Zakaria: It was Maliki who lost Iraq (with Dubya's help)

You can check out  Fareed Zakaria repeating his points from the Washington Post on CNN:

This week I heard Rush Limbaugh ranting that Obama "owned" what's happening in Iraq. He kept repeating that word, "owns," like it was a GOP talking point. 

What does that mean though?  It comes from the CEO-managerial culture where the top guy accepts ultimate responsibility for whatever happens on his watch.  Except, of course, the analogy falls short here, because CEOs don't take the blame for stuff that happens in other companies, or indeed, in other countries where the company doesn't even operate. 

So now the GOP wants to recycle the same old "solutions" that didn't work in Iraq before: a small U.S. ground force; training the Iraqi army; more airstrikes; and even regime change (!) of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki.  Forget it.

Who lost Iraq? The Iraqis did, with an assist from George W. Bush

By Fareed Zakaria

June 12, 2014 | Washington Post

It is becoming increasingly likely that Iraq has reached a turning point. The forces hostile to the government have grown stronger, better equipped and more organized. And having now secured arms, ammunition and hundreds of millions of dollars in cash from their takeover of Mosul — Iraq’s second-largest city — they will build on these strengths. Inevitably, in Washington, the question has surfaced: Who lost Iraq?

Whenever the United States has asked this question — as it did with China in the 1950s or Vietnam in the 1970s — the most important point to remember is: The local rulers did. The Chinese nationalists and the South Vietnamese government were corrupt, inefficient and weak, unable to be inclusive and unwilling to fight with the dedication of their opponents. The same story is true of Iraq, only much more so. The first answer to the question is: Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki lost Iraq.

The prime minister and his ruling party have behaved like thugs, excluding the Sunnis from power, using the army, police forces and militias to terrorize their opponents. The insurgency the Maliki government faces today was utterly predictable because, in fact, it happened before. From 2003 onward, Iraq faced a Sunni insurgency that was finally tamped down by Gen. David Petraeus, who said explicitly at the time that the core element of his strategy was political, bringing Sunni tribes and militias into the fold. The surge’s success, he often noted, bought time for a real power-sharing deal in Iraq that would bring the Sunnis into the structure of the government.

A senior official closely involved with Iraq in the Bush administration told me, “Not only did Maliki not try to do broad power-sharing, he reneged on all the deals that had been made, stopped paying the Sunni tribes and militias, and started persecuting key Sunni officials.” Among those targeted were the vice president of Iraq and its finance minister.

But how did Maliki come to be prime minister of Iraq?  He was the product of a series of momentous decisions made by the Bush administration. Having invaded Iraq with a small force — what the expert Tom Ricks called “the worst war plan in American history” — the administration needed to find local allies. It quickly decided to destroy Iraq’s Sunni ruling establishment and empower the hard-line Shiite religious parties that had opposed Saddam Hussein. This meant that a structure of Sunni power that had been in the area for centuries collapsed. These moves — to disband the army, dismantle the bureaucracy and purge Sunnis in general — might have been more consequential than the invasion itself.

The turmoil in the Middle East is often called a sectarian war. But really it is better described as “the Sunni revolt.” Across the region, from Iraq to Syria, one sees armed Sunni gangs that have decided to take on the non-Sunni forces that, in their view, oppress them. The Bush administration often justified its actions by pointing out that the Shiites are the majority in Iraq and so they had to rule. But the truth is that the borders of these lands are porous, and while the Shiites are numerous in Iraq — Maliki’s party actually won a plurality, not a majority — they are a tiny minority in the Middle East as a whole. It is outside support — from places as varied as Saudi Arabia and Turkey — that sustains the Sunni revolt.

If the Bush administration deserves a fair share of blame for “losing Iraq,” what about the Obama administration and its decision to withdraw American forces from the country by the end of 2011? I would have preferred to see a small American force in Iraq to try to prevent the country’s collapse. But let’s remember why this force is not there. Maliki refused to provide the guarantees that every other country in the world that hosts U.S. forces offers. Some commentators have blamed the Obama administration for negotiating badly or halfheartedly and perhaps this is true. But here’s what a senior Iraqi politician told me in the days when the U.S. withdrawal was being discussed: “It will not happen. Maliki cannot allow American troops to stay on. Iran has made very clear to Maliki that its No. 1 demand is that there be no American troops remaining in Iraq. And Maliki owes them.” He reminded me that Maliki spent 24 years in exile, most of them in Tehran and Damascus, and his party was funded by Iran for most of its existence. And in fact, Maliki’s government has followed policies that have been pro-Iranian and pro-Syrian.

Washington is debating whether airstrikes or training forces would be more effective, but its real problem is much larger and is a decade in the making. In Iraq, it is defending the indefensible.

Ex-CIA analyst and Army prof.: Don't trust Robert Gates

If you're at all concerned about Robert Gates's "revelations" in his recent memoirs about the Obama Administration then you should definitely read this article.

If you're like me and you see a guy in Gates who admits in his own memoirs that he was a burnout and reluctant SecDef before he even took the job in the Obama Administration, and now doesn't want to be associated with "defeat" in Iraq and Afghanistan (just like Dubya didn't want to -- hence he kept the troops there indefinitely, passing these two shit sandwiches to Obama...), and yet who writes in the same memoirs that he agrees with all Obama's major policy decisions (DWTF?!), then you can skip this one.

But like I said, if you have any doubts, just read this.

Robert Gates’ Narcissistic Notions of “Duty”

By Melvin A. Goodman

January 9, 2014 | CounterPunch

Melvin A. Goodman, a senior fellow at the Center for International Policy and adjunct professor at Johns Hopkins University.  He is the author of the recently published National Insecurity: The Cost of American Militarism (City Lights Publishers) and the forthcoming “The Path to Dissent: The Story of a CIA Whistleblower” (City Lights Publisher). Goodman is a former CIA analyst and a professor of international relations at the National War College.

URL: http://www.counterpunch.org/2014/01/09/robert-gates-narcissistic-notions-of-duty/

Obama must consider 'zero option' in Afghanistan

Excellent commentary by Michael Boyle. President Obama must seriously consider the "zero option" -- full withdrawal of all troops from Afghanistan by 2014 -- for three reasons:

1)  U.S. troops are just targets for the Taliban. So far a sizable U.S. presence there hasn't been able to root them out; a smaller force won't do any better.

2)  Having a base with a small U.S. presence won't equal "influence" over Afghanistan or its government, despite what many Republicans and neocons believe.

3)  Keeping U.S. troops there as advisers/trainers gives Afghanistan's government a scapegoat when its military cannot perform, as well as fosters a "culture of dependency" in the Afghan military that has only 1 out of 23 brigades that are combat-ready.

Here's his upshot:

It is now time for the US to look seriously at the zero option and to develop plans for removing all combat troops, except for a small special operations force to target exclusively on the 100 or so surviving al-Qaida operatives remaining. However many Americans remain there, the war against the Taliban needs to be President Karzai's from 2014 onwards, and the consequences of failure should be owned by him.

After more than 2,156 US troops killed and 18,109 wounded (pdf) since 2001, and more than $590bn given in aid, it is time to call an end to America's war in Afghanistan. With such losses, it is hard to accept that the US war in Afghanistan will end without a decisive victory, but keeping substantial American troops present in the country indefinitely will confer no real political or strategic advantages – while risking death and injury to even more young Americans.

