Well, it seems to be in the bag now. I try to be a sunny the-glass-is-one-sixteenth-full kinda guy, but it’s hard to overestimate the magnitude of what the Democrats have accomplished. Whatever is in the bill is an intermediate stage: As the graph posted earlier shows, the governmentalization of health care will accelerate, private insurers will no longer be free to be “insurers” in any meaningful sense of that term (ie, evaluators of risk), and once that’s clear we’ll be on the fast track to Obama’s desired destination of single payer as a fait accomplis.
If Barack Obama does nothing else in his term in office, this will make him one of the most consequential presidents in history. It’s a huge transformative event in Americans’ view of themselves and of the role of government. You can say, oh, well, the polls show most people opposed to it, but, if that mattered, the Dems wouldn’t be doing what they’re doing. Their bet is that it can’t be undone, and that over time, as I’ve been saying for years now, governmentalized health care not only changes the relationship of the citizen to the state but the very character of the people. As I wrote in NR recently, there’s plenty of evidence to support that from Britain, Canada, and elsewhere.
More prosaically, it’s also unaffordable. That’s why one of the first things that middle-rank powers abandon once they go down this road is a global military capability. If you take the view that the U.S. is an imperialist aggressor, congratulations: You can cease worrying. But, if you think that America has been the ultimate guarantor of the post-war global order, it’s less cheery. Five years from now, just as in Canada and Europe two generations ago, we’ll be getting used to announcements of defense cuts to prop up the unsustainable costs of big government at home. And, as the superpower retrenches, America’s enemies will be quick to scent opportunity.
Longer wait times, fewer doctors, more bureaucracy, massive IRS expansion, explosive debt, the end of the Pax Americana, and global Armageddon. Must try to look on the bright side . . .
I think that Mark is basically right. You will see a gradual waning of the ability to project force abroad. It will have at its root the health care fiasco we witnessed tonight – the socialization and nationalization of the greatest health care system on earth. I may as well take my car in for minor maintenance, only to watch the mechanics beat up my engine bay with sledge hammers, hand the car keys back to me, and tell me that the problem is fixed. Indeed, very consequential days we live in.
I am writing this message to you from the parking deck of a Metro station just outside Washington, DC. I just witnessed one of the most incredible sights I have ever seen in my life. By my estimate, there were more than 50,000 of average Americans like me gathered on the west side of the Capitol, yelling and screaming, because we feel that our elected representatives in that very building are ignoring us. The most popular sign that I saw today simply said, “Listen to Me!” What were we yelling about? A terrible piece of legislation, and a terrible idea known as ObamaCare. 50,000 people is not a bad turn-out, considering that the event was planned less than 48 hours in advance. I found out about it late Thursday night. And on Friday evening after work, I started driving, and kept driving.
Why did I do it, and was it worth it? I did it because after having written my Senators and Congressman (multiple times), after having researched the policy issues and forwarded to many of you the results of my research, after having been to Tea Parties and Town Halls, after having contributed to organizations fighting this terrible legislation, well, after all of that, attending today’s protest was the only thing left for me to do. Will our efforts today pay off, and will Congress do what we asked them to do, “Kill the Bill”? I honestly don’t know. Did my presence today make a difference? I honestly believe it did. At the very least, I have the satisfaction of knowing that I have now done everything that I can do to stop this. Was it worth it? Absolutely!!!
Many of you have talked to me, or emailed me, or even called me on the phone, to express your frustration and helplessness and to ask me what can be done to stop a tone-deft and tyrannical President and Congress. I have several ideas, and I promise a long answer in the future. But for now, the short answer is that we all need to be more INFORMED, ENGAGED, VOCAL and ACTIVE than we have ever been before. It’s up to us to make a difference. I saw today, first hand, what a difference ordinary citizens can make. There’s nothing like seeing a line of Congressman exiting a House office building with voters on both sides cheering their demands. Go America! Go democracy!
Other interesting things I saw today: I saw Congresswoman Michelle Bachman literally sprint up the Capitol steps . . . in high heels! I thanked John Voigt for coming. Congressman Tom Price thank ME for coming and wished me a safe drive back home to Georgia.
