[Comments indented.
Update: There is one thing Clark has to do before the '08 primary cycle begins. He has to run a competitive election. GHM: 14: p0(p0), 15: 8(0), 16: 267(12,13), 17:353(20,24,25),19:451,20:581.
EBW]
The Real Battle
Winning in Fallujah Is Just the Beginning
By Wesley K. Clark
Sunday, November 14, 2004; Page B01
Americans scouring news reports of the U.S.-led assault on the Iraqi city of Fallujah can be forgiven if they are experiencing a degree of confusion and uncertainty.
Air Force Gen. Richard B. Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, assures us that U.S. and Iraqi government forces are advancing steadily through the insurgent stronghold and that the assault has been "very, very successful." Yet even as troops move street by street through the Sunni city, the measure of their success is elusive. There's no uniformed enemy force, no headquarters, no central command complex for U.S. troops to occupy and win. At the end, there will be no surrender.
Instead, the outcome of the battle must be judged by a less clear-cut standard: not by the seizure and occupation of ground, but by the impact it has on the political and diplomatic process in Iraq. Its chances for success in that area are highly uncertain. Will Fallujah, like the famous Vietnam village, be the place we destroyed in order to save it? Will the bulk of the insurgents simply scatter to other Iraqi cities? Will we win a tactical victory only to fail in our strategic goal of convincing Iraqis that we are making their country safe for democracy -- and specifically for elections at the end of January?
I disagree with General Clark on the substance of his next two paragraphs. First, there are always parties advancing their pet "predicate condition", and elections could have been held at any time since George Bush snuck in and out of Baghdad late last November, when Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani wrote to the Iraqi journal al Zaman:
"Perhaps it would be possible to hold the elections on the basis of the ration cards and some other supplementary information."
Bush, Bremmer, Sanchez have had their moments of holding the "predicate condition" batton, which has morphed from the ration card voter id "problem" to a general security "problem" and now, with John Negroponte and Iyad Allawi holding the batton, the City of Mosques "problem".Once there is a "predicate condition", the only question of interest is who is holding the batton, not what the label on the batton is. The idea that Iraq can't find a legitmate government by direct elections while occupied by a foreign military power because one city isn't occupied hasn't passed its sell-by date, yet ... but ... it really means that there is no set date, and by extension, no exit. Wes Clark needs to reach down and find his 6th of June, his certain date on which elections will be held, even if it rains, no matter who gets wet, if he is to be President Clark.
Next, as I pointed out in Not to be contrary or anything ... but, "winning" in Falljua is wiffy. The US lost when political symbolism (see above) took precident over normal peace-keeping operations, and forces were re-deployed, long before the first shot was fired. It isn't any nicer that the political calculus that produced that decision could not anticipate that a major redeplyment to Falluja would enable opposition forces in brigade-strength to take Mossel in two days (Carter Ham) and stage over 100 operations in squad-strength or greater per day in central Iraq, weaken, or eliminate central Iraqi political participation in the election, or that operational errors of judgement (John Sattler) would create conditions generally meeting international standards for war crimes.
See also weathervanes.
Now that we have engaged, there cannot be any doubt about the outcome. It, too, is inevitable. U.S. forces don't "lose" on the battlefield these days. We haven't lost once in Iraq. Nor in Afghanistan. Not in the Balkans, or in the first Gulf War. Nor in Panama. We fight where we are told and win where we fight. We are well trained, disciplined and, when we prepare adequately, exceedingly well equipped. We will take the city, and with relatively few U.S. casualties. And we will have killed a lot of people who were armed and resisting us.
But in what sense is this "winning?"
To win means not just to occupy the city, but to do so in a way that knocks the local opponent permanently out of the fight, demoralizes broader resistance, and builds legitimacy for U.S. aims, methods and allies. Seen this way, the battle for Fallujah is not just a matter of shooting. It is part of a larger bargaining process that has included negotiations, threats and staged preparations to pressure insurgent groups into preemptive surrender, to deprive them of popular tolerance and support, and to demonstrate to the Iraqi people and to others that force was used only as a last resort in order to gain increased legitimacy for the interim Iraqi government.
Even the use of force required a further calculus. Had we relentlessly destroyed the city and killed large numbers of innocent civilians, or suffered crippling losses in the fighting, we most certainly would have been judged "losers." And if we can't hold on and prevent the insurgents from infiltrating back in -- as has now occurred in the recently "liberated" city of Samarra -- we also shall have lost.
The battle plan was tailored to prevent significant destruction. It called for a slow squeeze, starting with precision strikes against identified targets, and followed by a careful assault directed at taking out the opposition and reoccupying the city, while minimizing civilian and friendly casualties. We have superior mobility, with heavily armored vehicles; we have superior firepower, with the Bradley's 25mm cannon, M1A1 Abrams tanks, artillery and airstrikes; we have advantages in reconnaissance, with satellites, TV-equipped unmanned aerial vehicles and a whole array of electronic gear. But urban combat partially neutralizes each of these advantages. A weaker defender can inflict much punishment with only a meager force fighting from the rubble, provided they fight to the death. So this has not been a "cakewalk." This has been a tough battle, and the men and women fighting there deserve every Combat Infantryman's Badge, Bronze Star or Purple Heart they receive.
