Keys to Success in Iraq

I attended Sen. Barack Obama's speech on Iraq in Clinton today. First, off I was rather impressed that he has attracted Zbigniew Brzezinski as an advisor to his campaign. Mr. Brzezinski introduced Obama.

The actual pullout plan was a small part of a speech that was focused on the need for a pull out as a prerequisite to re-engage America's diplomatic and political efforts to secure peace not only in Iraq but in the region. Obama promised to personally conduct diplomacy to this end.

Obama also stated that a final resolution must come from the Iraqi people as part of a new constitutional order. He mentioned a soft partition as a possible solution but stressed that it must be the Iraqis' decision, not one imposed from above.

He focused on the cost of the war in both lives, money and in the things not done: education, healthcare, etc.

Good speech. Rational, and as many have said, there are no good choices left in Iraq any more. Only bad choices and worse choices. A lot of this is straight out of the Iraq Study Group proposals from last year. The rest just common sense.

Mock this (or any Democrat's) plan if you must. But compare it to the Bush administration's Keys to Success:



----------------
Now playing: Pearl Jam - Black (2004 Remix)
via FoxyTunes

Gen. Petraeus' Dirty Job

I have no doubt at all that Gen. Petraeus is one of the most capable field commanders the US Armed forces have produced in a generation. His command of the 101st Airborne in the early years of the war (how sad that we are referring to the "early years") showed that he "got it," about the new kind of war fighting that would be required to give us any chance of success in Iraq.

His reward was to be given a promotion and tasked with the thankless work of attempting to turn the sow's ear of the Bush administration's strategy in Iraq into a silk purse of a stable unified state.

We should have no doubts that Gen. Petraeus' report will reflect the political will of the administration. No matter what his personal judgement he will in the end, be a good soldier and take orders. It is a dirty job, but a soldier's duty is full of distasteful tasks.

Last week, Hilzoy of the Obsidian Wings blog wrote a guest post over at Andrew Sullivan's blog while Sullivan was on honeymoon. There really isn't much to add to it. It logically picks apart everything that will be said in defense of the surge and continuing engagement in Iraq under the current strategy.

Read all of: Thirteen Ways Not to Think About the Petraeus Report:

(1) "The surge is working; we should maintain it until we've done the job." -- This is not an option. Fred Kaplan:

"Adm. Michael Mullen, the incoming chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, testified at his confirmation hearings last month that the "surge" in Iraq could not be sustained at present levels past April 2008.

There are a few ways to remedy this shortfall, all of them impractical or infeasible. First, soldiers' tours of duty in Iraq, which were recently extended from 12 months to 15 months, could be stretched further to 18 months. However, Gen. Richard Cody, the Army's vice chief of staff, told me, during a recent interview for a separate story, that this idea is "off the table." As it should be: The relentless rotation cycles have already compelled many soldiers and junior officers to quit the Army; pushing duty and tolerance much further might not just exhaust the troops beyond limits but spark an exodus from the armed forces."

This means that the surge will end next April. When we ask ourselves whether or not to maintain it until then, we should recognize that the only question worth asking is: will keeping the extra troops there until April improve matters? Asking whether it would improve matters to keep them there in perpetuity, or "until we get the job done", is beside the point: we can't.

(6) But look at all our military progress! Doesn't that count for anything? -- In a word, no; at least not without political reconciliation. What is true in Anbar is true across the board: if the Iraqi government uses the increased security our troops are providing for them to create the conditions for real peace, then we will have accomplished something of real importance. If, on the other hand, they do not, then once our troop levels go back to normal, or lower, we'll be right back where we started. The entire effect of the surge will have been to produce a temporary fix, not a lasting improvement.

Don't take my word for it, though: here's Bush's nominee to be head of the Joint Chiefs:

"Unless the Iraqi government takes advantage of the "breathing space" that U.S. forces are providing, Mullen said, "no amount of troops in no amount of time will make much of a difference." (...)

In written responses to committee questions, Mullen warned that "there is no purely military solution in Iraq" and that the country's politicians "need to view politics and democracy as more than just majority rule, winner-take-all, or a zero-sum game." Absent that, he said, the United States will be forced to reevaluate its strategy."

Everything turns on whether or not the Maliki government takes advantage of the surge to make real progress towards reconciliation. And, of course, they haven't. From a briefing accompanying the National Intelligence Estimate:

"Political reconciliation has come to a "standstill," said a senior intelligence official who briefed reporters on the condition of anonymity."

And from a story on the recent GAO report:

"One of eight political benchmarks -- the protection of the rights of minority political parties in the Iraqi legislature -- has been achieved, according to the draft. On the others, including legislation on constitutional reform, new oil laws and de-Baathification, it assesses failure.