TCJ Editorial Comment: Thanks to Keith for being there when I couldn’t. En loco protestari, or something like that?
As a Milblog I don’t often weigh in on matters solely political, but in instances where I have predicted it right, I like to brag to readers (even if I have to go back some four years ago to find my prediction).
I had told my oldest son, Josh, a while back after he predicted a total debacle for the health care bill that it didn’t matter. Obama’s aims are much more nefarious than just a socialization of our health care system. He knows that he doesn’t have the soul of the American people with this scheme, but that is America as it is currently constituted.
America could change with “immigration reform,” with more of the votes going democratic. And despite the current political difficulties, Obama is going for broke, sooner rather than later.
Despite steep odds, the White House has discussed prospects for reviving a major overhaul of the nation’s immigration laws, a commitment that President Obama has postponed once already.
Obama took up the issue privately with his staff Monday in a bid to advance a bill through Congress before lawmakers become too distracted by approaching midterm elections.
In the session, Obama and members of his Domestic Policy Council outlined ways to resuscitate the effort in a White House meeting with two senators — Democrat Charles E. Schumer of New York and Republican Lindsey Graham of South Carolina — who have spent months trying to craft a bill.
According to a person familiar with the meeting, the White House may ask Schumer and Graham to at least produce a blueprint that could be turned into legislative language.
The basis of a bill would include a path toward citizenship for the 10.8 million people living in the U.S. illegally.
If this succeeds, 10 – 15 million new voters will be added to the roles, most of them voting democratic. The current objections to socialization of our society and nationalization of our industries won’t matter. It will be an artifact of history, and Obama will have thus ensured that his party remains in power in perpetuity.
One final note. With people like Lindsey Graham in the Senate, Obama doesn’t even need total control over the legislative process. The GOP will apparently help him do it. Maybe the GOP is on a suicide mission for some reason or other?
Glenn Reynolds links Ann Althouse, who after the SCOTUS decision on McCain-Feingold, questions Obama’s intent to formulate a forceful response. Ann asks, “Why would a law professor oppose a Supreme Court decision on a matter of constitutional law and not respect the authority of the Court and honor our system of separation of powers?”
Taking a quick detour, I have always been a fan of John and Abigail Adams. John is in my opinion in many ways the singular father of our republic. The strength of Abigail Adams is a story with its own merit, and worthy of study by any woman who aspires to greatness. Without her, John wouldn’t have been the man he was. Watching the HBO series John Adams made me even more a fan of John and Abigail. Quite simply, it is stunning, and if you’re like me, you intended to watch a DVD, put it aside, watch another next week, and so on. I ended up watching all of them in a single day. I couldn’t help myself.
Now back to Ann’s question. Ann has smart commenters, and kent offers this brilliant summary. “Because, so far as President Present is concerned: this is a nation of men, not laws. He is, at his core, the anti-John Adams.”
That’s it. I find a whole host of reasons to dislike Mr. Obama, but this sums the issue up as nicely and succinctly as I can imagine. If you haven’t watched the HBO series on Adams, you must do so as soon as possible. After completing it, sit back and ponder the proposition that Obama is, at his core, the anti-John Adams.
Media Matters analyzes reactions on the so-called right to Coakley’s Afghanistan remarks (that Afghanistan is terrorist-free). Distort Coakley’s comments, the right does, from the Weekly Standard to Foxnews and others. Then they marshal evidence from McChrystal to Jim Jones and then Petraeus to show that at most there may be 300 “al Qaeda” fighters in Afghanistan proper. Even Charles Krauthammer gives her the benefit of the doubt. Media Matters ignored my own post on Coakley showing that the Marines in Helmand were battling fighters from both sides of the border (although I occupy first page on a Google search).
Alas, the issue is not that complicated, but it does require a bit of attention to detail. It’s important in that it matters from the perspectives of both national security and the lives of sons of America who are fighting in Afghanistan as we speak. Thinking of the enemy in Afghanistan and Pakistan as a name (such as al Qaeda) is dangerous because of its oversimplification of the problem. To be sure, there are Arabs, Chechens, Somalians, and other foreign fighters (e.g., German) who currently take sanctuary in the Hindu Kush.
