Alternate History: Iraq

Victor Davis Hanson phones in from whatever alternate universe his deranged brain thinks he is living in--an alternate universe in which George W. Bush is the second coming of Winston S. Churchill:

Victor Davis Hanson: The insurgency in Iraq has no military capability either to drive the United States military from Iraq or to stop the American training of Iraqi police and security forces — or, for that matter, to derail the formation of a new government. The United States air base at Balad is one of the busiest airports in the world.... [T]he terrorists have an invaluable ally in the global media, whose “if it bleeds, it leads” brand of journalism always favors the severed head in the street over the completion of yet another Iraqi school.... During this sort of waiting game in Iraq, the American military silently is training tens of thousands of Iraqis to do the daily patrols, protect construction projects, and assure the public that security is on the way, while an elected government reminds the people that they are at last in charge....

Who will win? The Americans I talked to this week in Iraq — in Baghdad, Balad, Kirkuk, and Taji — believe that a government will emerge that is seen as legitimate and will appear as authentic to the people. Soon, ten divisions of Iraqi soldiers... over 100,000 police... crush the insurgency... a public tired of violence and assured that the future of Iraq is their own.... [T]he American presence in Iraq will... lessen considerably in 2006... reaching Korea-like levels and responsibilities in 2007...

Meanwhile, out in the non-alternate reality of the real Baghdad, Zayed the Dentist keeps his head down and phones to try to get the word out:

Healing Iraq : Fierce streetfighting at my doorstep for the last 3 hours. Rumor in the neighbourhood is that men in black are trying to enter the area. Some armed kids defending the local mosque three blocks away are splattering bullets.... [T]he attackers were fended off in our neighbourhood.... In Adhamiya, armed groups in black crossed the river in boats from neighbouring Kadhimiya and took over the Nu'man hospital. In Khadhraa', a combined force of Interior ministry forces and men dressed in black are surrounding 2 mosques with several families inside, threatening to burn them down on the occupants.... An armed group in 10 vehicles with no number plates entered the Al-Iskan Al-Sha'bi district in Dora... but was turned back by the residents. Eyewitnesses claim that as many as 40 bodies and 5 burnt vehicles.... Another group dressed in black in one Daewoo and two Opel vehicles passed the Interior ministry forces' checkpoint at Abu Dshir square... entered the Yassin mosque with explosives in tin containers. The keeper was killed and the mosque blown up. A Shi'ite armed group carried Sheikh Ghazi Al-Zoba'i in a pickup truck around Sadr city, shouting that they have a Wahhabi terrorist with them, before he was lynched on the streets by the angry mob.

Government officials and spokespersons are deliberately suppressing any news of these ongoing attacks on Sunni neighbourhoods and mosques. The official Al-Iraqiya channel is playing a historical movie, while other channels are playing Shi'ite mourning and Quran. The Interior ministry says it only has reports of 19 mosques attacked and one cleric killed. Go figure.

The FBI phones in from Guantanamo Bay, complaining

E-Mails Show FBI Agents Fretted About Prisoner Abuse - Los Angeles Times : that Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld's public pronouncements about interrogation policies were misleading. "I know these techniques were approved at high levels within DoD and used" on specific prisoners, said the official, referring to the Department of Defense. The names of the author and recipients of the e-mail were blanked out... no information was provided to indicate how the author knew the techniques were authorized at top levels.... Guantanamo's prison commander, Army Maj. Gen. Geoffrey D. Miller, was described as favoring aggressive methods "despite FBI assertions that such methods could easily result in the elicitation of unreliable and legally inadmissible information."... A Pentagon spokesman described the ACLU documents as "old information," and said that 12 investigations and reviews had found there was no Defense Department policy that encouraged or condoned abuse of detainees at Guantanamo Bay. The FBI memos had been previously released to the ACLU in December 2004, but with most of their contents censored...

William F. Buckley calls upon George W. Bush to acknowledge defeat in Iraq:

William F. Buckley Jr.: [T]he American objective in Iraq has failed.... Iraqi animosities have proved uncontainable by an invading army of 130,000 Americans.... The Iraqis we hear about are first indignant, and then infuriated, that Americans aren't on the scene to protect them and to punish the aggressors. And so they join the clothing merchant who says that everything is the fault of the Americans.... President Bush... postulate[d], from the beginning... that the Iraqi people... would suspend internal divisions in order to get on with life in a political structure that guaranteed them religious freedom... the invading American army would succeed in training Iraqi soldiers and policymkers to cope with insurgents bent on violence.

