JOURNAL: Decision Loop Test

The Petraeus team's attempt to try to (at least temporarily) change the game in Iraq's Anbar province by arming some tribes against the ISI (the loose Islamic State of Iraq) looks like it is already over. A significant failure in security allowed a suicide attack in the Mansour hotel lobby that killed key leaders (made critically important due to the imposed hierarchy deemed necessary to create a single Sunni "front") of the "Anbar Salvation Council." In parallel, there are rumors of bitter rivalry and that a tribal leader absconded with $75 m in US money given to fund militia development.

Comments

[Russell120]

The mayhem is pretty awsome:

http://tinyurl.com/yr8u7y

http://tinyurl.com/3xkwxb

Between the two accounts it's not real clear who sent the bomber. Given that he made it through three check points, I am guessing Prime Minister Nouri.

[MaYHeM]

Pessimism certainly sells print, doesn't it.

[adam]

Ah... The old people that fail to believe sufficiently are pessimists argument. Its a half day today so a bit of cheering up is in order. For Iraq today is probably enough to simply note that things are going to get worse before they get a lot worse.

(joke: How does an optimist keeps from becoming a pessimist? Denial!)

And now a quick trip over to the Devils Dictionary - a tome that, in my opinion, every office should have access to and every child be offered the opportunity to learn from at school:

Pessimism (n): A philosophy forced upon the conviction of the observer by the disheartening prevalence of the optimist with his scarecrow hope and his unsightly grin.

Cynic, n: a blackguard whose faulty vision sees things as they are, not as they ought to be.

[MaYHeM]

One can always tilt one way or the other through perspective. Myopic perspective is a human condition. The mind is set and sees what it will.

"- Mid-day on Friday, Muhammad Al-Daini (the chief judge of what is known as the Islamic State of Iraq) was killed during clashes that took place between two armed groups at Mustafa neighborhood in Baquba (50 km north of Baghdad), resources from Diyala Salvation Council said."

"Our guys are winning. Al Qaeda is about to be strangled and pummeled to death in this town, "

"No Significant Spike in Violence Following Latest Askariya Attack"

There is no shortage of reporting directly out of Iraq, from objective independent reporters that seem to counter this pessimistic view continuously held here.

To take a single incident and claim it illustrates the failure of an operation still in its infancy is absurd and short sited.

Countless positives can be found, next door to the very same single report that has been leveraged to vault forward a perspective that is as biased as it comes.

The world maybe lost, but Iraq is not.

[Barry]

"Our guys are winning. Al Qaeda is about to be strangled and pummeled to death in this town, "

If I had a dollar for everytime that Bush officials predicted an imminent victory in the next Operation This Time Onto Berlin, I'd be rich.

[adam]

Barry,

Heh. You said it better than I could.

Mayhem.

Lets look at the first quote. The other two are so broad as to be meaningless.

On the face of it, it is another piece of happy-clappy nonsense. You haven't sourced it, but on checking my notes its from McClatchy Washington Bureau. The item immediately below it is:

"Around 10 a.m., a mosque called The Bright Ten was bombed by gunmen who planted explosives inside the mosque. Part of the mosque was destroyed."

Still, some good news is better than no good news eh? Even if we're being pretty selective. That said all the note says is that someone we've never heard of has died. Its been reported as fact by a group that the US paid $75 million in cash and equipment to in the last 3 months (back in Saddams day the entire intelligence operation among all the Iraqi Sufis cost $1m a year, so inflation is pretty steep). We can surely trust them not to lie for the money.

Ah, Wait. Hang on. Lets look a little more closely at this micro-story. Its set in Diyala province the scene of so much violence from "The Surge" (TM).

The reality is that the insurgents in the Sunni neighborhoods of Baquba are getting lots of support. For some reason the Sunnis in Baquba think that the troops sent by SCIRI and the US mean to ethnically cleanse them. Funny that, given that prior to the current operation ("Arrowhead Ripper" - who comes up with these names? Hasbro?) the previous Iraqi government military commander (5th Division, Shi'ite) got caught helping the Shi'ite militias and their death squads with little things like training, support, ammunition, equipment, buildings, personnel, wages...

So, for that matter, did the (Shi'ite) head of the police. The first "terrorist" attack was on a Shi'ite police station, in a Shi'ite area - probably as a revenge attack, its hard to be sure.