But as I have noted before, the Taliban (including the indigenous Pashtun population) has evolved into a much more radicalized and globally committed group after at least eight years of exposure to this thinking.
… they have evolved into a much more radical organization than the original Taliban bent on global engagement, what Nicholas Schmidle calls the Next-Gen Taliban. The TTP shout to passersby in Khyber “We are Taliban! We are mujahedin! “We are al-Qaida!” There is no distinction. A Pakistan interior ministry official has even said that the TTP and al Qaeda are one and the same.
The Chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, Admiral Mike Mullen, is expressing concern about the growing ties between Afghan and Pakistani Taliban and al-Qaida.
Admiral Mullen told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee that President Barack Obama’s new strategy in that country is aimed at creating an environment that will not permit al-Qaida to return to Afghanistan.
“There is a strategic goal the Taliban have, to move back and take over the country, and secondly, in that goal, in that environment, that that is fertile ground for al-Qaida, who continues not to be just in Pakistan, but is now moving into Yemen, is connected very well in Somalia, and in other parts of the world,” said Admiral Mullen. “Their strategic objectives remain the same – to threaten us, to threaten the west, and that fertile ground to do that would be Kandahar and Kabul again, if we do not get this right.”
Mullen underscored his concern by noting growing ties between Afghan and Pakistani Taliban and al-Qaida.
“While al-Qaida is not located in Afghanistan, it is headquartered clearly in Pakistan, what I have watched over the last couple of years is this growing integration between al-Qaida and the Taliban, and the various networks of the Taliban, whether it is [Jalaluddin] Haqqani, or [Baitullah] Mehsud or [Gulbuddin] Hekmatyar, and that has alarmed me in its growth and integration over the last couple of years,” he said.
The conversation on Pakistan versus Afghanistan presupposes that the Durand Line means anything, and that the Taliban and al Qaeda respect an imaginary boundary cut through the middle of the Hindu Kush. It doesn’t and they don’t. If our engagement of Pakistan is to mean anything, we must understand that they are taking their cue from us, and that our campaign is pressing the radicals from the Afghanistan side while their campaign is pressing them from the Pakistani side.
Advocating disengagement from Afghanistan is tantamount to suggesting that one front against the enemy would be better than two, and that one nation involved in the struggle would be better than two (assuming that Pakistan would keep up the fight in our total absence, an assumption for which I see no basis). It’s tantamount to suggesting that it’s better to give the Taliban and al Qaeda safe haven in Afghanistan as Pakistan presses them from their side, or that it’s better to give them safe haven in Pakistan while we press them from our side. Both suggestions are preposterous.
This is why Coakley’s misunderstanding is critical. Reasonably intelligent people must be engaged in assessing the facts on a rather detailed level in order to arrive at a reliable understanding of the issues. Catch phrases, buzz words and bean counting is no replacement for scholarship. And that’s why Coakley’s comments are no mere gaffe. They are honest comments that betray a stolid understanding of national security.
“I am not sure there is a way to succeed. If the goal was and the vision in Afghanistan was to go in because we believe the Taliban was giving harbor to terrorists, we supported that, I supported that goal. They are gone, they are not there anymore, they are in apparently Yemen and Pakistan. Let’s focus our efforts on where Al Qaeda is.”
Maybe someone should tell the U.S. Marines who would like even more troops to stop the flow of terrorists into Afghanistan.
KHAN NESHIN, Afghanistan — Only a few hundred American troops are policing the southern border of one of Afghanistan’s major smuggling areas, leaving open a vast expanse of desert that the Taliban use to shuttle in weapons and fighters from Pakistan.
This dusty hamlet 75 miles (120 kilometers) north of the border in Helmand province was the Taliban’s key transit point from Pakistan before the Marines arrived in July. Since then, the Marines have set up a series of patrol bases east and west of Khan Neshin to disrupt the Taliban’s supply lines.
But the battalion deployed at only about 50 percent of its authorized strength, and one of its three companies is posted in central Helmand. That leaves several hundred Marines to cover roughly 6,000 square miles (15,000 square kilometers) — an area larger than Connecticut.
