Tom, Welcome to the Lake.

Spencer, Thank you for Hosting today’s Book Salon.

Welcome, Tom! Thanks, Spencer.

Thanks! Good to be here. I am sitting here at home listening to the Five Blind Boys of Alabama.

Fire when ready.

If the surge worked, why are there more U.S. troops in Iraq now than before the surge?

Welcome to Firedoglake – so glad you could join us today.

If the surge worked, why is violence again on the rise in Iraq?

I’d like to take moderator’s privilege. Tom, Odierno said in a ‘60 Minutes’ profile last year that he was mischaracterized as an overly brutish commander of the 4th Infantry Division. It seemed a lot like a jibe at ‘Fiasco,’ even though he didn’t say so explicitly. How did that portrayal influence his willingness to cooperate with ‘The Gamble’? What did you make of Odierno’s unwillingness to evaluate his ostensible transformation from 4ID commander to COINdinista corps commander? And do you want to revisit any aspect of your ‘Fiasco’ portrayal of Odierno?

It worked only tactically–that is, it led to improvements in security (along with other important factors, such as the near-completioni of ethnic cleansing in Baghdad, and putting the Sunni insurgency on the American payroll).

But the purpose of the surge was to lead to a political breakthrough, and that didn’t happen. So the best you can say is it was incomplete. And with the passage of time, it looks more and more like that incompleteness amounts to failure.

Thanks Spencer, and welcome Tom. Good to have you here.

I’ll second Spencer’s question — what implications does the “surge” and its perceived “success” have in terms of Afghanistan going forward?

Welcome, Mr. Ricks. Thank you for your voice. Can you comment on the torture “fiasco” though I think that needs an even profounder word.

Good afternoon Tom and welcome to FDL. And thanks for bringing your expertise to this Spencer.

I have not had a chance to read your book but do have a question. Does Petraeus hope to bring similar activities and results to Afghanistan as with the Surge? It is my understanding that a lot of the “success” of the ‘Surge’ was due to the pay-off of various groups. Is it possible for there to be a lot of pay-offs in Afghanistan as well?

Thanks. One of the short stories of U.S. military actions: easy-to-do-now increases headaches later.

There is no question that General Odierno was one of the villains of ‘Fiasco,’ emblematic of tactics that were abusive and profoundly counterproductive. I am still astonished that he found a battalion commander guilty of helping cover up a murder yet left that commander in command for another year. So I stand by that portrayal.

Yes, I was surprised when Odierno was cooperative with me as I reported ‘The Gamble’ in 2007 and 2008. I don’t know why he was, but I suspect that 1. General Petraeus encouraged him to be so and 2. he knew he needed to operate differently in Iraq in 2007 if he was going to succeed. Like a lot of the US military, he learned.

Yes. By the way, one of the first commentators to point this out, theat the U.S. was getting short-term gains but at likely long-term costs, was Andrew Bacevich of Boston Univ. He did it as the surge was happening. He is a thoughtful conservative voice, always worth paying attention to.

I’m a Bacevich fan. Recently read his Limits of Power.

BTW, the Pentagon propaganda team drowned out anyone who was trying to point out that the surge could be counterproductive. There were plenty of contemporaneous voices, they just didn’t get heard.

Yes, the torture was worse than a fiasco. It is a national shame, a sullying of our honor. I never thought I would like in a country where our government would make torture national policy.

I would like to see a truth and reconcilation commission akin to what South Africa had after the end of apartheid. I’d like to see a general amnesty offered, with perhaps an 18-month deadline. After that point, anyone who did not come forward would be prosecuted to the full extent of the law.

If you want more from me on this, please go to:
http://ricks.foreignpolicy.com/

I think that is too easy to say, that the Pentagon propaganda machine drowned out the criticism. Actually, the leadership of the Pentagon was against the surge–especially the uniformed military. As far as I can tell, General Odierno was the only senior officer in the chain of command who liked the idea. (General Petraeus was supportive, but wasn’t appointed to the Iraq command until January 2007, after the basic outline of the surge was in place.)

Sorry I haven’t read your book yet, but I seem to remember you’ve been talking about Teh Long War. Is that what’s going on in Iraq? What about SOFA? Patrick Cockburn sez Maliki must adhere to it or lose all political power.

Today there is a news story showing intel briefing documents prepared by Rumsfeld’s office that have bible quotes on the covers. How deep do you perceive this religious bent to be in the military now and how does that impact the situation “on the ground”?

I’ll turn to this question and Jane Hamsher’s now.

You’re right. The opposition to the surge was drowned out by the chickenhawks, not the Pentagon.

How has the draw-down of journalistic resources at the Post affected your ability to do this kind of reporting?

There are a bunch of additional surge narratives, as you’re aware, often coming from from people particularly close to one side or the other. One gives Lt. Gen. Chiarelli’s efforts at turning the 1st Cavalry Division into a COIN-focused force. Another concerns Special Operations Forces in Iraq under the command of Gen. Stanley McChrystal, who’s on his way to Afghanistan. Obviously you don’t consider those persuasive, or you would have incorporated them further into your narrative. But what do you think of Chiarelli’s and McChrystal’s efforts before and during the surge?

Afghanistan.

First of all, I love the place. I lived there from 1969 to 1971, when back when I graduated from college in 1977, and then back again in 2002 and 2004. When I was in high school I was a member of the Afghan Ski Patrol (Junior Grade) and actually skiied the Salang Pass, which is north of Bagram.

Second, I thought invading Afghanistan after 9/11 was the right thing to do. But I think things have gone downhill since the battle of Tora Bora, when the US military pushed the Taliban and al Qaeda into Pakistan. (Tell me again why destablizing Pakistan is a good idea, General Franks?)