So there's a certain amount of animosity among the Sunni majority in the city against the Shi'ites. Not unreasonably being faced with being tortured to death the Sunnis in Baquba formed local militias, and made alliances with Baathists and Salafi Jihadi cells. Baquba's Sunnis were very upset at the death sentence on Sadaam and they protested in the streets (and before people start babbling about how that makes them Al-Quaeda, Sadaam had no links to the group and was a secularist like most Sunnis). As Ben Franklin said if we don't hang together we'll hang separately. For the people of the US Saddams hanging was an enjoyable intermission something to say how nice it was that their former ally was dead; for the people of Baquba it was a quite reasonable presentation of their future: slow death at the hands of mocking Shi'ites.

So its these self-defence militias, Baathists, and Salafists that the Americans label Al Quaeda for home grown-US propaganda. In other words the US, with their Shi'ite allies, have eventually managed to crush a bunch of people that were worried that they'd be killed - by the US's new SCIRI Shi'ite allies. Ah, welcome to civil war.

The sad reality is that killing insurgents today will make simply new guerrillas of their remaining brothers, cousins and half-cousins. It gets better - the US general in charge of "Arrowhead Ripper" said that 80% of the insurgents left before the net was closed. Which means that a lot of people now have personal reasons to kill Americans and experience to do so.

So we're back on the Iraqi roundabout that we've been on since 2003 and will continue to be on until someone gets their act together.

Now, how precisely does the death of a judge help the situation? Realistically he may or may not be involved in anything. At the most optimistic he's one of the 3-member councils of the Islamic State of Iraq that lead the war-fighting groups. Alternatively, less optimistically, he's one of the 5-member advisory councils. Both offer other people to replace casualties instantly. The thing about guerillas is redundancy and strength in depth.

In other words, where precisely is the good news? Someones dead, they were quickly replaced, nothing else changed. Oh, except that more people hate us and SCIRI are in a better position to create their Islamic state in Iraq. Hooray.

[MaYHeM]

You may be educated in guerrilla/military tactic but you see nothing past the tip of the rifle.

I suggest you visit and see first hand, before churning out the typical MSM inspired bleak depictions.

To close this episode in futility I have insisted upon perpetrating on myself, an Iraqi poem.

By Ali
Two years now and "they" still wonder
And "they" still ask Was it worth it?
Was it right?
Two years and it seems to me Like it was yesterday
Two years and "they" keep trying
To silence the voice inside us
Yet it only grows louder

I was once free When I was a kid
But when I grew up
I couldn't be the man I am
I couldn't be the kid I was
And I couldn't flee

Two years since I finally became
The man in me, and the kid in me.
And "they" want to take this away?
"They" would have to kill them both first
The man and the kid
And turn the clock back around
And still "they" can't change me back

Two years since I stopped weeping
Inside of me, day and night
Two years since the widow
Found her husband's body
In a feast of death for the human death lord.
Two years since the orphan
knew Where his father lied
And now they finally have peace
And they have a future
No matter how painful it is to go on
And their dreams still go on

Two years since I started dreaming
Dreams that have a chance
And are becoming true
Two years since I regained my heart
And then I found her...
And she found me...
And the world looked beautiful!
And "they" think they can separate us?!
Think again, or keep wishing.

"They" say we are being slaughtered
"They" say we are being abused
Am I blind or are "they" the ones who are sightless?!
As why can't I see what "they" see?
And the best "they" can offer of their view is Maybe I'm a CIA?
Or maybe the other "they", that of their accusations is paying me?
But who is their accused and rumored "they"?
Oh, the accusers have so many names for this other "they".
Sometimes they're the CIA
Sometimes they're the NSA
Sometimes they're Bush and the gang
I say, yes they exist and they "pay" me, and I'm seduced.

I see with my own eyes this other "they"
And I call them simply, Americans.
What are they paying me?
Oh, you couldn't afford that!
Saddam couldn't afford it.
Sadr cannot afford it.
"They" think any of these can?
Could their "they" even try!?

Two years and some are still
Trapped in the past
And some cannot withstand the moment
And want to arrive without struggle to a better future
While others just enjoy what is already better now
And work to meet the future, bettered with them.
Two years and they ask
Should I be grateful?
Am I?
Do I even need to answer that!?
YES, and to the last breath!

[adam]

Gosh, its been a little while since I saw that one. It was in vogue about 18 months to 2 years ago on some of the way-out-there American pro-war far-right weblogs, I guess its coming back. I note that you've run out of actual good news.

