Yes, I am alive and well. Reality is an omnipresent force for those of us who survive in the financially iffy feast and famine world of consultancy. Sometimes you are 3 months behind on your rent and then there are times with so much work you can’t take time to come up for air. This is one of those head down, get the money while you can times.
I’m presently in an office deep in darkest Connecticut over looking a picture postcard river scene with colonial style houses and lawns facing it. I’m working 12 hour days to finish up one project before I go on to another in Manhattan and then San Francisco. I’ll not see Belfast again until June.
I don’t really have time to write this, but I’m doing so anyway because I’ve become so fed up with the ignorance of the “professional” punditry. I obviously never went to journalism school. Perhaps thankfully. Instead I have studied technical subjects and delved deeply into history, particularly that of WWII.
Where are the pundits with a real perspective? Why not a comparison with Omaha beach at +14 days? I’ve not time to check the numbers right now, but I know as a certainty there were more Americans dead in the first hour of the landing than we have lost in the entire war in Iraq to date. There may even have been more dead getting out the door of a single landing craft but I cannot prove that without research that would be very costly in terms of billeable time.
We certainly had not reached Paris in two weeks. If you turn things around and look at the opening days of Blitzkrieg after the end of the “Phoney War” period, not even France fell in two weeks of fighting.
One might look at the time and cost in lives of Iwo Jima, a tiny and otherwise rather useless spec on the Pacific map. A thousand US Marines died in the first wave. More followed. The surf ran red with American blood, bodies and body parts filled the surf like jelly fish. It took a very long bloody fight before that dismal spec was secured. It was not a job of hours or days.
The instant a journalist asks the question “Why is it taking so long?”, I write off their intellect as nonexistant. I read the DOD press briefing transcripts and I see these moronic queries on a daily basis. I know such people are full of self-importance. I doubt they realize we are actually laughing at them.
Let us look at the reality of the war. This snippet from DefSec Rumsfeld on “This Week with George Stephanopoulis” is one of the better summaries I’ve seen of exactly how amazing this campaign has been:
He’s got one of the most powerful coalitions that could be fashioned against him. Nine days ago, they entered the country. They are now closing on Baghdad from the north, from the west, and from the south. They have total air superiority. They control the southern oil fields. They control the ports. And they’re bringing in humanitarian assistance. They have been able to capture some 4,500 prisoners. And we know that there are people fleeing from the senior regime leadership’s family. And we haven’t seen Saddam Hussein or his son in close to eight days.”
I am not going to suggest the war is easy, or that it will be over quickly. There is still Baghdad to be dealt with. There will be many months clearing pockets of resistance by people who will have nothing to lose because their remaining mortal life span in a democratic Iraq will be quite limited.
When all is said and done, this campaign is one for the history books. Never before have so few defeated so many so quickly.
I now return to professional work, still in progess.
Dale, where in Connecticut are you?
Your disdain for profesional journalist is correct, but you make some bad mistakes too.
You should not compare the campaign in Iraq to the landing in Normandy or Iwo Jima. Those were serious campaigns, against serious, hard fighting, capable adversaries that were closely matched in armament with the US. This is not the case in Iraq – here the adversaries are Arabs. It’s not the same thing as Japs or Krauts, not even a tenth of the same thing. Also the gap in armament is colosal – for example: Iraq has no air force.
So there is no comparison.
Is the campaign going well ? As long as there are so few allied casualties – it is.
And this:
“There will be many months clearing pockets of resistance by people who will have nothing to lose because their remaining mortal life span in a democratic Iraq will be quite limited.”
IMO – wrong. The collapse, when it comes, will be fast and total. There are not many stuborn and determined fighters in Iraq. Of course this prediction could turn out wrong, but that’s how I see it.
I think it is a bit on the silly side to imply that Arabs can’t fight. Yes, it is more one sided than WWII. But that does not in anyway imply that taking on a nation of that size and military resources is a job that is guaranteed to be accomplished in a few days. Our care for minimizing civilian casualties in Baghdad will cause this to take awhile longer than it might otherwise, but even if it took 6 months or even 8 months to gain basic control of the entire country, that would be quite remarkable from an historical perspective. That it will more likely take 1-3 months is nothing less than spectacular.
And yes I do think there will be pockets that hold out. The Fedaheen will have to be rooted out and killed almost to a man. With the crimes they have committed, I don’t think they would see much advantage in surrender. They might as well die fighting as hang later.
Dale:
Yeah, where exactly in Connecticut ARE you? Lucky you if you have “picture-postcard” view – most of developed CT, IME, is decidedly lacking in such bucolic scenery.
However: whatever the historic comparisons of the Iraq War with other campaigns can/will be be made: the basic issue today is, IMHO, not so much the actual outcome of the war, based on whatever schedules for combat had been posited before hostilities started; but the EXPECTATIONS of how the war would unfold – and in the US, this was mainly the optimistic, saber-rattling jingo-jabbering of the Bush Administration crowd, whose expectations (DESPITE their later back-pedalling) of Op Iraq Freedom were indeed, that it would be a “cakewalk”, that the Iraqis would just fold up and surrender en masse; that there would be cheering crowds throwing flowers at “coalition” troops as they marched onwards to Baghdad, and that “we” would be able to plant “freedom and democracy” in Iraq with just a couple of weeks of campaigning.
This is not just the screed of a disillusioned anti-war type; this is how the US media had (up to about march 22 or so) presented the war to the home folks, and now that it has turned out to be something less of the walkover we were all expecting have had to beat a hasty retreat – leaving the reality of the Iraq campaign to sink in slowly – and, IMO, done a fairly poor job of preparing us for the long, dirty slog ahead.
