Ruminatrix
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Friday, Apr 04, 2003
Day 15: I have work to do, work I enjoy doing -- and yet, and yet...Could there be a syndrome, call it war fugue, whose sufferers (whatever their position on the conflict) find urgent reasons not to do what they have to. Their pretext for procrastination is that something important (or catastrophic, or ominous, or incomprehensibly weird) may be happening right now -- over there. Somewhere else. Anywhere else. Concentration on tasks at hand becomes inordinately difficult, like swimming against the current. Time passes --the urge to turn on (TV, radio, browser) is irresistible -- yeah, I know...addiction talk
Are most of the afflicted males? Perhaps so, it wouldn't surprise me..but I'm not really talking about that easily parodied boys-with-toys stuff. WF is more akin to generalized anxiety: like those Gulf War I veterans who feel compelled to "watch[ing] to make sure no mistakes are made," to imagine exercizing control.
A key symptom: searching for confirmation of developments that don't really matter. I mean who cares that a US military spokesman has renamed Saddam International Airport "Baghdad International"? Give that man a raise! It isn't news, it's transparent, dumb p.r. talk. I mean, rename the friggin' thing when it's open for business, and you feel safe that planes landing there won't be shot at with missiles or rocket-propelled grenades.
To some extent war fugue is closer to tom's war rant, although this log doesn't have any primary topic. And I feel more like a sleepwalker (or a zombie, perhaps) than someone stuck in a another's nightmare. The essential point of commonality is that the war impedes one from living life fully in the here and now -- it colonizes the mind.
Look, I don't think one can make this war just go away by refusing to discuss it -- and if there's no public pressure to let Iraqis run post-war Iraq, there sure as hell won't be any arising spontaneously in Washington.
We can't levitate the Pentagon and hyperbole -- say, finding no difference between the warped US polity and totalitarianism -- is just as escapist, in my view. And we here, even in ever-anxious NYC, are surely much better off than those who are directly in the line of fire.
But a modus vivendi is necessary. And I'm looking for it. So I can get some things done. Important things. I think.
If economic interests (trade) come into conflict with geo-political goals (subjugating uppity regimes), what happens? Watch the dollar for signs of overseas investors seeking non-dollar denominated assets.
For many economists, the dollar's jagged yearlong slide is just a side effect of an inevitable contraction in the nation's huge trade deficit. But current economic and political conditions are making the process more perilous than it might otherwise have been.
Recently, the dollar's exchange rates have bounced up and down with news from the Iraq war: late yesterday, on news of American military progress toward Baghdad, it reached 118.98 yen, up 0.76 percent from Tuesday. But the dollar's overall trend in the last year has been distinctly downward. Weighted by the volumes of trade with other countries and adjusted for inflation, an average of the rates dropped 4.4 percent from March 2002 to last month.
A steeper decline could be on the way, though. The run-up to the war in Iraq hurt the American economy, and fears of similar conflicts to follow could deter foreigners from holding dollar-denominated securities. With less demand for the securities, there would be less need for dollars."
"Perceptions are very important," said Kermit L. Schoenholtz, chief economist of Salomon Smith Barney. "If people believe that the events we've seen in Iraq are not one-off events, it will affect their investments."
An Iraqi grand ayatollah in Najaf urges Shiites "not to resist" the invasion. Why not before? A pundit interviewed on NPR reckons that -- aside from fear of a repeat of the 1991 massacres -- Shi'ites feared retaliation or just being accused of being pro-US fifth columnists by Sunnis (although Shiites are the majority in Iraq). Haven't seen this online yet.
Are US victories south of Baghdad partly due to NSA intercepts?
The decision to strike on Tuesday may have been influenced by a spy tip. The National Security Agency, the government's eavesdropping and code-breaking organization, intercepted communications between Baghdad and the Iraqi Republican Guard divisions south of the capital ordering the divisions to pull back from their forward positions and move closer to the capital, according to American intelligence officials.So intelligence plus total air superiority overrode the need for the 4th Division's M1 tanks.
