• Thanks for stopping by. Logging in to a registered account will remove all generic ads. Please reach out with any questions or concerns.

Top UK Gen says get out of Iraq - fast

tomahawk6 said:
I am not ready to write off Iraq as a failure,to do so would cheapen the sacrifice of so many. For their sake we need to see Iraq through to some type of successful conclusion. The only way we can lose in my opinion is if we quit,like we did in Vietnam. The enemy cannot defeat us on the battlefield. Their only hope like Vietnam is to persuade us to quit. We dont have the huge anti-war movement that forced us to quit. I think most americans want victory. People must realize that each time you quit you embolden the enemy. At some point the enemy is on our doorstep and we either surrender or fight and the price will be far higher. We have a chance to stop radical islam on a critical front. A victory in Iraq will be huge but it wont happen quick enough for some.
I agree with tomahawk6. I believe that we have to leave Iraq with a base of people capable of fighting off Iranian, Syrian and Turkish advances. That's the only reasonable exit strategy. To leave now would assure a far more brutal occupation and wider war, this could spread to our Nato allies, ensnaring Canada deeper into the conflict. If we fail to plant the seed of hope and responsibility in Afghanistan and Iraq, you can bet there will be someone else who will. I also agree with the US approch on the situation, (dissolving the army). On the other hand something should have been done to make sure those formerly uniformed had something to do with their now abundant free time. The British approch worked well to serve their own beliefs that they were minimizing casualties and creating a peaceful environment, but of course, you dont make deals with the devil and come out unscathed. Of course, eventually the situation must be handed over to the Iraqis, but thats the key point in the debate. Who are the Iraqis? Do we consider those loyal to a foreign power capable of being agents for Iraq? Certainly, the only way to guarentee the power of Iraq stays in Iraq is to leave with a strong police and military. If we leave Iraq now, not only do we surrender a lot of moral authority in Afghanistan (for creating a democratic society), but we embolden terrorists worldwide. I, personally, tire of advocating my position. I am content to let the left and the right and all of the foreign propagandists sell us out, or even til we start losing territory and allies. I feel it will take a more concentrated attack pattern on nations in the West, including some conventional attacks, for us to fight back, as a nation, in ernest. Leadership can bring about a convincing pull but I don't see it happening. I see a defeatist attitude seeping into conservative thought recently, including the general. It really is that. Now, that being said, it's backed by a lot of evidence that we should leave. The problem is the shortsightedness of it. Yes, the insurgency is adapting and getting organized, fueled by terrorists and foreign powers. Yes, casualties continue, but can we imagine the chaos if there is a general retreat without anything to fill the void? How quick it would spill over. The media would also project this pattern onto Afghanistan, effecting our mission there (we left Iraq, we should leave Afghanistan too). Personally, as I said, I'm tired of trying to advocate for people that my fellow canucks have a hard time relating to. Rest assured, if Afghanistan were a province of Canada, in Canada, involving Canadians being subject to strict Shar'ia law.. we'd have a far different reaction. So maybe that's what it will take.
 
Rest assured, if Afghanistan were a province of Canada, in Canada, involving Canadians being subject to strict Shar'ia law.. we'd have a far different reaction. So maybe that's what it will take.

Dare, are you suggesting that Canada should get into the Empire business.  I know the Turks and Caicos want in, and some have suggested adding Haiti but Afghanistan as well?
 
tomahawk6 said:
I am not ready to write off Iraq as a failure,to do so would cheapen the sacrifice of so many. For their sake we need to see Iraq through to some type of successful conclusion. The only way we can lose in my opinion is if we quit,like we did in Vietnam.

I agree with this assertion as well - the notion of being invulnerable on the battlefield is, however, irrelevant IMHO.  That was a given from the day the invasion started and, in winning the will of the Iraqi people (the real aim of the occupation), is not really a factor.

The question remains on how to do so.  A passive, stand back approach?  Partitioning and sending each its own way?  Continue the current course with trying to salvage a viable state?

PS:  Here is a summary by Bing West of the events to date:

http://usacac.leavenworth.army.mil/CAC/milreview/English/SepOct06/West.pdf

I disagree with part of his first assertion; I believe that the insurgency was much more complex than simply Sunni rejectionism, but other than that, I found his piece to be pretty good.
 
