Ruminatrix
...more recent posts
Saturday, Apr 05, 2003
Baghdad surrounded? Not quite -- there are no US troops immediately to the north of the city yet. But it's a matter of time and US troops are staging rolling patrol reconnaissance raids within the city limits, primarily for psychological effect. Reuters cites a UK official: "US Tanks have gone into Baghdad to make it clear to the people that whatever the regime may say, coalition forces are advancing and there is a determination to see the job through". You can anticipate major media madness when the first US tanks become visible to the TV news cameras in downtown Baghdad.
Because it's largely a war of images, words -- "perceptions" -- now. There's a slipperiness to language in this Looking-Glass world.
i) Baghdad Radio claims some allied paratroops landed at the airport and are surrounded: that's propaganda, of course.
ii) US Central Command says it doesn't matter whether Saddam is dead or alive, or ever found: wishful thinking, at best.
iii) US troops claim to move "freely" in Baghdad: exaggeration, by any common definition of freedom.
Hysteria creeps into each side's claims: desperation on one side, giddy anticipation of victory on the other.
Both surrenders and desertions continue in and around Baghad. But Ba'athist militia, cadres and SRG bodyguards and secret police guys and cousins from Tikrit, of whom there are very many, probably don't have the option to just melt away into the civilian population. Never mind would-be "martyrs."
Lagniappe: Why a Lebanese cleric may be most important to the actions of Iraq's Shiite population and those of the mysterious Badr Brigade.
Tony hasn't given his word as a English gentleman, precisely, but:
"The one thing that I want to make absolutely clear is that at the end of this, Iraq is not going to be run by Americans or by Britons, or by any other outside power.That's pretty straightforward. So I would expect him to resign on principal if the US Government fails to take the same position.
"As soon as the process of transition is over, it's going to be run by Iraqi people and a broad, representative government, not a small clique, an elite around someone like Saddam."
Now Iraq's Information Ministry is promising "non-conventional action" in the defense of Baghdad -- sounds like fair warning of a "martyrdom" suicide attack to me.
Two topical items on disarmament, our casus belli: Some white powder has been found at one Iraqi site, Latifiya. "But a senior US official familiar with initial testing said the white powder found at Latifiya was believed to be explosives, AP reported."
Meanwhile, a report suggests the war could boost the sales of the defense industry -- in Russia. Yeah, makes sense. Remember how the Falklands war boosted interest in the Exocet?: "According to some analysts, there has already been a surge in interest for Russian weapons at the IDEX-2003 arms exhibition, the biggest in the Middle East, which took place on the eve of the war in Abu Dhabi from March 16 to 20."
Gotta go. I can quit any time, I know I can...
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.