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Blunderov
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Iraq and the Logic of Timetables
« on: 2007-04-13 13:44:00 » |
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[Blunderov]"“Why would you say to the enemy, ‘Here’s a timetable. Just go ahead and wait us out?’” Well, there’s a logical answer to Bush’s rhetorical question.""
ISTM that there is also a logical question to Bush's rhetorical question. Does Bush propose to have Iraq awake one morning to find that the Americans have mysteriously vanished in the night?
Or does logic dictate that he would, at some or another time, have to announce a timetable for withdrawal anyway?
What he really is saying he has no intention of leaving Iraq whatsoever. (And Congress knows where it can stick its mandate.)
http://americablog.blogspot.com/2007/04/theocrats-have-been-taking-over.html
Iraq and the Logic of Timetables
by Robert Parry | Apr 13 2007 - 8:23am
It has become a standard part of George W. Bush’s litany for why he will veto a congressional plan for setting a timetable for withdrawing U.S. combat forces from Iraq: “Why would you say to the enemy, ‘Here’s a timetable. Just go ahead and wait us out?’”
Well, there’s a logical answer to Bush’s rhetorical question. If a timetable encourages Iraqi insurgents to silence their guns and to stop planting roadside bombs – even temporarily to wait the Americans out – Iraq might get the breathing space it needs to begin healing its sectarian divisions.
Indeed, one could argue that Bush’s “surge” plan and Bush’s fear about letting the enemy “wait us out” offer essentially the same opportunity: to achieve enough peace and quiet in the short term for reconciliation and reconstruction to begin.
But a withdrawal timetable has additional advantages. First, it has the chance of bringing relative peace to the entire country as insurgents pull back anticipating a total American military withdrawal, while the “surge” seeks greater security only for Baghdad.
One of the criticisms of the “surge” is that it amounts to a version of “Whack-a-Mole,” with insurgents disappearing for a while only to pop up in another location vacated by U.S. troops. The “surge” rationale, however, is that even a temporary sense of security in the capital might give the Iraqi government a chance to restore calm.
Another plus for a withdrawal timetable is that it would assure Iraqis that the U.S. military presence will not be open-ended, thus undercutting one of the strongest arguments of the insurgency, that it is a national resistance fighting a foreign occupation.
A date certain for American withdrawal also would put non-Iraqi al-Qaeda operatives – who number only an estimated five percent of the armed insurgency – in a tighter fix. Without the United States to point to, al-Qaeda would find it tougher to recruit jihadists and would likely face military pressure from Iraqi nationalists fed up with foreign interference.
That is why al-Qaeda leaders view Bush’s open-ended war in Iraq as crucial to their long-range plans for spreading their radical ideology throughout the Muslim world. As “Atiyah,” one of Osama bin Laden’s top lieutenants, explained in a Dec. 11, 2005, letter, “prolonging the war is in our interest.”
[To read the “prolonging the war” passage from the Atiyah letter at the Web site of West Point’s Combating Terrorism Center, click here and then scroll down to the bottom of page 16 and the top of page 17.]
Helping al-Qaeda
U.S. intelligence analysts have long understood that Bush’s Iraq strategy is playing into al-Qaeda’s hands.
Indeed, one could say Bush and bin Laden have enjoyed a symbiotic relationship in which each enhances the other’s power; Bush using 9/11 as justification for consolidating presidential authority in the United States and bin Laden exploiting the Iraq War to rebuild his terrorist bands and burnish his reputation as a defender of Islam.
Yet, even as Bush’s clumsy “war on terror” strengthens the terrorists, the President still cites 9/11 and al-Qaeda as reasons to continue with what is essentially the same “stay the course” strategy in Iraq, albeit now repackaged as the “surge.” Bush also repeats many of his old discredited canards, as he did on April 10 to an American Legion post.
“This is an unusual era in which we live, defined on September the 11th, 2001,” Bush said. “See, that’s a date that reminded us the world had changed significantly from what we thought the world was. We thought that – we thought that oceans and friendly neighbors could protect us from attack.”
However, the truth is that no one who grew up during the Cold War thought the oceans could protect the United States from attack. Soviet ballistic missiles, which could be fired from the other side of the planet, carried the threat of annihilation for major American cities.
But Bush has found this refrain about the oceans and 9/11 to be a pleasing way to justify his view that he must anoint himself as an all-powerful Commander in Chief who can ignore the Constitution to confront the supposedly unprecedented danger from al-Qaeda.
In his April 10 speech, Bush also repeated his claim that the government’s “most solemn duty … is to protect the American people from harm.” By making that argument, Bush further rationalizes his abrogation of the Constitution. What’s most important, he’s saying, is that Americans can drive to the mall without fear of a terrorist attack.
But the oaths that the President and other federal officers take do not mention protecting Americans from harm. The oaths pledge to uphold and defend the Constitution, which embodies the principles of a democratic Republic.