"Prospects for additional progress in enacting legislative benchmarks have been complicated by the withdrawal of 15 of 37 members of the Iraqi cabinet," it says. An internal administration assessment this month, the GAO says, concluded that "this boycott ends any claim by the Shi'ite-dominated coalition to be a government of national unity." An administration official involved in Iraq policy said that he did not know what specific interagency document the GAO was citing but noted that it is an accurate reflection of the views of many officials."

And, of course, there is no real Sunni buy-in to the government, which makes reconciliation even more unlikely.

And without reconciliation, any improvements in security will vanish as soon as we do.

The sad truth of the matter is that it took a brutal strongman like Saddam Hussein to hold the diverse population of the state of Iraq together. The only realistic option for a post-invasion success was to maintain the Baathist civil service and Army in place and to put an overwhelming US presence on the ground -- an MP on every corner. This is the model that worked in post-WWII Germany. It was proven and as close to a sure thing as there is in international politics.

The Bush Administration had other plans. Plans that they have stuck with for four years despite overwhelming evidence that not only were they not working, they were almost surely never going to work. Even the best generals leading the best army in the world wanting it with all their hearts and blood can make it work.

The inevitable decay of Iraq will come for Bush's successor(s). The responsibility for dealing with it will be theirs and ours in the years to come. But at the end of the day, all can and should know that the responsibility for these results rest squarely at the feet of Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld. The blood is on their hands.

----------------
Now playing: Kinski - "Boy, Was I Mad!"
via WOXY

From the mouths of the All American Division...

Seven active duty paratroopers in the 82nd Airborne Division pen a must-read Op-Ed in the Sunday New York times,The War as We Saw It:

Viewed from Iraq at the tail end of a 15-month deployment, the political debate in Washington is indeed surreal. Counterinsurgency is, by definition, a competition between insurgents and counterinsurgents for the control and support of a population. 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. As responsible infantrymen and noncommissioned officers with the 82nd Airborne Division soon heading back home, we are skeptical of recent press coverage portraying the conflict as increasingly manageable and feel it has neglected the mounting civil, political and social unrest we see every day. (Obviously, these are our personal views and should not be seen as official within our chain of command.)

...

A few nights ago, for example, we witnessed the death of one American soldier and the critical wounding of two others when a lethal armor-piercing explosive was detonated between an Iraqi Army checkpoint and a police one. Local Iraqis readily testified to American investigators that Iraqi police and Army officers escorted the triggermen and helped plant the bomb. These civilians highlighted their own predicament: had they informed the Americans of the bomb before the incident, the Iraqi Army, the police or the local Shiite militia would have killed their families.

A courageous speaking out by these gentlemen. It will be interesting indeed to see what politicians and the chattering classes make of this in the next week. Will these men be hung out to dry? Will they become celebrity darlings of the anti-war movement?

Or might the honest opinions of serving grunts finally begin to bend the support of that faithful few in Congress upon whose continuing support the Bush Administration's war plans increasingly depend?

Memorial Day: The Myth of Media-Driven War Fatigue.

It's Memorial Day weekend. It is dreary and raining and I can't get out and work on the pond like I wanted to. So, I'm catching up on my reading.

Over at Talking Points Memo, Josh Marshall recently published a letter from a reader that, I think sums up very well the feelings and opinions of the small number of Americans who either still support the war outright or support it in concept. TPM reader JDG writes:

Yes, our war in Iraq is very much like the one in Viet Nam, but not the way its opponents mean the comparison. What's similar is this: Both of these war efforts by the United States have been sabotaged, probably on purpose, and we will probably lose this one as we lost Viet Nam, by the media's practice of showing us the daily body count in color on the nightly news every single day, again and again and again and again!

It is simply impossible for a democratic country to pursue any war, no matter how justified, to a successful conclusion under those conditions.

No matter what you think of the merits of the present war, it's obvious that two choices lie before America: either we go back to our pre-1950 policy (which most countries in the world still follow) of wartime censorship -- not just of information that would help enemy commanders, but also of information that would undermine our own public's morale -- or we may as well pack it in and invite China to rule our country, since we can never possibly win another war.

As I said, I think it is important to confront this idea head on. It is, among a class of mostly male mostly conservative individuals a very popular and persuasive notion and it goes like this: The media prevents us from winning because the American people cannot stand to see their boys and girls bleeding and dying on a daily basis. It undercuts morale over the long haul and makes victory impossible by undermining the support for the war at home.

This is wrong and here is why. War is, for at least one of the participants, an existential threat to the nation. In other words, loose and your country -- at least as far as you currently know (and possibly love it) ceases to exist. That existential threat tends to bring everyone together not just in spite of the constant parade of death and destruction, but because of it.

America never faced an existential threat in Viet Nam or in Iraq. They were and are optional wars fought on vague principles of national security policy. The American nation has not been forced and hasn't even been asked to sacrifice in any way for the support of these wars. On the contrary, the Bush Administration has encouraged Americans to go on about their normal daily lives. In the words of the Vice President, "the American way of life is non-negotiable."