America's 'zero option': the only viable exit from this unwinnable Afghan war

By Michael Boyle

January 10, 2013 | Guardian

URL: http://gu.com/p/3d2bv

M. Moore: We don't 'support our troops'

Well said!  Nothing I could add.

Those Who Say "I Support the Troops" Should Just Stop, Out of Respect for the Troops

By Michael Moore

January 3, 2013 | MichaelMoore.com

I don't support the troops, America, and neither do you. I am tired of the ruse we are playing on these brave citizens in our armed forces. And guess what -- a lot of these soldiers and sailors and airmen and Marines see right through the bull**** of those words, "I support the troops!," spoken by Americans with such false sincerity -- false because our actions don't match our words. These young men and women sign up to risk their very lives to protect us -- and this is what they get in return:

1. They get sent off to wars that have NOTHING to do with defending America or saving our lives. They are used as pawns so that the military-industrial complex can make billions of dollars and the rich here can expand their empire. By "supporting the troops," that means I'm supposed to shut up, don't ask questions, do nothing to stop the madness, and sit by and watch thousands of them die? Well, I've done an awful lot to try and end this. But the only way you can honestly say you support the troops is to work night and day to get them out of these hell holes they've been sent to. And what have I done this week to bring the troops home? Nothing. So if I say "I support the troops," don't believe me -- I clearly don't support the troops because I've got more important things to do today, like return an iPhone that doesn't work and take my car in for a tune up.

2. While the troops we claim to "support" are serving their country, bankers who say they too "support the troops," foreclose on the actual homes of these soldiers and evict their families while they are overseas! Have I gone and stood in front of the sheriff's deputy as he is throwing a military family out of their home? No. And there's your proof that I don't "support the troops," because if I did, I would organize mass sit-ins to block the doors of these homes. Instead, I'm having Chilean sea bass tonight.

3. How many of you who say you "support the troops" have visited a VA hospital to bring aid and comfort to the sick and wounded? I haven't. How many of you have any clue what it's like to deal with the VA? I don't. Therefore, you would be safe to say that I don't "support the troops," and neither do you.

4. Who amongst you big enthusiastic "supporters of the troops" can tell me the approximate number of service women who have been raped while in the military? Answer: 19,000 (mostly) female troops are raped or sexually assaulted every year by fellow American troops. What have you or I done to bring these criminals to justice? What's that you say -- out of sight, out of mind? These women have suffered, and I've done nothing. So don't ever let me get away with telling you I "support the troops" because, sadly, I don't. And neither do you.

5. Help a homeless vet today? How 'bout yesterday? Last week? Last year? Ever? But I thought you "support the troops!"? The number of homeless veterans is staggering -- on any given night, at least 60,000 veterans are sleeping on the streets of the country that proudly "supports the troops." This is disgraceful and shameful, isn't it? And it exposes all those "troop supporters" who always vote against social programs that would help these veterans. Tonight there are at least 12,700 Iraq/Afghanistan veterans homeless and sleeping on the street. I've never lent a helping hand to one of the many vets I've seen sleeping on the street. I can't bear to look, and I walk past them very quickly. That's called not "supporting the troops," which, I guess, I don't -- and neither do you.

6. And you know, the beautiful thing about all this "support" you and I have been giving the troops -- they feel this love and support so much, a record number of them are killing themselves every single week. In fact, there are now more soldiers killing themselves than soldiers being killed in combat (323 suicides in 2012 through November vs. about 210 combat deaths). Yes, you are more likely to die by your own hand in the United States military than by al Qaeda or the Taliban. And an estimated eighteen veterans kill themselves each day, or one in five of all U.S. suicides -- though no one really knows because we don't bother to keep track. Now, that's what I call support! These troops are really feeling the love, people! Lemme hear you say it again: "I support the troops!" Louder! "I SUPPORT THE TROOPS!!" There, that's better. I'm sure they heard us. Don't forget to fly our flag, wear your flag lapel pin, and never, ever let a service member pass you by without saying, "Thank you for your service!" I'm sure that's all they need to keep from putting a bullet in their heads. Do your best to keep your "support" up for the troops because, God knows, I certainly can't any longer.

I don't "support the troops" or any of those other hollow and hypocritical platitudes uttered by Republicans and frightened Democrats. Here's what I do support: I support them coming home. I support them being treated well. I support peace, and I beg any young person reading this who's thinking of joining the armed forces to please reconsider. Our war department has done little to show you they won't recklessly put your young life in harm's way for a cause that has nothing to do with what you signed up for. They will not help you once they've used you and spit you back into society. If you're a woman, they will not protect you from rapists in their ranks. And because you have a conscience and you know right from wrong, you do not want yourself being used to kill civilians in other countries who never did anything to hurt us. We are currently involved in at least a half-dozen military actions around the world. Don't become the next statistic so that General Electric can post another record profit -- while paying no taxes -- taxes that otherwise would be paying for the artificial leg that they've kept you waiting for months to receive.

I support you, and will try to do more to be there for you. And the best way you can support me -- and the ideals our country says it believes in -- is to get out of the military as soon as you can and never look back.

And please, next time some "supporter of the troops" says to you with that concerned look on their face, "I thank you for your service," you have my permission to punch their lights out (figuratively speaking, of course).

(There is something I've done to support the troops -- other than help lead the effort to stop these senseless wars. At the movie theater I run in Michigan, I became the first person in town to institute an affirmative action plan for hiring returning Iraq/Afghanistan vets. I am working to get more businesses in town to join with me in this effort to find jobs for these returning soldiers. I also let all service members in to the movies for free, everyday.)

Obama owes liberals an explanation -- and an apology

A little grayer, but any wiser after 4 years of giving in to the GOP?

Conservatives dislike Obama for their own silly reasons, most of which relate to his non-traditional background: his mixed race; his peripatetic, multi-cultural, international upbringing (encapsulated in Birtherism); his "inexplicable" entrance into and completion of Columbia University and Harvard Law School; his "angry black" former pastor; his community organizing in Chicago; his proximity to ACORN and Saul Alinsky, etc.  

Indeed, it's quite telling how, even after four years in office, conservatives still primarily fixate on, and object to, Obama's origins, i.e. everything leading up to his term as Senator from Illinois.  It just goes to show that they were never going to accept him, never going to admit him into their country club, no matter what he did.  

Prime example: when Obama rolled out a health care bill after months of consultation with private insurance companies and Big Pharma -- a bill that was originally conceived by the conservative Heritage Foundation, passed into law by Republican Mitt Romney in 2006, and endorsed by Republican Newt Gingrich in 2006 and again 2008 -- because it came from Obama, Republicans called it Socialism and Big Government tyranny.  (And today, the aforementioned three feel not the slightest bit of shame in criticizing it as such!)

Unlike conservatives, we liberal-progressives have real gripes with Obama.  Unlike them, we are entitled to feel baffled and betrayed at Obama's first four years, because we voted for him with hope for change, and then watched as he let himself get beat up, again and again, by the Republican Congress, while he gave up key concessions for nothing, including: 

• the public option in Obamacare; 
• a stimulus bill in excess of $1.2 billion that was not one-third tax cuts; 
• real mortgage modifications with principal reduction for millions of underwater homeowners; 
• letting Bush's irresponsible tax cuts expire; and
• real banking-financial reform to end Too Big To Fail and speculation with taxpayers' guarantee.

