Mission accomplished:
The Bush administration was caught off-guard by the first Iraqi-led military offensive since the fall of Saddam Hussein, a weeklong thrust in southern Iraq whose paltry results have silenced talk at the Pentagon of further U.S. troop withdrawals any time soon.
President Bush last week declared the offensive, which ended Sunday, “a defining moment” in Iraq’s history.
That may prove to be true, but in recent days senior U.S. officials have backed away from the operation, which ended with Shiite militias still in place in Basra, Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al Maliki possibly weakened and a de facto cease-fire brokered by an Iranian general.
“There is no empirical evidence that the Iraqi forces can stand up” on their own, a senior U.S. military official in Washington said, reflecting the frustration of some at the Pentagon. He and other military officials requested anonymity because they weren’t authorized to speak for the record.
From the archives:
We are so fucked.
Z
Still, it shocks me that this guy got re-elected. How is it that people couldn’t see what a disaster he is? It is just so sad.
horatius
Damn. This thing cracks me up everytime I see it. It would have been really really fun if it wasn’t so tragic.
cleek
they just need some more training. another six months or so and we should start to see some real improvement.
bootlegger
No way, 3 months tops. They are so close we can almost taste it (smells like caca, tastes like caca, must be….). But I can guarantee they will be declared a success by election time.
b. hussein canuckistani
Four thousand dead, thirty thousand wounded and three trillion spent so that Iran could be the new power broker in Iraq.
There is no Lolcat that could express the Massive Fail we have seen here.
joe
I agree, training is the key.
Because of Iraq’s history, it has a severe shortage of adult males with military training.
That’s it, exactly. Once we fix that – actually develop the cadre of people trained in military and security work (skills which have been so severely lackin in Iraq over the past couple of decades) – it’s all downhill from there.
Ugh
Fixed
Punchy
This will be the most successful foreign policy endeavor ever attempted by the US, come the first week of October, 2008. Remember, they purposely put Iraqi elections at that very timeframe. Did I mention that US elections are only one month later?
If you’re smart, you’d buy stock in purple finger ink sometime soon. That stock is about to triple.
Zifnab
Tet Offensive anybody?
Jen
This is a result of the de-Baathification. Naveen Andrews can break a man’s neck using only his shins, but no, we didn’t want those guys.
sparky
if we (the US) are fucked, what of the Iraqis?
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
I love the smell of snark in the morning, it smells like… victory.
This idea needs to be hammered home again and again and again until it gets thru some thick skulls: the problem is motivation and legitimacy, not training. Who has been training JAM?
If the Iraqi Army can’t stand up in 2008 it is because too many of their recruits don’t want to stand up. In less time than the Iraqi Army has been under training we took boys out of cornfields and got them across the Rhine and into Germany.
If we could get the job done between 1942 and 1945, the IA has had more than enough time in this situation. They haven’t because collectively they don’t want to, and no amount of money or blood spent on our part is going to do anything to change this.
qwerty42
time to review “John Hodgeman’s Keys to Success” here. And, btw, if you wanted more – well, you’re a terrorist sympathizer. And you know what that leads.
Brachiator
Yeah, it’s a defining moment, but not one that Bush (and sadly, also McCain)understands.
This offensive may mark the moment when the US lost any ability to influence Iraqi affairs. Two critical things happened.
1. Even though Sadr’s forces were probably hit hard, they were able to melt into the surrounding area with their arms intact. If you cannot chase, follow and defeat your adversary — an adversary which obviously is either supported or at least tolerated by the populace — you can never achieve any military or political goal. On the other hand,Sadr is free to recruit new followers. And he can play this grinding game of attack and fall back again and again.
2. The Green Zone, despite all the hardened structures, make the US and supporting Western Forces into one of the biggest sitting ducks since Dien Bien Phu. That Iraqi insurgents could easily lob rockets into a location where US forces and Iraqi ministries are conveniently huddled together is starting to look like a really, really, really bad idea. Even though little serious damage has occurred within the GZ despite all the recent shelling, if the political tide seriously turns, it could lead to one of the messiest (and unnecessary) battles in military history. A little background on Dien Bien Phu, courtesy of Wikipedia.
I don’t have any doubt that US forces could repulse the Iraqis anytime, anywhere. But I hope that complacency and taking the Iraqis and their allies for granted does not lead to any monumental blunders. Unfortunately, the current administration is displaying all the signs of boundless hubris.
