"There Are No More Miracles"

What follows are the first three paragraphs from Trudy Rubin’s column in today’s Philadelphia Inquirer (registration required):

In early 1998, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Hugh Shelton, sent all of his 17 four-star generals a book called Dereliction of Duty. Then he summoned them to a breakfast at which the author, a young Army major named H.R. McMaster, described how Lyndon B. Johnson's top generals let the president bog us down in Vietnam without voicing their strong reservations.

One of the generals at the breakfast, Tony Zinni, who was then head of Central Command, recalled for me the chairman's firm words. "This will never happen again," Shelton said.

But despite internal grumbling about the administration's strategy for the Iraq war, most top brass have stayed silent. Now, some retired officers are speaking up.

I realize how difficult a call it is for these men to do this, because the moment they open their mouths and say anything that runs contrary to Bushco doctrine, they will endure the same fate as Gen. Eric Shinseki, as Rubin notes below:

Senior military officials had developed a contingency plan in the '90s in case of an Iraq invasion, calling for 380,000 to 500,000 troops. Rumsfeld said the plan was old and stale; Zinni says it was "living, breathing and dynamic," and was updated yearly. In 2003, the top Army general, Eric Shinseki, said several hundred thousand troops would be needed for postwar Iraq, but he was humiliated by Rumsfeld, sending a clear message to other military critics to shut up.

It bears repeating that the consequence of Rumsfeld’s arrogance, deception and incompetence is this, among other tragedies.

As I read Rubin’s story, I realized that these career military men have to do what they must given their time in service, and open rebellion against the civilian chickenhawks primarily responsible for the Iraq debacle both demoralizes the forces under their command and jeopardizes their own benefits and pensions. However, that still does not free them the duty to decry the madness of this misbegotten enterprise, and I also know that they don’t need me to remind them of that.

I know they want to hear about any possible successes in Iraq, as I and as every American should. That’s why, despite how I feel about the messenger, I was glad to hear this message about Tal Afar:

In last week’s issue of The New Yorker, author George Packer reported on the progress made to date in Tal Afar, as well as many other aspects of the war in the magazine’s typically thorough style, and now-colonel H.R. McMaster, formerly the commander of the Third Armored Cavalry Regiment, who Rubin referred to in her story, had a lot to do with it. As Packer reported:

The lessons that McMaster and his soldiers applied in Tal Afar were learned during the first two years of an increasingly unpopular war. “When we came to Iraq, we didn’t understand the complexity – what it meant for a society to live under a brutal dictatorship, with ethnic and sectarian divisions,” he said in his hoarse, energetic voice. “When we first got here, we made a lot of mistakes. We were like a blind man, trying to do the right thing but breaking a lot of things.” Later, he said, “You gotta come in with your ears open. You can’t come in and start talking. You have to really listen to people.”

And what of Rumsfeld? How well did he listen to reports of the insurgency that was forming after the spring of 2003, when Hussein’s statue fell in Fardos Square? As Packer reported:

“They didn’t even want to say the ‘I’ word,” one officer in Iraq told me. “It was the specter of Vietnam. They did not even want to say the ‘insurgency’ word, because the next word you say is ‘quagmire.’ The next thing you say is ‘the only war America has lost’. And the next thing you conclude is that certain people’s vision of war is wrong.”

The most stubborn resistance to the idea of an insurgency came from Donald Rumsfeld, the Defense secretary, who was determined to bring about “a revolution in military affairs” at the Pentagon – the transformation of war fighting into a combination of information technology and precision firepower that would eliminate the need for large numbers of ground troops and prolonged involvement in distant countries. “It’s a vision of war that totally neglects the psychological and cultural dimensions of war,” the office said. Rumsfeld’s denial of the existence of the insurgency turned on technicalities: insurgencies were fought against sovereign governments, he argued, and in 2003 Iraq did not yet have one.

I’m beginning to wonder if they ever will, as I’m wondering if people bleed, suffer and die whether or not their country is a fractured state of warring religious and ethnic tribes or “a sovereign government.”

Packer’s story continues with the effort of McMaster and his regiment to stabilize Tal Afar.

After McMaster’s (recent) offensive (to liberate Tal Afar), (Lieutenant Colonel Chris) Hickey and a squadron of a thousand men set up living quarters next to Iraqi army soldiers, in primitive patrol bases without hot water, reliable heat, or regular cooked meals. One afternoon, I walked with Hickey a hundred yards from his headquarters – past soldiers on guard duty warming themselves over a barrel fire – to the mayor’s office, in the Castle. The new mayor, Najim Abdullah al-Jabouri, is a secular Sunni Arab and a former brigadier general from Baghdad, who speaks no Turkmen, Tal Afar’s main language. The city was so polarized that the provincial authorities had turned to an outsider to replace the corrupt former mayor and win a measure of confidence from all sides.

On Najim’s wall hung a photograph of him with McMaster. The Mayor had written a letter to Bush, Rumsfeld and Congress asking them to extend the 3rd ACR’s deployment in Tal Afar for another year.

“If the doctor makes an operation and the operation succeeds, it’s not a good thing to put the patient under the care of another doctor,” the Mayor told me. “This doctor knows the wound, he knows the patient.” He added, “Hickey knows my children by name.”

I asked what would happen if, as before, the Americans withdrew from Tal Afar.

“What? No American forces?” The Mayor could hardly comprehend my question. “It will take only one month and the terrorists will take over. At a minimum, we need three years for the Iraqi Army to be strong enough to take control of the country – at least three years. You can’t measure the Army only by weapons. It’s building people too.”

Packer’s story also portrays our troops trying to train the Iraqi Army to hold Tal Afar acting with typical bravery and representing the very best of our country. It also told of what the Shiites have endured and are enduring from the Sunnis, including the cold-blooded execution by a Sunni of three Shiite men working in a butcher shop. As nearly as I can tell, no one is innocent over there, but I wonder exactly how the Shiites will react they, as a people, they finally say enough is enough.

This proposal from Lieutenant Colonel Majid Adbul-Latif Hatem, an Iraqi battalion deputy commander who Packer quotes about the future of Iraq, struck me as a solution proposed by the British during their empire days that had never really worked then either:

“…To get rid of the problems, we should divide Iraq into three parts: Sunni, Shiite, and Kurd. If there is one Iraq on the map, but inside the people are divided, what’s the point of being one? The people are tired of war and instability – they just want to live in peace, even by dividing. The time of Jesus and the prophet Muhammad is past. There are no more miracles.” And when asked about civil war, the answer was “At any moment, there will be war between the two sects.”

Even though some of this is “water wet, sky blue, yes we know now get back to telling us how lousy Bush is” stuff, I’d like to say something about Iraq (or at least patch together a post with the most reliable information I can find) that portrays what’s happening but also pays tribute to our fine men and women serving in this misery. And I also want to portray the deceit and murderous incompetence of the moral cowards that put them where they are.