This last did not happen. And the administration has, now, to cope with failure.... Mr. Bush has a very difficult internal problem here because to make the kind of concession that is strategically appropriate requires a mitigation of policies he has several times affirmed in high-flown pronouncements.... [D]ifferent plans have to be made. And the kernel here is the acknowledgment of defeat.

And John Podhoretz calls for the Bush administration to deal with the situation by mobilizing--Karl Rove:

The Corner on National Review Online : PAGING KARL ROVE--EMERGENCY!... Democrats in Congress are outpolling President Bush on national security. By a margin of 43 to 41 percent, Americans say they trust Congressional Democrats more than Bush when it comes to protecting our national security.... [T]he political consequences could be catastrophic.

Impeach George W. Bush. Impeach Richard Cheney. Donald Rumsfeld, Condi Rice, Stephen Hadley, Porter Goss, Andrew Card too.

Comments

[Howard]

wait - Hanson didn't actually bring up...schools?

[Brad DeLong]

Yes. He did. It's unbelievable, I know. But he did.

[Marky]

Brad,
Even VDH isn't that stupid. He's on the take. Wonder how much he got for that column. Iraq op-ed optimism is a seller's market now; he should get at least $50,000 for that, IMO.

[Eli Rabett]

Kick John Yoo out of UC Berkeley. Think globally, act locally.

[Rob]

Well Hansen is right that the insurgency can't militarily take Iraq from the US in the sense Alexander the Great took it. But after that Hansen is completely wrong. But that is better than he usually does. Maybe someone should clue him that this isn't the Hellenic world anymore. Its not even T.E. Lawrence's world.

[Linkmeister]

The Columbia Journalism Review politely said VDH was absolutely nuts.

http://tinyurl.com/zfb4g

[Larry Koresh]

If you read world history, today is exactly
like 1939, when everyone started 'freaking
out' about Hitler's lebensraum putsch, and
the violence was all being blamed on Polish
radicals and terrorists. Like, oh, where
did that come from? Oh, we didn't know! Oh,
give him Bavaria, maybe this unpleasantness
will end. !Und pass der lieberwurst!

Then on the latest Neo diversion tactic:

Go to any Arab embassy website, UAE, Saudi,
Qatar, Yemen, and drill down to "Conducting
Business in the Emirates". Every single
Persian Gulf country requires a local in-
country partner with a 51% stake of your
venture. Not a 51% buy-in, mind you, they
want 51% of the action and controlling vote
on your board. Your money, your labor, their
51% cut of the profit. It's all there.

Same for China, as long as we're talking
"free trade". 51% in-country, all your
capital, all your labor, plus a massive
amount of "key money", if you know what I
mean there. But doing business in the US?

Oh, no problem, just donate $100,000 to
re-elect Godfather George, and you can
control 21 US ports, a Defense shipping
contract, a stream of crude deliveries, even
a nuclear waste shipment contract or three.

Hell, you can buy US citizenship for that
amount. Even buy a LOTTO TICKET for US
citizenship, complete with airfare paid.
Just drill down on the Commerce or INS
website, it's all in there. But try swimming
or tunneling over the US border. Sorry, no
dinero. Trying become a citizen of UAE (or
Israel). Sorry, different mother.

What if Adolf had said, 'Screw these bovine burghermeisters, I'm gonna pull a Kozlowski!'
Just imagine if instead of attacking Poland,
Hitler had simply auctioned all of Germany's
autobahns and industries to the Queen Mother.
He'd still be living in Buenos Aires, feted
by Ken Lay sychophant apostles, with his own
private British secret service contingent.

Hail George!

Bush has cracked the Da Vinci Code, and
broken our Republic's back. He will be
remembered as long as Joseph Stalin and
Adolf Hitler, long after OBL is buried.

"History? We'll all be dead by then."

A pandemic premonition, möglicherweise?
Didn't anyone notice the quickly-supressed
EPA report that Chinese plastic is toxic?
Smallpox blankets from our Tienamen MFN's.

