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July 06, 2007 04:00 PM UTC
55 Comments
I’m assuming either the Post mis-quoted Powell or he mis-spoke when saying “the predominant Sunnis” in reference to Iraq, since the Shi’a are in fact the majority population in the country.
But aside from that, it’s good to hear General Powell’s assessment now that it’s not burdened by the duty of being a loyal soldier to an undeserving President. He can stand behind Generals Odom, Shinseki, Bautiste, and others in the parade of military officials who think Iraq is and was a Bad Idea™.
that he means the Sunnis are the majority of the insurgents, which they are. Otherwise, I would guess that paper added the word majority.
This tends to prove to me that Secretary Powell doesn’t know what he’s talking about anymore. The trend in Iraq is that the Iraqi tribes and Iraqi people are banding together *against* the Sunni insurgents. They’re losing support and credibility faster than Dick Cheney. They were even reduced to recasting the spell, Leeeroy-Jenkins-like, of “Divine Intervention” in blowing up whatever was left of the Golden Mosque – and this time, the results weren’t nearly as spectacular.
No, the Sunni Insurgency is very near becoming a non-factor in Iraq. Combine that with the fact that it’s in direct conflict with the Sadrists, who are likely to be the group Iran supports in the future, and who are currently the political and militant arm of the extremist Shia (and claim to represent the entirety of all majority Shia), and the Sunni extremists in the long run will have all the clout of Temperance Union has these days.
Sorry, Mr. Secretary, but I’m afraid you don’t know what you’re talking about anymore.
No, the Next Big Thing is going to be not taking out the Al Qaedists, but rather bolstering the secularists, Kurds, and moderate Shia in a coalition government against Sadr’s political power (in a two-pronged attack with his own movement Balkanizing itself), and countering the support of Iran not only in the form of weapons, but of Iranian intelligence personnel, as well. That’s more likely to be the long-term issue in Iraq. Not Sunni extremists.
as my father used to say.
Too bad the man didn’t have any balls when it really counted. But nope, he played good little soldier right to the end and ruined his future career plans and his reputation in the process.
Frankly, I’m unimpressed with his words to the Aspen Institute. The generals that PR mentions were far more outspoken and far more accurate, some of them from the get go, in their assessment of this miserable mess that we are stuck in.
Powell wins no brownie points with me for getting on board nearly 5 years after the fact.
Colin Powell did a lot to try to keep the Iraq invasion from happening and as a result was ostracized by W and the rest of the neocons. In the end out of loyalty he did give that famous presentation to the UN, which of course was a mistake.
Save your ire for the total fucking idiot neocon dilletantes that pressed for this war. History will judge them harshly.
I have plenty of ire to go around and Powell deserves more than his fair share of it.
let er rip then. I just thought Powell had a lot more dignity and class than the rest of the clowns in the white house, which, I know, isn’t saying much.
I came off harsh and didn’t mean to.
I think it’s my deep disappointment in him that drives my anger. I really liked Powell, really respected him and I have such disgust for his cowardice.
As for the rest of the fascist bunch of criminals, yeah, what more is there to say, really?
….but I’ve kind of gotten over it. The more I thought about it, the more started pitty him. He went into a civilian post with a lifetime of military experience. He was accustomed to following order given in the chain of command.
He must be haunted by the memory of that confrontation with “Vice” when Powell said that report re: WMDs was a crock of lies, and Cheney threw the report at him across the table and yelled, “Just read the damn thing to them [U.N. Security Council]!”
For a combat vet like Powell to be subjecting himself to that kind of shit from someone like Cheney has got to be eating him.
There’s a Greek tragedy or Shakespearean story in his life. Now, can he fully redeem himself?
What makes Powell in some ways worse than the rabid neocons is that he knew it was a mistake, and put loyalty to an undeserving president above loyalty to country and service. At least the neocons have the excuse of having been blinded by ideology. That said, both before and after making this very bad decision, he and State made a lot of effort to do things right and credit should be given where it is due. The tragedy of errors that was the early occupation was a continuous story of Defense (Rummy) overriding State (Powell).