While I'm not completely thrilled at the concept of replacing examining hard-headed reality with poetry, I guess that this is the same happy-clappy Republican kiddie basis that saw the CPA run Iraq into the ground, so maybe its justifable.

But the name "Ali" tripped something in my memory. I wonder if this is the same "Ali" - an Iraqi dentist-blogger - who said in 2006:

"I wanted to say something about the elections results ... I think there were huge violations and a fraud especially in the south and the north. This elections will cost Iraq and whoever decides to stand by her side at least 10 more years of suffering. The worst thing is that it could have prevented if some of us at least had paid attention to the real danger."

Answer - yes. Its the same man. He seems to have developed slight doubts about progress in Iraq between writing the poem and last year. I wonder why that might be?

Ali used to run the afreeiraqi weblog which seems to have gone offline since I last looked at it. The poem was originally posted there before being taken on by the far-right US weblogs. My badly written notes say that he and his brother(s) used to run Iraqthemodel, a light-years-out, far-right, anti-Islamic, pro-US weblog which - according to some commentators - operated out of the well-known Iraqi town of Abilene, Texas. This created a certain amount of doubt about their political positioning and who was paying for it. Lets just say that their political views would not be popular in, say, left-leaning, Islamic Iraq. I noted at the time that their "sidebar" was all Republican - I have no idea if that is still true.

A final word from Ali, dated December 2005:

"We got out of Saddam’s prison and got in a new one with a ‘democratic’ door.. Dreams will never come true as long...Iraq is far away from being free."

So even your poets agree with me. Bit awkward that.

[MaYHeM]

You are asserting the fact that there is violence and no resolution there of that things are decaying not improving. No I don't think he agrees with you on that and neither does CETCOM or anyone else in a place to make an appropriate judgement on that face.

The U.S. troop surge in Iraq is forcing Al Qaida to devote even more resources to that battle--resources that might otherwise be allocated to attacks in western Europe and the United States.

But the bad news doesn't end there for them. The loss of Al-Anbar Province as a logistical and operations base was a devastating set-back for Al Qaida. Recent clearing operations in Dialya are having a similar effect, and American troops are now moving into terrorist safe-havens in the Baghdad security belts. While the battle for Iraq is far from won, Al Qaida finds itself increasingly on the defensive, in areas that were once terrorist sanctuaries.

In Afghanistan, the Taliban's spring offensive never materialized, despite the availability of training and support facilities across the border in Pakistan. Instead of taking the fight to NATO, Al Qaida's Afghan allies found themselves squarely on the defensive, taking heavy casualties from aggressive U.S., British, Canadian and Dutch incursions into terrorist regions. The success of recent NATO attacks has prompted a change in tactics by the Taliban, who are now relying more on suicide attacks that sometimes cause significant civilian casualties, but accomplish little else.

Earlier this year, Al Qaida also suffered a major setback in eastern Africa, when Ethiopian troops, backed by U.S. airpower and special operations forces, routed the Islamic Courts in Somalia. The expulsion of those militants from Mogadishu effectively dashed Al Qaida's hopes for re-establishing a major terror base in the region.

Collectively, these defeats suggest a terrorist network that has--at best--achieved a bloody stalemate with the U.S. and its allies. And, that lack of progress affects other, critical aspects of terrorism, most notably fund-raising. Successful tracking and prosecution of Al Qaida's financial networks has made it more difficult for sympathizers to give money to the cause, and with the lack of apparent progress in Iraq, Afghanistan, Africa and elsewhere, some donors may be re-thinking their contributions.

In short, Al Qaida is in something of a squeeze.

Anything short of the assessment that we are in fact making progress is willful disillusion. Proposing that this world war should have been fought and won by now, is historically blind.

[londamium]

Mayhem

Unfortunately, your assertions bear little relationship to reality.

A quick glance at coalition fatalities in Afghanistan reveals that in Jan-June this year there were 94 deaths; in the corresponding period in 2006 there were 65 - that's a near 50% increase this year. Afghan security force and civilian deaths have also escalated. It would appear that there has indeed been a Taliban spring offensive - it's just not the one that NATO was anticipating.

Suicide bombings have been increasing relentlessly since 2005 - so this is hardly a new tactic; however, the increase this year suggests that the Taliban has no shortage of willing recruits, which is not an encouraging sign. That said, the really big civilian fatality counts have come as a result of the expanded, indiscriminate and injudicious use of airpower. The just-harvested poppy crop is the largest on record, which means that after record harvests in 2005 and 2006, the Taliban can finance its operations for at least another 2-3 years; again, not an encouraging sign. In the meantime Pakistan has entered a period of chronic instability and is in danger of heading down the road to full-blown state failure.