This is not to mention Obama's erstwhile support for fast U.S. troops withdrawals from Afghanistan and Iraq, perhaps the most mobilizing issue among Obama's grassroots supporters.  (By the way, during Clint Eastwood's curious, rambling speech at the GOP convention when he called for immediate withdrawal from Afghanistan, the conservative crowd erupted in cheers.  Gee, what a difference four years and a Democratic commander-in-chief makes!)

This past weekend, Sam Stein and Ryan Grim posted a very good synopsis of the disappointments of Obama's first term from a progressive's point of view.  It shows how Obama foolishly tried to play an "inside game" with Congressional Republicans who stated publicly that their #1 priority was to defeat him in 2012, and who sabotaged a deal with Obama on the deficit because it would have helped him get re-elected.

His pointless concessions were even more tragic and stupid, considering Obama's record 13 million e-mail addresses and 3 million individual online donors in 2008. Obama had this huge mass of active grassroots support with which he could have bludgeoned obstinate Republicans into submission, but instead Obama forswore his base, laying down his greatest weapon only to be barraged by Republican fusillades.

Maybe he's just too nice a guy.  Certainly he's too weak.  Maybe he had bad advice. (OK, he definitely had bad advice: Summers, Geithner, Emanuel, Axelrod, et al.)  Or maybe he was vain and bought into the hype that he was a "transformational" leader whom Republicans would have no choice but to bargain with, thanks to his irresistible post-partisan reasonableness.  Whatever the reason, it was such a wasted opportunity.

Obama Owes Us An Explanation

By Peter S. Goodman

September 3, 2012 | Huffington Post

URL: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/peter-s-goodman/barack-obama-economy_b_1847149.html

DOS 'whistleblower': Nation-building FAIL

More than a few State Dept. officers disagree with Van Buren, and personally distrust his motivations (write a provocative book at/near retirement and get rich and famous) instead of blowing the whistle internally and trying to change the system from within.

Myself, I have a problem with his "greedy contractors"/"corrupt bureaucrats" line.  First, contractors don't write the contracts, the government does.  They just bid on the work and then implement it.  Secondly, Van Buren presents no evidence of U.S. government corruption.  

If Van Buren meant corruption within the Iraqi and Afghan governments, then, well, duh.  We never should have expected to funnel $ billions through these nascent institutions and trust all the money to be well-spent or even accounted for.  But in fact, trying to spend a lot of money fast -- and this was a hell of a lot to spend on development, more than any nation had ever tried to spend before in such a short time -- no matter who was managing it, was bound to lead to waste, poor accounting, missed and moving targets, sloppy work, etc.  

Those disagreements aside, Van Buren's central points are true and bear repeating: 1) using development aid as a counter-insurgency tactic almost never works; and 2) in our arrogance and cultural blindness we have failed to understand that they don't want to be like us, they don't even want most of our stuff.  This is especially true in Afghanistan.

How not to reconstruct Iraq, Afghanistan - or the US

Why has the US spent so much money and time "so disastrously trying to rebuild occupied nations abroad"?

By Peter Van Buren

August 28, 2012 | Al Jazeera

URL:  http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2012/08/201282312156520461.html

Army Lt. Col.: 'Simply telling the truth' about Afghanistan

It doesn't seem like Lt. Col. Davis's whistleblowing got much coverage in the U.S. media. I'm posting this late but better than never.

Truth, lies and Afghanistan

By Lt. Col. Daniel L. Davis

February 2012 | Armed Forces Journal

I spent last year in Afghanistan, visiting and talking with U.S. troops and their Afghan partners. My duties with the Army's Rapid Equipping Force took me into every significant area where our soldiers engage the enemy. Over the course of 12 months, I covered more than 9,000 miles and talked, traveled and patrolled with troops in Kandahar, Kunar, Ghazni, Khost, Paktika, Kunduz, Balkh, Nangarhar and other provinces.

What I saw bore no resemblance to rosy official statements by U.S. military leaders about conditions on the ground.

Entering this deployment, I was sincerely hoping to learn that the claims were true: that conditions in Afghanistan were improving, that the local government and military were progressing toward self-sufficiency. I did not need to witness dramatic improvements to be reassured, but merely hoped to see evidence of positive trends, to see companies or battalions produce even minimal but sustainable progress.

Instead, I witnessed the absence of success on virtually every level.

My arrival in country in late 2010 marked the start of my fourth combat deployment, and my second in Afghanistan. A Regular Army officer in the Armor Branch, I served in Operation Desert Storm, in Afghanistan in 2005-06 and in Iraq in 2008-09. In the middle of my career, I spent eight years in the U.S. Army Reserve and held a number of civilian jobs — among them, legislative correspondent for defense and foreign affairs for Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison, R-Texas.

As a representative for the Rapid Equipping Force, I set out to talk to our troops about their needs and their circumstances. Along the way, I conducted mounted and dismounted combat patrols, spending time with conventional and Special Forces troops. I interviewed or had conversations with more than 250 soldiers in the field, from the lowest-ranking 19-year-old private to division commanders and staff members at every echelon. I spoke at length with Afghan security officials, Afghan civilians and a few village elders.

I saw the incredible difficulties any military force would have to pacify even a single area of any of those provinces; I heard many stories of how insurgents controlled virtually every piece of land beyond eyeshot of a U.S. or International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) base.

I saw little to no evidence the local governments were able to provide for the basic needs of the people. Some of the Afghan civilians I talked with said the people didn't want to be connected to a predatory or incapable local government.

From time to time, I observed Afghan Security forces collude with the insurgency.

FROM BAD TO ABYSMAL

Much of what I saw during my deployment, let alone read or wrote in official reports, I can't talk about; the information remains classified. But I can say that such reports — mine and others' — serve to illuminate the gulf between conditions on the ground and official statements of progress.

And I can relate a few representative experiences, of the kind that I observed all over the country.

In January 2011, I made my first trip into the mountains of Kunar province near the Pakistan border to visit the troops of 1st Squadron, 32nd Cavalry. On a patrol to the northernmost U.S. position in eastern Afghanistan, we arrived at an Afghan National Police (ANP) station that had reported being attacked by the Taliban 2½ hours earlier.

Through the interpreter, I asked the police captain where the attack had originated, and he pointed to the side of a nearby mountain.

"What are your normal procedures in situations like these?" I asked. "Do you form up a squad and go after them? Do you periodically send out harassing patrols? What do you do?"

As the interpreter conveyed my questions, the captain's head wheeled around, looking first at the interpreter and turning to me with an incredulous expression. Then he laughed.

"No! We don't go after them," he said. "That would be dangerous!"

According to the cavalry troopers, the Afghan policemen rarely leave the cover of the checkpoints. In that part of the province, the Taliban literally run free.

In June, I was in the Zharay district of Kandahar province, returning to a base from a dismounted patrol. Gunshots were audible as the Taliban attacked a U.S. checkpoint about one mile away.

As I entered the unit's command post, the commander and his staff were watching a live video feed of the battle. Two ANP vehicles were blocking the main road leading to the site of the attack. The fire was coming from behind a haystack. We watched as two Afghan men emerged, mounted a motorcycle and began moving toward the Afghan policemen in their vehicles.

The U.S. commander turned around and told the Afghan radio operator to make sure the policemen halted the men. The radio operator shouted into the radio repeatedly, but got no answer.

On the screen, we watched as the two men slowly motored past the ANP vehicles. The policemen neither got out to stop the two men nor answered the radio — until the motorcycle was out of sight.

To a man, the U.S. officers in that unit told me they had nothing but contempt for the Afghan troops in their area — and that was before the above incident occurred.