Lighten up on Fidel. Why post if you don’t want to hear what anyone has to say in response?
It’s OK. Ire makes for good posts though.
He always wanted to be seen as independent and principled but without going far enough to really tick off the right. Being SOS was more important to him than doing the right thing. He’s way too smart to have not known what crap he was pushing in that UN address. He just wanted plausible deniability. If he were a real man he would have resigned in protest rather than participate in what he knew to be a sham and that would have had an impact. At the time, the majority of the public did NOT want to go to war. His standing up and saying that he would have to resign rather than support the charade could have made a big difference and would at least have preserved his now totally shot credibility going forward. He could have been somebody. Not anymore.
Had Powell ran against W and won, things would be a LOT different. Sadly, Powell’s reputation is now trashed.
While I know that he was being the good soldier, that was also expected of him. And that occurs in ALL of the top offices. If the CC can not get respect and loyalty from those under him, then it is time to get rid of that person.
I have no respect for Colin Powell. The Powell Doctrine says you don’t go in unless you have overwhelming force, a clear objective, and an exit strategy. We had one of the three (overwhelming force) for the invasion and none of the three for the occupation. He knew Bush was making a horrible mistake that would uselessly kill U.S. soldiers and Iraqi civilians.
Powell could have stopped this war, and he is one of the very few people who had that power (Tony Blair is the only other one I can think of right now). He has a whole lot of blood on his hands.
All of the others support the war to some degree. There is a small but growing anti-war faction in the GOP (i.e., Dominici just became the last Republican in the Senate to join Voinovich, Warner, Hagel, and Lugar in calling for a change of policy).
My guess is that Powell would split that small RINO faction of the party with Giuliani, enhancing the chances of Thompson, McCain or Romney winning the nod.
lack of comment from our pro-war contributors.
pro-war contributors left on this blog?
…and of course, there’s “Blah” (which I think is the cyber assumed name of U.S. Rep Doug Lamborn). I think that’s about it for the pro-war contributors.
He’s the only regular I can think of…
I still support the war. I just post later in the day than most
I just don’t think that pulling out of Iraq before it can take care of itself is a good idea.
While I don’t buy into the idea that Bush purposefully lied to get us into the war, or any other theories along those lines, I do think that the war has been seriously mismanaged, and some stupid mistakes and miscalculations have been made. I have voice my disapproval to those instances in the past.
However, pulling out for the sake of pulling out isn’t going to help us at all. While I would love to get the troops home, I don’t think that it is worth undermining our efforts there, or emboldening countries like Iran or South Korea
I opposed the war before it started, but I don’t think a complete pull out is the right answer. The reality is there are no good options. I started developing a paper (just to help me think about solutions) this spring, the closest to my ideas is Lugar’s floor speech, though it lacks specifics.
However, Bush was either a liar or a fool perhaps both. The intelligence was unclear on WMD, but SH’s threat to the US was clearly overstated. Worse and more insidious Bush & co conflated Iraq and al Qaeda weakening our anti terror focus, diminishing our moral authority, and eroding our war fighting, and thus deterence, capability.
My problem is that while I support the war, I don’t have any specifics on how to fix the problems. Bush has clearly mismanaged the war, and if we could go back and change things I would have a nice list of specifics (armor for humvees being one), but ask me for a list of what to do to fix the problems we have now and you’ll get a nice blank stare.
If you come up with specifics, I would love to hear your thoughts.
One thing the Iraq policy has shown is the difference between ideas and practice. In theory, the Bush Doctorine and the Iraq war make sense. In practice, it’s seriously messed things up.
right now Turkey has 3+ extra divisions on the already miitarized kurdish border. There have been cross border incursions by the Turks to attack PKK terror camps. The KDP and particularly the PUK have been unwilling/unable to stop the PKK. The PKK is a terror organization and the turks are oppressing the Kurdish minority, so there are a lot of “villians”. Fortunately we still have real influence on both sides and we should use our leverage to get the Kurds to root out the PKK in exchange for more cultural (not political) freedom. If Turkey is serious about joining the EU they have to deal with their minorities without opression. Even though it goes against Turkey’s instincts it is in their interest.
