The war is lost

[Guest guest]

http://www.salon.com/opinion/blumenthal/2004/09/16/iraq_war/

 

The " war is lost "

Military experts say they see no exit from the Iraq debacle -- and

that the war is helping al-Qaida.

 

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By Sidney Blumenthal

 

 

Sept. 16, 2004 | " Bring them on! " President Bush challenged the

early Iraqi insurgency in July of last year. Since then 812 American

soldiers have been killed and 6,290 wounded, according to the

Pentagon. Almost every day in campaign speeches, Bush speaks with

bravado about how we are " winning " in Iraq. " Our strategy is

succeeding, " he boasted to the National Guard convention on Tuesday.

 

But according to the U.S. military's leading strategists and prominent

retired generals, Bush's war is already lost.

 

Retired Gen. William Odom, former head of the National Security

Agency, told me: " Bush hasn't found the WMD. Al-Qaida, it's worse --

he's lost on that front. That he's going to achieve a democracy there?

That goal is lost, too. It's lost. " He added: " Right now, the course

we're on, we're achieving [Osama] bin Laden's ends. "

 

 

Retired Gen. Joseph Hoar, the former Marine commandant and head of the

U.S. Central Command, told me: " The idea that this is going to go the

way these guys planned is ludicrous. There are no good options. We're

conducting a campaign as though it were being conducted in Iowa, no

sense of the realities on the ground. It's so unrealistic for anyone

who knows that part of the world. The priorities are just all wrong. "

 

" I see no ray of light on the horizon at all, " said Jeffrey Record,

professor of strategy at the Air War College. " The worst case has

become true. There's no analogy whatsoever between the situation in

Iraq and the advantages we had after World War II in Germany and Japan. "

 

" I don't think that you can kill the insurgency, " said W. Andrew

Terrill, professor at the Army War College's Strategic Studies

Institute, the top expert on Iraq there. According to Terrill, the

anti-U.S. insurgency, centered in the Sunni triangle, and holding

several key cities and towns, including Fallujah, is expanding and

becoming more capable as a direct consequence of U.S. policy. " We have

a growing, maturing insurgency group, " he told me. " We see larger and

more coordinated military attacks. They are getting better and they

can self-regenerate. The idea there are X number of insurgents and

when they're all dead we can get out is wrong. The insurgency has

shown an ability to regenerate itself because there are people willing

to fill the ranks of those who are killed. The political culture is

more hostile to the U.S. presence. The longer we stay, the more they

are confirmed in that view. "

 

After the killing of four U.S. contractors in Fallujah, the U.S.

Marines besieged the city for three weeks in April -- the watershed

event for the insurgency. " I think the president ordered the attack on

Fallujah, " said Gen. Hoar. " I asked a three-star Marine general who

gave the order to go to Fallujah and he wouldn't tell me. I came to

the conclusion that the order came directly from the White House. "

Then, just as suddenly, the order was rescinded, and Islamist radicals

gained control, using the city as a base, al-Qaida ( " base " in Arabic)

indeed.

 

" If you are a Muslim and the community is under occupation by a

non-Islamic power, it becomes a religious requirement to resist that

occupation, " Terrill explained. " Most Iraqis consider us occupiers,

not liberators. " He describes the religious imagery common now in

Fallujah and the Sunni triangle: " There's talk of angels and the

prophet Mohammed coming down from heaven to lead the fighting, talk of

martyrs whose bodies are glowing and emanating wonderful scents. "

 

" I see no exit, " said Record. " We've been down that road before. It's

called Vietnamization. The idea we're going to have an Iraqi force

trained to defeat an enemy we can't defeat stretches the imagination.

They will be tainted by their very association with the foreign

occupier. In fact, we had more time and money in state building in

Vietnam than in Iraq. "

 

" This is far graver than Vietnam, " said Gen. Odom. " There wasn't as

much at stake strategically, though in both cases we mindlessly went

ahead with a war that was not constructive for U.S. aims. But now

we're in a region far more volatile and we're in much worse shape with

our allies. "

 

Terrill believes that any sustained U.S. military offensive against

the no-go areas of the Sunni triangle " could become so controversial

that members of the Iraqi government would feel compelled to resign. "

Thus an attempted military solution would destroy the slightest

remaining political legitimacy. " If we leave and there's no civil war,

that's a victory. "

 

Gen. Hoar believes from the information he has received that " a

decision has been made " to attack Fallujah " after the first Tuesday in

November. That's the cynical part of it -- after the election. The

signs are all there. " He compares any such planned attack with late

Syrian dictator Hafez al-Assad's razing of the rebel city of Hama.

" You could flatten it, " said Hoar. " U.S. military forces would

prevail, casualties would be high, there would be inconclusive results

with respect to the bad guys, their leadership would escape, and

civilians would be caught in the middle. I hate that phrase

'collateral damage.' And they talked about dancing in the street, a

beacon for democracy. "

 

Gen. Odom remarked that the tension between the Bush administration

and senior military officers over Iraq is worse than any he has ever

seen with any previous U.S. government, including during Vietnam.

" I've never seen it so bad between the Office of the Secretary of

Defense and the military. There's a significant majority believing

this is a disaster. The two parties whose interests have been advanced

have been the Iranians and al-Qaida. Bin Laden could argue with some

cogency that our going into Iraq was the equivalent of the Germans in

Stalingrad. They defeated themselves by pouring more in there. Tragic. "

 

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