Bush has turned this reality upside down. In the name of making Americans safer, he has tossed the habeas corpus right to a fair trial and other liberties guaranteed by the Constitution.
False Dichotomy
In his speech, Bush also posed the choice facing America as either going “on the offense against an enemy” or “sitting back and being passive in the face of this threat.” Though an appealing argument to the weak of mind, those two choices aren’t the real alternatives.
No serious person has advocated “sitting back and being passive,” but there are profound differences about how to conduct a sensible counter-insurgency program aimed at neutralizing or eliminating al-Qaeda and other dangerous terrorist groups.
To pose the dichotomy more honestly, the choices are: pursuing a sophisticated strategy that avoids unnecessary violence, addresses legitimate grievances of the Muslim world and isolates the extremists – or crashing around the Middle East trying to kill anyone who might be a potential enemy and thus creating more hatred and more terrorists.
In effect, Bush has opted for the second approach, which is why Atiyah and other al-Qaeda leaders want Bush to continue doing what he’s been doing. The longer Bush insists on an open-ended war in Iraq the more time that buys for al-Qaeda to sink down roots there and to recruit jihadists in other countries.
Bush remains bin Laden’s perfect foil and Bush’s Iraq War continues to serve as al-Qaeda’s ideal recruitment poster.
One alternative to that dangerous situation would be a recognition that Bush handed al-Qaeda an extraordinary gift when he invaded Iraq and that one way to deny al-Qaeda continued use of that gift is to announce that U.S. combat forces will be leaving Iraq at a date certain.
Giving Bush another blank check for the Iraq War is like giving Osama bin Laden an indefinite extension on the gift that keeps on giving.
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Blunderov
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Re:Iraq and the Logic of Timetables
« Reply #1 on: 2007-04-16 13:18:49 » |
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[Blunderov] Timetables have become quite the talk of the town. Not going to happen while Bush is in power. Cheney is right - the Dems will blink.
Meanwhile the resistance has no intentions of falling in with Dubya's earnest hope that they play a waiting game.
http://www.allheadlinenews.com/articles/7007058653
Islamic Cleric Pushes Iraq Prime Minister To Set Timetable For U.S. Troop Pullout
http://electroniciraq.net/news/3003.shtml
Endgame: Iraqi Insurgents Press For Final Blow
Adam Elkus, Electronic Iraq, 16 April 2007
By all indicators, America's Iraqi expedition has failed miserably. One by one, American allies draw down their forces or resist increasing public pressure to do so. The central Iraqi government exercises little control--its main means of exercising power is negative--the use of Shiite death squads. A bloody civil war has created a feedback loop of ethnic violence that cannot be stopped. In the north, the Kurds lie in wait for the perfect opportunity to break away. And Iran is quietly grooming the Iraqi government to act as a client state.
Although President Bush's handling of the war has become extremely unpopular and the majority of the public seeks a form of withdrawal or drawdown, the public does not want immediate withdrawal. This can be explained as a defensive psychological reaction: few want to admit that so many were sacrificed for so little. In addition, Americans fear for the lives of the U.S. troops currently engaged in battle with the various ethnic factions and terrorist groups in the Iraqi maelstrom. While the public generally accepts the necessity of withdrawal, they blanch at the instability that could result. Proposals for withdrawal focus on a year-long redeployment rather than the quick withdrawal many anti-war advocates like.
Iraq's Sunni insurgency is not going to patiently wait for American will to collapse. They can sense that public support is fading and that the end of American involvement is near. They know that they can strike a fatal blow at public support for the war and possibly shorten the conflict, preserving their strength for the inevitable internecine feuding that will result after an American withdrawal. Such feuding has already begun, as Sunni insurgents have openly broken with Al Qaeda in Iraq.
While the public generally accepts the necessity of withdrawal, they blanch at the instability that could result. Proposals for withdrawal focus on a year-long redeployment rather than the quick withdrawal many anti-war advocates like.
To do so, however, they must go beyond merely bleeding the Americans to death, as such a war of attrition is inevitably slow and painful for them as well. They are looking for a shocking, media-worthy incident or series of incidents that will finally destroy American will. The recent attacks with chlorine bombs, though flashy, have failed to do the trick, as they are not lethal enough to inflict lasting damage. Thus, elements within the insurgency are trying two different approaches: overrunning an American unit and striking within the Green Zone.
Counter-terrorism consultant John Robb noted in a blog post that "As the [insurgency] continues to improve its methods and the US counter-insurgency effort becomes more of a police force to bolster street level security, the potential for successful assaults and overruns of small US outposts becomes a major threat." General Petraeus' strategy for the "surge" hinges on moving American troops from their fortress-like bases into small outposts within Iraqi cities, enabling them to police volatile insurgent strongholds in a manner reminiscent of big-city "community policing" in the continental United States.