In August, I went on a dismounted patrol with troops in the Panjwai district of Kandahar province. Several troops from the unit had recently been killed in action, one of whom was a very popular and experienced soldier. One of the unit's senior officers rhetorically asked me, "How do I look these men in the eye and ask them to go out day after day on these missions? What's harder: How do I look [my soldier's] wife in the eye when I get back and tell her that her husband died for something meaningful? How do I do that?"

One of the senior enlisted leaders added, "Guys are saying, 'I hope I live so I can at least get home to R&R leave before I get it,' or 'I hope I only lose a foot.' Sometimes they even say which limb it might be: 'Maybe it'll only be my left foot.' They don't have a lot of confidence that the leadership two levels up really understands what they're living here, what the situation really is."

On Sept. 11, the 10th anniversary of the infamous attack on the U.S., I visited another unit in Kunar province, this one near the town of Asmar. I talked with the local official who served as the cultural adviser to the U.S. commander. Here's how the conversation went:

Davis: "Here you have many units of the Afghan National Security Forces [ANSF]. Will they be able to hold out against the Taliban when U.S. troops leave this area?"

Adviser: "No. They are definitely not capable. Already all across this region [many elements of] the security forces have made deals with the Taliban. [The ANSF] won't shoot at the Taliban, and the Taliban won't shoot them.

"Also, when a Taliban member is arrested, he is soon released with no action taken against him. So when the Taliban returns [when the Americans leave after 2014], so too go the jobs, especially for everyone like me who has worked with the coalition.

"Recently, I got a cellphone call from a Talib who had captured a friend of mine. While I could hear, he began to beat him, telling me I'd better quit working for the Americans. I could hear my friend crying out in pain. [The Talib] said the next time they would kidnap my sons and do the same to them. Because of the direct threats, I've had to take my children out of school just to keep them safe.

"And last night, right on that mountain there [he pointed to a ridge overlooking the U.S. base, about 700 meters distant], a member of the ANP was murdered. The Taliban came and called him out, kidnapped him in front of his parents, and took him away and murdered him. He was a member of the ANP from another province and had come back to visit his parents. He was only 27 years old. The people are not safe anywhere."

That murder took place within view of the U.S. base, a post nominally responsible for the security of an area of hundreds of square kilometers. Imagine how insecure the population is beyond visual range. And yet that conversation was representative of what I saw in many regions of Afghanistan.

In all of the places I visited, the tactical situation was bad to abysmal. If the events I have described — and many, many more I could mention — had been in the first year of war, or even the third or fourth, one might be willing to believe that Afghanistan was just a hard fight, and we should stick it out. Yet these incidents all happened in the 10th year of war.

As the numbers depicting casualties and enemy violence indicate the absence of progress, so too did my observations of the tactical situation all over Afghanistan.

CREDIBILITY GAP

I'm hardly the only one who has noted the discrepancy between official statements and the truth on the ground.

A January 2011 report by the Afghan NGO Security Office noted that public statements made by U.S. and ISAF leaders at the end of 2010 were "sharply divergent from IMF, [international military forces, NGO-speak for ISAF] 'strategic communication' messages suggesting improvements. We encourage [nongovernment organization personnel] to recognize that no matter how authoritative the source of any such claim, messages of the nature are solely intended to influence American and European public opinion ahead of the withdrawal, and are not intended to offer an accurate portrayal of the situation for those who live and work here."

The following month, Anthony Cordesman, on behalf of the Center for Strategic and International Studies, wrote that ISAF and the U.S. leadership failed to report accurately on the reality of the situation in Afghanistan.

"Since June 2010, the unclassified reporting the U.S. does provide has steadily shrunk in content, effectively 'spinning' the road to victory by eliminating content that illustrates the full scale of the challenges ahead," Cordesman wrote. "They also, however, were driven by political decisions to ignore or understate Taliban and insurgent gains from 2002 to 2009, to ignore the problems caused by weak and corrupt Afghan governance, to understate the risks posed by sanctuaries in Pakistan, and to 'spin' the value of tactical ISAF victories while ignoring the steady growth of Taliban influence and control."

How many more men must die in support of a mission that is not succeeding and behind an array of more than seven years of optimistic statements by U.S. senior leaders in Afghanistan? No one expects our leaders to always have a successful plan. But we do expect — and the men who do the living, fighting and dying deserve — to have our leaders tell us the truth about what's going on.

I first encountered senior-level equivocation during a 1997 division-level "experiment" that turned out to be far more setpiece than experiment. Over dinner at Fort Hood, Texas, Training and Doctrine Command leaders told me that the Advanced Warfighter Experiment (AWE) had shown that a "digital division" with fewer troops and more gear could be far more effective than current divisions. The next day, our congressional staff delegation observed the demonstration firsthand, and it didn't take long to realize there was little substance to the claims. Virtually no legitimate experimentation was actually conducted. All parameters were carefully scripted. All events had a preordained sequence and outcome. The AWE was simply an expensive show, couched in the language of scientific experimentation and presented in glowing press releases and public statements, intended to persuade Congress to fund the Army's preference. Citing the AWE's "results," Army leaders proceeded to eliminate one maneuver company per combat battalion. But the loss of fighting systems was never offset by a commensurate rise in killing capability.

A decade later, in the summer of 2007, I was assigned to the Future Combat Systems (FCS) organization at Fort Bliss, Texas. It didn't take long to discover that the same thing the Army had done with a single division at Fort Hood in 1997 was now being done on a significantly larger scale with FCS. Year after year, the congressionally mandated reports from the Government Accountability Office revealed significant problems and warned that the system was in danger of failing. Each year, the Army's senior leaders told members of Congress at hearings that GAO didn't really understand the full picture and that to the contrary, the program was on schedule, on budget, and headed for success. Ultimately, of course, the program was canceled, with little but spinoffs to show for $18 billion spent.

If Americans were able to compare the public statements many of our leaders have made with classified data, this credibility gulf would be immediately observable. Naturally, I am not authorized to divulge classified material to the public. But I am legally able to share it with members of Congress. I have accordingly provided a much fuller accounting in a classified report to several members of Congress, both Democrats and Republicans, senators and House members.

A nonclassified version is available at www.afghanreport.com. [Editor's note: At press time, Army public affairs had not yet ruled on whether Davis could post this longer version.]

TELL THE TRUTH

When it comes to deciding what matters are worth plunging our nation into war and which are not, our senior leaders owe it to the nation and to the uniformed members to be candid — graphically, if necessary — in telling them what's at stake and how expensive potential success is likely to be. U.S. citizens and their elected representatives can decide if the risk to blood and treasure is worth it.

Likewise when having to decide whether to continue a war, alter its aims or to close off a campaign that cannot be won at an acceptable price, our senior leaders have an obligation to tell Congress and American people the unvarnished truth and let the people decide what course of action to choose. That is the very essence of civilian control of the military. The American people deserve better than what they've gotten from their senior uniformed leaders over the last number of years. Simply telling the truth would be a good start.

Soviet Afghan commander: Obama repeating our mistake

Listen to the wise words of a washed-up Soviet general who got his ass handed to him by pre-historic tribesmen in Afghanistan. (And watch for his typical "Denial aint just a river in Egypt" moment at the end). By the way, we've now got more troops there than the USSR ever did, and we will be there longer than they were.

Soviet commander: U.S. faces similar Afghan fate
By Paul Armstrong
December 2, 2009 | CNN

A former commander of Soviet forces in Afghanistan has warned history is being repeated in the war-ravaged country as the United States and its allies become increasingly mired in an "unwinnable war."

