Iraq Wrap-Up: Containing Chaos

This is a sort of wrap-up post following recent events. Clearly, the President's plan to add a division's worth of troops to the forces there will be a complete failure. Here is a month-by-month breakdown of the number of troops in Iraq since the beginning of hostilities. You can see that by adding 21,500 to the 132,000 already in country we will achieve a force just shy of the level we had in Nov. - Dec. 2005.

As Bush sends more young men and women off to Iraq, the country threatens to become even more of a meat grinder. The loss of four helicopters in the last two weeks to enemy fire indicates that the opposition has made some significant gains. Whether through tactical technique gains together with or possibly solely gaining weapons capabilities to begin to interdict the last reasonably safe transportation mode for coalition forces. How long do you suppose before they bring down a large cargo aircraft?

Also apropos of the increasing tactical nous of the opposition, John Robb points out the sophistication and planning clearly behind the Jan 23 attack that targeted Blackwater mercenaries and their client, a State Department Official.

• Hook. A State Department official protected by a Blackwater PSD (personal security detail) convoy was attacked.


• Line. QRF (quick reaction force) ground teams were dispatched from the Green Zone to relieve the convoy. These teams were ambushed. One retreated and the others were halted.


• Sinker. Two Blackwater Boeing Little Birds (small helicopter gunships) were dispatched to provide support. One was shot down and the other was damaged and forced to return to base. Recovery teams found the four bodies (one more died on the other helo that returned to the green zone) from the helicopter crash were stripped of their weapons.

Note that there is not a secret service, special forces, or regular army security detail for this State Department offical but a private mercenary team from Blackwater. I guess no one reads Gibbon any more than anyone reads Kipling.

Now it is not good for the Christian’s health to hustle the Aryan brown,
For the Christian riles, and the Aryan smiles and he weareth the Christian down;
And the end of the fight is a tombstone white with the name of the late deceased,
And the epitaph drear: “A Fool lies here who tried to hustle the East.”

Speaking of Fools... The President continues to send rather sharp hints to Iran to stay the hell out of Iraq. Hints that Iran will certainly ignore. Why?? Op. Cit. Kipling. They think they can outlast us and become the regional superpower. And we continue to stumble down the road to the conflict that will break the back of the US Military. John Robb again:

Here's a systems view of the escalating tensions between the US and Iran and why it will likely result in war. The current situation is open loop -- an open loop system is one where all participants are regularly adding inputs without any consideration of the output/outcome. Feedback loops, like direct diplomatic contact or the use of international bodies/mediators to adjudicate disputes, that could typically serve to mitigate further deterioration have been intentionally turned off by those that want this conflict to occur. As are result, inputs from allies like Israel and Saudi Arabia (both fearful of growing Iranian power), impetus from guerrillas/militias forcing sectarian conflict, fears over ongoing nuclear development, mutual military preparation for conflict, and a need to assign blame for escalating counter-insurgency failures continue to drive it forward. At some point in the not too distant future, unless the feedback loops are reinstated, the system will inevitably produce an outcome that will force a war.

Solutions? More talk less actions. This involves setting aside ideology and laying to rest the boogeymen status of nations such as Syria and Iran and engaging in a little good, old-fashioned Realpolitik to save our asses. Robb again:

How do we contain this chaos (?) has become the question upon which the entire global economy rides. The spread of this war would eliminate Iraqi oil production entirely and put at risk the production available from Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, and Iran. It would also set-up the US, which should be the main force for global cooperation, for an extremely hard landing both domestically and internationally, which may take a decade or more to recover from.

The first and foremost approach to doing this is to lessen the potential of state vs. state warfare. A war between the US/Israel and Iran would quickly destabilize every state in the Middle East and allow them to fall prey to open source war like Iraq. The best method for lessening the chance of this war is to open connections with both Iran and Syria (with Syria as the prime target) to reduce their connectivity to non-state groups. This not only reduces internal dynamics (that breathing your own exhaust creates) it can also help to make it more difficult for global guerrillas to generate an attack (another black swan -- I'm thinking of attacks that could do this, are you?) that serves as a pretext for regional war. Other ideas can be found in a report by Daniel Byman and Kenneth Pollack at the Saban Center (Brookings) called "Things Fall Apart: Containing the Spillover from and Iraqi Civil War.". This report is just the start, much more thinking needs to be done.

Democrats and Republicans both need to raise their gazes from the relative how-many-Marines-can-dance-on-the-head-of-a-pin types of arguments about the "surge" or "escalation," or whatever which is completely beside the point. Instead, Sens. Biden, Hegel et. al. need to get busy dragging the Administration kicking and screaming into the reality-based world in time to save a few thousand lives. Because, this, shit is just the beginning of an ever-increasing death spiral.