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Realism in Iraq
Shinto
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So there seems to be a rising ascendency of the old realist school of international relations as the government is looking for the way to handle the Iraq war. James Baker and other member's of George Bush Senior's inner circle are working on recommendations. Now Henry Kissenger has tossed in his two cents.
Kissinger: Iraq Military Win Impossible
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/11/19/AR2006111900287.html
What do you guys think?
Kissinger: Iraq Military Win Impossible
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/11/19/AR2006111900287.html
LONDON -- Military victory is no longer possible in Iraq, former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger said in a television interview broadcast Sunday.
Kissinger presented a bleak vision of Iraq, saying the U.S. government must enter into dialogue with Iraq's regional neighbors _ including Iran _ if progress is to be made in the region.
"If you mean by 'military victory' an Iraqi government that can be established and whose writ runs across the whole country, that gets the civil war under control and sectarian violence under control in a time period that the political processes of the democracies will support, I don't believe that is possible," he told the British Broadcasting Corp.
But Kissinger, an architect of the Vietnam war who has advised President Bush about Iraq, warned against a rapid withdrawal of coalition troops, saying it could destabilize Iraq's neighbors and cause a long-lasting conflict.
"A dramatic collapse of Iraq _ whatever we think about how the situation was created _ would have disastrous consequences for which we would pay for many years and which would bring us back, one way or another, into the region," he said.
Kissinger, whose views have been sought by the Iraqi Study Group, led by former Secretary of State James Baker III, called for an international conference bringing together the permanent members of the United Nations Security Council, Iraq's neighbors _ including Iran _ and regional powers like India and Pakistan to work out a way forward for the region.
"I think we have to redefine the course, but I don't think that the alternative is between military victory, as defined previously, or total withdrawal," he said.
What do you guys think?
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Franky, I think Kissinger would be one of the most beloved moderate political leaders if he wasn't the closest things to an evil genius we're ever likely to get in reality.
Yes, technology. That's the problem. The US lacks the technology to fight a bunch of guys in caves. The terrorists are just too far ahead of you technologically, you can't possibly win :roll:
The problem is not technology. It's rules, but not the way you mean it. It's not that the rules are old or outdated, it's that the US are playing by the wrong rules. The US are trying to play football using the rules for water polo. They're trying to fight a decentralised civilian ideology using the rules to fight a centralised military force. The US doesn't need to make new rules, they need to pick up the right rule book and read it.
i could be wrong about what he was talking about, but our military technology is not meant for dealing with people in caves, and embedded in a civilian population. it's for taking down standing armies, and we do that very well.
we do lack the technology to fight a bunch of guys in caves. we lack the tech and, i imagine, the training.
Exactly, the technology we're lacking in is better body armor. Need stuff that keeps the soldiers from getting killed since we all know its the body count that causing us to lose the war.
The U.S. does not lack the technology for that. But intel gained through technology can only give you so much information. It can show you a bunch of dudes that are hiding somewhere and fire a mortar at a FOB, and technology can even allow you to shoot down the rounds fired while firing a few rounds back with your own artillery.
But it's simply too expensive to protect every possible target, even when using a much lower standard of protection with less sophisticated technology. You can't have enough money so that you can pacify a country with a running insurgency.
You have to stop the insurgency, and you cannot do that with technology, or by killing insurgents. It is not enough to shoot every guy who picks up an Ak47 to become an insurgent.
You have to win the hearts and minds of the people living in the country, and you can't do that with technology.
Funny you should mention that. I remember several stories over the past three years of soldiers complaining they're not given the armour they need for the job. In particular I remember soldiers and their families buying superior armour to the one issued by the army (DragonSkin IIRC), and being told by their superiors that if they use it they forfeit their army benefits. I also remember soldiers complaining to Rumsfeld directly about their lack of armoured vehicles, and being told that "we go to war with the army we have, not the army we want".
Seems to me that the problem is not so much that the US doesn't have good armour technology ready to use, but that the politicians don't want it used in Iraq for fear it will hurt their rethoric that "the war is going well, the insurgency is dieing, the people there love us, no really there's nothing to worry about". Kinda hard to say that while you're super-armouring your troops.
Woah there sunshine. Enough of your baseless optimism.
Well excuse me for bringing people down after your cheerful and upbeat "Iraq Military Win Impossible" OP.
Fair enough.
I think it's because the soldiers (and by extension their family and by extension everyone else) would realize they aren't getting the best of the best and yet are expected to police the world.
My entire Friday morning was all meetings from DoD, and Army Intel - i'd say Richy's statement succintly summarizes my feelings afterwards. The kinds of IED's thier using, the improvisation of the bad guys in thier attacks, the political and religous differences - it's all doom and gloom as far as I could tell. Not because bad things are happening per say, but bad things are happening and there's no clear way to prevent it. It pretty much killed my cheerful Friday morning.
I think a lot of folks are waiting on the Baker-Hamilton commission to deliver unto us salvation, but i'm not so sure anyone can dig us out of this mess gracefully. I do feel sorry for the average Iraqi trying to get by - the very pillars (Military/Police/Political) of society that you are relying to protect you are corrupt or inept, or just apathetic.
I mean, really, if ever there was a time for a Democrat "I told you so," now is it.
I thought not winning a single senate, house or governorship race was the "I told you so."
All the Republican analysts who say it's normal to lose a few seats in the 6th year of a presidency, that many of the races were so close that the victory cannot be seen as a mandate for the Democrats, that losing in 06 will allow them to win in 08, etc., seem to disagree with you.
Oh, well. Que sera, sera.
His father's former administrative staff have been closely intertwined with the current administration, and I don't mean just Baker. Gates served under Bush Sr., and is the current Defense Secretary nomniee. Tony Snow was a speech writer for Bush Sr.
