Iraq from an Airborne POV

[edschweppe]

Random trawling of the blogosphere turned up this op-ed piece in the New York Times, written by a group of specialists and NCOs in the 82nd Airborne who are finishing up their 15-month tour in Iraq: (emphasis mine)

As responsible infantrymen and noncommissioned officers with the 82nd Airborne Division soon heading back home, we are skeptical of recent press coverage portraying the conflict as increasingly manageable and feel it has neglected the mounting civil, political and social unrest we see every day. (Obviously, these are our personal views and should not be seen as official within our chain of command.)

The claim that we are increasingly in control of the battlefields in Iraq is an assessment arrived at through a flawed, American-centered framework. Yes, we are militarily superior, but our successes are offset by failures elsewhere. What soldiers call the "battle space" remains the same, with changes only at the margins. It is crowded with actors who do not fit neatly into boxes: Sunni extremists, Al Qaeda terrorists, Shiite militiamen, criminals and armed tribes. This situation is made more complex by the questionable loyalties and Janus-faced role of the Iraqi police and Iraqi Army, which have been trained and armed at United States taxpayers’ expense.

A few nights ago, for example, we witnessed the death of one American soldier and the critical wounding of two others when a lethal armor-piercing explosive was detonated between an Iraqi Army checkpoint and a police one. Local Iraqis readily testified to American investigators that Iraqi police and Army officers escorted the triggermen and helped plant the bomb. These civilians highlighted their own predicament: had they informed the Americans of the bomb before the incident, the Iraqi Army, the police or the local Shiite militia would have killed their families.

As many grunts will tell you, this is a near-routine event. Reports that a majority of Iraqi Army commanders are now reliable partners can be considered only misleading rhetoric. The truth is that battalion commanders, even if well meaning, have little to no influence over the thousands of obstinate men under them, in an incoherent chain of command, who are really loyal only to their militias.

[ ... ]

Given the situation, it is important not to assess security from an American-centered perspective. The ability of, say, American observers to safely walk down the streets of formerly violent towns is not a resounding indicator of security. What matters is the experience of the local citizenry and the future of our counterinsurgency. When we take this view, we see that a vast majority of Iraqis feel increasingly insecure and view us as an occupation force that has failed to produce normalcy after four years and is increasingly unlikely to do so as we continue to arm each warring side.

So I can see one of two possibilities here:
1) The piece is total fabrication, and the New York Times ran it with no checking at all; or
2) The war in Iraq cannot be won under current circumstances, and the grunts on the ground know it.
At the moment, my money's on option two.

The tale of the Iraqi army and police officers helping plant an IED between their respective checkpoints is especially dismaying. Four years into the counterinsurgency and the folks we're supposedly going to turn security over to are setting ambushes for our troops? It's looking more and more like, short of a miracle, there's no good solution for Iraq; a "successful" result will require better than half a million US troops continuously in country for decades, while anything less will be a waste of the lives and treasure we've already spent.

Heckuva job, there, Bushie.

Comments

[carl-schweppe.livejournal.com]

I'm not sure that's the worst of it.

Say Obama or Clinton or McClain is the next President in 16 months.

Unless things are stable (and that seems unlikely, even if things are improving)... how does the next President get us out, without admitting that the whole thing was a mistake? And how does a President who presides over such a failure get re-elected? Will Republicans be willing to place blame on Bush if they manage to keep the White House? Will a Democrat be CAPABLE of placing blame on Bush if they manage to get the White House?

I'm not certain that a 1st term president would have the political courage to get us out of Iraq

[edschweppe.livejournal.com]

how does the next President get us out, without admitting that the whole thing was a mistake?
Bush certainly can't (and thus won't). But the next President can blame the whole fiasco on Bush. (Especially if said next President is a Democrat who ran on a get-the-troops-home platform.)

[johnpalmer.livejournal.com]

You know, that folks can ask a question like this is what amazes me about how bad a state the country is in right now.

I mean, think about asking an ordinary person in ordinary circumstances the following:


Can we admit that:

1) getting hundreds of thousands of people killed,
2) spending 300+ billion dollars
3) exhausting our military
4) ruining our preparedness (in terms of equipment)
and
5) throwing away the good will we had

was a mistake, given that doing this has left us much, much less safe?

Well, if you asked a person that any other time, they'd stare at you like you asked if you thought taking down one's underwear before taking a dump was a good idea. "Uh, yeah... is this a trick question?"

But the war has, for some reason, been sanctified. That it's been a horrific failure and a terrible waste is clear; it's objective. There's no sensible argument against these things. You can *just barely* argue that it wasn't stone stupid to go in, but remember, people *did* predict troubles of this nature before we went in. But still, you could argue that it wasn't stupid to go in. You can't argue that it's smart to say it hasn't been a horrible failure.

But people do.

If the architects of this war were looking at us, aghast and ashen faced, saying "we screwed up. Please, let us do what we can to try to fix the horrible problems we caused," well, I could deal with that. I'm not convinced that we *can* do some good, but at least that's an honest and meaningful argument. But people who swear that we might still pull out a victory? The time we could have had a "victory" is long past.

[wcg.livejournal.com]

I don't agree with your two possibilities Ed. What we have here is a candid opinion piece based on the observations of some good soldiers and NCOs. It is a good look at what's been going on in the 82nd's area of operations. Whether or not that can be generalized to the rest of Iraq is another question. I can point you toward the blogs of other grunts on the ground in Iraq who think that things are getting better. Again, they are giving their candid opinions about matters in their own unit's area of operations.

I do think your last sentence (not counting the zinger) is accurate. We'll probably end up keeping some US presence in Iraq for decades to come. I just hope it can be brought way down to something around 20,000 logistics troops, with the tip of the spear being made up of troops from other Gulf states.

[edschweppe.livejournal.com]

I hope to hell I'm wrong and you're right, Bill. But ...

A few months back, Jeff Emanuel of redstate.com ran a story about what one flag officer had on his wall in his Baghdad office. Entitled According to the US military, THIS is what victory in Iraq looks like (http://www.redstate.com/stories/special_events/according_to_the_us_military_this_is_what_victory_looks_like), it showed a picture of what i"m guessing is a printed PowerPoint slide, which read:

Iraq at peace with its neighbors, with a representative government that respects the human rights of all Iraqis, and security forces sufficient to maintain domestic order and to deny Iraq as a safe haven to terrorists.

That's an awfully high bar (I don't think there's a single state in the Middle East, Israel included, which meets all of those criteria); on the other hand, that's both (a) really good and (b) pretty much what the Administration promised us, so I have no reason to doubt that's the real deal victory conditions.

What I don't see is any good way to get to those conditions, given the news coming out of Iraq. Basra was a great success story until the Brits started redeploying out, then suddenly it turned into a three-way fight between Shia factions for control of the oil. Anbar is being quoted as a success against Al-Qaeda in Iraq, but we had to openly support the local Sunni tribal militias to make it work. How likely is it that they'll meekly put down their guns and obey orders out of Baghdad, particularly since the Sunni ministers have walked out of the "national" government?

There's no question in my mind that our troops can have local successes. But we don't have enough US boots on the ground to do the work alone, and I've got no faith that enough of the Iraqi security forces are loyal to the Iraqi government (vice their local militia leaders, or their tribal leaders, or whoever's running that particular ministry) to make up for the shortfall in US numbers.

Like I said at the top, I really hope I'm reading this wrong. But I really doubt it.

[wcg.livejournal.com]

The Malaki government may not last much longer. With the realignment of several different Iraqi political parties over the past few days, Malaki may not have a functional majority in parliament any more. Things might get very interesting this week.