The delusional surge defenders

Below is an exchange with Larry Johnson at No Quarter, prompted by an article from Ralph Peters that a mutual friend, a retired military officer, forwarded. Much of this new effort to portray the surge as a success was prompted by an op-ed piece in the New York Times by Ken Pollack and Michael O'Hanlon, who are frequently portrayed as 'anti-war lefties' in the conservative press. It should be pointed out, that Ken (a former colleague at the NSC) wrote a book entitled: "The Threatening Storm: The Case for Invading Iraq." He has a great deal at stake in portraying the invasion as successful, in other words. In addition, Pollack/O'Hanlon's trip was organized by the U.S. military, and every contact with Iraqis was arranged by same. A fair and balanced assessment of progress in Iraq?

First, some lines from Peters:

KILLING FOR CONGRESS

The New York Post
By RALPH PETERS

August 16, 2007 -- TWO days ago, al Qaeda detonated four massive truck bombs in three Iraqi villages, killing at least 250 civilians (perhaps as many as 500) and wounding many more. The bombings were a sign of al Qaeda's frustration, desperation and fear.

The victims were ethnic Kurd Yazidis, members of a minor sect with pre-Islamic roots. Muslim extremists condemn them (wrongly) as devil worshippers. The Yazidis live on the fringes of society.

That's one of the two reasons al Qaeda targeted those settlements: The terrorist leaders realize now that the carnage they wrought on fellow Muslims backfired, turning once-sympathetic Sunni Arabs against them. The fanatics calculated that Iraqis wouldn't care much about the Yazidis.

As far as the Thieves of Baghdad (also known as Iraq's government) go, the terrorists were right. Iraqi minorities, including Christians, have been classified as fair game by Muslim butchers. Mainstream Iraqis simply look away.

But the second reason for those dramatic bombings was that al Qaeda needs to portray Iraq as a continuing failure of U.S. policy. Those dead and maimed Yazidis were just props: The intended audience was Congress.

The remainder is here. Here's Larry's response, which includes my note to him:

Delusional Surge Cheerleaders

by Larry C Johnson

Ralph Peters, a retired Army Lieutenant Colonel, apparently is trying out for the Dallas Cowboys Cheerleading squad. How else to explain his piece in Thursday’s New York Post, "Killing for Congress? Peters performs an act of literary fellatio on General David Petraeus and insists that Al Qaeda is the primary threat in Iraq:

But the second reason for those dramatic bombings was that al Qaeda needs to portray Iraq as a continuing failure of U.S. policy. Those dead and maimed Yazidis were just props: The intended audience was Congress.

Al Qaeda has been badly battered. It’s lost top leaders and thousands of cadres. Even more painful for the Islamists, they’ve lost ground among the people of Iraq, including former allies. Iraqis got a good taste of al Qaeda. Now they’re spitting it out.

The foreign terrorists slaughtering the innocent recognize that their only remaining hope of pulling off a come-from-way-behind win is to convince your senator and your congressman or -woman that it’s politically expedient to hand a default victory to a defeated al Qaeda.

I commented on this piece earlier tonight in response to a query from a good friend, who is a retired Army Colonel. I wrote:

Sorry, but Peter’s analytical track record is pretty piss poor. He proceeds from the false assumption that we’re fighting only or primarily Al Qaeda. The intel simply does not support that position. The sectarian strife continues and in those areas where there is a decline it is not a positive for the national political picutre. Take Ramadi and Al Anbar for example. The Sunni tribes are cracking down on foreign fighters and we’re arming those tribes to protect themselves. However, who is pissed off by this? Prime Minister Maliki, who is saying very clearly that we’re arming his enemy.

Meanwhile, the bulk of the Iraqi Army and police are heavily infiltrated by Muqtada al Sadr’s guys. They warn off their compadres and go hell for leather after those who are their sectarian foes.

The politics on the ground have gotten worse, not better, in the last month. The Sunnis have pulled out completely from the Government. Anthony Cordesman provides a genuine and thoughtful analysis of what is really going on in Iraq.

My comment elicited this remark from Tom Maertens, a retired State Department Counter Terrorism official, who also served at the National Security Council. [Tom post’s at VoxVerax].

Larry has it right. Peters is a cheerleader, not an analyst. His line is that the more people the insurgents kill, the more desperate they are. Huh? So, they have been getting more desperate for four years, and have been in their ‘final throes’ for almost three years.

Mythologizing Petraeus is just the latest wishful thinking. The secular trend since the summer of 2003 is continually downward.

Keith Olbermann on MSNBC did a compendium of Bush’s “We are making progress in Iraq” statements from 2003 to 2007. However much we would like those regular pronouncements to be true, they are fiction. U.S. troops cannot do what the Iraqi leaders won’t do: reach a political settlement. In fact, al-Maliki is dead in the water, a figurehead who is essentially powerless and depends on Shia militia to stay in office.

We can pacify some areas with enough troops — temporarily — but that doesn’t solve the political problem, which has gotten worse with the Sunni decision to pull out of the gov’t.

Meanwhile, consider what happens if the insurgents launch a spectacular assault on the Green Zone. So far, they have thrown a few desultory mortar rounds into the Green Zone, but you have to presume that at some point they have the capability to do much more. Will we see helicopters landing on the Embassy roof, again?

As for the U.S. military strategy in Iraq, can anyone explain how it took us 3 years to rediscover ‘clear and hold’, and a 4th to begin implementing it? Has any other counter-insurgency strategy ever worked? The Viet Nam experience was so traumatic that we refused to learn anything from it.

What Bush/Cheney/Rove/Libby/Wolfowitz/Feith/Kristol/etc. learned from Vietnam, of course, was how to evade military service. A bunch of armchair warriors with grandiose delusions who got us into another quagmire.

The best reporting on what is happening in Iraq is coming from McClatchy (gee, call me shocked!!). Leila Fadel’s piece, "U.S. military leaders: Iraq security effort hampered by lack of political progress" is a definite must read. She reports:

Despite U.S. claims that violence is down in the Iraqi capital, U.S. military officers are offering a bleak picture of Iraq’s future, saying they’ve yet to see any signs of reconciliation between Sunni and Shiite Muslims despite the drop in violence.

Without reconciliation, the military officers say, any decline in violence will be temporary and bloodshed could return to previous levels as soon as the U.S. military cuts back its campaign against insurgent attacks.

Then there is the tiny matter of the real security in Baghdad:

When President Bush announced plans to increase U.S. troop strength in Iraq to help calm Baghdad, U.S. officials had hoped that any decrease in violence would lead to greater willingness from Shiite and Sunni political leaders to reach an accommodation.

But that hasn’t happened. Sunnis have accused the Shiite-led government of Prime Minister Nouri al Maliki of making no effort to stop Shiite militias from forcing Sunnis from their homes. Sunni ministers have withdrawn from the government in protest.

In the meantime, the most touted success of the campaign — an alliance between U.S. forces and some Sunni insurgent groups against al Qaida in Iraq — has angered many in the Maliki government, who accuse the United States of supporting groups that could ultimately turn against the government.

The true test in gauging the success of the surge is whether or not the Sunnis, Shias, and Kurds in Iraq find a way to settle their differences using diplomacy rather than bombs. And the record to date shows no progress in achieving that goal. Thank God Ralph Peters retired from the Army. We don’t need sycophantic fools like that in a leadership position.