BACK TO THE FUTURE IN IRAQ

Below is some thinking on why we are back to 2006 in Iraq (and why it's not necessarily a good thing).

The rate of attacks in Iraq (for all types) has stabilized at the levels of 2004/2005, which were prior to the bombing of Askariya. During this earlier period, Iraq's open source insurgency was highly decentralized. A good way to quantify this is through the analysis of Oxford's Neil Johnson, who plotted the number of attacks against casualties per attack. He found that the equilibrium point for Iraq's conflict (as well as the long running war in Colombia) was a power law with a coefficient of 2.5 . A conflict with a coefficient of 2.5 looks more like intensive terrorism than conventional warfare. It is also likely, given Colombia's experience, a level sustainable over decades of conflict. See my brief "War's New Equilibrium" and Johnson's paper "From Old Wars to New Wars and Global Terrorism" for more on this.

The best explanation for the spike in violence between February 2006 and June 2007 is that the Askariya bombings initiated a process that was leading the conflict towards total war. Total war (Ludendorf) is a form of non-trinitarian conflict that ignores moral, political, cultural, etc rules in favor of complete mobilization to achieve total victory (global thermonuclear warfare is the ultimate example of total war). In Iraq, total war means religious cleansing via militias. Up until February 2006, Iraq was a limited conflict where US and Iraqi forces under strict modern rules of engagement, kept a lid on the scale of conflict (although they were unable to win). The Askariya bombing changed that dynamic. It so completely sundered the domestic social system in Iraq that the conflict lurched towards total war.

By early 2007, Sunni forces were suffering defeat after defeat as large Shiite militias violently cleansed towns and neighborhoods across Iraq (if measured in terms of Johnson's coefficient, we would have seen a move towards 1.8, the coefficient of conventional warfare). This put the open source insurgency in a crisis. Sunni insurgents weren't able to form the large local militias needed to defend themselves as long as they were in conflict with the US (these formations would be easy targets). The US military saw this opportunity and enabled the Sunnis for form local militias under the protection of the US (putting 60,000 on a US/Saudi payroll) as long as they sacrificed jihadi groups associated with al Qaeda. The US also began to target Shiite militias. The result was that the onrush to total war in Iraq was averted as the Sunnis began to develop conventional forces. The return to limited war also means that the open source insurgency can now thrive again.

An important rule of systems disruption that was ignored

With Askariya, the open source insurgency's attackers ignored Lawrence of Arabia's advice on the use systems disruption. Lawrence correctly argued that limited disruption (partial disruption) allowed the attacker to control the direction or flow of a system. Complete disruption forces fundamental changes to the system that will likely result in negative consequences for the attackers. Open source insurgents that ignore this will pay the price (as al Qaeda is today). This is from my June 2005 brief, "Partial vs. Complete Disruption":

Complete collapse would create total war (via a bloody civil war). A complete urban/country takedown would prompt the state to launch a total war. This is a type of warfare that global guerrillas are not prepared or able to fight (in contrast, states are well suited to this). By keeping the level of damage below what would be considered fatal to the state, total war is avoided.

Comments

[Duncan Kinder]

Another way of looking at this is that the insurgents' strategy is ghazi and not jihad

See:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ghazw

quote:

Ghazi (Arabic: غازى) is an originally Arabic word, from ghazā (contracted from *ghazawa) = "he raided" or "he made war", and was also adopted by such languages as Turkish for Muslims vowed to combat non-believers. As such it is essentially equivalent to Mujahideen: waging jihad bin-saif, i.e. holy war.

For the ghāzīs in the marches, it was a religious duty to ravage the countries of the infidels who resisted Islam, and to force them into subjection. (Cambridge History of Islam, p. 283)

Also:

After the conquests had come to an end, the legal specialists laid down that the Caliph had to raid Ghāzī warriors depended upon plunder for their livelihood, and were prone to brigandage and sedition in times of peace. The corporations into which they organized themselves attracted adventurers, zealots and religious and political dissidents of all ethnicities. In time, though, soldiers of Turkic ethnicity predominated, mirroring the acquisition of Mamluks, Turkic slaves in the Mamluk retinues and guard corps of the caliphs and emirs and in the ranks of the ghazi corporation, some of whom would ultimate rise to military and later political dominance in various Muslim states.

In the west, Turkic ghāzīs made continual incursions along the Byzantine frontier zone, finding in the akritai (akritoi) their Greek and Armenian counterparts. After the Battle of Manzikert these incursions intensified, and the region's people would see the ghāzī corporations coalesce into semi-chivalric fraternities, with the white cap and the club as their emblems. The height of the organizations would come during the Mongol conquest when many of them fled from Persia and Turkistan into Anatolia.

As organizations, the ghazi corporations were fluid, reflecting their popular character, and individual ghāzī warriors would jump between them depending upon the prestige and success of a particular emir, rather like the mercenary bands around western condottiere. It was from these Anatolian territories conquered during the ghazw that the Ottoman Empire emerged, and in its legendary traditions it is said that its founder, Osman I, came forward as a ghāzī thanks to the inspiration of Shaikh Ede Bali.

In later periods of Islamic history the honorific title of ghāzī was assumed by those Muslim rulers who showed conspicuous success in extending the domains of Islam, and eventually the honorific became exclusive to them, much as the Roman title imperator became the exclusive property of the supreme ruler of the Roman state and his family.