So, where are we now? I actually am a bit more optimistic about Afghanistan then I am about Iraq, as long as we curtail our goals. We shouldn’t try to change cultures through the barrels of our guns.

I expect General Petraeus to use the attitude he had in Iraq, but not the recipe book. That is, show a little humility, talk to your enemies, and find ways to disaggregate them.

That said, I am not real optimistic about Pakistan. And we still don’t have our strategy right there–David Kilcullen and Andrew Exum, two of my CNAS colleagues (www.cnas.org) have a good piece in today’s New York Times about how counterproductive the drone strikes are there.

Never fear, the U.S. will engineer a military coup in Pakistan any day now.

This word “narrative” is starting to bug me. Here is a rant I wrote this afternoon and likely will post on my blog tomorrow:

Iraq and ‘the dominant narrative’

Whilist recuperating from the ‘flu, I’ve been contemplating the phrase “the dominant narrative.” It is implicitly negative, aking to labelling something “the conventional wisdom.” I was thinking about this again because of a piece that ran in yesterday’s Washington Post.

Let’s break it down here. What is wrong with narrative? As it was put by Jerome Bruner, the social psychologist who seems to have coined the term “dominant narrative,” people have “a readiness or predisposition to organize experience into a narrative form, into plot structures and the rest.” In other words, this is the manner in which human beings explain things to each other—that is, with what my Wikipal calls “sequential, action-oriented, detail-driven thought,” which, by the way, I would call the definition of a good newspaper story. Or of the 1,001 Arabian Nights.
So, nothing wrong with narrative—or with wisdom, for that matter. In both cases, the issue is with the modifier. “Dominant” is a loaded word, carrying connotations of being overbearing.

In the context of Iraq, I hear the phrase “dominant narrative” used most often by people who think that the American effort in Iraq was pretty good in 2006. In their view, they were more or less doing all the right counterinsurgency tasks that surge-era commanders are credited with doing in 2007-08. If their view is accepted, then the American people have been subjected to a massive fraud by the military and reporters who cover it.
I am sorry, but I am not buying it. Yes, the public (along with writers such as myself) has signed up to the narrative that American military operations in Iraq were radically different in 2007 from the previous several years. This is why:

–When I was in Baghdad in January and February 2006, there were almost no American troops evident in the streets. This was certainly not the way Baghdad felt in the spring and summer of 2007, during the surge.

–Later in 2006, American troops did indeed move out into the streets, in two operations called “Together Forward I” and “Together Forward II.” Both failed, and central Iraq slid into a small civil war.

–There were a few American outposts in the city back in 2006, but nothing like the three-score that were established in the spring of 2007.

–In 2006, the top priority of the American mission was transitioning to Iraqi authority. In 2007, this was changed to protecting the Iraqi people. Big difference that affected the mission in myriad ways.

Yes, the turning of the insurgency made a big difference, as did the fact that by the surge had begun, the ethnic cleansing of much of Baghdad was largely completed. Those facts, combined with a new American approach, made the war feel very different to me in 2007 than it had from 2003 through 2006. This is in no way a hit on the troops who did their best in those earlier years. It is indeed a hit on their leaders.

I am tempted to conclude “narrate that”–but I already did, in my latest book.

SO IS IT ULTIMATELY WORTH MORE LIVES, MORE MONEY, MORE TRAGEDY?

Thank you for commenting on the torture. It seems the “torture” depravity, is a surreally natural outgrowth of the ego-driven, psychologically imbalanced leadership of the Bush administration along with a military-industrial complex too facilely accessible and unmonitored by the legislative branch. Gratuitous and wrong-headed violence breeds violence, within and from without.

It is hard not to be seduced by the tragic status quo of how many have died for this venture and to not want it to have been IN VAIN. So more lives are committed, more efforts made? And we are banking on a regime in Iraq that has not organically coalesced from within, and there is so much historical damage from our clumsy, hypocritical, hubristic and obtuse attempts to prop up leaders not in this for the “common good” of Iraqis.

Now in Afghanistan, we are putting our soldiers and our money behind a regime that is wobbly and not committed to the common welfare and the people not solidly behind it, and ever rightfully distrustful of the codependent with avarcious corporations U.S. A regime that compromises dangerously with fundamentalist repression, particularly of women. That hooks up with barbaric war lords to survive.

go easy will you, Mr Ricks knows the score.

I saw on a news story that going to the Air Force Academy these days is like attending a “seminary”. Does this carry over, this indoctrination, to the combat arena?

Here’s one that David McLamore tweeted at me, as he seems not to be able to log in to FDL: Question for Ricks: what kind of splashback can COIN advocates expect from traditional military planners?

I actually think a military coup in Pakistan would be a huge setback. The way forward should be non-military. Right now the Pakistani military is part of the problem, not part of the solution.

I think the Obama Administration understands that. At least I hope they do. What you do think, Spencer?

Roger that

The ground combat troops commanded by Petraeus/Odierno et al are the Army.

The Air Force Academy folks are flying the planes.

Two different organizations. Most AF would have no dealings on the ground with any Iragis or Afghanis.

I just read that piece on the drone strikes. It does not sound promising.

What do you think about the reports of white phosphorous use?

http://abcnews.go.com/Internat…..038;page=1

I think we are seeing the splashback now. Despite the charge of the there being a counterinsurgency fad in the military, I think the US armed forces remain overwhelmingly focussed on regular, conventional conflict–especially the Air Force and Navy, but also, to a surprising degree, the ground forces. I think this is one reason that, according to a terrific article that Greg Jaffe had in the Friday edition of the Washington Post, the Joint Chiefs of Staff last year broke with Defense Secretary Gates over his defense strategy, formally voting against it.

