Archive for the 'Iraq' Category

In Resurgence of Taliban and al Qaeda we relied on the CTC Sentinel at the Combating Terrorism Center at West Point to show that there had begun a steady redeployment of al Qaeda and foreign fighters away from Iraq and to Afghanistan and Pakistan.  “By 2007, jihadist websites from Chechnya to Turkey to the Arab world began to feature recruitment ads calling on the “Lions of Islam” to come fight in Afghanistan. It appears that many heeded the call. This was especially true after the Anbar Awakening of anti-al-Qa`ida tribal leaders and General David Petraeus’ “surge strategy” made Iraq less hospitable for foreign volunteers.”

This steady drain of fighters away from Iraq has increased lately as reported by the Gulf News.

Some groups of Al Qaida terror network in Iraq have started leaving the country towards other hot spots in Africa like Sudan and Somalia, security sources tell Gulf News.

A key reason behind the change in strategy by the so-called Al Qaida Organisation in Mesopotamia is the intensity of the latest military strikes launched by Iraqi and US forces against the network, which has been the major challenge to restoring the stability of Iraq, the sources said.

“Our intelligence information indicates the withdrawal of certain groups of Al Qaida fromIraq because of the military strikes. Many of them have escaped through the borders with Syria and Iran to hotter zones such as Somalia and Sudan,” Major General Hussain Ali Kamal, head of the Investigation and Information Agency at the Interior Ministry, told Gulf News.

“I believe this is the beginning of the complete withdrawal of Al Qaida from Iraqi territory.”

A source at Iraqi Ministry of National Security said that documents and letters found in hideouts of “some elements of Al Qaida” during search operations in Sunni suburbs in Baghdad, which were previously under the control of Al Qaida, “prove these elements left Iraq for Somalia and Sudan”.

The sources for this article are mistaken that al Qaeda has “started leaving the country.”  They had started during the campaign for Anbar and later during the initial stages of the security plan for Baghdad.  The pace has apparently increased according to intelligence obtained directly from al Qaeda.  This is very good news for Operation Iraqi Freedom, but the vigilance must not wane.  Al Qaeda left Iraq and headed for Pakistan and Afghanistan, and now Somalia and the Sudan (among other countries – AQ was already present in Libya).

The Captain’s Journal has previously recommended that the U.S. Marines be deployed to Afghanistan to support Operation Enduring Freedom, and Somali and Sudan and other countries in Africa and the Middle East will need our attention.  While Iraq must be made secure and stable, we must not forget that the long war is against a transnational insurgency which has no recognition of borders as important or even existent with respect to its ideology.

So I’m reading Robert D. Kaplan’s Imperial Grunts.  The Prologue – Injun Country – might very well be the best twelve pages I have ever read.  It should be required reading in all professional military training.  No matter how much reading you have done, no matter who you have met, no matter what your experiences have been, there is no replacement for a careful study of this Chapter.  You cannot understand the current state of affairs in the world today, the so-called global war on terror, until you have read these pages.  Kaplan sums up in a tidy and small package a wealth of knowledge and wisdom concerning the nature of imperial defense of the homeland.  Enough said.  Buy the book and read it.

Kaplan also has much wisdom concerning the nature of embedded reporters and journalists in later pages of the book, but this is a dialogue for another time.  Being an aficionado of the Small Wars Journal myself, I am disappointed that it took reading Kaplan’s book to remind me of several important observations found therein.  On page 270 of Kaplan’s book we read the following:

As if foreseeing the situation in Iraq, the Manual notes that after major fighting:

… hostile forces will withdraw into the more remote parts of the country, or will be dispersed into numerous small groups which continue to oppose the occupation.  Even though the recognized leaders may capitulate, subordinate commanders often refuse to abide by the terms of the capitulation.  Escaping to the hinterland, they assemble heterogeneous armed groups of patriotic soldiers, malcontents, notorious outlaws … and by means of guerrilla warfare, continue to harass and oppose the intervening force in its attempt to restore peace and good order throughout the country as a whole.

Then Kaplan notes other sections of the Small Wars Manual, citing it to recommend that:

To countervail such hostile forces, numerous presence patrols must be organized with the help of the native militias, and outposts erected that are “dispersed over a wide area, in order to afford the maximum protection to the peaceful inhabitants of the country.”

So much for the detractors of the Small Wars Manual.  Seriously.  Summed up in these words are reasons for rejecting any supposed lack of knowledge or anticipation of a developing insurgency after toppling the Iraqi regime, foresight into dismounted patrols, and prediction of the utility of combat outposts.  All the planners had to do was read the Small Wars Manual.  Further, the Marines were the first to employ the concept of combat outposts in Iraq (specifically in Ramadi), and while this evolved to combination outposts / police precincts in Fallujah in 2007, the idea was basically the same (and even more in tune with the Small Wars Manual than in Ramadi).

There is nothing new under the sun.  Combat outposts are not new to Iraq COIN.  They have been employed by the Marines for decades.  And recollecting the nature of the initial combat operations, major urban areas were avoided and bypassed.  MOUT (military operations on urban terrain) has always been hard on any armed forces, and it was left to the subsequent counterinsurgency effort.  Ramadi, Fallujah, Mosul, and many other areas were left untouched for months while the assumed center of gravity was targeted – Baghdad and the center of government.

No matter how much group think was present in the Pentagon prior to the invasion of Iraq, there is simply no excuse for not anticipating the insurgency.  It’s right there in the Small Wars Manual.

