Iraqi Impressions—Final Part III
Our Equipment is Tired Too
The number of vehicles, arms, bases, and American infrastructure in Iraq is staggering. And the wear and tear on it all is evident everywhere. I wouldn’t be surprised that 30% of our equipment is worn out to the degree that it wouldn’t make sense hauling it back, and would be better off left to help transition the Iraqis. Humvees have sprung doors, broken glass, missing pieces, well in addition to the wear from sand and heat. I think the American people should accept that after Iraq we have an enormous tab to pay to reequip the air force, marines, and army. When you ride in a Ch-46 Frog marine helicopter, or a chugging Humvee or see banged up looking semis, you get some idea of the huge refitting job awaiting us after this is over, I’d say $30-40 billion at least.
Gen. Petraeus
I had an hour conversation with Gen. Petraeus, along with Rich Lowry of National Review, on Thursday evening at Camp Victory. He is trying to reconcile two widely divergent views. Petraeus knows his commanders in the Sunni provinces warn that the good news of calm is tenuous, dependent on good-faith efforts by the Shiite government to allot a fair measure of money to these minority constituencies that have sheltered both al Qaeda and former Baathists.
And yet he accepts that hyper-criticism of the elected Shiite government for their spite and intransigence can prove counterproductive, creating only resentment—especially since it is almost impossible to separate out the deliberate and malicious from simple incompetence within the ministries. An elected government, after all, is sovereign, and we work with those elected by a plurality of Iraq voters.
The result? One must constantly pressure, coax, argue for a Sunni constituency that until very recently was trying to blow apart your own soldiers. And that isn’t easy either. We liberated the Shiites, found them allies against Al Qaeda and Baathists, and now worry more about them than the Sunnis who killed us far more frequently for the first four years—only in Iraq.
Iran came up. Again, a dilemma. Everyone knows Iran is sending lethal copper-tipped IEDs into Iraq, along with agents and cash, to either destroy the country or reduce the government into the status of a puppet state. It gave aid to both Sunni and Shiite militias on the principle that whatever caused turmoil for Iraq could not be bad for Iran.
Solutions? What I gathered from Petraeus is that we have to find a way to stop Iranian infiltration and direct weapons deliveries, perhaps at first by moving our military compounds closer to the border, and getting Iraqis to monitor the intrusions along with us. We must get the Europeans to curb trade and investment; that alone would cripple the theocracy.
What we must be careful about are direct strikes against Iranian weapons’ facilities that would only prompt a terrorist response—or worse—in Iraq. So how one does balance that act—wean the Shiites of Iranian help, have the government rein in the Iranian-backed militias, and convince Baghdad that the new Sunni protection forces are no threat to the government?
Gen. Casey had a brain trust in Iraq, and he set up the counter-insurgency center in Taji. Col. Bill Hix (now in Afghanistan), whom I know well, was on his staff and representative of the highly-educated, talented colonels in the army I wrote about last posting and whom Casey brought with him. I think Petraeus has only accelerated that trend, in getting the likes of Cols McMaster, Kilcullen, MacFarland, and Mansoor all assembled together. No one knows more about the seams of wartime Iraqi alliances than they.
Imagine a university seminar, the professors with sidearms and M-16s at their side, the stakes not a change in curriculum but the life and death of thousands. So one’s final impression of Petraeus is pretty clear: this is about the only person who combines all the experience necessary for this now nearly impossible task. If he cannot pull it off, I don’t think any military commander could.
I found him at times soft-spoken, gruff but polite, blunt, candid, and informed, and generous with his praise of his subordinates. He is a colonel’s general, and represents this effort by the army to bring in those with advanced degrees, who question the status quo, and find that their intellectual skills and education are nearly as important as their military acumen in solving this Byzantine labyrinth of what is now Iraq.
He is not prone to misstatement or bluster or partisanship, and would seem a natural leader that the Democrats could rally behind as well–taking undue credit for demanding changes that led to his appointment. So the tactic of slandering him as we saw last month with the Moveon.org “Be-tray-us” ads is nothing short of political suicide—as the Democrats also belatedly learned who finally distanced themselves from their in-house zealots. But again, this is a mere sideshow, the real challenge being solely can the violence be stopped to allow reconciliation?
Al Qaeda
We sometimes think religion trumps human nature. It doesn’t. Remember the Rafsanjanis of Iran: under the cloak of religious zeal, that crooked clan wormed into businesses and ministries like a Costra Nostra family bent on cash and perks. So too with al Qaeda in Iraq. They are criminals first, pseudo-fundamentalists second. The military knows that well enough since it has seen their pornography, syringes, shake-down schemes, and petty criminality etc. “Al Qaeda” gave a lot of young criminals cover to steal cars, take over houses, and take young girls.
