More thinking on the coming withdrawal

The generally very wise Israeli military historian Martin Van Creveld has a must-read article in the online edition of New Perspectives Quarterly. It’s titled ” The Fall: Consequences of US Withdrawal From Iraq” and starts thus:

    Now that the American people have recognized that the war in Iraq is hopeless, what comes next? The answer is, the US is going to cut its losses and withdraw.

Then, with admirable focus, he gets right into the nitty-gritty of what that will entail:

    Withdrawing 140,000 soldiers with all their equipment is a very complex operation. In 1945 and 1973, the US simply evacuated its troops, leaving most of its equipment to its West European and South Vietnamese protégés respectively.
    This time, however, things are different. So precious is modern defense equipment that not even the largest power on earth can afford to abandon large quantities of it; in this respect, the model is the First Gulf War, not Vietnam or World War II.
    Second, whatever equipment is left in Iraq is very likely to fall into the hands of America’s enemies. Thus the Pentagon will have no choice but to evacuate millions of tons of war materiel the way it came—in other words, back at least as far as Kuwait. Doing so will be time-consuming and enormously expensive. Inevitably, it will also involve casualties as the road-bound convoys making their way south are shot up and bombed.

Van C is completely right both in his assessment that the US will have to withdraw from the melee in Iraq, and in his approach of starting from the “ground truth” of the logistics of any matter.
Longtime JWN readers might recall that back in July 2005, when I started thinking seriously about the modalities and logistics of how the US might withdraw from Iraq, I too noted the huge scale of the logistical challenge involved… I wrote here, for example, “Given the need to muster the necessary sealift, airlift, and other logistics, I think that 4-5 months from the date that Washington makes the total-withdrawal decision to the time the last British squadron follows the last US troops out of the door would be about right.”
However, I disagree with Van Creveld’s forecast that “the road-bound convoys making their way south [would be] shot up and bombed.” Why do I disagree there? Primarily because if there is a chance of serious harrassment of the withdrawal convoys as they head for the exits, then no responsible US commander is going to order such a withdrawal. In other words, the US generals themselves– that is, the men who have accepted responsibility for the lives and welfare of the men and women under their command– are honor bound to insist that the political leadership do everything in its power to create conditions on the ground that will permit a withdrawal that is orderly and as safe as possible.
(I probably don’t need to remind most readers of the horrendous scale of the losses the British– and “British” Indian– forces suffered in Iraq in 1916-1917.)
That was why, back in that July 2005 post on JWN and in all my many writings since then on how the US can plan an orderly withdrawal from Iraq– for which, check out the links at the top of the main page sidebar there– I have simply taken it as given that once the Prez has taken the tough decision that he needs to order a full withdrawal, the first order of business will be to conduct whatever contacts are necessary to create the climate in Iraq and the region within which the US commanders can organize their orderly withdrawal with the absolute minimum level of casualties.
And yes, of course that incoludes contacts with an Iran that strategically dominates the exit routes not only within Iraq but also right along the Gulf to the Straits of Hormuz.
In that July 2005 post, I wrote this:

    How can US troops redeploying out of Iraq be assured they won’t be harrassed/attacked along the way?
    This is a concern with some validity. The US authorities could negotiate an agreement on this matter with the Jaafari government. Of course, at present, the Jaafari government is not a body viewed as representative by many Iraqis, especially the more nationalistic ones. But if he could say to his compatriots: “Look, here is the plan for the total withdrawal of US troops so let’s all calm things down,” then he actually might suddenly develop nationwide credibility. And even if he didn’t gain that, simply the fact that the US troops are visibly following a well-publicized and timely withdrawal schedule would certainly mean that many other Iraqi leaders at the local level would come forward and say, “Yes, let’s make sure this goes smoothly.”

Of course, the political situation in Iraq has changed (deteriorated) a huge amount since the days of the Jaafari “government”. In the “Three-step program” for a US withdrawal that I laid out just one month ago, I updated that portion of the plan. The first of the three steps I describe there is that the president should make a public announcement of “His firm intention to pull all US troops out of Iraq by a date certain, perhaps 4-6 months ahead.”
Then my description of the second step starts like this:

    (2) The clock starts ticking on the timetable announced by the President. That fact and the other new diplomatic realities created by his announcement all act together to start transforming the political dynamics within Iraq, the region, and indeed the US, as well. The Iraqi parties and movements all have a powerful incentive to work with each other and the UN for the speedy success of the negotiation over the post-occupation political order…

