Posted on 05/10/2006 7:23:22 PM PDT by a_Turk
Zinni made a radical proposal to end the violence in Iraq: legitimise the militias and co-opt them by converting them into Territorial Guards. Their job would be to restore law and order and carry out various humanitarian and developmental tasks, with the national army providing back-up support
In late April, more than a thousand anti-war activists prevented President George Bush from visiting the conservative Hoover Institution at Stanford University, home campus of Condoleezza Rice, the secretary of state. This was quite a come down from three years earlier, when Bush had declared to thunderous applause from hundreds of US sailors aboard the USS Abraham Lincoln that the US had successfully implemented regime change in Iraq. Above him stood a banner: “Mission Accomplished”.
Now, a humbled Bush is trying to play up the installation of Iraq’s new prime minister in the hope that this will bring stability to Iraq, allowing the US to extricate itself from what has surely become a quagmire not unlike Vietnam. But no one is buying the proposition that this spells the end to America’s woes in Iraq.
Support for the Iraq War has evaporated in America. Even Richard Perle, the doyen of the hawks, has conceded that the US got the war right and the post-war operation wrong. Conservative author William F Buckley Jr says that the war has failed to achieve its objectives.
One of the staunchest advocates of the war, Francis Fukuyama, argues in his new book that the occupation of Iraq has contributed to radical terrorism in the Muslim world, a point acknowledged in a recent report by the US State Department. Fukuyama says that America’s image has been tarnished since people are more likely to associate it with prisoner abuse than with the Statue of Liberty.
Kenneth Pollack of the Brookings Institution, another war proponent, says, “We may have passed the tipping point. We no longer have the credibility with the Iraqis, or the American public, to make this succeed.” At the time of the invasion, 68 percent of Americans were in favour of the war. In a recent Gallup poll, 60 percent think it was a mistake.
US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld is faced with an insurgency on the home front. Six retired US generals have called for his resignation, which is unprecedented in American history. Perhaps the most prominent voice is that of retired Marine General Anthony Zinni, who joined the US military in 1961. He fought in Vietnam and was head of the US Central Command when he retired. Afterwards, Bush sent him as a presidential envoy to the Israelis and the Palestinians. Zinni resigned from that job just prior to the Iraq war, because of differences with the administration.
Zinni spoke recently at the World Affairs Council in San Francisco to an audience of about 500 in the swank Fairmont Hotel on Nob Hill. The audience, which included several junior military officers, gave him a standing ovation at the end.
The straight-shooting Zinni, who was considered outspoken to a fault by some military superiors, spent most of the hour critiquing the war in Iraq. He painted the picture of a war that had no chance of succeeding from Day 1.
The first blunder was going to war. After 1998, Saddam did not pose a clear and present danger to his neighbours, let alone to the US.
The second blunder was going to war with an insufficient force. In Zinni’s opinion, the US needed more than two to three times the number of troops than the 165,000 with which it invaded Iraq. The rapid advance of US forces towards Baghdad created “black holes” that became centres of insurgency in the weeks after the overthrow of Saddam’s regime.
The third blunder was the failure to hold a surrender ceremony in Baghdad. He said the US should have brought some senior Iraqi figures for a well-publicised ceremony signalling the end of Baathist oppression. The failure to create such a “momentum moment” would prove disastrous in the months to come.
The fourth blunder was to take a phased approach to the campaign, with the first phase being the overthrow of Saddam’s regime and the second phase being reconstruction. In Zinni’s opinion, the war and reconstruction activities should have been carried out in parallel. The first boots that stepped on the ground to fight should also have begun the reconstruction effort.
The fifth blunder was the US administrator’s decision to disband the Iraqi military. This guaranteed that a power vacuum would be created and the country would plummet into anarchy.
The final blunder was to raise an Iraqi army based entirely on Shias and Kurds. The army has 50 Iraqi battalions but not one of them is ethnically blended. This force is carrying out vendettas and reprisals against the Sunni population, thereby fanning the flames of an incipient civil war.
