Cliff LyonEmergency Advice for BlackFive
BlackFive (Bill Matt Burden), founder and owner of the most popular MilBlog today will be on the Laura Ingram Show tomorrow.
Today he posted a public letter to Defense Secretary Gates admonishing him for not moving faster.
His reasoning?
Look, Osama, Sadr, Iran, Syria and everyone else on Haifa street knows that if a Democrat is elected President, that we’ll be out of there - leaving all of the peace loving Iraqis to die or be subjugated to severe Islamic law. We need to succeed before the eighteen month time table, and the only way we’ll have the time and energy to succeed will be to get Petraeus on the ground and working on the solution YESTERDAY.
G–dammit, get moving!
Cordially,
Blackfive
I’d just like to remind him that a republican president in ‘08 would also pull us out of Iraq.
So if it comes up on the Laura Ingram Show, I would say, “the next president will pull us out of Iraq”…or am I missing something.
Good luck. Laura is HOT!
January 16th, 2007 at 8:07 am
Let me point out that LTG Petraeus has enough experience in Iraq and enough knowledge of counterinsurgency (he headed the team that just re-wrote the US Army field manual on counterinsurgency operations) that he knows Iraq is a lost cause. Why did he take this assignment? My guess is, they promised him a fourth star.
January 16th, 2007 at 8:32 am
Petraeus’ been injured twice in non-combat accidents.
M-16 shot in the chest was removed by none other than Dr. Bill Frist before he became a Senator.
He was in charge of training the Iraqi Army from June of 2004 - September of 2005. Remember that failure? They sent him back to Fort Leavenworth, Kansas. He slapped his name on the field manual on counterinsurgency.
An arm chair, a little extra free time, limited combat experience, a nagging wife (daughter of Army General), free long distance and presto - you’re hired!
January 16th, 2007 at 8:44 am
This is a classic example of denial in the tribal mind.
With 70% of the American people against sending in more troops, imagine the numbers right around when the campaign heats up.
Its pretty hard to imagine anyone getting elected president who will not pull us out of Iraq.
What will BlackFive do when he finds himself to the right of the republican party?
I see a ’surge’ in neo-libertarian hypocrites.
January 16th, 2007 at 8:44 am
LT Jones - why do you say “He slapped his name” in that regard?
D’you think he had little to nothing to do with it, and just put it out over his signature?
Just curious.
And his non-combat injuries are relevant to the discussion in what way?
As for “training the Iraqi army failure” - do you have any real concept on how long it takes to create an army, a competent army, with a serious NCO corps, essentially from scratch?
Take a look at our Continental Army. That effort took years.
You can recruit and army pretty fast. But you have to grow the intermediate leaders. Combat accelerates growth (witness US forces in WWII for example) but to inculcate a useful culture in a years long process and it requires sustainment.
One of the things that gets me about this - from both sides of the spectrum - is why everybody actually thinks this stuff was going to happen fast, and if it doesn’t show stunning results *right now* it must be a failure?
January 16th, 2007 at 8:45 am
Good grief my fingers won’t spell today.
January 16th, 2007 at 9:02 am
Did Black Five really say “peace loving Iraqis”? Just what planet does Black Five come from? They obviously know little to nuttin’ about the middle east on planet Earth!
January 16th, 2007 at 9:05 am
John, do you recall that Donald Rumsfeld promised that Iraq would take less than six months?
January 16th, 2007 at 9:35 am
I wasn’t so interested in the injuries as the relationship with the worlds greatest neocon task master - Frist.
Peaces was put in command of a group that had been working on the counter insurgency manual for several years while Peaches was getting nothing done training the Iraqi Army.
If everything takes so much time, why did we go in in the first place?
If we weren’t prepared, why didn’t we go in with overwhelming force.
How much more time do we need?
January 16th, 2007 at 9:38 am
Ah, Richard - you’re changing the subject on me. But I did open the door.
One of the reasons I didn’t support going into Iraq was I didn’t think we truly understood the magnitude of the undertaking. And that we weren’t likely to have the long term political stamina (even with the low casualties (by historical standards) we’ve taken - and, btw, low numbers (by historical standards) we’ve inflicted. Keep in mind my caveat, I’m speaking as a soldier here.
I’ve come to realize that many of those involved in the planning did understand. And the caveat. And they knew that the political opportunity was fleeting.
Add to that Rumsfeld’s penchant for a new way of war, one that was cleaner, quicker, cheaper.
It’s actually a very good style for a “smash and grab” style of war - but, as has become apparent (and I muttered about when it was going on) wasn’t good if you intended to hang around and try to change things, literally divert a culture to a new path. We actually knew how to do that - we did it for Japan and Germany. But the culture of Iraq was actually far far different, and that model would have had problems.