Gen. Victor Yermakov commanded the Soviet Union's 40th army in Afghanistan from May 1982 to November 1983, one of six commanders to preside over the Soviet task force after its 1979 invasion.

The Kremlin's bloody nine-year campaign to support the Marxist government in Kabul cost the lives of more than 15,000 troops and brought the Soviet economy to its knees before its 100,000-strong army was forced into a humiliating withdrawal.

The strategy of imposing its will on Afghanistan militarily had failed in the face of an unyielding guerilla insurgency, backed ironically by U.S. money and weapons. Afghanistan had become Moscow's "Vietnam War."

Fast forward 20 years and President Obama has authorized a troop surge that will take the U.S. commitment in Afghanistan to around 100,000, bolstered by around 45,000 NATO service personnel.

"We too entered Afghanistan with a large force," says Yermakov. "We came there not to conquer Afghanistan but to render international assistance to stabilize the situation there. Obama outlines troop buildup

"But you cannot impose democracy by using force. An Afghan has agreed with you today, at gunpoint, that American democracy is the best thing in the world, just as he was once saying that the Soviet system was the best.

"But as soon as you turn around, he'll shoot you in the back and immediately forget what he was just saying.

"I would like to remind you what the first man to unite the Afghan tribes, Czar Babur, said: 'Afghanistan has not been and never will be conquered, and will never surrender to anyone.' Afghans are a very freedom-loving and proud people."

Babur was a descendent of Genghis Khan who founded the Mughal dynasty which conquered much of central Asia in the 1500s.

Asked what difference the latest troop surge will make, the 74-year-old former deputy defense minister says, "I can see only one: Obama will be more often going to the airport to pay his last respects to the [airlifted U.S.] soldiers killed in Afghanistan.

"That's the only difference that I can see, whatever the size of the task force."

The U.S.-led coalition first invaded Afghanistan in response to the September 11, 2001, attacks on New York and the Pentagon by al Qaeda. The invasion overthrew the ruling Taliban, which had allowed al Qaeda to operate from its territory -- but most of the top al Qaeda and Taliban leadership escaped the onslaught.

As it had been with the Soviets, the mission is now to stabilize the country with a government it favors. But Taliban fighters have since regrouped in the mountainous region along Afghanistan's border, taking advantage of ethnic ties with sympathetic local tribes to fight against another foreign invader.

More than 900 Americans and nearly 600 allied troops have died in the ensuing conflict, with many of these casualties coming from roadside bombs, known as IEDs (improvised explosive devices), planted by Taliban fighters employing the same guerilla tactics as Mujahideen fighters used against the Soviets.

Is Afghanistan Obama's Vietnam?

But even when the U.S.-led forces achieve their objective of re-taking a village or town from the Taliban, Yermakov claims they repeat Soviet mistakes.

"Whether it's Tora Bora or Kandahar we would deploy troops, establish order, place a popular government there and render our assistance to it. But when we leave that government or leadership runs away.

"After all who is the leader of a province? If he's not part of the local tribe then nobody's going to pay attention to him."

He then pointed out how much of Afghanistan during the Soviet occupation was under government control during the day but at night the power shifted to the Mujahideen. "A similar thing is happening presently with the Taliban," he says.

Asked what lessons the coalition can learn from the bitter Soviet experience, the retired general advised western governments to transfer the money being spent on financing troops to the restoration of Afghanistan itself.

"Restoring Afghanistan's economy, its industrial enterprises, its education system, schools and mosques will increase your authority. War can only evoke resistance. Afghans regard war only as an attempt to enslave them."

According to White House estimates, it costs about $1 million per year to send just one soldier to Afghanistan. That figure includes the cost of the equipment the soldier would need, the fuel to transport the soldier to the theater and move him/her around during their deployment, and food, housing, combat pay, ammunition and other miscellaneous costs.

With a hint of defiance, Yermakov claimed the Soviet Army did enjoy some success.

"We didn't leave [Afghanistan] as a defeated force, he says. "We didn't leave with disgrace. It was our government who decided that we should withdraw, and we accepted that decision -- that the Afghan people should develop independently.
[Yeah, yeah, sure. - J]

"If we are to speak about what we needed badly, it was fence-mending with the local population. We were expanding those ties, we had met with their religious leaders, mullahs and so on.

"We tried to assist, to persuade -- and it yielded results. And I should tell you that we understood this after about four years of our presence there."

[Whatever you say, comrade. Right: victory was just around the corner. Seriously, folks, take a lesson from this Soviet general's typical military schizophrenia on the reality of war in Afghanistan vs. his self-assurance that victory was always within his grasp. He is no different than McChrystal or the rest of them. They will never admit defeat as long as there is more meat for the grinder. We -- through our popularly elected civilian politicians -- have to take the keys to the war machine away from them, because all they know is to fight and to win, and they will keep trying even if it's impossible. - J]

CNN's Maxim Tkachenko contributed to this report.

Buchanan: Reaping what we sowed abroad

The Fruits of Intervention
By Patrick J. Buchanan
October 30, 2009 | Human Events

If we had it to do over, would we send an army into Afghanistan to build a nation?

Would we invade Iraq?

While these two wars have cost 5,200 dead, a trillion dollars and a divided America facing an endless war, what have we won?

Gen. Stanley McChrystal needs 40,000 to 80,000 more troops, or we risk "mission failure" in Afghanistan. At present casualty rates -- October was the worst month of the war -- thousands more Americans will die before we see any light at the end of this tunnel, if ever we do.

Pakistan, which aided us in Afghanistan, now has a war of its own to fight. Its army is in a battle in South Waziristan, while the country is wracked by terror bombings, the latest in a Peshawar bazaar that specialized in women's clothing and jewelry and toys for kids. So horrific was the toll even the Taliban and al-Qaida denied any role in it.

The 130,000 U.S. troops in Iraq are, after almost seven years, to begin pulling out two months after January's election. But a hitch has developed. Iraq's parliament missed the deadline for setting the rules. At issue: Will voters be allowed to choose individual candidates, or will they be allowed only to vote for slates of candidates?

Gen. Ray Odierno implies that postponement of the election may mean postponement of U.S. withdrawals.

Ominously, in August, terrorists bombed the foreign and finance ministries in Baghdad, and last week blew up the Justice Ministry and Baghdad Provincial Governorate. And the Kurds are now claiming their control of oil-rich Kirkuk is non-negotiable, which crosses a red line in Baghdad.

Next door, a terror attack by Jundallah (God's Brigade) in Iran's southern province of Sistan-Baluchistan killed 40, including two senior commanders of the Revolutionary Guard.

An enraged Tehran pointed the finger at the United States, as there have been charges the CIA has been in contact with Jundallah as part of President Bush's destabilization program to effect "regime change."

But Barack Obama has been in office for nine months -- and he would never authorize such an attack on the eve of a critical meeting on Iran's nuclear program. Moreover, the State Department condemned the Jundallah bombing as terrorism and offered public condolences to the families of the victims.

But if we didn't authorize this, who did?

Was the timing of this attack coincidental? Were these just freelance secessionists on an operation unrelated to the U.S.-Iran talks? Or is someone trying to torpedo the talks and push Iran and the United States into military collision?

For this was a provocation. And whoever carried it out and whoever authorized or abetted it wishes to dynamite the U.S.-Iran negotiations, abort a rapprochement and put us on a road to war.