Don’t want to make this a long post so I won’t go into some of my other ideas. Maybe I’ll post a diary if I get this “paper” done.
I like it when people have ideas about how to make things better as opposed to just complaining about something.
I’ll give Mark Udall credit for this: he may or may not stand where you like on the war, but he’s been consistent in saying that the best way out is not to have gone there in the first place.
There’s no easy solution to this mess. And, BTW, I’ll come out and say that the PNAC plan for Iraq could have worked – if Rumsfeld, Cheney and the goon squad had listened to Shinseki and the State Dept. planners from the beginning instead of focusing on the oil to come… It wasn’t completely insane thinking – at least not assuming that you stopped in Iraq.
Now, however, the only good solution is a political one from within Iraq. Step 1: drop the demand for the oil law; let the Iraqis work it out without foreign ownership. Step 2: drop the permanent bases; we will never be welcome in Iraq for the timeframe for which they were envisioned. Step 3: Drop back 100 and punt; pick something symbolic, defensible, and rebuildable and defend it – let the Iraqis do the rebuilding, for themselves, with the cash we’d otherwise be spending on KBR. Step 4: Call a summit and hope the Iraqis show up; tell them we’re not stickin’ around so long as they keep bickering and we’re out in 90-180 days unless they can give us a real, positive reason not to be.
The book talks about the conduct of the war (not how we got there) Rumsfeld, Franks and Bremmer come in for particularly harsh criticism.
Udall is exactly right about the best way out is to never have gone, but we (america in general, not you or I) supported the war and voted for Bush again in 2004 now we have to live with those bad choices and deal with the hole we have dug ourselves. One of the problems of life is that individuals have to clean up the messes that other individuals created because it is our best interest.
Roughly speaking I think we have to 1. prevent a turkic intervention 2. present ourselves as a counter balancing influence to Iranian domination (most Shia political factions, though friendly with Iran–don’t want to be dominated by Iran-even within the Shia there is an Arab/Persian divide) 3. prevent the Saudi government from funding an Sunni religious insurgency which would eventually boomerang on us or Saudi Arabia even if not sucessful in toppling Shia Iraq
To do this we need to leave troops in Kurdistan and keep enough advisors, special forces and assault forces in rump Iraq to be A player (not the dominant player) in the Iraqi political environment. That way we can extract concessions for backing individual parties.
3 divisions (45-50k) would be sufficient (no contractors) if we were not trying to seperate the factions. If Kurdistan remained stable, UN or NATO forces may be convinced by an able president in 2009 to take over those functions ala the Balkans, but I wouldn’t bank on it.
I would like to prevent genocide, promote secular parties and liberal democracy, but I haven’t been able to suss that out. still working on it though.
why can’t she be more sane like her northern neighbor?
How embarassing! Thanks for catching that for me… Yeah, I totally meant *North* Korea….
🙂
I do think that we have to give the surge a bit of time. I do not want to see more troops sent over there (other than as replacements), but Gates is intelligent (as opposed to just about everybody else in the current admin) as well as, has come from the intelligence world. I suspect that Gates is almost certainly trying to infiltrate the insurgents with our own spies. Right now, we really do not know how well armed or how many troops there are. If we can gain some knowledge, then we may stand a chance.
I have always thought that infiltrating an insurgent group is next to impossible. On top of the fact that this is not like flipping some low level thug to introduce our spies into the group, they seem to be so fragmented that infiltrating one will little effect on any of the others. Sure, infiltrating the Mahdi army could have a potential impact, but everytime I listen to the BBC they seem to mention a new group.
