Iraq the TragiQomical

Of course. The Wages of Obamakles.
The Dem Doctrine of Preemptive Surrender

Relax, Obama...

Fragging

Obamakles Contra Petraeus

Well, of course. Who is Petraeus to think he has the right to deny The One the chance to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory?

Now, now, Pepe, take your meds

The Sunni Days May Be Over...

This is good, but full benefit from the article requires that all three pages are read. Can you guys handle that?

Distilled excerpts:

During my 15th trip to Iraq in August, for the first time I didn’t hear a shot fired. In several cities, I walked into markets with only a few American soldiers, and was immediately surrounded by Iraqis eager to talk about the economy, security, politics, whatever.

Normality? Nowhere close. Concrete barriers (designed to restrict the flesh-ripping radius of suicide bombers) were still in place, enclosing neighborhoods in Baghdad and a dozen other cities. Car bombings and criminal kidnappings persisted, as did battles against disparate al-Qaeda cells and Shiite insurgent gangs incited by Iran. Still, Iraq was not engulfed in civil war. The Sunni resistance had largely collapsed.

...The Awakening would not have started if the Americans had remained robo-cops, operating from bases apart from the population. Instead, the Americans on the western front were out among the people. Sattar knew the American leaders by name. The Americans parked a tank on his front lawn to protect him. I asked Sattar, later assassinated by AQI, if the turnaround in Anbar could not have come years earlier, and saved much grief. He thought for a moment, then said no.

“We Sunnis had to convince ourselves,” he said. He was the most remarkable leader I saw in Iraq.

Hitch understandably lauds Wolfie...

...Iraq should pay for its own reconstruction. But, just before we all join hands on this obvious proposition, may we take a moment to apologize to Paul Wolfowitz? Of all the many slanders hurled at this advocate for Iraq's liberation, probably none was more gleefully bandied about than his congressional testimony that Iraq's recovery from decades of war and fascism could be self-financing. Now the opponents of the intervention are yelling that Iraq ought to be opening its bulging wallet right away.

Perfidious Albion

Are the British becoming more like the French?

Pepe will have a conniption fit

US now winning Iraq war that seemed lost: Easy, Pepe, easy. Take some smelling salts.

Bring it on

How to look at the same story as Pepe brought up a few days ago, but from the opposite angle.

Where is Buck Turgidson when we need him?

Bad Coffee Up to this Point: No Wonder They're Killing Eachother

Battle Basra

A U.S. warplane strafed snipers in the southern city of Basra, killing at least 16 suspected militants after Iraqi troops came under heavy fire, the American military said... An AC-130 gunship then opened fire on enemy positions on three roofs.

That's gonna leave a mark.

Aahhh, those MSM scare quotes...

Cook On FCP's "Kinetic Energy"

Captain Cook's March 1st, 2008 Newsletter Update:

An insurgency by definition is a political struggle to overthrow an existing order or government in a country. While there are diehard Al Qaeda fighters like Noman Jawar who will never stop fighting, a vast majority of those who were once fighting us in our area are looking for a way to stop fighting. Through a series of painstaking meetings and negotiations with local leaders, we are developing a formal program to provide for a cease fire with all those that wish to turn themselves in. In exchange, those who have not committed crimes against innocent Iraqis will be granted amnesty and allowed to return to come out of the shadows, and become law abiding citizens in their community.

The other day, I attended a town hall meeting where one of the former spiritual leaders of the insurgency in the area made a passionate speech to the people to lay down their arms and join him in the reconciliation process. He was the original person that I met with to start this process. His willingness to take a public stand in favor of reconciliation was important, but it also put him at great risk with his former friends. I count his willingness to come out publicly in favor of reconciliation as a very positive sign that this process might bear fruit.

Note: the pic is of a different scene than the one Cook discusses above.

Kinetic energy

A major assumption of previous U.S. commanders in Iraq had been that "kinetic" operations--the favored neologism for "combat"--were counter-productive, producing more resentment and more insurgents. They emphasized the need to win hearts and minds and to avoid alienating the population. While major combat operations generate resentment among the population, and may encourage indigenous forces to become dependent on outside assistance, Petraeus and Odierno recognized that such problems pale in comparison with allowing the enemy to control key terrain and attack targets at will. Duhhh... I mean, do you need to be a military genius to understand that, in war, an Army needs to conduct combat operations?

Letter to MFT's Soldier Bro-In-Law

Below is the letter to my bro-in-law who happens to be on his second tour in Iraq. I thought I'd share it with the rest of you FCP'ers. Enjoy.

This morning I just received your mailing address from [my sister]. Sometimes I'll be watching those war movies (like "Band of Brothers"), and when mail call comes and a soldier doesn't receive anything I think, "Man, that really sucks..." But don't think of this as some sort of pity mail, either. No sir. I'm glad to communicate what it is I've been up to since Christmas and shoot it over to your Mesopotamia locale. I can veil my mild form of egocentrism as a letter to my brother in law. Neat, eh?