Whilst "defeating Al Qaeda" in Iraq, the coalition has suffered its worst period for sustained casualties since the occupation began. This is hardly surprising, Centcom press releases notwithstanding, as AQ is a marginal player in Iraq, and the US/UK are dealing with multiple overlapping, fractal insurgencies. The MoD, for example, has suffered 29 fatalities in the Jan-June period this year; this is the same as the whole of 2006 in spite of reduced troop numbers, a diminishing footprint and the complete absence of any AQ elements in the Basra region; US fatalities are, likewise, at their sustained highest level since the occupation began, and are on course for a 25-50% increase over prior years. Needless to say, Centcom has been saying positive things for 4 years now, but the trajectory has been relentlessly negative.

Quite why the bombing of the ICU out of Mogadishu and the accompanying Ethiopian invasion represent any sort of progress stumps me. The 6-month or so period of ICU control actually returned a degree of stability and optimism to Mogadishu after nigh-on 15-years of warlordism, civil war and descent into a failed state. The situation on the ground was sufficiently secure and stable for Channel 4 and the BBC to put correspondents in to the country - one report from the C4 correspondent dealt with the kids of asylum seekers from the UK who were being sent back to school there; needless to say the correspondents ( and probably the kids ) have fled since the Ethiopian invasion. Frankly, sending Somalia back into the cycle of warlordism and state failure because there were a couple of AQ suspects in Mogadishu simply demonstrates that the US and Ethiopia are preternaturally dumb, and that US special forces must be mightily incompetent. The only thing that seems to have changed since the mid-1990's is that the Aideeds are US allies this time around.

Quite why any of this merits the description of a world war is mystifying. Then again, US military doctrine asserts a 2-1-1 capability - it must be really embarrassing being stalemated on the 1-1 part, so let's call it a world war and everyone can feel better about themselves.

[adam]

Mayhem,

I'll back what londinium said 100% with a couple of additional points:

First please note that the Ethiopian invasion of Somalia was the invasion of a Muslim nation by Christians. This is not going to play well in, say, Muslim nations where the US is trying to persuade people that the US aren't a bunch of psychotic religiously inspired zealots determined to convert Muslims by sword and fire. Bin Laden remember declared a defensive jihad against US agression so the Ethiopian invasion doesn't make Bin Laden look worse.

"The U.S. troop surge in Iraq is forcing Al Qaida to devote even more resources to that battle"

What resources? We've not even been able to successfully demonstrate that Bin Laden even sent them a letter. There was a suggestion that letters had been exchanged between Al Quaeda and AQ in Iraq in 2005 or so, but the copies published used Shi'ite phraseology, not Sunni. So what is Bin Laden sending them? AK-47s? Tanks? Guns? Missiles? Secret Ninja Armies? Or good wishes based on cheap, cheap words?

Look, the US is spending $100bn+ a year in Iraq. Bin Laden is spending $0. Thats a major difference in ratio. Frankly Bin Laden cannot believe his luck. Not since Picketts Charge have a bunch of Americans flushed their offensive option quite so effectively. The US Army and Marines aren't going to be up to invading anywhere for the forseeable future, even the discussions around the forthcoming attack on Iran have been reduced to largely worthless airpower attacks against an enemy force that might actually shoot back.

The net result is that Bin Laden's forces (such as they are) aren't under particular pressure, whilst the US military is.

http://www.militarytimes.com/community/opinion/army_opinion_editorial_070709/

Personally I think the authors of this need to spend more time learning from history about what other empires' troops had to do. 15 months? Nothing. However the 15 month issue is a symptom of a deeper malaise within the US Army.

Starting fact: The key to a guerilla war isn't the technology, its the support of the local people. The US military never had the support of the majority of Iraqis (or Afghans for that matter). As a result currently the US are losing two wars against guerillas. The fact the US is losing is either something Americans can deal with and attempt to rectify or put their fingers in their ears and scream a lot, but it will remain a fact.

Analysis: The problem with the US military is that it simply isn't a colonial army, like the British army still was in 1941 when the British invaded Iraq (total time taken Mid-April to 31st May - it took about a week longer than the US took in 2003, but to be fair, we were fighting the Axis as well and didn't have much preparation time). The US army today is intended for TV / movie friendly armoured flanking actions - preferably in the fields of NATO ally Germany.