We aren’t going to be infiltrating any insurgent groups. Even if we could, it would have no effect on the myriad of others. I wish this stuff would work; I hate it that we went in and destryed a country that was no threat to us, and now we are going to leave them a broken, failed state. But hope is not a plan and wishing has no effect on reality.
From what I have heard, we are infiltrating (and watching more from above with UAVs). But you probably have hit the issue on the head. NONE of these groups are all that large. This may be a case of cutting off the head, only to have 2 or more replace it. But I do believe that we are better off allowing Gates to finish out a year. At that time, if he has not brought it down MEASURABLY, then F*&K it. Time to leave in a big way. If he has MEASURABLY brought it down, then give him another year. Normally, it takes about 6 months for the secretary to fit in. Then it takes another 6 months for policy to show. Gates was well acquainted with what was going on (he was looking at the situation starting in at least sept.), so he is getting about 9-10 months to make things happen.
As I have indicated in so many places, I am no fan of W. and am opposed to this invasion and occupation. But to pull out right is going to cause Iraq to be in far worse situation. And yeah, I suspect that will be end result anyways. But have to give him a try.
I saw Colin Powell about a year ago when he was a keynote speaker at a conference I attended. There were about 12,000 of us there and Secretary Powell was speaking on leadership. Now, this was an audience of business professionals–an audience that one would have thought would have been fairly moderate to conservative and, by and large, Republican.
Well, Secretary Powell started saying that the most important characteristic that a leader could have was the trust of those he or she sought to lead–they should never mislead or lie to those they were leading–roughly 1/4 of the audience got up and left.
It was apparent to me then that the gloss had worn off of Secretary Powell.
When he raised his right hand he did not swear allegance to W. He swore to protect and defend the constitution. Maybe if he had remembered that (even military guys are not suposed to obey illegal orders) we wouldn’t have to have this conversation.
If we are going to stay we need to stop fighting a PC war. Wars are not PC. Lots of people that you didn’t mean to kill get killed. Lots of things you didn’t mean to get blown up get blown up. If you say you can’t shoot at this or that it won’t take long for the other guys to figure out were to shoot at you from. If no one has the desire to see lots of dead civilians on CNN then don’t go! I think W and his freinds watched the film of the parades in Paris but forgot to look at the news reels of Normandy.
is a fantastic point. I just read the book by the Navy Seal that was the only survivor of the operation in Afghanistan called ‘operation Redwing’. He said that in the middle of combat, the only thing that actually made them afraid was the possibility of being arrested for war crimes if they accidentally threw a grenade into a house or shot to death civilians being used as shields or were just in the way.
How can we expect to defeat an enemy that knows this and capitalizes on it, and at the same time revels in hitting soft targets and not following any sort of battlefield protocol that we’re bound to?
Insurgents use hugging (sticking to civilians or sensitive targets) to minimize the striking power of the dominant miltitary force and everyone knows it.
The US has not signed off to give any body outside the US of authority jurisdiction over our soldiers (unless the US decides to).
The incedental killing of non-combatants has been a feature of war for ever and has been a major factor in the 20th century.
The problem with anti insurgency operations is they often lead to purposeful killing of non-combatants. Without clear rules of engagement/conduct/interagation, there WILL be abuse.
This is what made Lt. Calley’s case so bad. His immediate supperior in the chain of command, Capt. Medina, knew what was going on. In fact, the entire COC hadn’t established clear rules of engagement, hurting the hearts & minds strategy.
We have 2 stategies in counter insurgency: genocide, ill everyone who may possibly be an enemy, or domestication where we strengthen internal institutions to a point where the indigenous population isolates the insurgents. You can not mix the 2 stategies.
I do not, in general, blame the warfighter for breaches if there are not clear protocols: I do blame flag officers, civilian leadership for not developing those protocols.
The lament is “we don’t want to tie the hands of the soldier on the ground.” But that is empty, officers/NCO/enlisted are in the business of following orders. War is violence, it is confused, it is not clean and without clear rules, there will be abuse.
