Thursday, February 22, 2007

A Royal Goes to War Well now, let's see what is going on with the British part of the war.  Prime Minister Tony Blair announces that Britain will begin withdrawing her troops, while the military announces that Prince Harry will deploy to Iraq with his army unit.   While the media remind us that Britain’s royals have served in, and often led, the English/British military in wartime, it rarely mentions that the current war is but the latest of a long string of British wars in Iraq.  Not counting  World War One, in which a British military expedition failed miserably against the Ottomans (who then ruled Iraq), Britain has now fought in five wars/conflicts in Iraq (not counting Britain’s efforts to put down intermittent Kurdish rebellions in the Iraqi north).   For a list of Anglo-Iraqi Wars, see  http://www.historyguy.com/anglo-iraq_wars.html   Oh, and we do wish Harry luck in Basra.  Pity poor Tony Blair if the Queen’s grandson is killed or maimed in a war that he has already said Britain will eventually leave behind. 7:58:09 PM    comment []

	Monday, December 04, 2006

Iraq: From Combat to Advising U.S. troops accelerate their shift from a major combat role to an advisory role.  The process of "Iraqization" continues.  Will it lead to a better ending than "Vietnamization?"   U.S. Military Shifts Troops Into Advisory Roles in Iraq --By Thom Shankar and Edward Wong 9:56:14 PM    comment []

	Saturday, December 02, 2006

Iran and Hezbollah aid the Insurgents; hurt the U.S.   The evidence grows that the U.S. and the Coalition are not fighting JUST a home-grown insurgency and a few rag-tag foreign fighters. As mentioned in an earlier post, Iraqi fighters are getting help with better training and better arms.  The U.S. now believes, with what appears to be real evidence, that Iran, through its proxy in Lebanon, Hezbollah, is helping the insurgents against the U.S. and the Baghdad government. Now why would Iran want to do this?  There are several reasons: 1.     To further bog-down the U.S. in fighting the insurgents.  This makes any possible strike against Iran’s nuclear facilities that much more difficult.  2.     To exert more influence among the Shiite parties, militias, and the general Shiite population.  3.      To strengthen the bonds between the Shiites of Lebanon and Iraq and Iran; in other words, to show the Arab Shiites that the Iranian Shiites are their big brother and protector.  This reason is quite worrisome to the Sunni Arab powers, especially Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and the Gulf States. 4.       A general dislike of the United States going back to the U.S.-Iran Hostage Crisis of 1979-1981.  In other words, Iran plainly sees the U.S. as the enemy, and if they can train Iraqis to fight and die while killing American troops and messing up American foreign policy goals, all the better.    It should be noted that Iranian and Hezbollah support of the Iraqi Shiite insurgents and militias should come as no surprise.  The Soviet Union and China followed a very similar, though more obvious path during the Vietnam War in tying down U.S. forces and inflicting casualties on our military by aiding the North Vietnamese.  And the United States returned that favor by supporting the insurgents in Afghanistan during the Soviet invasion and occupation from 1979-1989.   Check out: Hezbollah Said to Help Shiite Army in Iraq --By Michael R. Gordon and Dexter Filkins New York Times: November 28, 2006 2:51:18 PM    comment []