So the splashback is taking various forms–direct opposition, the slow roll, and simply shirking the mission.

Thanks. I plead ignorance on the branches. But we have air bases there, correct? Might be healthy if there was some integration of air force with civilians I am thinking. Separation breeds demonization.

The way forward should be non-military. Right now the Pakistani military is part of the problem, not part of the solution.

How do you move forward without the military?

Mr. Ricks. Can you speak to the Gazan situation?

Please enlarge. I thought the Pak army was doing Obama’s bidding by attacking the areas, like Swat valley, where terrorists are hanging out, while Zardari and the Pak government seem in disorder.

Didn’t know you had a blog, but now I see you do!

http://ricks.foreignpolicy.com…..s#comments

I also see that you think Obama is bowing to Odierno’s desire not to have the abuse photos released.

Despite the charge of the there being a counterinsurgency fad in the military, I think the US armed forces remain overwhelmingly focussed on regular, conventional conflict–especially the Air Force and Navy, but also, to a surprising degree, the ground forces

How much of this has to do with conventional warfare requiring far more defense procurement dollars than unconventional warfare and command rank looking forward to lucrative post-career jobs with defense contractors?
In all the services.

That’s a weird handle, LibbyLiberal. Makes me think that Scooter has changed his views.

Anyway, is torture worth it? Absolutely not. The people who argue for it offer only the haziest of proof. While the costs are clear, and huge. As John McCain once said, it isn’t about who they, it is about who we are. (By the way, I think that question, “who are we?” is the beginning point of any good strategic discussion. The second question is, “And what are we trying to do?” The third is, “How then might we try to do it?”)

That’s good to hear. The best one-liner on COIN that I’ve heard is: Just because there’s counterinsurgency strategy, does that mean the U.S. has to do it?

That may be a small part of it, but motive is an endless abyss. The longer I report in Washington, the less I worry about motive and more about outcome.

People always guess about the motive of leakers who gave me good stories–and the guesses are 99.99% wrong.

It doesn’t matter much to the dead whether it was small arms, HE, nape or whatever else killed them.

That’s my sense as well. Holbrooke made several unequivocal statements — to the House two weeks ago and to the Senate last week — in favor of working with an elected Pakistani civilian government. They were conspicuous, and seemed designed to stop speculation about a military coup. The Pentagon policy shop (full of CNAS alums!) has lots of people within it who have criticized the Bush administration for unduly personalizing Pakistan policy to the Bush-Musharraf relationship, and their efforts in government appear to broaden the U.S.-Pakistan relationship. None of that is a guarantee that a coup won’t occur, but the Obama administration doesn’t appear to relish hopes for one by any stretch.

I was not asking in my question if torture is worth it. I am asking if a SURGE in Afghanistan is worth it? Or if more deaths in Iraq are worth it.

Afghanis are in the streets crying “Death to America.” Drone strikes of civilians, grotesque betrayal.

How important is Secretary Gates in the whole ‘conventional v. COIN’ struggle? In other words, if the next SecDef can’t play the bureaucratic game quite as well as Gates, will the current ‘reform’ efforts vaporize?

The decline in newsroom budgets is indeed worrisome. Good reporting is expensive, especially getting in and out of war zones and properly outfitting reportes with security, communications and so on.

Right now there are a dwindling number of reporters in Baghdad. The last time I looked, ABC, CBS and NBC didn’t have full-time reporters there. The only outlets that seem to be full time are the wires, CNN, the Post, the NY Times and McClatchy newspapers.

thomas, I am led to believe general shinseky actually used the formula petreus came up with for how many soldiers anre needed per capita

shinseky was obviously right but petreus does a back flip for bush over that number

It doesn’t answer the question of how the enemy-centric Maj. Gen. Ray Odierno of 2003-4 became the population-centric Lt. Gen. Ray Odierno of 2006-8

Enemy-centric, population-centric ? Please explain

Thanks. That has not been my impression, so appreciate the input.

the focus of the effort?

This was my earlier question. Not on torture, but on the feasibility of the profound investment of our soldiers and our money, and the collateral “damage” of Iraqi and Afghani lives as well as any kind of quality of life for them. 77% of Afghanistan does not have clean water I have heard.

It is hard not to be seduced by the tragic status quo of how many have died for this venture and to not want it to have been IN VAIN. So more lives are committed, more efforts made? And we are banking on a regime in Iraq that has not organically coalesced from within, and there is so much historical damage from our clumsy, hypocritical, hubristic and obtuse attempts to prop up leaders not in this for the “common good” of Iraqis.

Now in Afghanistan, we are putting our soldiers and our money behind a regime that is wobbly and not committed to the common welfare and the people not solidly behind it, and ever rightfully distrustful of the codependent with avarcious corporations U.S. A regime that compromises dangerously with fundamentalist repression, particularly of women. That hooks up with barbaric war lords to survive.

i apologize for this before the fact, but i’m serious….naive question here, but still haven’t gotten an answer that covers it all, from anywhere–

if there is only one major ‘pass’ (khyber) for traffic between pakistan and afghanistan, why is it so hard to stop the flow of people and weapons through there? one explanation that was given to me was that it was too intensive to inspect, but i don’t understand why we don’t just close it except for nato traffic. cut the artery instead of bleeding a little at a time. get it over with. there aren’t that many other ways in, other than through iran and china.

the northern areas of pakistan have border restrictions within their own country that are tighter than at the pass to afghanistan.

are they not closing it because it would be evident that the fighters aren’t coming from pakistan? wondering.
i don’t get it.

map of passes

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/F…..nistan.png

thanks for being here.