The Ottomans were probably the first to adopt this practice, and in any case the institution of ghazw reaches back to the beginnings of their state:

By early Ottoman times it had become a title of honor and a claim to leadership. In an inscription of 1337 [concerning the building of the Bursa mosque], Orhan, second ruler of the Ottoman line, describes himself as "Sultan, son of the Sultan of the Gazis, Gazi son of Gazi… march lord of the horizons." The Ottoman poet Ahmedi, writing ca. 1402, defines a gazi as "the instruments of God's religion, a servant of God who cleanses the earth from the filth of polytheism… the sword of God." (Lewis, The Political Language of Islam, pp. 147–148, note 8)

The first nine Ottoman chiefs all used Ghazi as part of their full throne name (as is often done with titles regardlessly whether they fit the office), and often afterwards, though it never became a formal title within the ruler's formal style, while Sultan ul-Mujahidin was once thus used, by Sultan Murad Khan II Khoja-Ghazi, 6th Sovereign of the House of Osman (1421 - 1451), styled 'Abu'l Hayrat, Sultan ul-Mujahidin, Khan of Khans, Grand Sultan of Anatolia and Rumelia, and of the Cities of Adrianople and Philippolis.

Because of the political legitimacy that would accrue to those bearing this title, Muslim rulers vied amongst themselves for preeminence in the ghāziya, with the Ottoman Sultans generally acknowledged as excelling all others in this feat:

For political reasons the Ottoman Sultans — also being the last dynasty of Caliphs — attached the greatest importance to safeguarding and strengthening the reputation which they enjoyed as ghāzīs in the Muslim world. When they won victories in the ghazā in the Balkans they used to send accounts of them (singular, feth-nāme) as well as slaves and booty to eastern Muslim potentates. Christian knights captured by Bāyezīd I at his victory over the Crusaders at Nicopolis in 1396, and sent to Cairo, Baghdad and Tabriz were paraded through the streets, and occasioned great demonstrations in favour of the Ottomans. (Cambridge History of Islam, p. 290)

Ghazi was also used as a title of honor in the Ottoman empire, generally translated as the Victorious, for military officers of high rank, who distinguished themselves in the field against non-Moslem enemies; thus it was conferred on Osman Pasha after his famous defence of Plevna in Bulgaria.

Two muslim rulers (in Afghanistan and Hyderabab)) personally used the subsidiary style Padshah-i-Ghazi.

The title was also assigned to Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, even though he was a secular politician.enemy territory at least once a year in order to keep the idea of jihad alive. (Peters, Jihad in Classical and Modern Islam: A Reader, p. 3)

The ghāzī warrior dates to at least the Samanid period, where he appears as a mercenary and frontier fighter in Khorasan and Transoxiana. Later, up to 20,000 of them took part in the Indian campaigns of Mahmud of Ghazni.

:end_of_quote

[Cavolonero]

So now they know if they keep that number at 2.5 ~ everything pretty much cool.

[zenpundit]

"Complete disruption forces fundamental changes to the system that will likely result in negative consequences for the attackers"

Hi John,

You are scarily close to agreement with Tom here :O)

[John Robb]

Thanks for the feedback guys. Unfortunately, the brief fell short of my desired mark.

[TM Lutas]

I think that there is a psychological temptation for the global guerilla to one up their cousins in other cells, to always go for that little bit bigger operation. You see it in Al Queda branches who have foregone easy, effective, sustainable operations (and we don't need to provide a road map on those in this forum) against the US and other countries in favor of the big, spectacular, hard to pull off attack. Eventually, the escalation becomes imprudent and the irritant that could steer the larger society in the direction the GG wants becomes the existential threat changing the larger society in a direction that the GG does not want and may not survive at all.

How a decentralized, competitive (amongst themselves), set of independent forces are going to avoid that line is unclear to me. The counter-argument is that Iraq has been a fairly close-run thing. Had the US had a different political makeup, a weaker military, a slightly different cast of characters in the people in charge, the GG escalation may well have moved the society over the edge into total sectarian war and a disintegration of Iraq.

Talk like this counter-argument has launched marxist nightmare after nightmare across the globe over the course of the 20th century. There's no reason to think that the GGs are any less subject to that sort of foolishness than the marxists. But ultimately the marxists failed even when they took power.

What the GGs seem to be lacking at this point is a sufficiently public and robust roadmap to victory that avoids these phase changes and allows them to remain a steering irritant all the way to victory. It needs to be public so the semi-independents can follow it without dangerously linking up with leadership and robust in that knowledge of it by the enemy will not destroy its utility.

I do not know if such a thing can be written. I suspect that for at least some causes, it is possible. But I believe that those causes will tend to be the better ones, not the worse ones. That makes the prospect of GGs more of a sort of fleshing out of the "bar against tyranny" theory of the US' 2nd amendment on a global scale than an unstoppable, inevitable, unending global nightmare.

[adam]

TM,

"How a decentralized, competitive (amongst themselves), set of independent forces are going to avoid that line is unclear to me. "

Bin Laden published a letter (November 2007) on this very issue recently. To be honest I think he expects the Islamic guerillas in Iraq to calve, certainly they did in Afghanistan. Bin Laden sees Islams internal feuding as the core reason that the West are able to dominate the Islamic world, via divide and rule. Certainly this is not a new issue to Bin Laden and his first letter on factionalism within the Iraqi insurgency goes back to October 2003.

