Decline and Fall

...is a bitch.

I haven't been officially diagnosed (that will have to wait until I get back stateside, in August) but the signs are all there: obsessive thoughts about horrific scenes I witnessed in Iraq, anxiety at the mere mention of anything having to do with that war, extreme guilt at having willingly participated in such a colossally wicked venture, sleepless nights, mood swings, constant fidgeting, and the strong proclivity to self-medicate by any means necessary. I have good days and bad days, but they've been mostly bad, and certainly worse than they were when I blogged about them before.

The worst for me is the guilt and the anger. Guilt for what I was a part of and anger that such a war could happen, or that people could still believe there is anything remotely positive about our military presence in Mesopotamia. As Thoreau put it so ably at Unqualified Offerings:

It outrages me more than I can describe that there are still apologists for this. It outrages me more than I can describe that there are people who can look at this and say "Yep, we sure made the right choice there!" And it outrages me more than I can describe that the people who look at this and see no evil are actually taken seriously. They are invited to speak and write in serious venues. They are warmly thanked for offering their amoral apologies. They are allowed to remain in power rather than impeached, convicted, removed, and stripped of privilege. They are able to walk down the street undisturbed when they should be cursed and pelted with trash. They should be sprawled on a sidewalk next the McPherson Square Metro Station, hoping to cadge enough quarters to enjoy the rare treat of laundering the vomit out of the only shirt they own, praying all the while that decent people do not recognize them beneath the matted beard and tangled hair.

In a real republic Bush would have been drummed out of office by now and the last thing any major candidate for the Presidency would say is that we might be in Iraq for another 100 years. Just thinking about it makes me so... anxious. Every time I hear a war apologist speak I am overcome with grief and it's a good hour before my mind's back on track. This is my war casualty: a complete inability to escape from that place for longer than a couple of hours.

Seeking mindless distraction, I went to see Ironman the other day, and boy was that a mistake. The predictably evil defense contractor (played by Jeff Bridges, who always looks like Jeff Lebowski to me, which is a bit disconcerting) reminded me so much of my old boss in the war-profiteering biz--warm and friendly on the outside, cold and heartless on the inside--that I spent half the movie trying to will away my flashbacks, then spent the next several hours after the movie drinking alone in my apartment. Such an innocuous reference from such a banal movie shouldn't produce such a powerful reaction, but such is life after war, for me at least. Suffice it to say I won't be watching Rendition or In the Valley of Elah any time soon.

So there it is: I'm pretty messed up in the head right now, and there's not a lot I can do but try to work through it. It's not like there are VA programs for DoD Contractors with PTSD. That's why the federal government loves contractors so much: there's no long-term commitment. A servicemember has all those whiny legislators demanding benefits (and overriding Bush's veto... we hope) for the troops, but us temps, we're on our own. Now that I'm not working for the company that paid me to go to Iraq, I'm nobody's problem but my own. Hell, I don't even have medical insurance any more. I swear to FSM I'm moving to Canada or Denmark some day.

Discovering that your soul has a price isn't a pleasant experience, but I'm the guy who signed on the dotted line, so it's my cross to bear. I wish I had read the fine print.

Cross-posted at OOIBC.

Labels: Iraq, OOIBC, personal, politics, PTSD

Of the 56 Senators and more than 200 Representatives who have signed on to legislation to improve GI Bill benefits, none of them is named John McCain. He's opposed to making the GI Bill more lucrative because "enhanced educational opportunities could negatively affect retention rates." You see, the last thing you would want is a military in which the troops feel like their military experience has prepared them to venture out into the wide world. No, better that they feel there is no escape because there aren't enough "opportunities" on the outside.

This isn't Supporting the Troops, it's Supporting the Defense Establishment. A veteran such as John McCain should know better; and he should do better by the young men and women he has sent, and pledged to send, to risk their lives in Iraq for his corrupt and pointless war.

Labels: Iraq, military

I'm glad to see that the media has finally done its job and uncovered the completely unsurprising links between the retired generals who serve as supposedly-independent Military Analysts on TV news and the Pentagon and Military Contractors whose talking points they invariably echo. It's one thing to know that there's no way these guys were picked because of their complete independence from the Pentagon and its big business contractors. It's another to have evidence that it goes so much further than that. It's a must-read.

A minor point I think deserves to be rebutted is this one from Pentagon spokesman Bryan Whitman:

It was, Mr. Whitman added, "a bit incredible" to think retired military officers could be "wound up" and turned into "puppets of the Defense Department."

If you believe this, you don't know the military very well. These guys all retired at the rank of Colonel or higher, and if there's anything a soldier could tell you about the guys at the top of the pyramid, it's that they seem to have no idea what goes on at the bottom of it. The Colonels and Generals I've seen in Iraq rarely leave their offices, except to take other Generals and Colonels on tours in their helicopters. They are briefed more than once a day on operations, but those briefings are often a bit... sanitized to protect their subordinates. They simply don't have the feel that the guys outside the wire have for what's going on. Given the lack of recently retired Buck Sergeant hired to be a Military Analyst on MSNBC, this makes for a somewhat skewed view of the battlefield.

But more tragically, there's a system in place that almost ensures that by the time you reach the rank of General, you've spent so much time with your nose up the ass of the people who made it before you that it's the only way you know how to operate. You see, there aren't all that many openings for Generals in the military, so they can be choosy in who they pick to wear those stars. One of the main criteria for making it that far is having a spotless or near-spotless OER (Officer's Evaluation Report). To get a good OER, you basically have to be competent in your position and not piss off your commander.

And what might piss off a commander? Well, considering that he's got an OER of his own to look after, anything that might wreck his next promotion is pretty high on that list. All this basically means that the last thing you want to do as a junior officer looking up at the stars is think outside the box, take risks, put yourself on the line, or any of those other things that businesses were hiring consultants to tell them to do 10 years ago. The people who make General tend to be above average in intelligence, but risk-averse, thanks to a system that encourages lockstep thinking and looks askance at anything that bucks tradition.

