John Burns on Iraq, Iran and how the surge is working.

New York Times Pulitzer Prize winner John Burns on Iraq, Iran and how the surge is working.

HH: Pleased to welcome back to the Hugh Hewitt Show John Burns of the New York Times. Mr. Burns, welcome, it’s been about six months since we spoke, and I gather you’re in Baghdad today?

JB: About three months. We take long rotations here, and then we reward ourselves with nice long breaks back home in the United States, or in my case, in the United Kingdom.

HH: Well, there are three things I want to cover with you today, Mr. Burns. Where are we now in Iraq, in your view? Secondly, where Iraq might be in a couple of years, depending on a couple of developments that the United States might enact? And then finally, in hindsight, what we did right and what we did wrong over the last four years. But let’s start with what you see in Baghdad today. Is the surge working?

JB: I think there’s no doubt that those extra 30,000 American troops are making a difference. They’re definitely making a difference in Baghdad. Some of the crucial indicators of the war, metrics as the American command calls them, have moved in a positive direction from the American, and dare I say the Iraqi point of view, fewer car bombs, fewer bombs in general, lower levels of civilian casualties, quite remarkably lower levels of civilian casualties. And add in what they call the Baghdad belts, that’s to say the approaches to Baghdad, particularly in Diyala Province to the northeast, to in the area south of Baghdad in Babil Province, and to the west of Baghdad in Anbar Province, there’s no doubt that al Qaeda has taken something of a beating.

HH: Now when General Petraeus returns in September to make his report, do you expect Petraeus to be completely candid with the American people about the good news and the bad news in Iraq?

JB: I think there’s no doubt that he’ll be candid. As a matter of fact, every time I’ve spoken to him about it, he talks about the need to be forthright, and as he puts it, he said we’re not going to be putting lipstick on a pig. I think that’s a fairly, that’s military jargon which most Americans will understand. David Petraeus is a man who’s had a remarkably distinguished military career, and he is very clear that he thinks his responsibilities lie not to the White House alone, but to the White House and the Congress conjointly, and through them to the American people. I don’t think that this is just a profession, a claim. I think he really intends that, and he’s been very careful not to make commitments at the moment as to what he’s going to say, though we may guess it. And I think he’s going to say that the surge is having its effects, it hasn’t turned the tide of the war, there’s been too little time for it, and I think he and Ambassador Crocker, who will be his partner in that September report, are going to say one thing very clearly, and that is a quick, early withdrawal of American troops of the kind that is being argued by Nancy Pelosi, for example, would very likely lead to catastrophic levels of violence here. And in that, General Petraeus and Ambassador Crocker will be saying something which is pretty broadly shared by people who live and work here, I have to say. The removal of American troops would very likely, we believe from all indications, lead to much higher, and indeed potentially cataclysmic levels of violence, beyond anything we’ve seen to date.

HH: Mr. Burns, some anti-war critics have begun to attack General Petraeus as being not credible and not trustworthy for a variety of reasons, one he gave me an interview, he’s given other people interviews that they consider to be partisan, whatever. Do you believe he’ll be as trustworthy as anyone else speaking on the war?

JB: I do. I can only speak for my own personal experience, and there definitely was in the, in the Vietnam war, there was a failure of senior generals and the joint chiefs of staff to speak frankly about the Vietnam war early enough. There has definitely been some Pollyannaish character to the reporting of some of the generals here over the past three or four years, although in my own view, knowing virtually all of those generals, I don’t think that that was out of fealty to the White House or Mr. Rumsfeld. It’s a difficult and complex question which we really don’t have time to discuss here. But to speak of General Petraeus in particular, General Petraeus is 54 years old. Let’s look at this just simply as a matter of career, beyond the matter of principle on which I think we could also say we could expect him to make a forthright report. At 54, General Petraeus is a young four star general, who could expect to have as much as ten more years in the military. And he has every reason to give a forthright and frank report on this. And he says, and he says this insistently, that he will give a forthright, straightforward report, and if the people in Washington don’t like it, then they can find somebody else who will give his forthright, straightforward report. He is not without options on a personal basis, General Petraeus, and I think he, from everything I’ve learned from him, sees both a professional, in the first place, and personal imperative to state the truth as he sees it about this war.

HH: Speaking more broadly now, in the American higher command, is there optimism that the surge, given enough time, will bring the kind of stability to Iraq that we all hope it achieves?