I guess certain political circles are well travelled for certain parties.
When you put it like that... Here's to hoping for a return of Dan Quayle!
See, Back in those days, Canadians sent to the front lines in france were given utter crap to work with, such as the legendary Ross rifle, and despite multiple occasions of the troops on the ground informing the politicians at home that the rifle was worthless when compared to the British Lee Enfield, the Minister of defense insisted that it's supperior accuracy at long range amply compensated for such flaws as the bayonet falling off when fired, jamming if the rifle wasn't kept immaculatley clean, and occasinally backfiring rounds into the soldiers face.
This might make me sound like a looney, but Re: Body armour.
The owner and primary contractor for the current Interceptor armour, is DHB Industries, a sizeable contributor to our current administration fincially (this year alone, 25k to the RNC). Pre 9/11, DHB was losing millions a year, and after they reeled in huge contracts to produce the cumbersome, and questionably effective armour.
During it's inital trials, Dragonscale armour 'failed' it's evaluations for our troops - low and behold, the testing was done by an engineer from Pointblank Industries, whose parent company is DHB. The failed evaluation was one done on Air Force standards, which was later refued by the Air Force actually - retesting was done and it has now passed NIJ Level III standards in Oct. of this year. Translation: We can use it for our troops if the Army wants to spend the money. As with everything in defense contracting, it's always about politics and money. The losers are the troops being equipped with what I view as inferior armour - heavy, cumbersome, and hellishly hot. Which reminds me - anyone see the turret gunner armour they're trying too push out? It comes with it's own A/C unit .
Now if only we had already fought a war against a civilian army stationed in caves and among the population in a country completely unfamiliar to us and had it fail miserably.
If that was the case, we might have learned something.
...
You mean World War II? Because it's the only one that comes to mind when I try looking for historical parallels to the current Iraq War.
Vietnam and Korea?
The American Revolution from the British perspective?
EDIT: And for WWII, they use the fictional WWII that started in 1941 and was single-handedly won by the USA on their own, not the real WWII that started in 1939, was a long violent and bloody struggle, and was won by the Allies.
It's mostly funny because we have a lot of ties to the cause of that chunk of the war -anyways-.
Goddamned Teddy.
As far as Iraq itself goes, I'll just tell you that my own experiences say that we needed to do one of two things. Either flooded the country with troops, so we could be everywhere all the time, or kept more troops in for longer rotations. Everytime a new unit goes in there, they have to learn everything from square one. Who the power players are, who's legit, who's corrupt, all that. Honestly, it seems that you've only got six months of real working on the ground. The first three are taken up getting rid of the "kill em all" attitude that was drummed into your command staff pre deployment, the last three are spent trying to GTFO so no one gets killed and turn it over to the next set of sorry bastards that are coming in.
Technology dosen't have anything to do with it. Its the intelligence, stupid. Our S-2 (intelligence) shop was fucking retarded, and its pretty much like that across the Army. We'd get a "hot tip" from some guy that would have us out of our bunks at one in the morning, driving into the middle of Mosul, because there were 25 insurgents who were about to start driving VBIEDs into the base. So we go in kicking down the goddamn door, and what do we find? Its usually one military aged male, two old guys, and a ton of women who are wondering why the fuck we're there at two in the morning pointing guns into people's faces. That's why we're losing the war, because no one likes getting treated like that.
Technology was what got us into this fucking mess, believing we could trust satellite relays, compare them to 12 year old on the ground intel and the word of partisan exiles, and call it a slam dunk.
McCain supports the former option, sending in more troops. It seems pretty shitty to do that, but I wonder if there's a glimmer of truth there. I recall reading a GW part I report that it would take about double what we've got there now to really do a decent job - but that's got to be a seriously un-popular viewpoint - most folks just want them out.
Don't forget Cheney. He was Bush Sr's Sec. of Defense.
That was Powell's proposed strategy in the beginning of the war. I think, honestly, that it was the superior option to what we tried to do, overwhelm them with technology.
At this point however, the pooch is pretty much screwed. The idea of using overwhelming force and presence is to prevent a strong insurgency. With an entrenched insurgency and civil war, the time for that strategy to be effective is over. Likewise, any dreams of this coming out objectively positive is pretty much over. At this point, it's damage control.
That and the fact there aren't any more troops to send. Guys are going in for back to back deployments, and that's nothing compared to the gear issue. Stuff is being used two or three times past its limit, and the Army answer is to pretty much close your eyes and hope to God it dosen't fall apart at the wrong time. What they're doing as far as manning issues consists of grabbing as many people that are in flux from one unit to another, throwing them into a brigade combat team, and hoping it meshes.
Fact of the matter is, Iraq is fucked.
And let me guess, does the changing of the rules have anything to do with the media, or people's attitude to casualties?
We should get an all-female brigade to march through Mecca.
Victory over Terror, here we come!
The neo-con (read: fanatically pro-Israel) faction of the administration got into this war making claims that appealed to "Realists" who still think like we're in the Cold War, even though neo-conservativism is about as "Liberal" and idealistic (and as far away from "Realism") as a political philosophy can get.
It's a confusing alphabet soup of semantics, engineered to manipulate the various political factions and marginalize dissent. After all, if you're not a "realist" you obviously don't understand the reality of the situation. :roll:
I always found the most apt paralllel to be the American conquest and rather brutal colonization of the Phillipeans to be the most apt comparison to Iraq. Of course it took a good 40 years for things to simmer down there....
Or that crap around the Panama canal.
Most people don't even know about anything that we did below our border, and hell, I barely know. Something about TDR going war mongering.