These outposts are the urban equivalents of Vietnamese firebases, small islands of American power vulnerable to being overrun by "swarming" attacks. They also are dangerously dependent on Iraqi units infiltrated by factional fighters. Iraq's insurgent factions are keen to exploit this vulnerability. In the last few months, insurgents have mounted a number of attacks against these bases, employing a mixture of car bombings, chlorine bombs, and small arms attacks.
Insurgents understand that the spectacle of Americans losing a pitched battle--something that hasn't happened since the Vietnam war--would attract massive media attention, crush the morale of the American people, and make the American military forces look weak, emboldening other insurgents for similar attacks. So far, they have been repulsed. Yet with each day the violence worsens, the chance that insurgents will overrun an American base grows. Given the growing power of the insurgency, Robb believes that it is only a matter of time before this event occurs.
Insurgents have targeted the Green Zone for a similar reason. As the high-tech, heavily fortified site of the major Iraqi government institutions and American military, diplomatic, and business presence in Baghdad, the Green Zone is the most secure area in Iraq. Thus, a terrorist attack within such an environment, especially one that succeeded in killing high-ranking American personnel, would have the same psychological effect as the Vietcong assault on the American embassy during the Tet Offensive. Center for Defense Information analyst Lawrence Korb predicted in a March 20 op-ed in The Guardian that "[i]f the green zone were to be shelled by mortars, causing a large number of casualties…the American public would most likely demand a much more rapid - but much less thoroughly-considered - withdrawal."
To this end, insurgents have attempted numerous attacks inside the Green Zone, the most brazen of which was an April 12 attack on the Iraqi parliament that killed one and injured twenty-two. It is unclear how heavily Al-Qaeda In Iraq and other insurgent factions have infiltrated the Green Zone, but past plots disrupted by American and Iraqi investigators have indicated that Sunni insurgents definitely have established a presence. Even if insurgents fail to breach the Green Zone's defenses for a much more devastating attack, they still can succeed in waging a war of literal and psychological attrition. Insurgents have increasingly targeted Americans within the Green Zone with mortars, weapons that can be fired from many miles away using commercially available GPS coordinates.
These attacks have killed Americans and Iraqis and even came close to hitting the UN Secretary General Ban-Ki-Moon during a speech in the Green Zone. According to the Washington Post, American embassy personnel cannot even take a short walk outside without protective gear, no outside gatherings are permitted, and "nonessential visitors" have been banned from the American embassy.
Even if the insurgents cannot achieve a devastating attack, they can replicate the psychological effect of making the Americans look vulnerable even in the most secure environment with "fire and forget" attacks at the Green Zone. The fear and political fallout spread by Hezbollah's use of rockets aimed at Israeli cities, coupled with Israel's inability to root out hidden Katyusha rocket teams during the summer 2006 invasion of Lebanon, is an instructive example of such an effort. Insurgents are banking on the possibility that risk-free attacks will eventually kill an important American military or civilian official.
Would a bloody success with either the overrun or mortar strategy have a crippling effect on American morale? Yes and no. It is likely that the shock of such an insurgent victory would motivate a desire for revenge among both the public and the administration. However, such a desire for revenge leads to heavy-handed offensives with massive collateral damage, a strategy that will almost certainly increase insurgent support. Perhaps this is one of the real goals of the insurgent attacks. And in the long run, the shock that a realization of either strategy would entail would certainly erode public support at a faster rate than the Bush's administration's less publicized but equally severe strategic debacles.
An insurgent victory would also drastically change the relationship between America and its Iraqi allies and adversaries. Administration officials, infuriated at the idea that the insurgents could have pulled off such a strategic coup, would naturally suspect subterfuge from within the Iraqi government and military. Military and diplomatic cooperation with Iraq, already fraught with suspicion and acrimony, would be severely damaged. The American military would also be seen as weak, motivating more daring attacks and discouraging Iraqi factions from trusting it on security matters.
The dire possibilities all point to one thing: the need for an effective withdrawal strategy. Yet such a plan will not be drawn up in the Bush White House. Sadly, we will have to wait until January 9, 2008 to see any kind of change in foreign policy, and by then it could be too late.
Adam Elkus is a freelance writer living in California.
Recent articles on Electronic Iraq:
War Every Day (eIraq Blog): Moving 9 Million Tons of Gear Out of Iraq (16 April 2007)
News & Analysis: Where Al-Qaeda Reigns (16 April 2007)
News & Analysis: Top Wolfowitz Postings Went to Iraq War Backers (16 April 2007)
Iraq Diaries: Video Diary: Symphony of Bullets (16 April 2007)
Opinion/Editorial: Endgame: Iraqi Insurgents Press For Final Blow (16 April 2007)
War Every Day (eIraq Blog): Cobban on the "Iraq War Czar" (16 April 2007)
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