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The fact Turkey did not allow a US ‘Northern Front’ to be launched from its territory could in the not-so-long-run prove very detrimental to what it views as its ‘national interests’.
The Turkish state in very uneasy that in the aftermath of a collapse of the regime in Baghdad, Iraq itself may fall apart, with the Kurds in the north declaring an independent Kurdistan. The Turks (and Iranians) fear this as it will greatly embolden the Kurdish separatists in South-Eastern Turkey (and also in parts of Iran).
So, ask yourself which scenario is more likely to lead to the collapse of Iraqi national integrity post-Saddam:
- A powerful heavily armed US force of 40,000 or more rolls into Northern Iraq, assisted by about 50,000 lightly armed anti-Saddam Kurdish guerillas from various factions… Ba’athism collapses eventually but US forces are in position to maintain order in the North and keep a reign on the political situation when Mosul and Kirkuk fall, ensuring that the Kurdish factions which can tolerate the notion of an autonomous Kurdistan within Iraq are not pushed out (or ever wiped out) by those demanding nothing less that Independent Kurdistan.
- or… A lightly armed force of not more that 2,000 allied paratroopers and special forces is operating in Northern Iraq, assisted by 50,000 lightly armed anti-Saddam Kurdish guerillas from various factions. Ba’athism collapses eventually but when Mosul and Kirkuk fall, the majority of the forces which arrive are Kurdish Peshmerga whose political views are very hard to judge.
So hands up who thinks that option 2 is vastly more likely to lead to Kurdish separatists doing exactly what the Turks fear?
If Mosul or Kirkuk fall to the Kurds alone, will the US be willing to shoot their way into those largely Kurdish cities if they are not invited in? What if the local (armed) Kurds politely say “Greetings honoured American soldiers! As we have taken care of the local Ba’athists, your noble, fraternal and well armed presence is not needed here, thank you very much, and have a nice journey home oh glorious brothers in arms”. I really doubt the US wants to fight the Kurds for what is a messy internal matter. Of course if the troops turning up at the outskirts of Mosul and Kirkuk are Turks, get ready for a war-within-a-war from the moment the two forces come within sight of each other.
Only time will tell what the outcome will be but if the Turks do not get their nightmare scenario materializing, they should thank their lucky stars because their actions made it far more likely to occur.
I suppose we will know in a few weeks!
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.
Pentagon planners must have been grinding their teeth with irritation when the Turkish parliament refused to allow a US division to unload in a Turkish port and move into Northern Iraq. Clearly having major US assets approach from an entirely different strategic direction would have enormously complicated the Iraqi military’s defensive dilemmas. In the event, the Iraqi army has been able to concentrate its the majority of its efforts against the allied moves in the south. Although it seems that allied special forces have run riot in the west of the country, that is really just desert of little real strategic importance to Iraq’s national cohesion. So far so good for the bad guys (well, sort of).
And yet…
The army which has attacked Iraq is much smaller than the one which ejected Saddam from Kuwait in 1991. The thinking here was clearly that the advances in technology and war fighting generally meant that a much smaller but ‘smarter’ force was all that was required to defeat Saddam’s armies in the field. The down side to this is that the sheer size of Iraq means that lines of communications are far longer than was the case in 1991 and in addition are running through enemy territory almost entirely… and there are far less troops to keep them secure.
If the allies have made any miscalculations, it is not with regard to the Iraqi army or Republican Guard: although both have resisted, they have been signally unable to prevent the overrunning of nearly half of Iraq and in every major battle so far against US and UK forces, their formations have been smashed and the survivors thrown back.
No, the unknown and more importantly, the unplanned for factor is the Fedayeen Saddam and sundry Ba’athist militias. These irregular forces, like all, irregular forces, have little real combat power but are able to disrupt logistics, cause irritation out of all proportion to their numbers and equipment, and most importantly for Saddam’s cause, maintain Ba’athist authority and political presence in areas nominally under the control of the allies. I lost track of how many times the allies reported that “The US Marines have taken Umm Qasr” day after day. What, again?
In reality it was only in the last two days that the Fedayeen and Ba’athist infrastructure in Umm Qasr had been sufficiently crushed by Royal Marines doing painstaking house to house clearances that Iraqi civilians felt safe enough to openly apply for jobs with the allied forces in the port city.
Similarly, the roads north to the bulk of the US forces are being called ‘ambush ally’ by the rear echelon troops tasked with the essential logistic task of keeping the heavy divisions rolling and shooting around Karabala and Nasiriyah.