...US forces were able to move and close in on the Iraqi divisions before they pulled back, catching them away from defensive positions [emphasis mine] closer to Baghdad. "We were able to get inside their decision," an official familiar with the intelligence said.
The German government is writing off Saddam: could the French be next? Meanwhile Downing Street has repeatedly insisted that Iraqis must be in charge in post-war Iraq (not a popular position in Washington). Moreover, according to UK Foreign Secretary Jack Straw, the UK won't be party to any US adventures against either Syria or Iran.
Wednesday, Apr 02, 2003
US forces advance into Republican Guard positions north of Karbala on the Euphrates, and at Kut on the Tigris. No details yet, so it's unclear whether the Guards stood and fought, fled or pulled back into metropolitan Baghdad. Baghdad is still the prize -- and yes, it does have its own oil field (from the invaluable Perry Castaneda map collection) just southeast of town...
Meanwhile US forces are being very careful in dislodging the Ba'athist opposition in the holy Shi'ite cities of Karbala and Najaf -- the home-in-exile of Ayatollah Khomeini until the Iranian Revolution of 1978.
With these advances and the very low US/UK casualties rate to date, it's a stretch to say that the war is going badly. (Winning the peace is another story). Still, critics of the Rumsfeld/Myers/Franks war plan have focused on three shortcomings:
i) Too few divisions -- and not enough tanks -- were sent to Iraq, particularly considering the need to secure rear areas from guerillas/gunmen;
ii) If Hersh's anonymous sources are right, the haste to get the war started interfered with logistical considerations (especially fuel, spares and ammunition); that's why supply lines are now stretched to near-maximum;
iii) Air support for ground forces has been hampered by a lack of land bases; carrier-based aircraft are having to fill in for the fighter-bombers and ground-attack planes that were to have been based in Turkey or Saudi Arabia.
Blame the last factor on diplomatic failures if you like, but the first two are attributable to the Pentagon's enthusiastic embrace of the Revolution in Military Affairs doctrine. A key RMA theorist Andrew W Marshall was profiled in the 16 July 2001 New Yorker piece, Dreaming About War. (It's not available on their site, but thanks to Bush Watch for archiving it and to net environments for the link.) It makes it clear that Rumsfeld championed RMA against the Joint Chiefs well before this war became likely. And RMA doctrine (many useful links here) does emphasize information technology and light forces while playing down the importance of some hard assets (e.g. heavy tanks). Could the US military's infatuation with high-tech gadgetry trip it up at some point -- not in this war, perhaps, but in the next?
Bad timing? UK Guardian's story info on US postwar administration plans.
Chalabi will only be an "advisor" to the US military governor, General Jay Garner (ret'd). Couldn't they find anybody who's lived in Iraq since 1956? Is this some sort of twisted April Fool's joke?
A disagreement has broken out at a senior level within the Bush administration over a new government that the US is secretly planning in Kuwait to rule Iraq in the immediate aftermath of the overthrow of Saddam Hussein.
Under the plan, the government will consist of 23 ministries, each headed by an American. Every ministry will also have four Iraqi advisers appointed by the Americans...
...The most controversial of Mr Wolfowitz's proposed appointees is Ahmed Chalabi, the head of the opposition Iraqi National Congress, together with his close associates, including his nephew. During his years in exile, Mr Chalabi has cultivated links with Congress to raise funds, and has become the Pentagon's darling among the Iraqi opposition. The defence secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, is one of his strongest supporters. The state department and the CIA, on the other hand, regard him with deep suspicion.
He has not lived in Iraq since 1956, apart from a short period organising resistance in the Kurdish north in the 1990s, and is thought to have little support in the country.
Theo is ten today -- Happy Birthday kid. She took 72 [!] cupcakes to school today.Tempus fugit and all that.