[John Palcewski]

I can hardly wait to see how turdblossom is going to spin Bill Buckley's verdict that the Iraq war has failed. He could have added that the gates of hell now have opened wide and very soon we'll be reaping the whirlwind, but being a gentleman he wished to keep his discourse civil.

Well, I'm not a gentleman anymore and I can't be civil. Six solid years of lies and bullshit from these fascist swine Republicans have turned me around.

I've finally come to believe that anyone in America who votes for a Republican this November is a god damned traitor.

And you know why. I don't have to explain it.

And a special message to all the turd blossom trolls out there: Bend down, and kiss me royal Irish arse.

[hirvi]

"....the second coming of Winston S. Churchill"

Isn't necessarily wrong.

Churchill was very inept for most of his life.

[Mike]

You left out (at least) one 'heavy hitter', Brad: John Negroponte.

After even they gave up on the delusion of children with flowers, Negroponte is the 'go-to' guy they sent in to implement "The Salvador Option"...

--------------------------

By Michael Hirsh and John Barry
Newsweek
Saturday 08 January 2005

The Pentagon may put Special-Forces-led assassination or kidnapping teams in Iraq.

What to do about the deepening quagmire of Iraq? The Pentagon's latest approach is being called "the Salvador option"-and the fact that it is being discussed at all is a measure of just how worried Donald Rumsfeld really is. "What everyone agrees is that we can't just go on as we are," one senior military officer told Newsweek. "We have to find a way to take the offensive against the insurgents. Right now, we are playing defense. And we are losing." Last November's operation in Fallujah, most analysts agree, succeeded less in breaking "the back" of the insurgency-as Marine Gen. John Sattler optimistically declared at the time-than in spreading it out.

Now, Newsweek has learned, the Pentagon is intensively debating an option that dates back to a still-secret strategy in the Reagan administration's battle against the leftist guerrilla insurgency in El Salvador in the early 1980s. Then, faced with a losing war against Salvadoran rebels, the U.S. government funded or supported "nationalist" forces that allegedly included so-called death squads directed to hunt down and kill rebel leaders and sympathizers. Eventually the insurgency was quelled, and many U.S. conservatives consider the policy to have been a success-despite the deaths of innocent civilians and the subsequent Iran-Contra arms-for-hostages scandal. (Among the current administration officials who dealt with Central America back then is John Negroponte, who is today the U.S. ambassador to Iraq. Under Reagan, he was ambassador to Honduras.)

Following that model, one Pentagon proposal would send Special Forces teams to advise, support and possibly train Iraqi squads, most likely hand-picked Kurdish Peshmerga fighters and Shiite militiamen, to target Sunni insurgents and their sympathizers, even across the border into Syria, according to military insiders familiar with the discussions. It remains unclear, however, whether this would be a policy of assassination or so-called "snatch" operations, in which the targets are sent to secret facilities for interrogation. The current thinking is that while U.S. Special Forces would lead operations in, say, Syria, activities inside Iraq itself would be carried out by Iraqi paramilitaries, officials tell Newsweek.

Also being debated is which agency within the U.S. government-the Defense department or CIA-would take responsibility for such an operation. Rumsfeld's Pentagon has aggressively sought to build up its own intelligence-gathering and clandestine capability with an operation run by Defense Undersecretary Stephen Cambone....

http://www.truthout.org/docs_05/010905V.shtml

--------------------------

[bob h]

The insurgency in Iraq has no military capability either to drive the United States military from Iraq

I wonder about this. If the Shiites turn against us, perhaps as a result of our bombing Iran, it seems to me we cannot stay. There is a whiff of military debacle in the air, and you can be sure it is something Rummy has not planned for.

[wkwillis]

Churchill saved the Tory party, not Britain. Any Labor member of Parliament could have run the country during WWII and done as well. Well, most of them.
Churchill was the only Tory member acceptable to Labor, not the only man to save his country. His chief claim to fame is not surrendering like the rest of the Tories were thinking about.
Thank God. He deserved the American citizenship we gave him.
Funny, his mom was an American.

[Invigilator]

I'm with John P and Bob H to an extent -- just remember Gallipoli, and the Bush-Churchill comparison seems not so fantastic.

[hirvi]

"Funny, his mom was an American"

True.