JB: You know, optimism is a word which is rarely used around here. The word they would use is realism. You have to look at what the plan is. The plan is that with the surge, aimed primarily at al Qaeda, who are responsible for most of the spectacular attacks, the major suicide bombings, for example, that have driven the sectarian warfare here, the belief is, or the hope is, that with the surge, they can knock al Qaeda back, they can clear areas which have been virtually sanctuaries for al Qaeda, northeast, south, west and northwest of Baghdad, and in Baghdad itself, and then have Iraqi troops move in behind them. The problem here is time. How much time does the U.S. military have now, according to the American political timetable, to accomplish this? I think most generals would say, indeed have said, most serving current generals here have said that a drawdown, which took American troops from the 160,00 level they’re at now quickly down to 100,000 or 80,000 over the next, shall we say, year to eighteen months, that’s too fast. If you do that, I think they would say, though they don’t put it quite this frankly, that this war will be lost for sure. Given a little bit more time, they think that it is realistic to think that the Iraqi forces can move in behind them, and can take over the principal responsibilities for the war. The problem is, of course, that American generals have been saying this now for four years, and as we know, the Congress is beginning to run out of patience with that. But I think that they have a good plan now, at least if there is any plan that could save the situation here, any plan that could bring a reasonably successful end to the American enterprise here, it’s probably the plan they have right now.

HH: Now John Burns, a military historian was writing this week that he fears a Tet-like offensive by al Qaeda’s fighters, as well as perhaps radical Shiia militias prior to the Petraeus report. Have you heard warnings or concerns about such a thing?

JB: Yeah, it’s not an original thought. As a matter of fact, it’s a thought we’ve heard expressed by General Petraeus and other commanders here, and you don’t have to be a crystal ball gazer or a seer to understand the risks in that. Indeed, there have been one or two attempts to pull off exactly that. The fear has been among the generals here that a major, spectacular attack, aimed for example at the Green Zone, the government and military command complex in the center of Baghdad, of the kinds that was mounted during the Tet offensive when, as you’ll recall, Viet Cong or North Vietnamese troops got right inside the American embassy. That kind of attack would have an…whatever its consequences here, would have an enormous impact and possibly fatal impact from the American military point of view on the balance of opinion in the Congress. You’ll forgive me, I have American attack helicopters flying overhead right now over our compound here in Baghdad.

JB: There was one attempt already to pull off an attack of that kind. It was not on the Green Zone, but on an American military base southwest of Baghdad, when a truck loaded with 12,000 pounds of high explosives, that’s by quick calculation, we’re talking about more than five tons of high explosives, got very close to what they call the wire of an American base in which there were several hundred American troops. A wary gunner in a watchtower, an American gunner, spotted the truck, and killed or fired at the driver, who got out of the truck wearing a suicide vest, as it happens, and the truck did not explode. Had it exploded, there could have been a repeat of what happened in Lebanon in 1982, when as you will recall, a truck bombing of the Marine barracks residential complex near Beiruit airport killed, as I recall, 249 Marines, and speeded Ronald Reagan in his decision to pull American Marines out of Beirut. So yes, there is a definite concern about that, and there has been a tightening of what the American military calls force protection, that is to say I guess self-evidently, the efforts that the force spends to protect itself in respect of that threat. (snip)

"But there’s a conundrum here."...

"... the Sunnis as well, and the Kurds, are inclined to think that this is going to be settled, eventually, in an outright civil war, in consequence of which they are very, very unlikely or reluctant, at present, to make major concessions."

IMHO - "reluctant"? - Maybe "not so much" if your position is eroding.

Let's see; in terms of the ability to prevail in a civil war, the Shite (w/Iranian help) currently hold the upper hand. So, the Sunni get arms (and organized military and police) if they fight AQ (as many Sunni now seem to be doing). Now the Sunni become stronger militarily and organizationally. AND, since the Sunni are working with the US to destroy AQ, while Mookie and Iran are giving the US a difficult time, the Sunni move toward the moral high ground. Do the Shite majority really want that to happen?? This situation could lead to loud shouting between Petraeus and the Iraqi (Shite) leadership! /sarc>

The Sunni are finally getting smart! This Petraeus guy is smart!

Well he writes dispatches regularly for the NY Times so you could go there. Hugh Hewitt interviewed him last Feb(?) so you could look that up.
Keyword search John Burns is another option
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/keyword?k=johnburns

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