That the US Army is like this is, of course, quite deliberate. The design of Abhrams after the Vietnam war was to ensure that no US leadership, no matter how incompetant or negligent, could ever get the US army into a guerilla war again. His moment of genius was to use the National Guard as the basis for the strength of the US army. If you wanted to fight a war then the weekenders would have to be used, and a decades long guerilla war would be untenable. Boy, was he wrong about the levels of incompetance in US politics.

To change this the US military has instituted a shiny new doctrine under Petraeus, which hasn't been tested, and is loosely based on the experiences of lots of other people losing guerilla wars. However what we've seen is no sign that the US military has started to accept the lessons of the new doctrine. Air strikes are at an all time high rather than becoming rarer. Why is the US dropping the bombs? Because they can. Theres no more thinking about it than that.

More to the point Petraeus isn't a Middle Eastern expert. If we take the comparative comments of General Sir Michael Rose who is, as it happens, a long term Middle Eastern expert with military experience in working with locals and also civilian experience as a director of Control Risks which works closely with the major Middle Eastern governments, its clear that the doctrine probably isn't going to work.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/6618075.stm

Even so, US troops have an awful attitude for colonial operations: a weird combination of extremist Muscular Christianity, casual racism, macho posturing, trigger happiness, and sexual dysfunction. Its not mentioned a lot in the US press but one major problem that the Iraqis have with working with the Americans is that most Americans are viewed as sexual deviants at best. Iraq is, in sexual ways, far more conservative than even the most repressed areas of the US. How would you feel if you *knew* your heavily armed foreign master was a pervert? I doubt if it would make you happy. So then how would you feel if he and his men arrested a woman or child? Would you assume that she / he was going to be raped?

Unlucky Iraqi women who have been held by the US, even temporarily, are assumed to have been gang-raped, and therefore outside Iraqi society. Even as early as 2003 a brief visit to a school by some US soldiers led the locals to be convinced that the teachers had all been raped. The women deny it, but then they would, wouldn't they?

The situation is not helped because the US soldiers simply don't want to be in Iraq. Most US soldiers are there to pay for college so they can earn some real money. The joke about US soldiers being greeted in heaven by 72 College Loan Application Officers really isn't that far off. Spending 20-30 years in Iraq certainly isn't on their personal agenda. Overall, there is no sense within the US military that the East is a place to grow. Mayhem likes poetry so lets take Kipling's Mandalay:

"Ship me somewheres east of Suez, where the best is like the worst,
Where there ain't no Ten Commandments an' a man can raise a thirst;
For the temple-bells are callin', and it's there that I would be-- "

http://raysweb.net/poems/mandalay/mandalay.html

For the British the East was a place to become better, stronger, wiser. In my local area no end of "old Indian hands" brought huge amounts of Indian experience and culture back with them. My grandfather (30 years in Africa and other British Empire locations) was another example of the type - up to age 5 my uncle spoke Swahili as a first language. By contrast for the Americans today Iraq is a place to endure and survive - like a rat in a cage.

Lets go back to the 15 month issue of which all that is a symptom - my local regiment when I was a kid, the 2nd Ox and Bucks (the first troops into Europe on D-day at Pegasus Bridge), sent one battalion to India in 1886. The unit remained in India until 1903, that's seventeen years abroad (actually its 19 years - they did a 2 year period in Gibralter in 1884-6 beforehand). The comparative lightweights at 1st Battalion did merely 11 years in India, and another 2 years in South Africa during the Boer war in the same period. The Ox and Bucks are quite typical of the broad brush of the British army during colonial operations.

Owing to the short term nature of the US military the traditional colonial operation of integrating into the local communities by friendship and marriage wasn't ever on the agenda (and US commanders were oddly afraid of local marriages - an odd set of priorities, but there you go). Local kids weren't sent to US schools - far too expensive. Local leaders didn't spend years dealing with the same person.

As a result the US military were deeply confused by Iraq and so left enemies (and dead bodies) behind it with the cheerful abandon of a movie killer. Back in 1943 US soldiers faced execution for randomly killing Arabs, whilst todays US military doesn't see it as a problem. Its notable that the longer the US military spends in an area the more they are hated and the greater the number of attacks. If the US military were competant at counter-insurgency the reverse should be true.

So the US military today is not intended for counter insurgency or colonial operations. Currently every US politician is talking about expanding the US armed forces. Presumably on the basis that Iraqs been such a success we should do it again.

