Just over two weeks ago, insurgents in Iraq’s Diyala province rammed an explosives-packed truck into the tall concrete blast walls that ‘surging’ US soldiers had put up to protect their new, small, neighborhood-style patrol base. The attackers pushed the heavy wall right over on top of the soldiers inside the base, killing nine and injuring 20.
The US military is a reactive, lesson-learning institution. Thus, in today’s WaPo we have this story telling us that for the ‘surging’ soldiers,
- defending their small outposts is increasingly requiring heavy bulwarks reminiscent of the fortresslike bases that the U.S. troops left behind.
To guard against bombs, mortar fire and other threats, U.S. commanders are adding fortifications to the outposts, setting them farther back from traffic and arming them with antitank weapons capable of stopping suicide bombers driving armored vehicles. U.S. troops maintain the advantage of living in the neighborhoods they are asked to protect, but the need to safeguard themselves from attack means more walls between them and civilians.
If you want to see what the new outer ring of fortifications at a ‘patrol base’ now looks like, click on the photo in that story. They have apparently put huge tubs filled with sandbags right behind those high concrete walls, presumably to prevent attackers from once again tipping the walls over onto the US soldiers inside…
Evidently, all these fortifications and fortifications of fortifications, are severely hampering the achievement of what was supposed to be the main point of distributing the ‘surging’ soldiers more widely throughout Iraq’s populated areas– that was, to enable the soldiers to “be with the people”, both in order to keep tabs on them and to build up some friendly alliances with members of the Iraqi public.
That piece in today’s WaPo, which was by Ann Scott Tyson, tells us just how bad relations have even become between the US soldiers and the supposedly ‘loyal’ Iraqi troops who are in the patrol bases alongside them. Writing of one outpost in Sadr City she says,
- U.S. troops staff guard towers on the roof 24 hours a day and, uncertain of the loyalties of their Iraqi counterparts, also stand sentry at the American section inside.
… So the surge is completely doomed not to work as planned. (You can read some of my earlier thoughts on that, here.)
Jonathan Weisman and Tom Ricks write in today’s WaPo that:
- Congressional leaders from both political parties are giving President Bush a matter of months to prove that the Iraq war effort has turned a corner, with September looking increasingly like a decisive deadline.
In that month, political pressures in Washington will dovetail with the military timeline in Baghdad. Gen. David H. Petraeus, the commanding general in Iraq, has said that by then he will have a handle on whether the current troop increase is having any impact on political reconciliation between Iraq’s warring factions. And fiscal 2008, which begins Oct. 1, will almost certainly begin with Congress placing tough new strings on war funding.
“Many of my Republican colleagues have been promised they will get a straight story on the surge by September,” said Sen. Gordon Smith (R-Ore.). “I won’t be the only Republican, or one of two Republicans, demanding a change in our disposition of troops in Iraq at that point. That is very clear to me.”
“September is the key,” said Rep. James P. Moran Jr. (D-Va.), a member of the House Appropriations subcommittee that funds defense. “If we don’t see a light at the end of the tunnel, September is going to be a very bleak month for this administration.”
Meanwhile, I just also want to flag this significant piece that Peter Spiegel and Julian Barnes had in Sunday’s L.A. Times. The title is On Iraq, Gates may not be following Bush’s playbook As the president pushes for more time and money for the war, the Pentagon chief’s message has seemed to run counter..
The reporters have amassed some pretty shrewd pieces of evidence for this. Including this:
- Gates was a member of the bipartisan Iraq Study Group, which recommended in its report last year that most combat troops withdraw by early 2008. Gates did not sign the report; he has said that formal deliberations did not start until after he left for the Pentagon. But several people who worked on the report said Gates was closely involved in early drafts and would have supported its eventual conclusions.
“Knowing how that group got along and how we shared our views, there remains no question in my mind that Bob Gates, had he not become secretary of Defense, would have supported those recommendations,” said Leon E. Panetta, a former Clinton White House chief of staff and a member of the Iraq panel.