Btw, the third step is: “(3) On the date certain the last US troops leave Iraq and there is a handing-over ceremony.”
Anyway, that is one criticism– albeit, one with very significant political/strategic implications– of what Van Creveld wrote in NPQ. I also have some disagreements with his forecast of the kind of political order that will exist inside Iraq after the US withdrawal.
Regarding regional balances after the US withdrawal, he writes that Iran’s regional position has already been significantly strengthened by the US’s actions in Iraq. Then, this:

    To make sure some future American president does not get it into his or her head to attack Iran as Iraq was attacked (essentially, for no reason at all), the Iranians are going to press ahead as fast as they can in building nuclear weapons.
    A powerful Iran presents a threat to the world’s oil supplies and should therefore worry Washington. To deter Iran, US forces will have to stay in the region for the indefinite future; most probably they will be divided between Kuwait, much of which has already been turned into a vast US base; Oman; and some other Gulf states. One can only hope that the forces in question, and the political will behind them, will be strong enough to deter Iran from engaging in adventures. If not, then God help us all.
    Some countries in the Middle East ought to be even more worried about Iran than the US. While turning to the latter for protection, several of them will almost certainly take a second look into the possibility of starting their own nuclear programs. Each time a country proliferates, its neighbors will ask whether they, too, need to do the same. In time, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Egypt and Syria may all end up with nuclear arsenals. How this will affect the regional balance of power is impossible to say…

For my part, I’m not so sure about this. In the context of a serious retrenchment of US power in the Gulf region, should we not all be redoubling our efforts to negotiate the transformation of the entire Middle East into a zone verifiedly free of all weapons of mass destruction? Surely, for all persons anywhere who are concerned about the dangers of nuclear proliferation, this turning-point in the Gulf towards which we are now approaching should surely give us all new impetus, as well as a new opportunity to work urgently to negotiate an agreement to this end.
Van Creveld seems to be a nuclear-proliferation fatalist. I note, in addition, that he makes no mention of the one indigenous power within the Middle East that already has a robust nuclear arsenal– Israel. And nor does he mention the fact that US Navy ships in the fleets now assembling in the Gulf are also nuclear-armed….
He ends by essaying a look into the global strategic implications of the coming US withdrawal from Iraq:

    Before 2003, many people looked at the US as a colossus that was bestriding the earth. Whatever else, the war has left the US with its international position weakened; Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice may bark, but she can hardly bite. So shattered and demoralized are the armed forces that they can only fill their ranks by taking in 41-year-old grandmothers. Hence, the first task confronting Robert Gates, nominated to be the new secretary of defense, and his eventual successors must be to rebuild them to the point where they may again be used if necessary.
    Above all, the US must take a hard look at its foreign policy. What role should the strongest power on earth play in the international arena, and just what are the limits of that role? How can American power be matched with its finite economic possibilities—the US balance of payment gap and deficit are now huge—and under what circumstances should it be used? If American power is used, what should its objectives be?

He is asking some very important questions here. But I believe that he is far too cautious and indeed, from his perspective, “optimistic” in his assessment of the global strategic effects of the whole US military debacle inside Iraq. He seems to assume that it would easily be possible for the US to effect a complete restoration of the kind of military-based US hegemony over the world that existed prior to 2003. I believe that is unlikely to happen, for a number of reasons. And from my perspective as someone committed to building relations of equality and mutual respect among all the people of the world regardless of citizenship, and who hates all the effects of violence, I truly do not seek the restoration of that hegemony.
Look what that situation of unfettered hegemony allowed the US government to do back in 2003…
Yes, we might now have a Congress in Washington that is more “conservative” than Mr. Bush regarding the idea of launching optional military aggressions overseas… But still, our country needs to use the imminent prospect of retrenchment in Iraq to re-think the entirety of its stance vis-a-vis the other peoples of the world. And I will certainly be making the case that this should be a relationship of equality and non-militarism.
(This discussion about the extent of the US’s retrenchment in world affairs is broadly similar to the one undertaken in Britain after the debacle of the Suez affair in 1956… Too bad that Tony Blair never really learned the lesson of that debacle or shared it with his good friend in the White House, eh?)
—————-
… In the context of this discussion of the prospects regarding a US withdrawal from Iraq, I just want to note, even if somewhat belatedly, the testimony that Zbigniew Brzezinksi gave to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on February 1. (PDF original here.)
That was an important statement, from a man who was Jimmy Carter’s National Security Advisor back in the day and who has certainly retained and honed his powers of analysis and understanding in the decades since then.
Here’s some of what he said:

    It is time for the White House to come to terms with two central realities:

      1. The war in Iraq is a historic, strategic, and moral calamity. Undertaken under false assumptions, it is undermining America’s global legitimacy. Its collateral civilian casualties as well as some abuses are tarnishing America’s moral credentials. Driven by Manichean impulses and imperial hubris, it is intensifying regional instability.
      2. Only a political strategy that is historically relevant rather than reminiscent of colonial tutelage can provide the needed framework for a tolerable resolution of both the war in Iraq and the intensifying regional tensions.