RAND has published a monograph entitled After Saddam: Prewar Planning and the Occupation of Iraq.  Similar to the Leavenworth study On Point II (which The Captain’s Journal could only review it in small bites), a few citations will be made below.  Similar to the Leavenworth study, some of the RAND report focuses on organizational issues.  This bores us.  To be sure, there are some issues of organizational instransigence that become so burdensome that change must occur in order to accomplish the mission.  This is seldom the case.

Corporate America has a habit of reorganizing.  It reorganizes when the organization fails, and sometimes even when it succeeds.  It reorganizes when the management wants to, or for financial gain.  It reorganizes in order to grant promotions, and in order to take them away.  The U.S. military might do well to study corporate America concerning some things, but organizational structure (and change of such) is not one of them.  The workers go on working in spite of the organization – and its constant change.  The story of Iraq is not one of organization.  It is one of heart, soul and mind.

We’ll supply a few quotes and then offer some comments.

Page xx: Two particular sets of assumptions guided U.S. prewar planning for the postwar period. First, administration officials assumed that the military campaign would have a decisive end, and would produce a stable security situation. They intended to shrink the U.S. military presence down to two divisions—between 30,000 and 40,000 troops—by the fall of 2003. Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz succinctly expressed this assumption during congressional testimony on February 27, 2003, when he stated, “It’s hard to conceive that it would take more forces to provide stability in post-Saddam Iraq than it would take to conduct the war itself and to secure the surrender of Saddam’s security forces and his army.”  Second, they assumed that the Iraqi population would welcome U.S. forces. Three days before the war, Vice President Richard Cheney clearly articulated this view by stating, “My belief is we will, in fact, be greeted as liberators.” Iraqi exiles supported this belief by emphasizing that the Iraqis would greet U.S. forces with “sweets and flowers.”

Page xxvi: Looking back, we can see that the failure to plan for and adequately resource stability operations had serious repercussions that affected the United States throughout the occupation period and continue to affect U.S. military forces in Iraq. Because U.S. forces were not directed to establish law and order—and may not have had enough forces for this mission anyway—they stood aside while looters ravaged Iraq’s infrastructure and destroyed the facilities that the military campaign had taken great pains to ensure remained intact. Because Iraq’s own police and military evaporated shortly after Saddam fell, ordinary Iraqis lived in a basically lawless society for months, during which, among other things, insurgents, terrorists, and criminal gangs assembled with impunity. And because U.S. forces have had to focus on providing security for their own personnel (both military and civilian) as much as for Iraqis, the buildup of coalition forces did not bring the degree of safety and security it might have brought had order been imposed from the start.

Page xxvii: … few military voices besides that of Army Chief of Staff General Eric K. Shinseki called attention to the possibility of a major, long-term security challenge in post-Saddam Iraq. One reason other military voices remained muted was that the military operated within the prevailing assumptions set by senior civilian officials, which did not identify security as a problem. Also, as General Franks makes clear in his memoirs, the senior Army planner for OIF was reluctant to take responsibility for security and stabilization missions in the aftermath of major combat. This was not seen as the military’s role or mission.

Page xviii: Although CENTCOM’s commander, General Tommy Franks, refers to Phase IV frequently in his memoirs, for example, he never identifies the specific mission that U.S. forces should have had during that time. To the contrary: He expresses the strong sentiment that his civilian superiors should focus on postwar operations while he focused on the war itself. He goes on to argue that civic action sets the preconditions for security rather than the other way around. And he justifies his decision to retire right after combat ended because the mission was changing and a new commander should be there throughout Phase IV.

What the hell is Wolfowitz talking about?  Where did he hear that assertion?  Who taught him that?  It isn’t at all difficult to imagine that it would take more troops to maintain order than to topple the regime.  Wolfowitz simply asserted axioms in his testimony and took them to be fact.  Actually, it’s worse than that.  Wolfowitz had heard before that it would take more troops than planned from General Eric Shinseki and General Anthony Zinni, and then had to go back in front of the press again and insult Shinseki in order to save his axiom.

There were two failures here.  The first was with Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz and their group think mentality in which they bullied generals to agree (or at least stay silent).  What is indeed difficult to imagine is that men would have reached the age Wolfowitz, Rumsfeld and Cheney were and still have been unable to think critically.  The second failure is with generals who are equally unable to think critically.  Jumping to the last quote, the notion (viz. Tommy Franks) that civic actions set the preconditions for security is directly contrary to what we have argued in too many articles to cite: security sets the preconditions for civic actions and reconstruction.  This seems so basic that any child experienced at playing on a schoolyard would know it.

A test was performed by criminals immediately upon the fall of the regime.  This test ascertained whether the U.S. troops could maintain security, law and order.  It is easy to argue that more troops would have been better early on (and we have many times argued just that point), but this issue requires a more nuanced understanding.  The ROE (rules of engagement) and RUF (rules for the use of force) essentially follow the SCOTUS decision in Tennessee v. Garner, and disallow deadly force for anything but self defense.

Here, more troops to watch as looters took what they wanted wouldn’t have helped.  It was left to individual property owners to take up arms and – you guessed it – use deadly force to protect their belongings.  Thus, since nothing will change regarding the ROE or RUF, the Iraq experience has shown us a gaping hole in our ability to provide law and order in a society which is accustomed to the use of deadly force (like Iraq).  The notions of restrictive ROE/RUF and maintenance of post-invasion law and order in a society such as Iraq (or many other Middle East or African countries) might be irreconcilable.  To date, The Captain’s Journal is the only voice speaking on this issue.  In the future, it should be understood that the ROE/RUF will change, or there will be anarchy after a regime is toppled.  Take your pick.