Having been on the inside of the military beast, I actually believe that the senior policy makers, including the President, believed the intel regarding WMD.
Mind you - they believed it because they wanted to believe it. But trust me - nothing is *ever* as clear in foresight as it is in hindsight. And you can always find someone who was “right” on any given issue at any given time. It’s a great teaching example for “target fixation” in decision making. But it really doesn’t have to mean all the dark evil motivations that are ascribed to it.
Intel, especially as it goes higher and higher, gets more and more influenced by political shapers among the bureaucrats - many times for internal politics, not just Democrat/Republican politics.
But I’m digressing.
One of the things you’ll find me griping about on the blog is the fact that no one, Left or Right, in positions of power, will tell unvarnished truth. And that’s because we won’t let them.
We don’t like “Inconvenient Truths” and so will gravitate to those who tell us what we want to hear. Please, Cliff - Progressives as well as Conservatives. For all the same internal human reasons.
I don’t blame the politicos in that regard. It’s *our* fault. We put them there, and keep them there. *All* of us.
January 16th, 2007 at 9:48 am
LT Jones - now there we agree. Why didn’t we go in with overwhelming force. I’m still pretty Clausewitzian and Powell-like in that regard, not that I don’t catch grief for being old-fashioned.
I addressed, albeit not thoroughly, some of your questions above.
I also think we shouldn’t start things we aren’t going to be willing to finish. But the people at the highest echelons see things differently from those of us down in the trenches. I didn’t say better - I said differently. Hence one of the reasons I’m not a fan of the Federal Gov’t as the arbiter of all that is good and wise (of course, only when progressives are in charge right, Cliff? They’re the source of all that is evil when the conservatives have usurped power…). At the same time, people too close to the problem get target fixated and lose sight of the forest. Nothing is perfect, which is why I like divided government. Both sides have to compromise to the middle, which is usually a better overall outcome. Not always, but usually.
The Federal gov’t is an unwieldy tool at best - that many times tries to impose a New York template, or a Washington template or a San Francisco template onto a New Orleans, or Butte, or Denver problem, without accounting for the differences. But that’s a whole ‘nother discussion.
Have I missed something - I know that Petraeus was operated on by Frist when he was shot as a LTC, but are we really construing a cabalistic construct followed?
I live in Leavenworth, and work at the Fort. While what I do there is not germane to this discussion, but I do analytical work for the Army. From my perspective, LTG Petraeus was fully-involved in the manual’s preparation and staffing. He didn’t just sign the promulgation.
January 16th, 2007 at 10:03 am
John, thanks for the intelligent discussion. I’m at work, so I have to be brief. You’re right, the invasion of Iraq was apparently planned as a large-scale raid. The un-stated assumption was that Ahmed Chalabi would waltz in to Baghdad and take over where Saddam left off. That was before OIF morphed into a noble crusade for democracy.
BTW, I thrive on inconvenient truths and like to bust caps on propaganda. We’re allies.
January 16th, 2007 at 1:52 pm
John,
I sense shades of resignation in your world view. You’ve clearly been paying close attention, at least to the military machine.
I’d like to reflect for a moment on your comment:
John, I respectfully submit to you that in this case you are right, EXCEPT FOR THIS BUSH-REPUBLICAN ERA.
I come from an old political family. My grandfather was head of the reconstruction finance corp, rising to cabinet level position under Roosevelt; my uncle was Dir of NEH under Clinton, and my father a career in and around EPA.
The Bush admin has facilitated two major and very destructive changes that cannot be compared to anything in modern political history and which cannot be dismissed.
#1. The first is the unadulterated ideological proposition that to fully realize the neocon agenda republican power must be maintained in Washington at any cost for the long-term. To that end, we saw for the first time the implementation of a Stalinesque lock-step discipline from the executive (Cheney’s office) across the executive branch and the republican congress under girded by an unprecedented level of secrecy and collusion with a consolidated corporate (and media) community and wall street. Anyone who stepped out of line was destroyed.
The evidence is everywhere, from Joe Wilson to the pentagon. I’m sure you know that the classification of gov’t docs increased by an order a magnitude as did ear marks (rewarded for loyalty, denied for disloyalty), corporate subsidies (the Dept of interior has literally stopped collecting royalties from SOME oil and gas producers) and K the Street Project.
2. The wholesale conversion of every federal agency from professional career civil servants to political lap dogs, not just at the director level (which has been the tradition since the George Washington) but all the way down to staff. You can look at any federal agency and see high-level and lower-level positions once held by professional who served 3,4, and 5 presidents filled by political patrons and friends.