    … The quest for a political solution for the growing chaos in Iraq should involve four steps:
    1. The United States should reaffirm explicitly and unambiguously its determination to leave Iraq in a reasonably short period of time.
    Ambiguity regarding the duration of the occupation in fact encourages unwillingness to compromise and intensifies the on-going civil strife. Moreover, such a public declaration is needed to allay fears in the Middle East of a new and enduring American imperial hegemony. Right or wrong, many view the establishment of such a hegemony as the primary reason for the American intervention in a region only recently free of colonial domination. That perception should be discredited from the highest U.S. level. Perhaps the U.S. Congress could do so by a joint resolution.
    2. The United States should announce that it is undertaking talks with the Iraqi leaders to jointly set with them a date by which U.S. military disengagement should be completed, and the resulting setting of such a date should be announced as a joint decision. In the meantime, the U.S. should avoid military escalation.
    It is necessary to engage all Iraqi leaders — including those who do not reside within “the Green Zone” — in a serious discussion regarding the proposed and jointly defined date for U.S. military disengagement because the very dialogue itself will help identify the authentic Iraqi leaders with the self-confidence and capacity to stand on their own legs without U.S. military protection…
    3. The United States should issue jointly with appropriate Iraqi leaders, or perhaps let the Iraqi leaders issue, an invitation to all neighbors of Iraq (and perhaps some other Muslim countries such as Egypt, Morocco, Algeria, and Pakistan) to engage in a dialogue regarding how best to enhance stability in Iraq in conjunction with U.S. military disengagement and to participate eventually in a conference regarding regional stability.
    The United States and the Iraqi leadership need to engage Iraq’s neighbors in serious discussion regarding the region’s security problems, but such discussions cannot be undertaken while the U.S. is perceived as an occupier for an indefinite duration. Iran and Syria have no reason to help the United States consolidate a permanent regional hegemony. It is ironic, however, that both Iran and Syria have lately called for a regional dialogue, exploiting thereby the self-defeating character of the largely passive — and mainly sloganeering — U.S. diplomacy.
    A serious regional dialogue, promoted directly or indirectly by the U.S., could be buttressed at some point by a wider circle of consultations involving other powers with a stake in the region’s stability, such as the EU, China, Japan, India, and Russia. Members of this Committee might consider exploring informally with the states mentioned their potential interest in such a wider dialogue.
    4. Concurrently, the United States should activate a credible and energetic effort to finally reach an Israeli-Palestinian peace, making it clear in the process as to what the basic parameters of such a final accommodation ought to involve.
    The United States needs to convince the region that the U.S. is committed both to Israel’s enduring security and to fairness for the Palestinians who have waited for more than forty years now for their own separate state. Only an external and activist intervention can promote the long-delayed settlement for the record shows that the Israelis and the Palestinians will never do so on their own. Without such a settlement, both nationalist and fundamentalist passions in the region will in the longer run doom any Arab regime which is perceived as supportive of U.S. regional hegemony.

There’s a tremendous amount of good sense there. Let’s hope that all the Senators paid good heed.

23 thoughts on “More thinking on the coming withdrawal”