The one place that the military can learn from corporate America is rejection of the notion of group think and also of unchallenged assumptions.  It was too easy for Tommy Franks.  Given the military assets in the possession of the U.S. at the time of the invasion, our grandmother could have led the toppling of the Saddam regime.

Critical thinking, challenging of assumptions, elevation and highlighting of disagreements rather than agreements, and scholarship.  These are the elements of the Armed Forces of tomorrow – if it is to be successful, whether in near-peer or counterinsurgency warfare.

As background, recall not too many months ago that U.S. forces rolled out a plan to split off the indigenous insurgents from al Qaeda, Ansar al Sunna, former Ba’athists and Fedayeen Saddam.  We offered to pay them for services rendered, these services specifically being the provision of security for neighborhoods and intelligence gathering.  Basically, we co-opted their services.

The Captain’s Journal strongly supported this move, initially called the concerned citizens, but we knew at the time that nothing was cast in stone.  Nothing was irreversible, and the progress was tentative.  The Iraqi government had to reconcile and incorporate them into the system, and this was pointed out to us by contacts from field grade officers in Iraq at the time.  The warnings from these contacts were rather dire.  We knew the risks, but supported the program anyway as the best and wisest approach to counterinsurgency at the time and in this situation.

Now comes a report from the LA Times that hints at a potential re-emergence of the Sons of Iraq as insurgents, entitled The rise and fall of a sons of Iraq warrior.

Abu Abed in his Amman apartment holds a picture of him and General David Petraeus from last year when the Sunni fighter was celebrated for leading a then unthinkable revolt against Al Qaeda in Iraq in Baghdad.  Photo courtesy of the LA Times, Ned Parker

A year ago, Sunni Arab fighter Abu Abed led an improbable revolt against Al Qaeda in Iraq. As he killed its leaders and burned down hide-outs, he became a symbol of a new group called the Sons of Iraq — the man who dared to stand up to the extremists in Baghdad when it still ranked as a suicidal act.

Today, Abu Abed is chain-smoking cigarettes in Amman, betrayed by his best friend, on the run from a murder investigation in his homeland. He once walked the streets of Baghdad wearing wraparound sunglasses and surrounded by a posse of men in matching fatigues like something out of “Reservoir Dogs,” but now he shouts futilely for speeding taxis to halt, a slight figure in jeans and a button-down short-sleeve shirt.

Abu Abed’s rise and fall encapsulates the complexities of the U.S.-funded Sons of Iraq program. Although the Shiite-led Iraqi government has regarded the Sons of Iraq as little more than a front for insurgent groups, the Sunni fighters’ war helped end the cycle of car bombings and reprisal killings by Shiite militias that had sent Baghdad headlong into civil war. America’s new friends also helped bring down the death rate of U.S. forces in Iraq.

The Defense Department’s report to Congress last week emphasized the vital nature of the program, saying, “The emergence of the Sons of Iraq to help secure local communities has been one of the most significant developments in the past 18 months in Iraq.”

Abu Abed’s flight into exile shines a light on a violent power struggle pitting upstart leaders like him against Iraq’s entrenched Sunni political elite and its Shiite-dominated government. The frictions could easily shatter the Sons of Iraq — and open the door to Al Qaeda in Iraq’s resurgence.

In the cramped Amman apartment he shares with his family, Abu Abed opens a folder with pictures of him and American officials — Army Gen. David H. Petraeus and others. He holds up the medals they awarded him, the letters commending him.

But his eyes glaze over at a photo of Iraqi officials from a reconciliation conference he attended in mid-June. “They pat you on the back with one hand and stab you with the other,” he says bitingly.

Abu Abed doesn’t reveal his identity to people in Amman. He tells them he sells cars. His skin is grayer and his cheeks, once plump, are noticeably gaunt. The family has already moved once, after his 8-year-old son was handed a threatening letter at school.

He worries that his fate will serve as a warning to others who gambled their lives fighting Al Qaeda in Iraq. “Al Qaeda will come back and the government and Iraqi army will be helpless to defeat them. People will have lost their faith in the government because of the way they treated me and others.”

The government considers Abu Abed a former militant with blood on his hands.

“If he has done something, let the legal system take its course. It is not just with Abu Abed, but all the people,” said Tahseen Sheikhly, an Iraqi government spokesman for Baghdad military operations. “They were part of the major problem of violence in Iraq.”

Abu Abed’s defenders, including some U.S. military officers, suggest that the fighter earned enemies for upsetting Baghdad’s status quo as he brought former insurgents into an alliance with the Americans.

In recent months, Abu Abed had been organizing like-minded fighters around Baghdad and northern Iraq for provincial elections in the fall. U.S. officers believe his transition to politics could have proved the last straw for the government.

“Certainly you can draw the conclusion because he was getting involved in the political process to engage Sons of Iraq leaders to form a political party, the Iraqi government actively targeted him,” said a U.S. military officer, who declined to give his name because of the subject’s sensitivity. “I don’t know that I can say it outright, but it certainly does seem that way.”

Amid the political skirmishing, the committee set up to integrate U.S.-backed Sunni fighters into the security forces and public works jobs has stalled.

