Gold9472
01-05-2007, 09:37 AM
Cheney's last stand
Contrary to the recommendations of the Baker-Hamilton report, Dick Cheney believes that sending extra troops to Iraq will deliver success.
http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/robert_fox/2007/01/dick_cheneys_last_stand.html
Robert Fox
1/5/2006
The new policies for Iraq due to be announced on January 10 could be the final act in the Freudian politics of the Bush family. According to the leaks, and they have been more than in your average suburban water main, George Bush is going to set recommendations by Papa Bush's old consiglieri, led by James Baker, neatly on their head.
"Staying the course is not an option" stated the Iraq Study Group of Baker and Hamilton. But that is just what the president is about to order. US troops are not to leave Iraq until "the insurgents are beaten". That means the troops will be on the ground for a month of Sundays, with no remission for good conduct. Wisely, Baker-Hamilton suggested that the resolution to Iraq's state of meltdown is not primarily a military issue.
Yet Bush, and Dick Cheney even more so, see the matter as being almost entirely military. Cheney believes that more US troops in Baghdad and seats of the insurgency in the Sunni Triangle like Ramadi can in the end deliver "success", if not "victory." The president is expected now to order in between 20,000 and 30,000 more combat troops. Some 11 combat brigades will start clearing Baghdad sector by sector of militias and insurgents.
US combat teams have tried this before, of course, but this time they will be told to stay on after they have cleared each zone. This is the key part of the plan produced by the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), a favourite haunt of Dick and Lynn Cheney. The report's author Frederick Kagan told BBC Newsnight this week, "this has never been done before. This time the Americans will take and occupy these places."
Cheney and co believe that the present administration must learn from the mistakes of Vietnam, which was lost because of the lack of resolve of US political and military leadership. The advice of Vietnam veterans like Colin Powell has been ignored totally. Powell has warned that even an extra 20,000 troops for only a matter of months could put an intolerable logistical strain on US forces, and - his words, not mine - could "break the army." The view has been endorsed sotto voce by General John Abizaid, the commander of Central Command. His immediate subordinate, General George Casey, the theatre commander in Iraq, has put the accent of his command on handing over to viable Iraqi forces - a tall order on the face of it now - and a plan of measured US and British withdrawal, not least because that's what most Iraqis want.
For the neocon grand wizards of the AEI this is defeatist talk. Another AEI member, who has criticised the conduct of the war, has counselled the president follow the example of his hero Winston Churchill when he sacked Auchinleck and Wavell and put Montgomery and Alexander in charge in the Western Desert in 1942. So, Casey is coming home early, and Abizaid pushed into retirement in March, if not earlier.
The blueprint Bush now appears to have embraced has two big flaws. First it still hopes a solution can be found kinetically, ie by the application of brute military force. Cheney, by all accounts, believes Iran should be dealt with by force, too, and sooner rather than later. In this he is supported by the Israelis and the Saudis, though for different reasons. The war plans for an aerial strike on Iran have been drawn up, but according to latest reports from Washington, the military command there is united in opposing it.
The second big problem with the AEI plan, and some of those drawn up by the US army, is that the American forces' bid to "reclaim the security" of Baghdad and Ramadi is not theirs to run and control, because technically it is not within their jurisdiction. The US is not the government of Iraq, for that was handed over by the Coalition Provisional Authority to the Iraqis themselves, when Bush's viceroy Paul Bremer did a runner from Baghdad in the summer of 2004.
The terms under which the international forces operate in Iraq are expected to be changed and reduced radically when UN security council Resolution 1547 comes up for review this summer. The word from UN HQ in New York is that it will not be renewed in its present form. It is increasingly likely that the Iraqi authorities, whoever they may be by next June and July, will then set down a strict timetable for the Americans and British to get out of Iraq. One of the principal military planners for the new options for US forces admitted privately just before Christmas, "We have very little time left to make anything work, only a matter of months, and not years, at most."
The violence in Iraq now seems to defy easy definition, following its version of Heisenberg's uncertainty principle - define it one way, and it changes before you can blink. For this reason both the Americans and the al-Maliki government appear to have completely miscalculated the execution of Saddam. In the way he was despatched, and then allowed to be buried in public ceremony, they have allowed him to become a martyr, his image an icon for anti American, and anti Iraqi Shia, sentiment across the Arab world. The Ba'ath party has just announced that General Izzat al-Douri is to be their new leader. Izzat has long been reported dead or dying. One of the few non-Tikritis close to Saddam he appears now to be the brains behind the Baath Party element of the Sunni nationalist insurgency - and the Ba'ath claim they have "four divisions" in the guerrilla campaign in central Iraq.
The insurgency is now a complex of Sunni secular and religious militias, some bent on having their own civil war. According to British and other intelligence sources, outsiders, including al-Qaida and Iranian advisers, have only a small, though at times very noisy, role. Taking on the complex multifaceted civil war would be beyond the capacity of 200,000 US and allied troops - despite what the American Enterprise Institute believes. The only effect the new plan might have is to unite everybody against the Americans and their pals.
Faced with the shifting strategic facts on the ground, George Bush resembles Ethelred, one of the less fortunate ancient Saxon kings. He was known as the Unready not so much because he couldn't get up in the morning in time to beat the Danes, but more from the Saxon unraed, roughly meaning "short of counsel/good advice". Like Ethelred and the Danes, Dubya the Unready still finds it difficult to smell the coffee about Iraq, and more bereft than ever of good counsel of what to do about it.
