Excerpt from "The Surge at Midpoint"
Note: The complete essay, "The Surge at Midpoint" can be found on the Club website at http://www.cepiaclub.com/Publications.htm after June 12, 2007.
The above description of the “on the ground” level of fighting an insurgency is the heart of what the current Bush Administration surge “strategy” needs to accomplish. The key problem in the Iraq War is that as the U.S. has spent over four years of using its heavy-handed, extremely violent, very visible, futile and ineffective traditions of indiscriminate firepower, overwhelming force, and cultural insensitivity in fighting the guerilla-terrorist networks of Iraq.
As a result of the misuse of strategy, the population of Iraq feels intimidated by BOTH the Coalition military forces and the insurgents. The government’s ineffectiveness to protect the people and provide services to the communities has lost and is losing the loyalty and cooperation of an ever-growing share of the Iraqi population and their tribal-system of leadership. Regrettably, the failures of political-military leadership at the very top of American government in Washington, D.C., among both civilians and uniformed personnel, in the White House and on both sides of the isle in Congress, may have lost the Iraq War without an opportunity for winning remaining. Time will tell.
First, the U.S. government has agreed that political benchmarks must be placed on the Iraqi government to measure progress. These measurements are conceived in order to determine if the strategy is working, if the Iraqi government can survive and operate with the support of its own people, and whether more U.S. blood and treasure will make a difference. Benchmarks on the Iraqi political leadership are necessary and fine. After all, the solution to the Iraq War lies first and foremost on Iraq establishing a political system which the majority of its citizens will support and whose cooperation is the first essential to defeat the insurgency.
The only thing wrong in this scenario is that the U.S. political leadership has no political benchmarks on itself. The failure of the post-invasion occupation and counter-insurgency war has always been the U.S. political grand strategy for the war and the entire Middle East is fundamentally flawed. No matter what the U.S. military is capable of doing in Iraq, or in Syria, Iran, Afghanistan and everywhere else, U.S. foreign policy defeats the sacrifice of near 4,000 dead Americans and the30,000 seriously wounded. Need we mention the tragedy of a half a million Iraqis murdered and the waste of 500 billion dollars of U.S. taxpayer money.
Wars all must begin with grand strategy–the setting of a desired political outcome. The U.S. uses the political propaganda that it wants democracy to transform the Middle East. When the wrong governments have been democratically elected, however, the U.S. opposes them and tries to destroy them. More cynically, it supports the most ruthless and reactionary dictatorships in the Middle East who forbid democracy and imprison, torture and murder their own citizens.
U.S. political policy in the Middle East is so absurd that it defies understanding. The absurdity is only possible because of the ignorance and apathy of the American people to accept it. The Bush Administration ruins any effort to equitably settle the Israeli-Palestinian problem by, no surprise, protecting Israel’s land and water theft. Not any more surprisingly, the U.S. denies the democratically elected government of Palestine led by the “terrorists Hamas party” the support and acknowledgement it needs to be a stable partner for peace negotiations. The American people have been lied to by their government and media into believing that failure to solve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is not standing in the way of peace and security for the U.S. against Muslim fundamentalists everywhere. These lies to the American people are of true Orwellian proportions.
Getting U.S. political policy correct and realistic is essential to the war against Islamist guerilla-terrorists, in Iraq and worldwide. In the weeks preceding this writing, the U.S. may have delivered the last cynical dagger into the soul of all the sacrifice. At this stage, when the originally scheduled units for the surge in Iraq have arrived completely in-theater, the Bush Administration announced that it would like to maintain a presence of 40,000-50,000 U.S. military personnel stationed in Iraq for possibly the next 50 years. The comparison was made with a UN Security Council-mandated military presence on the Korean peninsula 54 years after the end of active combat there. The difference, not pointed out, is that up until now at least, the South Korean government and most importantly the older people who live during the war, wanted the UN/US forces there.
The Iraqi people, by large majorities in polls, have opposed such a military occupation. They want to be left alone as soon as they possibly can be. The point to which they will tolerate a U.S. occupation (in all but name) is when one side or the other has decisively won control. The Iraqi people will eventually overwhelmingly support whichever side–American-supported or guerilla-terrorists–that meets their needs for security, sovereignty, order, services, and policies. It goes without saying that one of these policy needs is the respect for Arab culture and the Muslim faith in the Middle East. As mentioned, justice for the Palestinian nation is a prime one of these.
As stressed in this article, U.S. grand strategy/political policy regarding the Middle East, exclusive even from any military strategy or policy, is the first condition to win in Iraq. But the U.S. has consistently done and shown since 1943 its emergence to a superpower that it does not respect the needs of the Arab peoples and their Muslim faith to be treated with dignity, respect, justice and fairness. In the future, into this breach of credibility will step a great- or even an emerging super-power that does not bear the burden of America’s demands for the region to submit. This new replacement power, to which would accrue all strategic benefits deriving from the region’s oil resources and its political and economic gravity, could very well be China, Russia, India or the European Union. With that, the eclipse of America’s unrivaled power would begin, and the United States would begin passing into history as the world’s once and lost great empire of liberty undone by the ignorance and apathy of its own greedy and selfish people
The above description of the “on the ground” level of fighting an insurgency is the heart of what the current Bush Administration surge “strategy” needs to accomplish. The key problem in the Iraq War is that as the U.S. has spent over four years of using its heavy-handed, extremely violent, very visible, futile and ineffective traditions of indiscriminate firepower, overwhelming force, and cultural insensitivity in fighting the guerilla-terrorist networks of Iraq.