Kirkhill said:
Dare, are you suggesting that Canada should get into the Empire business.  I know the Turks and Caicos want in, and some have suggested adding Haiti but Afghanistan as well?
I think that we require a lot more of a concerted effort to pull off what is needed in Afghanistan and elsewhere. Nowhere do I see imperialism being utilized by us or our immediate allies. As I have suggested elsewhere, the reason we are really losing is in the realm of ideas in the short term and medium term. We have a third leg of new internet media that is growing fast, but not in time. A lackluster political leadership unable to sell the grand ideas they attempt to engage in. Frankly, Afghanistan should be a no-brainer to sell to the full spectrum of politics. Women so oppressed as they were (and still are to a large extent). People keep trying to splice up our enemies into little bits and pieces by factionalizing them without contending with the fundamentals of what motivates terrorism. While it is fine to treat it as unconventional warfare trying to win the war block by block, we still need a large overall plan. Would we have let Nazi propaganda be broadcast into Nazi Germany just after we defeated them? Would we allow Nazi rallys during this time? When you hear 10 people yelling at you one thing and one whispering another, which voice are most going to follow, regardless of it's accuracy?

I think Canada should be in the Peace Making business. Which means we are not acquiring a country as possession, but pacifying it so it causes us and our allies no further harm. Right now we are doing a great job with what limited resources have been applied but we still need more, not less. A retreat in Iraq would put (a *lot*) more momentum on the side of the opposition. The point of this large and vaunted exercise is to put momentum on our side pushing back extremism which is slowly encroaching into the West. It is my opinion that both wars should have been over and done with a long time ago, but the cleverness and adaptability of our enemies should not be overlooked. Nor should the subversives and sympathizers amongst us. It my opinion that the war of words is being lost in the White House by the administration because they are mostly poor public speakers. We have left CNN, CBC, Fox News, and the enemy to frame our product and our intentions. What the backers of the war on terrorism need to do is to be far more effective in communicating the threat. It took 5 years to more officially identify Islamic fascists as the enemy. Many have a hard time accepting that term.Why? Because no one has bothered to explain why they are exactly that. No one has bothered to explain who the enemy is and what they are about. What motivates them? What causes them concern? Too much focus and emphasis has been on the "hating our freedoms" line and such as so forth. It is true, but it does not address the most important question in all things, which is "Why?" It also does not grow much in terms of the identity of the enemy. Most of what I am talking is a critique of our (and our allies) ineffective diplomatic and persuasive abilities. It's not about creating Americans or Canadians or Europeans.. it's about draining a culture of its desire to kill us Americans, Canadians and Europeans.
 
Thanks for the clear response and explanation Dare. I have to admit that my question was asked a bit facetiously.
 
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/yeariniraq/view/

Interesting documentary by PBS Frontline.  Basically, it seems to be a 1-hour review of the general points from accounts like Cobra II and Fiasco - it allows you to skip 2000 pages of detailed reading.  :p

I still think that these accounts do not do enough justice in pointing out Saddam's recognition and planning of the insurgency prior to the invasion; the link above to the excerpts from Malcolm Nance's book go into this.  It does, however, highlight the tactical and strategic errors of the post-invasion occupation that in effect:

A)  Aided Hussein's plan due to an absence of any realistic plan to put the claypot back together again.

B)  Allowed the religious guys moved in at the expense of the Ba'athists.

Irregardless of any claims of "we didn't know at the time", I feel that putting a 25-year old and four of his frat buddies in charge of high level strategic planning is indicitive of the poor and amateurish approach that the administration had towards Iraq.  Although 2003-2004 is a much different time with different conditions on the ground in Iraq than late 2006, I do think that these realities are important in informing us on what sort of expectations we should have over the eventual outcome of the Iraqi State.

 
Britons overhaul Basra's police
By David Axe
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
October 23, 2006