We always knew that reconciliation would be necessary for the real gains to obtain.  Maliki has a once in a generation opportunity to bring peace to Iraq.  He demands that his people reconcile, but refuses to entertain the idea himself, perhaps beholden to Iranian influence.  If he continues this path, he might very well plunge Iraq into civil war upon the eventual departure of U.S. forces.

If this happens, nothing – including Maliki and the ISF – will be able to stop it.  The Sunnis may make up only 15% of the population, but aligned with al Qaeda would become as formidable as they were before.  Maliki will sit at the top of a crumbling government and nation-state.  Thus he will have proven himself to be the ultimate fool.  This is not inevitable, but probable if his administration doesn’t ensure that all parties are properly incorporated into the government.  The U.S. will have no leverage with the Sunnis next time if Maliki’s administration doesn’t produce.  Our wallet has been shot on this one chance.

The U.S. Army Combined Arms Center at Fort Leavenworth has produced a comprehensive study of the failure to plan for the post-invasion insurgency in Iraq.  It is entitled On Point II, Transition to the New Campaign: The United States Army in Operation Iraqi Freedom May 2003-January 2005.  It is a very lengthy and detailed study, so there is no way to analyze it within the context of a weblog.  This is left to others who have the professional honor and assignment to study such things.  However, a few preliminary thoughts are outlined below.  They cannot hope to be comprehensive or even connected.  They are presented in stream of consciousness fashion.

First, it seems that it would have been wise to have incorporated the other branches of the armed forces in the scope of the study.  For example, it might have been informative to have the Marine Corps perspectives to dovetail together with those of the Army, even though managing such an endeavor would have been much more difficult.

Second, on page 87 we read “As the United States moved closer to confrontation with Iraq in 2002 and early 2003, the US Government began conducting a series of studies intended to help understand what might occur after a military defeat of the Saddam regime. None of the organizations involved in this effort came to the conclusion that a serious insurgent resistance would emerge after a successful Coalition campaign against the Baathist regime.”  True, perhaps, but this sidesteps important issues, such as the fact that there was copius analysis that came to the conclusion that many more troops were needed (General Anthony Zinni and his team concluded 400,000 men) in order to maintain order once the regime was defeated.

Third, on page 92 and following, there is much discussion of de-Ba’athification and disbanding the Iraqi Army in the development of the Sunni insurgency.  Later on page 103 there is a good Venn Diagram showing a breakdown in the trouble-makers, including foreign Islamic extremists, gangs, opportunists and criminals, the unemployed, aggrieved tribes, and so on.  It is commonly understood that the insurgency included more than just al Qaeda, but rather, was composed of a large indigenous element, many subsets of which were fighting for different reasons.  However, one glaring omission is the absence of the discussion and analysis of Iranian elements (Quds, money, IRG) prior to the war (see Michael Rubin, AEI, Bad Neighbor).

Fourth, on page 103 in the section on Shi’a insurgency groups, the discussion seems very truncated with little to no real analysis of the affect of Moqtada al Sadr on the subsequent months and years.  It is of significance that in 2004 Sadr was actually in the custody of the 3/2 Marines, and ordered by coalition authorities, at the behest of the British, to let him go.  This significance of this cannot be overestimated, and yet the discussion lacks any acknowledgement of the event or its context.

Fifth, on page 116 the study notes that “While relatively few American Soldiers in Iraq in 2003 were familiar with counterinsurgency warfare and its theorists, it did not take long before many of the basic concepts of counterinsurgency made their way into US Army planning and operations. This process was indirect and based on immediate requirements rather than experience or doctrine.”  This seems basically correct, since necessity is the mother of invention.  A Soldier or Marine cannot grow up in the complex environment that is America without being familiar with a basic understanding of humans and how they interact, even if there is an overall lack of knowledge of the Iraqi culture.  Human terrain mapping isn’t just for professional anthropologists.  Every warrior is an anthropologist.

The sixth point may be the most critical of all, and the one closest to our heart.  The Captain’s Journal is noncommittal on Paul Bremer.  He did some good things.  He also did some nonproductive things.  But The Captain’s Journal is not noncommittal on Donald Rumsfeld.  We watched closely as he told jokes and acted coy in Pentagon press briefings while warriors died and lost arms and legs, brain function and eyesight.  In the most stunning revelation of the report, we learn that:

Critical to the understanding of the troop strength issue is that, as the senior US official in Iraq, the CPA Chief had the final say over US policy in Iraq. Bremerat times expressed displeasure to Coalition military leaders about the inadequate security situation and its relation to troop levels. Those concerns, however, did not persuade him to significantly change the CPA-led programs to train new Iraqi police and military forces or to agree that Iraqi military forces should have a role in internal security matters. Ultimately, neither Sanchez nor Bremer had the finalword on troop levels. That authority rested inside the Pentagon. Bremer remembered that the al-Sadr uprising and Sunni attacks of April 2004 conclusively demonstrated to him that Coalition troops were stretched too thin and that led him to send a written request for one or two more divisions—25,000 to 45,000 troops—to Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld. The CPA chief confirmed that in mid-May 2004 Rumsfeld received the request and that the Secretary of Defense passed it on to the Service Chiefs. According to Bremer, he never received an official response to his request.

If we began OIF with too few troops, at least Bremer noticed that we needed greater force projection early on and requested an increase in force size.  Rumsfeld must have been bored with the request, as he simply ignored it, choosing instead to smile and be clever with the press.