As a result, the Marines may have trouble curbing Taliban supply lines as thousands of fresh troops pour into the province as part of President Barack Obama’s surge.
“I would like to push closer to the border, but I can only go as far as I can support,” said Lt. Col. Michael Martin, commanding officer of 4th Marine Division, 4th Light Armored Reconnaissance Battalion.
“Like Napoleon, you don’t want to overextend your capabilities, or you will get your butt handed to you,” said Martin, whose troops are spread out among a handful of patrol bases along the Helmand River, marking the coalition’s most southern presence in the province.
Some 8,500 additional Marines are slated to arrive in Helmand by mid-2010 as part of the 30,000-troop buildup. But any decision to send more Marines south to patrol the largely uninhabited border area would leave fewer troops for the major population centers farther north.
Many Taliban fighters fled to Pakistan following the U.S.-led invasion of Afghanistan in 2001 and found sanctuary in the mountainous belt that runs between the two countries. Obama has pressed Pakistan to target the militants, but many analysts believe the government has resisted because the Taliban could serve as useful proxies if the coalition effort in Afghanistan fails.
That leaves the Marines with the difficult task of disrupting the flow of Taliban fighters into Afghanistan largely without Pakistani help.
“We are trying to make it as difficult as possible for the Taliban to stay connected to their sanctuary in Pakistan,” said Capt. Timothy Newkirk, executive officer of 4th LAR’s Bravo Company, which is based in a 200-year-old mud fort in the town of Khan Neshin.
They (the Afghan Taliban and the Pakistan Taliban, both of whom harbor AQ and other transnational insurgents) are sharing resources, just as they said they would.
So I spent most of the weekend with several Marines (not an uncommon occurrence), one of whom isn’t re-enlisting and has been trained extensively as Scout Sniper and Force Recon. What are his intentions, you ask? Military contractor. It doesn’t matter which one, DynCorp, Aegis, or what was once Blackwater. They’re all the same, in my estimation. They pay more for services, they issue better body armor, they issue better weapons, and they do little to no real training of their hires. They rely on the training done by the U.S. military.
Regardless of what one might think, the use of military contractors is still ongoing in Iraq, and increasing in Afghanistan to the point that they are being used to conduct force protection at some Forward Operating Bases. This all raises several important observations.
The Captain’s Journal isn’t opposed to the use of military contractors for the normal reasons. We have no moral objection to their existence, and similar to their pay scale and outfitting, we believe that the U.S. military should be given the best weapons and gear.
But the cost of recruiting and training Marines (who have deployed multiple times) is astronomical, and the military contractors get the benefit of that investment. So the U.S. pays to recruit them, pays to train them, pays to deploy them and gain combat experience, and then pays a much higher rate to hire them as military contractors when they leave the service because we refuse to fund the U.S. military so that they can retain its own warriors because of budgetary constraints within the Congress.
It is stupid in the superlative degree, and much more costly in the long run. It is also very destructive of morale in the U.S. military. Is my life not worth it, they ask? Larger pay raises are being called for in 2010, but even these pay raises are a pittance compared to what is required to retain the best, and what – in the long run – would make the U.S. military more cost effective.
The very existence of military contractors is evidence against the decision-making in Washington and in favor of larger pay increases for the military. The bean-counters be damned, there is a better way to do things.
Is it possible to get Mr. Daniel Hannan to change citizenship to the U.S. and run for President? We need leadership like this because we currently have none of our own. Moral character, nerves of steel, and persuasive oratory.
The last exchange between Katie Couric and Governor Sarah Palin didn’t go as well as it should have. Therefore, I am laying this out there as my conversational dream – the one that should have happened the last time, and the one that surely must happen the next time.