So a debate broke out a little while ago about whether the COINdinistas are enthusiasts for counterinsurgency or advocates of keeping the COIN tool behind glass to break out in case of emergency. But from a bureaucratic perspective, looking beyond Iraq and Afghanistan (and Jaffe’s great piece would lead me to say that Gates thinks that whole premise is a mistake), what effect will Pentagon and conventional-military culture have over a military capability that won’t be used very frequently? Not to be too structuralist, but won’t the anti-COIN crowd neuter COIN efforts if it doesn’t look like the U.S. needs them for the wars it’s fighting at the moment, or might have to fight on the horizon?

Oh, sorry!

On Iraq: I think staying in Iraq is immoral. But I think that leaving Iraq is even more immoral. That is, there are no good answers here. Everything is the fruit of the poisoned tree, of invading a country pre-emptively on false premises. I think invading Iraq is probably the biggest mistake in the history of American foreign policy.

So for me the question going forward is how to mitigate the damage we’ve done? I don’t like the answer I have settled on, which is that we probably should stay in smaller numbers for several years to come.

What about the SOFA? I expect it will be revised.

Mr Ricks:
What do you think will happen in Iraq going forward? If the surge ‘worked’ because we paid off the Sunnis, will we continue paying? If we stop, what happens? How big a residual force do you think will be left, if any?

Actually, the leadership of the Pentagon was against the surge–especially the uniformed military. As far as I can tell, General Odierno was the only senior officer in the chain of command who liked the idea. (General Petraeus was supportive, but wasn’t appointed to the Iraq command until January 2007

Then who gave the order for the Surge

My apologies. The argument — well supported by Tom’s reporting — goes that Odierno was focused on killing and capturing U.S. adversaries in Iraq as a division commander (enemy-centricity), and recognized that a more stable footing for the U.S. mission required focusing on providing security and services to the Iraqi people (population-centricity).

Er, LATER recognized a corps commander…

AS corps commander. (I’ll stop now.)

Well, first, there are plenty of passes and tracks over the Afghan-Pakistan border. Lots of stuff comes into the south from the Spin Boldak entry station south of Kandahar, for example.

Second, the Afghan economy really needs the Khyber to be open. That’s where a lot of imports and exports go through.

You can’t really seal that border. And I don’t think that would be productive. What you need to do is get the population on your side, if possible. (Btw, in response to an earlier question, that is what is meant by “population-centric,” as opposed to “enemy-centric,” which is the more coventional approach of focussing miltiary operations on killing the enemy. In counterinsurgency, the best thing to do with your enemey is to get him to change sides. The second best thing is to make him irrelevant.)

As a reporter, is it hard to stay objective do you think, when you are embedded with very brave and challenged military people who are overwhelmed by their immediate challenge and horror? To keep your eyes on the forest amidst those trees, metaphorical trees we’ll say frighteningly ablaze? To empathize but not emotionally over-empathize? Obviously you do and are respected for that or would not be such a respected commentator. But maybe my question should be how do you keep that balance?

Is the Army high command and the WH aware that America is broke and that we might not be able to afford to keep troops in long enough to accomplish the goals they have set.
Do they have a plan if that happens? End the war or cut Social Security voters will choose end the war.

I think embedding is good, because the military is a big part of the story. But it is not the whole story.

One thing I try to do is not write while I am still with the military. When I was doing a lot of reporting in Iraq I had the luxury of heading back to the Wash Post house, where the beer is always cold. Then I sit alone and write for a couple of days while listening to loud music. Then, after filing, I head back out for another embed.

How does the new US Embassy compound — the largest State Department facility in the world — go over among Iraqis?

The claim that release of the torture photos will endanger our troops is at odds with the assertion that our military interventions in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Pakistan are supported by the locals. Presumably they would welcome additional evidence of our efforts on their behalf.

Thank You enemy-centric sounds like Rummy

I heard oil fields all messed up in Iraq. US inclined for “oilier” pastures in the Mideast? Hence, imperial expansion. Over-cynical or serious motivator of U.S. agenda?

President Bushd did, overruling his top commanders!

I am no Bush fan, but I think November-December 2006 was his finest moment. He fired Rumsfeld, removed his top commanders in Iraq and Central Command, and instituted a new strategy with new leaders. In some ways, the transition to the Obama administration began in Iraq two years before it began here. Note that in Dec. 2006, Bush picked the man who is now Obama’s defense secretary.

Police.

How do both Iraq and Afghanistan feel about the non-military War Inc. gated communities so much taxpayer contribution money pouring into rather than the broken infra-structure of their own countries. I know how I would feel. You guys bring the bullets and then you get to hide behind the bullet proofing, not us.

Whaaat?

Building off that last point, someone who doesn’t show up in ‘The Gamble’ is Doug Lute, the White House war czar whom Obama has tapped to stay on as well. (And with an expanded portfolio, no less.) What do you make of Lute’s tenure during and after the surge? And if you expect there to be SOFA revisions, what do you expect Lute’s role in them to be?

That ties in with my Q about The Long War at 18, which I didn’t see an answer to.

Yeah, I was surprised in my reporting how little General Lute showed up. No one in Iraq ever mentioned him.

That’s not necessarily a hit on him. Maybe it meant he was doing his job. Certainly, the White House wanted the face on the war to be that of Petraeus, not of Bush/Cheney.

How do you justify the use of preempive strikes?

Yes, but it does affect the number of the dead. And the goal should be as few civilian dead as possible. It is both the moral solution and the militarily effective solution.