So no, Mr. Whitman, it's not "a bit incredible" that retired Generals are puppets of the system. That's how they got there in the first place. And thanks to the extremely lucrative after-market in the defense contracting and lobbying business, these retired Generals know they've got to dance with the one that brung 'em. The quote from retired Colonel John C. Garrett in an email to the Pentagon shows just how closely tied these guys are to the system that created them. Preparing to go on FOX News to talk about the (then-upcoming) surge, he stated:

"Please let me know if you have any specific points you want covered or that you would prefer to downplay."

Almost as painful as the system that reduces America's military leaders into glad-handing yes-men is the pathetic cravenness of a figure such as Garrett, whose pitiful servility to the Administration and the Pentagon is so clearly expressed in this quote. He's not a man, he's a robot, sent out to do the bidding of his masters. Instead of leading, he's following, like a Private in Basic Training. Instead of getting the opinion of a Pattonesque leader, a man of action, a thick-skinned, no-nonsense man's man that the viewers imagine they'll get when the magic words "Retired General" flash across the screen, they get this mincing courtier saying nothing that we hadn't already heard from Ari Fleischer or Sean Hannity. We want Chesty Puller, but we get Willy Loman.

Cross-posted at OOIBC.

Labels: Framing, Iraq, military, OOIBC

ACT I

Sunni Tribal Sheikhs: Death to America!
American Military: Would you please stop fighting us and start fighting Al Qaeda for us?
Sunni Tribal Sheikhs: What's in it for me?
American Military: Stability, a chance to be a part of the new Iraqi government, political leverage to empower the Sunnis.
Sunni Tribal Sheikhs: What about money?
American Military: Lots.
Sunni Tribal Sheikhs: Sounds good, but what we're really concerned about is making sure that Maliki doesn't screw us.
American Military: Oh yeah, you'll get your security, and, Maliki, yeah, that guy's great, isn't he?
Sunni Tribal Sheikhs: Um, no. He screws us, and we're out.
American Military: Security is awesome.

ACT II

American Military: Isn't it great how peaceful things are in Anbar these days? We did such a great job! Aren't we just the best?
Chicken Hawks: Isn't it great how peaceful things are in Anbar these days? Bush did such a great job! All those naysayers were wrong! Iraq is basically free these days, it'll be smooth sailing from here on out!
Naysayers: Didn't they say something about "political participation" or something?
Chicken Hawks (with fingers in their ears): Nyahh, nyahh I can't hear you!
Maliki Government: Symbolic, largely meaningless gesture.
Sunni Tribal Sheikhs: The Maliki government is the worst government on Earth. If we don't have real political participation in three months, the deal is off.

On the next episode of Anbar Awakening: will the American Military listen? Will the Tribal Sheikhs follow through? Will the Chicken Hawks notice?

Stay tuned....

Labels: Iraq

One of the biggest factors driving the insurgency in Iraq has been our ham-handed approach toward the Iraqi populace. In an insurgency, the support of the populace is the ultimate prize--lose that, and you lose the war. General Petraeus' much-vaunted counterinsurgency operations were supposed to address this issue head-on, and they have, up to a point. But one of the most glaring examples of our occupation behaving counter-productively has been our detention operations, where the policy seems to have been to arrest as many people as possible on whatever grounds are handy.

I'm not writing about this from the outside. In 2004-2005, and to a lesser extent this year, I have had close, inside contact with the detention programs in Iraq. I lived and worked at Abu Ghraib and other Iraqi prisons and saw firsthand how mass arrests have negatively affected our image over here. One of the most common refrains I have heard from Iraqis is that the Americans arrest them for no reason, then release them later without even bringing any charges. I would bet a year's salary that there isn't a single Iraqi who hasn't had this happen to someone close to him. It's what they have come to expect from us.

Now Major General Douglas Stone is seeking to change all that. (Link via Iraq Newsladder.) He's finally making the argument that many of us were making back when the war started: if you arrest innocent people, then keep them locked up with genuine badguys, they won't come out on the other end with a positive opinion of you. Or, as General Conway said after hearing out Gen. Stone, "If you roll up 150 guys in a village and you don't have probable cause, you've just created 150 little terrorists."

Actually, it's worse than that. Because it's not just the 150 guys you arrested who radicalize, it's also their families and friends. Moreover, you've just made anyone who has ever heard their story (and again, EVERYONE has) that much less likely to believe you when you roll through town distributing leaflets about how wonderful the "justice" and "democracy" you've graciously bestowed upon them is. If you want to know why the Iraqis have been so hesitant to jump aboard the America bandwagon, maybe this has something to do with it.

Which is what is so confounding about the fact that Petraeus himself planned for 40,000 detainees as part of the surge. Did Petraeus actually believe that locking up 40,000 people would somehow make the Iraqis like us more? How does it make sense that, at the very same time we began talking with insurgents and indeed fighting alongside them, we implemented a policy of arresting them at an even higher rate than previously? It simply makes no sense.

Any idiot could see three years ago that our detention policies were actively fueling the insurgency. Petraeus' counter-insurgency tactics were supposed to address the areas where our actions were fueling the resistance. I'm glad that someone is finally in charge who seems to get it, but why on earth has it taken four and a half years to reach such an obvious conclusion?

(Cross-posted at OOIBC)

Labels: Iraq

Labels: Iraq

Catching up on missed blog reading today. I've been out for a few weeks to some of the more remote spots in Iraq and noticed this at Unqualified Offerings from a few days ago:

The blast walls certainly seem omnipresent in Baghdad. I doubt there are as many in the rest of the country. Michael Totten has an interesting embed report from Fallujah that doesn't detail internal controls on movement in the city. He does refer to border controls, but stresses they are in the hands of local police forces.

Well, I'm in Fallujah and I can tell you that while there may not be blast walls separating one neighborhood from another (as is the situation in Baghdad), there is a wall around the entire city with controlled access points staffed by U.S. Marines checking the identification of everyone who attempts to pass through them. The ID's are produced by U.S. forces and are connected to a biometric tracking system that is run by U.S. forces. So Totten is wrong about the border controls being in the hands of local police forces. I find it amazing that he could have gotten that as wrong as he did, but I have no idea what Totten was shown when he was here.