Oh well, at least we won’t (if W. has his way) have to do anything really irksome like PAYING for this war – after all what price freedom?
(ask the CBO!)
Dale:
Yeah, where exactly in Connecticut ARE you? Lucky you if you have “picture-postcard” view – most of developed CT, IME, is decidedly lacking in such bucolic scenery.
However: whatever the historic comparisons of the Iraq War with other campaigns can/will be be made: the basic issue today is, IMHO, not so much the actual outcome of the war, based on whatever schedules for combat had been posited before hostilities started; but the EXPECTATIONS of how the war would unfold – and in the US, this was mainly the optimistic, saber-rattling jingo-jabbering of the Bush Administration crowd, whose expectations (DESPITE their later back-pedalling) of Op Iraq Freedom were indeed, that it would be a “cakewalk”, that the Iraqis would just fold up and surrender en masse; that there would be cheering crowds throwing flowers at “coalition” troops as they marched onwards to Baghdad, and that “we” would be able to plant “freedom and democracy” in Iraq with just a couple of weeks of campaigning.
This is not just the screed of a disillusioned anti-war type; this is how the US media had (up to about march 22 or so) presented the war to the home folks, and now that it has turned out to be something less of the walkover we were all expecting have had to beat a hasty retreat – leaving the reality of the Iraq campaign to sink in slowly – and, IMO, done a fairly poor job of preparing us for the long, dirty slog ahead.
Oh well, at least we won’t (if W. has his way) have to do anything really irksome like PAYING for this war – after all what price freedom?
(ask the CBO!)
Dale:
Yeah, where exactly in Connecticut ARE you? Lucky you if you have “picture-postcard” view – most of developed CT, IME, is decidedly lacking in such bucolic scenery.
However: whatever the historic comparisons of the Iraq War with other campaigns can/will be be made: the basic issue today is, IMHO, not so much the actual outcome of the war, based on whatever schedules for combat had been posited before hostilities started; but the EXPECTATIONS of how the war would unfold – and in the US, this was mainly the optimistic, saber-rattling jingo-jabbering of the Bush Administration crowd, whose expectations (DESPITE their later back-pedalling) of Op Iraq Freedom were indeed, that it would be a “cakewalk”, that the Iraqis would just fold up and surrender en masse; that there would be cheering crowds throwing flowers at “coalition” troops as they marched onwards to Baghdad, and that “we” would be able to plant “freedom and democracy” in Iraq with just a couple of weeks of campaigning.
This is not just the screed of a disillusioned anti-war type; this is how the US media had (up to about march 22 or so) presented the war to the home folks, and now that it has turned out to be something less of the walkover we were all expecting have had to beat a hasty retreat – leaving the reality of the Iraq campaign to sink in slowly – and, IMO, done a fairly poor job of preparing us for the long, dirty slog ahead.
Oh well, at least we won’t (if W. has his way) have to do anything really irksome like PAYING for this war – after all what price freedom?
(ask the CBO!)
Wow, THREE repeats!
My Bad!
Just goes to show…
“Always trust content from SAMIZDATA” !
Dale,
If you seek historical similarities – it would be more apt to compare the war in Iraq with “taking” Kenia or Sudan by the British. Not entirely similar, as Iraqis have tanks, but that’s the direction.
“I think it is a bit on the silly side to imply that Arabs can’t fight” –
There is no instance where they fought well in conventional modern warfare. They are specialists in terror and suicide bombing, or in Lawrence of Arabia style camel cavalry, or in shooting missiles into cities, or in using gas against civilians. They have acheived results by using these tactics. Anyway – they cannot be compared to Japanese or German soldiers of WW2.
As to the Fedayeen – they will melt away as in Afghanistan, they will not make a stand and try to go down fighting.
“There is no instance where they fought well in conventional modern warfare. ”
How modern? The accounts I’ve read report that the Transjordan Arab Legion fought well in the 1948 Israeli War of Independence. Of course they had British officers fresh out of WWII…
Jay, you obviously have not seen any of the good parts. I look out my house onto a good sized lake, and during the change of colors in the fall, it is the prettiest site on God’s Green earth.
Jay: As I have read the DOD press transcripts every day for the last year… I know for a fact that Rumsfeld et al have never once suggested a time frame for this war other than “how long it takes to do the job”. There have been occasional expressions, in answer to media questions, of possible scenarios.
The cakewalk is totally a conception of the US media, not of the Bush administration. That is not to say there are not thing about that administration I do not like: Patriot I and Patriot II are anything but Patriotic for example, but in terms of the war Rumsfeld and his people have kept scrupulously to factual answers and have refused to speculate and have consistantly said “no, we won’t tell you that” when the media asked operational matters.
You could take one of the briefing transcripts from November, knock out a few words that give the time away, and then not be able to tell whether it was said then or in Mid March. They’ve not wavered or changed their story one bit.
It is the media who have been lying consistantly to make a “better story”.
If you have evidence to another effect, please give me a reference to the person and the transcript in which they made such a statement.
Oh yeah, Perle isn’t official. He’s a civilian contractor. Or was.
Well said Dale.
I don’t recall hearing anyone from the administration use terms like “easy”, or “cakewalk”…in fact quite the contrary.
As far as I see it they’ve always said it wouldn’t be easy (and BTW…from a leadership perspective, this is ALWAYS the route to take).