By the way, that also means protecting the civilians from your local allies (i.e., the Afghan or Iraqi police) as well as the enemy.

thanks.

but part of me keeps thinking, what good is having goods coming and going if it means in the end it will be the taliban government benefiting from it?

and if the fighters and the weapons keep coming in, its a futile struggle.

if the cancer keeps spreading, you lose the patient/country. it won’t matter much what kind of economy the people have now if we lose.

they were already having problems unifying the people/government and locally before we escalated our numbers there in the past year. i can’t see how that will swing to them helping us more.

and we can’t make it less forces because of the escalation of opposition fighters and weapons coming in. that’s why unless the influx/artery is cut off, it can’t end in the way you describe. as it stands, we have to escalate, and unless we draw down the people won’t help us.

catch 22

hope i am missing something and am wrong on this.

i’ll have to read your book, then maybe i’ll have my answers.

I don’t believe I do, generally. Certainly not in the Iraq situation in 2003.

I wouldn’t take pre-emption entirely off the shelf, though. I could see a situation where pre-emption might be required–say, if Pakistan’s nuclear warheads were in danger of falling into the hands of the Taliban, or if North Korea said it would fire a nuke at Seoul unless certain demands were met.

Not knowing anything about internal Pakistani security forces, how separate are the police from the military? And can they really act as a countervailing force?

Great Minds do think alike:) The blogs are sure things will get worse 2 years to a recovery is what I’ve been hearing from the optimists in the business press.
This war is financed on credit never mind the choice between war and Social Security.
Do the Generals and WH have a plan in case it becomes a choice between another bank bailout or more war?
After all the odds are too high to ignore.

So what’s the number of outside military that are required in Iraq & Afghanistan if they are to do policing duty? Isn’t that in the neighborhood of hundreds of thousands, especially since training of locals doesn’t seem to go very well?

What do you think of our allegiance militarily and diplomatically with Israel?

How many guns, weapons etc can we not account for in Iraq and Afghanistan that were given to local police, militia?
How many have been recovered from locals shooting at us? Is the army even keeping track or are those numbers to embarrassing?
How many billions have we given Pakistan?

No, we can’t and shouldn’t do police duty. That really has to be locals who ideally are from the neighborhoods being policed.

What our military can do is improve security to the point where a police force can do its job. (That is, drive around in a cruiser without being bombed or hit by a rocket-propelled grenade.) And, as I said earlier, our military can keep an eye on our allies in the local army and police, and that lowers corruption and abuse.

But yeah, bottom line is the answer has to be local. And that often means it isn’t going to be something we recognize as victory or even as something we necessarily like.

late arriving

Thomas Ricks,

Welcome to Firedoglake. thank you for your time with us today.

my question/concern is the same as flory’s above at 82. ISI’s influence on local law enforcement.

p.s. you had me at Blind Boys of Alabama :D

I suspect we will find out in the next couple of years whether the Pakistani police can do the job. Certainly their military doesn’t appear to be competent to do what is needed.

How can we expect to win a war when we made the troops wait for bullet proof vest, armored humvees, and nobody is pulling KBR’s Army contract after the shower electrocutions?
We can’t fight a war with equipment problems like that.

What do you think of status of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell”. Is this even an issue with troops themselves right now? I am very disturbed by reports of female soldiers being sexually harassed and attacked. Do you know more about this issue?

Here’s my problem with that concept. How can outside troops improve security for civilians with one hand while bombing civilians with the other?

I think you’ve been reading too much Yeats. (And I speak as someone whose literary agent used to be Yeats’ editor–no joke.)

Look, war is a messy, even psychotic endeavor. There always are going to be problems. Don’t let those sway you too much. In fact, victory often goes to the side not which has the most numbers, but which is fastest to recognize its errors and adjust to them. (For example, I believe that in 1940, the British and French had more tanks than the attacking Germans did. But what the Germans did have was a better concept of attack, and the use of radios to better communicate and adjust.)

To which I’d add that I’ve seen U.S. forces in Afghanistan refuse to allow Afghan policemen to loot a houseful of women suspected of protecting a Taliban weapons cache. The police then refused to allow the American platoon to continue its search for a weapons cache, which according to an edict of Hamid Karzai’s meant the troops had to go back to their base. But that platoon understood its mission wasn’t merely to find a weapons cache, it was to protect the population, and that meant protecting them from Afghan forces as well as from the Taliban.

Well, sorry to the Boys, but I’ve moved on to the Wynonie Harris section on my laptop library!

Is Gen. Petraes politically ambitious?

Don’t be so Manichean! That is what happened in Iraq in 2007-08. Saw it with my own eyes.

The key is, I think, making protecting the civilian population your top priority. Once you do that, it changes how your military operates. (I’d suggest reading the first chapter of my book ‘The Gamble,’ which looks at how radically the US military approach in Iraq changed from 2005 to 2008.)

Why is the U.S. fighting the Taliban? All they did was host OBL, and probably didn’t know of his 9/11 plans. Why are the Taliban an enemy of the U.S.?

Didn’t the Taliban in Afghan. offer to deliver up bid laden to a neutral country’s tribunal, long, long ago and George W. said not good enough and invaded Aghanistan? We went military, used the hammer, immediately, without legal, diplomatic, extradition being seriously explored more. And look what went down.

Good afternoon, Mr. Ricks. I would like to join the chorus asking you to condemn everything that the United States has done in the past dozen years and join in insisting that if we stop sending troops overseas the entire world will instantly become peaceful and just.

Aside from that, I’ve greatly enjoyed your work.

(I’d suggest reading the first chapter of my book ‘The Gamble,’ which looks at how radically the US military approach in Iraq changed from 2005 to 2008.)

Mission accomplished!…I just bought a copy….:-)

I really don’t think so. I think he wants to be a great military leader–perhaps after Central Command, become chairman of the Joint Chiefs. I wouldn’t be surprised to see him become national security advisor at some point.