That the Iraqi forces can’t “stand up” is just the curdled icing on an already spoiled cake.
Wilfred
I don’t believe a single word this Administration has to say about anything to do with Iraq or any other part of the Middle East. Period. The “We had no idea” bullshit was only to provide cover if and when things went bad.
Teak111
And according to the Yoo Memo, perpetual war means perpetual absolute power for the President. Nice.
BigHank53
We are so fucked.
Oddly enough, that was my first statement upon hearing the Supreme Court decision in Bush v. Gore
Seems to sum up the last seven years pretty well, eh?
Robert Sneddon
Re: the Green Zone
The US training of the Iraqi Army has been consistent with British Empire historical practices — you don’t permit your native levies and Sepoys access to artillery. That remains the provenance of the White Man, and for good reason.
See “Ubique” by Kipling if you require further enlightenment.
jake
So was the moment when Napoleon said “Let’s go kick the Russians asses.”
Asshole.
Not to piss on the fires of fun, but ya’ll know those are kids in the video, don’t you?
lilysmom
Let me see… weren’t our tax dollars used to equip and train an army to stand up to the Russians in Afghanistan? That worked out SO well. Nothing bad came back to bite us on the butt from that one.
Idiots
Tsulagi
Just another byproduct of success.
That PT vid always cracks me up. No doubt these Iraqi special forces distinguished themselves during the Basra operation. They’d give themselves high-fives, but they always miss each others’ hand in the air.
Recently saw a vid of a crack Iraqi EOD team. There was a 155 round IED buried in a roadway. Maybe it’s in their field manual, but they might want to rethink using an AK barrel as a pry bar.
Bill H
As Keith Olbermann put it, They stand up, we stand down, they fall over.”
If we give the Iraqi Army heavy weapons and arty, we will be fucked because they will turn them on us. If we don’t, we will be fucked because without them they essentially have no Army and thus we need to to stay forever.
My plan is the old ploy of the crime drama movie. “I’m leaving now and I’m taking your guns with me. I’ll leave your guns, unloaded, in the parking lot. I’ll drop the bullets out of my car window as I drive away.”
montysano
Barbara Bush chuckled and said “Well, I think this has worked out very well for them”.
PaulB
Or on each other in the civil war that it still simmering.
Brachiator
Let’s review. Training is soooo hard. But Sadr’s forces can fight hard, stop fighting on a dime and resume the cease-fire, and fall back into the countryside, ready to fight again on command.
By any reasonable definition, this is a disciplined fighting force.
As ThatLeftTurnInABQ says, men and women don’t fight hard because they have been trained to do so. They fight hard when they feel that they have something to fight for.
Here endeth the lesson.
TenguPhule
John, it’s the morning after, you taste somebody else’s beer in your mouth and a small hill is snoring in your bed.
Fucked is an understatement of criminal proportions.
TenguPhule
Love that snark.
Indeed, once we train them to be good soldiers, they will be.
For the other side.
tBone
No one could have anticipated that basing Iraqi EOD procedures on old Benny Hill videos was a bad idea.
Rick Taylor
I’ve been feeling this way since November 2004 (with a brief illusionary bit of relief in 2006 when i foolishly thought the midterm elections might make a difference). You’ll get used to it.
Thanks for bringing back the Iraqi jumping jack video though; I needed a smile.
w vincentz
The underlying question bears an answer. Since Maliki launched the action in Basra (without American input), wherein the US military was forced to provide support, is there a conflict regarding who really is the commander-in-chief of the US military?
It looks very much like Maliki has assumed that role.
cleek
the fact that a huge percentage of the Iraqi army are actually Sadr’s men who refuse to shoot at fellow Sadrists puts a little wrench into any plans to use the army internally.
brendancalling
i love that video.
In a tragicomic kind of way.
w vincentz
“He who joyfully marches to music rank and file, has already earned my contempt. He has been given a large brain by mistake, since for him the spinal cord would surely suffice. This disgrace to civilization should be done away with at once. Heroism at command, how violently I hate all this, how despicable and ignoble war is; I would rather be torn to shreds than be a part of so base an action. It is my conviction that killing under the cloak of war is nothing but an act of murder.”
Albert Einstein