Contrary to the recommendations of the Baker-Hamilton report, Dick Cheney believes that sending extra troops to Iraq will deliver success.
http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/robert_fox/2007/01/dick_cheneys_last_stand.html
Robert Fox
1/5/2006
The new policies for Iraq due to be announced on January 10 could be the final act in the Freudian politics of the Bush family. According to the leaks, and they have been more than in your average suburban water main, George Bush is going to set recommendations by Papa Bush's old consiglieri, led by James Baker, neatly on their head.
"Staying the course is not an option" stated the Iraq Study Group of Baker and Hamilton. But that is just what the president is about to order. US troops are not to leave Iraq until "the insurgents are beaten". That means the troops will be on the ground for a month of Sundays, with no remission for good conduct. Wisely, Baker-Hamilton suggested that the resolution to Iraq's state of meltdown is not primarily a military issue.
Yet Bush, and Dick Cheney even more so, see the matter as being almost entirely military. Cheney believes that more US troops in Baghdad and seats of the insurgency in the Sunni Triangle like Ramadi can in the end deliver "success", if not "victory." The president is expected now to order in between 20,000 and 30,000 more combat troops. Some 11 combat brigades will start clearing Baghdad sector by sector of militias and insurgents.
US combat teams have tried this before, of course, but this time they will be told to stay on after they have cleared each zone. This is the key part of the plan produced by the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), a favourite haunt of Dick and Lynn Cheney. The report's author Frederick Kagan told BBC Newsnight this week, "this has never been done before. This time the Americans will take and occupy these places."
Cheney and co believe that the present administration must learn from the mistakes of Vietnam, which was lost because of the lack of resolve of US political and military leadership. The advice of Vietnam veterans like Colin Powell has been ignored totally. Powell has warned that even an extra 20,000 troops for only a matter of months could put an intolerable logistical strain on US forces, and - his words, not mine - could "break the army." The view has been endorsed sotto voce by General John Abizaid, the commander of Central Command. His immediate subordinate, General George Casey, the theatre commander in Iraq, has put the accent of his command on handing over to viable Iraqi forces - a tall order on the face of it now - and a plan of measured US and British withdrawal, not least because that's what most Iraqis want.
For the neocon grand wizards of the AEI this is defeatist talk. Another AEI member, who has criticised the conduct of the war, has counselled the president follow the example of his hero Winston Churchill when he sacked Auchinleck and Wavell and put Montgomery and Alexander in charge in the Western Desert in 1942. So, Casey is coming home early, and Abizaid pushed into retirement in March, if not earlier.
The blueprint Bush now appears to have embraced has two big flaws. First it still hopes a solution can be found kinetically, ie by the application of brute military force. Cheney, by all accounts, believes Iran should be dealt with by force, too, and sooner rather than later. In this he is supported by the Israelis and the Saudis, though for different reasons. The war plans for an aerial strike on Iran have been drawn up, but according to latest reports from Washington, the military command there is united in opposing it.
The second big problem with the AEI plan, and some of those drawn up by the US army, is that the American forces' bid to "reclaim the security" of Baghdad and Ramadi is not theirs to run and control, because technically it is not within their jurisdiction. The US is not the government of Iraq, for that was handed over by the Coalition Provisional Authority to the Iraqis themselves, when Bush's viceroy Paul Bremer did a runner from Baghdad in the summer of 2004.
The terms under which the international forces operate in Iraq are expected to be changed and reduced radically when UN security council Resolution 1547 comes up for review this summer. The word from UN HQ in New York is that it will not be renewed in its present form. It is increasingly likely that the Iraqi authorities, whoever they may be by next June and July, will then set down a strict timetable for the Americans and British to get out of Iraq. One of the principal military planners for the new options for US forces admitted privately just before Christmas, "We have very little time left to make anything work, only a matter of months, and not years, at most."
The violence in Iraq now seems to defy easy definition, following its version of Heisenberg's uncertainty principle - define it one way, and it changes before you can blink. For this reason both the Americans and the al-Maliki government appear to have completely miscalculated the execution of Saddam. In the way he was despatched, and then allowed to be buried in public ceremony, they have allowed him to become a martyr, his image an icon for anti American, and anti Iraqi Shia, sentiment across the Arab world. The Ba'ath party has just announced that General Izzat al-Douri is to be their new leader. Izzat has long been reported dead or dying. One of the few non-Tikritis close to Saddam he appears now to be the brains behind the Baath Party element of the Sunni nationalist insurgency - and the Ba'ath claim they have "four divisions" in the guerrilla campaign in central Iraq.
The insurgency is now a complex of Sunni secular and religious militias, some bent on having their own civil war. According to British and other intelligence sources, outsiders, including al-Qaida and Iranian advisers, have only a small, though at times very noisy, role. Taking on the complex multifaceted civil war would be beyond the capacity of 200,000 US and allied troops - despite what the American Enterprise Institute believes. The only effect the new plan might have is to unite everybody against the Americans and their pals.
Faced with the shifting strategic facts on the ground, George Bush resembles Ethelred, one of the less fortunate ancient Saxon kings. He was known as the Unready not so much because he couldn't get up in the morning in time to beat the Danes, but more from the Saxon unraed, roughly meaning "short of counsel/good advice". Like Ethelred and the Danes, Dubya the Unready still finds it difficult to smell the coffee about Iraq, and more bereft than ever of good counsel of what to do about it.