But if you want to know why Fallujah is as calm as it is (and it is quite calm by the standards of this warzone), the walls and the iris scans are a huge part of it.

Labels: Iraq

Thoreau at Unqualified Offerings:

Some day, other countries' versions of neocons will say "It's just like
2007, and [insert leader here] is just like Bush. If we don't start a
pointless war RIGHT NOW, he'll take yet another country! We must act NOW
to prevent another world war!"

Labels: Bush, humor, Iran, Iraq

Your instant all-purpose three-word rebuttal to the arguments against withdrawing from Iraq: It's Already Happening. Michael Ware reacting to Bush's speech, by way of hilzoy:

MICHAEL WARE, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, Anderson, my first impression is, wow. I mean, it's one thing to return to the status quo, to the situation we had nine months ago, with 130,000 U.S. troops stuck here for the foreseeable future. It's another thing to perpetuate the myth. I mean, I won't go into detail, like the president's characterizations of the Iraqi government as an ally, or that the people of Anbar, who support the Sunni insurgency, asked America for help, or to address this picture of a Baghdad that exists only in the president's mind.

Let me just refer to this, what the president said, that, if America were to be driven out of Iraq, extremists of all strains would be emboldened. They are now. Al Qaeda could gain new recruits and new sanctuaries. They have that now. Iran would benefit from the chaos and be encouraged in its efforts to gain nuclear weapons and dominate the region. It is now.

Iraq would face a humanitarian -- humanitarian crisis. It does now. And that we would leave our children a far more dangerous world. That's happening now. (...)

COOPER: The U.S. -- but the U.S. talks about reconciliation and the need for -- for Shia-led government to -- to reconcile with Sunni, even former Sunni insurgents. Does this government -- do -- so the Sunnis want to reconcile?

WARE: Not the ones that I'm talking to, certainly not the power brokers. I mean, I'm talking about the heads of the largest Shia militias in this country, men who sit in the parliament, men who are the chairmen of the security and defense committees, the parliamentary oversight watchdog committees.

These men are not looking for reconciliation. What they want is America to get out of the way and let us loose.

It's all there: delusionally-optimistic President, the arguments against withdrawal debunked in the simplest and most direct terms, and a clear view of the situation on the ground as it actually is. If only arguing politics were always this easy.

Labels: Iraq, politics

Regarding the motivations of the insurgents I interrogated in Iraq, a week ago I wrote:

The vast majority of them weren't radical Muslims, bin Laden acolytes or Saddam hardliners; they were motivated by nationalism. They opposed the U.S. occupation of what they saw as their sovereign land (silly them!) so they lashed out in the most meaningful way they could: at the "collaborators" in their midst aiding and abetting the occupying, colonial power. It's basic insurgency doctrine, folks. In my experience, "religious fanaticism" is the veneer that some in Iraq, and even more in the West, use to cover what is essentially the struggle to get out from under the thumb of a strongman.

Later last week, The Washington Monthly published an article by Andrew Tilghman, former Stars & Stripes reporter, that came to a similar conclusion, and on Tuesday Gallup released a poll analysis that supports my anecdotal experience. (Thanks to Framing Science for the link) The pollsters discovered that political grievances, rather than religious ones, are the prime motivating factors behind Violent Islamic Extremism:

After analyzing survey data representing more than 90% of the global Muslim population, Gallup found that despite widespread anti-American sentiment, only a small minority saw the 9/11 attacks as morally justified. Even more significant, there was no correlation between level of religiosity and extremism among respondents. Among the 7% of the population that fits in the politically radicalized category -- those who saw the 9/11 attacks as completely justifiable and have an unfavorable view of the United States -- 94% said religion is an important part of their daily lives, compared with 90% among those in the moderate majority. And no significant difference exists between radicals and moderates in mosque attendance.

Gallup probed respondents further and actually asked both those who condoned and condemned extremist acts why they said what they did. The responses fly in the face of conventional wisdom. For example, in Indonesia, the largest Muslim majority country in the world, many of those who condemned terrorism cited humanitarian or religious justifications to support their response. For example, one woman said, "Killing one life is as sinful as killing the whole world," paraphrasing verse 5:32 in the Quran.

On the other hand, not a single respondent in Indonesia who condoned the attacks of 9/11 cited the Quran for justification. Instead, this group's responses were markedly secular and worldly. For example, one Indonesian respondent said, "The U.S. government is too controlling toward other countries, seems like colonizing."

The real difference between those who condone terrorist acts and all others is about politics, not piety. For example, the politically radicalized often cite "occupation and U.S. domination" as their greatest fear for their country and only a small minority of them agree the United States would allow people in the region to fashion their own political future or that it is serious about supporting democracy in the region. Also, among this group's top responses was the view that to better relations with the Muslim world, the West should respect Islam and stop imposing its beliefs and policies. In contrast, moderates most often mentioned economic problems as their greatest fear for their country, and along with respecting Islam, they see economic support and investments as a way for the West to better relations. Moderates are also more likely than the politically radicalized to say the United States is serious about promoting democracy.

Note how counter-intuitive this all seems from the Clash of Civilizations perspective through which the entire GWOT has been filtered for us. No significant difference in mosque attendance between radicals and moderates. The Quran cited only as justification for abhorring violence, not condoning it. American occupation and lack of respect are the reasons the radicals fight us, not the results of their fight against us.

The implications of a study such as this are enormous. The most obvious is that if we are going to claim to be serious about fighting terrorism, we need to focus our efforts on the factors that actually motivate people to become terrorists, not the factors we continue to insist motivate them. Killing or incarcerating a terrorist or insurgent may take one of them out of circulation, but if you create two new ones for every one you destroy, you are going backward, not forward.