I actually think his dream job down the road would be dean of the Woodrow Wilson School of international affairs at Princeton Univ.

Can we talk about Maj. Gen. Fastabend for a second? One of my favorite holy-crap moments in ‘The Gamble’ comes when you detail his 2007 strategy memo for Petraeus, ‘How This Ends.’ As I wrote in the intro, it sounded a lot like stuff progressives had been advising in Iraq for years, like cutting deals with insurgent groups and announcing deadlines for withdrawal. (Except, of course, all the stuff about staying in Iraq…) To put it somewhat provocatively, does counterinsurgency teach us valuable lessons about what might be called Strategic Appeasement?

(I also remember attending an October briefing from the now-cashiered Gen. McKiernan, in which he very grudgingly acquiesced to the concept of reconciling with Taliban elements who, as I think he said, ‘have American blood on their hands.)

Yep, something like that.

We face a cash crunch unemployment is headed for 10% government will have to cut back. As far as

Don’t let those sway you too much. In fact, victory often goes to the side not which has the most numbers, but which is fastest to recognize its errors and adjust to them.

Bush had years to adjust we won WW2 in less time we are not the first to recoginize our errors.
In fact we are just now beginning to play catch up and trying to get past mistakes like torture and bombing civilians.
Just what do you propose we do to make the civilians upon who’s cooperation we depend for a longer occupation to work give us a second chance?
Yeats? I’ll take that as a compliment:)

I am glad you picked up on that. I thought Fastabend’s essay for Petraeus, which laid out a lot of what would happen during the surge, would have gotten more attention.

But I wouldn’t call his policy prescriptions ‘appeasement.’ He called them “risks,” and that is a better description. In appeasement, you give the other guy something in the hope that that satisfies his appetite. In taking risks, you give up something in the aim of getting something.

That said, we still don’t know whether the biggest risk taken in the surge really worked. That was the turning of the Sunni insurgency. We have paid them, helped organize them, trained them in some ways, and I think looked the other way as they scooped up weapons caches. If those guys go back to a civil war, all we will have done is poured gasoline on the fire.

We have paid them, helped organize them, trained them in some ways, and I think looked the other way as they scooped up weapons caches. If those guys go back to a civil war, all we will have done is poured gasoline on the fire.

And isn’t the ‘paying them’ part really the key? And what happens when we stop paying them? I assume they’re not on the payroll unto eternity.

I think we are stuck there for many years to come. I think President Obama only in the last couple of months has recognized just how screwed he is with Iraq.

Thanks Tom…Jaun Cole, on Bill Moyers, epoused a different view that there is no danger of 4K Taliban getting to dissasembled nukes, then having the technology to assemble and deliver them.

TURNING and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.

Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again; but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

http://www.online-literature.com/yeats/780/

I’ve been exposed:) When I first chose this name I misremembered it as Things Come Undone, good eye dude!

Well, the Iraqi government is supposed to pay them, and put 20,000 of them into the Iraqi army and police. The turned insurgents complain that neither thing is really happening as promised.

My guess is that Maliki is trying to take them apart–buy some, arrest others. He is doing it slowly, but wants to get as much of it done while Uncle Sam still has lots of combat troops around to back him up.

They’re off the payroll now. Have been since April IIRC. (March?) And the Maliki government keeps arresting important Sons of Iraq/Awakening leaders. The bill that Tom describes may come due rather sooner than we expect.

http://informationclearinghous…..e22601.htm

Could you comment on McChrystal. Gareth Porter’s comments:

McChrystal spent an unusual five years as commander of JSOC, because he had become a close friend of then Secretary of Defence Donald Rumsfeld. Rumsfeld came to view JSOC as his counter to the covert operations capabilities of the CIA, which he hated and distrusted, and Rumsfeld used JSOC to capture or kill high value enemy leaders, including Saddam Hussein and al Qaeda’s top leader in Iraq, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi.

In 2005, JSOC’s parent command, the Special Operations Command (SOCOM), was directed by Rumsfeld to “plan, synchronize and, as directed, conduct global operations against terrorist networks in coordination with other combatant commanders”. That directive has generally been regarded as granting SOCOM the authority to carry out actions unilaterally anywhere on the globe.

Under that directive, McChyrstal and JSOC carried out targeted raids and other operations against suspected Taliban in Afghanistan which were not coordinated with the commander of other U.S. forces in the country. Gen. David Barno, the U.S. commander in Afghanistan, has said that he put a stop to targeted airstrikes in early 2004, but they resumed after he was replaced by McKiernan in 2005.

[Edited by Mod. In the future, please just provide a couple of paragraphs and a link in order to avoid copyright problems. Thank You]

Below the National level, the Obama Presidential Campaign in many ways resembled COIN strategy–flexibility, a focus on local outreach and involvement, a drive to calm fears on all sides, an emphasis on quality data and communication, and an unusual increase in the number and dispersal of staff for social development work. Have you seen any movement of former low-and-mid-level Obama campaigners into our war efforts? Do you anticipate that we will see such movement in the future, and will it be a good idea/effective?

I read Juan Cole’s blog every day.

I don’t think the Taliban would be able to deliver nukes. I worry that they would be able to get to them, and then sell them to someone else.

I also worry that if it came to that, Indian would intervene pre-emptively.

Well, the Iraqi government is supposed to pay them, and put 20,000 of them into the Iraqi army and police. The turned insurgents complain that neither thing is really happening as promised.

We’re screwed if it doesn’t work. The whole thing has always struck me as horribly reminiscent of our 1980s strategy in Afghanistan….finance and train the very people you’ll be fighting in 20 years.