John, you simply cannot deny this reality or equate with anything you have ever seen in your lifetime. And we have only begun to see the extent to which these changes have penetrated every aspect of how gov’t functions – or disfunctions.
From the repeal of Clinton’s CAFÉ standards, Katrina, secret CIA prisons, the wholesale fabrication of WMD evidence, to the now overt attempt to repeal the constitution.
The debate over how the war is being conducted is really just noise.
Without trying to be provocative, when I quote MLKs words; “the hottest place in hell is reserved for those who in the a period of moral crises, maintain their neutralityâ€
…I am talking about YOU and anyone else who thinks they are being great patriots while superficially criticizing the president.
We are very much in a period of moral crises. You can always tell when people with lots to lose start speaking out.
My question to you John is, are you the sort of person who never moves much past neutrality?
Btw: I’m sending you my love and appealing to your deeper humanity. Is it working? :)
January 16th, 2007 at 2:35 pm
Briefly Cliff, what you describe the neo cons doing to offices, and positions in our Federal system is known historically now known as NAZIFICATION.
January 16th, 2007 at 2:43 pm
Saddam utilized a combination of of police force and readily available military of 500,000 to keep the lid on Iraq, and utilized brutality and terror in addition. We will need at least that to bring it under control.
So that isn’t politically possible, unless Bush assumes a Hitlerian mantle,
haul the hook, no don’t…cut and run, before we hit the rocks.
January 16th, 2007 at 4:47 pm
Cliff, I’ve worked within the Federal Gov’t as an employee and now as a contractor since 1980.
What you describe as the politicization of the government happened under Clinton, as well. I’m not in a position to argue details with you, but consider - your evidence comes from people discomfited by the entrance of a Republican administration, no?
Mine comes from those discomfited by the entrance of a Democrat administration. Anyone, from the SES positions up, is, and always has been, a political appointee.
I will grant you this - Clinton, in many ways, not least Jim Witt at FEMA, chose better people. And if Bush has a horrible fault as President, not least is his excessive loyalty to his people.
But if you think the teeth-gnashing when Bush took office was any more severe than that when Clinton took office - it’s only because you’re hearing your fellow-travelers doing the gnashing. I *still* think you have an enormous blind spot regarding the sweetness and light of your own side. And, as I admit we have trolls in caves on my side, you use that against me, in a sense, by suggesting that it actually reinforces your argument when I see no such thing.
Something else you need to know about me, Cliff. I didn’t favor what we did to Kosovo, either. For many of the same reasons I didn’t favor what we did with Iraq. And there are many parallels between the two operations (no, they are certainly not identical, let’s not get mired in that sort of argument) from no UN mandate, to Security Council disapproval, etc. A big difference in outcomes is simply because Kosovo and Bosnia don’t have a Syria and Iran equivalent nearby, and Russia at the time felt they had more to gain by tacit cooperation than by confrontation. Iran feels no such need.
I didn’t favor what we were doing - but I followed the legally given orders, as my duty as a sworn officer of the armed forces required me to do.
And consider well this statement “My question to you John is, are you the sort of person who never moves much past neutrality?”
When you pose it to people like me - on active duty or no (and since I’m a Regular, my commmission is still in effect, just in the Retired Reserve) - do you *truly* want those who literally command the instruments of what is termed the “state’s right to legitimate violence” to decide which orders and policies they will or will not obey? Do you *really* want me to do that? How about the TAG of Idaho, who actually, right there in Boise, effectively commands one of the largest concentrations of combat power in the United States - do you want him deciding what orders he will or will not obey?
I will voice my opinions right up to the point my bosses make the decision. Then, as long as they aren’t giving me orders that are obvious Law of Land Warfare violations I am duty bound to salute, and turn around and execute to the best of my ability.
To expect me to exercise the citizens right of continual protest, whining, wheedling, and cajoling, is not really what you want me, as an officer of the Armed Forces to be doing.
Neutrality? I said I was against starting the war.
I am for finishing it. But where you and I disagree at the moment is - how to finish it.
And now you’re mounting the altar and preaching at me that because I don’t agree with what you have decided is Meet and Good, slap at me with “the hottest place in hell is reserved for those who in the a period of moral crises, maintain their neutralityâ€.
I’m not maintaining neutrality.
I’m for changing the course. And I’ve been critical of the course we’ve taken thus far in many ways.
But please, don’t wave MLK at me just because you’ve decided you’re right and therefore all who don’t agree with you and march to your beat are going to go to hell.
Nice rhetoric, but inapt.
January 16th, 2007 at 7:39 pm
Excellent discussion. J of A - you are a welcome addition!