into the fight doesn't mean that the Army won't break eventually, however. There are soldiers who have already done two and three overseas tours, tours that take them away from their loved ones and which force them to see and do things that nobody would endure in a just world. The more times soldiers endure that, the harder it is to keep the force viable. It is difficult to ask people to accept spending one-third of their career separated from their loved ones, and the current rotation cycle is asking even more than that from soldiers, as some units are fortunate to get a year back on the ground before they're preparing to return to war. That is a recipe for divorce and damaged families, and it's something people will only put up with for a limited time before they decide to seek employment elsewhere. We see this even now, as promotion rates in the Army have skyrocketed as fewer and fewer people stick around to compete for higher ranks. Trimming the Army presence in Iraq to ten brigades will slow this process, but it is unlikely to halt entirely until the war is over.

This is not to say we must pull out of Iraq immediately, but it is important to keep in mind the price of continued involvement. Every new rotation will convince a few more soldiers that perhaps there are better careers in the world than the Army, and eventually we will reach a tipping point. We don't have to leave Iraq right now, but the longer we stay, the more work it will be putting our armed forces back together again.

I will return to address some of McCaffrey's other points at a later time.

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November 29, 2006

Science Meets the Blogosphere

Scott Kaufman of Acephalous is attempting to measure the speed of a meme with a participatory experiment. His intent is to see how quickly his post will spread and how it spreads: do big-traffic sites drive the speed of a meme's growth, or does it bubble under before appearing on a major site. So, if you are a blogger reading this and would like to participate (and Scott would greatly appreciate it; granted, since the odds are you don't know Scott, that probably doesn't matter to you), just link to his post and help him measure the blogosphere. Because it's for science, and if that doesn't move you, I don't know what will.

Hat tip: Crooked Timber.

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Losing Our Focus

The evidence we're getting ready to leave Iraq compounds daily, as the Post today highlights a key indicator of government failure: the blame game. As the violence continues to escalate and the odds of failure go up, what are our elected officials doing? Why, they're trying to blame the Iraqis for the failure of the U.S. to establish a stable state in Iraq.

Is there some blame to be laid at the feet of the Iraqis for the evident failure of democracy in Iraq? Short answer yes with an if, long answer no with a but. No democracy can work if the citizens don't accept the results of lawful elections, and that is certainly the case in Iraq as various militia groups act to push their own sect's agenda in conflict with other sects and the Iraqi government. So in that respect, it is Iraq's fault that Iraq isn't stable. But Iraq is in that condition right now because of actions we took as a nation, establishing conditions where Iraq's various sects have a legitimate need to protect themselves because the government is, thus far, incapable of so doing. (It should be noted that many of the actions they're taking are, in fact, making the situation worse, but the fact remains we're the ones responsible for creating the situation where they feel they need to do something.) Would Iraq be in better shape today if more Iraqis were willing to work together and trust one another? Absolutely. The world would also be better off if Osama bin Laden decided that instead of killing westerners, he'd rather give the world a Coke and teach everyone to sing, but I'm not going to hold my breath for either of those. To borrow from Donald Rumsfeld, you invade the nation that exists, not the nation as you would like it to exist, and Iraq was and remains a low-trust culture. As such, there were good reasons to doubt that we could establish representative government there successfully with a well-run invasion and occupation plan. Given the disastrous way we executed the mission, we gave Iraq almost no hope of becoming what we would like.

Naturally, it's nice to be able to pin the blame on the Iraqis, because then Republicans and Democrats can step away from blaming each other and can focus their efforts on working together to extricate the U.S. from Iraq. After all, if it's not our fault, who can blame us for leaving?

Except that pat answer fails on two counts: it ignores the fact that Iraq is how it is today because of our actions, and it abdicates our responsibility to do something about it. It may be that the best solution left to us is to leave Iraq to its own devices. But if we do so, it should be because we've acknowledged our failure there and with the full knowledge that we're leaving people behind to die. Fleeing Iraq while claiming that it's not our fault is not an acceptable end to this war.