BASRA, Iraq -- British-led forces in this southern city of 2 million are speeding up an effort to reform the city's troubled police force with a heightened awareness that they are running out of time.
    Operation Sinbad, begun in August, has seen as many as 1,000 British soldiers backed up by 2,000 Iraqi troops "surge into Iraqi police stations and raise standards," said Brig. James Everard, senior commander of coalition forces in southern Iraq.
    The operation has been overshadowed by British Army chief Gen. Richard Dannatt's admission -- unsurprising to commanders in Basra -- that his forces are increasingly unwelcome in Iraq.
    "We are in a Muslim country, and Muslims' views of foreigners in their country are quite clear," Gen. Dannatt told the Daily Mail earlier this month. "Whatever consent we may have had ... has largely turned to intolerance."
    Brig. Everard said Operation Sinbad is an effort to "win back some of that consent" so that British forces can set up their eventual withdrawal. Reform of Iraqi security forces is a prerequisite to any large reduction of British troops.
    Basra's 7,000 police are notoriously corrupt even by Iraqi standards, and death squads wearing police uniforms and traveling in police vehicles have abducted and killed Sunnis and journalists.
    "One thing the average Baswari fears is that white pickup with the blackened window," said British forces spokesman Maj. Charlie Burbridge, referring to the death squads' preferred mode of transport.
    To reform the police, British forces must first be free to move around Basra's dangerous neighborhoods. To that end, British and Iraqi engineers drawing from $80 million in U.S. funds have begun hundreds of reconstruction projects in the city, employing thousands of formerly unemployed residents.
    Weeding out the most corrupt police and death-squad members means first conducting a census of a force that, in recent years, has eluded the oversight of outnumbered and overstretched coalition forces. Just 8,000 coalition troops, most of them British, are responsible for four southern provinces with a combined population of more than 5 million.
    On the morning of Oct. 1, a small team led by Royal Military Police Cpl. Stacey Jackson, 27, visited a Basra police station to register 300 Iraqi officers and their weapons and to administer a written test intended to measure literacy and knowledge of basic policing.
    Two Iraqi officers sat side by side on an exposed bed frame, openly reading each other's answers, their brows furrowed in confusion. A grinning Cpl. Jackson explained that, anticipating efforts to cheat, she had prepared 10 different versions of the exam.
    Commanders have not plotted a firm end date for Operation Sinbad, instead pledging to sustain their efforts until the police are reasonably reliable -- or until local resistance becomes too great.
    "We're seeing inch-by-inch progress," Maj. Burbridge said.
    Even before Sinbad, there were some encouraging signs. In August, Basra police mobilized to repel an infiltration by 2,000 rural tribesmen whose sheik had ordered them to kill the provincial governor.
    The ensuing clash had a "very Iraqi resolution," said British Army Lt. Col. Simon Winkworth, 41, whose team coordinates police reform efforts. There was a two-hour gunbattle in which thousands of rounds were fired and no one was killed. Having exhausted their ammunition, the tribesmen departed.

http://washingtontimes.com/world/20061022-114249-9502r.htm
 
Part 1 of 2

I'm reviving this old thread because I think this article, a "letter" from Professor (and Colonel Ret'd) Andrew J. Bacevich to Paul Wolfowitz fits rather neatly, after all these years, because it offers an important insight, I think, into the Bush Doctrine which Prof Bacevich has, elsewhere, described as "immoral, illicit, and imprudent." It is reproduced under the Fair Dealing provisions of the Copyright Act from Harpers:

http://harpers.org/archive/2013/03/a-letter-to-paul-wolfowitz/?single=1&utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=twitter
A Letter to Paul Wolfowitz
Occasioned by the tenth anniversary of the Iraq war

By Andrew J. Bacevich

From the March 2013 issue

Dear Paul,

I have been meaning to write to you for some time, and the tenth anniversary of the beginning of the Iraq war provides as good an occasion as any to do so. Distracted by other, more recent eruptions of violence, the country has all but forgotten the war. But I won’t and I expect you can’t, although our reasons for remembering may differ.

Twenty years ago, you became dean of the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies and hired me as a minor staff functionary. I never thanked you properly. I needed that job. Included in the benefits package was the chance to hobnob with luminaries who gathered at SAIS every few weeks to join Zbigniew Brzezinski for an off-the-record discussion of foreign policy. From five years of listening to these insiders pontificate, I drew one conclusion: people said to be smart — the ones with fancy résumés who get their op-eds published in the New York Times and appear on TV — really aren’t. They excel mostly in recycling bromides. When it came to sustenance, the sandwiches were superior to the chitchat.

You were an exception, however. You had a knack for framing things creatively. No matter how daunting the problem, you contrived a solution. More important, you grasped the big picture. Here, it was apparent, lay your métier. As Saul Bellow wrote of Philip Gorman, your fictionalized double, in Ravelstein, you possessed an aptitude for “Great Politics.” Where others saw complications, you discerned connections. Where others saw constraints, you found possibilities for action.