The situation the warfighter finds himself in now without clear boundries? Do whatever you think, because flag officers/civilan leadership give vague rules and hope it doesn’t come out in the media. If it does come out (Abu graib, Haditha) who is the lowest rank warfighter we can through under the bus.
This is a direct result of the My Lai trial which absolved officers of responsibility for the actions of Lt. Calley.
Infantry combat requires the demons inside of us to be released, a suppression of our human empathy and a suspension of our normal moral code. We do a disservice to the warfighter if we release the dogs a war and then are shocked when they don’t know when to stop doing violence.
on the strategy that considered everyone a possible enemy for far too long. That alienated large numbers of Iraqis who otherwise were not part of the insurgency. This stategy
resulted in mass arrests and the imprisoning of scores of people and can be directly linked to Abu Graib as well as the killing of innocent civilians.
All books, going back to the early twentieth century, about counter insurgency specifically recommend protecting the civilian population, the established infrastructure and defend the borders and you will minimize the insurgents ability to recruit and operate. I would recommend that people read the book Fiasco by Thomas Ricks. Great insights into the run up to the war and how the war has been fought.
Killing more civilians is not going to win this war for us. Destroying more of the country’s infrastructure will not count as progress. We’ve tried that (cf. Fallujah) and it just pisses the populace off more.
Think about it: would it work on you? Imagine we have been invaded by another country. Would you stop resisting, because the invaders became more brutal? Heck no; you would fight harder. Iraqis aren’t any less fierce and determined than we are.
There was a VERY interesting story in Harper’s a few months back looking into the question of if it is possible to control and occupied territory. Examining both famous historical despots and 20th century wars and occupations, the answer is a definite “Yes.”
BUT – and there is always a but, isn’t there – is do we have the will power to enfore a no insurgent policy? How do you do it? You slaughter innocents after any action against, in this case, us. IED? No problem. Go into the nearest house, line up the family in the public square for all to see, and execute them.
This is how the Nazi’s, for instance. controlled occupied France. When the resistance would kill a motorcycle courier by means of a wire stretched across the road, they would march into town, round up some innocents, and execute them. Some townspeople would know who the resistance folk were, so internal strife happened. Then the resistance folk had the guilt of being responsible for the deaths of friends. So they stopped.
After Abu Graib and other atrocities, is this the next step?
I would be interested in reading that article.
I think there is a difference between 1940s France and Iraq today. Religion being the biggest variable which would make any comparison moot. The idea of martyrism is so strong with the insurgency that any innocent killed would be considered a martyr. That may or may not sit well with friends and family of that killed, but they are often seen as a worthy death, one that rewards them with 67 (?) virgins upon their entrance to heaven.
And to my recollection, they don’t post entire articles, just teasers.
The Nazi item I mentioned was what just popped into my head. Now, I also remember that another component is massive troop infusion. Pretty much what the “discredited” military planners told Rummie, we need 500,000 troops to start with.
You are right, religious fanatacism is a factor that didn’t exist for the French Catholics.
Gen. Petraeus is the current “owner” of the counter-insurgency doctrine of the U.S. Army, and his own document says you need one troop for every 40 civilians. 26,000,000 Iraqis (at the time fighting began) = 650,000 troops (more or less – less if you have the population on your side, which we did in the initial invasion…)
Did anyone notice that this collection of posts was different?
Unlike most of the Iraq war posts on Pols that devolve into angry, name-calling posts about how the war is wrong and how Bush tricked us, how a spineless government beauracracy blinded by group-think failed to make its views known and how the Congress did nothing (all true), this collection of posts focused on “So, we are where we are. What should we do about it?”
Since there is no time machine, we can’t go back in time and change what’s happened, so, in my view, the proper focus of policy and implementation discussions should be on the decisions that confront us today — not rehashing the decisions made in the past.
I’ve said several times that I believe we will be in Iraq for a long time as the consquences of sudden withdrawal are very, very bad.
