Mahdi Strategery

Very interesting take on what's currently going on in Iraq. Certainly more compelling than the Bush/McCain hundred years' war. John Robb writes:

The Iraqi government's militias (Army/police) are on the offensive in Basra, in an attempt to eliminate the Sadr's militia. In contrast to previous engagements with the Mahdi army, this fight is going to more interesting. A leaner and more efficient Mahdi army has learned from Hezbollah's success in southern Lebanon that a carefully planned defensive strategy in combination with a strategic timer (a series of actions that inflict visible strategic damage to the opponent) can rapidly dissolve the political will of a weak adversary...

We're essentially moving in the direction of insurgency 2.0, or what the bloggers are calling open source warfare. The western powers represent monolithic Microsoft type corporations with buggy code, bloated operating, and increasing dependence on hardware upgrades just to do the same things they could do in earlier eras. The insurgents on the other hand are being portrayed as hackers: smaller, faster, and smarter whose only goal is to disrupt and cripple the powers that be by hitting them where their strongest (which is Rove-ian politics at its finest, come to think of it).

Robb's blog predicted what's currently going on in the green zone, as well as the disruption of the oil pipelines.

[Via Kung Fu Monkey]

The Victory That Nearly Was

This is probably old news to a lot of folks, but I was fascinated by Peter Bergen's account of the rise and fall and rise of Al Qaeda in last week's New Republic. The whole thing is worth reading but here's the part that really got to me (Bergen is describing the battle of Tora Bora as the daisy cutters smash down on Al Qaeda's heads):

Bin Laden was clearly in trouble, and he knew it. At some point during the battle, he would sustain a serious wound to his left shoulder. And, on December 14, around the time he finally fled Tora Bora, he wrote a final testament that included this bleak message to his offspring: "As to my children, forgive me because I have given you only a little of my time since I answered the jihad call. I have chosen a road fraught with dangers and for this sake suffered from hardships, embitterment, betrayal, and treachery. I advise you not to work with Al Qaeda."

Yet, even as bin Laden contemplated his own death and Al Qaeda seemed on the verge of defeat, Gary Berntsen, then commander of CIA operations in eastern Afghanistan, was worried. A gung-ho officer who speaks Dari, the local Afghan language, Berntsen realized that Afghan soldiers were likely not up to the task of taking on Al Qaeda's hard core at Tora Bora. In the first days of December, he had requested a battalion of Rangers--that is, between 600 and 800 soldiers--to assault the complex of caves where bin Laden and his lieutenants were believed to be hiding and to block their escape routes. That request was denied by the Pentagon, for reasons that have never been fully clarified. In the end, there were probably more journalists at Tora Bora than the 50 or so Delta and Green Beret soldiers who participated in the fight.

Why is it that we aren't hearing more about this in the debates? On the news? Where's the movie? This is amazing. Even Bin Laden thought the jig was up and then we just magicked him a new life, a do-over, a divine wind, via reverse deus ex machina. We handed the endgame over to the Afghans who unsurprisingly did pretty much nothing. More importantly, by the time the Bush administration realized something was wrong, they'd already moved on to Iraq.

The article also goes into interesting detail on our mutually fake friendship with Pakistan, the stupidity of Guantanamo, and documented proof that torture is neither useful nor necessary (hint: captured Al Qaeda, faced with an actual judicial process, will turn state's evidence as quick as a Michael Vick or an O.J. Simpson accomplice).

Cheerleaders of War

Glenn Greenwald had an interesting piece yesterday rebutting the Weekly Standard's so-called 9/11 generation. He writes

... the "9/11 Generation" is no different than its predecessor. One group is comprised of an extremely small percentage of young Americans who volunteer to fight in combat. Contrary to Barnett's attempt to hold them up as the symbolic prop of the "9/11 Generation," they actually represent a tiny percentage of Americans in this age group. A far larger percentage of young Americans fought in the Vietnam war than have fought in the 9/11 era.

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It is no surprise, then, that the younger generation of the political movement led by the Vietnam-era chickenhawks largely emulates their cowardly and principle-free behavior. The defining attribute of the Weekly Standard strain of the "9/11 Generation" is the unprecedented ease with which one can cheer on endless wars without having to make even the most minimal sacrifices to sustain them. That is the unique and defining attribute of the Weekly Standard/Hugh-Hewitt strain of the 9/11 Generation.

I think this a point that is long overdue, and my only objection is that it wasn't made back in 2004 when the Young Republicans were out in force campaigning for the re-election of the President. Do you think any of those guys have signed up?

On the other hand, I live in Colorado Springs with Fort Carson Army Base, Peterson Air Force Base, and the Air Force Academy. There are no chickenhawks here. And one can only hope that the next administration does more than just cheer-lead from the sidelines.

The War Debate

Peter Galbraith in Salon writes:

The Iraq war is lost. Of course, neither the president nor the war's intellectual architects are prepared to admit this. Nonetheless, the specter of defeat shapes their thinking in telling ways.

The case for the war is no longer defined by the benefits of winning -- a stable Iraq, democracy on the march in the Middle East, the collapse of the evil Iranian and Syrian regimes -- but by the consequences of defeat. As President Bush put it, "The consequences of failure in Iraq would be death and destruction in the Middle East and here in America."

A commenter responds:

Pathetic. More pathetic, though, is why liberals are so eager for American to lose. You're all such self-loathing wimps wringing your hands over every little perceived problem. You're so deluded by Bush Derangement Syndrome that you'd just as soon as see American lose if only it'll make Bush look bad.

This is the entire debate in a nutshell. Those on the left read the tea-leaves for signs of change while the right thumps its collective chest and says fight on.

Cheney's Empire

Matt Yglesias is finally saying what I've been hoping someone would say for years now: there never was a plan to leave Iraq. We're stay-ers:

...here we are, over four years after the invasion, and it's time to face up to the possibility that the Bush administration's policies in occupied Iraq haven't been driven exclusively by a sincere and idealistic commitment to the well-being of the Iraqi people and the principles of liberty and democracy. Shocking, yes. But not to put too fine a point on it, it's the imperialism, stupid.

Bush won't adopt a bargaining strategy that involves walking away as an option, because he's not willing to walk away. The objective is to retain Iraq as a platform for the projection of American military power in the region, to continue a larger regional struggle against Iran and Syria, to maintain physical control over Iraq's oil resources, etc.

That's right, it's the imperialism, stupid. We wanted a permanent base in the Middle East, just like we have in Germany, Japan, and Korea. The snag is that it wasn't a very good plan from strategic or logistical points of view. It leaves troops on the ground in a hostile environment (unlike those other places) and we don't have enough of them to accomplish our goals.

To defeat the insurgency we need more troops (more than even the surge could provide). More troops that we can't have without a draft. And if we have a draft, the public will revolt and demand withdrawal. So now we're stuck, trying to complete the same job with fewer resources. Can't move forward, can't move backward. Instead of Empire, we have Quagmire.