Posted on 06/15/2014 2:54:25 PM PDT by Kaslin
When the United States invaded Iraq in March 2003, Americans were told it would be a quick, simple project. When asked how long the war might last, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said airily, "Six days, six weeks, I doubt six months."
So what's the complaint today from those who advocated the war most vigorously? We left too soon.
Republican Sens. John McCain, Lindsey Graham and Kelly Ayotte put out a statement the other day blaming the recent rout of Iraqi government forces on "President Obama's decision to withdraw all of our troops from Iraq in 2011." That final pullout came in December of 2011, or more than eight years after Rumsfeld expected our war to be over.
The hawks have as much trouble remembering the past as they do predicting the future. They forget that the Status of Forces Agreement between the U.S. and Iraq, which mandated the removal of all American military personnel by the end of 2011, was signed by President George W. Bush.
It was also signed by Iraqi President Nouri al-Maliki. "In the end, the Iraqi leadership did not try to get a commitment through their parliament that would have made possible a continued U.S. presence after December 31," wrote Robert Gates, who was secretary of defense at the time. "Maliki was just too fearful of the political consequences. Most Iraqis wanted us gone."
Colin Kahl, who as a top Pentagon official under Obama tried to get an agreement to keep U.S. troops in Iraq, tells me that al-Maliki "was conscious of the extreme unpopularity of a continued U.S. presence with his Shia constituency. He had no interest in a sizable U.S. presence along the Arab-Kurd divide, which is what all our big troop options assumed." He also refused to give our troops the legal protections they get in other countries with U.S. bases, which was a deal-breaker.
Obama failed to secure the agreement, just as Bush had. Maybe the accord was impossible. If not, then Bush merits as much blame as Obama for the fact that it didn't happen.
Of course, the greater blame lies with Bush, since it was he and Dick Cheney who stormed into Iraq in search of weapons of mass destruction, with no understanding of its internal politics, the violence they were precipitating, or the immense difficulty of constructing a stable order in an alien land. The insurgency did not begin when Obama was inaugurated. It began in 2003, and it has never ended.
The Bush administration managed to tamp it down by flooding the country with an additional 36,000 U.S. troops in 2007. But the point of the surge was not merely to suppress the insurgency. It was to give al-Maliki the time and space to consolidate control, create reliable security forces and reconcile with Sunnis who felt imperiled. He didn't do any of this, and we couldn't do it for him.
The surprise of recent days has been the utter uselessness of the Iraqi military, in which the U.S. invested so much. Some units collapsed under attack by far smaller forces, with soldiers fleeing and changing into civilian clothes as quickly as they could. At this stage, the best hope for defending Baghdad lies not with government troops but with pro-government Shiite militias allied with Iran. Yes, Iran.
We could always ship the Iraqi army weapons and equipment. But we already tried that, with destructive results. The Washington Post reported that the insurgents "seized large quantities of weaponry from the security forces when they overran their bases, including vehicles, arms and ammunition that will help the group press further offensives. Much of the equipment was probably supplied by the United States, Iraq's biggest provider of weapons."
We could also resort to air strikes, drone attacks or even ground troops. But if eight years of fighting by the American forces didn't save Iraq from chaos, another round is not likely to make much difference.
The only answer the war supporters have ever had, since their absurdly optimistic initial predictions went awry, is to continue the war indefinitely. Col. Pete Mansoor, a top aide to Gen. David Petraeus when he was commander of our forces in Iraq, said the U.S. effort would have to go on for "many, many years to come." Another Petraeus adviser, Stephen Biddle, said "perhaps 20 years" would suffice.
How about forever? Except it might not be long enough.
“How long have we been in Germany, Korea, Japan?”
That’s a poor argument for occupation.
E*X*C*L*U*S*I*V*E
Once again George H.W. Bush takes to the skies!
Using a stunt double for his birthday leap as cover, Bush the Elder once again used his CIA Director card to wrangle an SR-71 spy flying at ten times the speed of sound made his HALO jump over Iraq with his Halliburton body guard.
He sure did say that. He also said "This will be a war like we have never seen before" and he spoke the truth
You ask how long have we been in Germany, Japan and South Korea? We are still in Germany and Japan for 69 years and in South Korea 61 years
The Mission Accomplished banner was for the men and crew of the USS Lincoln, which did accomplish their mission
This is the end of Iraq as a country. We're going to see at least three new "countries" out of it - a Kurdish state, a Sunni Arab state, and at least one Shiite state.
The “war” lasted what, 21 days?
Of course to these guys, one US soldier carrying a rifle and battle rattle means “WAR! Booga booga!”
What went wrong was mismanagement and excessive lenity in the occupation.