Those of us old enough to have spent our senior trip in SE Asia can attest to the s*&^-storm that happens when American troops suddenly withdraw. A replay of Pol Pot’s massacre of 3 million Cambodians could easily result in a Middle East defined by waring religious sects that are incapable of resolving Old Testement differences.
Is it better to remain the Middle East and lose American troops or stand by and watch the slaughter of Muslims that will likely occur if we withdraw?
Our economy still runs on oil imported from the Middle East thanks to our leaders’ squandering the last three decades since the 1970s oil embargo and failure to make our national energy independent. We love cars, living in and commuting from distant suburbs, big truck and SUVs. I’d be willing to bet that not one person on this board commutes on a bicycle.
While it’s distasteful to admit that we are in Iraq because of oil, we are. A sudden withdrawal from the Middle East also threatens our economy and prosperity, so any withdrawal plans must consider how to minimize that impact.
More pleasant for the discussion. But no less pointless. We are completely hosed in Iraq, and there is no plan that will improve it. It will get much worse (at least for a while) when we pull out. It will continue to get worse, a bit slower, as long as we stay. We have only bad choices. Of the bad choices I am in favor of the one that stops the killing of our military personal (several of whom I know personally). Yes, we broke it. But we can’t fix it.
One element of withdrawal that is not discussed much is the simple logistics of physically removing the mountains of hardware and supplies that accompany our troops. In the military, there’s a saying “Amateurs talk about strategy and professionals talk about logistics.”
Some estimates are that it would take 10-14 months just to clean and pack the vehicles in Iraq.
The military is the world’s biggest moving and storage company, and they’ve been moving “stuff” (guns, ammo, humvees, trucks, planes, buildings, etc.) into Iraq for more than 4 years. There are roughly 160,000 troops and equal number of “consultants” and more than 250 camps in Iraq, all with “stuff” that must be moved.
How do we get all that stuff out and what effort ($$, time and manpower) is required to get it out? The policy debate in DC is cast simply as whether to continue funding the war or not. I suspect it may cost a LOT to withdraw and take a long time and that is NOT being discussed or considered by the Congressional brain-trust in DC that brought us this war and is now using their opposition to the war to get themselves elected President.
One of the legacies of the collapse of the Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War is that a lot of military hardware was simply abandoned in Eastern Block counties, like Yugoslavia. That hardware was put to “good” use in the ethnic cleansing and religous wars that followed the collapse of former Soviet client states.
The same result seems likely in Iraq if we do not “clean up our mess”.
The equipment the US left in SE Asia constituted the forth largest conventional land force on the planet at the time. If we leave that kind of equipment in Iraq I’m afraid the entire middle east will be soaked in blood. We must find a way to bring it home or find a way to “spike the cannons”.
The reason most of the Democratic withdraw plans specify a 6-month to one year withdraw period is a basic concession to this need. Additionally, the details of those plans call for a withdraw not to home but to safer bases where we can redeploy to home over the amount of time required to get us and our stuff out safely.
As far as contractors go, I have little sympathy; they are raking in millions in cash that could have been better spent on our own military – they can use it to haul their own asses out.
With all due respect, the same Democrats who now claim to have a plan for an orderly withdrawal are largely the same ones who abrogated their leadership responsibility to competently investigate the reasons for going to war in the first place.
I suspect that NONE of the Democratic candidates have given any thought to how to withdraw except for how their retoric plays in the media and in the public opinion polls. Said differently, they’ve probably given as much thought to withdrawal as they gave to the decision to go to war in the first place.
Having lived through several Democratic administrations, including the one that brought us Vietnam, I believe that Democrats can be as incompetent a war administration as can Republicans.
I was expecting to get pounced on when I stated I was for the war, so I was pleasantly surprised when I was able to state my views and talk about them without anything that I took as serious name calling or whatever.
Maybe it’s because the subject has been discussed so much. But I would like to think that we are becoming more civil too.
That certainly would be nice…