And so if the tank, artillery and AFV heavy Iraqi units around Baghdad are not really what is causing the allies difficulties, then the fact irregular forces are able to attack overstretched supply lines is the thing that should be worrying us, give the lack of absolute numbers of infantry the attacking allied armies.
Well, the forces that would have moved into Northern Iraq are about to arrive in Southern Iraq. If my guestimates are correct, their ships should be reaching the appropriate Gulf ports any time now.
In Northern Iraq, they would have faced much the same problems as their colleagues in the south… but deployed in the south, they will increase the feet-on-the-ground per square mile considerably, which can only be very bad news indeed for the Fedayeen.
Perhaps this cloud has a silver lining.
British troops are getting fed up with ‘blue on blue’ fire by the trigger happy ‘cowboys’ in the USAF.
There does not seem to be anything about this in the US media and some threads on US forums are noting that. I have a problem with the way this incident has been handled and responded to by the US audience. Most apologies are suffixed with mumble mumble “fog of war”, “fighting conditions”, “it’s war, shit happens” mumble, mumble. And then there is the abusive variety of commenters or warbloggers who will assault anyone suggesting that the US military is anything short of orgasmic. Most ‘attacks’ on British frustration with FF by the US reach the same level of intelligence the media have about Iraq. And that’s pretty low.
Given the absence of the debate in the US media (and I do not care how many official channel it has to go through before the various spokepersons are allowed to comment), I checked the situation on a military forum which was linked on ARRSE (Army Rumour Service). Here are a few comments that put the point better than I could:
To our US collegues. I have served many times with the US but one thing you lack is your ability to look at how you do things. You think its your way or the highway! Do not take this as an insult but you do have a terrible history of blue on blue and it needs addressing. My dad was in Korea as a Brit Soldier he said that the Brits were terrified of US Artillery. An old Sgt Maj of mine who is Australian said that his unit also lost more to US “friendly” fire than enemy during Vietnam.
Again in GW1, more Brits lost to US forces than Iraqi, then the Canadians in Afghanistan, now its happening again! My dad is genuinely more concerned about me being hit by US Forces than Iraqi when I deploy as are most of the UK public about our servicemen. These occurences can change public opinion and the consequences of this can be terrible. What gets us is that you appear to just say “Fog of war” or something similar, which just piss*es us of even more.
PS – when I go, I will be the one with the giant UK flag flying above my head
And another one:
A really pissed Brit. Firstly, I’m amazed that I can’t find reference ONE to this incident in the American Press. Who says your media is free. Let me make this plain, we are ALL very angry, and the standard American reply of “It’s war, sh1t happens, is NOT good enough” The fact this story hasn’t even run in the American press, as far as I can see, speaks volumes.
I remember vividly, the last time an A10 killed a British AFV. It was from my Regiments battlegroup in GW1. 2 Warriors killed, in spite of the fact, both IFV’s were displaying Big Union Jacks and Orange recognition panels. Were the pilots court-martialled? Bullsh1t were they.
This is the early report, which as you can imagine, has circulated the British Armed Forces very fast indeed: - The AFVs were in the location they were supposed to be in at the time they were supposed to be there.
- They were flying the Union Flag
- They had orange ID markers
- They displayed Allied Cheverons
- The pilot took 2 passes, shooting on both with civilians close by
- After the 1st pass British soldiers in British uniforms waved and tried to warn the pilot
- The optical scope on an A10 can id a target at 1500m. The pilot was flying at no more than 50m on each pass. Visibility has been described as “excellent”.
- The tank crews adjacent fired the colour of the day smoke marker to warn the A10 pilot
- The pilot had not been engaged or shot at by either British forces, or Iraqis.
- The pilot was out of his designated Limits of Exploitation.
In spite of all of this, the pilot still engaged, not once, but twice. There is a stong feeling amongst us, that he won’t get prosecuted, there won’t be any action taken, there never is. He gunned that column down, because as he dived in, he had the soundtrack going in his head, and he wanted a kill
Could I have recognised a Scimitar or a BMP2 at 200 knots, in broad daylight? Yes I could…
And just to make matters worse, I remember one RAF veteran telling me about how during the WWII when the Germans were firing, the British and the Americans ducked, when the British were firing the Germans ducked and when the Americans were firing, everybody ducked…
Come on, guys, we are supposed to be on the same side, so don’t get uppity when we start asking questions why are our soldiers being killed by yours…
…no, that does not mean what you think.
The casualties in question are Fox New Channel reporter and all round buffoon Geraldo Rivera, who has been booted out of Iraq by the military for the committing the cardinal sin of any war correspondent… he revealed sensitive information live on television. It is interesting how the CCN article I spotted this in buries the fact en-passant at the bottom of a much larger article. My Grandmother had pretty much the perfect summation of our ol’ buddy Geraldo back in December 2001.