During the recent presidential campaign, there was a lot of talk about supporting our troops in wartime. And yet calling what's going on in Iraq "war" has distracted us from marshaling the diplomatic and political support our troops need to win.
"Support the troops" can't mean letting Iyad Allawi expend them to ensure the right cast of dubious characters form the next government in Baghdad and the 19 provinces. Translated into American, we've just medivaced a half of a battalion of head wounds and amputees to Landstuhl to ensure that Ron Paige's replacement at Education, and John Ashcroft's replacement at Justice, are NeoCons, not Goldwater Republicans or War-time unity Democrats.I'm not enamored with this next bit either. The primary agents of change in Iraq are Iraqis. How many battalion-equivalents is Syria supposed to have transit-facilitated? It has to be a number bigger than one to be militarily significant. Re-integration of Shi'i is just as likely to bring an end to wilayat-i faqih in Iran as it is to extend it to Shi'i Iraq, and more important than any number of Saudi clerics who begged for peace is the number of Shi'a clerics who didn't, Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani. Still, Clark concludes well after ritual utterances, that if Syria and Iran are already "in theatre", things won't improve.
The success of our military efforts in Iraq is thus directly connected to the skill of U.S. diplomacy in the region. Certainly neither Syria nor Iran could welcome American success in Iraq if they believe it means they'll be next on a list of regimes to be "reformed" by the United States -- and yet that's precisely the goal of American policy. Bringing about change in those countries should be a matter of offering inducements as well as making threats, but not if it adds to the danger for our men and women in uniform. We need to choose: continue to project a grand vision, or focus on success in Iraq. Not only the safety of our troops, but the success of our mission depends on a degree of Syrian and Iranian accommodation for an American-supported, peaceful, stable, democratizing Iraq. And we won't get that support if they think they're next on the hit list.
It is equally important to seek a resolution of the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians, which has fueled the recruiting efforts and determination of the jihadists we're fighting in Iraq.
Bravo. Linkage.
Which brings us back to some of the factors that made last week's battle of Fallujah inevitable: a series of circumstances and errors in 2003 -- an initial coalition occupying force too small to achieve dominance over a historically restive population, the lack of a skilled political corps to reorganize the local inhabitants, the proscription of Baathist participation in the early postwar recovery and the disbanding of the Iraqi military. Then there was the aborted April 2004 effort to subdue the city, in which an under-strength Marine assault was called off by the White House. A silly plan of turning the city back over to a thrown-together Iraqi force left the enemy in control of the battlefield and turned Fallujah into even more of an insurgent stronghold.
1. Don Rumsfeld "fast-and-light" was a mistake.
2. Bremer, Senor, and dozens of twenty-somethings from the Heritage Foundation was a mistake.
3. Chalabi was a mistake.
All good. Then Clark goes awry. The April battle of Falluja goes into the MOUT experience as a battle in which the attacker did not have 4:1 force superiority, did not have isolation of the defended urban area, did not attain defeat or surrender of the defenders within four weeks, and therefore lost. Dan Senor and above at the Whitehouse ordered the assault on Falluja, and absent the force, isolation, and time factors, guaranteed the attack would end by some means other than "victory". Bush didn't screw up by stopping the attack, he screwed up by ordering it in the first place.
Troops are in Fallujah only because of a political failure: Large numbers of Sunnis either wouldn't, or couldn't, participate in the political process and the coming elections. Greater security in Fallujah may move citizens (whenever they return) to take part in the voting; it's too early to say. But it's certain that you can't bomb people into the polling booths.
We should be under no illusions: This is not so much a war as it is an effort to birth a nation. It is past time for the administration to undertake diplomatic efforts in the region and political efforts inside Iraq that are worthy of the risks and burdens born by our men and women in uniform. No one knows better than they do: You cannot win in Iraq simply by killing the opponent. Much as we honor our troops and pray for their well-being, if diplomacy fails, their sacrifices and even their successes in Fallujah won't be enough.
Retired Army Gen. Wesley Clark served as commander in chief, U.S. Southern Command and later as supreme allied commander in Europe during the war in Kosovo. He was a candidate for the 2004 Democratic presidential nomination.
N.B. I supported Wes during part of the primary cycle, and set up the meeting between he and the Swanton Band of Abenakis. Ultimately I stood for Dennis Kucinich at the Maine Caucus and was selected to be a Kucinich Delegate to the Maine Democratic Party Convention. After I fulfilled that duty I switched to the Maine Green Independent Party.
Posted by EBW at November 13, 2004 08:05 PM | TrackBack