Heretics' almanac

Winning or playing fair in Iraq

I watched a documentary last night on the Battle of the Bulge, Hitler's ill-fated attempt to seize the initiative on the western front, just before the Allies invaded Germany.  It was a horrible battle, all too typical of warfare through the ages.  Veterans and footage showed massive devastation through the Ardennes, villages and towns reduced to ruins, fields pockmarked with artillery shells.  One villager remembered that when they melted snow to get water, it was black from gunpowder.

This was primarily an infantry battle, with horrendous casualties on both sides.  Troops typically fortified themselves in villages, and attacks and counterattacks focused first on destroying cover - which is to say, houses, churches, and other civilian structures.  There was none of the door-to-door combat we expect to see in urban warfare nowadays.  If approaching troops got under fire from a village, they'd destroy the village and then move in.

The tactics were based on one consideration: finishing the war as soon as possible.  And victory was defined by attaining one objective: unconditional surrender by the Axis powers. 

What Europeans should understand about Bush (and Kerry)

I've previously written that the pollsters are underestimating the effects of the high turnout in this year's election. Anecdotal reports I have from New York City (not exactly a battleground area) and Florida seem to indicate severe crowding at elections, and determined patient voters.

One of the best bloggers in my book, Jonathan Edelstein, is usually quiet on American politics but is out stumping for Kerry in Philadelphia. Andrew Sullivan, as everyone should know, is going with Kerry although he endorsed Bush in 2000.

Nearly everyone I know who would otherwise vote for a Republican is voting for Kerry this year, even if they are holding their nose while they do it.

One point I want to share with you:

Although Europeans (obviously) can't vote in US elections, there is a prevailing sense that Bush is famously unpopular there. This is evidence of European treachery among many, even me in my darkest moments.

A hymnal of cowardice

Two entirely different sources draw my attention to two entirely different articles today.

Imshin writes an article on hatred of Israel, coupling it with an article that appeared both in the UK Guardian and Front Page Magazine, titled An American Scapegoat in London. It's pretty scary reading.

Then there is an article in the Duke University newspaper titled The Jews , where a Benjamin N. Duke scholar thinks that "the Jews" took their "privilege" too far by seeking to prevent the Palestine Solidarity Movement from holding a conference there.

So, before you read more of my rantings, read all the stuff I've linked to above and think about it all.

The radical option of a liberal democracy

In a concession to political correctness, Bush has said that he doesn't want Iraq to turn into the US, only that it become a free, democratic society after the Iraqi fashion.

Is this a distinction without a difference? Is our conception of the minimal standards for freedom and democracy fundamentally at odds with what Iraqis (or indeed the entire Arab and/or Muslim world) desires?

Rubin is way smarter than Brzezinski

The New Republic's latest issue features a series of essays by prominent thinkers across the ideological spectrum, all on "How to Save Iraq." Some of the essayists offer more or less predictable advice, e.g., Victor Davis Hanson's view that military action now will save a lot of political trouble (and lives) later.

But two essays have attracted my attention: Zbigniew Brzezinski and Michael Rubin's. Brzezinski's is stunningly simplistic; Rubin's is stunningly hopeful.

Does Zinni care if some neocons are Jewish?

Anthony Zinni appeared on 60 Minutes yesterday to lambast the Bush administration and the Pentagon in particular for having followed the neoconservative "ideology" with respect to the Middle East. IsraelInsider compares (perhaps unfairly) Zinni's opinions with those of Fritz Holling's, who seems to believe that Israel's interests were a primary driver for invading Iraq.

Zinni does rattle off names of prominent Jews in the Bush administration, namely Paul Wolfowitz, Douglas Feith, Richard Perle, Eliot Abrams, Lewis "Scooter" Libby as the key neocons in the Bush administration. And I've seen several Norwegian articles claiming that these men have hijacked US policy against Israel in Sharon's favor.

How close is Zinni to being antisemitic?

Atrocities at Abu Ghraib

Let me for the record add my voice to those who condemn the mistreatment of prisoners at the hands of coalition troops in Iraq. The matter should be investigated and the guilty punished harshly - turning big rocks into small rocks for the rest of their lives at Leavenworth sounds like a good idea.

I looked at the pictures and am disgusted by what I see. The Norwegian newspaper Aftenposten, which characterizes the cold-blooded murder of a Jewish "settler" and her four daughters as a mere "attack," nevertheless views this abuse as "atrocities" that "terrorize" the prisoners.

