Random Thoughts

In my 24 July post, I said that we should wait for Gen. Petraeus’ September report and that, ”I guess that he will be honest in that report but he might also sugar-coat his report in the interest of the Commander-in-Chief.”

Check out this report, “Majority of Americans Expect Petraeus to Spin,” on a CNN poll and reported on IraqSlogger.

Though 47% of Americans may like Petraeus, a majority does not trust he will be forthright in his assessment to Congress next month. Fifty-three percent expect him to try to make things sound better than they actually are, according to a new poll released Thursday.

CNN Polling Director Keating Holland said he doesn't think the mistrust is directed at Petreaus as much as it is what he represents.

My own comment about sugar-coating came from my military experience that simply says one should defer to the wishes of your commander, in this case the Commander-in-Chief. The CNN polling director thinks the spin factor is based on mistrust of this Administration. There’s a subtle but important difference here, but it all comes down to the same thing – we’ve all formed our opinions before Petraeus informs us.

In that light, the poll “also reports that 72% of Americans say the September assessment will not have any impact on their opinion on the war, no matter what Petraeus says.” And that reminds me of a study I read about a few months ago that says that some 85% (or some other very high percentage) of Americans will not change their opinions even when presented with opposing facts, or words to that effect. We are addicted to debate and opinions and the Internet is fueling the addiction, but we are rarely affected by those debates, except maybe to get angrier. We listen but we don’t hear.

Yet I do believe that we change our opinions in the longer term. The great majority of the American public was behind this Iraq War until sometime in 2005 when repeated untruths and errors from the White House and Defense exceeded the public’s tolerance. That great majority is now very much against this war.

And I don’t believe the media is at fault. In fact, the common cry of media bias is tiresome at best. While I do believe most folks in the media are liberal, I don’t think the product is significantly liberal, except possibly ABC which has had frequent episodes of managing the news much like Fox News does all the time. No, this time the problem has been an arrogance of power that convinced this Administration that they could fool most of the people most of the time.

As long as I’m on this media kick, check out some really dumb reporting that Black Five found. This Iraqi woman found bullets that our troops used on her house. The problem is that the bullets are full rounds with casings intact. As Black Five notes, we must be throwing bullets now. Read the whole thing to find out this is not her first miraculous bullet find. Why the AFP (and the F stands for Financial) reported this can only be explained by unabashed dumbness.

Speaking of dumbness, you may be surprised that this also pops up in the White House. Check out Cheney’s 1994 explanation video of why we shouldn’t invade Iraq. It’s about the best summary of our current quagmire that’s ever come out of the White House. I’ve watched this video three times, trying to determine if it is a hoax. I certainly looks like it ought to be a hoax, but I guess it’s real.

Grim at the Black Five blog posted parts of a roundtable with Brigadier General Bergner (Army spokesman in Iraq) on August 9. Bergner was speaking about successes on the local level and Grim asked, “Do you think that the nature of Iraqi society is changing in this regard, that it's becoming more of a bottom-up society, a locally driven society?”

Bergner replied, “You know, that's a very good question, it's an interesting one, because on one level, it has been a centrally governed country, without question, but in this country the tribe, the family have always been the most powerful bond that the Iraqi people have felt. And so you have kind of a duality of centrally directed but, if you ask the people who they trust and who they want to work with, it's at the family, tribal and community level.”

The gist of all this seems to be some hope that the Iraqis will form a nation from the bottom up. Tribes will work together and form provincial governments. Blocks of Sunnis will learn they can work with blocks of Shias. The Kurds can work with anybody. Finally, all these groups will from a working Iraqi government.

Well, the very first step is certainly happening. Tribes in Anbar are joining to fight al Qaeda with the Americans. Kurds already have the semblance of an autonomous government. Shias of the Sadrist type provide security and run services within their enclaves. But doesn’t all this just bring them back to WWI times when the Ottoman Empire collapsed and internal warring followed? Britain tried to unify the country and had about as much success then as they are having in al Basra today.

The Yugoslavian experience is a recent example of what happens when a strongman is removed and a country united only by force and terror falls apart and proceeds directly to genocide. If one want other recent examples then check out the Sudan, Somalia, and other countries in that region. In those cases, the solution (maybe temporary) was partition. I’m still in favor of a soft partition in Iraq. A hard partition is where Iraq becomes three states. A soft partition is where three, mostly autonomous, regions join in a loose federation of economic interests (oil, mostly).

Ethnic maps show fairly well-defined regions of religious identity and tribal groups. Division along those lines is possible although any drawing of borders would lead to widespread relocations. But a huge part of the Iraqi population is already in refuge camps in Syria, Iran, Lebanon, and Jordan. The problem with even the soft partition is central Iraq, around Baghdad, where Shia and Sunni live together. If a soft partition seems workable then perhaps we should entertain the idea of U.S. troops remaining in that area and continue to do what they are now doing – separating the warring factions. We could call it the District of Baghdad or Baghdad, D.C.

I still intend to post on problems with the FM 3-24 counterinsurgency theory. I’d planned one more topic concerning the fine line between counterinsurgency operations and propping up unsavory governments. But as I prepare that post, other problems keep intruding. The sheer numbers of troops required may prevent our even considering future COIN operations. Also, I keep looking at the experience that FM 3-24 is based on and I don’t find a lot previous insurgencies that are like the religion-driven movements we are most likely to encounter. I need more think time.