"The counter-argument is that Iraq has been a fairly close-run thing. Had the US had a different political makeup, a weaker military, a slightly different cast of characters in the people in charge, the GG escalation may well have moved the society over the edge into total sectarian war and a disintegration of Iraq."

Thats very optimistic and based on current US military happy-talk. Currently 2007 remains the worst year for US deaths, we've got about 2 weeks left and the odds are that the US military are going to hit 900 dead and around 6,000 wounded. By comparison the British, in Malaya, in the 12 years between 1948 and 1960 lost around 500 dead and 2,000 wounded.

The reality is that the US military is pulling out from March 2008 and everyone knows it, the people in charge of the US government are still inept (but gone in about a year), and Iraq remains politically broken into four main areas - Shi'ite North, Basra, Kurdistan and Sunni West. Kurdistan is currently being bombed by the Turks. The simple fact that the US has been reduced to supplying weapons and equipment to Sunnis that want to overthrow the elected Shi'ite Iraqi government isn't a good sign.

Actually it sets the scene for the fighting in, I'd guess, mid to late 2008 to (at least) 2010. US troops are currently expected to remain in a training role in Iraq until at least 2013 and whilst US troops remain in Iraq the civil war will keep running. At the end of the fighting I'm assuming that one or more groups of Shi'ites will win... if anyone can really be said to win a full-on "30 years war style" civil war.

"Talk like this counter-argument has launched marxist nightmare after nightmare across the globe over the course of the 20th century."

Its been a while but I'm pretty sure that the thing that launched Marxist revolutions were often savagely oppressive social conditions, a decaying economy, a moral or ethical cause, and the availability of a vanguard movement to mobilise popular resistance. All of these conditions are present in Iraq. But lets take Castro, always a good choice, dealing with (US backed) military dictator Batista. Batista killed around 5 thousand Cubans in the Havana area alone a year. Castro offered the Cubans (typically the young males most targeted by Batista's goons) that didn't want to die a secure hiding place, and a place to fight back. After that Cuba became a "nightmare", with no more US backed death squads. Fortunately the Cubans banded together and overthrew Castro the unpopular dictator, replacing him with a US-backed pseudo-democracy controlled by oligarchs from their massive properties in Florida... or maybe they didn't.

"What the GGs seem to be lacking at this point is a sufficiently public and robust roadmap to victory that avoids these phase changes and allows them to remain a steering irritant all the way to victory."

Guerillas accept that they are going to be knocked back. Its the fact that they live with the "phase changes" and move with them that makes them successful. Taber's wonderful War of the Flea is now partially on Google Books. Which is good as my 1960-something copy dissolved on a rain-swept London station:

http://books.google.com/books?id=w4v2Jf2auW8C&pg=RA1-PA151&lpg=RA1-PA151&dq=war+of+the+flea+text&source=web&ots=oc42Dl0dj8&sig=cMPL8BwmswASxqtGFQ63xCW9Lm0#PPP1,M1

Actually its fascinating how little has changed since the 1960s, although the arrival of political Islam might be an addition.

" It needs to be public so the semi-independents can follow it without dangerously linking up with leadership and robust in that knowledge of it by the enemy will not destroy its utility."

Bin Ladens resistance manual is widely available, in both English and Arabic. Whether its legal for you to read it is another matter entirely. An edited (dumbed down) version can be found in Imperial Hubris.

A (legal) review of what the encyclopaedia of tactics contains can be found here, but it leaves the politics out:

http://www.unl.edu/eskridge/encyclopedia.html

A simplistic analysis of the political thinking (pre-Iraq) can be found here:

http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200201/gerecht

Finally there is the actual source document which, amazingly, isn't commonly available. My copy is one of only 20,000 in the first printing. I'd have assumed that the US army would have ordered ten times that for themselves alone, that the US Army didn't want to understand their enemy implies quite a lot.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Messages-World-Statements-Osama-Laden/dp/1844670457/ref=sr_1_4?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1198227273&sr=8-4

Bin Laden is impressive for a political writer - he's calm, witty and urbane; not a frothing maniac.. He even throws in some fairly good jokes. Uncle Sam, in Arabic, is pronounced Amm Samm, but Samm is the Arabic for poison, so Uncle Poison... It may not seem much but for anyone who has had to go through Das Kapital in their undergraduate years...

Its odd - back in the cold war I could pick up loads of information legally on the writings of the nuclear weapon armed Russians, today if I read the political thoughts of someone living in a cave armed with sharpened pineapples I go to prison. Makes you think, or maybe not.

[adam]

John,

Agree completely with the analysis. A minor point I just wanted to make that you've got the dates between February 2006 and June 2007 but you don't specifically mention that bombings at the shrine bookended both the start and end points.

The first, major, bombing was in February 2006 and sparked (or, alternatively, encouraged) a wave of ethnic cleansing in Iraq. Iraqi special forces were blamed for the attack (or insurgents in special forces uniforms, or insurgents actually in special forces... its Iraq, is there a difference? Who can tell!).

The shrine itself is sacred to Shi'ites, as it honours three descendants of the Prophet (Imams). Two of whom were, according to legend, poisoned by Sunnis whilst under house arrest. The other one, like Jesus, is the Chosen One who will come back to Earth and make things right. He's also called the Hidden Imam and, as such, he is very important in the 12er form of Shi'ia Islam. Some Shi'ites, in these days of political and economic turmoil, think his second coming is imminent - Sadr and his followers are among them. Basically its very similar to the American Christians who are convinced that the return of Jesus is imminent (although they add the disturbing addition of it being based on the elimination of non-Jews from Jerusalem).