So, it is of very little shock then that the vast majority of the American people, who do not serve and who increasingly do not even know people who serve in the military have no stake in the war. It is an abstract thing, thousands of miles away. Their only connection to it is through the media. And the media shows it for what it is, a disaster. A disaster for the Iraqi people, a disaster for American standing in the world, and a disaster for those brave men and women who march off to war in our names.

But do think back to the times where America DID face existential threat. Think back to World War II. Did the media show such graphic scenes of American casualties? Not as much, no. But did every American know a Gold Star Mother? Did every American have a close family member serving in the military? Did every American participate in rationing, in scrap drives, in victory gardens, buy war bonds? The answer to all those questions is, Yes.

Think back to the Civil and Revolutionary wars. Those wars were fought on our own soil. For many, the battles and the marshaling of forces occurred literally in their back-yards. Did a large majority of Americans personally witness the carnage that results from combat? Was there TV in 1862? No. Was there Matthew Brady and other photographers using that new technology to bring the carnage of the war into people's homes? Yes. Photo of African American voulunteers collecting the bones of the dead following the Battle of Cold Harbor. John Reekie, July 1865. Library of Congress.

In all those cases America and American's stayed in for the long haul, against the odds (1941, 1863) and ground out the inevitable victory. In all those cases, the difference between victory and defeat was strong leadership and a strong national sense of purpose. THAT is what we lack in America today. The media is merely a long-focus lens that lets us see events ocurring a long way away. But without the leadership to give us confidence that our men and women are there for a good purpose, those images from abroad will eat away at the conscience of America. Without the leadership to give all of us at home a shared vision, shared purpose that can help us set aside the ugly images abroad and see a brighter future, the names of the dead will haunt us. Eventually, the will to fight will flag and fail.

No, it is not the media's fault for showing us what IS. It is the Administration's fault for lying to us about what Iraq WAS and for not providing America with a compelling sense of mission in Iraq. Lord knows they tried. But you can't just fake this shit. People know, instinctively whether something is right or wrong. You can't make a silk purse out of a sow's ear and you can't make 2003 into 1941. People know the difference.

And THAT is why the vast middle of America has turned its back on the war and on the administration. America can fight and win any war that has the backing of the American people. But war has changed. There probably (God willing) will never be another large, conventional war fought. The wars of the future will be guerrilla, open-source wars. It will require very good reasons and very compelling arguments for Americans to get behind those sorts of bloody, drawn-out affairs.

It requires a sense of noble purpose, an inspiring call to arms by our leaders and probably a burden shared with other nations. It requires that we feel morally and legally justified in doing what we have to do, ideally with international institutions behind us. It requires some sort of sense that not only is progress towards the final goal possible, but evidence that it is occurring.

All of those things are missing in America's endeavors in 2007. So, on this Memorial Day, 2007 I, along with so many parents across the country simply ask myself the same question that was asked in 1970, "who will be the last child to die for a mistake?"

A Plea for Help and Iraq Quandry In a Nutshell

I feel really bad to not have been able to post in nearly two weeks. However, I really am just barely keeping my head above water between work, home and mom. So, seriously, if anyone knows a good, experienced networking and Windows server operating system tech, they should get in touch. If that person is not from the Clinton area, that's okay, I can sic the Clinton Area Development and Chamber People on him/her to give the hard sell on why living in Clinton is so great.

A ommenter on Andrew Sullivan's blog writes in with what I feel is the most forthright description of the horrible no-win situtation we are in in Iraq.

I just read your post comparing the tragedy at VT and the daily terror in the lives of ordinary Iraqis. This kind of observation seems to summarize a lot of my anxiety over the future of our involvement in Iraq. Along with many Americans I wish that we could extracate ourselves from Iraq and get our men out of the way of an inevitable civil war. At the same time I hear the words of men like John McCain and am forced to remember that the cost of leaving Iraq would be an increase in the chaos within Iraq. I also know that our absence from Iraq wouldn't remove our responsibility for the violence that we helped seed in 2003.

What if a Shia vs. Sunni civil war were to progress unchecked in our absence were to progress into genocide? One of America's great sins is its blind eye to the kind of terror that is occuring in Darfur today. Thoughts like these often lead me to think that the only morally right move in Iraq is to commit ourselves totally to the future peace of that nation. I want so much to wash my hands of Bush's war, but in a democracy all the people must take responsibility for the actions of our government. It is our responsibility to restore the peace that we stole from the children of Iraq, even if it costs us even more than it already has.

That, in a nutshell, is why I still can't fully get behind any of the let's-just-wrap-it-up-and-get-the-hell-out-of-there, plans being espoused (mostly) by Democrats. Because that would evade our responsibility for the monstrous fuckup that we have created there and surely condemn to death thousands of the people we allegedly went there to rescue from tyrrany.