  1. Martin van Creveld is one of the substantial body of Western ‘strategic studies’ theorists and historians whose have produced dubious interpretations of the Cold War which are close to being an incitement to proliferation – and now find themselves trying vainly to think of ways out of a mess for which they are at least partly responsible.
    According to van Creveld, ‘(a)s history since Hiroshima shows, the best, perhaps the only, way to curb war is to deter it with such overwhelming force as to turn it from a struggle into suicide.’ (See the interview at http://www.d-n-i.net/creveld/interview_van_creveld.htm.) In black moments I sometimes imagine myself in the position of an Iranian strategic planner, assembling citations to remove any prudential or indeed moral objections that leadership might have to acquiring nuclear weapons. This is one of my prize quotes. I have others from a range of eminent authorities, including John Lewis Gaddis, Sir Lawrence Freedman, and Tony Judt.
    An interesting implication of van Creveld’s view, of course, is that when George Kennan attempted, back in early 1950, to breathe new life into the agenda for the international control of atomic energy which had been abandoned following the failure of the Baruch Plan in 1946, he was displaying a desperate recklessness. Had he been successful, obviously, World War III would have been inevitable or at least highly likely. We must be eternally grateful that Kennan was removed from any share in American policymaking by prudent ‘realists’ like Paul Nitze, Dean Acheson, and John Foster Dulles.
    However, as is well known, or at least should be, Kennan has spent decades repudiating the idea that the threat posed by Stalin was one of military aggression analogous to that posed by Hitler – and claiming that this notion arose from at best a misunderstanding, at worst a wilful disregard, of his arguments. The argument was restated in an exchange of letters with the historian John Lukacs, published in 1997, fifty years after the famous X-article appeared in Foreign Affairs. In this, Kennan complains of the way in which after the war many of his fellow countrymen ‘jumped quickly to the primitive assumption that the Soviet aim was to overrun the remainder of Europe militarily and then to replace the governments there, including the West German one, with Communist puppet regimes.’ Perhaps Professor van Creveld is still in the grip of the ‘primitive assumption’.
    On the question of whether it was valid to infer an ‘intentions threat’ from the very evident ‘capabilities’ threat posed by Soviet forces in Central Europe from the late Forties on, however, some of the best former Western intelligence analysts came to share Kennan’s view. I refer specifically to Raymond Garthoff, who before joining the CIA in 1957 was perhaps the leading pioneer of academic studies of the Soviet military in the West; and also Michael MccGwire, who was head of the Soviet naval section of British Defence Intelligence in the mid-Sixties, before turning academic, and was certainly one of the best military intelligence officers Britain has ever had. Both men are very critical of the ‘deterrence’ theory which van Creveld propagates with such enthusiasm.
    A central point is very simple. In the aftermath of the Second World War, the United States enjoyed an overwhelming preponderance of potential military-industrial power – its production of motor vehicles was more than ten times that of the Soviet Union, according to the figures given in the key NSC 68 paper of April 1950. But, as a democracy, it has difficulty in maintaining ground forces in being in peacetime. Accordingly, if in the event of general war the Soviet Union is to avoid eventual defeat, it must act to forestall the effective deployment of American potential power in Eurasia. The technical military logic impelling the Soviets towards an offensive posture in Central Europe was set out in the JSC Strategic Guidance for Industrial Mobilisation Planning of May 1947, available in the standard collection of Containment documentation edited by Gaddis and Thomas Etzold. It was also set out in an article in the confidential Soviet journal Military Thought in June 1950 by Major-General V. Khlopov, which was discussed in the 1958 study of Soviet Strategy in the Nuclear Age by Garthoff.
    If the inference from a ‘capabilities’ threat to an ‘intentions’ threat is illegitimate, obviously judgements like that of Professor van Creveld are called into question.
    Also very interesting is the way that Kennan developed his argument to Lukacs. He pointed out, not implausibly, that a successful invasion of Western Europe would have meant the creation of a united communist Germany. But this, according to Kennan, was not a reason why Stalin would have wanted to invade Western Europe, but a reason why he would have wanted not to. A united communist Germany, Kennan argued, would have been ‘the last thing Stalin would have wanted to bring about.’ I cannot do justice to the subtleties of his argument here, but essentially Kennan was saying that the government of a united communist Germany would have come to dispute Stalin’s claim to leadership of world communism and that Stalin’s ability to maintain his legitimacy in the Soviet Union would have thus been called into question. Accordingly, Kennan asserts, Stalin preferred to see Western communist parties as pawns to sow disruption and division in the West, rather than having pawns become queens, and as a result repudiating Stalins’s claim to be, as it were, the Pope of world communism.
    Also striking is the fact that Kennan ended up telling Lukacs that he still sees ‘no inconsistency’ between the views he held in 1945 and those he put forward in later years. As a simple point of logic, either Kennan’s claim that his views did not change must be misleading, or the general interpretation of the X-article cannot accurately have reflected Kennan’s views at the time he wrote it. The one logical impossibility is that Kennan can be what he is commonly portrayed as being – a kind of secular saint whose probity is so self-evident that even to raise the question of his being disingenuous, or manipulative, seems somehow indecent.
    I am sorry to post at such length, and also hope that the element of tetchiness I see rereading the post will not be deemed to violate your injunction to courtesy. But it seems like almost every other day that I read arguments based upon the supposed lessons of the Cold War, made by scholars and journalists who seem simply ignorant of some of the relevant complexities. Very often also, as with van Creveld, the effect of these arguments is actively to encourage proliferation.
    Is it too much to ask that before drawing lessons from the Cold War, commentators, rather than heaping incense on Kennan as is so commonly done, should display some awareness of what he has actually said? The exchange with Lukacs is a good starting point. It costs $12.95 from Amazon, and can be read in an hour.