The second bombing in June 2007, which dropped the remaining minarets, saw the effective collapse of the Malaki government when the Sadrists withdrew for the duration of "The Surge" (TM). Those with long memories will recall that UNESCO got the contract to do the rebuilding, leaving the Americans slightly cross because American firms wanted the contract.

According to my notes the Brookings Institute said that:

Daily Insurgent Attacks:
Feb 2004 - 14
July 2005 - 70
May 2007 - 163

Estimated Insurgency Strength:
Nov 2003 - 15,000
Oct 2006 - 20,000 - 30,000
June 2007 - 70,000

In short the period between February 2006 and June 2007 sees a major increase in both number of attacks and insurgency strength, which is attributable to the bombing. Now there's a shockpoint and no mistake.

[TM Lutas]

adam - I won't address most of your points because they're too delusional. Suffice it to say that your analysis makes sense only if you ignore the military and policing improvements on the Iraqi government side in 2007. To do so is to significantly depart from reality. Your comments on Castro are worse. They're just obscene.

Robb - Rereading your article, you seem to also be missing the big story which is that Iraqi forces have another year of experience under their belt. The police have had significant changeover in leadership which has somewhat turned them around as well. On the government side, we are not back at 2006 because the force levels are different and the force capabilities are seriously improved.

I agree that the insurgency has been knocked back to 2006 levels of capabilities. The level of unity and coordination between insurgency segments does not seem to be equivalent to 2006 though.

On balance, things are better and they are likely going to continue to get better with steady improvements in Iraqi security forces and something of a sine wave pattern in the insurgency. The sine wave will be around a somewhat flat center line and then a declining line after Iraqi forces get good enough. The later that the US significantly draws down the sooner the insurgency's baseline capability (around which the sine wave operations tempo will fluctuate) will start its death decline.

[ramsis]

adam.
where to begin! "Bin Laden is impressive for a political writer - he's calm, witty and urbane; not a frothing maniac"
your endorsement of ubl as a political writer is hilarious! It sort of reminds me of when jeffery dahmer was finaly caught. The media interviewed his neighbors and they all said what a quiet nice guy he seemed like, kind of like ted bundy as well! Come to think of it most of historys greatest sociopaths were calm, witty and urbane!the fact is that nobody in there right mind would dismiss bin laden as "frothing maniac" to kill as many "apes and pigs" (or whatever he calls us) as he has takes a cold, calculated and sadistic individual!

[adam]

I needed a break from Pakistan... its far too depressing.

"adam - I won't address most of your points because they're too delusional. "

Charming... TM you asked a question and I rattled out a half dozen links and this is the thanks I get... I'd be annoyed, but its fairly typically neo-con.

TM, I cannot actually recall a time you were able to actually answer any of my points. Look, TM, you've claimed in the past you're a software engineer, not from politics. If you cannot understand what I am saying on the politics of terrorism then just assume that I'm right - I'll do the same to you if Windows crashes, I do the same for car mechanics when the car goes pear-shaped too.

"Suffice it to say that your analysis makes sense only if you ignore the military and policing improvements on the Iraqi government side in 2007."

Oh heavens to Betsy! Please, change the record... I recall we were here, with you, in 2005 when - as I recall - you were arguing that the Iraqi military were soon going to be mighty warriors on behalf of the US driving all before them and that it didn't matter if they were working for 2 or more political masters. I thought it did matter quite a lot who the military and police are working for. I still do. Reality and history in 2006 and 2007 were on my side.

Maybe 2008 will be significantly different, but I doubt it. The Surge ends soon, there is no political reconciliation in Iraq, and right now it looks like this is as good as it gets.

But so what? The logic from the American far-right runs like this:

The US military cannot withdraw because civil war would break out (intensify). If the violence increases the US army must stay. If it falls... the US army must still stay. that shows the war needs to continue. Brer Rabbit and the Tar Baby rides!

"To do so is to significantly depart from reality. "

So... no actual points in your favour then?

"Your comments on Castro are worse. They're just obscene."

But not, I note, to the point where you can say that they are wrong. Obscene does not mean incorrect, it merely means disgusting. That's a value judgement and not one that impresses me particularly - I find torture to be obscene, it still happens. Actually one of my colleagues is working on a rather natty little far-right American dictionary. He's got Obscene meaning a) a female breast seen on television and b) an awkward reality. I think we can all agree that b) is the likely meaning here. Its wryly amusing that the American far-right, always so quick to defend Batista, strangely forget to mention that - as a vicious dictator - he also used to have Communists in his cabinet and that the Communist party refused to support Castro remaining with Batista to the end. Indeed, the MSR Communists attempted to assassinate the then student leader Castro in 1949. Wolf (1973) has a reasonably good summary explanation of how the situation panned out:

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Peasant-Wars-Twentieth-Century-Eric/dp/0061317748/ref=sr_1_1/026-7790009-6922846?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1198883076&sr=8-1

[adam]

Ramsis,

Its midnight, but frankly I need more of a break from bloody Pakistan. Currently I am trying to think how I can make "beats me, squire" fit 5 pages.