IEDs
Col. Hickey gave a scholarly presentation about IEDs—a frightful weapon that kills randomly, without recourse to reply to the attacker, and quickly instills a sense of dread among those forced to drive over highways seemingly devoid of enemies.
I won’t go into detail, but answers offered are not merely technological since we are in a constant challenge/response cycle against sophisticated enemies, in which the deadlier and more sophisticated mine can gain the edge much more quickly than the commensurate expensively armored vehicle or jamming device. Even the new wedge-bottom marine vehicles (I rode in a MRAP [Mine Resistant Ambush Protected] vehicle and found that it seemed to ride much more cumbersomely than the up-armored Humvee) are very vulnerable to Iranian-machined copper-headed IEDs, as are at times even Abrams tanks. All the jamming gear in the world, and up-armored plating, can’t save our men driving down roads with occasional Iranian IEDs or large al Qaeda brands.
So the answers are found in intelligence, and that means getting the local population to identify the bomb makers, the mules who plant them, the houses where they sleep, and the places where they eat. I think we are winning that race, but the rub is that an exasperated public has zero tolerance for further casualties. So to maintain our pressure on al Qaeda we must suffer almost no losses, and that means almost no IEDs. And even a analyst like Col. Hickey can’t promise that.
Civilians
The number of Defense Intelligence Agency analysts, Provincial Reconstruction teams, investigators from the Pentagon, and mid-level diplomats in transit hourly around Iraq is astonishing. In the present calmer climate, their duties, ironically, can pose even higher risks than combatants, since they hop from one area to another, in convoys and in aircraft, often given tours of the front immediately upon arrival.
I have only the highest regard for all of them—a large number of whom are courageous women—who think nothing of jumping on a Blackhawk to copter up to Fallujah, tour the town, meet Iraqis, write reports, fly back, low and in pitch black night on an Army helicopter, and then repeat the sequence the next day or so.
The Arbitrariness of Death.
Soldiers die in Iraq in very unexpected ways, as is true in all wars. But the line from rear and front is blurred to an astonishing degree, the enemy has no uniforms, and we know sometimes very little about shifting alliances—and who is who on any given week.
Shrapnel can fly into a tent at the hospital in Balad. An overloaded Humvee can careen into a canal. Someone walking in Camp Victory can be mortared. With so many poorly trained Iraqis with so many guns, accidental firings are common. Paid insurgents can mortar into, and drive-away from, even the most fortified target. Listening to the stories of how our 3,800 something have died, I was struck how often death came in moments that were outside “combat,” and involved simply driving, or sleeping, or eating dinner.
There are no fronts in Iraq. That does not mean that a private in a Humvee driving outside Tikrit is not in vastly more danger than a staffer in one of Saddam’s grotesque palaces at Camp Victory—only that the war can be everywhere and nowhere, and no one is immune at any time
One small example of what must be an everyday occurrence. After visiting areas in Anbar deemed active, one hardly thinks that the ten-or-so mile drive from Camp Victory to the tarmac poses much danger.
But on arrival about 7:30 PM, while approaching with two Air Guard pilots our light prop plane, without warning a mortar round landed thirty yards from us. We six (journalist Rich Lowry and two National Guard lieutenants were also there) dived to the tarmac.
All that saved us was that instead of immediately exploding and showering us with shrapnel, the nearby round hit the cement runway obliquely and for some reason skipped before exploding at a safer distance. The entire airport was shut down for considerable time after the attack, and when it reopened we walked over to the impact hole in the tarmac and saw that even without going off immediately, the unexploded round, if aimed just few yards differently into our midst, would have taken at least one of us out.
To stave off defeat, the insurgents, whether ex-Baathists, al-Qaeda, or Shiite militias are embedded within terrorized communities. And they know that while a firefight with a US Marine or Army unit means instant death, an occasional quick rocket or mortar salvo might kill randomly an American—and with that death another headline in a U.S newspaper and another thousand or more citizens back home sick of Iraq, the war, and Iraqis. The war now has increasingly become defined only on the basis of how many of our own die, and that’s the metric the enemy welcomes.
But then after 9/11 we learned there are no fronts, and the worst “battle” still was the first that saw 3,000 incinerated in minutes in Manhattan. Behind all this lies the reality that Islamic radicals and their patrons fear any conventional fight with the US military, be it from the grand scale to the mere skirmish. Their only home is terror and its twin of demoralization and fear.