There are many more revelations, and some information that is commonly known among persons who have followed or been involved with Operation Iraqi Freedom.  There will be more to come on this from The Captain’s Journal.  This report is well worth the time and will take its place among required reading in professional military circles.   It is a good thing that such honesty and scholarship is forthcoming from Leavenworth.

Baseball is a wonderful sport. Field of Dreams is among the best movies ever made. There is a correlation between life on the diamond and life in the real world; there are many parallels. But among the best plays ever, which happens on very rare occasions, is the triple play. As a teen, I was able to experience it only a couple of times during summer league. In the real world lately, it seems as though we are on the verge of a big time triple play. Only this is not a game.

I thought it fitting this week to call this article “Triple Play.” It’s been a busy three days around here. Just so all of you know what I’m talking about, my son and his wife became the parents of three boys on Monday the 23rd. That’s right, triplets. Jesse, Jacob and James arrived between 1018 hrs and 1022 hrs on Monday morning. They came early, but it was expected that would happen. My son, the US Army Helicopter pilot and his wife are rather beside themselves at what now is a daunting task ahead of them. But with much care, assistance from family, and lots of prayer, all will be fine. It is just a long road ahead that will be traveled one step at a time.

In other news this week….the Bush administration seemed to have upped the tempo a bit about going for its own triple play. As things heat up continually in Afghanistan, most recently due to the blazing jail house attack that freed 1100 or so “bad guys” including around 400 Taliban fighters, lots of attention has been in that direction by the media. And, just as Iraq is being reported to sustain immense security improvements  in the past year, and definitely such is the case, only last night more casualties were reported with the loss of three US Army soldiers in Mosul by IED. And still yet, another report this week told of meetings between US and Israeli officials who were said to have discussed the option of attacking Iran. Israel has recently been doing high profile maneuvers and letting the word out that it has no intention of letting Iran have nuclear capabilities. US officials are said to have been urging restraint on Israel’s part, however most observers have concluded that joint planning for such an attack is already in the works. And there you have it folks, out at first, out at second, and perhaps out at third. We’ll see.

But for the record, my job as a catcher was to cover home plate, no matter what the consequences.  What I enjoyed most about being a catcher on the field was that I had to know every possible scenario for each and every pitch that was thrown to the batter. I had to know it before it was thrown, and be prepared for whatever transpired. As I mentioned earlier, there are many parallels between baseball and real life. And herein lies the point of this writing.

I’ve never forgotten about how it was that we went into Afghanistan back in 2001, which seems like a life-time ago. It was the first time as a father I experienced having my own son sent to war. It was only a couple of months after having just lost our oldest son, a Marine. Things were still very raw. Then, in 2003, the nation saw fit to go back into Iraq and finish something that had twelve years earlier been incomplete. It was the second time as a father I saw my son off to war. And now, it’s mid 2008, and I look towards the horizon and see storm clouds brewing once again, only the target is Iran. I know once again, should the commander in chief tell my son to “saddle up,” my son would be ready in a heartbeat for his fifth deployment in the past seven years, only this time, the next generation on deck, would be awaiting his return.

It is a very difficult play, the triple play, but it can be pulled off, but not without perfect coordination and excellent timing. And remember, it is very rarely pulled off successfully, something akin to triplet boys being born naturally without using any artificial measures.

Covering home plate, the catcher must be willing to hold onto the ball and never drop it, even when some opponent is barreling around third racing to plow into the catcher as he awaits the throw from his teammates to tag the runner out before he scores. Never let the opponent score and the last line of defense is the one covering home plate. Such is the case in this global triple play that is possibly about to take place. There were lots of errors leading up to the events of 9/11. After the disaster of the twin towers, we as a nation, and rightly so, embarked upon an “easy out” on first. Come to find out, the cave dwellers weren’t so stupid as we suspected, errors were made at Tora Bora, and just when we thought the bottom of the ninth was going to end the game, we’ve all been witness to many extra innings.

There were severe errors made leading up to the invasion of Iraq in 2003, at least that is what many believe these days in 2008. Then, once again, when we all thought the bottom of the 9th was in view, like the banner telling us, “Mission Accomplished,” it became clear that it had gone into extra innings.  That brings us to today.

I remember living in Australia for a few years when my kids were little. They learned the sports games down under, which I never could actually figure out completely. The closest thing to baseball was cricket. What I couldn’t stand about cricket was the fact that the game took an unbelievable amount of time to play, sometimes days, just for one game. It made no sense to me. I think I can speak for the rest of the fans covering home plate across the nation when I say, “if we’re going to another game, I hope it does not go into extra innings.”

A good catcher hones his skills by learning from all the errors made in previous games. I figure that’s one reason there’s 162 games in a professional baseball season. There is a real possibility that Iran has pushed the envelope too damn far. In many respects, I feel they’ve crossed the line way more than once. I don’t want to see extra innings anymore. I love having triplet grandsons now. And I always liked being a part of a successful triple play as a young baseball player. But if we go to war directly with Iran, even though we’ve already been fighting them in the streets of Iraq for many years, those in charge, all the way up the chain of command, better execute it perfectly this time, for if they don’t, there just may not be a next season.  I for one will cover home plate with my entire body, soul and spirit, whatever betides.

Jim Spiri
Jimspiri@yahoo.com

In Concerning the U.S.-Iraq Security Arrangement we discussed the ongoing negotiations between the U.S. and Iraq over exactly what the U.S. force presence should look like in the future.  We concluded with the position that an empowered Iran would result from a rapid stand-down of U.S. forces in Iraq, and that a once-in-a generation opportunity existed to impede Iranian intentions of hegemony by our continued existence in Iraq.