Katie: I asked you last time, Governor, give me one example of effort to increase regulation by John McCain. You didn’t, and you said that you would get back to me. So I am giving you one last chance here. Can you give me just one …
Sarah: Hold on Katie. Sorry to interrupt you – well, actually, no I’m not. Let’s get one thing clear. I’m not going to play your stupid little quiz game. This isn’t twenty one questions with a right or wrong answer. I have no more intention of answering your quiz questions than I do of demanding that you tell me about my reform efforts in Alaska, or telling me what it feels like to deploy a son to Iraq. This is supposed to be an investigative and analytical interview. We all know what John is about. If you want to know something about one of his reform efforts, then ask him. Don’t ask me. If you want to know something about my reform efforts in my home state, then ask me. But either way, prove yourself to be something other than just another talking head. I’ll give you one last chance to conduct a meaningful interview that is useful to the citizens of America. One more chance. Now, I’m the Governor of a state of 700,000 citizens who has the reputation for taking on waste and bureaucracy. Don’t you have a single heavyweight question you want to ask me about my record? Huh, Katie? One last chance.
” … the evidence indicates that the Iraqi Security Forces will not be able to secure Iraqi borders against conventional military threats in the near term … the ISF will be unable to fulfil their essential security responsibilities independently over the next 12-18 months,” Independent Commission on the Security Forces of Iraq [1].
“Restoring Iraq to military self-sufficiency will require at least a decade. For that alone, Iraq will remain an American protectorate well into the next decade …” John Pike, Globalsecurity.org [2].
If only the issues with the Iraqi Security Forces (ISF) could be summed up by saying that they needed to learn to do calisthenics better or target with their rifles, training the ISF would take several months. Undoubtedly, this is what the uninitiated think when the administration talks of “standing down when the Iraqis stand up.” How long can it take to train a soldier? Even if one includes consideration beyond individual training to unit level tactics such as satellite patrols, squads rushes, flanking maneuvers, room clearing, and so forth, this would add months – maybe a year at the most.
But the almost insurmountable problems with the ISF present themselves under three rubrics. The first has to do with the nation-state of Iraq, and the degree to which it can function without the sectarian divides that have hindered the progress of the government thus far. After all, the military is not immune from society’s ills any more than other institutions.
Early this year, a 700-strong Kurdish Iraqi army battalion, originally from the northern city of Sulaymaniyah, deployed to Balad, 50 miles northwest of Baghdad, to bolster a single Shi’ite battalion mustered from local residents.
The large Sunni minority living around Balad protested the Kurdish unit’s presence, according to U.S. Army Lt. Col. David Coffey, a member of an ad-hoc Military Transition Team that was helping train the Kurdish battalion. Residents including some Iraqi military personnel fired at patrolling Kurdish troops, and on at least one occasion, the Kurds fired back — one of the few recorded incidents of fighting within Iraqi Army ranks.
Yet by the summer of 2007 this had all been turned on this head. Kurdish fighters were seen as savior for at least one Sunni family.
Bristling with weapons, the men arrived on the back of three pick-up trucks, then surrounded the modest house in the once “mixed” suburb of al-Amel, in western Baghdad. A black-clad gunman jumped down and hammered on the thin metal gate. There were “bad people” on the loose, he shouted to the residents cowering inside. They should pack up and go and live “among your own people—for your own protection”. He and his men would helpfully put their belongings on the back of the trucks. For safety’s sake, the family should go immediately. As this ultimatum was being given to the terrified Sunni Arab family by the Shia gunmen, a group of Iraqi policemen, also Shias, leant on a police car and idly puffed away on their cigarettes, just 50 yards up the street, indifferent to the crime of sectarian cleansing being perpetrated under their noses.
That scene has become all too common in al-Amel—and in many other mixed districts. Since the bombing of the Shias’ shrine in Samarra, north of Baghdad, in February last year, many mixed and middle-class areas have become either mostly Shia or mostly Sunni, depending on which side of the main road you live.
Yet on the occasion described above the Sunni family managed to sit tight, in the house they had built some 30 years ago in what was then a palm grove. They were saved by the arrival, in the nick of time, of a contingent of about 100 Kurdish soldiers, some of the 3,000-odd former Peshmerga fighters (literally, “those who face death”) who have joined Iraq’s national army and have been controversially deployed in Baghdad as part of the “surge” of troops, mainly American ones, to beef up security in the bloody capital.
As they neared the besieged house, the Kurdish soldiers shot over the heads of the Shia gunmen, identified by locals as members of the Mahdi militia loyal to a Shia firebrand, Muqtada al-Sadr, and told them to leave the area. They swiftly complied. There was no American soldier in sight.