I saw this dynamic when I was an interrogator in Iraq. Coalition forces would arrest an insurgent, humiliate him in front of his family, keep him in prison for months, and then release him without charges. In the meantime he learned to hate us (even if he hadn't before) and, more importantly, his family learned to hate us. While he was learning to hate us, he was in a population that was uniquely qualified to fan the flames of his hatred and teach him how he might better act on it. Meanwhile his family and close friends were now easy targets for recruitment. In getting rid of one "terrorist," we created several. Is it any wonder that the estimated number of insurgents in Iraq jumped from 5,000 (total) in 2003 to 70,000 (Sunni) in 2007, while the prison population skyrocketed from 10,000 to 60,000? (See pp. 25-26 of this Brookings Institute report for details.)

When will we realize that our presence in the Middle East and our support of tyrants such as Mubarek and the Saudi Royal Family are not only not helping ease the troubles in the region, they are the primary cause for those troubles? Middle Easterners are not stupid. They can see that America has a long history of supporting brutal dictators (remember the Shah?) and they have learned from that experience that we are not to be trusted. They see us stomping around the world with our big stick and turn to whatever means of resistance they can find to resist what they see as the assault on their culture by the biggest bully on earth. The fact that militant Islam is their only major option should not cause us to confuse their motives

Cross-posted at OOIBC.

Labels: Framing, fundamentalism, GWOT, interrogation, Iraq, Islam, OOIBC, personal, politics, terrorism

Hint: it's not always them.

BAGHDAD (AFP) — Hundreds of Shiites and Sunnis marched on Wednesday in protest at the building by US troops of a tall concrete wall separating their northwest Baghdad neighbourhoods, an AFP photographer said.

The protesters complained that the wall would promote sectarianism and demanded its removal.

Residents said that US forces last week began building the two-kilometre (1.25 mile) wall along the border of the mainly Shiite al-Shuala and adjoining Sunni-majority al-Ghazaliyah neighbourhoods without consulting them.

The demonstrators -- tribal leaders, clerics and local residents -- marched from one neighbourhood to the other carrying banners reading "No to the dividing wall" and "The wall is US terrorism."

The protesters demanded in a statement that the government intervene to halt the wall and ensure that the section already completed is demolished.

"The wall is in accordance with Al-Qaeda's plans," the statement said, adding that the barrier was being built to "separate family from family."

"The wall is dividing small neighbourhoods and will lead to the partitioning of Iraq," said Hassan al-Taii, a leader of the large Taii Sunni tribe.

He demanded that the Baghdad government destroy the wall and act against those "planting division and sectarianism among Iraqis."

Our ability to sacrifice any hope of long-term gain on the altar of "seemed like a good idea at the time" never ceases to amaze me. You know things are bad when the average Iraqi sees the strategic view more clearly than the guys we train and pay to see that view.

Link via Juan Cole.

Labels: Iraq, military

Michael Goldfarb is right to chastise some on the left for wanting to have it both ways regarding the Petraeus testimony--either Petraeus is a stooge for the Administration or he isn't. Here's the General's hand-wringing non-response to Sen. Warner's question of whether the Iraq war is making America safer:

"I don't know, actually. I have not sat down and sorted in my own mind."

That reaction seems to me to be a tacitly negative response. If he were truly the lapdog that he's been accused of being, he would have at least muttered something incoherent about success in Iraq being a "vital national interest" or something, but instead he hid behind what is, in all honesty, at least a somewhat legitimate dodge: it's not his job to assess the war's implications for the overall national security of the United States.

I say "somewhat legitimate," because, as a Four-Star General, one would think that he would have pondered this question at least a bit. Even if he hasn't spent his waking hours as MNF-I Commander agonizing over the pros and cons of the Iraq War vis-a-vis the threat to America proper, he certainly ought to have at least entertained some thoughts in that direction during the years he spent at the U.S. Army Combined Arms Center writing the Army's Counter-Insurgency doctrine. After all, he was back in the U.S. working explicitly on the Army's broader missions, which one would think would include things that fell under the heading of "support[ing] and defend[ing] the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign or domestic."

So actually, Petraeus should have been able to answer that question more fully at the time. Given the constraints of the political circus that his testimony could only be, I can understand why he would hesitate to dive right in with a bold declaration that the Iraq War is doing bupkis to protect America.

But then he got his bearings, remembered why he was there, and came clean in exactly the incoherent "vital interest" vein that we have come to expect from a political class that excels at saying nothing:

Candidly, I have been so focused on Iraq that drawing all the way out was something that for a moment there was a bit of a surprise.

But I think that we have very, very clear and very serious national interests in Iraq. Trying to achieve those interests — achieving those interests has very serious implications for our safety and for our security. So I think the answer really, to come back to it is yes.

"Very, very clear and very serious" national interests. Good boy. No word yet on what those interests actually are.

I suspect that his initial instinct--to run from that question with all his might because he knows the frank answer will be counter-productive to his Commander-in-Chief's staged love-in for a tragically ill-advised and destructive campaign--was borne out of unease. That hesitation betrayed a lot more about Petraeus' thoughts than anyone with a political axe to grind--left or right--is willing to admit.

I suspect that he is a man who is conflicted about the overall war, his role in it, and his responsibilities as a commander tasked with managing it. That he only came to his senses and played the political ball game when he had been allowed a moment to consider his options at least says that he has struggled with his faith.

Anyone who has ever believed in something and been put in a position where they had to act on those beliefs but entertained thoughts to the contrary should understand this. I know I do, because I came to Iraq the first time in 2004 with nothing but praise for the enterprise, only coming to realize that it was a bad idea and a lost cause after experience and reflection. That was a long process, though. Could General Petraeus be going through a similar existential crisis? I'd like to think so.

But even after changing my mind, I still had (and have) a job to do, as does Petraeus, only in a vastly more significant way. While I'm free to distance myself intellectually from the strategy and the entire war, he isn't. As Goldfarb concludes, "he's not there to defend the war--despite what the left is saying--he's there to defend the strategy." Goldfarb is right about that, but only in the sense that this "report" isn't really a report; it's a public relations campaign for a failed strategy. In a political culture that was less poisoned by naked partisanship, he would have been there to report on a strategy. But we always knew that wouldn't really be the case. Only a partisan hack like Goldfarb, however, would call that a good thing.