Truthfully, I wouldn’t give you especially high marks as dean. You were, of course, dutiful and never less than kind to students. Yet you seemed to find presiding over SAIS more bothersome than it was fulfilling. Given all that running the place entails — raising money, catering to various constituencies, managing a cantankerous and self-important faculty — I’m not sure I blame you. SAIS prepares people to exercise power. That’s why the school exists. Yet you wielded less clout than at any time during your previous two decades of government service.

So at Zbig’s luncheons, when you riffed on some policy issue — the crisis in the Balkans, the threat posed by North Korean nukes, the latest provocations of Saddam Hussein — it was a treat to watch you become so animated. What turned you on was playing the game. Being at SAIS was riding the bench.

Even during the 1990s, those who disliked your views tagged you as a neoconservative. But the label never quite fit. You were at most a fellow traveler. You never really signed on with the PR firm of Podhoretz, Kristol, and Kagan. Your approach to policy analysis owed more to Wohlstetter Inc. — a firm less interested in ideology than in power and its employment.

I didn’t understand this at the time, but I’ve come to appreciate the extent to which your thinking mirrors that of the nuclear strategist Albert Wohlstetter. Your friend Richard Perle put the matter succinctly: “Paul thinks the way Albert thinks.” Wohlstetter, the quintessential “defense intellectual,” had been your graduate-school mentor. You became, in effect, his agent, devoted to converting his principles into actual policy. This, in a sense, was your life’s work.

Most Americans today have never heard of Wohlstetter and wouldn’t know what to make of the guy even if they had. Everything about him exuded sophistication. He was the smartest guy in the room before anyone had coined the phrase. Therein lay his appeal. To be admitted to discipleship was to become one of the elect.

Wohlstetter’s perspective (which became yours) emphasized five distinct propositions. Call them the Wohlstetter Precepts.

First, liberal internationalism, with its optimistic expectation that the world will embrace a set of common norms to achieve peace, is an illusion. Of course virtually every president since Franklin Roosevelt has paid lip service to that illusion, and doing so during the Cold War may even have served a certain purpose. But to indulge it further constitutes sheer folly.

Second, the system that replaces liberal internationalism must address the ever-present (and growing) danger posed by catastrophic surprise. Remember Pearl Harbor. Now imagine something orders of magnitude worse — for instance, a nuclear attack from out of the blue.

Third, the key to averting or at least minimizing surprise is to act preventively. If shrewdly conceived and skillfully executed, action holds some possibility of safety, whereas inaction reduces that possibility to near zero. Eliminate the threat before it materializes. In statecraft, that defines the standard of excellence.

Fourth, the ultimate in preventive action is dominion. The best insurance against unpleasant surprises is to achieve unquestioned supremacy.

Lastly, by transforming the very nature of war, information technology — an arena in which the United States has historically enjoyed a clear edge — brings outright supremacy within reach. Of all the products of Albert Wohlstetter’s fertile brain, this one impressed you most. The potential implications were dazzling. According to Mao, political power grows out of the barrel of a gun. Wohlstetter went further. Given the right sort of gun — preferably one that fires very fast and very accurately — so, too, does world order.

With the passing of the Cold War, global hegemony seemed America’s for the taking. What others saw as an option you, Paul, saw as something much more: an obligation that the nation needed to seize, for its own good as well as for the world’s. Not long before we both showed up at SAIS, your first effort to codify supremacy and preventive action as a basis for strategy had ended in embarrassing failure. I refer here to the famous (or infamous) Defense Planning Guidance of 1992, drafted in the aftermath of Operation Desert Storm by the Pentagon policy shop you then directed. Before this classified document was fully vetted by the White House, it was leaked to the New York Times, which made it front-page news. The draft DPG announced that it had become the “first objective” of U.S. policy “to prevent the re-emergence of a new rival.” With an eye toward “deterring potential competitors from even aspiring to a larger regional or global role,” the United States would maintain unquestioned military superiority and, if necessary, employ force unilaterally. As window dressing, allies might be nice, but the United States no longer considered them necessary.

Unfortunately, you and the team assigned to draft the DPG had miscalculated the administration’s support for your thinking. This was not the moment to be unfurling grandiose ambitions expressed in indelicate language. In the ensuing hue and cry, President George H. W. Bush disavowed the document. Your reputation took a hit. But you were undeterred.

