NYT: "Boots on the Ground" say surge is a failure

It's odd that right-wing bloggers who cited the "success" story (put forward by a pair masquerading as 'critics' of Bush's handling of Iraq) in the New York Times, could pass up another editorial in that same paper giving the opposite assessment. This one, however, was not written by phony critics being led by the nose around scenes the military has picked as "proof" that the surge is showing success.
No, these are actual servicemen, the "boots on the ground" that Bush and Republicans allegedly listen to rather than "politicians". Rather than being escorted on a well-guarded Magical Mystery Tour with military spokespeople telling them exactly what they want to hear, these guys have been risking their necks carrying out the policies that the right-wing bloggers cheer. They offer an assessment that markedly contrasts with Pollack and O'Hanlon, mainly by telling the truth of their experiences.
Now you won't see these guys on Fox News, because they don't sit in an air-conditioned office in the Green Zone reading scripts their superiors have handed them. They don't play some kind of brown-nose game to get their rank; they are NCOs. They actually have to go out in the heat and dust with their men and carry out the dirty work while the officer corps thinks up clever new ways to call the latest batch of corpses that turn up a 'sign of victory'.
One of the "surprising" elements of their assessment is that (gasp) Al-Qaeda is not the number one obstacle to stability in Iraq. It seems to the sectarian militias and the political situation that drive them that occupies that spot. The Iraqi military and police force are not seen as a capable and professional force on the verge of "taking over" or "standing up", but rather as a profoundly corrupt, disloyal, and dangerous element thoroughly infiltrated by the militias. They offer a "routine" example of Iraqi civilians being threatened with death and torture by the Iraqi military and police if they co-operate with the U.S. military. They offer the "common" scenario of Iraqi troops being loyal to their own miitias rather than their commanders or even the al-Maliki government. They reveal the consequences of our new policy of arming Sunnis to wipe out Al-Qaeda, which is the shining star of the surge effort. It seems we are simply arming groups that want to take on the government, which just postpones the day we can withdraw.

Of course, the right-wing will dismiss this all with shrill squawks of "Al-Qaeda!". They don't really care about the Iraqis at all, except as a tool to be abandoned if the day ever comes where Al-Qaeda is actually driven out of Iraq. This talk of Iraqi politics and multiple factors and social unrest is not nearly black-and-white enough for their tastes, so they get bored by it and go back to the Big Battle Between Good and Evil That We Must Win. Wake them up when "we" get the oil, okay? If you mention withdrawal, however, you will hear a crazed scenario of massive bloodshed where those poor Iraqi civilians will suffer, and they really care about those innocent peoples' lives, and after all, they voted. Yes, they care deeply about Iraqis if it suits the talking points.

The neocons are real "defeatists" here. They have given up on Iraq completely and have focused on Al-Qaeda to the exclusion of all else.

How is it that a sectarian militia that tortures, abducts, and executes innocent people based on their religion or ethnicity is suddenly considered "good" and "non-terrorist" simply because they temporarily agree to join with us in our Al-Qaeda extermination campaign? How does arming, feeding, housing and providing intelligence to groups that seek the violent overthrow of the elected government of Iraq bring us any closer to "stability"? How does looking the other way as the Iraqi Interior Ministry runs torture centres in the prisons square with our criticism of Saddam's abuses?

The answer is simple: we don't give a damn about anything but Al-Qaeda and Iraq can go to hell in a handbasket as long as Al-Qaeda goes with it. When the commanders talk of "success" and "pacification", they mean success against Al-Qaeda and the pacification of specific isolated areas by letting the militias run the show while the military and police stay on the sidelines taking bribes and passing along information to the armed gangs that are now our buddies.

In the hypocrisy we have all come to expect from Republicans, the NYT is a credible source when they say what the right-wing wants to hear, but when they print something that contradicts their Fox News-fueled fantasy world, then it's just another "liberal media outlet" that is peddling "defeatism". And when the "boots on the ground" say things that aren't cleared by Ryan Crocker or Tony Snow first, well, that's just traitorous propaganda and those guys will suffer the consequences as those brave folks in the Green Zone spring into action to silence and punish them. It's the only way to spare us from the evil schemes of sergeants who want to see America fail and put your daughter in a burqa. They apparently have forfeited their right to our support by failing to parrot the words of the "politicians" that we aren't supposed to listen to in the first place.


story at NYT

The War as We Saw It


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By BUDDHIKA JAYAMAHA, WESLEY D. SMITH, JEREMY ROEBUCK, OMAR MORA, EDWARD SANDMEIER, YANCE T. GRAY and JEREMY A. MURPHY
Published: August 19, 2007