"your endorsement of ubl as a political writer is hilarious! It sort of reminds me of when jeffery dahmer was finaly caught. "

First, have you read any political theory? Do try some. Hobbes is readable, Machiavelli is rollicking and after that its more or less downhill all the way until you hit Hannah Arendt and Rawls who are fantastic writers.

Still, lets take it slowly.... Bin Laden is not a serial killer, he is a political writer and revolutionary / terrorist. The two often go together - lets take Che and Cuba or Mao and China or Franklin and America. In fact lets save my time and take Scheuer's classic Through Our Enemies Eyes and start at page 3. Bin Laden is: "a genuinely pious Muslim; a devoted family man; a talented, focussed and patient insurgent commander; a frank and eloquent speaker; a successful businessman; and an individual of conviction, intellectual honesty, compassion, humility and physical bravery". And Scheuer should know.

None of these points apply to the serial killers you have listed (except perhaps the conviction... they were all convicted. Sorry, cheap pun, its late).

Scheuer argues, coherently in my view, that Bin Laden shares many characteristics with American heroes including John Brown and Thomas Jefferson. Brown is an especially good example and Scheuer does an excellent job of the comparison although I personally rather prefer my comparator of Helen Keller because it highlights the classic American failure to know key information - almost everyone gets taught that Keller was blind and graduated university... almost no one gets taught that she was a radical socialist dedicated to stopping industrial injuries, pro birth control and things of that nature. Keller graduated at 24 or so, she dies in her mid 80s, the missing 60 years are rarely explained in American schools.

Where I differ from Scheuer is on his policy descriptions - he draws the conclusion that the US is going to have to fight (and win) a generation-long battle to win the war. I think that negotiation is the place to start; we have more to lose than Bin Laden does. To be honest I think that fighting a generational long war against Islam to try and somehow make them accept that we are in charge of their countries is something of a non-starter. We tried it in the early 1900s and it didn't work, and since then somebody invented the AK-47 and RPG. The old rule of empire was that we have the Maxim gun, and they do not. This no longer applies. More to the point it'll simply cost too much to justify the expenditure.

The reality is that Bin Laden was married at 18, and - as far as anyone knows - has led an exemplary life as a husband and father. We certainly aren't aware that Bin Laden is a multiple homosexual child rapist like Dahmer or Chikatilo, nor a poisoner like Shipman.

The minor issue that upsets Americans is that he killed a few thousand Americans as part of a campaign to defend Islam from outside influences. To be fair he did warn the Americans on a number of occasions that he planned to do something like kill a few thousand Americans. The sooner we accept that Bin Laden is neither mad nor stupid and so stop pretending that our ignorance is strength the better.

Its rather sad that Americans have to denigrate their enemies to the extent that they are comparing them to serial killers and it helps explain why they are losing. I can recall my Granddad telling me that the Italians were actually "good blokes". But the bottom line is that our grandparents respected their enemies. We haven't learnt that and its costing us.

Which is, oddly, exactly the point that I was making when I said that only 20k copies of Bin Ladens writings had gone to press in the West. Maybe it sailed past everyone about "first know your enemy".

"The media interviewed his neighbors and they all said what a quiet nice guy he seemed like, kind of like ted bundy as well! "

The one thing we can not say about Bin Laden is that he was quiet - he was a political and religious activist from a very early age. Arguably he has always been looking for a better method of Islamic government. Whether you agree that Islam is better than a repressive dictatorship, even if you're very high up in the dictatorship, is your call.

While I am thinking about it would anyone say that Dahmer was a successful anything? Heck, he wasn't even as good a serial killer as the Russian one (Chikatilo? 60? kills) or the UK's Harold Shipman (218 kills, minimum). As a colleague noted on the train the other day - "its nice that the UK is no.1 in something".

Anyway, another American serial killer. Bin Laden isn't a serial killer. For that matter neither Dahmer not Bundy were serious political writers. I'll make it simpler - Bin Laden is able to persuade lots of people to fight and die for him; neither Dahmer not Bundy would have been capable of that kind of leadership or empathy.

Bin Laden's overriding personality traits are: personal religious belief, personal responsibility for his own actions and professionalism. No one could claim that any non-movie serial killer shows these traits, with the possible exception of Shipman - and I'm sure that Shipman wasn't a conservative Muslim.

"Come to think of it most of historys greatest sociopaths were calm, witty and urbane!"

To spin it another way there is an argument in Paxman's The Political Animal where he can make a coherent case that most politicians are sociopaths. But a sociopath and a serial killer are two very different things. Sociopaths do make very good investment bankers, and politicians - very few people would argue that Nixon wasn't a sociopath.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Political-Animal-Jeremy-Paxman/dp/0141032960/ref=pd_bbs_sr_5?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1198886648&sr=8-5

"the fact is that nobody in there right mind would dismiss bin laden as "frothing maniac" to kill as many "apes and pigs" (or whatever he calls us) as he has takes a cold, calculated and sadistic individual!"

Bin Laden quite often calls us "Crusaders" or "Mongols"... You know, the bunch of people that invaded the Middle East and attempted to subjugate Islam. If you mean "apes and pigs" as specific epithets these can be found in materials distributed by the government of Saudi Arabia. You know, our allies, who are against Bin Laden.

http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/news/article-23384657-details/We%20do%20use%20books%20that%20call%20Jews%20'apes'%20admits%20head%20of%20Islamic%20school/article.do?expand=true

Cold and Calculated? OK. Another, nicer, way of saying that is professional. Professionals don't often get all upset about their profession. Bin Ladens is Islamic revolution, a soldiers is soldiering, a dentists is dental surgery.