As a result of the misuse of strategy, the population of Iraq feels intimidated by BOTH the Coalition military forces and the insurgents. The government’s ineffectiveness to protect the people and provide services to the communities has lost and is losing the loyalty and cooperation of an ever-growing share of the Iraqi population and their tribal-system of leadership. Regrettably, the failures of political-military leadership at the very top of American government in Washington, D.C., among both civilians and uniformed personnel, in the White House and on both sides of the isle in Congress, may have lost the Iraq War without an opportunity for winning remaining. Time will tell.
First, the U.S. government has agreed that political benchmarks must be placed on the Iraqi government to measure progress. These measurements are conceived in order to determine if the strategy is working, if the Iraqi government can survive and operate with the support of its own people, and whether more U.S. blood and treasure will make a difference. Benchmarks on the Iraqi political leadership are necessary and fine. After all, the solution to the Iraq War lies first and foremost on Iraq establishing a political system which the majority of its citizens will support and whose cooperation is the first essential to defeat the insurgency.
The only thing wrong in this scenario is that the U.S. political leadership has no political benchmarks on itself. The failure of the post-invasion occupation and counter-insurgency war has always been the U.S. political grand strategy for the war and the entire Middle East is fundamentally flawed. No matter what the U.S. military is capable of doing in Iraq, or in Syria, Iran, Afghanistan and everywhere else, U.S. foreign policy defeats the sacrifice of near 4,000 dead Americans and the30,000 seriously wounded. Need we mention the tragedy of a half a million Iraqis murdered and the waste of 500 billion dollars of U.S. taxpayer money.
Wars all must begin with grand strategy–the setting of a desired political outcome. The U.S. uses the political propaganda that it wants democracy to transform the Middle East. When the wrong governments have been democratically elected, however, the U.S. opposes them and tries to destroy them. More cynically, it supports the most ruthless and reactionary dictatorships in the Middle East who forbid democracy and imprison, torture and murder their own citizens.
U.S. political policy in the Middle East is so absurd that it defies understanding. The absurdity is only possible because of the ignorance and apathy of the American people to accept it. The Bush Administration ruins any effort to equitably settle the Israeli-Palestinian problem by, no surprise, protecting Israel’s land and water theft. Not any more surprisingly, the U.S. denies the democratically elected government of Palestine led by the “terrorists Hamas party” the support and acknowledgement it needs to be a stable partner for peace negotiations. The American people have been lied to by their government and media into believing that failure to solve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is not standing in the way of peace and security for the U.S. against Muslim fundamentalists everywhere. These lies to the American people are of true Orwellian proportions.
Getting U.S. political policy correct and realistic is essential to the war against Islamist guerilla-terrorists, in Iraq and worldwide. In the weeks preceding this writing, the U.S. may have delivered the last cynical dagger into the soul of all the sacrifice. At this stage, when the originally scheduled units for the surge in Iraq have arrived completely in-theater, the Bush Administration announced that it would like to maintain a presence of 40,000-50,000 U.S. military personnel stationed in Iraq for possibly the next 50 years. The comparison was made with a UN Security Council-mandated military presence on the Korean peninsula 54 years after the end of active combat there. The difference, not pointed out, is that up until now at least, the South Korean government and most importantly the older people who live during the war, wanted the UN/US forces there.
The Iraqi people, by large majorities in polls, have opposed such a military occupation. They want to be left alone as soon as they possibly can be. The point to which they will tolerate a U.S. occupation (in all but name) is when one side or the other has decisively won control. The Iraqi people will eventually overwhelmingly support whichever side–American-supported or guerilla-terrorists–that meets their needs for security, sovereignty, order, services, and policies. It goes without saying that one of these policy needs is the respect for Arab culture and the Muslim faith in the Middle East. As mentioned, justice for the Palestinian nation is a prime one of these.
As stressed in this article, U.S. grand strategy/political policy regarding the Middle East, exclusive even from any military strategy or policy, is the first condition to win in Iraq. But the U.S. has consistently done and shown since 1943 its emergence to a superpower that it does not respect the needs of the Arab peoples and their Muslim faith to be treated with dignity, respect, justice and fairness. In the future, into this breach of credibility will step a great- or even an emerging super-power that does not bear the burden of America’s demands for the region to submit. This new replacement power, to which would accrue all strategic benefits deriving from the region’s oil resources and its political and economic gravity, could very well be China, Russia, India or the European Union. With that, the eclipse of America’s unrivaled power would begin, and the United States would begin passing into history as the world’s once and lost great empire of liberty undone by the ignorance and apathy of its own greedy and selfish people
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posted by Scipio Cepicanus @ 12:46 AM
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