David Ignatius recently had an article where he discussed the “right Iraqi footprint,” citing David Kilcullen.

I’ve been helped in thinking about the future of Iraq by conversations over the past week with Lt. Col. David Kilcullen, a retired Australian army officer and an expert in counterinsurgency. He was a key member of the team that drafted Gen. David Petraeus’s Iraq campaign plan. He was speaking in a private capacity at an academic conference sponsored by the Philip Merrill Center for Strategic Studies — and he stressed that he was offering ideas about the future, rather than a critique of past or present strategy.

Kilcullen’s key point is that we need to use the breathing space the surge has created to transition to a presence in Iraq that is less costly and more sustainable. By congressional estimates, we’re spending about $400 million a day on the war; at that rate, we are walking into the trap Osama bin Laden described in 2004, when he said he wanted to draw us so deep into conflict that we would eventually leave the region exhausted and bankrupt, the way the Soviets departed Afghanistan.

Kilcullen argues, as Abizaid did, that our heavy military occupation of Iraq has created enemies unnecessarily. It’s human nature: People don’t like to see another country’s army patrolling their streets. It’s the “antibody response,” he says. “Our large-scale presence, although essential for current stability, also creates an angry reaction — and therefore can’t be a permanent solution. We need to focus on what General Petraeus has called ‘sustainable security.’ ”

The alternative to our big, uniformed force in Iraq is a lighter, smaller, more nimble residual force. This force could concentrate on the tasks that most Iraqis and Americans seem to think are sensible — fighting al-Qaeda terrorists and training the Iraqi military and other proxy forces. “Over the long run, we need to go cheap, quiet, low-footprint,” argues Kilcullen.

Is The Captain’s Journal out of accord with Kilcullen?  Not by a long shot.  In fact, we heartily concur with Kilcullen’s position, as any regular reader knows (see Observations on Timeliness from the Small Wars Manual, where we feared that the protracted operations were leading to the perception of the U.S. as occupier rather than liberator).

There are seasons in counterinsurgency, and a finite period of time in which to accomplish certain important milestones and results.  We were advocating the “surge” and “security plan” from the inception of The Captain’s Journal.  We have also been among the first to raise warning flags about Operation Enduring Freedom, advocating vigorously for more troops, a change in rules of engagement for NATO troops, and a comprehensive strategic approach.

This buildup of troops, we have known for some time, could only come from a decrease in troop presence in Iraq.  But we also know that after pacification of parts of Iraq and standing up the internal Iraqi system, further troops presence would only cause a diminution of the view of the U.S. mission among Iraqis.  The Marines in Anbar should be standing down very soon, if they haven’t already.  The season of combat is over, the season of transition teams and proper governance is in full swing, and even that will be standing down soon.

We advocated more rapid confrontation of the problematic Shi’a South for the same reasons that we advocated a rapid buildup in Afghanistan.  Seasons run their own course, and cannot be repeated or slowed.  Kilcullen is right on the money concerning footprint.  It should have started large in Iraq, and had to wait on the surge.  It will end small, but the very concerns we are addressing here speak volumes about the campaign in Afghanistan which is older than Operation Iraqi Freedom.

It is necessary to end with the right force size and mission in Iraq, and this doesn’t mean complete withdrawal any more than it means continued heavy force projection.  The campaign in Afghanistan has yet to see the right size force.

Writing for Foxnews, Alireza Jafarzadeh has an article entitled Shiite Awakening in Iraq Targets Tehran.  His commentary is important and bears reiterating here before we analyze it.

Over the weekend — while the EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana was in Tehran making headlines with yet another incentive package offered by China, France, Germany, Britain and Russia and the United States — three million Shiites in Iraq were making another, more important “Iran headline.” United Press International reported from Baghdad that “More than 3 million Iraqi Shiites signed a petition sponsored by the leaders of the People’s Mujahedin [MEK] of Iran opposing Iranian influence in Iraqi affairs.”

“Expulsion of all members and agents of the Iranian regime’s IRGC, Intelligence, and the terrorist Qods Force from all governmental or non-governmental institutions of Iraq, especially the security systems and the police,” the declaration demanded.

UPI added that “The declaration, which also called for the lifting of a measure curtailing the activity of the MEK in Ashraf City in eastern Iraq, was announced at the fourth conference for the Solidarity Congress of the Iraqi People” held in Ashraf City, Iraq. The Congress was attended by “Several Iraqi politicians from the Sunni Islamic Party of Iraq of Vice President Tariq al-Hashimi, the Islamic Unity Party and several other blocs, including the Iraqi Accordance Front,” according to UPI.

The development has wide-ranging implications for Iraq and for the volatile debate over Iran policy in Washington and other western capitals.

For a long time, a myth essentially manufactured in Tehran has been making the rounds in policy circles on both sides of the Atlantic, according to which the situation in Iraq must be viewed in the framework of Sunni vs. Shiite. More specifically, it is argued that Iran has the ultimate sway over Iraq’s Shiites, and any firm countermeasure against Tehran’s meddling risks prodding the ayatollahs into unleashing the Shiite population and plunging Iraq into bloody civil war for years to come. In support of this misguided argument, some pundits are saying if you think things are bad now, just imagine the mayhem if Iran brings its army of Iraqi Shiites to the streets.

