Ian Welsh

The horizon is not so far as we can see, but as far as we can imagine

Category: Iraq Page 3 of 4

The UK is a Propaganda Society

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On December 5, 2013

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People cannot make correct decisions if they believe lies:

In May 2013 the reputable polling company ComRes asked a representative sample of the British public the following question: “How many Iraqis, both combatants and civilians, do you think have died as a consequence of the war that began in Iraq in 2003?”

According to 59% of the respondents, fewer than 10,000 Iraqis died as a result of the war.

This is similar to the fact that on the eve of the Iraq war, 70% of Americans thought that Saddam was involved in 9/11.

The information problem, that people believe what they hear repeated, and the way it interacts with our media system is another problem we’re going to have to tackle if we want a long cycle of prosperity after this cycle ends.

The comment thread you should read

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On June 25, 2013

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Is this one.  It’s one of the reasons why I have no time for Iraq war pushers.  It’s one of the reasons why one of my friends used to say that the person who will wipe a major US city off the face of the planet has probably been born.

Read it.  Feel the hatred.

I’m not against all war.  But the bar is VERY high. This is why.

The entire Iraq war was one large war crime.  Everyone who voted for it in Congress is a war criminal. It is the exact same crime Nazis were hung for at Nuremberg. The exact same one.

Weep bloody tears, and pray that you don’t reap as you have sowed.  And understand that this is one reason you have to live in a surveillance state. It is, in part, a desperate attempt to manage “blowback.”

Comments on the cost of Iraq

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On September 17, 2012

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Elevated from the comments, MarkFromIreland:

Greetings Ian,

Do you remember Mohammed Ibn Laith?

Gorilla’s Guides » 2007 » February » 15:

I am a Muslim I am Iraki maybe you believe that God told you that must turn aside when you have been struck.That is not what God tells me.

What God tells me is what he tells every other Muslim when you are attacked you defend yourself and you keep on figthing until your attacker is in such pain that they offer truce or surrender. You attack back and you continue attacking relentlessly, never ever giving any respite, until the invader flees worn out with grief and horror and pain. Any sacrifice is warranted to expel the American I feel no grief when I see an American soldier die. I feel only relief that this one less barbarian to kill innocent Iraki children.

And then there’s this from Colonel Iihsan:

Gorilla’s Guides » Blog Archive » It is not only Americans who can say “Mission Accomplished”:

The Resistance’s Tactics Were SuccessfulThis is the lesson of the Iraki Resistance’s war on the American invaders. The goal was not just to inflict death and physical wounds they goal was to drive American troops into mental and moral breakdown.

The tactic was to attack American troops relentlessly — to force the American invaders to live in a situation where they never ever had any respite.

The American invader was never to be able to relax they must be denied any respite, they were denied meaningful rest.

The resistance consciously set out to inflict constant tension,constant sleeplessness, constant mental pain, and constant uncertainty, and fear upon the American invaders. The idea was to do this until a large proportion of the invaders were worn out with fatigue, grief, horror and pain.

The Resistance’s intent was to not just inflict pain and horror on the invading troops for the sake of doing, the object was to shatter their minds so that while they were still in Irak they turned on their comrades. And then after they returned to America that they turned on the American civilian population at large.

This tactic was, one resistance commander told me, far more successful than they had dared hope.

The American high command, and American civilians are only now beginning to appreciate what the resitance did to them. They are only now starting to realise that they are not the only ones who can inflict “collateral damage” and that there is more than one form of it.

It is not just Americans who can say “Mission Accomplished”.

As you no doubt worked out a long time ago the murder of first his grandfather, followed by the murder of his parents, and the murder of his younger brother all by American forces decided Mohammed to join the resistance. He was a very successful commander who ensured that in his sector no Americans ever set foot outside their FOB’s other than in heavily armed convoys. He made sure that PRT leaders went home dead or wounded he made sure that civilian PRT members never ever got to leave their compounds. The Iraki resistance won their war – America ran away from Irak leaving its “enduring bases” and an awful lot of TOE behind them. All of which is a long-winded way of saying you’re right. Napoleon used to talk about “moral force” as a force multiplier which is what you’re discussing above.

Hope you’re well. I very very very rarely comment here (I think this is my third) but I read you regularly.

Keep well.

mfi

My reply:

Mark,

yes, thanks for the comment. I do remember Mohammed.

