I'd be happy to tell you exactly which Petraeo-Crockerian successes have finally registered, Mr. Bones, but Struthy does not make the task easy. The paragraph I have swiped from already goes like this,
| But despite these controversies about the military side, Gen. Petraeus has certainly had successes. And he is clearly frustrated that they have not been taken advantage of by the Iraqi political elite. And my strong suspicion is that the US officers in Iraq are also frustrated with the White House for not pushing the Iraqis harder on a political settlement. It is very hard to see what Bush's political strategy is in Iraq. The "surge" was never meant to be the objective but rather the means. |
"Despite these controversies" would be an odd way of itemizing Austerlitz and Jena and Wagram and so on in the case of Struthy's other hero, but in this case, it's all we got. Working backwards almost to the beginning,
| The US troop escalation, the strategy of paying Sunni guerrillas to join pro-US Awakening Councils, and the cease-fire with the Mahdi Army have brought down the grisly daily death toll from an average of 65 a day in the apocalypse that followed the February 2006 bombing of the Golden Dome in Samarra to between 20 and 40 a day more recently (it was 20 in January, 26 in February and 39 in the first half of March): [TABLE]. The first half of March has been disappointing with regard to casualties. There have been several big bombings in Baghdad, and over a dozen US troops have been killed in the past week. In fact a few weeks ago the Sunni Arab guerrillas blew up a meeting of the al-Anbar Awakening Council in Baghdad itself right under the nose of the US military. It is possible that the Sunni guerrillas had lain low during January, keeping their powder dry, with the intent of embarrassing Gen. Petraeus in his April congressional testimony. It is also possible that the various techniques the US military has deployed to reduce violence have reached their limit of effectiveness in the face of an ever-adapting enemy. And after all, the Sunni Arabs now have even more to avenge, since quite without meaning to the American surge somehow allowed a massive ethnic cleansing of Sunnis from Baghdad, with about a million of them now penniless and homeless in Damascus. |
The ‘controversies’ are easy to spot. Where are the Crockerio-Petrolaean successes, the splendid victories for Boy and Dynasty and Party and Ideology? Are we to count off "The US troop escalation, the strategy of paying Sunni guerrillas to join pro-US Awakening Councils, and the cease-fire with the Mahdi Army" Eins - Zwei -Drei, perhaps? That would be odd, when (1) EVS’07 is only a name for the whole campaign, and (3) the Rev. Señorito al-Sadr did not actually sign any cease-fire with the extremist Republicans, he merely unilaterally and preëmptively declines to clash with them. And even (2) that nifty Bribe-a-Tribe™ scheme has been described by the Dr. Gen. and the Party Proconsul themselves as the Baní Sahwa's own original notion, not one imported from Crawford. I daresay the B.S. (wouldn’t have)/(will not) keep it up unless their pensions are paid, but just comin’ up with some fundin’ is not much of a ‘success' to credit to an Occupyin’ Party run by Harvard Victory School MBA’s. Or to an alumnissimus of either Princeton University or the Mil. Acad., let alone of both.
After that, Struthy works through the columns of the New Baghdád Daily Bodycount, which I suppose is what the Dr. Gen. would mostly point to himself, success-and-victorywise. Struthy is scarcely trying to make his new buddy look good, though, he only pours yet more cold water into the braniac's blood soup the same way as every other day before today. The only faint lead-up to those flabbergasting words in the very next sentence -- "Petraeus has certainly had successes" -- lurks in the formula "the various techniques the US military has deployed to reduce violence have reached their limit of effectiveness," which acknowledges, about as vaguely as is humanly possible, that at some point in the past a certain reduction in violence took place. You wouldn't have heard about it from Struthy at the time, though, Mr. Bones. And speaking of time, sir, "That was then and this is now." (Plus have you noticed the Damascus refugee situation lately?)