He said the situation in Iraq was very grim, marked by a “witches brew” of insurgents, terrorists and street criminals. The enemy, he said, was not a single ideology-driven nationalist group, like the Viet Cong. Rumsfeld’s appointees had failed to correctly identify the enemy. Initially, they blamed the roadside explosions on Baathist dead-enders. Then they blamed the kidnappings and beheadings on foreign terrorists headed by Al Zarqawi. Now they have added militias who simply want an end to the US occupation to the list of enemies.
Zinni made a radical proposal: legitimise the militias and co-opt them by converting them into Territorial Guards. Their job would be to restore law and order and carry out various humanitarian and developmental tasks, with the national army providing back-up support.
Stepping back from Iraq, Zinni said a recurring problem with US foreign policy actions in the Middle East has been a failure to anticipate their consequences. He said, for every action the administration carried out, it failed to answer the question, “And then what?”
This “shoot first, ask later” approach is most visible in the talk about attacking Iran. Zinni said the US can bomb all known Iranian nuclear sites but any such action would unite the Iranian population behind Ahmedinejad. He would feel compelled to launch ballistic missiles against shipping vessels and oil facilities in the Gulf and “light up” terrorist cells throughout the region, causing global mayhem.
As the evening came to a close, it was hard not to admire this four-star general who was working for world peace as actively in retirement as he had when he wore the uniform. In his new book, The Battle for Peace, he argues that political instability, not radical Islam, is the number one threat to the West, a message that is unlikely to sit well with the neo-con ideologues who want to bomb Tehran.
Why do they only cite American leftists in the article?
I don't know. Maybe their tv only gets one channel.. Maybe the screw on their dial is loose.
Given your user name and the fact that you posted a "Kurdish" editorial I would venture a guess that you may have a small ax to grind.
My ninth president was a Kurd (God rest his soul) and I am part Kurd. We are thoroughly mixed. Any wide-spread civil unrest between Kurds and non-Kurds in Turkey would be a bloodbath and the end of the Republic. Thus the cheerleaders with their anti-Turkish rhetoric.
I have an axe to grind with liars first and fools second (not directed to you). International affairs are no place for romanticism. You need to see the downside.
THE best way to preserve and encourage peace in the region is to dismantle the parastate Muslim Turkey.
That may not be the best approach but Turkey had better keep its damned hands off Northern Iraq.
Legitimize the militias and you have Iraq decay into another Somalia with warlords like Al Sadr in charge.
Horrible idea. Not even worth discussion or further exploration. It's hypothetical nonsense that has a political agenda behind it.
The last thing you need is 31 different armed militias out there all with their own agenda and ultimate aim to gobble up as much of Iraq as possible. You legitimize whacko’s like Sadr (A 30 year old punk living off of his dads reputation as an Imam) and you create a monster you can’t control and has international acknowledgement/support.
This is another 20/20 hindsight view that is appealing superficially but not even remotely viable if your goal is to create a stable and democratic republic of Iraq.
Frankly, I'm sick to death of them. The Bush administration is doing the best it can to bring these different factions together.
Continuing to vomit up coulda-shoulda scenarios is a waste of time.
The author of this piece can piss up a rope.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ahmad_Faruqui
Ahmad Faruqui is a defense analyst and energy economist based in the San Francisco Bay Area who serves as director of research at the American Institute of International Studies. He is a regular contributor to Daily Times (Lahore, Pakistan, www.dailytimes.com.pk), and writes frequently for the Global Beat Syndicate (New York University). His most recent book is called "Rethinking the National Security of Pakistan" (Ashgate Publishing, 2003).
He has contributed op-ed pieces on national security issues to Asia Times (Hong Kong), The News Sentinel (Fort Wayne, Indiana), Journal Star (Peoria, Illinois), The Contra Costa Times (Danville, California), The Friday Times (Lahore, Pakistan), The San Francisco Chronicle, The San Jose Mercury, The News on Sunday (Karachi, Pakistan), The Nation (Lahore, Pakistan), Pakistan Link, Pakistan Today, The Weekly Independent (Lahore, Pakistan) and Wisconsin State Journal.