He was also 1/8 red Indian/native American if my book is correct.

[hirvi]

"...just remember Gallipoli, and the Bush-Churchill comparison seems not so fantastic"

Indeed - Gallipoli was a useless campaign that served no strategic purpose. In fact, it served no purpose at all, except for getting men killed and ships sunk.

Yet even the "great" Kitchener agreed to it, which proves that Churchill wasn't the only bird-brain in English administration at the time.

[anne]

Imagine how easily we could save American lives and fantastic material costs by leaving Iraq at once. We fought a needless war, even speedily accomplished our objective of changing a government, then we stayed and stayed as all we found about should have set us to leave. We should not have fought this war, for Iraq was completely contained and no threat to us, but we fought the war then in a magical fashion common opinion decided we must forever stay however regrettable the staying.

[Bruce Webb]

kiss me royal Irish arse.

Posted by: John Palcewski

Wow, I know a certain amount about the 'Irish Pale', until now I knew nothing about the 'Irish Pole'. Well I guess you live and learn.

"Note: The English Pale. That part of Ireland in which English
law was acknowledged, and within which the dominion of
the English was restricted, for some centuries after
the conquests of Henry II. John distributed the part of
Ireland then subject to England into 12 counties
palatine, and this region became subsequently known as
the Pale, but the limits varied at different times.
[Century Dict., 1906]"

[hirvi]

"...Imagine how easily we could save American lives and fantastic material costs by leaving Iraq at once..."

You can say that again...

[sm]

Gallipoli occurred to me, too.

The Iraq campaign has brilliantly succeeded in strengthening forces that actually threaten the United States. Did Gallipoli revive the Ottoman Empire? It certainly did wonders for the reputation of Kemal Ataturk (as he would be called). The one interwar strongman who knew that an aggresive foreign policy would destroy his country.

[anne]

http://www.calvorn.com/gallery/photo.php?photo=4283&u=11087|21|...

Female Red-tailed Hawk Stripping Bark for Nest
New York City--Central Park.

Hirvi, I really do think you owe us some thoughts on Finnish birds :)

[tom f]

I see the Vietnam and Iraq wars as both luxury items purchased by elite politicians and beurocrats. Unnecessary for the security and welfare of the Constitutional Republic, but acheiving several varied domestic political aims while potentially (in the minds of the hawks) expanding the prestige and power of their own political clique, which is portrayed through mass propaganda as being moderate, pragmatic, and benign.

That is all.

[putnam]

Professor Hanson properly views with disdain the superficial, "if it bleeds, it leads" brand of journalism. He himself does not write accounts of a few bloody battles, no, he has done invaluable work researching the history of the painting of schools in antiquity.

[Roger Albin]

Gallipoli continues to be controversial. Churchill argued after WWI that it could have succeeded and indeed, the post-war official histories issued by the Turks confirmed his opinion. With a bit of luck, say the absence of Ataturk from the scene, the British and French, could have succeeded. The British and French bungling was immense, but to be fair, this was the first major amphibious assault in modern history. Whether success at Gallipoli would have been strategically decisive is another matter. Most modern scholars doubt this idea but it was not ridiculous. It was definitely more plausible than the idea that the American army could invade Iraq, set up a friendly and democratic government, and markedly reduce troop levels in one year.

[Steven Rogers]

Comparing Iraq to Gallipoli is most unfair to Churchill. Gallipoli had a point within overall Allied strategy after all: Gravely weaken if not knock out the Ottomans and grreatly mitigate the Logistical difficulties the Russians were experiencing. In addition, I read a claim recently that when the Turks closed off the black sea, they trapped a greater tonnage of Allied merchant shipping than was sunk by the U-boats during the entire great war.

As Roger Albin said, at the time the Ottomans thought the operation came scary close to succeeding.

[Doctor Memory]

Per "A Peace to End All Peace", Gallipoli did come extremely close to succeeding, and Fromkin makes a pretty strong argument that it was bungling by the local officers, not any inherent weakness in the plan that sunk it.

[batavicus]

Pardon the off-topicness

Steven Rogers,
Any chance you could dredge up the source of the claim on allied shipping trapped in the Black Sea by the Turks? Having written a masters thesis on the requisition of neutral, specifically Dutch, shipping by the Associated Powers, I have some interest in this subject.
Thanks.