I haven’t written about it, but I have discussed with friends, the collateral damage. I’m especially noticing it in police departments. The vets come back, join police departments and the results are ugly. They have no fire discipline, act as if they’re in a war zone, blowing away civilians indiscriminantly if they feel in the least danger (the guy who killed his boss in NY comes to mind) and often when they clearly aren’t (a man running away from them). They also have a taste for brutality, and the only people they have fellow-feeling for are their mates, certainly not anyone who isn’t in their “unit”.

Then, of course, there are the homeless veterans, the suicides, the wife and child beaters, and the rapists.

A lot of these people are VERY badly damaged. Occupation is always brutalizing, for everyone involved, but this bunch has been particularly brutalized. One of my friends is an ex-US military officer, out before Iraq, and to say that he is livid is a vast understatement.

The same thing happened to the Israeli army, over time. And Americans went and copied failed Israeli tactics.

We saw it happening at the time. Not just immoral, and unethical, but a mistake.

But the resistance did not win much of a victory. Brutalizing your brutalizers is all very nice and I have no moral qualms against it. If Canada was invaded, I would fight, and I would join the resistance, and if the invaders were American (and who else could it be) I would rejoice at every dead American soldier.

But at the end of the day, Iraq is in shambles, appears to be essentially a protectorate of Iran, has a huge Kurdish problem (or the Kurds have an Iraqi problem, depending on where you sit), violence is ongoing, and so on.

Iraq was never a war anyone was going to “win”, that’s why people like me were against it from before the beginning. All anyone can claim, at best, is a Pyrrhic victory.

As for America, as I’ve said in the past, the first great man of the 21st century (great is not a synonym for good) was bin Laden. He wanted to draw America onto the ground, and bleed them like the USSR was bled, costing them so much treasure that their economy could no longer bear the costs of empire. He, essentially, succeeded, thanks to the sublime stupidity of his enemies. He must have gotten down on his knees every day and thanked God for George Bush and American high command and the NeoCons. And now the Muslim brotherhood is in charge in Egypt and that is a direct result of food inflation, which is a direct result of the costs and opportunity costs of Bush’s idiot eternal wars, and the mandate that 9/11 game him to be an evil moron.

The far enemy (US) is blowing up its goddamn satraps with its insane financial and economic policies. That strain is exactly what bin Laden wanted, he says so in his writing.

He’s dead, but he’s winning. And I think that’s a deal he would have happily taken if offered to him September 10th, 2001.

Why I’m Against Current Wars—and Most Foreseeable Wars, Too

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On January 12, 2011

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No, I’m not against all wars.  But I’m against the Afghan war, the “secret” war in Yemen, the occupation of Iraq, and any war with Iran under any circumstances I can imagine.

Why? Because:

  1. They are moronic (in the sense that they cannot be “won” and I oppose unwinnable wars);
  2. The US is in steep decline in an economic/industrial sense and needs to spend its money on other things.

As noted, I’m not opposed to all wars.  Hell I even supported the Afghan war up to the point where it became clear that it was destabilizing Pakistan, polls of Afghans indicated they wanted us out, and it become obvious it couldn’t be “won” in any meaningful sense.

Anyone who supports the current wars is not someone I have much time for, I’m afraid.  I regard them as fundamentally stupid wars and significantly immoral to boot, plus on pragmatic terms I believe they are doing more harm than good to the US, not just economically, but in terms of real security and in terms of the erosion of civil liberties.  States at permanent war cannot and do not maintain their liberties.  Permanent occupations are particularly corrupting and badly damage the real war fighting capacity of the armies doing them (see Army, Israeli).

Anyone who’s in favour of imperial wars and permanent war can’t really be on the left in any meaningful fashion, because the cost of permanent war is:

  • every domestic priority that left wingers claim to care about
  • plus the gutting of civil liberties in the core.

To a liberal, military spending is a necessary evil, and as such you do only as much as is necessary to:

  • actually defend the country. (I.e., hardly any.  Who is going to invade the US?)
  • hold open necessary trade lanes. (I.e., the navy would be smaller than it is now and differently organized, but it would be the primary US military arm.)

And that’s about it.  Every dollar spent on the military is not spent on actual economically productive activity. Yes, there are some exceptions, but there are other ways to do R&D spending, and more and more military R&D is not applicable to civilian matters.

(I’m sure Vladimir Putin laughs himself sick every night that the US pays him off to help America stay in Afghanistan.  The irony must be one of the great joys of his life.)