Final note. After beating this reoccurring stone problem, I hope to make a third visit next year, and see to what degree the Anbar awakening has taken hold.
This trip the general feeling was one of almost abject disbelief that ‘lost’ provinces could suddenly change so quickly. But to sum up: there has been a dramatic change on the battlefield, to such a degree not only is the media largely clueless about it, but our own military is so surprised that it doesn’t wish to make any sweeping predictions.
But if the Sunni transformation continues, this is an historic development that may well tip the scales in our favor—with enormous political ramifications throughout the region, and indeed the world at large. How the Arab world—or indeed our own Left—will handle scenes of former enemy and hard-core Sunni nationalists working side-by-side with Americans I don’t quite know, but it should be interesting…
“. . .an occasional quick rocket or mortar salvo might kill randomly an American—and with that death another headline in a U.S newspaper and another thousand or more citizens back home sick of Iraq, the war, and Iraqis. . .” And therein lies the crux of this war: since Vietnam it has been clear the way to beat the American military is through the American press. How do we change this dynamic? I mean, without changing American values? F
Dr Hanson,
No matter how beaten up a machine, it will probably be easier to get monies to repair it from Congress than monies to replace it. This is especially true of helicopters and airplanes, whose procurement processes are highly politicized, both in terms of getting business for the factories in the home district and in terms of the opportunity to strike a blow against the military-industrial complex, or against the very notion of the military itself.
Another possibility is labelling the purpose of the appropriations “upgrades” to “extend life” or “replace inefficient engines with more economical ones.”
Sorry to sound so cynical, but it seems in the nature of Congress. It may be that a legislature that worked well for thirteen or twenty States becomes a pork-trough when you have fifty, and hundreds of Congressional districts. (If we were to triple the population of Rhode Island, would we be able to decrease the number of districts?)
Dr. Hanson -
Many, many thanks for your continued writings. They are brilliant and greatly appreciated. Given the utter collapse of credibility (and, frankly, plain old bias and partisanship) in many media outlets, your credible and sober voice is truly a rare treasure, especially in the crucial areas of foreign policy and national defense.
All the best for easy passage(s) of the stones! I have family experience with them and know they are no fun at all.
Keep up your great work.
Kind regards,
GGA – Dublin, Ohio
Dr Hanson,
Thank you for your insightful articles. For a free society, the public must be able to depend on the news to be unvarnished. You and others have stepped in to fill the void to provide such a news stream — And for that you are to be applauded.
You have to wonder, isn’t MRAPs mostly COTS equipment and couldn’t the needs of future upgrades and new equipment be met with mostly commercial vehicles. Even things like commercial Hummers would seem capable of meeting a huge amount of the need for new. Airplanes, helicopters, maybe not, but surly trucks and light transports could. The MRAPS are being procured in large quantity, so they should last, and things like Stryker are in series production, so you just keep those lines running.
Thank you again for what you do… You have made a difference.
I wish you the best of luck in dealing with your kidney stones. I have had two bouts with them and it is something I would not wish on my worst enemy.
Thank you for all of your hard work and great insights.
A fan,
Jim D – Batavia, IL
I would like to hear more specifics about Iraqi government. One of the main criticisms of the Petraeus hearings was the lack of political momentum in the Iraqi government. I been told that two big reasons for the dysfunctional Iraqi government are the middle eastern culture of corruption and the lack of Shiite governmental experience. National institutions to train and create administrators for a democratic system on a national level was almost nonexistent when the US came. These points in conjunction with the tragic and violent history of Iraqi creates a potential quagmire.
It is agreed between our enemies and ourselves that the US will lose when the US public runs out of patience. My question is, how much time does our military have to buy for the Iraqi government to get their act together before the US public runs out of patience? Is it even possible given the circumstances mentioned above?
Dear Dr. Hanson:
Thank you Sir for your reports. Greatly appreciated and respected.
As a middle-age, middle-class Greek guy from Queens, NY … I appreciate your grasp of history and your general clarity in regards to our own foreign policy. I am rather lonely here in NY as a conservative. :-)
Warm Regards
Victor T
Queens, NY
For those still with the “quagmire” heebie-jeebies, I offer the following two items:
Iraq as Al-Qaeda Bait
and
Iraq as Al-Qaeda’s Quagmire.
Also,
A Quiet Triumph May Be Brewing.
As Victor says, things may be going MUCH better than anyone in official positions dares say or believe.
The US Congress may well need to equip two militaries: ours and Iraq’s. Iraq’s economy may not bear the cost of a well-armed military for some time. Iraq is the US’s new baby, and will be supporting it for a few more presidential terms. Perhaps even a few generations.