[massacio]

Can we impeach John Podhoretz?

[Washington]

The absurd notion that Bush is Churchill, or even remotely approaching WSC is laughable.

As to VDH, the column is long on hyperbole and short on fact. There is no way to spin Iraq. It is what it is...but hardly Gallipoli. Come now. Let's not allow emotion to trump reason.

[Mike]

You ever been shot at, Washington?

Just wondering....

[Ari]

Say what?

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/02/24/AR2006022401816.html

The number of Iraqi army battalions judged by their American trainers to be capable of fighting insurgents without U.S. help has fallen from one to none since September, Pentagon officials said yesterday.

But the number of Iraqi battalions capable of leading the battle, with U.S. troops in a support role, has grown by nearly 50 percent. And the number of battalions engaged in combat has increased by 11 percent....

In a new report to Congress assessing the Iraq situation, the Pentagon also asserted yesterday that the insurgency is losing strength, becoming less effective in its attacks, and failing to undermine the development of an Iraqi democracy.

The report was written last week, before the bombing of a Shiite shrine and a wave of deadly reprisal attacks. It is the third in a series of reports that Congress requires from the Pentagon every three months....

[Ari]

As Juan Cole writes about the news story above, "In comedy and in politics, timing is everything."

[Johnny]

Guys like Hanson, and they're are a lot of them, are locked into the Bush is Churchill faith-based fantasyland, and nothing is going to change their minds... The farther IRaq sinks into undeniabele chaos, the more and more you'll start seeing how the chaos is of great strategic value to us.... They'll never admit they were wrong. To admit it would be to inlalterably udermine the entire way they see the world.

[anne]

Then, now that democracy is finally come to Iraq, can we leave? Can we leave at once, so there are no more American casualties, so that we can attend to our needs here and even affairs that should be of concern say in Latin America and Africa?

[ilsm]

VHD is indeed wrong most of the time.

The VC and NVA could not kick the US out of Vietnam either; did not mean they were losing nor we winning.

All a guerilla needs to do is survive to win. That is, even against a bunch of nuts willing to have other peoples' kids killed forever, and waste the working class' tax money.

VDH is a classicist, one who would have been censured by Gibbons for being a fop.

His war is the Pelopennesian war, 400 BC.

His ineptitude is to fail to see that we are advised by the Iraqi equivalents of Alcibiades who could not figure whose side he was on.

Look to the Syracuse campaign.

Athens was on top of their game, decided to push little Syracuse around over on Sicily.

The Syracusans had a decent Spartan general and Alcibiades went over.

Bottled up the insanely arrogant Athenian fleet in the harbor and they could not get any of their 40,000 troops home.

Greece never recovered.

But VDH does not see how a great power can lose to a smaller one.

That was his war 2500 years ago.

[Ari]

The old regime is gone, there can be nothing to be won anymore in Iraq.

[Anderson]

I'm glad some people knowledgeable about Gallipoli (properly, the Dardanelles operation--it was all doomed by the point it became "Gallipoli") chimed in.

As for this:

"Churchill saved the Tory party, not Britain. Any Labor member of Parliament could have run the country during WWII and done as well. Well, most of them."

--pooh. A negotiated peace with Germany in 1940, easily. Only a romantic like Churchill could & did hold Britain together in that very dark year.

[Steven rogers]

Batavicus,

I *think* it was in Strachan's recent one-volume history of WWI, but don't hold my feet to the fire on that one.

Steve

[Fabius Maximus]

For better -- and so far accurate -- analysis and forecasts about the Iraq War, see the Defense & National Interest website.

Ilsm will like the this article, with its analogy of Iraq = Syracuse:

Forecasts for the American Expedition to Iraq
http://www.d-n-i.net/fcs/fabius_forecasts_nov_2005.htm

[hirvi]

Anne, here are some Finnish birds for you, all quiet (mostly) and peaceful.

My only thought is: I hope none of them get bird flu.

http://www.suomikuva.net/en/galleria.php?album=14

[hirvi]

"Churchill argued after WWI that it could have succeeded..."

Which begs the question "So what if it had succeeded?" They might just as well have invaded Paraguay for all the difference it would have made.