Leaving now (or in six or nine months) even with the very persuasive logic that accompnies it -- e.g. the Iraqis don't want us there anymore, they really do need to work it out for themselves, still leaves us scot free and poor brown people on the other side of the world holding the bag for our mistakes.

And really, isn't that the sort of stuff that got us here in the first place?

None of this should in any way be construed as endorsement of any sort of the halfwitted policies of this Administration or it's lackeys. There isn't going to be a happy ending in Iraq. Americans need to learn to man up and swallow the bitter pill.

Iraq is just the first of many coming down the pike in the next few years.

DMR: Iowa National Guard Equipment Levels 7th Lowest

Blizzard? Tornado? Flood? Outbreak? The Guard has half its gear in Iraq. Missions Overseas Sap Iowa Guard of Gear:

he Iowa Army National Guard has one of the worst equipment shortages of National Guard organizations in the country for responding to large-scale terror attacks or natural disasters, a federal report released Wednesday said.

The U.S. Government Accountability Office, an investigative arm of Congress, said the Iowa National Guard had 42.5 percent of its authorized equipment inventory for nondeployed forces as of November 2006. That was seventh-lowest among the 50 states, the District of Columbia and three U.S. territories.

However, there is no question the global war on terrorism has taken a toll on the Iowa National Guard's equipment inventory. In the fall of 2001, the Iowa Guard had 74 percent of its authorized equipment inventory, Hapgood said.

The federal report said the majority of state national guards have capabilities to handle typical domestic missions, but shortages exist and concerns remain about the ability to respond to large-scale, multistate events. The massive, state-led and federally funded response to Hurricane Katrina illustrates the Guard's important role in such events, the study added.

The Army has budgeted $21 billion between 2005 and 2011 to modernize the Army National Guard and expand its equipment inventory, the GAO report said. However, this equipment may be deployed to meet overseas demands, and the Army has not specified how much equipment will remain in the United States for domestic missions, the study said.

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.

Bosworth Field for Bush In Iraq

The chief problem that has bedeviled the Bush Administration from the beginning in its Iraq project is that it seems to have been working with a construct of the Middle East of its dreams and desires, not of the Middle East as it is; 20,0000 years old, cradle of Western Civilization, Judaism, Christianity and Islam, a modern technological society burdened by cultural ideas from the Middle Ages, a bustling, brawling collection of tribes, clans, cults and idealists of every stripe imaginable in the human condition.

For a long time, the Administration and its supporters succeeded in getting many if not most of the American people to buy into its imaginary construct. It did this in much the same way as Peter Pan revived Tinkerbell. If we all clap hard enough and believe hard enough it will be so.

Well, facts are uncomfortable and uncompromising things. They will not be denied and they keep forcing themselves upon you. Anyone who is not completely psychotic will eventually be faced with accepting that their fantastic world view does not work in the world of facts and will change their outlook.

Not so our Glorious Leader. After a solid renunciation of his policies at the polls in November, it had the change to reevaluate. After the promulgation of the findings of the Iraq Study Group, an unwieldy collection of pretty much every rational idea put forth in the last four years for dealing with the situation in Iraq, the Administration could have made some hard choices.

Instead it has decided to throw yet more bodies into the fray. The plan Bush put forward on Wednesday would raise the troop levels to about what they were in mid-2005. This final "surge" will be combined with a push to get the Iraqi government to make a series of reforms that have been in the works since the government was empaneled in January of last year. That government has known that it needed to do these things and has not yet been able to do them. Expecting them to do so know is yet more wishful thinking.

Many Democrats have been branding this plan an "escalation" of the war in Iraq. Normally, I don't hold with such semantic shenanigans. However, it seems that escalation is indeed the word to be used here. The plan put forth to once-and-for-all occupy and pacify large swaths of Bahgdad by placing US soldiers in the neighborhoods 24/7 will force the militias who currently excersise defacto confrol to stand and fight. This will lead to an escalation in the level and ferocity of fighting.

Secondly, the entire framing of this plan as the last-best-hope for victory puts a huge mental pressure on military commanders and rank-and-file soldiery to pull out all the stops in day-to-day fighting. Former US Special Forces Colonel and Middle Eastern Expert, Pat Lang recently wrote an article Surging To Defeat:

As Robert Gates takes the helm at the Pentagon today, he is probably already aware that Vice President Dick Cheney and President George W. Bush are resolute in their decision to stay the course in Iraq (without using those words) for the next two years. What he probably does not realize is that the U.S. military is about to commit hara-kiri.

A “surge” of the size possible under current constraints on U.S. forces will not turn the tide in the guerrilla war. Reinforcement of Baghdad several thousand U.S. troops last summer simply brought on more violence. Those who believe still more troops will bring “victory” are living in a dangerous dream world and need to wake up.

Moreover, major reinforcement would commit the US Army and Marine Corps to decisive combat in which there are no more strategic reserves to be sent to the front. It will be a matter of win or die in the attempt. In that situation, everyone in uniform on the ground will commit every ounce of their being to a hope of “victory,” and few measures will be shrunk from.