Sadistic? Now thats a lot harder. Bin Laden argues, not unreasonably, that he is working to defend Islam from the West. He has noted in the past that, among other things, the death of a half million or so Iraqis during the period of sanctions (mostly the under 5's and over 50's) were a direct result of US policies in the region. To date all of his terrorist attacks have been quick and, as far as I can recall, I don't think he has ever targeted hospitals (although embassies are fair game and have been since well before Bin Laden came along). The US has hit hospitals and schools supposedly accidentally. Does that make the Americans sadistic? If you mean Bin Laden has killed American civilians then he has a reasonable answer (October 2001): "Who said that our civilians and children are not innocent and that shedding their blood is justified?".

[TM Lutas]

adam - Oooh, you're challenging me to find bad things about Castro to counter your praise, how difficult! I suggest Google to start then maybe moving on to the Black Book of Communism.

I'm not pro-Batista. I wasn't born when Batista was overthrown. I don't particularly have a problem in condemning Batista's crimes but Batista and his system, somewhat like Franco, are still dead. Castro and Castroism is still very much alive.

As for the Iraqi military, if you'd actually look at the Congressionally mandated quarterly assessments, you'd find that there are a growing number of units, more of them are rated as capable, and that there is significant improvement in the problem of serving 2 political masters, some due to people giving up their 2nd allegiances, some due to them dying, being arrested, or fired. The vetting system has been improved and that spells improved political reliability and also objective performance which you can tell from the relevant statistics in the 2nd half of 2007.

The area under which Iraqi units are in the security lead grow with each report (though there is some minor shifting around) and Iraq is not notably the worse for the Coalition going into secondary roles in those areas.

Your problem (at least one of them) is that you mistook my timeline. Two years is "just around the corner" when the usual process for counterinsurgency is a decade plus affair.

Your idea of negotiating with bin Laden is comical. ObL is at least heavily influenced by Qutb and Qutb at his worst is intolerable. Qutb claimed that Islam was extinct and only Qutb's Islamic vanguard were true muslims. That makes for a bit over a billion apostates and the punishment for muslim apostasy is well known. As the Muslim brotherhood's chief intellectual Qutb was highly influential and those MB members who are most Qutbist tended to move to Al Queda.

bin Laden's crimes against the West are almost incidental to his crimes against his fellow muslims which are his main focus. But a muslim civil war *is* something that's going to stink things up world wide so we're right to try to nip this before it rises to massive genocide.

I'll indulge in one 'pull' from your wet kiss to Al Queda. Combatants are supposed to stay clear of hospitals and similar privileged facilities under the laws of war. To place military assets in or near privileged facilities removes their protection and when the facilities are attacked, the war crime falls on the side that first placed their combat forces near or in such places.

Al Queda routinely tries to draw fire to mosques, hospitals, etc in order to gain propaganda coups and to exploit our rules of engagement which sometimes allow them to have free shots without return fire from such places. These are war crimes on Al Queda's part and constitute knowingly endangering hospitals, schools, and mosques. Feel free to let me know the moral difference between knowingly endangering and "targeting".

[adam]

TM,

Ah... the good old Black Book. Bless. Yes, I remember it. Its wryly amusing that an American neo-con should rely so heavily on a French book. Still, the book itself is a good attempt to rattle up 100 million dead directly at the hands of Communists. But lets face it, it failed to even make it on its own standards, stopping at a non-sexy 93 million or thereabouts.

Quite a lot of people pointed out that a "black book" of, say, America alone might point at around 100 million people killed by US policies (mostly American Indians), but the US would argue that the deaths do not represent "true Americanism" or whatever. Being pro-British we've surely managed the 100 million on our own - we starved around 5 million to death in India in just the 1940s without much trouble. Mind you in the 1770s we killed nearly a third of the population of Bengal via starvation, around 10 million people - which is a pretty good number to start with. So our Black Book alone would have a similar number of 100 million, using the same methodology. Oddly the book fails to mention this. Still, its an academic argument for another day, and not terribly relevant here because the point I made was that in the 1950s, Castro is not a Communist; the Cuban Communists were anti-Castro and pro-Batista. So the whole Black Book point just means that you don't understand the basic point I made. I did say that it was complicated.

Still, finally some points - excellent. OK, admittedly your one and only current source is a US military one, but its a start.

"As for the Iraqi military, if you'd actually look at the Congressionally mandated quarterly assessments, you'd find that there are a growing number of units, more of them are rated as capable,"

Now let us look at page 5 of the last version of that document (I provided a reference, so that people can look at what we're talking about):

http://www.defenselink.mil/pubs/pdfs/9010-Final-20070608.pdf

"As of May 14, 2007,approximately 346,500 Iraqi personnel received training and equipment."

This is a number that is still rather smaller than the old Iraqi military, who didn't have an active insurgency. Also receiving training and equipment doesn't actually mean much, particularly if the people with the training and the equipment are different people. Lets take a not unusual Iraqi military issue, desertion. Bill and Ted are Iraqis. Bill deserted after training. Ted joined after Bill left, and Ted got his rifle, although by then the trainers had wandered off so he got no training. They did, technically, for the purposes of this document receive equipment and training. I also note that on page 35 the US military also admit that the squaddies on the books and in reality may be two different things.