Then comes the Great Swerve in the Ann Arbour Centre party line. After the confluence of Swerve and Surge comes this -- what the futz, why not swipe the whole megillah? and pick the nits in notes? --
| . . . Gen. Petraeus has certainly had successes. And [sic] he is clearly frustrated that they have not been taken advantage of by the Iraqi political elite.[2] And my strong suspicion is that the US officers in Iraq are also frustrated with the White House for not pushing the Iraqis harder on a political settlement.[3] It is very hard to see what Bush's political strategy is in Iraq. The "surge" was never meant to be the objective but rather the means. Gen. Petraeus isn't specific, but I can give some examples.[4] The Sunni Arab Iraqi Accord Front withdrew from the al-Maliki 'national unity' government last summer. The IAF is a coalition of three parties. Two of them say they are uninterested in coming back into the government. The third, the Iraqi Islamic Party, led by vice president Tariq al-Hashimi, is said to be seriously considering returning. Nothing has happened so far. In other words, it is still the case that al-Maliki's government is less successful at reconciliation with the Sunnis now than it had been last year this time before the surge had made much of an impact.[5] Sunni Arab provinces such as Diyala, Salahuddin and Mosul are still violent, and even al-Anbar, which has settled down, is not paradise. The Awakening Council model does not seem to have been successful outside al-Anbar and some Baghdad neighborhoods, and there is always the danger that the US is creating a powerful Sunni militia that despises Prime Minister al-Maliki as Iran's cat's paw. The Kurdish-Arab struggles in the north, the issue of Kirkuk, the terror activities of the Kurdish Workers Party (PKK)-- based in Iraq but hitting NATO Turkish troops in eastern Turkey-- and the Turkish incursions into and bombings of Iraqi Kurdistan, signal that the north is a powder keg. The unresolved issue of oil-rich Kirkuk and whether it will accede to the Kurdistan Regional Government is the other shoe in the Iraq crisis, which has not yet dropped but could at any moment. I have been told that Gen. Petraeus deeply disagreed with Bush's decision to share real time intelligence on the PKK with the Turkish government and to allow a major Turkish incursion into and bombing of northern Iraq.[6] Likewise, the Islamic Virtue Party (Fadhila) withdrew from the al-Maliki government last year. It controls the provincial administration of Basra. Its rival, the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq, staged a 5000-strong demonstration against the provincial government last week. Having bad relations between the federal center and the province of Basra is not good for Iraq, because Basra is the country's biggest export route, including for petroleum, which generates 90% of government revenues.[7] So you could understand how Gen. Petraeus, having sacrificed so much to get some sort of social peace in Baghdad that would allow some major steps toward political reconciliation, is frustrated that no such major initiatives have been launched and that Iraqi politics just seems to be stuck. It is worthwhile mentioning that what Gen. Petraeus said about the lack of political progress is the opposite of what John McCain has been saying. I am not saying that the contradiction is intended to be a political statement.[8] But I am saying that Petraeus has just revealed himself again to be a straight shooter of a sort that has been all too rare in the Iraq misadventure. |
As observed in the note, "what John McCain has been saying" amounts to a pronoun with no antecedent. But there is plenty of time before Inauguration Day, so probably Struthy will fill in that blank for us eventually.
Happy days.
____
[1] The Músae al-Sadr conference must be a great success, because S.C. has left its website in considerable disarray. The passage wherein the light is finally seen about the Doctor-General was probably posted on 15 March 2008 between 0100 and 0500 EDT.
[2] Struthy wastes not an instant -- you do gotta admit that, Mr. Bones! The scribble would have been more intelligible if he had wasted a few instants on the Dr. Gen.'s merely military accomplishments before hastening on to the political failures of the Imperial and Colonial GOP, but never mind that, when it is so extremely obvious what is going on here at last: Struthy actually thinks he can enlist General Braniac as an anti-Bushevik! (Was ever a hope so forlorn as that one?)