The Vietnam/Iraq Meme

Ted Kennedy caught pundit imagination when he compared Iraq to Vietnam. A lot of people are weighing in on this issue, most of them trying to reassure us that, no, this is entirely different. (My initial take is here).

Comparisons and analogies are always tempting, in part because they - as senator Kennedy demonstrated - are so effective. We understand things by comparing them to things that we already know and then distilling the differences. Well crafted, comparisons are sharp and incisive; poorly chosen and articulated they only confuse things.

It may be, for example, that the greatest value in the Iraq/Vietnam comparison is that the differences are important than the similarities. Merely making the comparison doesn't guarantee and outcome.

And since the basis for comparison isn't clear, opininions differ:

Jenin and Fallujah

The Head Heeb comments on an article in the Forward, and a related one in Ha'aretz, that seems to indicate that the Separation Barrier is working out well for Palestinians and Israelis in and around Jenin and Umm al-Fahm.

In seemingly unrelated news, it may appear that "insurgent" hostage taking in Fullajah and elsewhere in Iraq has so unnerved the coalition that debka.com characterizes recent events as "devastating setbacks."

Can we draw a line between these two dots?

Quagmires in Iraq and Vietnam

Eugene Volokh is trying to find out if what Ted Kennedy says he meant bears any resemblance to what he actually said when he (Kennedy) compared Iraq to Vietnam.

There's something heroic about untangling political parisology, but I'm more interested in the substance of the question: Does the situation in Iraq today have meaningful similarities with Vietnam in, say, the early 1970s?

The strategic context is obviously different:

South Vietnam was an American ally that was threatened by its Northern communist countrymen. Iraq was an enemy of the US, the head of which threatened regional stability. The underlying theory in Vietnam was containment - the interest in reducing the growth of communist regimes in the US sphere of influence. The theory of Iraq is a kind of virtuous domino effect - democracy will break out in the Middle East once a single Arab state gets bitten by the bug. Vietnam was in the context of the cold war. Iraq is in the context of the War on Terror. One thing they do have in common is that an abrupt and unilateral US withdrawal would be a bad thing - genocide in Cambodia; civil war resolved by a theocracy in Iraq.

But these are irrelevant differences as far as the ghost of Vietnam is concerned. The operative term in this debate is "quagmire." This, I think, is a situation in which:

- Political objectives are confused and/or vague, complicating and frustrating the purpose of military operations
- Tactical and operational superiority are overtaken by the ability to sustain steady losses
- Domestic support is dwindling as the costs become more apparent than the benefits
- Pulling out is politically unacceptable, as it would be seen as conceding defeat
- All these reinforce each other, creating a syndrome

Ironically, the Powell doctrine is intended to avoid precisely a quagmire syndrome. Swift, overwhelming military action to accomplish a specific goal, followed by a clear exit strategy limits military engagement to what it is most useful for: winning wars and dictating terms of surrender and peace.

There is certainly the possibility that Iraq will become a political and military quagmire. It's really too early to tell, but some aspects of this adventure worry me.

I've discussed this with a cousin of mine who is a high-ranking US Army officer in Iraq. My main point was that there aren't clear metrics of progress for the occupation. And since the press focuses on bad news, public opinion will easily be influenced by the number of Americans killed rather than the number of Iraqis saved (in one way or the other). Armies are built to either conquer or hold positions, and it's generally pretty clear if they're succeeding or not. We may have opinions on whether the occupation is going well or poorly, but there's no way for the American public to know for sure.

This war is also unusual (though probably not unprecedented) in that its main purpose was to overthrow, not just defeat, the enemy's government. When the Allies defeated Japan and Germany, they dictated terms of peace to a provisional government and assured continuity of civil order. Saddam's government never actually surrendered, and so the transfer of power was more like what you'd see after a coup or rebellion. The Iraqis may have viewed the Saddam regime as immoral, repressive, brutal, and bloody (and it was all of those things), but they are also likely to view the American interim regime as illegitimate.

On the other hand, the exit criteria for the coalition administration are pretty benign - the US isn't looking to plunder or even humiliate the Iraqis. They want there to be a representative, Iraqi government that won't support terror, build weapons of mass destruction, or attack any of its neighbors.

The quagmire scenario is predicated on the harm caused by organized Iraqi resistance overtaking the benefit of US nation-building, with anarchy or civil war being the likely alternative to continued occupation. It may be that the Bush administration has overestimated Iraqi willingness to create a better nation as a result of outside "encouragement." If so, a quagmire may be just what we get. Or a unilateral withdrawal that leads to a bloodbath.