"Given the persistence of the violence by insurgents, terrorists and militias, the Iraqi forces will require continued
training, development and equipping to be able to progressively assume missions from
Coalition forces."

Short form - we're going to be here for an even longer time than the 5 years already gone. The SURGE (TM) starts to finish in 3 months. These two facts do not mesh well together.

Well, that's all the good news of the quarterly report. Even in this biased piece of military hackery the rest backs me all the way. I repeat my basic, essential point: The Surge (TM) has not worked, it needed a political dimension, which it never got.

Back to the rest of it.

"and that there is significant improvement in the problem of serving 2 political masters, some due to people giving up their 2nd allegiances, some due to them dying, being arrested, or fired."

Hm. Two ways of reading this - I think they have 2 masters, that these two masters can have very different agendas, and the evidence has shown that this is the case. You think that they may have 1 (I assume that you think that the US government, rather than the Iraqi insurgency is becoming the sole master). No. I am sorry, but I can see no evidence of this alternative reading in your only source.

"The vetting system has been improved and that spells improved political reliability"

I got the giggles on hitting "improved political reliability". Just to check... you are aware who runs the vetting? SCIRI and Sadrist appointed people do. Hm... Wonder how that vetting procedure works on improving political reliability. Could it be that they're putting in people that they trust? No, that could never be. I am sure that they appoint people with only the purest of intentions and motivations. We can trust SCIRI and the Sadrists to do whats best for the US.

"The area under which Iraqi units are in the security lead grow with each report (though there is some minor shifting around) and Iraq is not notably the worse for the Coalition going into secondary roles in those areas."

I do find myself repeating the following basic observations...

a) the presence of the Coalition, specifically the Americans, is the problem in Iraq
b) the US cannot win (whatever "win" means) in Iraq
c) there will not be, in Iraq, a government that the US is happy with that can claim any level of popular support.

The quickest solution to violence in Basra? Removal of the British troops. No troops, minimal violence. Hm... Could it have been the foreign occupying soldiers that were the problem?

"Your problem (at least one of them) is that you mistook my timeline. Two years is "just around the corner" when the usual process for counterinsurgency is a decade plus affair."

Really? I was under the impression that you thought back in 2005 that success was just around the corner. I like to think that I have always been from the US will take a decade to fail perspective. Now you're saying that they need (another?) decade to succeed, taking us to 2018. OK you're an optimist, fair enough, so where does the US plan to get the extra money and troops from? Its around $150bn a year now to maintain the US forces in Iraq. Another 10 years is another $1.5 trillion (assuming no inflation). This money will have to be borrowed and to pay the interest on $1.5 trillion requires nearly $100bn a year forever.

"Your idea of negotiating with bin Laden is comical."

Maybe. But then first they laugh at you, then they fight you, then they lose. More seriously we negotiated with the IRA, and ETA, and the PLO, and Dawa, and SCIRI, and the Virtue party, and we're currently negotiating with the Taliban.

I have to say to you, the Ronnie Reagan myth that "we don't negotiate with terrorists" was pure hyperbole intended to keep poorly educated little old ladies in Peoria on board. It was never true, we always negotiate.

Now as for an Islamic justification for negotiation... let us look at the Koran:
Many Americans argue that verses 8:59-60 condone terrorism. Verse 8:60 does indeed condone fighting one’s enemies. The problem is that most Americans don't read on to verse 8:61 : "And if they incline unto peace then incline unto it"

In this context, verse 8:60 is advocating that one does not need to take the course of complete pacifism when threatened by an enemy, but 8:61 then limits the application of violence to the period prior to negotiation.

In short negotiation has a good track record, and there is no reason not to do it. The sooner we negotiate the better terms we get. Oil at the start of 2007 was £70 a barrel, now its $100.

On Qutb... he's only part of the story, although quite an interesting part. Bin Laden developed his political philosophy from more than one place and person. In fact you might as well argue that Tammiyah the medieval scholar that invented the concept of responsibility for dealing with non-Muslim attacks, when Muslim ruler were ungodly. Of course Tammiyah didn't get covered in the Power of Nightmares as he didn't have something nice to listen to like "Baby its cold outside".

"ObL is at least heavily influenced by Qutb and Qutb at his worst is intolerable."

Intolerable to whom? And anyway Qutb is dead, the Egyptians tortured him to a confession (in their shiny CIA provided facilities) and then killed him. Being dead he's not going to be changing anything he said at this stage.

Still, I'm not personally convinced that a negotiating strategy that starts with a "we have a right to tell you what you think" is a goer. I suspect that we may want to start thinking that maybe people that aren't Westerners might actually be allowed to have their own political philosophy. Radical I know, but that's negotiation.

"bin Laden's crimes against the West are almost incidental to his crimes against his fellow muslims which are his main focus."

Has Bin Laden, in his own view, committed a crime against the West? He would (indeed does) argue that he shot back after years of Western attacks on Islam. Certainly he declared a defensive Jihad, exactly according to the rules of Islam. And if Bin Laden committed a crime then presumably we've committed the same crime or larger multiple times? Or do we get a special exception because we're invading them, and they're defending themselves.

"But a muslim civil war *is* something that's going to stink things up world wide so we're right to try to nip this before it rises to massive genocide."