(Pardon my editorial tendencies, sir.) Fortunately for the schemes of Ann Arbour Centre, positive coöperation from the Doctor-General is not required. If it had been, Struthy would have been compelled on Dale Carnegie grounds to divulge some of the Crockerio-Petrolaean successes in detail, which I suspect he would have found it very difficult to do. maybe impossible. But in fact all Struthy needs to appropriate is the man's name and his uniform and, above all, his general reputation as a braniac. One might argue, though I shan't, that George XLIII has never required much more than that from his ole pal David.
Notice that Struthy considers it ‘clear’ that the Dr. Gen. is ‘frustrated’ with Little Brother and the chickenhawk high command.
[3] When it comes to the GZOC, "Green Zone Officers' Club," Struthy only ‘strongly suspects’ that they agree with him and his David. It's just as well that he lowers the hurdle a little, I'd say, because there are a number of signs that the braniac's underlings are not in total accord with his views on occupational therapy for the Big Party's semiconquered provinces.
"Not pushing the Iraqis harder on a political settlement" is perhaps rather your run-of-the-mill GZOC view than the subtle, élitist Petraeo-Crockerian and McNamario-Petraean strategies for prosurgency. Struthy is no military bird, after all, only a chickendove wannabe. The finer points of that particular brand of subtlety and élitism may well elude him, leaving him with your average General Joe's views about how a swift kick in the posterior might work wonders with poor M. al-Málikí. Struthy is at one with Ms. Sapientia Conventionalis in considering that gobs and gobs of Affirmative Action™ for the poor opppressed Arabophone Sunnis will set all things right in Peaceful Freedumbia some decade soon. I'm not absolutely certain that the Dr. Gen. knows better than that, but there are signs that he may. Party Proconsul Crockerius may get this point right by sheer accident, since it is poor M. al-Málikí's neorégime that he is credentialled to. ‘David’ ought in principle to be more independent, although his McNamarianity could produce a similar blinkerin’ effect -- the "host government" can do no wrong, &c. &c.
[4] Examples of what, pray? (Has a sentence dropped out here?)
[5] Struthy ("Juan Cole, considered as ostrich") and Sappy ("conventional wisdom, considered as folly") coincide in error, as it seems to me, here as with their unflagging Sunnocentricity. The phrases "government of national unity" and "national reconciliation" make them feel so swell they become incapable of paying adequate attention to what is really going on. But God knows best.
[6] Whatever ‘David’ may have thought, one can only infer that Struthy disapproves of the vigilante operation. The authentic opinion of the Doctor General would be of mild interest, yet since his sphere of martial law does not extend to Free Kurdistan, let alone to Turkey, there are limits to how much difference it makes.
As a political finagle by Ann Arbour Centre, an attempt at a joint Coleo-Petraean blow against the dimwit Crawfordites, this point is deeply unimpressive. Nobody outside the immediate vicinity cares about the PKK. Doubtless everything could fall apart in the northern provinces of the former Iraq, but until it actually happens, if it ever does, Struthy is just spinning his wheels in a snowbank.
[7] The Doctor General has dropped out of sight altogether at this point. One cannot even make out Struthy's own druthers as between the Virtutites and their Fedguv, only that something fort mauvais might happen in the southern provinces of the former Iraq also. At this point we have returned to normalcy after the Grand Swerve, because that is precisely the sort of "Just you wait!" thing that Struthy has been squawking about regularly ever since EVS'07 commenced. The thing's resemblance to the proverbial efforts of Ms. Chicken Little strikes me as unfortunate. BGKB.