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Posted at 11:07 AM · War · Comments (2) · TrackBack (0)

November 28, 2006

Holding the Dike

With the release of an intelligence report on Anbar that suggests the U.S. cannot defeat the insurgency there with anything short of an additional division's worth of troops and many billions of dollars, the U.S. occupation of Iraq continues to look more and more bleak.

There are some snippets of good news to be found. The U.S. forces in Anbar have at least managed to make life better for the citizens of the province than would otherwise be the case, and the Iraqi police forces there have apparently performed better than we could have expected. The flip side of that, however, is that the U.S. forces are unlikely to remain much longer, and in Anbar, as in the rest of Iraq, what happens when the U.S. leaves is likely to be disastrous. That seems to be one of the few rationales left for remaining in Iraq: that if we leave, things will get worse. Jim Henley and Kevin Drum, among others, disagree, claiming that things are getting worse because the U.S. is there. I suspect there is some truth to that, but I think that our presence is also providing some good.

Having said that, it's hard to argue that we should stay indefinitely because we're probably doing some good. A sizable majority of Iraqis want us out within the year, for one thing, and that in and of itself suggests the time has come for us to go. There's also the fact that a nontrivial section of the insurgency will probably lay down its arms once the U.S. leaves. No, the fighting will not end; there will be plenty of other fighting between factions attempting to seize control of the government. But it would be foolish to pretend that our presence in Iraq isn't infuriating for a section of the insurgency, both Iraqis who want their country unsullied by an occupying force and foreign fighters who see the U.S. as the Great Satan and just want to take a shot at U.S. fighters.

I'm quite sympathetic to the 'Pottery Barn' rule; there's no question we broke Iraq, and we bear responsibility for the disaster it has become. But if we can't fix it, staying there simply because it's our fault doesn't help anyone. The little Dutch boy saved his town because other people came along and fixed the problem once they realized his finger was preventing disaster. If other people hadn't fixed the underlying problem, the end of the story would have been the little boy drowning when the dike finally collapsed. Nobody is coming along to fix Iraq no matter how long we keep our finger in the dike.

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Posted at 07:38 AM · War · Comments (8) · TrackBack (0)

November 16, 2006

No Middle Ground

Robert Kagan has done an excellent job of explaining why pulling back from Iraq with the ability to return forces to help the Iraqis as needed is a pipe dream. Read the whole thing, but I'll provide a synopsis here: moving troops into Iraq from either Kuwait or Kurdistan would take between hours and days, and those troops would be highly vulnerable to attack while en route.

Which means that hopes of a middle ground in Iraq are similarly futile. We are in a difficult situation in Iraq: if we stay, our hopes of improving things are probably pretty slim. But if we go, Iraq will dissolve into a bloodbath well beyond the current problems it faces. The proposed plan to bump troop levels by 20,000 is unlikely to work, as it's just not enough bodies to get the job done, and any attempt to put that number of bodies on the ground would be politically impossible (and far from certain of success). While we can tinker a little at the margins, the end results remain the same: stay indefinitely and hope things get better, or leave and try to ignore the screams.

But politicians don't like admitting that kind of thing. For the Republicans to admit that their strategy is nothing more than keeping a lid on worse violence at the cost of the ongoing deaths of American soldiers is to admit that their intervention in Iraq has failed. No matter how obvious that may be, no politician is likely to admit to it. Conversely, for the Democrats to admit that withdrawal from Iraq will result in a bloodbath for Iraqis is rather ticklish as well, particularly for those Democrats who voted in favor of the war back in 2002. Sure, they can claim it's all the Republicans' fault, and that they're just salvaging what they can, but that isn't going to change the fact a lot of people are going to see the aftermath in Iraq as a disaster for the United States and, perhaps, further proof that the Democrats aren't serious about national security. Is that silly? Sure, bu