Baghdad

VIEWED from Iraq at the tail end of a 15-month deployment, the political debate in Washington is indeed surreal. Counterinsurgency is, by definition, a competition between insurgents and counterinsurgents for the control and support of a population. To believe that Americans, with an occupying force that long ago outlived its reluctant welcome, can win over a recalcitrant local population and win this counterinsurgency is far-fetched. As responsible infantrymen and noncommissioned officers with the 82nd Airborne Division soon heading back home, we are skeptical of recent press coverage portraying the conflict as increasingly manageable and feel it has neglected the mounting civil, political and social unrest we see every day. (Obviously, these are our personal views and should not be seen as official within our chain of command.)

The claim that we are increasingly in control of the battlefields in Iraq is an assessment arrived at through a flawed, American-centered framework. Yes, we are militarily superior, but our successes are offset by failures elsewhere. What soldiers call the “battle space” remains the same, with changes only at the margins. It is crowded with actors who do not fit neatly into boxes: Sunni extremists, Al Qaeda terrorists, Shiite militiamen, criminals and armed tribes. This situation is made more complex by the questionable loyalties and Janus-faced role of the Iraqi police and Iraqi Army, which have been trained and armed at United States taxpayers’ expense.

A few nights ago, for example, we witnessed the death of one American soldier and the critical wounding of two others when a lethal armor-piercing explosive was detonated between an Iraqi Army checkpoint and a police one. Local Iraqis readily testified to American investigators that Iraqi police and Army officers escorted the triggermen and helped plant the bomb. These civilians highlighted their own predicament: had they informed the Americans of the bomb before the incident, the Iraqi Army, the police or the local Shiite militia would have killed their families.

As many grunts will tell you, this is a near-routine event. Reports that a majority of Iraqi Army commanders are now reliable partners can be considered only misleading rhetoric. The truth is that battalion commanders, even if well meaning, have little to no influence over the thousands of obstinate men under them, in an incoherent chain of command, who are really loyal only to their militias.

Similarly, Sunnis, who have been underrepresented in the new Iraqi armed forces, now find themselves forming militias, sometimes with our tacit support. Sunnis recognize that the best guarantee they may have against Shiite militias and the Shiite-dominated government is to form their own armed bands. We arm them to aid in our fight against Al Qaeda.

However, while creating proxies is essential in winning a counterinsurgency, it requires that the proxies are loyal to the center that we claim to support. Armed Sunni tribes have indeed become effective surrogates, but the enduring question is where their loyalties would lie in our absence. The Iraqi government finds itself working at cross purposes with us on this issue because it is justifiably fearful that Sunni militias will turn on it should the Americans leave.

In short, we operate in a bewildering context of determined enemies and questionable allies, one where the balance of forces on the ground remains entirely unclear. (In the course of writing this article, this fact became all too clear: one of us, Staff Sergeant Murphy, an Army Ranger and reconnaissance team leader, was shot in the head during a “time-sensitive target acquisition mission” on Aug. 12; he is expected to survive and is being flown to a military hospital in the United States.) While we have the will and the resources to fight in this context, we are effectively hamstrung because realities on the ground require measures we will always refuse — namely, the widespread use of lethal and brutal force.

Given the situation, it is important not to assess security from an American-centered perspective. The ability of, say, American observers to safely walk down the streets of formerly violent towns is not a resounding indicator of security. What matters is the experience of the local citizenry and the future of our counterinsurgency. When we take this view, we see that a vast majority of Iraqis feel increasingly insecure and view us as an occupation force that has failed to produce normalcy after four years and is increasingly unlikely to do so as we continue to arm each warring side.

Coupling our military strategy to an insistence that the Iraqis meet political benchmarks for reconciliation is also unhelpful. The morass in the government has fueled impatience and confusion while providing no semblance of security to average Iraqis. Leaders are far from arriving at a lasting political settlement. This should not be surprising, since a lasting political solution will not be possible while the military situation remains in constant flux.

The Iraqi government is run by the main coalition partners of the Shiite-dominated United Iraqi Alliance, with Kurds as minority members. The Shiite clerical establishment formed the alliance to make sure its people did not succumb to the same mistake as in 1920: rebelling against the occupying Western force (then the British) and losing what they believed was their inherent right to rule Iraq as the majority. The qualified and reluctant welcome we received from the Shiites since the invasion has to be seen in that historical context. They saw in us something useful for the moment.