Speculation is focusing on the Saudis, the Gulf Arabs and the Israelis, who have been accused, as has the United States, of aiding PJAK, a Kurdish faction that has conducted raids in northern Iran.

If we have any control of these organizations, we should shut them down. With U.S. armies tied up in Iraq and Afghanistan, and America conducting Predator and cross-border attacks in Pakistan, provoking a war with Iran would be an act of madness.

Looking back, how has all this fighting advanced U.S. national interests? We have a "democratic" Iraq that is Shia-dominated and tilting to Iran. We have an open-ended war in Afghanistan that will likely do for Obama what Iraq did for Bush. But we can't pull out, it is said, for if we do, Kabul falls and Afghanistan becomes the sanctuary for an Islamist war to take over Pakistan and its nuclear weapons.

And if that should happen, it would indeed be a crisis.

And so, how has all this intervention availed us?

We ran Saddam out of Kuwait and put U.S. troops into Saudi Arabia. And we got Osama bin Laden's 9-11. We responded by taking down the Taliban and taking over Afghanistan. And we got an eight-year war with no victory and no end in sight. Now Pakistan is burning. We took down Saddam and got a seven-year war and an ungrateful Iraq.

Meanwhile, the Turks, who shared a border with Saddam, have done no fighting. Iran has watched as we destroyed its two greatest enemies, the Taliban and Saddam. China, which has a border with both Pakistan and Afghanistan, has sat back. India, which has a border with Pakistan and fought three wars with that country, has stayed aloof.

The United States, on the other side of the world, plunged in. And now we face an elongated military presence in Iraq, an escalating war in Afghanistan and potential disaster in Pakistan, and are being pushed from behind into a war with Iran.

"America rejects the false comfort of isolationism," said George W. Bush in his 2006 State of the Union. And we did reject that false comfort. And now we can enjoy the fruits of interventionism.

Iraq's gov't won't sign U.S. occupation treaty

I don't know how much attention the MSM is giving this story, but it's pretty darn significant.  The U.S. occupation of Iraq could end on January 1, 2009 de jure -- when America's current status of forces treaty with Iraq expires -- if Iraq's government delays much longer on agreeing to U.S. demands for a new agreement thru 2011.

Iraq Asks U.S. to Reopen Talks Over Security Pact Changes

October 28, 2008  |  Associated Press

 

Iraq's government decided Tuesday to formally ask the United States to reopen negotiations on a proposed deal to keep American troops here past the end of the year. The U.S. suggested it may not be ready to offer more concessions.

 

That cast doubt on whether the agreement can win parliamentary approval by the end of 2008, when the U.N. mandate expires — and with it the legal basis for the U.S. military to operate in Iraq.

 

The U.S. has warned that without an agreement or an extension of the mandate, military operations would cease, including not only combat operations but also infrastructure projects and aid to Iraq's government.

 

Iraqi government spokesman Ali al-Dabbagh said the decision to ask for more talks was taken after Cabinet members submitted amendments to the draft. They asked Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki to present them to the Iraqi negotiating team.

 

Al-Dabbagh described the amendments as "essential" before the prime minister can submit the draft to parliament. Al-Maliki has said he won't submit the document to the 275-member legislature unless he is confident it can win overwhelming approval.

 

In Washington, White House press secretary Dana Perino said the Bush administration may talk to the Iraqis about their proposed amendments, but that "it will just be a very high bar for them to clear for us to change anything" in the agreement.

 

She said that U.S. officials have not seen the amendments list.

 

"It might be something we can work with, it might not," Perino said. "We have provided them with our best thinking on it, our best offer. We think that the door is pretty much shut on these negotiations."

 

For nearly two weeks, Iraqi politicians have been considering the draft agreement, which would keep U.S. troops in Iraq through 2011 unless both sides agree that they could stay.

 

The draft would also give the Iraqis a greater role in supervising U.S. military operations and allow Iraqi courts to try U.S. soldiers and contractors accused of major crimes off duty and off base.

 

But critics say the draft does not go far enough in protecting Iraqi sovereignty, and major Shiite politicians said last week that the agreement stands little chance of approval in its current form.

 

One option being floated privately is to ask the U.N. Security Council to renew the mandate for six months or a year until a way out of the deadlock is found. It is unclear whether Russia, China and other council members may raise their own demands and delay the process.

 

An official at al-Maliki's office said some of the amendments submitted in Tuesday's Cabinet meetings had been forwarded to U.S. diplomats in Baghdad. The official said the changes were mostly attempts to clarify parts of the text that the Cabinet found open to interpretation.

 

He said the changes were introduced in both the English and Arabic texts of the agreement. He spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not supposed to talk about the discussions.

 

Neither the official or al-Dabbagh elaborated on the changes. Some Iraqi politicians have complained that the parts dealing with Iraqi jurisdiction were unclear.

 

They also wanted clarification of the conditions under which U.S. troops might be asked to stay after Dec. 31, 2011.

 

The agreement, reached after months of tough negotiations, has stirred a political storm in Iraq, with most of the major political groups reluctant to take a clear position for or against the deal.

 

Only the radical group led by anti-American Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr has taken a public stand on the agreement. The group, which holds 30 seats in parliament, has rejected it outright.

 

Al-Maliki has not publicly committed himself to the current draft.  [Whoa, that's something!  Al-Maliki is supposed to be our guy in Iraq. -- J]

 

Iraqi leaders have objected to what they describe as unjustified threats by senior American officials about what would happen if the year ends without an agreement or a new mandate.

 

"I don't think there are any Iraqis who think that they are ready to do this on their own, deep down," Perino said. "Iraq still has a lot of violence that they have to deal with. Our soldiers are the ones who are there to help them deal with it. And they're going to need our help for some time."

 

In violence Tuesday, four police officers were killed in a drive-by shooting in the turbulent northern city of Mosul, while three civilians were killed and 13 others wounded in a Baghdad car bombing, police said.

 

Also in the capital, another nine people, including four policemen, were wounded in two separate roadside bombs targeting police convoys.

Ignored by Lib'rul Media: Iraq PM endorsed Obama's withdrawal plan

Here it is: Our big chance to support Iraqi democracy, by giving the Iraqi people and their government what they want.  Wait, what's that you say?  That doesn't matter?  Our occupation of Iraq is not about establishing democracy after all?

Obama's Foreign Policy Advantage           

Matthew Yglesias

September 18, 2008 | Prospect.org

           

A funny thing happened on the morning of July 19 -- Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki of Iraq endorsed Barack Obama's plan for a 16-month withdrawal timeline from Iraq in an interview with Der Spiegel magazine. In a stroke, the entire conservative argument on Iraq was demolished. Withdrawal, they'd been telling us, was abject surrender and the abandonment of our Iraqi allies. The conservative counter that this was merely political posturing by Maliki made no sense -- if the reason Maliki was calling for withdrawal was the overwhelming demand for withdrawal on the part of the Iraqi public, that was all the more reason for us to leave. And, of course, looking backward John McCain was (and is) still committed to the idea that, even in retrospect, invading Iraq was a good idea. It looked to me like the election was in the bag. Democrats were going to win the national-security argument, and hence, the election.

 

It hasn't quite gone that way. Indeed, Maliki's stunning and repeated endorsement of the progressive position hasn't really penetrated the narrative of the campaign. And while I'd like to blame the media for this, the truth is the Obama campaign hasn't seriously pushed its arguments about Iraq. Nor have they talked about the fact that on Tuesday, five former secretaries of state, including Republicans like Jim Baker and Colin Powell and even McCain adviser Henry Kissinger, endorsed Obama's position on the need for talks with Iran. Indeed, they've stopped pushing national-security messages altogether.

