US+field+commanders+understand+their+failure,+Helena+Cobban

Just World News, June 07, 2006
=US field commanders understand the force's failure=


 * posted by //Helena Cobban//**


 * [|This]** little piece of reporting by Capitol Hill Blue's Doug Thompson looks very significant. (Hat-tip to Juan Cole for flagging it.)

Thompson writes:

‘Military commanders in the field in Iraq __admit in private reports to the Pentagon the war "is lost"__ and that the U.S. military is unable to stem the mounting violence killing 1,000 Iraqi civilians a month.

‘Even worse, they report the massacre of Iraqi civilians at Haditha is "just the tip of the iceberg" with overstressed, out-of-control Americans soldiers pushed beyond the breaking point both physically and mentally.

‘"We are in trouble in Iraq," says retired army general Barry McCaffrey. "Our forces can't sustain this pace, and I'm afraid the American people are walking away from this war."

‘Marine Gen. Peter Pace, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, has clamped a tight security lid on the increasingly pessimistic reports coming out of field commanders in Iraq, threatening swift action against any military personnel who leak details to the press or public.’

McCaffrey has been in Iraq fairly recently and was one of the Iraq experts __called in to a small-group meeting with Pres. Bush last week.__ I just hope that Bush (1) allowed McCaffrey enough time to give an honest report on what he had seen, and (2) listened to him carefully and understood what he was hearing.

I've been pretty busy over the past few days writing two pieces that I consider important on the theme that __the failure of the Bushite project in Iraq is now clear.__ One is my column for Thursday's CSM. The other is a longer think-piece that should appear on Salon.com tomorrow.

It has become increasingly clear to me over recent weeks that:

(1) The US military has no ability and no plan for resolving Iraq's interlocking crises of public security collapse, infrastructural breakdown, and prolonged political impasse. These problems are unevenly distributed through the country. But the fact that the insecurity is greatest of all within the huge metropolis of Baghdad, the hub of the country, is fatal to the Bushite project.

(2) The political process being shepherded forward by Viceroy Khalilzad has been going nowhere. Here we are, now nearly **6 months** after that much-hyped national election of december 15, and the country still doesn't have a full government!

(3) Also, Juan Cole's daily events-in-Iraq blog, which used to contain many tidbits of internal Iraqi political news, has become almost totally a lengthy daily catalogue of grisly deaths and mayhem. (And of course it's not just Juan... That is, unfortunately, most of the news that's happening inside Iraq these days.) Invading Iraq was-- as I note in both the pieces I've been writing-- a huge roll of the geopolitical dice by the Bushites. That they have lost the "game" they played there there will have huge repurcussions-- both in Iraq, and far beyond.

Here, just as a benchmark, is the lead to the **[|column]** I had in the CSM on __January 9, 2003__:

‘Any use of massive violence such as that Washington is now threatening against Iraq is a terrible thing.

‘Everything we know about violence gives two clear lessons. First, the use of force always has unintended - often quite unpredictable - consequences. And second, war in the modern era always disproportionately harms civilians. ‘

And here's how I finished it:

‘Mr. President, there is still time to stop this war. True, the build-up toward it has already been very expensive. But you should not conclude that the fact of those already sunk costs locks you into a path of war against Iraq from which there is no escape. If you launch this war, then the cost - in dollars, in human suffering, and in unfolding strategic chaos around the Middle East and the world - will be unimaginably greater than anything you've spent to date.

‘Turn back. You have many friends in the US and around the world who will eagerly help you find a way to do so.’

He didn't listen to me, or to any others of the hundreds of experts in Middle Eastern and world affairs who warned him this would turn out badly... I am crying for the people of Iraq this week. I just hope they can find a way to hold their country together and bind up the wounds they are all currently suffering.


 * From: []**

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