Tuesday, December 19, 2006

The Iraq Survey Group Nonsense

Mish-mash and garbled babble

by Ferdinand III

Imagine Churchill in 1942 commissioning a group to assess how the British could pull out of North Africa, negotiate with Vichy France and Germany and engage in ‘forceful diplomacy’ to secure Britain’s national interests. Any such set of recommendations would have been rubbished. So it should pass with another useless anti-war; anti-reality experiment by men who prefer diplomatic appeasement over fighting and winning a war – the so-called 10 wise men of the ‘Iraq Study Group’ or ISG. After spending a resounding 4 days in Iraq, these erstwhile practitioners of Kissinger styled ‘realism’ and State Department diplomacy, have decided that by 2008 the US must be out of Iraq. Sheer genius.

Look at the makeup of the ISG. Gates and others are old schoolers from the Bush I imperium – when in 1991 instead of taking Baghdad after routing the Iraqi’s in southern Iraq they scattered promises of freedom to the Kurds and Shias and promptly left. About 185,000 Kurds were slaughtered post 1991 and an equal if not larger number of Shias met their doom at the hands of Hussein’s fascist Sunni thugs. So much for American moral diplomacy and imperative. Promises are cheap; words even more so. What good is a super power, if it is a super-wimp unable to keep its agreements? It is doubtful that the fascist elements of Islamic militancy view retreat, denial and cowardly actions with benign grace and goodwill.

The report itself is largely uninformative. It contains 50 pages of recommendations; a 40-page overview of the current situation in Iraq; and about 50 pages of maps, biographies and list of key players. Its form, style and substance are largely pedantic and devoid of any enlightening theme. It is remarkable that Bush, hamstrung by a military and administration that has refused to fight a war with clear aims, objectives and with enough ruthlessness to win, must now read such tripe and politically be seen to agree with most of it. You can already hear the media whines– ‘why haven’t you implemented every last item of the ISG?’ sniff-sniff. Answer; because it is a litany of nonsense.

These 10 wise men offer nothing new, innovative or even intelligent. Absurdities litter the report which was displayed on the Internet before it was given to the President. Thus we can read that Iraq’s 2 neighbours Iran and Syria are not being very helpful and kind. No kidding. In order to make Iran happy we need to keep talking through the UN about Iran’s nuclear ambitions. Yes that should really work as a deterrent in preventing the Islamic fascist republic from getting nukes and dominating the region. We learn that foreign elements are disrupting the Iraqi democratic experience. Gee, really? Arab nations are not supportive we are somberly told, of the new Iraq. Wow, another surprise. And of course the ISG blames Israel for the misery of 100 Iraqi innocents dying each day in car bombs or IUD explosions. Sigh.

The ISG lives in a State Department, multi-lateral, EU inspired bubble world.

Fighting and winning wars require four decisive and all important foci. First, have clear objectives and targets. Second, ensure that adequate supplies, logistics, personnel, and troops are in the right areas, at the right time, within the overall plan of action. Third, destroy and eliminate the enemy; its infrastructure and civilian support. Fourth ensure that the goals and aims are honest, moral, and militarily relevant, all of which will appeal to the domestic political polity that must approve of the war. None of these time honored military necessities can be found in the ISG report; nor can much of it be found in current US military policy in Iraq. It is for that reason that the Sunni and Shia militia, the Baath party fascists, the Iranians and the Syrians are literally blowing up the nascent democracy.

Deposing a fascist regime is not the difficult part. The hard part is creating a friendly state of some variety that supports our geopolitical interests after we have destroyed the formal power of the fascists. I wrote before the Iraqi invasion in March 2003 that the Americans would win the war in 3 weeks but be in Iraq 10 years. This still looks accurate. Regardless of the ISG report the Americans cannot possible evacuate Iraq by 2008. US forces will only leave, regardless of who runs the White House in 2008, when the Iraqi state is able to defend itself and is a more or less stable ally in the long war against fascist Islam. It will take years for that to happen including at least 3 more years apparently to properly train Iraqi troops and policemen, and root out the corruption that is hobbling the development of a viable state.

Problems abound with the current US strategy in Iraq. Porous borders; most US troops are barracked; development aid and money gone missing; terrorists infiltrating the armed forces and police; poor quality of Iraqi troops; American unwillingness to take out the Sunni and Shia militias; poor equipment and degraded armor; lack of embedded US troops inside Iraq units etc. Some of these issues and others the ISG references, but it is not realistic to have these important miscalculations recalibrated by 2008.

It is disheartening to see the Americans bumbling so badly in Iraq. In war a superpower must have a coherent strategy; fight with ruthlessness; have no qualms about doing what needs to be done and turn off the media and TV cameras and get busy winning the war, not appeasing the alphabet soup media which hates war anyways. By not controlling and fighting the war properly the US might well lose Iraq to the terrorists and allow Iran complete regional hegemony.

It is a sorry sight that the ISG report does nothing to correct.