Analogies come to mind: the Bulge, Stalingrad, the Battle of Algiers. It will be total war with all the likelihood of excesses and mass casualties that come with total war.

To take up such a strategy and force our armed forces into it would be an immoral course of action, both for our troops and for the thousands more Iraqis bound to die.

Sen. Gordon Smith, R-Ore., spoke for many of us last Thursday on the Senate floor:

“I, for one, am at the end of my rope when it comes to supporting a policy that has our soldiers patrolling the same streets in the same way, being blown up by the same bombs day after day. That is absurd. It may even be criminal. I cannot support that anymore.”

Yesterday, when George Stephanopoulos asked Smith what he meant by “criminal,” he replied:

“I said it. You can use any adjective you want, George. But I have long believed in a military context, when you do the same thing over and over again, without a clear strategy for victory, at the expense of your young people in arms, that is dereliction. That is deeply immoral.”

If adopted, the “surge” strategy will be even worse than that. It will be something we will spend a generation living down.

Lastly, this week comes the news that US forces are going after Iranian operations in Iraq. The operation in Irbil last week took down a facility that was borderline to seizing diplomats. This is not necessarily a strategically or operationally poor decision. The Iranians are working actively with their clients and allies in Iraq and working their interests. The interests of Iran are not the interests of the US forces there and they could be considered legitimate targets.

However, Iran is not (yet) a belligerent in this conflict. More behavior such as that this week could change that. I believe that imprisoning Iranians qualifies as an escalation at least in the diplomatic sense that doesn't do much to advance our interests in stabilizing Iraq.

So, at the end of the day we are left with a President who has rejected all attempts by friends and foes alike at urging less-bad bad options in his Iraq adventure. He maintains is now obviously psychotic imaginary world-view of how things may be in Iraq and urges us towards one final effort to "win" "victory." He stands alone now, his former Congressional followers abandoning him in droves after seeing their colleagues cut down in November. Bush stands now alone, only his most loyal retainers by him like Richard III. A horse, a horse! My kingdom for a horse!

Yet none have the courage or the will to gainsay the President his powers to send unknown hundreds (thousands?) of American men and women to their doom, to undoubtedly kill thousands more Iraqis -- innocent and not, and to commit yet more crimes of war.

Would that he will suffer the torments of Richard on the eve of battle.

Give me another horse: bind up my wounds.
Have mercy, Jesu!--Soft! I did but dream.
O coward conscience, how dost thou afflict me!
The lights burn blue. It is now dead midnight.
Cold fearful drops stand on my trembling flesh.
What do I fear? myself? there's none else by:
Richard loves Richard; that is, I am I.
Is there a murderer here? No. Yes, I am:
Then fly. What, from myself? Great reason why:
Lest I revenge. What, myself upon myself?
Alack. I love myself. Wherefore? for any good
That I myself have done unto myself?
O, no! alas, I rather hate myself
For hateful deeds committed by myself!
I am a villain: yet I lie. I am not.
Fool, of thyself speak well: fool, do not flatter.
My conscience hath a thousand several tongues,
And every tongue brings in a several tale,
And every tale condemns me for a villain.
Perjury, perjury, in the high'st degree
Murder, stem murder, in the direst degree;
All several sins, all used in each degree,
Throng to the bar, crying all, Guilty! guilty!
I shall despair. There is no creature loves me;
And if I die, no soul shall pity me:
Nay, wherefore should they, since that I myself
Find in myself no pity to myself?
Methought the souls of all that I had murder'd
Came to my tent; and every one did threat
To-morrow's vengeance on the head of Richard.

Insurgents Using New Ideas Choke Iraq, No New Ideas Here Though

James Glanz writes in today's New York Times that Iraq Insurgents Starve Capital of Electricity:

Over the past six months, Baghdad has been all but isolated electrically, Iraqi officials say, as insurgents have effectively won their battle to bring down critical high-voltage lines and cut off the capital from the major power plants to the north, south and west.

The battle has been waged in the remotest parts of the open desert, where the great towers that support thousands of miles of exposed lines are frequently felled with explosive charges in increasingly determined and sophisticated attacks, generally at night. Crews that arrive to repair the damage are often attacked and sometimes killed, ensuring that the government falls further and further behind as it attempts to repair the lines.

Mr. Wahid said that last week, seven of the nine lines supplying power directly to Baghdad were down, and that just a trickle of electricity was flowing through the two others. Western officials agreed that most of the lines were down, but gave somewhat higher estimates on the electricity that was still flowing.

And in a measure of the deep disunity and dysfunction of this nation, when the repair crews and security forces are slow to respond, skilled looters often arrive with heavy trucks that pull down more of the towers to steal as much of the valuable aluminum conducting material in the lines as possible. The aluminum is melted into ingots and sold.