And please no one believe the notion of a "supply line to Russia" because it's nonsense, seriously. Russia was a dead duck anyway, and the Allies didn't have the supplies to send there in the first place - in fact, they couldn't even keep the Gallipoli force properly supplied, militarily, medically or in any other way.

It was an intensely foolish operation, conceived in weeks, with no purpose, no real planning, and no hope of affecting the main theatre. "Cigar butt strategy" at its worst, as one notable critic put it.

Re. Mustafa Kemal: he certainly did stop the Allies on one or two important occasions at Gallipoli, but he also 'threw away' entire regiments in less than an hour. You wouldn't want him as your leader, unless you believed in the after-life.

(...but you wouldn't have wanted the British generals either).

[hirvi]

"Only a romantic like Churchill could & did hold Britain together in that very dark year"

Yes, he gave them great heart.

But don't ignore the fact that Germany couldn't actually invade Britain with any hope of success, and Churchill knew it.

So did Hitler's generals, which is why they never tried it.

[hirvi]

"...I read a claim recently that when the Turks closed off the black sea, they trapped a greater tonnage of Allied merchant shipping than was sunk by the U-boats during the entire great war"

Forget the claim, Steven, it isn't true.

The Atlantic is where the Brits were vulnerable, in WW1 and WW2. The Black Sea had nothing to do with it.

[Warren]

A million purple-fingered Iraqis say they want a unified democratic government. A few thousand terrorists say no. Whose side are you on?

The VDH report and the Dentist report do not mutually contradict, even if Brad tries to imply they do.

[anne]

Hirvi

Ah, well, I was rooting for the Finns, but the prosaic Swedes have been too clever for the merely musical Finns :)

As for me, I am on the side of peace, so, I say leave the Iraqis to a hopeful peaceful democracy and bring American troops home now, possibly though leaving a mobile strike force in the region to limit strife.

[anne]

We fought a needless war for Iraq was contained and we were not threatened, but the war quickly changes the government and we could have left at once then. Since there have been votes and votes and votes, chances to leave, but we have not left and there is a tragedy of human and material cost that I would stem by leaving now.

[anne]

From our "mission accomplished" on, I have heard from all sides that there would be terrible things to come were we to leave Iraq. But, there have continually come terrible things and we have not the slightest idea what the future would have brought had we left ot what it would bring were we to leave now other than the peace of our not being in Iraq.

[hirvi]

Thanks Anne... but we know where to find them :-)

(...anyway, silver is still very good, imho)

Concerning "mission accomplished", you ought to retitle it "photo-op accomplished". Then everyone would have the real perspective.

[anne]

http://www.calvorn.com/gallery/photo.php?photo=5686&u=4|16|...

Juvenile Semipalmated Plover at Sunset
Jamaica Bay NWR East Pond, New York.

"Thanks Anne... but we know where to find them :-)"

Imagine fraqntic fierce Finns bent on taking Sweden as a colony, though, come to think about it, there might be certain advantages to colonizing Sweden. Hmmm...

[wkwillis]

Well, if the British had sent half of their munitions to the Russians, they would have done a better job of keeping the Germans from seizing a million square miles of Russia, and the only consequence is that the British wouldn't have had the artillary to prepare the way for the attacks they launched that killed a million British soldiers and recaptured a thousand square miles of France.
Not a bad trade.

[hirvi]

"Well, if the British had sent half of their munitions to the Russians, they would have..."

...possibly lost the war in France, which couldn't have been the point of the exercise, WKW, because the war in France was what mattered.

The problem with the concept of "supplying Russia through the Black Sea" is that a) Russia was collapsing into Civil War and so couldn't be helped; b) the Allies had nothing to send anyway; and c) how were they to get the non-existent supplies to Russia in the first place? Have you seen the length of that supply line? Was nothing to stop them on the way?

Were there roads or rail they could use? They hadn't thought this through - in fact, they didn't even have proper maps for the Gallipoli invasion force, which shows how amateur they were.

Back on earth (and not on cloud 9) there were practical issues the Allies couldn't master. They should have known it, if they were going to commit to an operation that size. But obviously they didn't.

Nothing they could have done in Gallipoli would have influenced the Western Front or the Atlantic.

Which is why it was a horrible, inhuman waste.