And, of course, withdrawal of forces from what amounts the defense of Iraq from its own enemies (int- and external).
Typical of that arrogant pos occupant of 1600 Pennsylvania Ave and his butt kissing lamestream media
People need to read, “Red Storm Rising” (Tom Clancy)...
Exactly.
Really, you think that was happening, or about to happen? I lived in Bayonne, NJ at the time of those attacks. And while I said to a friend that I thought the cops should be going door-to-door in Northern NJ (inasmuch as I thought that if the IRA had done it they should be going door-to-door in Woodside, Queens) but there was nothing like that going on, nor was it about to go on.
That was all BS, and continued to be BS, and continues to be BS.
There may be isolated instances of bad behaviour, but Americans, for the much most part, are a very fair minded people.
What Pres. Bush did, with his ill considered proviso, was to make sure that we could never really fight the enemy.
We were just going to fight “terrorism”, which would be akin to medicine seeking a cure for “fever”.
The average Muslim has never been in danger in America (if they thought they were presumably they’d leave which they’d be free to do).
We have not accepted the challenge, I don’t know how many times the Jihadis will slap our face with the glove. I guess we’ll just have to let time tell the tale.
Of course I know how long we’ve been there, and I know, esp in the case of Japan how hard we sat on their heads.
I guess the question is: are the Japanese people better off since we sat on their heads than they otherwise would be?
My answer would be a cautious “yes”, but their fertility rates, etc. give me pause.
But, pro-life though I am, if I heard of decrease fertility rates in the Muslim world (provided it was via contraception and not abortion) I would not cry in my beer about it.
Key words War on Terror, not War in Iraq
Lets stop putting our heads in the sand, W and Cheney made a criminal mistake in going into Iraq.
4500 American soldiers lost (countless thousands more of contractors) and 2 trillion dollars down the drain so mad men Jihadists could take over a decade later?
Anybody who actively supported the initial invasion and still does should have their heads examined.
Saddam was no external threat to America and kept his boot on the asses of these scum.
Of course it was happening. A lot of innocent people were attacked and killed. And it just didn’t happen in Texas...it happened all over the country. Maybe the media in NJ didn’t report flyover country? Emotions ran high at that time. They would have escalated with every killed soldier. Think about WWII. Same thing.
I agree, Americans for the most part are vey fair minded. But I see a very big difference in how people perceive Muslims after 9/11. Prior to that, things happened in different countries or by a lone perpetrator.
IMHO, we can’t win a war because we try to fight pc and not hurt anybody’s feelings. Plus the “governments” of foreign nations pull us back. This started prior to ME engagement and after WWII. Again, imho, when we fight a war we need to fight to win no matter what it takes. The other alternative is to not spill our soldiers blood for a lost cause.
I’m sure you know that if you take an aspirin...it will break a fever. :)
Did you mean to log in to DailyKos?
Last I heard is we still have troops in Bosnia.
Revisiting Seymore Hershs’ article from 2007. It seems this policy of “redirection” has continued through 0bama. And it’s falling apart.
THE REDIRECTION
Is the Administration’s new policy benefitting our enemies in the war on terrorism?
http://m.newyorker.com/reporting/2007/03/05/070305fa_fact_hersh?currentPage=all
A STRATEGIC SHIFT
“In the past few months, as the situation in Iraq has deteriorated, the Bush Administration, in both its public diplomacy and its covert operations, has significantly shifted its Middle East strategy.
The “redirection,” as some inside the White House have called the new strategy, has brought the United States closer to an open confrontation with Iran and, in parts of the region, propelled it into a widening sectarian conflict between Shiite and Sunni Muslims.
To undermine Iran, which is predominantly Shiite, the Bush Administration has decided, in effect, to reconfigure its priorities in the Middle East. In Lebanon, the Administration has coöperated with Saudi Arabia’s government, which is Sunni, in clandestine operations that are intended to weaken Hezbollah, the Shiite organization that is backed by Iran. The U.S. has also taken part in clandestine operations aimed at Iran and its ally Syria. A by-product of these activities has been the bolstering of Sunni extremist groups that espouse a militant vision of Islam and are hostile to America and sympathetic to Al Qaeda.
One contradictory aspect of the new strategy is that, in Iraq, most of the insurgent violence directed at the American military has come from Sunni forces, and not from Shiites. But, from the Administration’s perspective, the most profound—and unintended—strategic consequence of the Iraq war is the empowerment of Iran. Its President, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, has made defiant pronouncements about the destruction of Israel and his country’s right to pursue its nuclear program, and last week its supreme religious leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, said on state television that “realities in the region show that the arrogant front, headed by the U.S. and its allies, will be the principal loser in the region.”