Vietnam, Somalia, and Iraq: A Comparison of Perceptions New York Times columnists Dominic Johnson and Dominic Tierney examine the power of perception in recent American military history, and present a very strong case that those perceptions and opinions formed by the media and hence by the public as a whole are not always well-informed or correct.  With the War in Iraq as a backdrop, Johnson and Tierney look at the American experiences in Vietnam and Somalia, basically warning against looking at the shallow reporting coming out of Iraq which is skewing public perception. Johnson and Tierney explain that the Vietnam War’s infamous Tet Offensive of 1968, while an almost total military defeat for the Communist Viet Cong, found itself perceived in the U.S. media and in public opinion as a total American failure.  Tet was considered a Communist victory despite the fact that the Viet Cong failed to hold onto a single one of their military objectives, and despite the fact that the Americans and the South Vietnamese destroyed at least half of the Viet Cong forces in this offensive.  The power of the media to shape public opinion is well-known, and Tet is a classic example.  Images of the Viet Cong attack on the American Embassy in Saigon, though a military failure, were flashed across the world and into the living rooms of millions of American voters in the early months of an American Presidential election year.  The misperceptions were also partly the result of the pollyanna “we are wining the war” mantra of the Johnson Administration, making the shock of the sudden Communist attacks all the more mind-blowing for most American civilians.  Shortly after Tet, President Johnson declared his non-candidacy in the election, paving the way for Richard Nixon to win and his eventual pullout of American forces from Vietnam, dooming the South Vietnamese, and by extension, the people of Cambodia and Laos to the pain of Communist rule. Just as in Vietnam, the U.S. and U.N. intervention in the early 1990s was seen by the media and the public as a failure due to the highly-publicized Battle of Mogadishu in 1993.  Even though untold thousands of Somali lives were saved from the drought and famine by the intervention, that one single battle in which 18 Americans died, (to the loss of hundreds of Somali fighters), paved the way for American withdrawal.  Again, the media flashed pictures around the world and into the living rooms of America, turning a relatively minor battle into a policy-changing media event.  Somalia today is a warren of warlord-controlled militias and violent anarchy, amid a growing unease that these conditions are fostering an al-Qaida aligned Islamic militancy which could lead to a larger regional war involving Ethiopia and Eritrea. The lessons of these two failures of American foreign policy, though not necessarily military failures, leads now to the debate over what to do with the Iraqi question.  Whenever American forces meet the insurgents in open battle, as at Turki recently, or in Fallujah earlier on, the insurgents cannot stand, fight, and win.  We do win those battles, but the media focuses on the day-by-day statistics of IED explosives, car bombs, and the political problems of the Iraqi government.  The frequent picture of  burned out car-bombs in Baghdad markets and streets  impacts public opinion far more than the much more infrequent television reports out of Kurdistan, which show a functioning society enjoying relative stability, or the many neighborhoods in smaller Iraqi cities that do not suffer the attentions of terrorism or Sunni-Shiite warfare.  This is not to say that things are going well in Iraq; quite the contrary.  The Sunni-Shiite civil war and the possible breakaway of Kurdistan are very serious problems that must be addressed.  One would hope, that in this modern era so highly touted as the “Information Age,” that the American public, (along with the British and other citizens of the world), can look past the often biased or incorrect perceptions of the media, whether it is from CNN, ABC, Fox, or even al-Jazeera, use the internet as the informative tool that it should be, and gain better knowledge of our problems in Iraq.  One image broadcast by the media, such as we saw in Saigon and in Mogadishu, should not set the course of American public opinion, or American government policy.   Check out: The Wars of Perception --By Dominic Johnson and Dominic Tierney of the New York Times: November 28, 2006 1:35:23 PM    comment []

	Wednesday, November 29, 2006

Iraqi insurgents show new military resolve and proficiency.     The War in Iraq is taking an interesting turn, in terms of purely military matters.  The New York Times (U.S. Fights Highly Trained Militants in Iraq—By Edward Wong--Published: November 23, 2006) reports that some Iraqi Insurgent/Resistance groups are appearing on the battlefield with greatly improved battle training, tactics, discipline, and weaponry.  In Diyala Province, east of Baghdad, (and near the porous Iranian border), “liberated” zones are now in insurgent control.  With more freedom to organize and move about the province, the insurgents have set up military training camps where their fighters are training.  Unsaid in the article is who is conducting the training; are they Baathist veterans of Saddam’s military, are they al-Qaida fighters with experience from the Afghan training camps, are they Iranian agents adding to the Coalition’s troubles?    The U.S. Army officers, who faced the newly improved enemy in battle near the town of Turki, were impressed by the quality of their foes.  Also unsaid in the article is whether this portends to be a greater danger to Coalition forces, or a greater opportunity to hurt the enemy.  The danger is obvious, with greater training comes greater lethality on the insurgent’s part.  However, if the insurgents and the various militias are encouraged to engage in more set-piece battles, such as those fought in Falluja and Ramadi, the U.S. military may have a much greater opportunity to inflict damage on their enemy, taking advantage of their air superiority and heavier firepower.   These challenges are evident in the casualty figures for the Battle of Turki: a reported 72 insurgents died, while two U.S. Army officers perished.  Some in the U.S. military have actually hoped for a turn toward conventional (as opposed to guerrilla) warfare in the war against the insurgents, but they should be wary of actually getting this wish; the French military hoped for the same turn of events in their war in Indochina in 1954.  What they got was the set-piece battle they dreamed of in a little valley forever immortalized in its own special place in the long list of French defeats: Dien Bien Phu! 7:55:32 PM    comment []