  4. The history of peace settlements is rife with combatants who declared they would never make peace with their enemies, but eventually did. Hamas should be viewed no differently.

  6. Jim, I’ve no doubt that in the future HAMAS will be forced to come to terms with Israel’s existence. Judging from today’s remarks, that moment hasn’t arrived.
    I’m surprised to hear Helena describe Van Creveld as “generally very wise.” Forget that he preaches the inevitability of Iraq’s dissolution, predicting “three mini-Afghanistans that will serve as havens for terrorist activities throughout the Middle East” should the US withdraw. He also falsely predicted that Sharon would overrun the West Bank under cover of the Iraq war (“Sharon’s plan is to drive Palestinians across the Jordan”), and that Israel would invade Iran in 2004 (“Sharon on the warpath : Is Israel planning to attack Iran?”. His solution to the I-P conflict is a wall “so tall that even the birds cannot fly over it”, fortified by a ten-meter wide “death strip…sown with antipersonnel mines and guarded by automatic machine guns.” He’s been quoted saying “the Palestinians should all be deported [from Israel.]”
    In short his analysis seems a bit overheated if not paranoid. His historian’s (non-military) tactical thesis, employing 40- and 60-year old points of reference also isn’t supported by the ISG report. Even though I’m sure it feels nice to envision US “punishment” and humiliation. I’d add that it stokes the paranoid fantasies of those who never want to leave Iraq, who would cite the same “inevitable” factors to justify a permanent US presence.

  7. re: withdrawal
    The US troops are going nowhere until after we get rid of bush….. either by election, or God willing, IMPEACHMENT.

  8. Habakkuk’s contribution is timely. The real legacy of the Cold War is the way in which it has infected intellectual discourse. The case of the west, as put forward ad nauseum, was simply meant to convince taxpayers to pay for policies which were actually close to being suicidal for working people (the immense amounts Britain, for example, spent on Defence robbed its industry of investment and undermined its manufacturing.) The idea that the Soviet Union was bent on aggression was always incredible, all evidence pointed the other way, and yet this has become an article of faith, a part of reality. Americans are constantly told that the US “won the Cold War”, that therefore US intervention abroad is good, it having saved the world from totalitarian slavery etc etc. Believe that and wars against Iraq and Iran become almost obligatory.
    US foreign policy has been pretty well consistent since the middle of the Second World war. There have been big differences in style and tactics but the insistence on putting down revolts, whether in Guatemala, Iran or elsewhere, has been a constant. What has also been consistent has been the commitment to large scale interference in the internal affairs of other countries. The case of Italy in the post war years is only one example; it is difficult to think of a country in which, often financial, pressure has not been used to reshape the political landscape. The case of Australia is well known; the importance of US influence, money and agents in transforming the socialist parties of Britain and western Europe cannot be underestimated.
    The parameters of debate over foreign policy are extraordinarily narrow, the differences between one President’s advisors and those of his successor may seem stark but in the real world they are imperceptible. The Carter policy of drawing the Russians into a guerilla war with the Afghans is all of a piece with the current situation. The current attitude towards Iran stems from Carter’s support of the Shah at his worst.
    The question is: why is there no challenge to imperial strategies despite their obviously calamitous tendency and the falseness of the assumptions behind them? Don’t blame AIPAC who simply chimed into a conversation which was long established before likud had been dreamed of.