Cross-posted at OOIBC.

Labels: Iraq, military, OOIBC, politics

Cross-posted at OOIBC.

As General Petraeus testifies in the dog and pony show on Capitol Hill this week, news comes that two of the seven soldiers who wrote the brilliant New York Times Op-Ed “The War as We Saw It,” Sgt. Omar Mora and Sgt. Yance T. Gray, died when their cargo truck overturned. They were scheduled to come home in November.

These soldiers understood the pointlessness of their mission, and they understood the enormous sacrifice that they were asked to make, and have now made, in service of that pointlessness. Their honest and incisive assessment cut through the usual blather of the Iraq debate with an eloquence and an authority that has rarely been seen in the tired platitudes that pass for American political discourse:

To believe that Americans, with an occupying force that long ago outlived its reluctant welcome, can win over a recalcitrant local population and win this counterinsurgency is far-fetched.

Simple, erudite and brutally honest. Three qualities that are in short supply on Capitol Hill this week.

As Petraeus, Crocker and their Administration bosses spin their statistics and pat themselves on the back for the “Anbar miracle,” remember what those seven, now five, soldiers wrote:

[W]hile creating proxies is essential in winning a counterinsurgency, it requires that the proxies are loyal to the center that we claim to support. Armed Sunni tribes have indeed become effective surrogates, but the enduring question is where their loyalties would lie in our absence. The Iraqi government finds itself working at cross purposes with us on this issue because it is justifiably fearful that Sunni militias will turn on it should the Americans leave.

A real political solution requires that the proxies, be they Sunni tribes bought and paid for by us, the central Iraqi government, or any other group working with us, actually be working toward the goal of a unified Iraq. If they aren’t, they are just using us to strengthen their hand until the opportunity to jump ship arises. This is the Achilles’ heel of any lofty goals the Masters of War ever had of bringing democracy, peace and stability to Iraq. This is what should be honestly discussed on the Hill this week.

America owes it to them to have this discussion.

R.I.P.

**UPDATE** Thank you, Blue Girl, for the no-subscription-required link to The War as We Saw It at Behind the Times, who re-posted it and is leaving it at the top of the page all day in honor of Sergeants Mora and Gray.

Labels: Iraq, OOIBC

If you look to your right, you'll notice that there are a bunch of new links there. That's because I've joined the Out of Iraq Blogger's Caucus, a group of bloggers united by the following positions:

1) Opposed to the Iraq Supplemental Appropriations Bill.
2) Opposed to funding Bush's Iraq Occupation Debacle.
3) Committed to getting the troops home as soon as possible.
4) Determined to end George W. Bush's Iraq and Mid-East Debacle as quickly as possible.
5) Determined to restore some sanity to the world.

You can imagine that this was not a difficult test for me to pass.

So take a moment to check out my fellow bloggers, including previous faves Welcome to Pottersville and Army of Dude. I haven't visited them all yet but I'll get there.

And stop by the main OOIBC site for some Iraq blog goodness, including occasional cross-postings from yours truly, because sometimes they're worth reading more than once.

Labels: Iraq, OOIBC

At least someone on the right can see the forest for the trees. While I don't agree with everything in his latest piece, By Bush's Own Standard, Surge Has Failed, his main point is unassailable, unless you're drunk on Rupert Murdoch's special Kool-Aid:

The purpose of the surge, they said, is to buy time -- "breathing space," the president says -- for Iraqi political reconciliation. Because progress toward that has been negligible, there is no satisfactory answer to this question: What is the U.S. military mission in Iraq?

Many of those who insist that the surge is a harbinger of U.S. victory in Iraq are making the same mistake they made in 1991 when they urged an advance on Baghdad, and in 2003 when they underestimated the challenge of building democracy there. The mistake is exaggerating the relevance of U.S. military power to achieve political progress in a society riven by ethnic and sectarian hatreds.

How do people not get this? The military is utterly unfit to the task of facilitating political reconciliation. Our very presence here ensures that reconciliation will not happen, because all we can do is arm our friends du jour, walling them off from each other, and bribe them to stop attacking each other, while creating potemkin villages for sympathetic journalists and politicians to base glowing reports upon.

Iraqis know damn well that America doesn't particularly care about them or their situation. We've all but abandoned our original goal of bestowing freedom and democracy upon them and are now just looking for a way to bow out that doesn't involve an airlift from the roof of our embassy in Baghdad.

But we will continue to fight here, because winning the political war in Washington is more important than winning the actual war in Iraq. Because saving (the President's) face is more important than saving (American soldiers') lives.

Labels: Iraq, military, politics

Kevin Drum's onto something here: the casualty figures in Iraq mean very little unless you take seasonality into account, which means, basically, that the level of violence in Iraq has been consistently higher in Spring and Autumn than it has been in Summer and Winter. Remember this when the Administration trots out a comparison between violence levels in April 2007 and August 2007 to show that the surge is working. It isn't. To quote Jim Henley, " They're bullshitting us."

But there's more to it than that. It turns out that the numbers don't include casualty figures for civilian deaths if they were the result of Sunni-on-Sunni or Shia-on-Shia violence:

Unfortunately, there's simply no reliable data series for civilian casualties over the course of the war, and the data for this year in particular gives every indication of being massaged to within an inch of its life (intra-Shiite violence doesn't count, car bomb fatalities don't count, al-Qaeda attacks against Sunni tribes don't count, the figures change mysteriously from one report to the next, the supposedly lower numbers for August are classified, etc. etc.)

The Administration and Pentagon are so invested in the "sectarian violence" meme that their statisticians rule out the possibility that intra-sect killings are meaningful. Which of course they are, because this isn't merely a sectarian conflict. The battle lines have been drawn in so many directions that there's no way to accurately characterize it.