It has long been my contention that last November’s replacement of Rumsfeld as SecDef by Gates marked an important turning-point in the Bush administration’s handling of the war. Gates looks like a canny, patient player of the bureaucratic game. Let’s hope he is also as canny (or at least, realistic) at grand strategy.
I just also want to flag this significant piece
It’s called “Dirty Politics” Helena no surprises here we saw more and more people behaved a like when comes to Power, Money and Positions, any one hate to be High?
Now you need to fire your “Oil colour” lady that’s why she loved to pay a kickback to Saddam, should she be fired then, isn’t?
Helena – You’ve probably seen Pat Lang’s assessment of the dangers of the isolated fortified positions, but I encourage your readers to read Col. Lang’s post — and the insightful comments — at http://turcopolier.typepad.com/sic_semper_tyrannis/2007/05/a_disaster_wait.html
All soldiers understand that war is dangerous, but it is unconscionable to place them in harm’s way when it has become clear that they are being used simply to allow the president to avoid admitting his failure.
From the Nixon-Kissinger Fig Leaf Contingent of my own long-ago Souteast Asian days to the Cheney-Bush Buy Time Brigade of today, nothing has changed but the names of (1) the perpetrating politicians seeking to escape punishment for their crimes and (2) the American soldiers and foreign civilians who die or become destitute as a result of the Lunatic Leviathan’s malfeasance and mendacity of (again) historic proportions.
Not long ago I happened to rummage through some old letters and found one sent to me by a fellow enlisted man who stayed behind at our isolated (and steadily shrinking) Vietnamese river outpost base after I finished serving my time and had returned to America in January of 1972. He described a situation of increasing isolation and paranoia as the remaining Americans — who distrusted and feared the “good guy” Vietnamese (whom we supposedly had come to “save”) — continually walled themselves off against our erstwhile “allies” until the day hopefully came when they could leave Vietnam and come home as I had. The “new” isolated and vulnerable outposts (or miniature Green Zone Castles) mentioned in the relevant article remind me so much of what I once endured for over a year in Southeast Asia — only far, far worse. Now our genius, ticket-punching generals bravely tell us that they expect to get even more of their enlisted men and junior officers killed (or, even worse, captured?) “surging” to the tune of a recyled “strategic hamlet” scenario cooked up at the neocon “belief tank” (“like a think tank, only without the doubt,” as Gary Trudeau calls it) American Enterprise Institute. No doubt exists in my ex-military mind our genius generals will, in this at least, prove successful.
All this panic-stricken, throwing-in-the-kitchen-sink committment of all our reserves to Little Big Horn on the Tigris reminds me as well of those doomed French Legionnaires parachuting to their deaths for nothing at the already lost battle of Dien Bien Phu. This will get even uglier. Count on it. And it will result in nothing of any value for either Iraq or America. So why do we permit this insane travesty to continue for even another week — for nothing more substantial than the pathetic, posturing egos of Sheriff Dick Cheney and his sock-puppet propaganda catapulter Deputy Dubya Buah? Not worth it. No way.
Concerning the new walls planned/constructed in Bagdad along with the surge, I’ve been wondering whether their untold goal wasn’t an attempt to secure the Green Zone better, by creating a larger cercle of check points around it ? It would be interesting to have a map of their location. The move would makes sense, since there has been more and more attacks against the Green zone; the most audacious being the one in the cafeteria of the members of parliament. Since months now, people working in the Green zone have also been instructed to wear body armors when getting out of a building.
If the untold reason was really that, then the situation in Bagdhad is much worse than what we imagine and we may be nearer of a US withdrawal than thought.
* AP: “The Pentagon has notified more than 35,000 Army soldiers to be prepared to deploy to Iraq beginning this fall, a move that would allow commanders to maintain the ongoing buildup of troops through the end of the year if needed.” The administration said this is not related to the escalation strategy, though some have trouble believing that.
President Bush has repeatedly argued that the United States needs to “eliminate terrorist threats abroad, so we do not have to face them here at home.”
“President Bush has repeatedly argued that the United States needs to “eliminate terrorist threats abroad, so we do not have to face them here at home.”
