"I think we are winning. Okay? I think we're definitely winning. I think we've been winning for some time." - Gen. Richard Myers, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, on the Iraq War 04/26/05
"I just wonder if they will ever tell us the truth." - Harold Casey, Louisville, KY, October 2004.
What's that famous Maverick McCain saying about the Iraq War? Pat Lang at his Sic Semper Tyrannis blog has provided a text for a recent speech McCain gave at the mothership of neoconservatism, the American Enterprise Institute (AEI): Winning the War in Iraq 11/10/05.
The first thing that stood out to me about Maverick McCain's speech is what isn't there. Namely, there's not one word about weapons of mass destruction. The Congressional war resolution of 10/16/02 which the great Maverick enthusiastically supported called for war if all peaceful means were exhausted for assuring that Iraq had no more "weapons of mass destruction". Why does the bold Maverick not care about the goals of his own war resolution? Did he believe the case for war for which he voted? Or was he just cynically scamming the public just like all the non-maverick Republicans who voted for the resolution?
What does the legendary Maverick propose to do about the Iraq War? Well, let's see.
He wants more troops to send to Iraq and a larger Army to accomplish it. That's one way that the bold Maverick differs from the Bush administration.
It's going to cost more money and take "probably years", number not specified. No performance deadlines for the Iraqi government in Maverick McCain's plan. Apparently no negotiations with insurgent groups, either. Nothing I see in there about a pledge for no permanent bases.
The Maverick wants to have the Army shift to a counterinsurgency strategy. Not exactly easy to do with an Army completed oriented toward fighting the Soviet Army Central in conventional warfare. At least, the Maverick recognizes that it isn't happening so far:
Securing ever increasing parts of Iraq and preventing the emergence of new terrorist safe havens will require more troops and money. It will take time, probably years, and mean more American casualties. Those are terrible prices to pay. But with the stakes so high, I believe we must choose the strategy with the best chance of success. The Pentagon seems to be coming around on this, and top commanders profess to employ a version already. If we are on our way to adopting a true counterinsurgency strategy, that is wonderful, but it has not been the case thus far. After the recent operations in Tal Afar most American troops were redeployed from Tal Afar already, leaving behind Iraqi units with Americans embedded. I hope this will be sufficient to establish security there, but it is also clear that there has been no spike in reconstruction activity in that city.
Maverick McCain has a model for success in the war: the pacification of Fallujah. Yes, I know anyone who has followed it knows that the Fallujah operation involved levelling a large part of the city in conventional war operations that looked very little like model counterinsurgency. And the guerrillas still operate in the area.
That bold Maverick has a plan, you see. Two, three, many Fallujahs, to paraphrase Che Guevara's famous call.
Let's take a closer look at what that innovative Maverick McCain sees as a victory strategy: One year later: Fallujah mending, but still volatile by Scott Peterson Christian Science Monitor 11/16/05
Last February, US commanders declared Fallujah the "safest" city in Iraq. Yet, despite a constant US and Iraqi military presence and the strictest security measures of any Iraqi city, insurgents have begun filtering back, and the prevailing calm veneer of a city on the mend can disappear in a flash. US forces here are often confronted with street-level decisions about how best to build the trust of residents while maintaining security - and their own safety. Though attacks are limited, roadside bombs are increasingly common; marines say teenagers are being paid to throw grenades. ...
When more than 10,000 US troops and several thousand Iraqis launched "Operation Phantom Fury" on Nov. 8 last year, marine top brass promised a "decisive victory" against "mugs, thugs, murderers, and terrorists" that controlled Fallujah.
Today, the sound of rebuilding is everywhere: the scrape of shovels lifting sand, the tap of trowel on brick, as Fallujans haul away mountains of rubble and rebuild, often from scratch. But there is also a tension that did not exist earlier this year, when only a trickle of residents had come home - and attacks were negligible.
The insurgency is persistent enough that marines on Monday morning launched a large operation with several hundred US and Iraqi troops against Zaidon and other nearby targets south of Fallujah, using helicopters to insert units. Officers believe Zaidon has been a base for training insurgents to infiltrate into Fallujah. ...
"They don't like foreign armies in Fallujah," says resident Abdusalem al-Duleimi, referring to US and Iraqi forces. "The Iraqi Army here from the south, is no good." There is deep mistrust between Sunni Fallujans and Iraqi Army units,made up primarily of Shiites thatcontrol parts of the city.
Iraqi police in Fallujah have a different problem: Many are from Fallujah itself, and so are more vulnerable to intimidation.
"It's difficult to make a split with the bad guys, when your family is right there," says Capt. William Grube, the Fox Company commander. "Insurgents pay visits to people, and we can't be everywhere. They can't either, but it only has to happen one or two times for people to get the message."
"If we lose Fallujah, then we look like a bunch of yahoos who can't control one city. But we won't," says Captain Grube, from Emmaus, Pa. "It's a winnable war, if we make the right decisions."