While Mr. Glanz goes on to give a solid, workmanlike recitation of the facts and figures of the country's electrical infrastructure and problems with same, he really misses the point that what he's describing is textbook 4th Generation War: as it starves the Malaki government of credibility and bleeds the population's will to resist... whatever it is the bad guys want. I'm still unclear on that part, but I'm sure the people dynamiting the electrical grid have a diamond-sharp agenda.

So, as the bad guys continue to innovate the nation of Iraq out of existence the powers that be in D.C. as well as the wannabes continue to trot out ideas that are either too little, too late (more troops) or just plain blame the victim rationalizations to get the hell out (Visack, Levin, et. al.). None of which are going to help us gain control or regain the initiative in Iraq.

Sure, it is easy to throw stones. Do I have any answers to Iraq? No. I've thought about it a lot and I really don't see any possible "victory" scenario. Just varying shades of failure, shame and regional unrest.

But the one ray of hope that do have is that the tools needed to, a) prevent another Iraq debacle from happening or, b) help inoculate the United States against internal 4th Generation Warfare tactics are becoming apparent.

Radical Transparency is one path. Pulling the curtain back from the wizards at the controls and allowing the wisdom of crowds to identify and close weaknesses. As John Robb puts it:

A newly vigilant and networked public will push for much greater levels of transparency in government and corporate operations, using the Internet to expose, publish, and patch potential security flaws. Over time, this new transparency, and the wider participation it entails, will lead to radical improvements in government and corporate efficiency.

Certainly the current tactics of Chomsky-esque manufacturing of consent and outright propaganda are reaching the point of diminishing returns, just as an over-stimulated public is also rejecting the ever more omnipresent advertising industry. As Robb continues:

Within the context of 21st century warfare, moral cohesion and innovation (particularly given open source opponents) have emerged as paramount concerns. Up until now, nation-states have relied on propaganda to mobilize the public for war and maintain the effort. In parallel, black box decision making has been relied upon to produce ongoing improvements in capabilities/technology. However, in this long war, these methods are more of a liability than an asset. Propaganda has proven to be both ineffective and harmful (see my critique: "Propaganda Wars" for more on this) -- and -- black box decision making has yet to yield any meaningful improvements in capabilities. In my view, an update to our decision making process (to take advantage of vastly superior information flows) through radical transparency would be a far superior means of maintaining our moral cohesion and innovation over the long haul.

Many of the tools required are in our hands. What is needed is some event or catalyst that can force open the black boxes of power and capital and bring a more transparent society. Secrecy (and privacy) may be dead, but that doesn't neccesarily have to be a bad thing.

The Gathering Storm: Peak Oil

The dark predictions of Jim Knustler are a frequent part of my reading. I generally try to take his Cassandra-like musings with a grain of salt. But lately I've found it harder and harder to brush them off.

I'm working on some alternative energy and gas tax research for the upcoming legislative session. I'm confronted daily by complete denial of the situation we are in. The current thinking on the gas tax is to raise revenue in order to... build more roads.

Anyway, here is Kunstler's latest musing with comments and footnotes. The Storm Perfected

Last week, I had one of those clarifying moments when the enormity of the American fiasco stirred my livers and lights again. I was riding in a car at sundown between St. Cloud and Minneapolis on I-94 through a fifty-mile-plus corridor of bargain shopping infrastructure on each side of the highway. The largest automobile dealerships I have ever seen lay across the edge of the prairie like so many UFO landing strips, with eerie forests of sodium-vapor lamps shining down on the inventory. The brightly colored signs of the national chain fried food parlors vied for supremacy of the horizon with the big box logos. The opposite lane was a blinding river of light as the cars plied north from the Twin Cities to these distant suburbs in the pre-Thanksgiving rush hour.

All that tragic stuff deployed out on the prairie was but the visible part of the storm now being perfected for us. On the radio, Iraq was coming completely apart and with it the illusion of America being able to control a larger set of global events -- with dire implications for all the glowing plastic crap along the interstates, and the real-live people behind the headlights in those rivers of cars.

The main fresh impression I had amidst all this is how over it is. The glowing smear of auto-oriented commerce along I-94 (visible from space, no doubt) had the look of being finished twenty minutes ago. Beyond the glowing logos lay the brand new residential subdivisions full of houses that now may never be sold, put up by a home-building industry in such awful trouble that it may soon cease to exist. If suburbia was the Great Work of the American ethos, then our work is done. We perfected it, we completed it, and, like a brand new car five minutes after delivery, it has already lost much of its value.

I had essentially the same feeling drving home on I=88 last Saturday passing the North Aurora mega-retail corridor.