The election of George W. Bush as president permitted you to escape from academe. You’d done yeoman work tutoring candidate Bush in how the world works, and he repaid the debt by appointing you to serve as Donald Rumsfeld’s deputy atop the Pentagon hierarchy. You took office as Osama bin Laden was conspiring to attack. Alas, neither Rumsfeld nor you nor anyone else in a position of real authority anticipated what was to occur. America’s vaunted defense establishment had left the country defenseless. Yet instead of seeing this as evidence of gross incompetence requiring the officials responsible to resign, you took it as an affirmation. For proof that averting surprise through preventive military action was now priority number one, Americans needed to look no further than the damage inflicted by nineteen thugs armed with box cutters.

You immediately saw the events of 9/11 as a second and more promising opening to assert U.S. supremacy. When riding high a decade earlier, many Americans had thought it either unseemly or unnecessary to lord it over others. Now, with the populace angry and frightened, the idea was likely to prove an easier sell. Although none of the hijackers were Iraqi, within days of 9/11 you were promoting military action against Iraq. Critics have chalked this up to your supposed obsession with Saddam. The criticism is misplaced. The scale of your ambitions was vastly greater.

In an instant, you grasped that the attacks provided a fresh opportunity to implement Wohlstetter’s Precepts, and Iraq offered a made-to-order venue. “We cannot wait to act until the threat is imminent,” you said in 2002. Toppling Saddam Hussein would validate the alternative to waiting. In Iraq the United States would demonstrate the efficacy of preventive war.

So even conceding a hat tip to Albert Wohlstetter, the Bush Doctrine was largely your handiwork. The urgency of invading Iraq stemmed from the need to validate that doctrine before the window of opportunity closed. What made it necessary to act immediately was not Saddam’s purported WMD program. It was not his nearly nonexistent links to Al Qaeda. It was certainly not the way he abused his own people. No, what drove events was the imperative of claiming for the United States prerogatives allowed no other nation.

I do not doubt the sincerity of your conviction (shared by President Bush) that our country could be counted on to exercise those prerogatives in ways beneficial to all humankind — promoting peace, democracy, and human rights. But the proximate aim was to unshackle American power. Saddam Hussein’s demise would serve as an object lesson for all: Here’s what we can do. Here’s what we will do.

Although you weren’t going to advertise the point, this unshackling would also contribute to the security of Israel. To Wohlstetter’s five precepts you had added a silent codicil. According to the unwritten sixth precept, Israeli interests and U.S. interests must align. You understood that making Israelis feel safer makes Israel less obstreperous, and that removing the sources of Israeli insecurity makes the harmonizing of U.S. and Israeli policies easier. Israel’s most effective friends are those who work quietly to keep the divergent tendencies in U.S.-Israeli relations from getting out of hand. You have always been such a friend. Preventive war to overthrow an evil dictator was going to elevate the United States to the status of Big Kahuna while also making Israelis feel just a little bit safer. This audacious trifecta describes your conception. And you almost pulled it off.

Imagine — you must have done so many times — if that notorious mission accomplished banner had accurately portrayed the situation on the ground in Iraq in May 2003. Imagine if U.S. forces had achieved a clean, decisive victory. Imagine that the famous (if staged) photo of Saddam’s statue in Baghdad’s Al Firdos Square being pulled down had actually presaged a rapid transition to a pro-American liberal democracy, just as your friend Ahmed Chalabi had promised. Imagine if none of the ensuing horrors and disappointments had occurred: the insurgency; Fallujah and Abu Ghraib; thousands of American lives lost and damaged; at least 125,000 Iraqis killed, and some 3 million others exiled or displaced; more than a trillion dollars squandered.

You expected something different, of course. Shortly before the war, you told Congress:

It’s hard to conceive that it would take more forces to provide stability in post-Saddam Iraq than it would take to conduct the war itself and to secure the surrender of Saddam’s security forces and his army. Hard to imagine.

Your imagination led you to foresee a brief conflict, with Iraqis rather than U.S. taxpayers footing the bill for any mess left behind.

After all, preventive war was supposed to solve problems. Eliminating threats before they could materialize was going to enhance our standing, positioning us to call the shots. Instead, the result was a train wreck of epic proportions. Granted, as you yourself have said, “the world is better off” with Saddam Hussein having met his maker. But taken as a whole, the cost-benefit ratio is cause for weeping. As for global hegemony, we can kiss it goodbye.

