[Rhodes22-list] Politics - Comparison and Contrast

[brad haslett]

Here's a good excercise in comparison and contrast
(for those of you who have the time).  If only we had
a competing newspaper in Memphis.  Brad
-----------------

ROLLIN' ON THE RIVERS

By MACKUBIN T. OWENS 

MAY was a costly month in Iraq: 700 Iraqis and some 80
Americans died, making it one of the bloodiest months
of the war. While bombings in Baghdad decreased over
the last two weeks as the result of a major sweep by
some 40,000 Iraqi soldiers and policemen, backed up by
10,000 troops (Operation Lightning/Operation Thunder),
insurgent attacks against Iraqi civilians and police
have resumed. 

The continuing attacks have generated the usual sort
of stories in the U.S. press: America is mired in a
Vietnam-style quagmire. Thus a recent Boston Globe
report began by claiming: "Military operations in Iraq
have not succeeded in weakening the insurgency." 

But the Globe is wrong. Coalition operations in Iraq
have killed hundreds of insurgents and led to the
capture of many hundreds more, including two dozen of
Abu Musab al-Zarqawi's top lieutenants. Intelligence
from captured insurgents, as well as from Zarqawi's
computer, has had a cascading effect, permitting the
Coalition to maintain pressure on the insurgency. 

Vice President Dick Cheney's recent claim that the
insurgency was in its "last throes," however, was
clearly an overstatement. But while the outcome in
Iraq is far from certain — and even a favorable one
won't come overnight — evidence suggests the United
States and the new Iraqi government are on the right
track to ultimate success. To understand why, it is
necessary to grasp the essentials of the current U.S.
strategy in Iraq and how it seems to be playing out. 

The Globe's problem, one shared by most of the
American press, is the tendency to see events in Iraq
as isolated. They fail to see the overall campaign: a
series of coordinated events — movements, battles and
supporting operations — designed to achieve strategic
or operational objectives within a military theater. 

No force, conventional or guerrilla, can continue to
fight if it is deprived of sanctuary and logistics
support. Accordingly, the central goal of the U.S.
strategy in Iraq is to destroy the insurgency by
depriving it of its base in the Sunni Triangle and its
"ratlines" — the infiltration routes that run from the
Syrian border into the heart of Iraq. 

One ratline follows the Euphrates River corridor —
running from Syria to Husayba on the Syrian border and
then through Qaim, Rawa, Haditha, Asad, Hit and
Fallujah to Baghdad. The other follows the course of
the Tigris — from the north through Mosul-Tel Afar to
Tikrit and on to Baghdad. These two "river corridors"
constitute the main spatial elements of a campaign to
implement U.S. strategy. 

This campaign began last November with the takedown of
Fallujah. 

Wresting Fallujah from the rebels was critically
important: Control of the town had given them the
infrastructure — human and physical — necessary to
maintain a high tempo of attacks against the Iraqi
government and coalition forces. 

In and of itself, the loss of Fallujah didn't cause
the insurgency to collapse, but it did deprive the
rebels of an indispensable sanctuary. Absent such a
sanctuary, large terrorist networks cannot easily
survive, being reduced to small, hunted bands. 

With Fallujah captured, the Coalition continued a high
tempo of offensive operations. After losing the city,
Zarqawi apparently tried to reconstitute the
insurgency in Mosul, but was unable to do so because
of continued U.S. pressure. In Mosul as in Fallujah,
Coalition forces killed and captured insurgents —
forcing Zarqawi to move west into Al Anbar province.
In March, an Iraqi special operations unit captured an
insurgent camp near Lake Tharthar on the border of
Anbar and Salaheddin provinces. Such operations forced
him back to positions along the Syrian border. 

Next came the rivers campaign — to destroy the
insurgent infrastructure west and northwest of
Fallujah, and so shut down those "ratlines" — which
continues apace. 

May saw four operations within that campaign: 

* The first, Operation Matador, was a week-long Marine
action centered on Qaim, near the Syrian border.
Matador sought to kill and capture followers of
Zarqawi known to be located there and to interdict the
smuggling routes they used to move downriver to
Baghdad. Some 125 insurgents died in the fighting. 

* Next came Operation New Market, another Marine
operation, in the Haditha area southeast of Qaim.
Here, a major highway from Syria crosses the Euphrates
and then branches north toward Mosul and southeast
toward Fallujah and Baghdad. While the insurgents did
not stand and fight as they had in Qaim, the operation
still netted substantial intelligence. 

* The third was a joint U.S.-Iraqi operation in the
Mosul-Tel Afar region that contains the Tigris River
ratline. 

* The fourth operation of this campaign was the
aforementioned Lightning/Thunder in Baghdad itself,
which led to the capture of a former general in
Saddam's intelligence service, who (according to the
U.S. military) led "the military wings of several
terror cells" operating in west Baghdad. Hundreds of
other insurgents were captured as well. 

The rapid tempo of Coalition operations will likely
continue. Indeed, as U.S. and Iraqi forces shut down
these ratlines, the insurgency will likely fall back
on its "strategic rear" in Syria. Thus, "hot pursuit"
into Syria may soon become an issue. 