  9. Bevin,
    As an American I can say that the elites support imperialism because they get away with it, and the masses support it passively because they don’t want to know how their hamburger gets made.
    Sometimes I believe that the only way you can learn your actions are harmful is to have that same harm visited on you by another. Other times I recall how the Irish wasted no time upon arrival in America in supporting slavery, just so they could do unto blacks what Englishmen had always done unto them – a lesson followed in slowly-accelerating detail by victims of anti-Semitism emigrating to Israel. I do not know how the chain is broken. If I argue that FDR tried to use his extraordinary power to try to break the chain of imperial oppression, or at least replace it with a rubber leash, I will be denounced by those who argue capitalist America never had any good intentions at all – which view I am trending towards myself.
    The average American gets through the day denying half of the evils he hears about and making excuses for the other half. I know that’s a front for something worse, that in some lobe he’s aware that, though he every day has less and less power and a smaller and smaller share of America’s wealth, it’s still better than letting the empire be destroyed and having his standard of living reduced to that prevalent beyond our borders. But damned if I can begin to get someone to admit that he’s just a redneck henchman for a global slave plantation owned by idiots.
    It appears these monstrosities called empires work until they fail, and then are inevitably replaced by other monstrosities. If you want to stop the next one, talk to the Chinese, but be aware that they are eagerly anticipating committing the same crimes we do.

  11. Any strategy military institutions teach military commanders moving a military force to a war zone should be consider withdraw issues before deployment of the military force and how to get them out or withdraw in worse case scenario.
    Many takes a personal analysis how to withdraw troops from war zone “Iraq now” these thoughts comes from a normal peoples some have never been in the military or in real war zones and its tasks,
    If US military never thought or planed before about withdraws their troops from Iraq and they taking advices from others how to withdraw US military force from war zone, this disastrous ware planning any means in military arena.
    To refreshing your memory, in 1991 US military forces bombed Iraqi withdrawal military force from Kuwait after they accepted the ceasefire that massacre called ” “The Highway of Death” ”
    of Iraqis which are mostly are normal Iraqi military personal and there were not Saddam special force even not Republican forces, most of them are from southern cites of Iraq and some Kurds as typical Iraqi military forces structured for many decades.
    Those Iraqis Military guys killed intentionally by US military commanders and command in chief GB father who agreed on ceasefire with Iraq.
    This is against to UN charters and all regulations of any ceasefire agreements; simply it was a war crime.
    So US commanders now may some of them were serviced in that war 1991, they should consider that their acted in 1991 left each Iraqi family grieving of their loose of their loved ones and if they are looking for US troops safety now inside Iraq they should took that in account when the brook the rules of wars in 1991…

  12. My recollection was that the opposite was in fact the case…Papa Bush and Colin Powell were criticized for withdrawing precipitously from Iraq in 1991 and leaving the Shiites and Kurds exposed after encouraging them to revolt.

  13. Truesdell,
    This is different issue what you talking about.
    What I said is when Iraq agreed on UN resolution of withdrawn troops from Kuwait and US agreed also and hold Ceasefire to allow the long line of Iraqi troops on Highway 80 from Kuwait city to Basra south Iraq to move with holding fire during that troops move north. what happened is US fighters was the killing machines for that hundred of thousands of Iraqi troops killed injured during that withdraw process.
    What you talking about is after that when the rest of troops who sow the horror in he way back home and in Basra some start shoot the Iraqi troops who came just from the killing zone and they find themselves under fire on their land.
    Ok now “Papa Bush and Colin Powell” issue come here what’s happened here this is a real stores at the time how much western media fed to you I don’t know.
    Some said “Iraqis, some my family members and some my college in the military service while I am also in service at that time in different place” they shoot Iraqi military personal in Basra who survived the Highway of Death horror when they tried to go home from Basra and some reports said that Iranians trucks entered Basra with food Aid on the top of the trucks and hide underneath weapons.
    That’s Iraqi side stories, what I heard in VOA, or BBC ” (Arabic broadcast, I wish I had recorded for the future) not sure which one it’s a long time to remember” I heard a report that a team of ten CIA againsts entered Iraq from the south “Nasryiah” they went there for very specified mission for ten days” to assisted the situation on the ground, when they returned to US Bush the father get their massage that the chaos this not can help, there will be chaos and they realised Iranians fingers went inside Iraq, then “Papa Bush and Colin Powell” let Saddam to use his copters to fight back those rabbles, whom they put on fire schools hospitals and food stores land registration offices and Ba’ath Party offices. Unfortunately Saddam gone and he is the only one he can specks what massage got from “”Papa Bush and Colin Powell”.
    The damage of infrastructures we saw after 2003 is similar to that in 1991 but late one more bigger, a gang of looters and criminals they run wild to take this status of lawlessness, exactly what’s happened in US after Katrina or in 1992 I think in US when US army took action and shoot those gang and criminals, Saddam went far from that he punish all the southern cities as he did in Dujal and in north for Kurds, its not matter of Shiites or Kurds revolt as such, although more Iraqi civilians killed or fled Iraq to Saudi Arabia from the brutality of Saddam forces but I can say what US troops did in Falujah and Tel-La’afer , Haditha and other places is not diffrent what Saddam did in southern cites of Iraq.