Okay. On with the letter. I'm in my last week of a 2-week notice, and it's getting kind of late. But who gives a shit, because as I already said, I'm in my last week at [work], and what are they going to do if I show up a bit late in the morning? Right, they are going to wish that they were so cunning as to have slept in an extra 1/2 hour on the grounds that they stayed up to write their bro-in-law a letter. I won't tell them I was drinking cold beer the entire time, but sometimes those minor cold beer details just crowd a story. Like I said, on with this damn letter.

I traveled to Mongolia. That's a bit succinct for a one month tour, I know. I made several journal entries though, and I have yet to go back and re-read them. By the end of my month in Mongolia, I was craving an American cheeseburger. I'm going to grill you a great damned cheeseburger upon your return. You're just going to have to accept that. If you have any other soldier buddies who enjoy good cheeseburgers, invite them too. But first check with [my sister/your wife], because I don't know how many I should invite over into your guys' house. Back to me, though: I had Dad drive me to a good American cheeseburger joint just after retrieving me from the Bismarck airport upon my Mongolian return. It was great, but enough about cheeseburgers. Back to Mongolia.

Just next door to my friend's apartment flat in Ulaan Bataar, Mongolia, lives a couple of U.S. Marines. I think the U.S. has a military interest in Mongolia. George W. Bush was over there some years ago to promote democracy. The Mongolians gave him a horse, or something like that. Mongolian horses have short, stout legs compared to American quarter horses. So if we ever see pictures of G.W.'s Crawford ranch, and we notice an unusually short horse, there's a good chance that it's a Mongol one. I only met one of the U.S. Marines in Mongolia, and his last name was Quarter. Thus, he went by "Quarter." Nice guy, although my friend said he heard two Marines arguing at length with one another a couple days back. They must've worked it out. Whatever.

Mongolia is really f#cking cold in January. Believe me. Even colder than North Dakota, and certainly colder than Winnipeg. Yet the body reached a certain pain plateau from cold, and although it got even colder, the body only allowed for a certain amount of pain. I called it the Cold Pain Threshold. This is merely theory, of course, and since we ducked into warm places [pubs] every couple blocks, it's difficult to say whether the beer was acting as bio-antifreeze, or whether the Cold Pain Threshold was reality. Hold on, I need to grab one more cold beer... ... ...--...

Alright. I really wanted this letter to be so much more. But we just have to work with what we got. I'll get this in the mail, and start composing another ASAP. I'm scheduled to be down in Vegas the first three days of March. More details on that when they unfold. Until then, cold beer and cheeseburgers on me upon your return.

Sincerely,

~mft

Back to Mesopotamia and Reconstruction

Okay, politics at home can fuck off for a while. Back to our band of brothers and sisters on the front. The link above directs you to an Atlantic piece about how Iraqis turned on al Qaeda, and how local, grass-roots politics is necessary for Iraq to hoist itself and stand on its own two feet. That is happening. See this singular excerpt that serves to symbolize a growing trend:

"We Sunnis had what we call sahwa, an awakening," Dr. Mouyad [an Iraqi] said. "An American soldier was blown up outside my windows. My children were screaming. I said, ‘Enough!’ You Americans had your own awakening. No more rough stuff. It’s good here now. We’re together—American soldiers and my neighbors. It’s the [Iraqi] government that needs an awakening."

And another excerpt:

"With Americans, things improved," he [former local insurgent leader, Abu Abid] said. "We are a victory for the Iraqi government, but they won’t support us. We don’t want to be left out. If the Americans leave us, it will be a disaster."

In the more personal sense, my bro-in-law arrived in Kuwait with the rest of his MP company not long ago, another small outfit to help expedite this broader procedure. The most recent newsletter told of how before arriving in Kuwait, they spent the last 70 days training 16 hours/day at Ft. Dix in New Jersey. Now they are training in Kuwait, and will get just a bit of R&R before heading to kick some ass and help the locals in Iraq.

Professor-General Petraeus continues to do a stand-up job. Maybe when he's done cleaning up Iraq, he'll consider being our 21st Century "Ike," much to Planet Pepe's shagrin. Hats off to our soldiers, once again.

And now these Turkeys are doing shit like this...

Investigative Work in Iraq with Cpt. Cook...

18 December, 2007

We are settled into our forward combat outpost... near the ancient ruins of the Assyrian capital, Ashur, along the banks of the Tigris River... Over the past year, our Troop trained really hard for the worst case scenario, which is constant gun battles and other intense fighting that often times erupts in a counterinsurgency campaign. We prepared for this contingency because you always need to be ready for such worst, but our area of operations right now is in line with the general trend across Iraq since the surge: a slow, methodical campaign to uproot insurgent networks that operate a lot like a mafia family would. It is a painstaking process with a lot of emphasis on investigative work. Fortunately, our police training with the Austin Police department’s organized crime division is paying huge dividends in this type of campaign. We use force when we have to, but we are finding that more often restraint and forbearance pays far more dividends in winning over the population to our side.

Uh-oh! Looks like AA and AI might need to modify their Sherman-esque approach?