Yep, that's Maverick McCain's model of success.
You have to give the Maverick credit for political strategy. Instead of raising a major stink over the torture that's actually been going on in the Bush Gulag and demanding a serious Congressional investigation, the Maverick instead sponsored an anti-torture rider to the defense appropriations bill that would have been purely cosmetic and ineffectual if he weren't dealing with an administration of power-drunk fanatics. If the Torture Administration didn't care about all the anti-torture laws currently on the books, why would anyone think they would obey a new one?
But Dick Cheney, the Dark Lord of Torture, insisted on making a fight over it. So the Maverick shows up on the cover of Newsweek as a bold opponent of torture. (Hello? Democrats. You know, you folks in the opposition party? Why is it Maverick McCain who the press winds up celebrating as the one out front on this issue?)
But the Maverick's position on the Iraq War shows how phony his dissident image is. Aside from some rhetorical differences, he's simply endorsing Bush's hopeless "stay the course" strategy. And it's not a more serious strategy coming from him than from Bush, even though the Maverick's packaging may be a little more exciting.
What I said in an earlier post about Bush is just as true for Maverick McCain: if he's serious about this victory strategy, he should call for an immediate tripling of the US troops in Iraq, for a massive draft to provide the troops to make that happen and a tax increase to pay for it all. Until he does that, all this vague talk about more troops and a bigger Army is just pandering to the Christian Right and other Republican hardliners.
And, like the generals and military strategists, the bold Maverick is warming up his stab-in-the-back theory for after the pullout happens. Just like Bush with his Veterans Day Democrats-are-traitors speech. Here's the Maverick:
If we leave Iraq prematurely, the jihadists will interpret the withdrawal as their great victory against our great power. Osama bin Laden and his followers believe that America is weak, unwilling to suffer casualties in battle. They drew that lesson from Lebanon in the 1980s and Somalia in the 1990s, and today they have their sights set squarely on Iraq. The recently released letter from Ayman al-Zawahiri, bin Laden's lieutenant, to Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, draws out the implications. The Zawahiri letter is predicated on the assumption that the United States will leave Iraq, and that al Qaeda's real game begins as soon as we abandon the country. In his missive, Zawahiri lays out a four stage plan - establish a caliphate in Iraq, extend the "jihad wave" to the secular countries neighboring Iraq, clash with Israel - none of which shall commence until the completion of stage one: expel the Americans from Iraq. Zawahiri observes that the collapse of American power in Vietnam, "and how they ran and left their agents," suggests that "we must be ready starting now." We can't let them start, now or ever. We must stay in Iraq until the government there has a fully functioning security apparatusthat can keep Zarqawi and his terrorists at bay, and ultimately defeat them.
He's even using the same Al-Qaeda[Zarqawi]-is-behind-it-all line that the administration uses. Bush at least has the excuse that he's probably detached enough from reality that it's possible he actually believes it.
And the Maverick is sure he knows what will happen if the US troops leave, even though the mission to get rid of Iraqi WMDs was accomplished before a single one of them stepped on Iraqi soil:
Some argue that it our very presence in Iraq that has created the insurgency, and that if we end the occupation, we end the insurgency. But in fact by ending military operations, we are likely to empower the insurgency. Zarqawi and others fight not just against foreign forces but also against the Shia, whom they believe to be infidels, and against all elements of the government. Sunni insurgents attack Kurds, Turcomans, Christians and other Iraqis, not simply to end the American occupation but to recapture lost Sunni power. As AEI's Fredrick Kagan has written, these Sunni are not yet persuaded that violence is counterproductive; on the contrary, they believe the insurgency might lead to an improvement in their political situation. There is no reason to think that an American drawdown would extinguish these motivations to fight.
Because we cannot pull out and hope for the best, because we cannot withdraw and manage things from afar, because morality and our securitycompel it, we have to see this mission through to completion.
Yeah, "some argue" that McCain is a marvelous Maverick, too. Can someone explain that one to me again?
Simon Jenkins addresses the British incarnation of the we-can't-leave-because-there'll-be-a-civil-war argument: Blair should stop playing fall guy in Rumsfeld's war games Guardian (UK) 11/16/05.
[British Secretary of State for Defense Secretary John] Reid claims that if Britain leaves soon there will be "civil war". I find no intelligence to support this classic imperialist excuse. There will be bloodshed in places, but there is that now. As Talabani knows, the occupation is protecting his ministers, but it is fostering militancy everywhere and hopelessly undermining his authority. The one hope for Iraqis is toown their country and be free of the humiliation of foreign rule. That cannot come too soon.