  14. Salah, I agree that “The Highway of Death” from Gulf War must remain in Iraqi insurgent’s memory, especially since the Insurgency is largely composed of military (Republican guard, Saddam Fedayeen, and ordinary soldiers). Also, the average Iraqi must surely have it burned into their memory from the loss of their fathers, brothers and sons in that massacre. I also agree that firebombing a retreating army is a war crime. However, a minor technicality gives the U.S. “plausible deniability.” There was no cease fire. In fact, I remember distinctly the Pentagon briefings, where the press asked if there would be a ceasefire, allowing the Iraqi troops to withdraw from Kuwait without being fired upon. The Pentagon emphatically stated there would not be a ceasefire, leaving the press perplexed as to how Iraqis could possibly be expected to withdraw without that assurance. “They know what they have to do,” the Pentagon spokesman said. “Drop their weapons, remove their uniforms, and leave.” That quote, I believe is verbatim from my memory. I’ll never forget it precisely because I immediately sensed a bloodbath was coming, as did the press. And indeed that’s exactly what happened. The Iraqis did what was asked. They left in civilian clothes and vehicles, without weapons, and as they did they were firebombed. Tens of thousands were incinierated on “The Highway of Death.” As the news of the atrocity trickled out, Bush Sr., looking toward re-election, called a halt to the war, saying something to the effect of “This is not the American way” in order to quell rising outrage. The media subsequently dropped the story .
    Now, the question of whether U.S. forces will be able to withdraw peacefully has been on my mind for quite some time. Although I have long advocated withdrawal, I’ve come to the conclusion that our window of opportunity has closed. I no longer believe it’s possible, logistically or politically, to simply say, “oh well, nevermind” and leave. It’s too late for that. Essentially, our forces are trapped. IED’s block the roads, helicopters are being shot out of the air, and underreported attacks on U.S. bases are increasing. However, I do not believe their aim is to oblitirate our forces in another “Highway of Death” scenario. They know that our commanders would never attempt to withdraw under these conditions. As Helena pointed out, that would be suicidal. What insurgents are after, I believe, is a checkmate strategy. If you know chess, you know that checkmate occurs when the King can no longer move. We’re damned if we leave, damned if we stay. Game over. It is at this point that they will have the leverage to make demands that will bring the American Empire to its knees. Ultimately, the U.S. will have no other options left but to meet their conditions in order to save our forces.
    Rober Fiske outlines their conditions in a recent article:
    * The release of 5,000 detainees held in Iraqi prisons as “proof of goodwill”.
    * Recognition “of the legitimacy of the resistance and the legitimacy of its role in representing the will of the Iraqi people”.
    * An internationally guaranteed timetable for all agreements.
    * The negotiations to take place in public.
    * The resistance “must be represented by a committee comprising the representatives of all the jihadist brigades”.
    * The US to be represented by its ambassador in Iraq and the most senior commander.
    It is not difficult to see why the Americans would object to those terms. They will not want to talk to men they have been describing as “terrorists” for the past four years. And if they were ever to concede that the “resistance” represented “the will of the Iraqi people” then their support for the elected Iraqi government would have been worthless.
    Indeed, the insurgent leader specifically calls for the “dissolution of the present government and the revoking of the spurious elections and the constitution…”
    He also insists that all agreements previously entered into by Iraqi authorities or US forces should be declared null and void.
    Al-Jeelani described President George Bush’s new plans for countering the insurgents as “political chicanery” and added that “on the field of battle, we do not believe that the Americans are able to diminish the capability of the resistance fighters to continue the struggle to liberate Iraq from occupation …”The resistance groups are not committing crimes to be granted a pardon by America, we are not looking for pretexts to cease our jihad… we fight for a divine aim and one of our rights is the liberation and independence of our land of Iraq.”There will, the group says, be no negotiations with Mr Maliki’s government because they consider it “complicit in the slaughter of Iraqis by militias, the security apparatus and death squads”. But they do call for the unity of Iraq and say they “do not recognise the divisions among the Iraqi people”.It is not difficult to guess any American response to those proposals. But FLN [National Liberation Front] contacts with France during the 1954-62 war of independence by Algeria began with such a series of demands – equally impossible to meet but which were eventually developed into real proposals for a French withdrawal.
    Read the full article:
    http://news.independent.co.uk/world/fisk/article2251354.ece

  15. Diana, there is no coherent “they” capable of negotiating terms… Considering the obscurity of its source Fisk’s latest scoop has all the political significance of an anonymous email. What kind of resistance group demands the occupier stick around a while to rebuild the country and its army? And how on earth is the US military supposed to disband Al Sadr’s militia?

