Ex-Commander Says Iraq Effort Is ‘a Nightmare’

WASHINGTON, Oct. 12 — In a sweeping indictment of the four-year effort in Iraq, the former top commander of American forces there called the Bush administration’s handling of the war “incompetent” and said the result was “a nightmare with no end in sight.”

Well duh.

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I wonder what the philosophy behind it all was. It seems like our forces struck almost zero fear in the opposition, and never attempted to correct for that.

I don't get this at all. The problem in Iraq is not "the opposition" - its that so many different groups are in opposition to eachother as much as to the US occupation. Some play us in the hope of getting the upper hand in their primary aim of smiting their neighbors. Others oppose us as much for getting played by their local rivals as for occupying the country - they want all the "reconstruction" graft for themselves.

Saddam's Iraqui Army folded like a wet cardboard box. The problem that virtually everyone outside of the administration with some expertise on the area said if you take out the dictator that barely holds this mess together you get Beirut in the '80s but on a much larger, much more dangerous scale - and they were right. From the beginning much of what our government was willfully mislabeling as "Saddam holdouts" was really already the beginnings of the civil war between Sunni and Shia - as well as competitive groups within each ethnic group jockeying for position.

It was idiotic to think the US could intimidate social groups that have hated eachother for decades if not centuries into forming an inclusive multi-ethnic democracy in the first place. You can't force people to respect their neighbor's culture and religion with violence and if you can't get people to agree to build a nation together, there will never be a cohesive "them" to hand the situation off to. Thats the predicament of Iraq in a nutshell.

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Barack Obama on security, Iraq and Afghanistan. We need a Commander in Chief who knows the differences between Shii'a and Sunni.

It seems that the Soviets, for a given time, managed to frighted the various ethnics groups into submission for years. Of course in the long-run it didn't work, but how did they control these groups as well as they did.

I'm going to guess that it was through iron discipline.

In light of that, just yesterday I was reading this blog on military.com about what kind of gear the guys use and their discussions about it (the soldiers have to buy a lot of their own stuff!) Several of the writers, who are all soldiers, were making fun of the "hearts and minds" approach to the war. That idea doesn't allow them to use every weapon and tactic that they'd like to employ, thus they have to second guess themselves while they're acting. That's a good way to lose.

It was mentioned that they were excited by the microwave pain beam that's been developed as it's nonlethal. However, they aren't allowed to use the thing because it might be seen as torture, so instead they have use guns and really kill people. I saw a video of the beam used on our soldiers and it seemed to work just great.

Anyway, the war is about not hurting people, not scaring citizens, and not coercing the population into doing our will. Strange.

Because the stated aim of the war is "nation building" a stable multi-ethnic democracy which Iraq has no real experince of having previously. If you are thinking as cold anc calculating and indifferent to the aim of "encouraging democracy" as your post seems to indicate you are, keeping Saddam in place was actually the best option for stability. The plan for Iraq is fundementally flawed because there is no coherent "them" to hand off the country to and we are no closer to that aim than we were 5 years ago and there is little indication that we will be any closer in another 5 years. Thats the predicament.

The "big success" of Patreus's surge was arming local Sunni tribal leaders but those local Sunni leaders who may now be opposed to Al Queda in Iraq are still deeply opposed to the central Shia dominated government, just as the central Shia dominated government under Malaiki is deeply opposed to our arming of those local Sunni tribal leaders. Our big "success" is that we are in fact footing the bill now for both sides in the innevitable civil war. Pretty great "success", huh?

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Barack Obama on security, Iraq and Afghanistan. We need a Commander in Chief who knows the differences between Shii'a and Sunni.

I think that a west style government is the best for the region. Plus, the location of Iraq is excellent to send out our fingers and take down the whole area over the long-run.

My point is that if you want to "build a nation" you have to ruthlessly tear down the old one and force the people to build what you want. After WWII in Japan many things related to being a warrior and whatnot were outlawed. What used to be the highest status became the lowest illegal status, and that's what we should have done in Iraq. You invade, you make everyone into children, then you force them to follow your dictates, which if good, will eventually become habit. If we don't want to do things like that, and we don't, then we should stay out of wars.

I recall this Polish boxer from a few years ago. He would have anxiety attacks just before a fight, and then quite. If you don't want to fight and aren't excited about it, then do something else.