Professor Hanson:
Thanks to you and others the American public is learning to go to alternative sources for hard information as to the state of affairs in our world. The traditional media is in decline because it is agenda driven and many citizens are tired of the manipulation.
Clearly Iraq remains a complex and difficult reality. Let’s hope it can become independent and functional in some democratic form that can provide a stabilizing influence in the most volitile region of the planet in history.
http://www.greensrealworld.blogspot.com
Dear Dr. Hanson,
Thank you for this series of reports! What you give us is a good overview of the work seen by others: Michael Yon, Bill Roggio, Michael Totten, Laughing Wolf, Badgers Forward… The excellence in reporting by independent observers and reporters has been astonishing and speaks well to the journalistic tradition that American citizens understand even if our media does not.
The shift of Anbar is less surprising if, as you noted, you look at the nature of tribal Iraq and its internal bonds across sectarian bounds. While Anbar, itself, is predominantly Sunni, the tribes cross over into surrounding provinces where tribal sunni/shia mixing happens within and amongst tribes. From the compendium of reports from the region south of Baghdad city, we now see Iraqi Shia tribal leaders going to Jordan to talk with Sunni tribal leaders and ask them to return to rebuild society. The recent metropolitanization of Iraq within the last generation only shows that tribal affiliations in cities are still present, although weaker than in the less populous areas. External violence inflicted by terrorists and militias of all stripes, under orders from those outside Iraq, attacked that structure of community and it was in Anbar where the community finally rejected that. Blood is, apparently, thicker than ideology or religion in Iraq, and the Shia tribes moving to follow that of their brothers elsewhere is a cause of concern for uniformity of law enforcement. That is something that Iraqis, by and large, will work out on their own.
Our own history of being able to label someone this/that-American, belies the histories of those cultures coming into America. There is a tribal and clan history in many cultures that come to America, and our own past shows that across the Piedmont to Appalachia to the predominance of some families in an ethnic community. Our own culture, outside of cities, still hearkens back to that with high school football a source of local pride from Texas to Washington State to Maine. From the modern to the clans of Scotland and Ireland, to the various divisions in Germany still showing up today, to the regional affiliations of Scandinavia, that history is still present in America in toned down form. Those from metropolitan areas do not understand this cultural aspect of America and they are likewise blind to its different depth in Iraq, because it is a matter of degree not kind. US soldiers understand this deeply and while the language and localization may be alien, once that is adjusted for things become a bit clearer. By working with the cultural outlooks and supporting the positive and teaching how to mitigate and hold accountable the negative, Iraq is getting a crash course in civility and governing ethics.
Of particular interest is the dove-tailing between Michael Yon’s report on the opening days of the surge in Baqubah and the need for those that had commanded US bases. These individuals are highly trained in the day-to-day administration of infrastructure, delivery, maintenance and security as US bases are small towns in and of themselves. One wonders how many of those in the mid-officer echelons have done that and now apply that background to Iraq. That this ability to teach organization is present is beyond question, and part of the reason for the sudden change-over in Iraqi provinces is also due to the ‘brass tacks’ of ‘how to get things running 101′. Some section of our military is highly knowledgeable about that, and those that have rotated through base command positions would be a prime candidate for that, along with those coming from an industrial background of ‘supply chain production’.
I, too, have wondered for the need of 115,000 to 125,000 soldiers in Europe: that commitment is too heavy and the hospitals and staff are too far from where they are needed. A shift to smaller, fewer bases across the former Eastern Bloc Nations would greatly help not only in response time but locally helping those armed forces to learn how to take up the burden that their Western brothers do not do. Likewise 300,000 in PACOM with 2/3 of that in non-forward deployed status seems ridiculous. Even with the current size of the Armed Forces these outside forces should be added to the rotation mix so as to get late ‘hands-on’ COIN work. Those from in-theater should be given a chance to take postings in support of the Philippines, Columbia and other places where terrorists have taken root to threaten peoples and government. We need not fight everywhere to teach where it is needed. Of all the things one could wish for, it is an across-the-board combat experienced armed forces, so that new procurements are guided by needs, not Congressional pork. And the best able to do that are those who have that experience and apply it widely. Truly the upper crust of American morals. Unfortunately, like any crust, it is thin at the top and masks something far less solid beneath it.
Yet more excellent stuff from Dr. Hanson…
Wilber said: “One of the main criticisms of the Petraeus hearings was the lack of political momentum in the Iraqi government”…
Yes, I too would like to be better informed on that facet myself…
Still I think the Dems making like the cut ‘n run crowd may have just added a bit of impetus to the Iraqi desire to get a functioning government together…
Another example of Professor Hanson being brilliant as ever!