In terms of dependence on foreign commodities, the progressive solution is to move the energy basis of the US economy off of oil and onto a basis which is much more domestically available (and built).  That way you don’t need to be able to knock around middle eastern nations.

While many lefties wouldn’t agree with me, I would also move to mandatory service, everyone serving 2 to 4 years.  Most wouldn’t serve in the military, but every male and any woman who wants it would get military training. A militarily trained population tends to concentrate the minds of politicians and other elites and I also believe that the military should be much more representative of the population as a whole, for a variety of reasons.

What do you do with all those people in national service?  Rebuild the country: teach them skills and put them to work on broadband, infrastructure of various kinds, refitting all buildings for energy efficiency, etc…  Why?  Well, because that makes the country more secure and safer by reducing dependence on foreign oil, etc… (Well, that’s one reason.)

In my opinion anyone who’s for the current war is delusional or attached to the military industrial complex and willing to betray their country’s real interests for money.  The US cannot afford war.  Period. To be for war right now is to be for the ruin of America.

Oh for God’s Sake: US combat troops have NOT left Iraq

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On August 18, 2010

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This is positively Orwellian, and people on the progressive side should not be cooperating with it. There are still 50,000 US troops in Iraq and they include brigades which are, absolutely, combat troops.  Call them “advisers”, but nothing has changed, they are combat troops.

Update: Oh hey, the plan is to double the number of mercenaries in Iraq, as well.

Iraq’s Papered Over Problems Flare Up As the Iraqi Endgame Starts

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On May 4, 2009

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Image by a62a68

Image by a62a68

The “surge” worked, mainly, not because of more troops, but because of more money and weapons.  The Sunnis needed money and guns to fight their insurgency.   They got those, in part, from Al-Q’aeda in Iraq, but by the time of the surge AQ had overstepped itself and tried to get control.  It started assassinating Sunni leaders and it engaged in very indiscriminate killing, which the Sunnis didn’t like. along with engaging in some violations of the norms of war as the Sunnis saw it.

Into this stepped in the US and says “we can give you money and weapons, and all you have to do is take out the AQ people who are trying to get control of you by assassinating your leaders”.  This then was the “Awakening” – guns and money for dealing with AQ and for peace afterwards.

Since the endgame in Iraq was about who would control Iraq after the US left, which was indicated by the fact that Iraqi government forces were under heavier attack than the Americans (who were attacked just enough to keep the cost high), the Sunnis said “sure.”  By accepting the money and arms they got to build up to be in a better position when the Americans left—either for negotiation, or for war.

But the Shia run central government is aware of this, and in the past few months they’ve started arresting and assassinating Sunni leaders, in preparation for when the Americans leave.  Remember, the Sunni government forces aren’t that impressive.  Their last independent major operation was in Basra against the Sadrists, and until American forces intervened and Iranians played diplomat, they were losing.

So Maliki is trying to get his licks in and weaken or break the Sunnis before the Americans leave.

As a result you’re seeing a spike in attacks, because the Sunni Awakening leaders don’t want to be arrested or killed, strangely enough.  You aren’t seeing all out warfare yet, because the Sunnis know the US will step in, since the US is helping Maliki with his crackdown, and the Sunnis want to save their forces for the real showdown: over who controls Iraq after the US leaves, or perhaps more accurately, who gets how much of the oil revenues.

Iraq is not stable.  The problems in Iraq were papered over with money.  But now that the money is going away, and Maliki is violating the terms of the American brokered truce, the papered over problems are re-emerging.

Endnote: In addition to the Awakening, the Sadrists standing down, the completion of ethnic cleansing in Baghdad, Iranian intervention, and the British withdrawal from Basra all contributed.  But in terms of the Sunnis, money and guns for peace was the primary consideration.

The Iraq Awakening Showdown

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On April 8, 2009

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Image by a62a68

Image by a62a68

Looks like the Iraqi government is moving against the Awakening Councils in Iraq. The councils, as you may recall, were the Sunnis (many of them ex-insurgents) whom the Americans paid and armed to fight al-Qa’eda in Iraq, and to impose some sort of rough peace on their areas.  They aren’t really controlled by the central government, and no central government likes the idea of having independent military forces in its territory, so they’ve been arresting leaders, which has led to some pitched fighting.