The problem is that the Iraqi government was far from stable. Saddam Hussein was constantly fighting with different factions in an effort to hold on to his power. When the US eliminated Saddam, it gave renewed life to the warring factions. It's one thing to enter a hornets nest. It's another to enter a hornets nest already at war with itself.

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In terms of grousing about not being allowed to be "tough" and/or brutal enough against insurgents, when you are a grunt on the ground your obvious main mission is to keep yourself and the folks in your unit as safe as possible so your priority will always be to be allowed to blow up as much, kill as many collateral damage civilians as are required for maximizing you and your unit's safety. That's a natural response to being put into a dangerous and hostile situation. Its also completely counterproductive to basic counterinsurgency strategy, "winning hearts and minds" etc. Brutal tactics but short term security while building long term resentments and swe the seeds for our eventual resentment.

In Vietnam we pursued counterinsugency pretty much to its logical end point, basically moving whole villages into barbed wire encampments to isolate the population from the Viet Cong, the insurgents. We had superior fire power and training and the best technology available at the time. Still as an occupying army facing nationalist opposition, its an extremely taxing situation to be the occupier. Time is on the side of the insurgents and a viable national government with widespread popular support is necessary to win. There are many more examples of failed counterinsurgencies in history than there are of succesful ones.

In Iraq the situation is many, many more times more complex than Vietnam. Its not one one counterinsurgency but dozens overlapping eachother overlaid again with a complex and multifaceted civil war. Even in the south around Basra where our allies the British are currently deploying out as quickly as possible, there are really only ethnic Shia and even among the Shia factions there is bloody combat between the Shhia with several regional governors being recently assisnated by rival Shia factions. All the factions are recieving covert aid and support from Iran to stick a thumb in the US's eye and still they are blowing eachother up. Its not a situation, we were smart to walk into.

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Barack Obama on security, Iraq and Afghanistan. We need a Commander in Chief who knows the differences between Shii'a and Sunni.

Supposedly we were like five minutes from winning in Vietnam and quit, but maybe not.

In Iraq I have no idea why we need ground troops. They're just morale building targets for the bad guys. The best idea would be bombing and misery inducing tactics until the population grew to hate themselves, their culture, and the defenders, and begged us to stop and help. Then, as with WWII you come in and rebuild and you're the hero, even though you caused the destruction to begin with.

It makes no sense that the average Iraqi should be able to have a business, make money, feed their family, and hate America, while we are HAVING A WAR THERE. What kind of war is that? Things should be so inconvienent that people can't stand it.

You are completely insane. Supposedly we went into Iraq as part of a larger battle with extremist jihaadist Islam. We attacked them without the support of the UN or any of the other countries in the region. In World War II the US faced agressor nations who attacked us, that were hell bent on teritorial expansion that quite literally were bent on controlling the entire globe. Saddam might have had private wet dreams like that but in atuality posed no substantive threat to any of his neighbors and everyone in the world knows it.

A nation that carpet bombed the civilain population of another nation unilaterally would quite literally become a justifiable target of any freedom loving nation on this planet. The US in a scenario like that would really be no different ethically than the Kaiser's Germany or Musolini's Italy and would probably deserve the treatment that each of those nations recieved after we were justly defeated.

If we were to behave like that we would be inviting a world of constant unending war on a scale comparable to WWII, complete politicla and economic isolation - basically the end of the so called Pax Americana of the last 50 years.

Again you are completely insane. I take it you live in a box and pay no attention to the news. There are 7-8 million displaced Iraqui's, 5-6 million turned out of ther homes internally more than 2 million living as refugees in neighboring Syria and Jordan since the beginning of this war. Its the largest refugee crisis in the history of the Middle East - period. Their economy (except for graft on American funded "reconstruction" contracts and the booming business in kidnapping by both the various ethnic militias and criminal gangs) is total collpse. Formerly one of the most well read and best educated countries in the Middle East the entire educated class has fled the country due to the crime, kidnapping and constant car bombs

We have inflicted plenty of suffering and damage to the civilians in Iraq and it gets exagerated and broadcast all over the Islamic world nightly on satelite TV feeding the recruitment lines for Islamic extremist organizations like Al Queda in a way they could barely have dreamed of 10 or 15 years ago.

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Barack Obama on security, Iraq and Afghanistan. We need a Commander in Chief who knows the differences between Shii'a and Sunni.