  16. Vadim,
    As far as the Sunni insurgency, which is the primary anti-occupation force, there is a coherent “they” with whom the U.S. can negotiate. One such person is Abu Salih Al-Jeelani, one of the military leaders of the Iraqi Sunni Islamic Resistance Movement, whose group also calls itself the “20th Revolution Brigades”, a military wing of the original insurgent organization.
    The U.S. has already been negotiating with insurgents, as far back as June 26, 2005.
    http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,160709,00.html
    The U.S. would have liked everyone to believe that there is no coherent force fighting against the U.S. They’ve tried to characterize them as a sort of rag tag bunch of “dead enders” or as “terrorist” with whom they refuse to negotiate. Clearly, this is not the case.

  17. As far as the obscurity of Fisk’s source, I agree. I’m not at all sure that insurgents are willing to negotiate, at this point at least, and I don’t know where he got that information.
    The “Brigades of the 1920 Revolution” categorically deny any overtures on their part:
    http://www.uruknet.info/?p=m30525&hd=&size=1&l=e
    I posted his article as an example of what the conditions -might- be, once they have the U.S. backed into a corner. I should have made that more clear.
    What may cause some confusion is the stance the insurgents took prior to Saddam’s execution, at which time they were willing to negotiate. They had warned that executing Saddam would end all negotiations. Indeed, part of their negotiations were centered around the release of Saddam.
    At the end of the day, I don’t think they will “negotiate,” they will simply -demand- that their conditions be met. The point is they will have the leverage to make their demands stick.

  18. Diana,
    As far as the Sunni insurgency, which is the primary anti-occupation force,
    You are quite right in this but if you allow me there is a growing oppositions to US in the Southern cites like Basra, Dewaniaya and recently we saw Najaf massacre (New Dujail) this all indications that the opposition to US is all over even I read some Kurds are not happy with their larders there??
    But what’s happen is the Mahdi Army, Fadillah Party, Hezbollah Party (Iraq Branch) and Da’awa party and Bader Brigade/ SCIRI party all these guys they open fires against Iraqis for their power gain so they are the main supporter to US occupation.
    recently these guys ” Iranian proxy” fear that US may start war with Iran which they very relay on here for their support more than US for simple reason because Iran its long and sustainable supporter for them (don’t forget they midwife by Iran 20 years ago) not like US sooner or later this occupation/existence will be come to end.

  19. One such person is Abu Salih Al-Jeelani, one of the military leaders of the Iraqi Sunni Islamic Resistance Movement, whose group also calls itself the “20th Revolution Brigades”, a military wing of the original insurgent organization.
    Unfortunately I can’t find any mention of this person in any other context, and I’ve scoured NEXIS and Google. As much as I’d love to think this complete unknown spoke for a grand coalition of Sunni patriots ready to lay down their assault rifles and embrace their Shia rivals with the departure of the last US plane.
    As far as backing the US into a corner: they’re in no more of a position to “take over” Iraq when the US leaves than any of the militias they’re hoping to disarm and outlaw (& who exactly is supposed to bell that cat? the Marines?)
    This is where the beloved Vietnam analogy seems to fail. Where is its manifesto? Who are its leaders? Unlike the VC, Iraq’s “20th Revolution Brigades” has no provisional government-in-waiting nor Mme Binh to sign its treaties, no Ho Chi Minh, no discernible political ideology beyond “US out!” , & no claim to sovereign authority. They’re obviously outgunned and outnumbered. Beyond Robert Fisk’s say-so, we have no evidence its spokesman even exists.

  21. Excellent analysis of what SHOULD happen. Sadly, we know that George Walker does not plan, and can only produce shambles. My fear is that the US will use aerial power to create a free fire zone through which material and troops will be withdrawn. A horrible picture but consistent with everything that has happened so far.

  22. I have no idea why some people seem so sure that getting rid of Bush is what it takes to get the United States out of Iraq. The Democrats are historically not much better when it comes to Middle East policy. Bill Clinton, for starters, is responsible for killing vast numbers of Iraqi civilians, both directly and indirectly.

Comments are closed.