Sorry if this diary duplicates another previous one. Did a quick search and didn't find anything. However, this diary discusses an article in the New Yorker from April 4, so I wouldn't be surprised if someone already diaried this.
The article is The Lesson of Tal Afar by George Packer. http://www.newyorker.com/.... A truly outstanding piece from a guy who obviously went there and really spent some time on the ground. Quite long but definitely worth reading if you want the real picture over there.
Let me confine myself to making some points that I drew from the article. Others can add their take in the comments. I don't claim to be comprehensive of my analysis of this article.
- First, Rumsfeld is really quite terrible. Don't believe any spin from the right wing noise machine. This guy can be compared to McNamara of the Vietnam war and probably suffer in the comparison. For a long time he denied that there even was an insurgency.
The most stubborn resistance to the idea of an insurgency came from Donald Rumsfeld, the Defense Secretary, who was determined to bring about a "revolution in military affairs" at the Pentagon--the transformation of war fighting into a combination of information technology and precision firepower that would eliminate the need for large numbers of ground troops and prolonged involvement in distant countries. "It's a vision of war that totally neglects the psychological and cultural dimensions of war," the officer said. Rumsfeld's denial of the existence of the insurgency turned on technicalities: insurgencies were fought against sovereign governments, he argued, and in 2003 Iraq did not yet have one.
But not only that,
...Rumsfeld, President Bush, and other Administration officials continued to call the escalating violence in Iraq the work of a small number of Baathist "dead-enders" and foreign jihadis. For Rumsfeld, this aversion became a permanent condition...General Peter Pace, said, rather sheepishly, "I have to use the word `insurgent,' because I can't think of a better word right now," Rumsfeld cut in, " `Enemies of the legitimate Iraqi government'--how's that?"
Right now, "...it's an open secret in Washington that Rumsfeld wants to extricate himself from Iraq." So he's trying to move over work to the State Department and Condi. But of course, the State Department doesn't have anything near the budget of the Pentagon. And although he pays lip service to counterinsurgency and all that new stuff, the funding is still heavily tilted towards jets and all that expensive high tech stuff. Condi is now trying to win the same fights that Colin Powell lost against Rummy. But enough about Rummy...
- Second, a gent called Col. McMaster showed the correct way to fight a counterinsurgency in Iraq. At least he showed it could work in a relatively small place like Tal Afar. The key is patience, learning the Iraqi culture, countless meetings with both sides of the conflict, an incredible amount of hard work without going around indiscriminately blowing things up. The 'hard ass', blowing things up and killing people approach didn't work at all wherever it was applied.
- Third, the US is definitely pulling out. Elections in November. By summer there will be a significant drawdown. Not that there's been any improvement, but there's heavy political pressure on the military guys to just pull back. They're pulling into 'enduring bases' and staying there, the exact opposite of McMaster's approach. Very few people in these enduring bases are going out and dealing with the Iraqi people.
As a State Department official was preparing to leave for Baghdad recently, a colleague told him, "When you get there, the big sucking sound you'll hear is D.O.D. moonwalking out of Iraq as fast as it can go. Your job is to figure out how we can fill the gap."
- Fourth, it is pretty much unquestionable that there will be a civil war. At this point, the Sunnis and Shiites truly hate each other. Too much blood has been spilled on both sides to ever hope for reconciliation.
- Fifth, the US is putting far too little money into reconstruction. Congress is allocating very little money, and therefore the extremists are destroying pipelines, oil refineries, electricity generating plants, water pipelines and so forth. There is no hope in rebuilding these. Although State Department personnel are pretty much being forced to go there and supervise reconstruction projects, there's not enough money and not enough security for this to happen in any meaningful way. Forget about getting any oil from Iraq for the foreseeable future. Since grabbing Iraq's oil was Bush's objective from the start, this objective has utterly failed.
- Sixth, Col. McMaster says that no one really knows anymore what's going on in Iraq. The situation is "so damned complex." "If you ever think you have the solution to this, you're wrong, and you're dangerous." McMaster wrote a Ph.D thesis called Dereliction of Duty in which he showed that LBJ, McNamara, et al, completely messed up Vietnam due to incompetence. When the writer asked him about parallels between his thesis and the current situation, he laughed and said he didn't want to touch that. But the writer drew parallels that were quite clear.
- Seventh, there are three kinds of failure going on in Iraq: "There was an intellectual failure at the start. There was an implementation failure after that. And now there's a failure of political will."
- Eighth, the administration has a Plan B ready in case of American defeat: blame the press and the opposition:
In recent remarks, the President and Administration officials, such as Cheney and Rumsfeld, have made it clear that, in the case of an American defeat, they will have a Plan B ready: they will blame the press for reporting bad news. They will blame the opposition for losing the war.
- Ninth, there is a potential domino effect. Unlike Vietnam, where the domino effect proved false, no one knows what will happen in Iraq.
Iraq in the hands of militias and terrorists, manipulated by neighboring states, would threaten the Middle East and the U.S. for many years. The truth is that no one in Washington knows what to do.
- Tenth, Barry Posen, a political scientist at MIT, says about the US administration: ""These people are stubborn. A rational person would think that they've learned something about the limits of American power. They've learned nothing."
- Finally, there is a chance that things might work out. If the US can broker a unity government, which is its current strategy with Khalilzad as its spokesman, political compromise might drain away support for the violence. And the Sunnis have been engaged lately; a lot voted. But this is a long shot and the US's final card. The violence may continue even after a unity government is formed and after that, there's nothing.