Tribal feuds, for example, are often completely non-sectarian. The massacres of Sunni policemen by Sunni Islamic militants and Ba'ath Party loyalists are clearly non-sectarian. Ditto for the ongoing battles between Badr and Jaysh al-Mahdi.

My experience in 2004-2005 interrogating almost no Shiites testifies to this. Of the hundreds of Iraqis I met, almost none of them were killing or otherwise terrorizing Shias. The vast majority of them weren't radical Muslims, bin Laden acolytes or Saddam hardliners; they were motivated by nationalism. They opposed the U.S. occupation of what they saw as their sovereign land (silly them!) so they lashed out in the most meaningful way they could: at the "collaborators" in their midst aiding and abetting the occupying, colonial power. It's basic insurgency doctrine, folks. In my experience, "religious fanaticism" is the veneer that some in Iraq, and even more in the West, use to cover what is essentially the struggle to get out from under the thumb of a strongman.

The Administration won't cop to that, though, because they need to be able to paint the current troubles as "those crazy Muslims and their backward ways." Any hint that these people are motivated by the same desire for self-government that every other people who have sought to break their yokes of bondage has been motivated by must be carefully avoided to maintain the illusion that we're "liberating" them. The media and the Right scoffed when some reality-based thinkers declared that "one man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter," but deep down I think we all knew that was true. Ask the Irish, the Algerians, the French Partisans or the Sioux about that distinction.

This in no way excuses the use of suicide bombs and the targeting of innocents: these tactics are deplorable no matter who employs them. But they are effective, and that's something we still don't understand, four years after "Mission Accomplished."

Labels: Bush, Iraq, military, politics

One feature that I neglected to address in my recent posts on Blackwater was brought up by some of the commenters to those posts, for instance this one:

The scariest thing about some entity like Blackwater turning America into a police state is the fact that they hire foriegn soldiers of fortune. These Hessians could one day be marching down our streets and commanding American citizens at the point of a gun barrel. Just like they are doing in Iraq. And you see the results there. A lot of dead people.

Although I am hesitant to declare the police state nearly here, I am mindful of the dangers of allowing the seeds for it to be planted while we all assure ourselves that it could never come to that.

As for those foreign soldiers of fortune, I see them all the time. The most visible to me are the guys guarding our mess halls. All of the ones at my local facility seem to be from Uganda, as far as I can tell (I've had brief conversations with some of them). To a man, they seem like nice people, but then again so did Eichmann. The fact of the matter, however, is that they are standing outside (and sometimes inside) our dining facilities with loaded weapons. I've never asked if they have rounds chambered, but the magazines are in their M-16s, which means they could be firing three-round bursts withing seconds if the situation called for it.

While I don't live in fear of them staging an armed takeover of the salad bar, I do wonder what kind of status they might be afforded if their employer, EOD Technology, were called upon to provide homeland security. Doubtless there would be cries of protestation from all corners of the political spectrum shoudl they ever arrive stateside (the Dems would cry "civil liberties" while the GOP would play the xenophobia card, I suspect) but I'm not at all convinced that our Unitary Executive would pay them any heed. The legal aspect of this is something I am utterly unqualified to expound upon, so I won't.

We need to understand this very clearly: the United States is arming private armies of foreign nationals to provide security for its own military on installations in Iraq. This isn't a "coalition of the willing" here, because they aren't operating under their nation's flag. They are employees of American companies, beholden primarily to those companies, and they're paid for by the U.S. taxpayer. And it's not like they're only guarding the mess halls. Foreign security contractors go outside the wire just like Americans.

This would be distressing even if the ones I referred to weren't from a country that is one of the biggest offenders in the horrific production of child soldiers in the world. Were some of the guys guarding me while I eat abducted at a tender age by the Lord's Resistance Army? Somehow, I doubt their employer keeps statistics on these things.

But the point is not that they are foreign, but that they are there at all, and largely unaccountable for their actions.

Labels: Iraq, liberty, mercenaries, military

I was just told that I am leaving in 2 - 4 days for the Anbar Province, where I will apparently remain for the rest of my stay in this lovely country. So, recent uptick aside, there's a good chance that I will again post very lightly, if at all. It's a surreptitious things for me here anyway.

At least Anbar is pretty calm, for now. Of course I hope it stays that way (even more so now that I will be living there and travelling across it regularly), but I've seen too many "pacified" areas where the "local tribes are working with Coalition Forces" turn sour and go right back to being hotbeds of violence to believe that this is permanent.

Labels: Iraq, personal

Unqualified Offerings led me to a fantastic milblogger: Army of Dude, who is fortunately near the end of his deployment to Iraq. His writings are sharp and insightful, conveying what life is really like for a soldier in Iraq, away from the spin of the Administration and Generals who use people like him as means to their twisted, thoughtless and indefensible ends.

His post, Stupid Shit of the Deployment Awards!, is a great starting point. Some highlights:

Working with 1920s – A Sunni insurgent group we’ve been battling for months, responsible for the death of my friend and numerous attacks, agreed to fight Al Qaeda alongside us. Since then, they’ve grown into a much more organized, lethal force. They use this organization to steal cars and intimidate and torture the local population, or anyone they accuse of being linked to Al Qaeda. The Gestapo of the 21st century, sanctioned by the United States Army.

...

The surge was nothing more than a thorn in the side of nomadic fighters having to move thirty five miles while the generals watched Baghdad with stubborn eyes.

...

Wires and triggers are hidden behind doors or underneath rugs, so when we go out and clear blocks and blocks of houses, there’s a pressure plate waiting for you at the foot of the stairs. Only your eyes can save you at this point. That tactic has been born from our proclivity to redundantly clear neighborhoods, and the extension is guilty of claiming lives of men who are running on too little sleep, walking into house after house in the desert heat. When you’re worried about how much water you have left and the trucks are too far away to get more, you tend to miss the trip wire in the dark stairwell. Twelve month deployments are a burden on your body and mind. Asking men for three more months is not only unfair but deadly.