Blaming the victims for their deaths -- women and children at that -- won't cut it in a battle for hearts and minds. And US policy requires winning them over before the war ends. More careful ways of handling civilians could help avoid such ugly accidents, and help win their trust, if indeed it is winnable. In other words, the UK military's long "peacekeeping" experience in Northern Ireland could actually pay off -- in Iraq.
But US military doctrine since WWII has been to call in the heavy firepower (and/or close air support) when the going gets tough. And regular US forces haven't had any large-scale urban warfare experience since Hue in 1968.
As for the endgame, the Pentagon reckons Baghdad to be more like Berlin, the Ba'athists prefer the Stalingrad analogy. Both are wrong, of course, (it's perhaps more like Grozny v Sarajevo?) but that's no reason not to read both the books by Anthony Beevor. They are masterpieces.
NBC/National Geographic Travel fire Peter Arnett for remarks made in an interview by Baghdad TV. And haven't had time to read Sy Hersh, American journalist. Can't give him enough links. Meanwhile there's a big shootup between US Marines and paramilitaries near Najaf. Light trucks charging tanks -- hmm, sounds like Poland in the fall of 1939.
Too busy to take up jim's inviation for now, but should also keep a list of words being purged or edged out of the lexicon: fedayeen (now terror squad is preferred, paramilitary or militia acceptable); cakewalk is so two weeks ago; operational pauses don't exist; etc, etc.
An unintended consequences of demonizing the adversary:
Saddam and the UN inspectors might deny the presence of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, but many members of the public and the military have started believing that this must be correct, and this has removed any inferiority complex vis-a-vis the US in their minds. They have been thinking and saying, "We don't have to fear the Americans now. If the worse comes to the worst, we can use these weapons against the Americans." This has apparently fortified their morale.More here, including the role weather is playing in this war. Reading it triggers some very unpleasant thoughts:
i) How windy is it in Central Iraq this time of year? Can US/UK forces only attack when the wind blows from behind them?
ii) Would the actual use of WMD by Iraq in a defense of Baghdad in fact be condemned by all non-combatant nations? In what forum?
iii) Is the US threat to retaliate with nuclear arms against such use actually plausible, if the Iraqi leaders are bunkered in Baghdad among a civilian population wishing to be liberated?
Good night.
Sunday, Mar 30, 2003
No, Rumsfeld won't resign; he's just passing the buck back to the generals. But "house of cards" predictions about this war have been erased from the hawks' press clips file. And let's face it -- "war of liberation" rhetoric is harder to pull off when you don't have pix of cheering crowds tossing garlands as our tanks roll by. Want images? Reuter's slide shows have been around awhile; its new service (free for now, expected to go subscription-only soonish) is Raw Video -- [mpg?] clips without any commentary (Raw Video button loads viewer)
As the estimable and orotund John Smith of LincolnPlawg points out, the underestimation of a military enemy can be founded on racist biases. Surely that is not the case when officials blame Russian contractors or meddlesome neighbor nations for the consequences of their own shortsightedness, e.g. failing to bring along enough troops to secure your lines of supply.
One must keep the US/UK reverses in perspective though: casualties have been low, Iraqi attacks sporadic and largely ineffective, and the war is only eleven days old. Expect talk of moral calculus to begin in earnest next week -- is it better to take more time or to hurry things along, even if more "unnecessary" deaths occur? And what are the political costs of these choices?
Yet the "operational pause" has made history, Rummy knows it and it bugs him. I reckon a six-or-seven day coalition walkover would have been much more dangerous to global security in the long run. There are plenty of chances for screw ups (before the war's end or afterward). And if bad weather were to ground US air support for a few days, I wouldn't be surprised if Satan's boyfriend launched a counteroffensive if only to keep his diehard forces' morale up.
So perhaps there is a silver lining to the past week's events: the next time brilliant "defense policy" advisors come up with an amazing scheme to rearrange the world order at little or no cost, politicians, generals might join citizens in plucking up the nerve to ask: "Is your war really necessary?"