What conclusions should we draw from the events that actually occurred, rather than from those you hoped for? In a 2003 Boston Globe interview, Richard Perle called Iraq “the first war that’s been fought in a way that would recognize Albert’s vision for future wars.” So perhaps the problem lies with Albert’s vision.

One of Wohlstetter’s distinguishing qualities, you once told an interviewer, was that he “was so insistent on ascertaining the facts. He had a very fact-based approach to policy.” Albert’s approach was ruthlessly pragmatic. “It derived from saying, Here’s the problem, look at it factually, see what the questions are that emerged from the thing itself, so to speak.” Then confront those questions.

One of the questions emerging from the Iraq debacle must be this one: Why did liberation at gunpoint yield results that differed so radically from what the war’s advocates had expected? Or, to sharpen the point, How did preventive war undertaken by ostensibly the strongest military in history produce a cataclysm?

Not one of your colleagues from the Bush Administration possesses the necessary combination of honesty, courage, and wit to answer these questions. If you don’t believe me, please sample the tediously self-exculpatory memoirs penned by (or on behalf of) Bush himself, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Rice, Tenet, Bremer, Feith, and a small squad of eminently forgettable generals.

What would Albert Wohlstetter have done? After Iraq, would he have been keen to give the Bush Doctrine another go, perhaps in Iran? Or would he have concluded that preventive war is both reckless and inherently immoral? That, of course, had been the traditional American view prior to 9/11.

Would Albert endorse Barack Obama’s variant of preventive war, the employing of unmanned aircraft as instruments of targeted assassination? Sending a Hellfire missile through some unsuspecting jihadist’s windshield certainly fits the definition of being proactive, but where does it lead? As a numbers guy, Albert might wonder how many “terrorists” we’re going to have to kill before the mission accomplished banner gets resurrected.

And what would Albert make of the war in Afghanistan, now limping into its second decade? Wohlstetter took from Vietnam the lesson that we needed new ways “to use our power discriminately and for worthy ends.” In light of Afghanistan, perhaps he would reconsider that position and reach the conclusion others took from Vietnam: Some wars can’t be won and aren’t worth fighting.

Finally, would Albert fail to note that U.S. and Israeli security interests are now rapidly slipping out of sync? The outcome of the Arab Spring remains unknown. But what the United States hopes will emerge from that upheaval in the long run differs considerably from what will serve Israel’s immediate needs.

Given the state of things and our own standing ten years after the start of the Iraq war, what would Albert do? I never met the man (he died in 1997), but my guess is that he wouldn’t flinch from taking on these questions, even if the answers threatened to contradict his own long-held beliefs. Neither should you, Paul. To be sure, whatever you might choose to say, you’ll be vilified, as Robert McNamara was vilified when he broke his long silence and admitted that he’d been “wrong, terribly wrong” about Vietnam. But help us learn the lessons of Iraq so that we might extract from it something of value in return for all the sacrifices made there. Forgive me for saying so, but you owe it to your country.

Give it a shot.

Andy

End of Part 1


 
Part 2 of 2

Take note, please, of Prof Bacevich's concise summary of what he calls the Wohlstetter Precepts.

    "First, liberal internationalism, with its optimistic expectation that the world will embrace a set of common norms to achieve peace, is an illusion. Of course virtually every president since Franklin Roosevelt has paid lip service to that illusion,
    and doing so during the Cold War may even have served a certain purpose. But to indulge it further constitutes sheer folly.

    Second, the system that replaces liberal internationalism must address the ever-present (and growing) danger posed by catastrophic surprise. Remember Pearl Harbor. Now imagine something orders of magnitude worse
    — for instance, a nuclear attack from out of the blue.

    Third, the key to averting or at least minimizing surprise is to act preventively. If shrewdly conceived and skillfully executed, action holds some possibility of safety, whereas inaction reduces that possibility to near zero.
    Eliminate the threat before it materializes. In statecraft, that defines the standard of excellence.

    Fourth, the ultimate in preventive action is dominion. The best insurance against unpleasant surprises is to achieve unquestioned supremacy.