This is a false prophecy. It has nevertheless hampered the formulation of an effective policy or plan to neutralize Tehran’s inroads in Iraq. That failure has dire consequences as it will enable Tehran to make further inroads in Iraq and consolidate its domination of that country.

The reality is that Tehran’s sway over Iraqi Shiites is limited to its proxies, who have infiltrated all spheres of the Iraqi government and Southern provinces. They are augmented by an army of well paid mercenaries, operating within and without the government in various terrorist groups which are financed, trained, and armed by the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps’ Qods Force. In the streets of the Shiite cities and neighborhoods, ordinary Iraqis describe the ayatollahs’ meddling as the “poison from the East.”

The scope of the Shiite opposition goes far beyond the 3 million signatories, because unlike petitions signed on the corners of K Street in Washington, these Iraqis and their families could very well pay with their blood for such a public and emphatic rebuke of Tehran.

Last April in an opinion piece in the Boston Globe, Dr. Saleh al-Mutlaq, the head of the influential Iraqi Front for National Dialogue, and a member of the Iraqi Parliament, charged the al-Maliki government “was caving in to pressure from Iran to make life difficult for the MEK.” He wrote that “the MEK people enjoy popular support inside Iraq, particularly in Diyala province, where they have worked to promote reconciliation between Sunni and Shiite communities.”

The landmark declaration signed by three million Shiites also has a clear message for Washington: Iraqi Shiites reject the false assertions of those who have been speaking on their behalf. They are telling Washington to stand firm and confront Iran’s meddling, without fear of a Shiite backlash.

This is an important article and warrants some serious reflection.  The Captain’s Journal agrees with Jafarzadeh, and has called for the dismantling of Iranian forces and diminution of Iranian influence in Iraq so many times that it is not possible to find and link all of our articles.  We have no fear of a Shi’ite backlash, whether it happens or not.  As students of counterinsurgency are quick to point out, winning and losing are concepts that must be replaced with a spectrum acceptable outcomes.

Let’s be clear.  An empowered Iran is not an acceptable outcome of Operation Iraqi Freedom.  This “awakening” of sorts is a good step.  But more important than the seeds of a Shi’ite awakening is the most significant name missing from the list of proponents.

The name is Abdul Aziz al-Hakim, one time military leader of Badr and now head of Supreme Islamic Iraqi Council.  The Captain’s Journal mistrusts him as much as we do Sadr, and maybe more so, since Sadr at least makes his sentiments and intentions known.  Hakim has managed to play the political game well enough to be befriended by the administration, both in the U.S. and Iraq.

But he is no friend of a strong, sovereign Iraq.  Rather, he is in the hip pocket of the Iranians.  And there is a huge difference between the Sunni awakening and the Shi’ite awakening to which Jafarzadeh refers, and he alludes to this difference in his very article.

The reality is that Tehran’s sway over Iraqi Shiites is limited to its proxies, who have infiltrated all spheres of the Iraqi government and Southern provinces. They are augmented by an army of well paid mercenaries, operating within and without the government in various terrorist groups which are financed, trained, and armed by the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps’ Qods Force. In the streets of the Shiite cities and neighborhoods, ordinary Iraqis describe the ayatollahs’ meddling as the “poison from the East.”

Poison it is.  And Hakim knows just who the IRG and Quds are.  He knows names, persons, locations, caches, routes of supply, training camps, and all manner of things that makes Iran powerful in Iraq.  The Sunni awakening was a true awakening, where common people rose up against a brutal enemy – al Qaeda.  Neither side was embedded within the government like the tick that is Hakim and the SIIC.

Only time will tell whether the common people rising up against the continuing Iranian influence (including the SIIC) will be enough.  Unlike al Qaeda, the SIIC is embedded within the Iraqi system.  Hakim himself could rise up against Iran and repudiate their influence, demanding his followers do the same.  Will he?  It’s Doubtful.  He belongs to Iran, and there has been absolutely no stomach with Maliki or the U.S. advisers to pressure Hakim regarding his alignment with Iran.

As the negotiating continues over a replacement agreement for the U.N. mandate (in which Iraq and the U.S. are “partners” in Iraq security), there are reports that Iraq is refusing to grant the U.S. immunity from Iraqi laws, rejecting the right of U.S. forces to operate free and independently (and without Iraqi approval), and refusing to grant use of Iraqi skies and waterways at all times.

Iraq knows that it needs U.S. troops, and Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari has said that negotiations are not dead from their perspective, even though PM Maliki has said that there is an impasse.  Making sense of the situation takes on the characteristics of the presuppositions taken to the analysis.  Or better stated, our paradigm dictates the outcome of our thought game.

Nibras Kazimi, who is a very smart Iraq analyst and doesn’t mind telling us so, has said little about this subject, partly because he has a huge blind spot.  One might have been left to wonder why he was so giddy at the failure of the Sunni insurgency.  His background comes out in his analysis, and his blind spot is Iran.  Dr iRack at Abu Muqawama (or Michael O’Hanlon of the Brookings Institution) has a lot to say about this subject, here and elsewhere.

Says O’Hanlon, among a great many other things, “Maliki’s government could call our bluff and cave into (sic) the delusion that they don’t need us.”  Kazimi, discussing the campaign in the Maysan province, naively says that it is Iran’s last stand in Iraq.  O’Hanlon chooses to dissect Iraqi politics to the nth degree of precision, yet ignores the Iranian influence.