Another Brit, Robert Fisk, whose knowledge of Arabic has made him one of the best reporters on the Iraq War, also talked about Fallujah in a recent article. Describing an appearance of his at a conference on the war, he related the account given by F.J. "Bing" West: Administration thinks abuse sounds better than torture Seattle Post-Intelligencer 11/15/05. (Also at CommonDreams.org 11/16/05)
Plugging his new book "No True Glory: A Frontline Account of the Battle for Fallujah," he gave a frightening outline of what lies in store for the Sunni Muslims of Iraq.
I was sitting a few feet from Bing - plugging my own book - as he explained to the great and the good of New York how Gen. Casey was imposing curfews on the Sunni cities of Iraq, one after the other, how if the Sunnis did not accept democracy they would be "occupied" (he used that word) by Iraqi troops until they did accept democracy. He talked about the "valor" of U.S. troops - there was no word of Iraq's monstrous suffering - and insisted that the United States must "prevail" because a "Jihadist" victory was unthinkable. I applied the duke of Wellington's Waterloo remark about his soldiers to Bing. I don't know if he frightened the enemy, I told the audience, but by God Bing frightened me.
Our appearance at the Council on Foreign Relations was part of a series titled "Iraq: The Way Forward." Forward, I asked myself? Iraq is a catastrophe. Bing might believe he was going to "prevail" over his "Jihadists" but all I could say was that the American project in Iraq was over, that it was a colossal tragedy for the Iraqis dying in Baghdad alone at the rate of 1,000 a month, that the Americans must leave if peace was to be restored and that the sooner they left the better.
Many in the audience were clearly of the same mind. One elderly gentleman quietly demolished Bing's presentation by describing the massive damage to Fallujah when it was "liberated" by the Americans for the third time last November. I gently outlined the folk that Bing's soldiers and diplomats would have to talk to if they were to disentangle themselves from this mess -- I included Iraqi ex-officers who were leaders of the non-suicidal part of the insurgency and to whom would fall the task of dealing with the "Jihadists" once Bing's lads left Iraq. To get out, I said, the Americans would need the help of Iran and Syria, countries that the Bush administration is currently (and not without reason) vilifying.
We can't be sure of what will happen if the US pulls out. The disaster may continue to become worse and worse. But the question is are the war advocates ready for the kind of massive escalation that might provide some chance of success in the counterinsurgency war there. And if they are not, what sense does it make to fight an endless holding action?
Well, say the war fans, we have to wait until the Iraqi armed forces "stand up" so US troops can "stand down". Jenkins says of that notion:
Most intelligence regards any exit strategy based on a revived Iraqi army as fantasy. Its brigades will not be deployable outside their areas of primary recruitment, if only because the defence ministry is not that stupid. The ministry, like the police, is increasingly in thrall to one or other party militia. Army units deployed in possibly hostile provinces, at least without coalition cover, will almost certainly refuse to fight. Indeed the federal constitution appears to give regional governors the right of veto over such deployment. The reality is internal security in each of Iraq's three regions will be in the hands of police and unofficial militias. This has alreadybeen recognised in Kurdistan.
But that bold Maverick McCain says we've proved our success in Afghanistan:
The lesson of Afghanistan is instructive. There, the United States insisted - over initial objections from the Afghan Ministry of Defense - that each new military unit be carefully calibrated to include Pashtuns, Tajiks, Uzbeks, and others. This diversification *within* units serves three important functions: first, over time, it helps build loyalty to the central government; and second, it makes it more difficult for militias to reconstitute, should any decide to oppose the government. More broadly, the multiethnic Afghan National Army has provided a powerful psychological boost in a deeply divided country. Simply seeing Pashtuns and Tajiks and Uzbeks, in uniform and working together, has had a great impact on Afghan public opinion and the way Afghans imagine their country.
Simon Jenkins has a more informative summary of the situation in Afghanistan:
In Afghanistan Rumsfeld's plan is now almost complete. From the start Washington insisted that once it had fixed the election of its puppet, Hamid Karzai, to office, it would get out fast. Democracy was inplace. Afghanistan should be left to Karzai, the warlords, the Pashtun mullahs and the drug runners. If the Taliban returned, too bad. Find some stooge ally to throw up a smokescreen and get out.
Who is that smokescreen? The answer is John Reid. He is sending 4,800 British troops allegedly to wipe out the world's most lucrative opium trade and bring democracy, stability and protection to southern Afghanistan. How re-impoverishing Afghan peasants will encourage them to defy a resurgent Taliban is unclear. The identical strategy failed after the 2001 invasion. Already Nato's byzantine diplomats are fighting like rats in a sack over who will do what and where in the mountains of Khyber and the wastes of Helmand. Nato and Britain have been suckered to the miserable task of covering America's retreat. The Pentagon must be laughing fit to bust.
Maybe if Maverick McCain one day gets serious about what to do in the Iraq War, someone besides fawning reporters will have reason to take him seriously.
"Wars are easy to get into, but hard as hell to get out of." - George McGovernand Jim McGovern 06/06/05
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