The chief failure in American politics lately has been the inability to appreciate the relationship between how we live here and how other people in other lands support us with their resources -- oil from the Middle East, human labor and money saved from the fruits of human labor from the Far East. The oil obviously runs all the cars and the money from China and Japan supports our debt (and incidentally pays for building ever more big box stores and fried food emporia). The Middle East is now so close to exploding that we may not get so much oil from them in the years ahead. China and Japan have stepped back from buying American debt in the form of US Treasury certificates.

The dollar has been taking a beating against other currencies for months and reached a 20-month low against the Euro yesterday. The Chinese are leading the rush away from dollars. Washington Post and Gold Seek on this.

Even if there were no exogenous forces operating, the proverbial Man-From-Mars casual observer would have to conclude that America has built all the shopping venues it will ever need (and far beyond), and certainly more single-family housing subdivisions useful only in a happy motoring meta-system. But the exogenous events are out there and they are going to assert their power to make us uncomfortable and to alienate us from the very stuff that we have poured all of our wealth and spirit into.

The New York Times headlined yesterday that the US government might try to start negotiations with Iran and Syria over the fate of Iraq -- an idea so preposterous that it might have been a wire-story from The Onion. Iran and Syria have no interest in the matter whatsoever except in the failure of America to control events, and the humiliation entailed by that failure, which is happening on its own. So the story is a clear signal of our desperation that we are even pretending to make overtures.

See my earlier post that references John Robb on the increasing inability of the US to continue to control events there.

For the US military this is a tragedy of classical Greek dimensions, a playing out of implacable forces despite its heroism or even good intentions. But for the American public, back home, enjoying the bright lights of the WalMarts and the steaming heaps of baby back ribs, and the comfort of the ride home with the latte plugged into the cup holder and Jay-Z's inspirational thoughts playing on the car stereo -- it's really the end of the road.

I've been saying for a long time that as our illusions dropped away, the US economy would fall on its face. I think the process is underway, especially with last week's movement of the dollar against the Euro. All the elements are now set for a full-throttle depression in which currency loses value while credit dries up and incomes are lost. You get a fire-sale of assets that behaves like a deflation while the dollar itself inflates. The Federal reserve can't possibly drop interest rates if foreigners will not buy our bonds.

Losing your house to the re-po man is a major illusion-breaker. The housing bubble has popped and entered a downward self-reinforcing feedback loop that will be understood as a death-spiral of valuation. Even if nominal house prices stayed close to where they are, dollar inflation would signify a real drop in value. The jobs associated with the bubble -- everything from the legions of house-framers to the realtors to the creative mortgage hawkers to the Crate-and-Barrel furniture elves -- will drop into a black hole. Mortgage obligations will not be met, credit card payments will stop, house refinancings will no longer be possible as equity dissolves, the WalMart associates will get their pink slips, the vacancy signs will go up in the strip malls, and a mighty sob will be heard above the prairie wind.

Barry Ritholtz at The Big Picture went off last week on the fudged numbers of the National Association of Realtors and reality behind the situation of the housing market. Here and here.

This is really a tight spot. Wider war in the Middle East is hardly out of the question, with Iran and a broad array of jihadistas emboldened by America's flounderings in Iraq. A year from now, perhaps, or less, we will lose our access to a substantial portion of the imported oil that we run all our stuff on. The sodium vapor lamps will flicker out. The last taco will be served. The US public will have to start paying attention and making other arrangements. I believe what Garrison Keilor says about the people in Minnesota. Scratch below the surface, you'll find a thoughtful, practical mentality. I believe that when they can't do anymore of what they're doing now, they'll turn around and do something else.

The problem that I see with Kunstler's Keillor-based silver-lining is that in order for people to make adjustments they have some sort of notion of the changes in the offing in order for that "thoughtful, practical mentality" to make useful plans. But I don't see anyone in a prominent public policy position really laying the facts out for the American people. And that includes the Democratic party by the way.

The problem, as Kunstler has often stated, is that the American people have a deep, DEEP psychological investment in the current auto-oil-suburban way of life. When and if the means to continue to feed that way of life are suddenly brought up short, thay are going to be very ill-prepared to change. The weight of popular support will go to those who promise -- whatever the cost in wealth or liberty -- to maintain the status quo.

Iraq: Beginning of Endgame?

I'm sure many have noticed my absence. Coming to grips with the new job.

Took a nice trip into Chicago to spend Thanksgiving with Laura's family there. I intentionally shied away from news but couldn't escape the images on the TV. Now, after a bit of catch-up upon arriving back home it seems time to provide some hardcore analysis.

I think that this may be the beginning of the great unravelling of our little experiment in bringing democracy to the Arab peoples. It will unfold slowly and in fits and starts but I think this is the beginning of the slow slide down into disaster. In February of this year, I wrote that the bombing of the Shiite Shrine of the Imam Hasan Al Askari would be the historical bookmark that signaled the end of any hope for a unified Iraq. I think that the events of this Thanksgiving similarly signal the effective end of American control over events and the beginning of the end for the current Iraqi governement.