 

Now, the campaign has its reasons for this. The economy really is a dominant public concern. But I still find it disappointing that these issues have been left off the table.

 

Among other things, it leaves an awful lot of Barack Obama out of the Obama campaign. Obama is a candidate who, rather plainly, could never have secured the Democratic nomination without national-security issues. Indeed, it seems extremely unlikely that he would have had an opening to run against Hillary Clinton in the first place if not for her catastrophic misjudgment in backing the invasion of Iraq in 2002. Beyond that, some of his finest moments in the primary campaign were linked to foreign policy -- from his refusal to back down from his controversial-but-correct stance in favor of high-level talks with Iran to Samantha Power's brilliant denunciation of the "bankrupt conventional wisdom" that's led our country astray.

 

And beyond that, it leaves most of what we really know about John McCain. Not only has McCain, by his own admission, made military and national-security issues the primary focus of his career but anyone who's being honest will tell you that nobody has the foggiest clue what domestic policy would actually look like in a McCain administration. We can, to be sure, evaluate his campaign's policy proposals: They mostly stink. But if elected, he'll face expanded Democratic majorities in Congress who are unlikely to go along with these proposals. What happens then is in the realm of pure conjecture. McCain's been all over the map and then back again, ideologically, on domestic issues and seems prone to capricious decision-making. Faced with congressional resistance would he compromise? Dig in his heels and fight? Nobody really knows.

 

Foreign policy isn't like that. Congress has, in practice, few tools with which to constrain presidential war-making powers. And McCain is passionate about his ideas on this score and will surely resist any congressional efforts to restrain him quite vigorously. What's more, his ideas on this subject are extremely unsound. Jeffrey Goldberg, who is sympathetic to the McCain approach to national security, observes in a recent profile that "in one area, though, he has been more or less constant: his belief in the power of war to solve otherwise insoluble problems."

 

Pocketbook concerns are always dear to the electorate, but it would be nice for voters to give some consideration to the question of whether the right lesson to learn from the Bush years is that we need a president who believes strongly in the power of war to solve problems. Indeed, it seems telling that neither Condoleezza Rice nor Colin Powell can bring themselves to endorse McCain.

 

Their indecision reflects the larger state of U.S. foreign policy. Around when Robert Gates was appointed to run the Pentagon, the Bush administration's proclivity for neoconnish hubris was checked in favor of something more pragmatic. But mere pragmatism has been unable to accomplish much in light of the disasters of the previous years. But Bush has been unwilling to take the sort of dramatic steps -- a diplomatic breakthrough with Iran, reinvigoration of the multilateral nonproliferation process, a new worldwide treaty on climate change -- that could right the course. As a result, we've been drifting: no new disasters, but no solutions either. In this regard, McCain wouldn't offer four more years of the same thing; he'd offer a return to the kind of approach that Bush himself eventually abandoned as unworkable. Obama, meanwhile, offers the sort of bold new approach that could break the impasse. Or, rather, he did back when he talked about national-security policy.

 

Both campaigns have their reasons for downplaying foreign-policy debates, and it's at least defensible for the press to follow the candidates' lead in this regard. Still, it's disturbing to realize that one of the starkest choices ever offered on national-security policy seems likely, barring a sudden and happy end to the financial crisis gripping the country, to go almost entirely undiscussed during the portion of the campaign season when voters are actually paying attention.

Re: The real reasons behind improvement in Iraq

Too bad Robinson doesn't include herself among the "grown-ups" who need to discuss this decision; she ends the op-ed without giving any concrete advice, despite her extensive 10 months of experience in Iraq.  She does advocate some number of troops between 0 and 100,000 to remain in Iraq, for some unspecified period of time.  Wow, brilliant.  That's just the kind of "risk nothing" policy prescription that lands you a comfortable fellowship at conservative Johns Hopkins U. 

Sounds to me like the Sunnis and Maliki did things that were in their interest: The Sunnis gladly took U.S. cash in exchange for rooting out al Qaeda (which they would have done anyway); and Prime Minister Maliki gladly borrowed U.S. muscle to help cow his rival, Moqtada al-Sadr and his Mahdi army (whom he would have had to take on anyway).  We couldn't really "take advantage" of the competition between Maliki and Sadr, because Maliki knew that we wouldn't support Sadr, what with his close ties to Iran.  So Maliki was our only alternative, and he knew it.  That's not "competition" or playing both sides off one another, as Robinson claims, that's just plain choosing sides (Maliki's) in an internecine power struggle.  Let's hope Maliki was worth it.

That said, bribing people who can be bribed is SOP in counter-insurgency warfare.  It's cheaper and less bloody than killing them.  Again, let's hope we bribed the right people, and that they'll stay bought and not to shoot us in the back as we leave.

Finally, just because Petraeus and the U.S. army were proximate to these events, doesn't mean that they caused them.  I sense in Robinson another journalistic victim of "Embed Syndrome," who got starstruck by all her access to Petraeus himself.   

The upshot of this op-ed is just what every Administration mouthpiece has been saying for the past 5 years: Stay the course in Iraq, for some unknown period of time, at some undefined level of troops.  McCain couldn't have put it any better himself. 

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From:
Date: Sun, Sep 14, 2008 at 2:46 PM
Subject: Fw: the first disastrous steps taken by the U.S. occupation authority led by L. Paul Bremer -- disbanding Saddam Hussein's Baath Party and the old regime's security services -- had helped create the Sunni insurgency.
To:

 

 

How Petraeus Changed the Course in Iraq

 

By Linda Robinson

September 14, 2008 | Washington Post

 

Iraq still divides Democrats and Republicans like no other issue, as the campaign rhetoric of both parties makes abundantly clear. Liberals and conservatives can now more or less agree that Iraq is a much, much safer country than it was 18 months ago. But each side is peddling its own story about Iraq's extraordinary turnaround -- and both are wrong.

 

Many conservatives believe that the 2007 "surge" in U.S. troop levels directly produced the decline in Iraqi violence. Meanwhile, liberals argue that Iraq's warring Shiites and Sunnis spontaneously decided -- for their own internal reasons, unrelated to the surge -- to stop fighting. As is so often true of Washington debates, these arguments bear little relation to the reality of how Iraq actually pulled out of its death spiral, which is far more interesting than either partisan yarn. There was no single silver bullet, but rather a multifaceted strategy crafted and carried out by those in Baghdad -- not, despite recent claims, in Washington.

 

I came to this conclusion after reporting in Iraq for a total of 10 months since 2003 and after extensive interviews with Iraqi and U.S. leaders, as well as with troops in the most violent neighborhoods of greater Baghdad, the epicenter of the conflict. My biggest question was my simplest: How did Gen. David H. Petraeus do it?

 

My answer? Bottom line, for the first time since the war began, a U.S. leader decided to address the political motivations of the Iraqi combatants. Petraeus convened a study group that shrewdly analyzed the raging sectarian conflict, then came up with what he called "the Anaconda strategy" to address the underlying dynamic.

 

 

Petraeus and his diplomatic partner, Ambassador Ryan Crocker, realized that the first disastrous steps taken by the U.S. occupation authority led by L. Paul Bremer -- disbanding Saddam Hussein's Baath Party and the old regime's security services -- had helped create the Sunni insurgency. They produced a critical mass of angry men worried that the Sunnis who had run the old Iraq would wind up on the bottom in the new one. Those fears were soon realized: Bremer's occupation government pushed for a sequence of poorly planned elections that wound up entrenching the power of a Shiite-dominated coalition, which began a "sectarian cleansing" campaign against Iraq's minority Sunnis -- and tilted the country into a full-on civil war.