Last night on Hannity and Colmes, right-wing pundit Dick Morris also claimed that we need to keep U.S. troops in Iraq so that terrorists don’t come to the United States. But he argued that we need to put “Americans right within their [terrorists’] arms’ reach” so that they have the opportunity to “kill Americans” there. He added that therefore, “they don’t have to come to Wall Street to kill Americans. They don’t have to knock down the Trade Center. They can do it around the corner, and convenience is a big factor when you’re a terrorist.” Watch it:”
Tricky Dick Morris surprises me with that analysis. Not because he treats the aggression and occupation primarily as a popular entertainment, for that is only what one would expect of anybody in his profession.
The surprise is the type of entertainment with which Mr. Morris is satisfied — a merely passive and sacrificial type. I should have expected him to recommend to the extremist Republicans that they try to get more “good” explosions onto the tube — more of “our” explosions — and generally aim at reviving the glory days of Shock-‘n’-Awe.
Watching uniformed Americans get killed could no doubt make lots of chickenhawk couch potatos get angry, but can that anger be enough to sell the policy product that Mr. Morris’s clients really want sold? The policy that the Bushies are, or logically ought to be, flogging might be called “responsible nonwithdrawal.” To advance that policy they require pictures and video that would “prove” that it is worthwhile for Uncle Sam to remain in neo-Iraq indefinitely, or at least, more immediately, that Dr. Gen. Petraeus and The Surge of ’07™ have now at last put “us” on the road to success and victory.
The sort of pictures and video that Mr. Morris solicits would appear to suggest the exact opposite, (1) that The Surge of ’07™ is mostly successful at running up the US body-bag count, and (2) that neo-Iraq would be a swell place to get out of.
The man is accounted an expert in his field, however, so it is quite possible that he sees something here that I am missing.
Still, if I am wrong about this, my whole idea of America needs major revisions. For a short time after the Pentagon/WTC attacks the couch potatos were happy enough to enjoy the moral rush of being a more or less innocent victim for a change — “washed in the blood of 9/11,” so to speak. But the notion that Televisionland and the electorate want a steady diet of that brand of narcissistic masochism, let alone a Long War predicated upon it, strikes me as mad.
Unless I am altogether mistaken, Americans typically think it important to be what they call “proactive.” The present Administration panders to that taste frequently. Mr. Morris, however, seems to think that “we” have all been converted to Shi‘ism, or Ghandianity, or some similar mindset. If the militant Republicans were to conduct their agitprop the Dick Morris way, they might possibly persuade a number of folks that globoterror really exists and that it really detests Uncle Sam and means to injure him if it can, but only at the cost of giving the impression that poor old Sam is that “pitiful, helpless giant” from the days of MacNamara and Kissinger who can’t actually do anything much about anything much.
This would not be a profitable bargain for the invasion fans to make, I don’t think.
But God knows best.
Combined, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are the second costliest camaign in U.S. history, surpassed now only by the Second World War.
IN BILLIONS OF 2006 DOLLARS
The American Revolution: $1.54
War of 1812: $1.14
Mexican War: $1.71
Civil War*: $61.9
Spanish American War: $9.3
World War I: $346.67
World War II: $3,235.96
Korea: $409.09
Vietnam: $536.23
Gulf War: $90.24
Wars in Iraq and Afghanistan: $609
*Combined Union and Confederate armies
SOURCE: CONGRESSIONAL RESEARCH SERVICE
“Knowing how that group got along and how we shared our views, there remains no question in my mind that Bob Gates, had he not become secretary of Defense, would have supported those recommendations,”
If Gates would be something he isn’t, he would be something different from what he is now….. In the meantime, the real Gates is secretary of Defense, and is presiding over the surge, the bloodbath and the continuation of the occupation. It seems that there always has to be a guy, who, for all appearances, is a loyal servant of Bush, but who is believed to be a secret opponent of his policies, though no one notices any difference in those policies (for whatever one can say about Bush, his Iraq policy has always been very consistent, from the day he came to office). In the first years of the Bush administration it was Collin Powell who played this role in the eyes of many. Now it’s Gates. What does one have to do to be taken for what one is?