Which brings us to the costs. You're arguing that Bin Laden's resources are limited, which is true. Then again so are the US's - and in a far more formal manner. Bear in mind the US is outspending Bin Laden in Iraq nearly $100bn to $0. Eisenhower, now seen as one of the wisest people to hold the presidency, said that "every rocket fired, signifies in the final sense a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed.". As Ike knew, most military spending is just wasted (actually its just occured to me that it was under Eisenhower that US soldiers that killed Arabs were executed...). The military produces nothing useful, its occasionally needed (but not very often), it rarely wins victories, and having a military is often the precusor to using it more and more, like having a heroin stash. A fun fact for us to consider the US defense budget is around $600bn a year - roughly half of all the military spending in the world. Defense is the single largest line item in the US budget (in the UK its health). In order to pay for this huge military the US government needs $2bn a day in loans, mainly from foreign money.

The reality is that at some stage the the US government is going to have to make some hard decisions about what’s going to give. The US cannot afford the military in Iraq and all of the other government programmes - it simply cannot be done. The current betting is that entitlements to things like healthcare can be slashed, maybe pensions. But sooner or later, like all junkies, the military will need more money. A single bomber of this generation costs $1bn whilst the next generation of bombers are predicted to cost $10bn each.

Back to Ike: "How far you can go without destroying from within what you are trying to defend from without?" Smart man, and an under rated president.

[Duncan Kinder]

Adam, several comments to your generally good post.

1) You state that the United States' resources are finite. Objectively you are correct. However, so long as the Chinese and others are willing and / or able to fund U.S. deficits this is not subjectively apparent.

2) You state that guerrilla forces need popular support. While popular support would always be useful, John Robb, I believe, would argue that small guerrilla units embedded in today's mega cities could conduct operations without it.

3) The United States today is acting out impulses dating from WWII. People have responded to 9/11 as another Pearl Harbor; the invasion of Iraq as another D-Day; the great American military industrial complex then began; Bush is another Churchill; "the troops" are a Band of Brothers. The refutations of these points are obvious, but this misses a point. John Robb has written about swarms - how groups upon a few rules can self-organize their behavior. But there is a problem with swarms. You can't predict individual behavior but you can predict group behavior. A herd of antelope may mystify a lone wolf; but neolithic hunters could stampede herds over a cliff. And that is what happened following 9/11. The herd of Americans got stampeded over a cliff. Their post-WWII herd instincts backfired.

Following this logic, this herd instinct will continue to pour into Iraq - much like lemmings - until it exhausts itself.

[adam]

Duncan,

"1) You state that the United States' resources are finite. Objectively you are correct. However, so long as the Chinese and others are willing and / or able to fund U.S. deficits this is not subjectively apparent."

Good point. What I should have added is that the funding from China and elsewhere is not guaranteed and depends on the value that they get back from US sources. In other words the US has to provide high interest rates and would find it hard to devalue significantly. This does create a formal, legalised, resource constraint for the US military that Bin Laden doesn't have - the instant that foreign money runs down so does the US war effort. Bin Laden still doesn't ship missiles to Iraq though.

"You state that guerrilla forces need popular support. While popular support would always be useful, John Robb, I believe, would argue that small guerrilla units embedded in today's mega cities could conduct operations without it."

Again a very good point. As I recall I said it was the "key", but wasn't explicit in saying that it was only for the guerillas. You're quite right, it would have been more accurate for me to say that the counter insurgents need local popular support in order to succeed. As I recall back in the 1970s the PIRA were able to operate 50 gunmen with less than 500 supporters so the level of guerilla support doesn't have to be high. Mind you, in Iraq, support for anti-US political parties is up in the mid-70% range which is incredibly high.

"3) The United States today is acting out impulses dating from WWII. "

I love that phrase "acting out"... Its tellingly accurate and I will steal it for later use. As I recall acting out is an expression of childish emotional conflicts by throwing a tantrum. Iraq as the result of the Terrible Twos? Its an image that's quite hard to resist.

"Following this logic, this herd instinct will continue to pour into Iraq - much like lemmings - until it exhausts itself."

Which is the road-crash that I'd rather not see. To continue your metaphor Sometimes I feel like the lemming at the back of the swarm thinking "water wings, where can I get lots of water wings?". I can't complain too much, it pays the rent.

[Friendly Fire]

Adam have you a blog?

If you don't you should have.

Great reading here at GG.