 

While policymakers back in Washington continued to be duped by sectarian-minded Shiite politicians, Petraeus and Crocker set about using all available levers -- including thinking about Iraqi politics -- to rectify the earlier, catastrophic U.S. blunders.

 

The extra surge brigades certainly helped, but the number of U.S. troops was far less important than the new ways in which they were used. The most important new tactical move still gets scant Beltway attention: Petraeus's initiative to reach out to the Sunni insurgency and its base. "We cannot kill our way to victory," he said.

 

On June 2, 2007, Petraeus gathered his commanders and told them to engage with influential Sunnis and insurgents and persuade them to stop fighting. "Tribal engagement and local reconciliation work!" he said. "Encourage it!"

 

The policy was carried out on the battalion level, using troops deployed in U.S. outposts and in joint security stations alongside freshly trained Iraqi forces. "Don't let our bureaucracy stop you, and don't let the Iraqi government stop you," Petraeus urged his young lieutenant colonels, whom he often invited to join him for five-mile fitness -- and advice-dispensing -- runs around Camp Victory, the main U.S. base.

 

He was right to turn to his battalion commanders. Baghdad was being engulfed in growing mayhem: ever-larger car bombs, lethal copper projectiles, homemade explosives packed into sewer pipes that burned U.S. soldiers alive. But the U.S. troops persisted. Over the summer of 2007, the Sunnis responded en masse to the new approach: By September, according to U.S. officials and my own reporting, 15,000 Sunnis had signed up to become checkpoint guards and neighborhood watchmen, paid and monitored by the U.S. battalions that were being so carefully coached by Petraeus. The Shiite government was not amused; the last thing it wanted was its former Sunni foes back inside the fold. Still, by year's end, 70,000 Sunnis -- comprising the vast majority of the insurgents and their support base -- had joined the new U.S.-backed effort. This policy -- battled by bureaucrats both in Baghdad and inside the Beltway -- changed the tide of the war.

 

As the Sunni insurgents switched sides, they passed vital intelligence to their U.S. partners and paymasters, which enabled Petraeus's forces to target Sunni holdouts, including diehards affiliated with al-Qaeda in Iraq. U.S. soldiers also employed new techniques to control the Iraqi population and provide for its safety and to identify fighters hidden among the civilians. For the first time since the war began in 2003, a shareable, computerized biometric registry of military-age males was created. This led to the detention of fewer innocents and more bad guys. Meanwhile, car bombings fell off dramatically after U.S. forces erected concrete barrier walls along sectarian fault lines, including the markets that had been the scenes of some of the ghastliest atrocities.

 

Why were so many Sunnis -- insurgents and civilians alike -- ready to respond to the U.S. overture? Because they were getting desperate and saw Petraeus's outstretched hand as their best chance of surviving a campaign of sectarian violence and ethnic cleansing led by the Shiites and fueled by neighboring Iran. The secular Sunnis' alliance with the jihadist insurgents had always been an uneasy marriage of convenience, and it broke up when Petraeus made a better offer.

 

Another major change over the past 18 months is also poorly understood: the decision of the Mahdi Army, the radical Shiite militia led by Moqtada al-Sadr, to largely stop fighting. Sadr, a young firebrand Islamist cleric, raised a militia of poor youths to take on U.S. troops, even as he backed his fellow Shiite, Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, through political channels. Then last August, Sadr abruptly declared a ceasefire.

 

That move has been widely misinterpreted as a spontaneous, unilateral gesture; in fact, it came after months of military and political pressure. Iraqi special operations forces, backed by elite U.S. combat advisers, conducted near-nightly raids against the most extreme elements of the Mahdi Army. In March 2007, according to Petraeus's staff, the special ops units captured Qais Khazali, a member of the radical Lebanese militia Hezbollah and a Sadrist militia leader. Khazali, U.S. military officials said, provided details of extensive Iranian assistance to Khazali's henchmen. This information, together with two assassinations of provincial governors by Sadrist forces, rattled Maliki -- and began to turn him against Sadr, a fellow Shiite who had helped put the prime minister in office.

 

The final straw came on Aug. 27, when Sadr's militiamen attacked guards at the main Shiite shrine in Karbala as a million worshipers arrived in the city to mark a holy day. An apoplectic Maliki rushed to Karbala, and the resulting confrontation led Sadr (then in Iran) to back down and issue his ceasefire declaration. Maliki then launched an offensive in Basra this spring to break Sadrists' control of the city, the port and oil pumping station. The wedge between Maliki and Sadr widened when massive arms caches of recent Iranian manufacture were discovered, despite Iran's 2007 pledge to desist stoking Iraq's nascent civil war.

 

 

That said, the intra-Shiite competition for power will persist for years; the trick is to channel it into politics, not violence -- and to continue to make use of the competition between Maliki and Sadr.

 

Iranian influence in Iraq is also destined to continue, but it's a double-edged sword. Iraqi Shiite groups are wary of appearing to be Iranian puppets, which would hamstring their popularity with Iraqis. Nor do many Iraqi Shiites fancy a Tehran-style theocracy. As Sadr's militia has loosened its control over many Shiite neighborhoods, ordinary Shiites have sighed with relief, glad to be rid of the thuggish behavior and the religious strictures imposed by some militia leaders.

 

Another key factor in Iraq's turnaround has been Petraeus's willingness to use his leverage with Iraqi leaders. Behind closed doors, the U.S. commander has frequently gone to the mat with Maliki as part of a "good cop, bad cop" routine that he and the unflappable Crocker have perfected. The veteran ambassador provided diplomatic sangfroid and insight into the region's historical animosities; Petraeus provided the raw muscle to maneuver the Iraqi government into making concessions.

 

Petraeus waded deeper into the political mire than most other U.S. generals would have. In one of my interviews with him last year, he confessed to me that he had shown the "full range of emotions" and had even feigned anger in order to move Maliki away from sectarianism. On his first tour in Iraq, in Mosul, the general had learned that it was sometimes necessary to bang tables and twist arms.

 

Getting basic services to Sunni areas was one key effort that required constant browbeating. When Petraeus was told that an Iraqi ministry official had refused to visit Dora, one of many Sunni regions still without electricity, trash removal and other basic services, I heard him bark, "Tell him if he wants a blue badge for the Green Zone, he'd better get down here." Petraeus also pushed the Iraqi parliament to pass de-Baathification reforms and other crucial legislation earlier this year. And not least, the general repeatedly bucked pressure from his civilian and military superiors at the Pentagon to declare "Mission Accomplished" before he felt that it was.

 

Petraeus's willingness to grapple with Iraqi politics made all the difference. His replacements' tasks will be more than ever political, not military. The former Sunni insurgency hasn't yet been woven into the political, economic and security life of the country, and the extraordinary success of the past 18 months is likely to unravel if Petraeus's and Crocker's successors -- as well as the next U.S. president -- do not finish that crucial undertaking.

 

No, the Iraqis can't finish the job on their own now; at the same time, no, we don't need 100,000 U.S. troops to stay in Iraq and do it for them. It would be heartening if we could understand the real record of Iraq's turnaround -- and talk about its future like grown-ups.

 

lrobin43@jhu.edu