John Robb breaks down the Social Disruption In Sadr City

While the governments of Iraq, Iran, Syria, and the US engage in the motions of legacy power politics, Iraq's global guerrillas are decisively rending the social fabric of Iraq and potentially the Middle East. November 23, 2006 provided a solid example of an inflection point in this type disruption (like the attack on Samarra earlier this year), with a triple car bomb in Baghdad's Sadr city (200 dead and 250 wounded) and an attempted overrun of Iraq's health ministry (run by Sadr's party).

First, this attack eliminates the remaining legitimacy of the current government. It is also a deep blow to the legitimacy of Sadr's movement (despite attempts to shift blame to the US Army for the failure) since it couldn't even provide basic security in both of its showcase properties. Second, to regain legitimacy and exact revenge, the Mehdi army will certainly go onto the offensive (in contrast to inactivity the government). This offensive will likely force them to move beyond abductions and into large scale assaults in order to replicate the level of this attack. By doing so, it will achieve a goal of the attackers: it will put these militias in direct confrontation with the US army and the few functional Iraqi army units as they range beyond the borders of Sadr city.

They key question that should be in the minds of all Americans now is: What's the best way to get our men and women out of there? Because we will have to get out. It is just a matter of how bloody a trail leave behind.

Can't leave you kids alone for a minute.

I deliberately did not pick up a paper or watch TV (none of the latter to be had anyway) for the past five days. I did sneak a peak at the Guardian's football page to find out how the World Cup final ended up. Things didn't work out schedule-wise and I spent most of the time the game was on wandering around the Pine Ridge Reservation looking for a place to watch it. Wanna see the definition of a blank stare? Walk into a bar on an Indian reservation and ask them to put on the World Cup.

Anyhoo... So, I fire up the old laptop this morning to catch up on things and find that I had driven back in time to 1982. It would be trite and yet sadly true to cop the typical Middle American attitude towards the Arab-Israeli conflict, e.g. "They're all fucking nuts, let them just slaughter each other and be done with it." But, we can't do that as we are all quite hip deep in the entire matter and there is that pesky carotid artery of oil flowing from the region.

I'd like to make a quick point about this. It is really sort of a meta-comment on the entire mess that has been going on in that region for the last couple of months. This guy Jamie K at Blood and Treasure points to an anonymous source who writes:

…the capture of Israeli troops, first one in the south, then two in the north, has galvanized Israel. The kidnappings represent a level of Arab tactical prowess that previously was the Israeli domain. They also represent a level of tactical slackness on the Israeli side that was previously the Arab domain. These events hardly represent a fundamental shift in the balance of power. Nevertheless, for a country that depends on its cultural superiority, any tremor in this variable reverberates dramatically. Hamas and Hezbollah have struck the core Israeli nerve. Israel cannot ignore it.

It had to happen sometime I suppose but the terrorists are actually getting smart. It probably has a lot to do with the very harsh,Darwiniann world of being a terrorist. Suicide bombers notwithstanding, if one wants to have a long and ordistinguishedd career in the global jihad business one needs to be very smart and very tacticallysophisticatedd. The dumb ones tend to get weeded out pretty fast. There are a lot of very smart, very tactically and technically sophisticated people with the financial backing of very large nation states trying to kill them all the time.

And what I fear is thatHezbollahh, Hamas, et. al. have finally begun to take seriously the notions of Fourth Generation or Open Source Warfare. I would urge readers to spend some time exploring those two links as well as bookmarking John Robb'sexcellentt site, Global Guerillas which I have linked in the sidebar as well.

The essential concepts of 4th Generation War aren't anything new. It is really just old-school guerilla tactics and cell-based organization mixed in with the speed and depth of the information resources of networks taking place in the environment of the globalized, interdependent economy and mediasphere. The result is a force multiplier that makes it possible for non-state combatants, i.e.Hezbollahh and AlQaidaa to negate the huge technological and force advantages of traditional military powers, i.e. the U.S. and Israel.

From the Defense in the National Interest Website:

Perhaps most odd of all, being seen as too successful militarily may create a backlash, making the opponent's other elements of 4GW more effective.

The authors of the first paper on the subject captured some of this strangeness when they predicted:

The distinction between war and peace will be blurred to the vanishing point. It will be nonlinear, possibly to the point of having no definable battlefields or fronts. The distinction between 'civilian' and 'military' may disappear.

If indeed it is the case thatHezbollahh, et. al. have finally started getting smart about this kind of thing, and there is evidence that they are, then we are in for some interesting times. And I mean in the Chinese sense.

Game On? Game Over.

In the not-so-distant future we will mark February 21, 2006 as the day the situation in Iraq went permanently out of our control. The bombing and resultant destruction of much of the shrine of the Imam Hasan al Askari yesterday will in all likelihood scupper any hope of sectarian peace or a national unity government. Journalist, Chris Albritton writes from Baghdad and pulls no punches.