The other casualty is Peter Arnett who has been fired by NBC/MSNBC for being a ‘useful idiot’.
The sun is shining, the birds are singing and the world is back running in well oiled grooves… now if only the same thing would happen to the odious Robert Fisk.
This has been posted on the Command Post:
British backtrack over general
We had a misidentification of the rank of the officer concerned,” Group Capt. Al Lockwood said on Monday. “What I can say today is – and can confirm – that we have five senior Iraqi officers as prisoners of war.
And this on the Inn of the Last Home
British Backtrack Over General
In related news, a Moroccan troop transport backed over a colonel today, leaving him with multiple injuries and contusions. It was believed monkeys were at the wheel of the transport which was last seen heading to the sea to pick up some errant dolphins. A visiting foreign ambassador was quoted as saying, “When will monkeys ever learn to use rear-view mirrors?”.
France has lodged a protest with the UN.
I just love the blogosphere…
This is amazing, considering the source. Arab News war correspondent Essam Al-Ghalib reports that Iraqis who chanted pro-Saddam slogans told him privately that they only did so out of fear of the massacre that would follow if Saddam’s rule were to return to their area. He says he heard the same sentiments many times.
Kudos to Essam Al-Ghalib for reporting things that will make him very unpopular at home. His willingness to do so is a good sign for the future of the Arab press.
I found the link in Joanne Jacobs’ blog. If the permalink is bust, try the general link here.
British forces are continuing their aggressive incursions into Basra, capturing some senior Iraqi Army Officers and killing a Republican Guard colonel in the process.
My guess is that the object of this is keeping the Iraqi forces off-balance and probably trying to demonstrate to the population of Basra that Ba’athist control is decaying daily… hence the day before yesterday’s foray into the city by British Challenger Tanks for the decidedly non-military objective of blowing up a statue of Saddam Hussain in a public square with the tank’s 120mm gun!
In a horrifying, senseless and brutal attack on innocent Iraqi mothers and toddlers, a British ship carrying more than 500 tonnes of aid for Iraqi civilians has docked in the southern port of Umm Qasr.
The Royal Fleet Auxiliary Sir Galahad, carrying food, water and other essential supplies, arrived at the quayside just before 12.30pm British time. The ship had been delayed for several days while mine sweepers and American forces using specially trained dolphins cleared a path through a minefield in the approaches to the port. That’s right. Dolphins. I am not joking. These people will go to any lengths to ensure their sick plans are carried out, even to the extent of training charming sea-creatures to perform impressive tasks. Is there no end to their evil cunning?
Aid agencies grudgingly described the shipment as “a meagre and pathetic attempt to steal our thunder” and expressed concerns over British soldiers distributing the supplies, suggesting that maybe trained idiots would do the job better than them. However, the Americans explained that although they had managed to train dolphins to do quadratic equations and sew patchwork quilts now, their attempts to communicate basic reason to people such as themselves had utterly failed, and they were even beginning to lose interest in trying.
There are fears that the most needy Iraqis are in areas outside army control where deliveries are not being made. The Americans suggested that maybe even more of their troops should risk death in order to be able to get food to the people whose country they were liberating? But the aid workers completely missed their sarcasm and agreed.
Military planners have yet to decide where this delivery will be sent, but there is little prospect of it reaching the centre of Basra, where Ba’ath party paramilitaries have forced a stand-off with British troops. The delivery is seen as central to coalition hopes of winning over critics of military action around the world as well as ordinary Iraqis.
Alex Fentoon, spokesman for a big food-aid charity, said:
We welcome any aid that can be delivered to the people of Iraq. They needed it before the war and they will need it all the more as the war goes on. But it is terribly obvious that civilians in a war are tools, whether used as human shields or propaganda. It would be better to let them starve than to give them food and tell anyone about it. Charity should always be done in secret.
While we welcome this aid, a few boxes chucked out of the back of an army truck may look good but it is not the same as organised distribution to the 16 million in Iraq who needed it before the war even began. Why weren’t the Americans feeding Iraq before? Whose fault do they think it is that this country is in such an economic and political mess anyway? Don’t they realise it is their job to deliver food to all the peoples of the world who are hungry, in a huge Marixst wave of wealth redistribution?
The Americans told Mr Fentoon to fuck off.
(Thanks to The Telegraph)
Aqui hay algo para personas que hablan Español, quienes son unos ‘utiles idiotas’. Esta presentación ha sido creada por algunos que no lo son.
(Although it helps if you speak Spanish, the meaning of the presentation can be understood by anyone.)