	Tuesday, November 28, 2006

An Iraqi Civil War? Yes, it is... Despite the ongoing refusal of the Bush Administration to admit that the inter-Iraqi violence is a civil war, the evidence is mounting that it is indeed a civil war.  To be fully accurate, the warfare in Iraq is multi-faceted, with several related conflicts intertwining with each other to form the "War in Iraq."  Let’s take a look at these various conflicts: 1.      The “Iraq War” that Americans, Britons, and other foreigners are fighting in Iraq.  This is the attempt to put down the Insurgency and stabilize the Iraqi government.  Many Iraqis, particularly the Sunnis, refer to this as “The Resistance.”  Part of the Resistance is against the Baghdad government, but the fuel that drives this aspect of the violence is, literally, the resistance to the Americans and other coalition partners.  The Resistance includes various Sunni groups, including members of Saddam’s Baath Party and sectarian Sunnis who oppose the coalition and the Shiite-dominated government.  Also part of this resistance are the foreign fighters often called “Jihadists”, many of whom are part of the “al-Qaida in Iraq” force formerly led by Abu Musad al-Zarqawi.  Their goal is to drive the Coalition out, overthrow the government, and reduce Shiite power and influence.  Many of the attacks by the Resistance targets foreign troops, forces and officials loyal to the government, and many of the attacks on the country’s infrastructure, including sabotage to the power grid, and the Iraqi oil industry. 2.      The “Iraqi Civil War,” which is the fighting between the Shiites and the Sunni Arabs.  This fighting destroys mosques, results in mass kidnappings and mass murders, and pitched battles between Shiite and Sunni militias in many urban areas of the country.  Many of the militias and other groups that at times have fought the Coalition are involved in this battle, including the Baathists and the Shiite Mahdi Army, among others.  Generally, the Coalition Allies have said they want to stay out of this inter-Iraqi conflict. In addition to these overt conflicts, other Muslim nations are positioning themselves in a contest for influence and power in Iraq.  Turkey is very concerned that if Iraq falls apart, the Iraqi north, controlled by Iraq’s Kurdish minority, may declare independence.  This concerns the Turks due to a continuing rebellion in Turkey’s Kurdish areas near the border with Iraq. Also, Shiite Iran seeks to contain its own “Kurdish Problem,” while also working to influence the Shiite majority in Iraq to Iran’s advantage.  Sunni Syria, ruled by a variant of the Baath Party, is also trying to shore up its influence in Iraq, partly as a way to influence the United States to pressure Israel into a peace agreement which would return the Golan Heights territory back to Syrian hands.  Oil-rich Saudi Arabia, ruled by a sect of the Sunni branch of Islam, seeks to support the Sunni minority in Iraq against the Iranian-supported Shiites, while also hoping for stability in Iraq and the Gulf region as a whole.  Instability is bad for business, after all. So, to say that Iraq is not in civil war is misleading, if not downright wrong, while it is also too simplistic to say that it is merely in a state of civil war.  The war in Iraq will only continue to become more complicated and more dangerous, not only for the concept of Iraq as a unified nation, but potentially for the entire Mideast region. See also: Bush Declines to Call Situation in Iraq Civil War. President Bush blamed Al Qaeda for the latest wave of sectarian violence and vowed not to withdraw troops “until the mission is complete.” By SHERYL GAY STOLBERG. [NYT > Home Page] An Inventory of Iraqi Resistance Groups: "Who Kills Hostages in Iraq?" --By Samir Haddad and Mazin Ghazi of  al Zawra, Sept. 19, 2004 History Guy: The Iraq War--An overview of the Iraq War. 9:02:05 PM    comment []

	Saturday, November 25, 2006

Money for the Insurgents U.S. Finds Iraq Insurgency Has Funds to Sustain Itself. The insurgency is raising tens of millions of dollars a year from oil smuggling, kidnapping, counterfeiting, corrupt charities and other crimes, a classified U.S. report has concluded. By JOHN F. BURNS. [NYT > Home Page] 3:15:29 PM    comment []

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