If Gareth Porter is reporting it, then it’s probably wrong. ‘Nuff said?

The choice of McChrystal certainly appears to signal the administration’s readiness to continue Special Operations forces raids and airstrikes that is generating growing opposition by Afghans to the U.S. military presence.

Seconded I’d worry about this being in charge of a box of matches.

How do you rate the brain trust Petraeus put together for his 2007-8 tenure in Iraq with the breadth and quality of advice Odierno receives now?

Could the Taliban or AQ suitcase some of the material from the weapons?

Don’t know much about him. What has he done?

Interesting question.

As a matter of fact, I noticed that Phil Carter, a former Army officer who worked in the Obama campaign, officially became the Pentagon’s chief of detainee affairs the other day.

Craig Mullaney — another Army vet, West Point grad and Obama-campaign member — is going to the Afghanistan desk at the Pentagon.

I just remember being in Iraq and chasing down some hot story he’d reported. It turned out to be wrong.

Damn, uncultured me always thought it was:

Undone
( The Guess Who )

She’s come undone
She didn’t know what she was headed for
And when I found what she was headed for
It was too late

She’s come undone
She found a mountain that was far too high
And when she found out she couldn’t fly
It was too late

Maybe Yeats was kind of down because he saw that the British Empire was collapsing under debt and war and nobody believed him?
Thank Dog I got the blogs:)

Yeah, that would understandably do it.

As a matter of fact, I noticed that Phil Carter, a former Army officer who worked in the Obama campaign, officially became the Pentagon’s chief of detainee affairs the other day.

Good news. One of those blogger types in the Pentagon!

That’s a good question. I feel out of touch, though, so I can’t really answer it. The last time I was in Baghdad was in November, and six months is an eternity in Iraq.

I do know that Emma Sky is still advising him. For those of you who haven’t read my book, she is a smart, anti-American, anti-military, pacifist who has been Odierno’s political advisor for a couple of years. She now likes the American military, but still is broadly anti-American, last I checked.

No, I think it was more because he came to believe that the best lacked all conviction, while the worst were full of passionate intensity.

Well said and thank you…it is a wonder to have these discussions with military folks who have the ethical starch to oppose the established military positions.
General Swarzkoff and the Desert Storm General Staff would have taken a dark view of Bushco’s line of action in regards to striking Baghdad (Fear and Awe, occupying and empowering the Iran leaning Shite power base. Take a crack at that in your book?

I played their greatest hits all the time in college maybe thats why I got confused or was it that song Third Rock from the sun by Joe Diffie?

do you know anything about the survey sent to all medical personnel in the service where prisoners were held? it was an interrogative survey to find out if any had witnessed or taken part in, or been asked to participate, in torture…

it was sent out by undersecretary, of military health affairs, winkenwerder.
he said in 2006 that the information would be compiled and a report was to be released.

never was.

Yeah, I talked about that in ‘Fiasco.’ Schwarzkopf was very skeptical about the 2003 invasion, and to his credit said so on the record in an interview I did with him.

Speaking of Emma Sky, I wanted to draw you out on something. There were some members of the Petraeus brain trust who joined up because they wanted to fashion a responsible exit from Iraq. Sky was one of them; Dave Kilcullen was another. Others, though, contended that any effort in Iraq that looked like success required at least some measure of American presence until the insurgency ended, and I think Odierno forecasted the other day that the insurgency could last in some form for the next five to 15 years. Was this ever a source of internal tension? I’ve never been able to determine that, but could be misunderstanding several aspects of the internal debate.

Thanks so much for a great and productive and thorough chat.

Well, right now my laptop is playing Ahmed Jahmal’s ‘Poinciana,’ one of my all-time favorite songs by anyone.

The supposed best the democrats in Congress pre Obama lacked all conviction, and Stones and the worst were are still full of passionate intensity.
Just watch Fox News.
We are trying to change that here…and we will!

i sent you an email about it back then, and you referred me to dana priest i think..it was right after she discovered the ‘black’ prison sites..

i thanked you. thanks again.

still never found anything else out about it.

re yeats re wikipedia:

Over the years, Yeats adopted many different ideological positions, including, in the words of the critic Michael Valdez Moses, “those of radical nationalist, classical liberal, reactionary conservative and millenarian nihilist”.[

As we come to the end of this Book Salon,

Tom, Thank you for stopping by the Lake and spending the afternoon with us discussing your new book.

Spencer, Thank you very much for Hosting today’s great Book Salon.

Everyone, this is an important book, if you haven’t bought a copy yet, here is a link.

Thanks all.

Thanks! You run a remarkably civil chat house. Thanks to everyone who wrote it.

You are right about the long war issue. Emma Sky, for example, told me that she was advising the American military in order to “help undo some of the damage you people have done.” But I think that the tension never really devloped sharply because a consensus emerged among the advisors that in some form, the United States is stuck in Iraq for a very, very long time–something most Americans still don’t recognize.

Thanks Tom,
Thanks Spencer and Bev.

Fascinating discussion.

Why is this war continuing? What are the aims of the U.S.? Do soldiers even have an inkling of this? Or is it all fuzzy patriotism and fine words about democracy?

Re McChrystal, I can’t help but notice you haven’t commented on that. (If I missed that, sorry.) How can a man responsible for some of the worst torture at Camp Nama [Task Force 121 also called SMU TF in the SASC report] and elsewhere (even the CIA wouldn’t let their interrogators participate there) have such power in the U.S. military? It doesn’t augur well for the future.