Although war still rages, it is already time to start looking to Iraq’s future.
All but the most willfully blind will have seen that no accommodation is either possible nor in fact desirable with Ba’athist Socialism, and that must shape how the allies act not just now but when victory has been won.
Since 1945, we have had the examples of the overthrow of many totalitarian regimes: National Socialism in Germany, Fascism in Italy, Fascist Imperialism in Japan and Communism in Russia and Eastern Europe… each informs us in very different ways.
In Russia, Eastern Europe and the former Yugoslavia, Communist totalitarianism was cast off by internal dissent, made possible by a decaying security apparatus and enervated ruling elite that were the inevitable long term result of Marxist economics.
The good thing about the momentous sloughing off of Communist tyranny across the Slavic world was that it came with a relatively small price in blood even in places like Romania. However therein also lies the cost…
Throughout eastern Europe the success of civil and political society breaking out of the toxic legacy of communism has been very patchy indeed. As the overthrow of communism was political, the inevitable political cost was that accommodations with ‘former’ communists were made… in many cases former communists came to dominate the post-communist nations, effortlessly exchanging command economics for so called ‘crony capitalism’. In nations like Serbia, the thuggish national socialist elite retains control over large sections of society as it always did: with assassinations, fear and brutality.
In Germany, Italy and Japan however, the overthrow came not from political processes but at the point of a foreign bayonet. In East Germany unfortunately the bayonets were those of the equally monstrous Soviets but elsewhere it was the Western Allies who crushed the Nazi and Fascist regimes… and brought in their wake a process called ‘De-Nazification’.
In occupied post war Germany member of the Nazi Party were simply forbidden from participating in politics and excluded from any ‘sensitive’ jobs. Leading members of the German National Socialist German Workers Party were put on trial and many were hanged. The British even had what can only be described as military ‘hit squads’ ranging across Occupied Germany in 1945 summarily executing upper and middle rank German officers responsible for atrocities against British personnel during the war.
A ‘De-Ba’athification’ process is what must follow the destruction of Saddam Hussain’s state. Mere membership of the Ba’athist Party must be taken as prima facie evidence that the person is unfit for any political role whatsoever and membership in the Fedayeen Saddam must carry with it a presumption of guilt for crimes. When an anti-Ba’athist Iraqi regime is in place, they must not only not be restrained from conducting their own systematic purging of Iraqi society, but must be required to do so.
Similarly the allies must not get squeamish and should make no apologies for the use of violence to expunge Ba’athist toxins from the Iraqi state and society… Something that many libertarians fail to understand is that when normal civil society has collapsed, normal rules of civil interaction and legal niceties are not just impossible, they are madness. When the guns are out, it is the logic of the lifeboat which applies, not the logic of the lawsuit.
Ba’athist Socialism is institutionalised civil violence and unlike communism, it could have lasted indefinitely as it fed like a vampire on the rich blood of Iraq’s oil wealth. It is not enough to destroy Saddam Hussain’s armies, Ba’athist Socialism too will have to be killed just as National Socialism was, quite literally.
In a similar vein, hopefully the Fedayeen responsible for executing British prisoners and massacring fleeing Iraqi civilians will be summarily shot by British soldiers if they are captured when Basra is finally taken (that may of course happen regardless of any ‘policy decisions’ in London). The most effective way to do this and the best way for Iraqi society in the long run, is simply not to take any Fedayeen prisoners, except a few perhaps for intelligence gathering purposes. Rough justice is the only justice there is at such times.
John Keegan asks whether trying to avoid civilian casualties may cause more deaths:
How much more difficult are the allies making this war for themselves by their determination to spare the Iraqi civilian population as much suffering as is humanly possible? That is certainly a condition of the strategy being pursued.
…is the effort to minimise civilian mortality counter-productive? Do slow and careful operational procedures actually increase the number of civilian deaths and the amount of suffering, when a less precautionary and more peremptory approach might achieve the same, or even a better effect, by hastening the end?
A good analysis of the classic military dilemma. Also, an important reminder that it is Saddam’s ba’athists who are using civilians as a proxy:
Saddam and his apparatchiks have absolutely no compunction about employing violence to keep themselves in power. They will shoot anyone who looks like changing sides or trying to escape from the regime’s control. They benefit from the indisputably powerful effect of displaying force. They equally benefit from the reluctance of the allies to display any more force than they believe to be necessary.
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Who Are We? The Samizdata people are a bunch of sinister and heavily armed globalist illuminati who seek to infect the entire world with the values of personal liberty and several property. Amongst our many crimes is a sense of humour and the intermittent use of British spelling.
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