His research on energy problems facing India and Pakistan has been published in Asian Profile, Energy Policy, Power Economics and Utilities Policy. He is a consultant to electric utilities in North America and abroad, and has co-edited three books and more than 100 articles dealing with electricity planning, marketing, and management. His most recent book dealing with energy issues is called "Electricity Pricing in Transition" (Kluwer Academic Publishing, 2002).
He holds B. A. and M. A. degrees in economics from the University of Karachi, where he was awarded the Rashid Minhas (Shaheed) Gold Medal, and a Ph. D. in economics from the University of California, Davis, where he was a Regents Fellow. He has taught economics at the University of California - Davis, San Jose State University, and Karachi University and lectured on national security issues at the Army War College, Naval Postgraduate School, Stanford University and the University of California, Berkeley. He belongs to the American Economics Association, the Association of Energy Service Professionals, Economists for Peace and Security, Nature Conservancy and the Sierra Club.
Monday morning quarterbacks always have a 100.00 rating.
A bleating leftist!!!
Economists for Peace and Security. One of the founding trustees of EPS is John Kenneth Galbraith.
In other words, he's the brains and mouthpiece for a leftist think tank.
Naw. Some, like Zinni still botch it up. We clearly were able to successfully invade Iraq with less than a half million soldiers, and his idea of turning Iraq over to militias is awful. It's not like Germany that had a professional gentleman's army to fall back on once we got the SS nuts out of the picture - Iraq was a collection of thugs for a couple of generations.
The Turkish Government's scorched-earth policy has destroyed thousands of Kurdish villages producing more than two million civilian refugees. Now they threaten to destabilize northern Iraq where a de facto independent Kurdish state thrives.
The Turks have done the same wherever they have slithered including to the millions of the original inhabitants of anatolia - Christians who were destroyed under Muslim Turk rule.
Turkey has always supported state sponsored terror against its non muslim minorities.
The sooner this remnant of Asiatic aggression is divied up and the land given back to its original inhabitants/owners the better.
The Zinni analysis is not new or novel, just consistent proof that hindsight can make even a fool seem wise.
"The third blunder was the failure to hold a surrender ceremony in Baghdad. He said the US should have brought some senior Iraqi figures for a well-publicised ceremony signalling the end of Baathist oppression. The failure to create such a “momentum moment” would prove disastrous in the months to c..."
Huh? There was nobody who would surrender .. they just fled. Besides, that 'moment' was April 10, 2003, when the Saddam statue fell .. THAT was the moment, when Iraqis were hitting shoes on Saddams bronze head, that defined the end of the Saddam regime... they were in hiding afterwards.
A lot of the Zinni commentary is similarly lame...
"The fourth blunder was to take a phased approach to the campaign, with the first phase being the overthrow of Saddam’s regime and the second phase being reconstruction. In Zinni’s opinion, the war and reconstruction activities should have been carried out in parallel."
Reconstruction work was beginning as early as April 2003!!!
Who is he kidding here? We were having military folks hand out care packages within days of fighting in the south of Iraq.
Maybe disbanding the Iraqi army was a 'blunder' but in fact, the entire army has *melted away and gone home!!* and the US forces were not in any position to *draft* the conscript army to come back again! So the complaint sounds good, but misses some complications that makes it not so simple as he sounds.
etc.
Alot of great second-guessing and 20/20 hindsight that proves little. In the end, we liberated Iraq and did a very good thing, and despite what history may judge as mistakes or not, the balance is one where we and Iraqi are and will be better for the liberation of Iraq.
IF WE WANT TO MAKE OUR EFFORT SUCCEED, WE WILL SUCCEED.
IF WE WANT TO MAKE IT FAIL, WE WILL FAIL.
The difference is our will, our determination, our tenacity, our courage, and our patience.
If we persevere, we will have victory.
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