Yours is the only voice on the Internet that can be relied upon because you have no agenda other than the truth. You know human nature. It does not change. It is immutable. And for me your statement that religion does not trump human nature is most profound. This being true gives credence to Bush’s overall strategy for Iraq. If it fails, it will be because of American impatience. The Democrats/Left were loons in 1864 and so are again.
Not intending to pun, I pray for a quick and painless passage of your kidney condition with the stones.
You are looked upon fondly by many out here.
Excellent series Victor and my heartfelt thanks for your reporting. Best wishes for a quick and complete return to excellent health! Selfishly, you are just too valuable of a credible source of reporting on this war to loose.. :-)
I read this over at Gateway Pundit posted from Amy Proctor’s blog and it surely does add some clarity to the speed by which the Sunni areas have turned around.
http://gatewaypundit.blogspot.com/2007/10/al-anbar-awakening-how-muslims-took.html
I am so thankful that the lives of you, Rich, and the others were spared. Thank you for this wonderful report and for all of your superb work!
Sir,
Excellent, as always.
Some further discussion – “What we must be careful about are direct strikes against Iranian weapons’ facilities that would only prompt a terrorist response—or worse—in Iraq.” As opposed to … the Iranian instigated terrorism that is already taking place? I think that this is a bit of a strawman. Perhaps the result of striking, say, an “IED Factory” would be to force the Iranian Quds forces into the open, and thus more vulnerable to our military forces.
And looking on the brighter side, w/kidney stones, at least you get to keep your kidneys. But gallstones ….
Many thanks for what you do.
More great work Victor. I would like to say though that worn out vehicles should be taken as a sign of success. In past wars vehicles didn’t last long enough to wear out and destroyed vehicles meant dead and wounded crews. Worn out vehicles means more living crew members.
Keep up the great work.
I had the opportunity to meet some of the Shah’s people in the early 1970s, and to talk with other Iranians, Syrians in exile, and a few Egyptians after that. I disagree with one comment – we should NOT “be careful about attacking Iranian” anything. The one thing I’ve learned about the Arab/Islamic mindset is that they truly believe their God will help them, and that the only thing they truly respect is power. If the United States flatly destroyed Iran from the ground up and down and left it that way, the respect (fear?) for us would grow immensely. The Arabs will back a winner and turn on a loser. Following Vietnam, we were looked upon as a loser. The same thing happened to the Soviet Union after Afghanistan. Neither the Arabs nor the Persians have any respect for losers. They DO respect power. After the jimmy carter debacle, Ronald Reagan’s flight from Lebanon, and Wm. J. Clinton’s cowardly behavior in Somalia, the United States is seen as a loser that will flee at the first sign of real danger. The only way to curtail Islamic power is to show unequivocally that the United States is slow to anger, but once aroused, can be a really NASTY SOB. Destroying Iran would prove that point not only to the Muddled Middle East, but to the rest of the world as well. We’ll have a lot fewer problems afterwards.
And everyone knew that Iraq had WMDs.
Did Petraeus himself actually say that about Iran? Or is that coming from your fervid desire for a wider war, that you’d like people to assume that Petraeus said? You certainly seemed to try to confuse the origin of that claim in the article. If he said it, give us the exact quote.
I don’t like the idea of relying on defensive, quasi-passive measures such as border security to stop the flow of Iranian supply and direction to enemies of ours in Iraq. Think of the East German borders from the Cold War and successful breaches conducted by those seeking freedom.
Also, it is my experience that it is difficult to confrontational work if you are unwilling to accept that the opposition will get some licks in. I’m not referring to individual or organizational courage, but to the stategy itself: Iran engineers politically-damaging deaths of Americans to wear down our will to fight, but at the same time, we are supposed to maintain a hands-off, passive, reactionary stance. That seems to me to be a surrender of the initiative to the Iranians. I don’t think we should concede initiative to anybody.
I think we should more actively defend against this threat. I’m sure we have invested enormous sums and countless hours of hard work by very smart people in developing the ability to act anonymously. During the Cold War, we developed a concept of Unconventional Warfare in which the military and IC would fight communist regimes from within and provide foreign internal defense to Western allies under siege from revolutionaries. We are hard at work on FID in Iraq, but what about UW in Iran? Why not exact a personal price on Pasdaran and VEVAK officers? Why not discredit hardline members of the Iranian regime? The Iranians have infiltrated Iraqi government…when are we going to return the favor?
Everybody in this fight is covered in mud. It’s a little late to worried about getting our hands dirty.