Approximately two years ago The Captain’s Journal warned an officer that the Sunni insurgency would be defeated, but without the equivalent defeat of the Sadrists and the full blown incorporation of the SIIC into the Iraqi mainstream (including their rejection of Iran), the Iranian Ayatollahs would have their forces deployed in both Lebanon and Iraq.  Iran will have been made supreme in the Middle East.

This officer – a thinking man – promised to save this in his AKO account.  We maintain our position.  The situation warrants neither naive jocularity nor precise political analysis.  The Iranians are furious over the proposed security plan, and it is precisely because of their plans for regional hegemony.  Syrian analyst Sami Moubayed goes further.

A popular Iraqi joke speaks of an aged man who marries a young girl many years his junior, called Mana. Whenever he visits his young bride, she complains that his long beard has become too white, and plucks out its white hair. The next day, he visits his first wife Hana, who is his age, and she complains that the remaining black hairs do not compliment him, plucking them out as well. He eventually ends up with no beard, and miserably speaks to himself in front of the mirror saying, “Between Hana and Mana, I lost my beard!”

The moral of the story – which rhymes in Arabic – is that men cannot please all tastes, nor two wives. Iraqis today are using the story in reference to their Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki, who is torn between appeasing the United States, which brought him to power and kept him there despite all odds, since 2006, and pleasing his patrons and co-religionaries in Tehran.

The Americans tell him to sign a long-term agreement between with the US, maintaining 50 permanent American military bases in Iraq. The Iranians angrily order him not to, claiming this would be a direct security threat to the region as a whole, and Iran in particular. The Americans reportedly are pressing to finalize the deal by July 30, 2008, upset that no progress has been made since talks started in February. Iran has carried out a massive public relations campaign against the deal, calling on all Shi’ites in Iraq to drown it.

Traditional foes like Abdul Aziz al-Hakim, chairman of the Supreme Iraqi Islamic Council, and Muqtada al-Sadr, a leading Shi’ite cleric, have gone into high gear in recent weeks, pressuring Maliki not to sign. Hakim, who enjoys excellent relations with Washington, cannot stand up to his patrons Tehran – or defy his Shi’ite constituency – and say yes to such an agreement, which Iran considers a pretext for long-term US occupation of Iraq.

After a visit to Tehran this month, Maliki at the weekend made his position clear – surprising the Americans – saying, “Iraq has another option that it may use. The Iraqi government, if it wants, has the right to demand that the UN terminate the presence of international forces on Iraqi sovereign soil.”

He added, “When we got to demands made by the American side we found that they greatly infringe on the sovereignty of Iraq and this is something we can never accept. We reached a clear disagreement. But I can assure you that all Iraqis would reject an agreement that violates Iraqi sovereignty in any way.”

These bold words were given under direct orders from the Supreme Leader of Iran, Grand Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, during Maliki’s latest visit to Tehran.

This portrait paints Maliki as beholden to the Iranian theocracy.  At The Captain’s Journal, we believe that this portrait is correct, and thus the game is fairly simple as long as you aren’t too naive to see it and the complexity of your analysis doesn’t cloud the issue.

At stake are some very serious consequences.  Robert Kaplan has written an impassioned plea to Obama to learn from Robert Gates and adjust his approach to Iraq.  But it won’t happen.  We have all of the infrastructure necessary to sustain a longer term presence in Iraq, thus at least providing a temporary barrier to Iranian hegemony (if you can ignore the leftist hyperventilating, this article on U.S. megabases in Iraq is informative).  But this infrastructure might go to no avail.

Obama’s ego is writing checks that the U.S. cannot possibly cash.  He has promised to bring troops home within approximately one year.  This is impossible, as the logistics officers know that it will take two years or more to deploy back to the States.  But more to the point, even if logistics could keep up with Obama’s ego, the question is “should it?”  Do we not have a unique, once-in-a-generation opportunity in Iraq to forestall the regional and ultimately the global ambitions of one of the world’s most significant dangers?

The security agreement must ensure robust rules of engagement, freedom of independent movement, and freedom from prosecution in Iraqi courts for U.S. troops.  The agreement must be pushed through the Iraqi system, as the real opponent is not the Iraqi government or people.  It is Iran, and everyone who isn’t naive or confused at the complexity of his own thought knows it.

It has been two productive days for the the U.S. in Iraq.  On Thursday, June 5, the U.S. apprehended a high level financier and smuggler of Iranian weapons.

Coalition forces in Iraq captured an alleged leader and a suspected primary weapons smuggler and financier for Iranian-backed enemy fighters June 5.

Acting on intelligence information, coalition forces conducted a raid on the home of the suspected “special groups” leader in Mahawil, south of Baghdad. He surrendered without incident.

In a separate operation east of Kut, intelligence tips helped coalition forces track down the hideout of a suspected special groups member who sources allege is the primary weapons smuggler and financier for Iranian-backed enemy elements in that area. The suspect and an associate surrendered when coalition forces stormed their location.

In even bigger news today, is has now been learned that the individual arrested is the number 2 figure in Hezbollah’s military wing (the deputy military chief).  “The arrest is a major achievement and could provide an intelligence bonanza,” an Iraqi source said.

The continual drumbeat isn’t that the U.S. is going to go to war with Iran.  Rather, it is that Iran is at war with the U.S. and has been for more than twenty years.  The deployment of such a high level Hezbollah leader is more evidence of the Iranian commitment to destabilization of Iraq.