From the point of view of the Iraqi central government, they’ve got till the US leaves to get this done with.  As with when they went after al-Sadr is Basra and had to be bailed out by American troops and Iranian diplomacy, it’s not clear that the Iraqi army is capable of independent operations against highly motivated enemy forces.  But as long as the Americans are around, no one wants to call up a large enough force to beat the Iraqi army, because if they do the Americans will swoop down, and no one in Iraq can beat them in open field combat and even if they could, the losses they would take are not worth it.

The “surge” worked less becuase of extra troops than because ethnic cleansing had pretty much completed itself and because Americans paid part of the insurgency (the Awakening Councils) to fight another part (al-Qa’eda in Iraq).

The question now is whether the Iraqi government can get enough of a monopoly on force to survive after the majority of American forces leave.  It’s not clear to me that they can, if only because their own military is pretty awful and thoroughly infiltrated by various other groups.  A lot will depend on the deals they cut with the Sunni opposition, and with al-Sadr.  If Sadr and the Sunnis decide to work together, I don’t think the central government can survive.  Folks forget the nature of militias in Iraq—you put out the call, and they rise up and when they’re not needed large numbers of them appear to be little more than civilians.

And again, when it comes to large scale operations, the Iraq army does not have a record of success unless backed up by US troops.

So this will be a political game as much as a military one.  If the central government doesn’t buy off enough of the opposition, I expect it will lose entire provinces to a new insurgency when they rise after the Americans leave.

Remember, the game has never been primarily about fighting the Americans.  The game has always been about who will be in charge after the Americans leave.

Addendum: The Newshoggers have been covering Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan better than anyone else I’ve seen, and very much in the spirit of the old BOPnews and Agonist.  I suggest keeping an eye on them if you want good analysis about what’s really going on.

Netanyahu’s Delusional Desire to Attack Iran

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On April 1, 2009

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Netanyahu states that if the US doesn’t deal with Iran’s “nuclear program”, Israel will.

Neither Netanyahu nor his principal military advisers would suggest a deadline for American progress on the Iran nuclear program, though one aide said pointedly that Israeli time lines are now drawn in months, “not years.” These same military advisers told me that they believe Iran’s defenses remain penetrable, and that Israel would not necessarily need American approval to launch an attack. “The problem is not military capability, the problem is whether you have the stomach, the political will, to take action,” one of his advisers, who spoke on condition of anonymity, told me.

This is like saying “if Russia doesn’t stop its program to create apocalyptic fairies, we will attack them”.  That is to say, while Iran certainly has a nuclear program, there is no credible evidence that it is trying to get nuclear weapons, only civilian nuclear technology.

And while Iranian defenses may be “permeable”, who, exactly, is going to give Israel overflight rights to get its planes to Iran?  Add to that the fact that Israel will need multiple sorties, unless it wants to use nuclear weapons itself (which would be somewhat ironic) and there’s a fair chunk of bluster going on here.

And then there is Netanyahu’s apocalyptic hysteria:

In unusually blunt language, Netanyahu said of the Iranian leadership, “You don’t want a messianic apocalyptic cult controlling atomic bombs. When the wide-eyed believer gets hold of the reins of power and the weapons of mass death, then the entire world should start worrying, and that is what is happening in Iran.”

This is just propaganda, or if not that, self-delusion.  There is no credible evidence that Iran is willing to accept certain nuclear annihilation in order to use nuclear weapons on Israel.  Nukes come with return addresses, even nukes given to terrorists.  Iran having nukes just means it can’t itself be nuked without retaliation, what Israel is concerned about is not the possibility of pre-emptive nuclear war started by Iran, but the fact that if Iran was to get nukes (again, there is no evidence they are trying, but Israeli decision makers don’t appear to care about evidence) then Israel would loose its Middle Eastern nuclear monopoly.

If the US greenlights an Israeli attack on Iran it risks having both Iraq and Afghanistan go up in flames, and having Iran shut down the Strait of Hormuz, which would send the price of oil through the roof and put intolerable pressure on the world economy.

In no way is an Israeli attack on Iran in America’s interests.  In no way is it in Israel’s interests.  However, like the Israeli attack on Gaza, it may serve domestic Israeli political needs, by making Israelis feel tough and as if they are doing something for their security.  Like the attack on Gaza, however, all it will accomplish is to make the rest of the world trust and like Israel even less.  And it may make Iran decide that it does actually need nuclear weapons.

Israeli decision makers are abominably bad.  After failing to achieve their goals in Lebanon (destroy Hezbollah) or Gaza (end smuggling and missile attacks) they now claim they want to attack another country for doing something there is no evidence it is doing.

George Bush would approve, I suppose.

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