[8] At this point we need the first sentence of Struthy's scribble, the only bit not yet swiped:
| General David Petraeus is quoted in WaPo as saying that no one, American or Iraqi , thinks that there has been sufficient political progress in light of the reduction of civilian deaths since last fall. |
Perhaps we had better check the elephant's mouth as well:
| Iraqi leaders have failed to take advantage of a reduction in violence to make adequate progress toward resolving their political differences, Gen. David H. Petraeus, the top U.S. commander in Iraq, said Thursday. Petraeus, who is preparing to testify to Congress next month on the Iraq war, said in an interview that "no one" in the U.S. and Iraqi governments "feels that there has been sufficient progress by any means in the area of national reconciliation," or in the provision of basic public services. (...) Petraeus insisted that Iraqi leaders still have an opportunity to act. "We're going to fight like the dickens" to maintain the gains in security and "where we can to try and build on it," he said. (...) "I don't see an enormous uptick projected right now," Petraeus said.... "What you have seen is some sensational attacks, there's no question about that." Petraeus said several factors may account for the recent violence, including increased U.S. and Iraqi operations against insurgents in the northern city of Mosul... and insurgent efforts to reestablish some of their havens in Baghdad. And Petraeus said U.S. commanders could not discount the possibility that insurgents "know the April testimony is coming up." (...) Petraeus said it would increasingly fall to Iraqi security forces and neighborhood patrols funded by the United States to help keep violence down. Petraeus also said the United States would temporarily freeze further reductions in its troop presence to allow for a "period of consolidation and evaluation after reducing our ground combat forces by over a quarter." He said he would discuss the length and timing of what the military terms an "operational pause" during his testimony. Petraeus credited both the mainly Sunni neighborhood patrols known as the Awakening and a cease-fire called by Shiite cleric and militia leader Moqtada al-Sadr with helping to bring down violence. (...) Petraeus conceded that some elements of both the Awakening movement and the Mahdi Army may be standing down in order to prepare for the day when the U.S. presence is diminished. "Some of them may be keeping their powder dry," Petraeus said of Mahdi Army members. "Obviously you would expect some of that to happen. The issue is, again," he continued, "how to sort of prolong what has been achieved, in just a host of different neighborhoods, villages, towns and cities, so that the Iraqi structures can continue to gather strength." Sunni fighters in the western province of Anbar who have joined the Awakening "are waiting for the next opportunity," not the next war, Petraeus asserted. "What they want to do is get more closely linked with Baghdad so they can continue to benefit from the enormous oil revenue wealth which is pouring into this country." Petraeus said he and U.S. Ambassador Ryan C. Crocker had "repeatedly noted that it's crucial that the Iraqis exploit the opportunities that we and our Iraqi counterparts have fought so hard to provide them." |
Struthy is "not saying that the contradiction is intended to be a political statement," -- the contradiction between what I just swiped and some uncited and unreferenced statement or statements issued by or on behalf of J. Sidney McCain.
Well, Carl von Clausewitz and thou and I can be a little more EMBOLDENED than that, Mr. Bones! The Dr. Gen.’s interview is ganz und gar politisch durchaus, yet not narrowly political for Boy and Dynasty and Party and Ideology. ‘David’ is here engaged in allgemeine Militärpolitik, so to call it, in a general background attempt to make the political world more secure for Mars and Bellona. There is at least a little something to be said in favour of that project, although Struthy is not likely to mention it.
In any case, the nature of the project is such as firmly to exclude the possibility of any genuine Coleo-Petraean Pact of Steel-Trap Minds. At Ann Arbour Centre the gentry do not want a world made safer for War, although I would not venture to claim that they have examined and approved all the implications of a world made less safe for war either. The whole issue remains virgin turf, as it were, for Struthy and Struthy's gang.
It follows at once that the genuine success of Dr. Gen. Petraeus of Princeton and West Point will not be visible from Ann Arbour Centre. To identify this success is easy enough: thanks to DP, the intational community have been reassured that Force often works, and, more specifically, (1) that the bigger battalions usually win, and (2) that Martial Law remains a perfectly workable notion. Sheer incompetence on the part of the Big Management Party had thrown these elementary and venerable notions into conceptual jeopardy. Now that the Doctor General has successfully rescued them, we ought to be grateful to him pro tanto.
The interview makes clear that he would like to go farther and achieve actual Success and Victory in Peaceful Freedumbia. That is another story altogether, and we need not pursue it here.
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