After the revolution of 1979 brought a religious government to power, the United States broke with Iran and cultivated closer relations with the leaders of Sunni Arab states such as Jordan, Egypt, and Saudi Arabia. That calculation became more complex after the September 11th attacks, especially with regard to the Saudis. Al Qaeda is Sunni, and many of its operatives came from extremist religious circles inside Saudi Arabia. Before the invasion of Iraq, in 2003, Administration officials, influenced by neoconservative ideologues, assumed that a Shiite government there could provide a pro-American balance to Sunni extremists, since Iraq’s Shiite majority had been oppressed under Saddam Hussein. They ignored warnings from the intelligence community about the ties between Iraqi Shiite leaders and Iran, where some had lived in exile for years. Now, to the distress of the White House, Iran has forged a close relationship with the Shiite-dominated government of Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki.
The new American policy, in its broad outlines, has been discussed publicly. In testimony before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in January, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said that there is “a new strategic alignment in the Middle East,” separating “reformers” and “extremists”; she pointed to the Sunni states as centers of moderation, and said that Iran, Syria, and Hezbollah were “on the other side of that divide.” (Syria’s Sunni majority is dominated by the Alawi sect.) Iran and Syria, she said, “have made their choice and their choice is to destabilize.”
Some of the core tactics of the redirection are not public, however. The clandestine operations have been kept secret, in some cases, by leaving the execution or the funding to the Saudis, or by finding other ways to work around the normal congressional appropriations process, current and former officials close to the Administration said.
A senior member of the House Appropriations Committee told me that he had heard about the new strategy, but felt that he and his colleagues had not been adequately briefed. “We haven’t got any of this,” he said. “We ask for anything going on, and they say there’s nothing. And when we ask specific questions they say, ‘We’re going to get back to you.’ It’s so frustrating.”
The key players behind the redirection are Vice-President Dick Cheney, the deputy national-security adviser Elliott Abrams, the departing Ambassador to Iraq (and nominee for United Nations Ambassador), Zalmay Khalilzad, and Prince Bandar bin Sultan, the Saudi national-security adviser. While Rice has been deeply involved in shaping the public policy, former and current officials said that the clandestine side has been guided by Cheney. (Cheney’s office and the White House declined to comment for this story; the Pentagon did not respond to specific queries but said, “The United States is not planning to go to war with Iran.”)
The policy shift has brought Saudi Arabia and Israel into a new strategic embrace, largely because both countries see Iran as an existential threat. They have been involved in direct talks, and the Saudis, who believe that greater stability in Israel and Palestine will give Iran less leverage in the region, have become more involved in Arab-Israeli negotiations.
The new strategy “is a major shift in American policy—it’s a sea change,” a U.S. government consultant with close ties to Israel said. The Sunni states “were petrified of a Shiite resurgence, and there was growing resentment with our gambling on the moderate Shiites in Iraq,” he said. “We cannot reverse the Shiite gain in Iraq, but we can contain it.”
“It seems there has been a debate inside the government over what’s the biggest danger—Iran or Sunni radicals,” Vali Nasr, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, who has written widely on Shiites, Iran, and Iraq, told me. “The Saudis and some in the Administration have been arguing that the biggest threat is Iran and the Sunni radicals are the lesser enemies. This is a victory for the Saudi line.
”Martin Indyk, a senior State Department official in the Clinton Administration who also served as Ambassador to Israel, said that “the Middle East is heading into a serious Sunni-Shiite Cold War.” Indyk, who is the director of the Saban Center for Middle East Policy at the Brookings Institution, added that, in his opinion, it was not clear whether the White House was fully aware of the strategic implications of its new policy. “The White House is not just doubling the bet in Iraq,” he said. “It’s doubling the bet across the region. This could get very complicated. Everything is upside down.”
The Administration’s new policy for containing Iran seems to complicate its strategy for winning the war in Iraq. Patrick Clawson, an expert on Iran and the deputy director for research at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, argued, however, that closer ties between the United States and moderate or even radical Sunnis could put “fear” into the government of Prime Minister Maliki and “make him worry that the Sunnis could actually win” the civil war there. Clawson said that this might give Maliki an incentive to coöperate with the United States in suppressing radical Shiite militias, such as Moqtada al-Sadr’s Mahdi Army.
http://m.newyorker.com/reporting/2007/03/05/070305fa_fact_hersh?currentPage=all
I didn't know it applied to the mission of just that ship, but the media always mocked it as applying to the Iraq mission as whole which, when it didn't end with the fall of Saddam, was characterized as a failure, or "mission not accomplished."
Dubya, Cheney, Wolfowitz, Rumsfeld - drooling idiots for ever even imagining that Islam could ever be compatible with democracy. Absolute barking-mad idiots, all of them.
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