From what I can tell, the entire JSOC/JPRA nexus was the incubator for the worst torture post-9/11. What was McChrystal’s role in all this? He reportedly guaranteed that interrogators would never be prosecuted for torture, and also kept ICRC from his guy’s prisons. How can we have an amnesty for these people, leaving them in place to engineer future fiascos? They are criminals. Paraphrasing Norman Mailer’s title of a book he wrote 30 years ago, “Why are we in Afghanistan?”

Have not heard that one still good talk, good music and Yeats! Plus I think we are marginally on topic.

Thanks so much, Mr. Ricks and Mr. Ackerman! Wonderful salon!

Still he was right to be down the British Empire was falling.

Good night all!

Great job, thanks so much.

Wikipedia said he was a pillar of both Irish and English literary establishments. That’s gotta be a tricky balance to uphold.

Not everyone in the British Isles was a fan of the Empire.

When I think of the Bush Years Auden comes to mind too

The Shield of Achilles
by W. H. Auden

She looked over his shoulder
For vines and olive trees,
Marble well-governed cities
And ships upon untamed seas,
But there on the shining metal
His hands had put instead
An artificial wilderness
And a sky like lead.

A plain without a feature, bare and brown,
No blade of grass, no sign of neighborhood,
Nothing to eat and nowhere to sit down,
Yet, congregated on its blankness, stood
An unintelligible multitude,
A million eyes, a million boots in line,
Without expression, waiting for a sign.

Out of the air a voice without a face
Proved by statistics that some cause was just
In tones as dry and level as the place:
No one was cheered and nothing was discussed;
Column by column in a cloud of dust
They marched away enduring a belief
Whose logic brought them, somewhere else, to grief.

She looked over his shoulder
For ritual pieties,
White flower-garlanded heifers,
Libation and sacrifice,
But there on the shining metal
Where the altar should have been,
She saw by his flickering forge-light
Quite another scene.

Barbed wire enclosed an arbitrary spot
Where bored officials lounged (one cracked a joke)
And sentries sweated for the day was hot:
A crowd of ordinary decent folk
Watched from without and neither moved nor spoke
As three pale figures were led forth and bound
To three posts driven upright in the ground.

The mass and majesty of this world, all
That carries weight and always weighs the same
Lay in the hands of others; they were small
And could not hope for help and no help came:
What their foes like to do was done, their shame
Was all the worst could wish; they lost their pride
And died as men before their bodies died.

She looked over his shoulder
For athletes at their games,
Men and women in a dance
Moving their sweet limbs
Quick, quick, to music,
But there on the shining shield
His hands had set no dancing-floor
But a weed-choked field.

A ragged urchin, aimless and alone,
Loitered about that vacancy; a bird
Flew up to safety from his well-aimed stone:
That girls are raped, that two boys knife a third,
Were axioms to him, who’d never heard
Of any world where promises were kept,
Or one could weep because another wept.

The thin-lipped armorer,
Hephaestos, hobbled away,
Thetis of the shining breasts
Cried out in dismay
At what the god had wrought
To please her son, the strong
Iron-hearted man-slaying Achilles
Who would not live long.

Darn, too late!

But thanks to Mr. Ricks and Spencer and all for a fascinating read and discussion.

Sorry Mod. got overzealous and didn’t have time to edit. Will keep in mind.

True

thanks for coming, and answering, you too, spencer..

(can’t believe i forgot to ask the question i’ve wondered for three years, until the end..man.)

TCU,

Whoa…thanks for this. It does resonate with Bush demoralization theme. Will read again slowly but skimmed and was impressed.

When I read your moniker I thought it was maybe a quote from wonderful Flannery O’Connor, but then realized I might have been thinking of her “Everything That Rises Must Converge” … not even close. “I am undone” sounds like a common comment in Shakespeare’s plays? “Things come undone” is haunting. Except for third rock stuff, maybe it can be YOURS!!!!

things come undone, but then turn into something else.

physics–’energy cannot be created or destroyed, only changed.’

applies to all things.

later.

p.s. just occurred to me that maybe, mr ricks, that’s what you were trying to say in your response about the afghan people having to be ‘converted’..the law of conversion. applies to all things.
thanks.

maybe Spencer would be able to forward your question.

Another great quote title is “Something Wicked This Way Comes”, I think from Ray Bradbury short story.

yeah, that would be nice, or i can, through the paper…at the time, in 2006, my question to him was about winkenwerder quoting a different number of ‘black prisons’ than dana quoted in her article…i left out the other part about the torture surveys because it wasn’t yet an issue. it is now. he said it on diane rehm’s 6-28-06 show. has bothered me since.

still digging.

cont’d

i found him again thanks to ‘hugh’, i had forgotten winkenwerder’s name…he has his own file now. an extensive one.
also had dr. steven miles on it-a really interesting man-wrote
‘Oath Betrayed: Torture, Medical Complicity, and the War on Terror’
really good show.
winkenwerder went too far a few times, and backpedaled. fast.weird to listen to it now that we know more of what he knew at the time. i want to know where those surveys went and where that report is.
http://wamu.org/programs/dr/06/06/28.php

10:00Dr. Steven Miles: Oath Betrayed

Dr. Steven Miles details the role of medical professionals in the abuse and neglect of prisoners in U.S. military prisons in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Guantanamo Bay.
Guests

Dr. Steven Miles, professor of medicine at the University of Minnesota Medical School, practicing physician, medical ethicist, and author

Dr. William Winkenwerder, Assistant Secretary of Defense for Health Affairs

an appropriate phrase when discussing things military

That’s serious pot-and-kettle talk about Gareth Porter, Tom, coming from the bull feather merchant who helped his old pal Dave Petraeus trick Congress and the public into letting him extend the Iraq war indefinitely. Will America ever catch on to access poisoned stenographers like you who pretend to be journalists?

Jeff Huber