    Lastly, by transforming the very nature of war, information technology — an arena in which the United States has historically enjoyed a clear edge — brings outright supremacy within reach. Of all the products of Albert Wohlstetter’s fertile brain,
    this one impressed you most. The potential implications were dazzling. According to Mao, political power grows out of the barrel of a gun. Wohlstetter went further. Given the right sort of gun — preferably one that fires very fast
    and very accurately — so, too, does world order."

In his Remarks at the Presentation Ceremony for the Presidential Medal of Freedom on November 7, 1985, President Ronald Reagan said:

    "Albert Wohlstetter is a brilliant man with enormous strength of character. His intellectual integrity is renowned, and his analytical standards have been increasingly and unceasingly rigorous. He's been a steady hand in an uncertain time.
    His understanding on many levels has been indispensable to the well-being of the free world. In these last 30 years, Albert has been influential in helping to design and deploy our strategic forces -- an awesome task. He's sought
    ways to make our forces safer from attack, less destructive, and thereby less dangerous to us all. Many of the basic concepts and requirements for deterrence in the nuclear age -- analysis on which we've operated -- can be traced
    to this outstanding individual. And his work on the problem of nuclear proliferation gave us the insight we needed to better curb the irresponsible flow of sensitive material and technology.

    "Albert has always argued that in the nuclear age technological advances can, if properly understood and applied, make things better; but his point, and [that of his wife,] Roberta Wohlstetter's, has been a deeper one than that.
    He has shown us that we have to create choices and, then, exercise them. The Wohlstetters have created choices for our society where others saw none. They've taught us that there is an escape from fatalism."

Please note, also, Prof. Bacevich's critique of Paul Wolfowitz' implementation of Albert Wohlstetter's precepts:

    "The scale of your ambitions was vastly greater.

    In an instant, you grasped that the attacks provided a fresh opportunity to implement Wohlstetter’s Precepts, and Iraq offered a made-to-order venue. “We cannot wait to act until the threat is imminent,” you said in 2002.
    Toppling Saddam Hussein would validate the alternative to waiting. In Iraq the United States would demonstrate the efficacy of preventive war.

    So even conceding a hat tip to Albert Wohlstetter, the Bush Doctrine was largely your handiwork. The urgency of invading Iraq stemmed from the need to validate that doctrine before the window of opportunity closed.
    What made it necessary to act immediately was not Saddam’s purported WMD program. It was not his nearly nonexistent links to Al Qaeda. It was certainly not the way he abused his own people. No, what drove events was
    the imperative of claiming for the United States prerogatives allowed no other nation.

    I do not doubt the sincerity of your conviction (shared by President Bush) that our country could be counted on to exercise those prerogatives in ways beneficial to all humankind — promoting peace, democracy, and human rights.
    But the proximate aim was to unshackle American power. Saddam Hussein’s demise would serve as an object lesson for all: Here’s what we can do. Here’s what we will do."

I do not share Prof Bacevich's sense of moral outrage at the Iraq war but I think he is, after ten years (and nearly six years after his son (a US Army lieutenant) was killed in action in Iraq), properly assessing Paul Wolfowitz' contribution which was to provide the intellectual foundation for the Bush Doctrine. Paul Wolfowitz is a brilliant man, I admire his intellect and his accomplishments - even if they led America down a strategic rabbit hole.
 
Thanks for posting Edward.

Interesting read definitely.

 
1. "First, liberal internationalism, with its optimistic expectation that the world will embrace a set of common norms to achieve peace, is an illusion."

Self-evident.

2. "Second, the system that replaces liberal internationalism must address the ever-present (and growing) danger posed by catastrophic surprise."

What the "system" has to be capable of is reacting without over-reacting (WWI, 9/11).

3. "Third, the key to averting or at least minimizing surprise is to act preventively...Eliminate the threat before it materializes. In statecraft, that defines the standard of excellence.

Nothing new here; Sun-Tzu laid it down over 2000 years ago, but understood that the "standard of excellence" was victory without open warfare.

4. "Fourth, the ultimate in preventive action is dominion."

Almost self-evident, except for the fact that increasing complexity of "systems" makes it progressively easier for smaller rogue elements to fu<k things up.

5. "Lastly, by transforming the very nature of war, information technology — an arena in which the United States has historically enjoyed a clear edge — brings outright supremacy within reach."

Or to generalize and not be blinded by specifics, "strategy of technology", which works.  The cost of maintaining supremacy is arguably cheaper than the cost of war.
 