...

In the future, I want my children to grow up with the belief that what I did here was wrong, in a society that doesn’t deem that idea unpatriotic.

Well put. Take the time to read his other entries as well.

It takes great courage to say these things, and I'm glad we have people like Alex Horton willing to say them.

Labels: Iraq

In Bush's brave new world, whistleblowers are repaid with jail time and interrogated at Camp Cropper:

One after another, the men and women who have stepped forward to report corruption in the massive effort to rebuild Iraq have been vilified, fired and demoted.

Or worse.

For daring to report illegal arms sales, Navy veteran Donald Vance says he was imprisoned by the American military in a security compound outside Baghdad and subjected to harsh interrogation methods.

There were times, huddled on the floor in solitary confinement with that head-banging music blaring dawn to dusk and interrogators yelling the same questions over and over, that Vance began to wish he had just kept his mouth shut.

He had thought he was doing a good and noble thing when he started telling the FBI about the guns and the land mines and the rocket-launchers - all of them being sold for cash, no receipts necessary, he said. He told a federal agent the buyers were Iraqi insurgents, American soldiers, State Department workers, and Iraqi embassy and ministry employees.

The seller, he claimed, was the Iraqi-owned company he worked for, Shield Group Security Co.

''It was a Wal-Mart for guns,'' he says. ''It was all illegal and everyone knew it.''

So Vance says he blew the whistle, supplying photos and documents and other intelligence to an FBI agent in his hometown of Chicago because he didn't know whom to trust in Iraq.

For his trouble, he says, he got 97 days in Camp Cropper, an American military prison outside Baghdad that once held Saddam Hussein, and he was classified a security detainee.

Also held was colleague Nathan Ertel, who helped Vance gather evidence documenting the sales, according to a federal lawsuit both have filed in Chicago, alleging they were illegally imprisoned and subjected to physical and mental interrogation tactics ''reserved for terrorists and so-called enemy combatants.''

This is what happens when the supposed need for "security" is allowed to trump all rights, even for American citizens. This is what happens when you're "either with us or with the terrorists." Even when you are demonstrably not with the terrorists. Because the definitions of "patriot," "traitor" and "enemy combatant" are entirely subject to the arbitrary will of the king.

Labels: GWOT, interrogation, Iraq, liberty

I take back everything I've ever said about the Iraqis not being ready for American-style democracy: it appears we're teaching them all too well:

The Iraqi contractor was charging $50 per basketball and $30 per soccer ball. In Baghdad, top-of-the-line basketballs and soccer balls cost no more than $15.

Johnson's eyes went down the contract. Was hooking up a power cable to the city's power supply really going to cost $10,000? "I'm an ex-infantry guy. I don't know what this runs," Johnson said. "Maybe a cable like that costs a lot, but I really doubt it."

Clearly the Iraqi contractors are taking their cue from KBR and the other companies over here charging exhorbitantantly for everything from laundry and soda to innovative ways to avoid oil changes to my salary.*

I'm glad to see that the Bush Administration's patented combination of corporate corruption, poor planning and general incompetence is filtering down to the lowest levels of the DOD.

*The average salary of $97,934/year listed for Iraq on the linked .pdf seems quite low to me. Suffice it to say I don't know anyone making less than $100K/year, and really, I don't know anyone making anything below $120K/year. I suspect that the survey participants aren't including the hazardous duty pay and the separation pay that boost salaries here into the stratosphere.

Labels: Iraq

The editors of The Weekly Standard, ever vigilant in their mission to "support the troops" by parroting whatever the Administration is saying this week, have trotted out seven of their own soldiers to counter the NYT Op-Ed I linked to below. Their argument boils down to this: the guys in the 82nd (who wrote the earlier piece) are in a different part of Baghdad, so they can't see how wonderfully the surge is working. The Weekly Standard's guys trot out the same "attacks are down, political participation is up" mantra that the surge's proponents have been spouting from the beginning.

What they don't seem to get, however, is that there's no earthly reason to believe that the reductions in violence that have been seen are anything other than temporary. They cite Ramadi and the Anbar Province as exemplars of the effectiveness of counter-insurgency strategy and the effectiveness of holding territory:

Take Anbar Province. In 2006, al Qaeda controlled the capital of Ramadi and Marine intelligence officers declared the province effectively lost. A leaked Marine Corps report concluded, "the prospects for securing western Anbar province are dim and there is almost nothing the U.S. military can do to improve the political and social situation there."

Today Ramadi is peaceful and Anbar no longer a haven for al Qaeda. The tribal awakening that brought about political reconciliation and stability in Ramadi and Anbar primarily resulted from an improved security environment provided by American forces. Americans not only cleared Ramadi, they also held it by occupying over 65 outposts.

This security environment allowed local tribal leaders to stand up to their former al Qaeda occupiers, and now American and Iraqi forces are improving security beyond Anbar in places like Diyala and Babil Provinces.

This is all true, but only in a very limited sense. Take the example of Fallujah, Samarra or Baqubah. These are three cities where U.S. and coalition forces have in the past declared stable, turned over to the local Iraqis, and seen flare up again after we left. Every time we stabilize a place and turn it over to the locals, it goes to hell again. The key to the perceived success in Ramadi is that the Marines have continued to hold it. The "surge" only works when the increased presence remains.

This is the fatal flaw of all of the rosy predictions and spun statistics on the surge: it only works when it ceases to be a "surge" and becomes a permanent occupation. And even then its effectiveness is suspect, but that's a matter for another post.

The Weekly Standard is not, however, in the business of seriously critiquing the argument these soldiers have presented. Nor do they seem to care that one of the most telling critiques from the first piece goes completely unanswered in their riposte.

The soldiers from the 82nd wrote:

However, while creating proxies is essential in winning a counterinsurgency, it requires that the proxies are loyal to the center that we claim to support. Armed Sunni tribes have indeed become effective surrogates, but the enduring question is where their loyalties would lie in our absence. The Iraqi government finds itself working at cross purposes with us on this issue because it is justifiably fearful that Sunni militias will turn on it should the Americans leave.