The Shi’a within the ISF have increasingly caused problems with the Sunni population, failing to engender trust. The surge also allowed U.S. troops to provide adequate coverage when this had been missing from earlier in the campaign. U.S. troops are now also seen as protectors against Shi’a ISF members in areas in which they previously didn’t have the manpower to patrol.
As the Americans patrol the Sunni Arab neighborhood of Azamiyah, people keep turning to them for help. One man asks them to bring in a fuel truck stopped by Iraqi troops. Another complains that Iraqi soldiers just beat up his brother.
The Americans used to be loathed in Azamiyah, a longtime stronghold of insurgents and the last place where Saddam Hussein appeared in public. Now the animosity has given way to a grudging acceptance, because the people of this northern neighborhood want American protection from a foe they hate and fear even more: the mainly Shiite Iraqi army.
“We feel safe when the Americans are around,” says a computer engineer who gave his name only as Abu Fahd. He stopped going to work because of his fear of militiamen at the Shiite-dominated Health Ministry and now makes a living selling clothes.
“When we see the Iraqi army, we just stay home or close our shops.”
The altercations and lack of trust doesn’t just affect the population. In Western Iraq – Sunni territory between Baghdad and Fallujah, the ISF have had altercations with not only the Sunni “awakening” (e.g., 1920s Brigade), but U.S. forces as well. Lt. Col. Kurt Pinkerton, a 41-year-old California native who has spent the previous months cultivating his relationship with Abu Azzam (an “awakening” leader), managed to de-escalate just such an encounter in June of 2007 between his friend the Sunni leader and an ISF Brigade.
… the Iraqi brigade, which is predominantly Shiite, was assigned a new area and instructed to stay away from Nasr Wa Salam, Colonel Pinkerton said. But he said he believed that the Iraqi soldiers remain intent on preventing Sunni Arabs, a majority here, from controlling the area. He cites a pattern of aggression by Iraqi troops toward Abu Azzam’s men and other Sunnis, who he believes are often detained for no reason.
Recently, and without warning, Colonel Pinkerton said, 80 Iraqi soldiers in armored vehicles charged out of their sector toward Nasr Wa Salam but were blocked by an American platoon. The Iraqis refused to say where they were going and threatened to drive right through the American soldiers, whom they greatly outnumbered.
Eventually, with Apache helicopter gunships circling overhead and American gunners aiming their weapons at them, the Iraqi soldiers retreated. “It hasn’t come to firing bullets yet,” Colonel Pinkerton said … Pinkerton’s experiences here, he said, have inverted the usual American instincts born of years of hard fighting against Sunni insurgents.
“I could stand among 1,800 Sunnis in Abu Ghraib,” he said, “and feel more comfortable than standing in a formation of Iraqi soldiers.”
The second problematic area has to do with broad, general corruption across the entire ISF. Earlier in the 2007, “American units that patrolled with Iraqi forces in west and east Baghdad found that Iraqi officers sold new uniforms meant for their troops, and that their soldiers wore plastic shower sandals while manning checkpoints, abused prisoners and solicited bribes to free suspects they’d captured.”
Interviews with U.S. soldiers, and reporting from accompanying them on patrols, made it clear that there are profound problems with the Iraqi troops, ranging from worries that they’re operating on behalf of Shiite death squads to aggravation with their refusal to carry out basic tasks such as wearing flak vests.
In a west Baghdad neighborhood where bodies often turn up beside the road, facedown on the pavement with bullets in their heads, U.S. Army 1st Lt. Brendan Griswold looked on last week as Iraqi soldiers patted down three men at a checkpoint and thumbed through their documents. The Iraqi soldiers found a fake Iraqi passport on one of the men, whom they suspected was Jordanian and possibly an insurgent.
Griswold didn’t stir, determined to let the Iraqis conduct the search on their own.
“I like going out with some of them. But some of the others are hard to control; they run away when things happen,” said the 24-year-old 1st Cavalry Division platoon commander from Leavenworth, Kan.
An Iraqi soldier approached him. “Where do we put them?” he asked.