The U.S. strategy in Iraq is limited by a number of
factors: the U.S. forces available, Iraqi politics and
the time it is taking to create a competent Iraqi
military. But the ongoing river campaign indicates
that America has chosen to go on the offensive, taking
advantage of the success in Fallujah to deny the
insurgents respite. The high operational tempo is
intended to rapidly degrade the rebels' lines of
communication at both ends of the two river corridors,
while killing and capturing as many of the enemy as
possible. 

But while military operations have weakened the
insurgency, military means alone cannot defeat an
insurgency. That is why it is necessary to bring the
Sunnis into the government. Recent evidence suggests
that the steps so far have already begun to drive a
wedge between the Sunni and the foreign jihadis who
have come to fight for Zarqawi. 

Indeed, one of the reasons U.S. forces have been able
to go on the offensive — despite the fact that U.S.
troop strength is actually lower than it was earlier
this year — is an improvement in actionable
intelligence. Some of this is coming from captured
insurgents. But much of it is coming from Sunnis who
realize that their best chance for a future requires
them to choose the new Iraqi government and reject the
jihadis. 

If current trends can be sustained, Zarqawi and his
jihadi murderers will soon run out of time and space. 

Mackubin Thomas Owens is a professor of national
security affairs at the Naval War College in Newport,
R.I. 

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----------------------

    

June 15, 2005
Let's Talk About Iraq
By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN 
Ever since Iraq's remarkable election, the country has
been descending deeper and deeper into violence. But
no one in Washington wants to talk about it.
Conservatives don't want to talk about it because,
with a few exceptions, they think their job is just to
applaud whatever the Bush team does. Liberals don't
want to talk about Iraq because, with a few
exceptions, they thought the war was wrong and deep
down don't want the Bush team to succeed. As a result,
Iraq is drifting sideways and the whole burden is
being carried by our military. The rest of the country
has gone shopping, which seems to suit Karl Rove just
fine.

Well, we need to talk about Iraq. This is no time to
give up - this is still winnable - but it is time to
ask: What is our strategy? This question is urgent
because Iraq is inching toward a dangerous tipping
point - the point where the key communities begin to
invest more energy in preparing their own militias for
a scramble for power - when everything falls apart,
rather than investing their energies in making the
hard compromises within and between their communities
to build a unified, democratizing Iraq.

Our core problem in Iraq remains Donald Rumsfeld's
disastrous decision - endorsed by President Bush - to
invade Iraq on the cheap. From the day the looting
started, it has been obvious that we did not have
enough troops there. We have never fully controlled
the terrain. Almost every problem we face in Iraq
today - the rise of ethnic militias, the weakness of
the economy, the shortages of gas and electricity, the
kidnappings, the flight of middle-class professionals
- flows from not having gone into Iraq with the Powell
Doctrine of overwhelming force. 

Yes, yes, I know we are training Iraqi soldiers by the
battalions, but I don't think this is the key. Who is
training the insurgent-fascists? Nobody. And yet they
are doing daily damage to U.S. and Iraqi forces.
Training is overrated, in my book. Where you have
motivated officers and soldiers, you have an army
punching above its weight. Where you don't have
motivated officers and soldiers, you have an army
punching a clock.

Where do you get motivated officers and soldiers? That
can come only from an Iraqi leader and government that
are seen as representing all the country's main
factions. So far the Iraqi political class has been a
disappointment. The Kurds have been great. But the
Sunni leaders have been shortsighted at best and
malicious at worst, fantasizing that they are going to
make a comeback to power through terror. As for the
Shiites, their spiritual leader, Ayatollah Ali
al-Sistani, has been a positive force on the religious
side, but he has no political analog. No Shiite Hamid
Karzai has emerged. 

"We have no galvanizing figure right now," observed
Kanan Makiya, the Iraqi historian who heads the Iraq
Memory Foundation. "Sistani's counterpart on the
democratic front has not emerged. Certainly, the
Americans made many mistakes, but at this stage less
and less can be blamed on them. The burden is on
Iraqis. And we still have not risen to the magnitude
of the opportunity before us."

I still don't know if a self-sustaining, united and
democratizing Iraq is possible. I still believe it is
a vital U.S. interest to find out. But the only way to
find out is to create a secure environment. It is very
hard for moderate, unifying, national leaders to
emerge in a cauldron of violence. 

Maybe it is too late, but before we give up on Iraq,
why not actually try to do it right? Double the
American boots on the ground and redouble the
diplomatic effort to bring in those Sunnis who want to
be part of the process and fight to the death those
who don't. As Stanford's Larry Diamond, author of an
important new book on the Iraq war, "Squandered
Victory," puts it, we need "a bold mobilizing
strategy" right now. That means the new Iraqi
government, the U.S. and the U.N. teaming up to widen
the political arena in Iraq, energizing the
constitution-writing process and developing a
communications-diplomatic strategy that puts our
bloodthirsty enemies on the defensive rather than us.
The Bush team has been weak in all these areas. For
weeks now, we haven't even had ambassadors in Iraq,
Afghanistan or Jordan. 

We've already paid a huge price for the Rumsfeld
Doctrine - "Just enough troops to lose." Calling for
more troops now, I know, is the last thing anyone
wants to hear. But we are fooling ourselves to think
that a decent, normal, forward-looking Iraqi politics
or army is going to emerge from a totally insecure
environment, where you can feel safe only with your
own tribe. 



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