It is the question of who or what our Iraqi partners actually support that continues to make this war a lost cause. the examples of Fallujah, Samarra and Baqubah show that the loyalties and alliances we have forged with different groups in this conflict are transient and subject to dissolution at a moment's notice. The Weekly Standard soldiers act as if the gains they have seen must be permanent, when recent history should lead them to conclude that only a fool would believe such a conclusion so early in the operation.

This is just another example in the litany of cynical, self-serving rhetoric cooked up by the masters of war to justify their continued prosecution of a war that has done more to harm America in the long run than any previous conflict.

Labels: conservatism, Iraq, politics

I've been really, really, really bad about posting. Sorry about that.

I have been busy, however. My job takes me all over Iraq, which generally means spending six or so hours getting ready to travel followed by one to four hours flying to a random base somewhere in Iraq in a Blackhawk or a Chinook helicopter to spend about three hours trainign soldiers how to run a computer system (sorry, I can't be more specific), and then a repeat of the seven to ten hours of travel on the way back. My hours in general are long: even in the office at beautiful Camp Slayer I'm expected to be in my seat for twelve hours a day, seven days a week.

Also, there's a real bias against blogging, the media, and the rest of the non-U.S. military world here. I could well imagine losing my job over D&F, especially considering how much angrier I've become at this stupid war, our stupid President, his stupid party, our stupid military, its stupid defense contractors, and our stupid country. Some of the things I've wanted to write here have bordered on treason. This is why I am writing this at 4 o'clock in the morning.

But such is the heat of the moment. On more careful reflection, I do still think that America is essentially good, in its ideals if not its actions. Most republicans don't want to destroy everything that's good about America, they are merely mistaken in the way they approach problems, and some of those ways can only lead to, well, destroying everything that is good about America. And the military is, still, largely peopled by those who would rather be anywhere but here, and don't actually think that the solution to the world's problems isn't nuclear.

If that last one sounded a bit far-out to you, as in, "I'm sure there aren't any soldiers who would advocate that," I assure you it's an opinion that is within the acceptable range over here. I've had the "why nuking the entire Middle East is a bad idea" conversation many times since I've been over here. More mainstream is the idea that we really ought to "take the gloves off" and bomb them Dresden-style.

I am here to tell you that no amount of arguing this point gets through to these people. Tell them that carpet bombing backfired big-time in Vietnam, and they'll respond with, "America didn't lose Vietnam, the news media was responsible for us pulling out when we were on the verge of victory." Tell them it's morally repugnant to kill innocent women and children and they will tell you that war is hell and besides, they're all enabling the insurgency anyway, which is to say, there's no such thing as an innocent Iraqi. Tell them that if America does that, it ceases to be American in the truest sense of the term, and they respond that we are fighting the terrorists over here so that we won't have to fight them in America (i.e., there won't be any America at all). At this point they start to suspect that I'm a liberal, and then I know the conversation is going nowhere. Reasoning with these people is useless.

What's interesting to me about this mindset, besides the obvious appeal of getting inside the brains of people who genuinely believe that genocide can make the world a better place, is that these would-be mass murderers tend to all be the sorts of soldiers and contractors who have never actually seen a shot fired in anger. I speak here of the people who sit in their cubicles all day analyzing this war, the people who spend their entire deployments pumping gas or driving around the FOB, the people who will go back to the States after their deployment and wow their friends with stories of the mortar that just barely missed them, the people who were once referred to as REMFs (Rear-Echelon MotherF*****s).

It is these people, the out-of-touch, the wannabe politicians, who are so willing to contemplate sending others to slaughter the "enemies of freedom." Those they would send, the infantrymen and other cannon fodder, generally express something more human when talking about this war. They hate firing their weapons, they hate clearing dead bodies, they hate what they have to do here. It's as if, and I know this sounds unbelievable but bear with me, the people who have actually killed Iraqis find the prospect of killing even more of them unappealing. They see the gravity of their actions.

One more thing: the REMFs tend to be the only ones who still believe Iraq isn't already a completely lost cause, and they generally still think invading Iraq was a wise decision. One even told me that Bush 43 is one of the greatest Presidents ever. You don't hear that very often from the foot soldiers.

I paint here with a broad brush, but this has been the general trend in the discussions I have had here. The computer dweebs are all about carnage, the soldiers just want to go home.

Unfortunately I work with a bunch of REMFs. There comes a point where holding your tongue is necessary to being able to fuction in the workplace. I generally register an objection to this kind of talk and let it go, knowing that pursuing the conversation wouldn't get us anywhere except someplace less congenial. But I have to admit that I die a little every time I encounter this phenomenon.

Labels: Iraq, personal

The life of someone preparing to go to Iraq is a busy one, which is why I haven't "blogged more freely" this past week. Last week was spent at Ft. Benning, Georgia, land of the 56k modem, checking off a bunch of bureaucratic boxes to ensure that I was ready to embark. These boxes included everything from making sure my inoculations were up to date (lucky me I'm not "mission essential," so I got out of the Anthrax shot this time) to learning the latest techniques for spotting IEDs, and attending to a gunshot wound. Let's just say I hope I never have to use my new needle decompression of tension pneumothorax skills.

By the end of the week I should be somewhere in the Middle East, and I will likely have landed in Baghdad by this time next week. Beyond that I don't know much. I'll check in once I'm on the ground in Iraq, if not sooner, and I'll have some analysis up once I've gotten my bearings.

Labels: Iraq, personal

Oops. It looks like the military has denied access to myspace and youtube. Can blogger be far behind? It looks like I'll have to post more surreptitiously.

On the other hand, this only makes my commitment to telling it like it is even more pressing. It seems to me that the only proper response to government encroachments on freedom of speech is to speak more freely. I hope I can do that.

Hat tip: Sully.

Labels: Iraq, liberty, military

I've kept this blog largely anonymous for some very good reasons, mostly having to do with