Griswold pointed to the Iraqi army Humvees in front of him. Iraqi soldiers grabbed the three men, opened the back trunks of their Humvees and started to stuff them inside.
“No, not in there,” Griswold yelled, as he cussed under his breath and walked over to supervise.
After he made sure the detainees were seated in the Humvees, the convoy drove to an Iraqi army intelligence office. The Iraqi troops led the three men into what looked like a darkened closet. Griswold asked the Iraqis not to abuse the detainees, then shook hands and said goodbye. As he left the intelligence building, he asked his interpreter what the Iraqi troops would do to the detainees.
“They were asking them how much they would pay to be released,” the interpreter replied with a grin.
The third problematic area has to do with Middle Eastern culture and what it brings (and doesn’t bring) to its armed forces. Norvell B. De Atkine has written an analysis entitled “Why Arabs Lose Wars” that should be required reading for every field grade officer who deploys to Iraq, and perhaps Non-commissioned officers as well [3]. The problems are numerous, but De Atkine focuses in on officers and the cultural tendency for over-centralization, discouraging initiative, lack of flexibility, manipulation of information, and the discouragement of leadership at the junior officer level. Stepping down in the chain of command, De Atkine then focuses in on one major difference that separates Western armed forces from the rest of the world.
The social and professional gap between officers and enlisted men is present in all armies, but in the United States and other Western forces, the non-commissioned officer (NCO) corps bridges it. Indeed, a professional NCO corps has been critical for the American military to work at its best; as the primary trainers in a professional army, NCOs are critical to training programs and to the enlisted men’s sense of unit esprit. Most of the Arab world either has no NCO corps or it is non-functional, severely handicapping the military’s effectiveness. With some exceptions, NCOs are considered in the same low category as enlisted men and so do not serve as a bridge between enlisted men and officers. Officers instruct but the wide social gap between enlisted man and officer tends to make the learning process perfunctory, formalized, and ineffective.
De Atkine summarizes the perceptive analysis with this sobering comment.
It would be difficult to exaggerate the cultural gulf separating American and Arab military cultures. In every significant area, American military advisors find students who enthusiastically take in their lessons and then resolutely fail to apply them. The culture they return to — the culture of their own armies in their own countries — defeats the intentions with which they took leave of their American instructors. Arab officers are not concerned about the welfare and safety of their men. The Arab military mind does not encourage initiative on the part of junior officers, or any officers for that matter. Responsibility is avoided and deflected, not sought and assumed. Political paranoia and operational hermeticism, rather than openness and team effort, are the rules of advancement (and survival) in the Arab military establishments. These are not issues of genetics, of course, but matters of historical and political culture.
An interesting and more personal account of the nature of the society and how it impacts the ISF is given to us by David J. Danelo [4].
When jundis sign up to serve in the Iraqi Army, they do not enlist for any length of time. There’s no such thing as a one-, two- or four-year commitment, because it would be both impractical and unenforceable, given the current state of Iraq … An accurate count of Iraqi soldiers is almost impossible. “When they go home on leave, we have no idea how many are going to come back,” says one U.S. military adviser to the Iraqi Army. “Some are kidnapped or killed. Some just run away” … Lieutenant Muhammad: “I Haven’t Been Paid In 10 Months” … Warrant Officer Omar: “No One in My Family Knows I’m in the Army” …
And so the story goes, from corruption, to desertion, to lack of family support for ISF members, to poor or no pay, to sectarian differences, to poor training, to the lack of an NCO corps. The story is about cultural differences and sectarian divides rather than the ability to perform with a firearm. The project in which the United States is engaged with respect to the ISF is no less than one of cultural transition – a change of paradigm.
Going forward, it is in the interest of the United States to have an “enduring strategic partnership … one of the follow-up items that both the Iraqis and the Americans need to work on to make sure that we can have a presence there that helps continue to support the region and helps the burgeoning democracy in the heart of the Middle East,” as stated in the White House press release. But the Iraqi government is prepared to allow the US a long-term troop presence in the country and preferential treatment for American investments in return for a guarantee of security including defence against internal coups. Due in no small part to the state of the ISF, a strategic relationship is in the interests of the Iraqi people as well.
14 years, 12 months ago