An alternative hypothesis has been posted in the book "The Next 100 Years", where the author suggests the United States actually does not "care" if it achieves victory, stalemate or defeate in the Middle East, but simply seeks to prevent stability in the region in order to prevent the formation of any regional Hegemon who can unify or dominate the region.

This is a variation of Halford MacKinderer's "Heartland" dictum; by preventing or denying the ability to dominate the "Heartland" there is no possibility of a Eurasian Superstate forming, hence there will be no Continental power capable of challenging the Oceanic power of the United States and its allies.

If this is true, the US and the West can fairly confidently "leave" the region now. The growing Shia/Sunni "civil war", collapsing regimes and demographic unbalancing, coupled with the "petrol revolution" that discounts the ME's oil reserves and reduces their economic and political impact on the rest of the world should provide the level of instability that would satisfy this element of the "American Grand Strategy" for decades to come. Should any element show signs of gaining control, it would be a simple matter to supply a small amount of aid to one of the opposing factions and disrupt the entire process again.
 
Thucydides said:
An alternative hypothesis has been posted in the book "The Next 100 Years", where the author suggests the United States actually does not "care" if it achieves victory, stalemate or defeate in the Middle East, but simply seeks to prevent stability in the region in order to prevent the formation of any regional Hegemon who can unify or dominate the region.

This is a variation of Halford MacKinderer's "Heartland" dictum; by preventing or denying the ability to dominate the "Heartland" there is no possibility of a Eurasian Superstate forming, hence there will be no Continental power capable of challenging the Oceanic power of the United States and its allies.

Are you sure that the US (or any modern nation state) is really that smart and capable? If so, that would be a historical first.
 
I have to agree with D&B on this one.  While I agree that it fits in nicely with MacKinderer's 'musings'.....I think it's more good luck than good planning
 
and it would have been leaked all over the 'net if it had been planned...

 
Getting out of Iraq without leaving behind a viable government and military,would have left the door open to Iranian hegemony.
 
One could argue that is common sense T6, and given that, perhaps not getting rid of the original Iraqi Gov and Army would have been the proper action to take upon taking Iraq.  Adopting a program like the De-Nazification of Germany may have been a much better program, and one that had been a clear prefered option prior.

 
Starting anew was the best solution.It sent the right kind of message to the population.Retaining the old would have tainted the new.
 
tomahawk6 said:
Starting anew was the best solution.It sent the right kind of message to the population.Retaining the old would have tainted the new.

...except that the majority of Iraqis, no matter their age, was the 'old'...to untaint the new would pretty much require the elimination of anyone capable of walking and talking.

The United States, through Paul Bremer, had made a promise to the mid- and lower-levels of the Ba'ath Party and the Iraqi military for moderated support, once Sadam and other high-ranking officials in the Ba'ath Party and the military were removed from power.  Coalition Provisional Authority, Orders #1 and #2, issued by Paul Bremer as the Executive Authority over Iraqi people, reneged on that promise.  In contrasting the pre-war influence with CPAO #1 and #2, many would support the Iraqi people's overall belief that the United States did not behave honourably.

One would be hard pressed to develop a more effective plan to create 100,000's of insurgents overnight.  The rest was pretty much a slug-fest...

:2c:

G2G
 
Good2Golf said:
...except that the majority of Iraqis, no matter their age, was the 'old'...to untaint the new would pretty much require the elimination of anyone capable of walking and talking.

The United States, through Paul Bremer, had made a promise to the mid- and lower-levels of the Ba'ath Party and the Iraqi military for moderated support, once Sadam and other high-ranking officials in the Ba'ath Party and the military were removed from power.  Coalition Provisional Authority, Orders #1 and #2, issued by Paul Bremer as the Executive Authority over Iraqi people, reneged on that promise.  In contrasting the pre-war influence with CPAO #1 and #2, many would support the Iraqi people's overall belief that the United States did not behave honourably.

One would be hard pressed to develop a more effective plan to create 100,000's of insurgents overnight.  The rest was pretty much a slug-fest...

:2c:

G2G

YUP.

I mean what else did they expect to have happen?  It was stupid school boy diplomacy at best.

Iraq and the area would have been so much better off with a functioning Army and Police (as well as a government). 

IF the USG was dedicated to the COA they undertook, they should have known it required about x5 the troop numbers they had in theatre.

 
Back
Top