Just to check...

a) why would there be a Muslim Civil War without our actions? The main targets are our Western-backed dictators
b) When we say genocide do we mean the millions bumped off in Iraq over the past 30 years? Or do we have no responsibility for our actions there?
c) Where did this notion that Bin Laden wanted a Muslim Civil War come from (other than the TV show the Power of Nightmares)?

If you mean that Muslim Civil War means that we must stop Bin Laden (or his followers) from removing the pro-Western governments who are, lets face it, quite pitilessly ruthless in maintaining their personal power then you'd have to admit that we're fighting hard to keep some really unpopular people in power.

On that basis Bin Laden could argue, with a straight face, that he is the voice of Islamic democracy - in any democratic vote the current Islamic rulers would be gone in an eye blink to be replaced by more radical Islamic thinkers. In Egypt, last time around, the Egyptian Brotherhood took 80+% of the popular vote. SCIRI and the Sadrists take nearly 60% of the Iraqi vote.

"Feel free to let me know the moral difference between knowingly endangering and "targeting". "

Its not a particularly subtle or complicated area of morality, and the fact that you think it is, is another depressing sign of American moral decline (what Boyd would probably call Moral Isolation).

From a fatwa that goes all the way back to April 2001, from Qatar-based Yusuf al-Qaradawi, one of Islams top scholars:

"The basic thing for Muslims to do is not to kill a child, woman or an old man who has nothing to do with war. But there are necessities sometimes. When our brethren set off a car bomb, they do not mean to kill a child... That is not intentional killing of a child. In the intifada children receive direct hits in their heads and their chests (referring to a practice of Israeli sniper teams). This is intentionally killing of children."

In summary: The car bombers knowingly endanger. The sniper targets. Both kill children. What matters is intent.

Of course the thing about the "free shot" theory that is now prevalent in the American far right is that it starts by presupposing that Americans have some right to be driving military vehicles in places where they can be shot at by the locals. Wryly, they could try driving some miles further away. Or just ask the locals if you can drive through.

Actually the 1943 US military guide to Iraq which has rather a lot of interesting things to say, even at 65 years distance. Quite why it wasn't re-issued I have no idea (actually I do, almost the first point it makes is that the Iraqis are top quality guerillas, which is not something the American military wanted to hear, never mind say, in 2003):

http://digitallibrary.smu.edu/cul/gir/ww2/pdf/w0025.pdf

Now lets all turn to page 11 where there is a simple highlighted passage "keep away from mosques". Its one of the few things italicised in the book and is perfectly simple advice. Quite why the Americans feel that they can ignore their grandparents perfectly wise solution remains unclear. Of course, in 1943, the British had not created an Iraqi guerilla war because (lets face it) we knew what the hell we were doing.

Rather awkwardly when you are discussing Bin Ladens war crimes I note that you oddly don't mention that the basic war crime is invasion. The indictment at the Nuremberg Trials was for “planning, preparation, initiation or waging of a war of aggression, or a war in violation of international treaties, agreements or assurances”. That kind of wording is rather awkward for the Americans today, so its probably best to say that Bin Laden can commit war crimes such as shooting back; whilst Americans cannot because... because... because Americans are special. Its vaguely concerning that American morality appears to go no deeper than that, and that would be another point that Bin Laden makes.

[ramsis]

adam:
Happy new year!
"Rather awkwardly when you are discussing Bin Ladens war crimes I note that you oddly don't mention that the basic war crime is invasion. The indictment at the Nuremberg Trials was for “planning, preparation, initiation or waging of a war of aggression, or a war in violation of international treaties, agreements or assurances”. That kind of wording is rather awkward for the Americans today, so its probably best to say that Bin Laden can commit war crimes such as shooting back; whilst Americans cannot because... because... because Americans are special. Its vaguely concerning that American morality appears to go no deeper than that, and that would be another point that Bin Laden makes.

I've never used this forum before to argue the invasions moral justification (I find it's someting you believe in or don't) but scince you brought it up I would like you to reread your statement and perhaps remember way back to 1991 when Iraq INVADED Kuwait (an ally and buisiness partner of the U.S.) Upon being thrown out of kuwait after ransacking the place an AGREEMENT was SIGNED by the Iraqi military to prevent an invasion and overthow of the Bathist regime. this ceasefire was violated numerous times! that alone gave us the moral athority to finish the war that saddam started! As for osama "shooting back" I don't think he was in iraq at when the invasion took place, in fact he felt miffed that he was not contracted for the job of defending kuwait and suadi arabia. So he embarked on a propaganda campaign casting us as crusaders invading the holy lands, (even though we were there at the request of both saudi arabia and kuwait) and for most part this propaganda effort was effective in many parts of the arab and apparantly european world.

[adam]

Ramsis,

Happy new year to you too. Apologies for taking so long to reply. A Devil's Brew of flu and some complete bastards armed with white boxes in the Persian Gulf have managed to keep me both ill and busy at the same time. (Thanks a bunch Iranian speedboats - whine, mumble, gripe, groan, etc. :-D)

You have fair points about the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait although I'd tend to argue that they are very much from the post 2000 US position. A full discussion of the issue can be found in Harvey, David (2005) The New Imperialism, Oxford University Press.

A summary of the non-US position would be:

a) In 1990 the US ambassador in Iraq gave permission for the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait. April Glaspie, meeting Saddam on 25th July 1990, said: "We have no opinion on your Arab-Arab conflicts... the Kuwait issue is not associated with America". In fact the meeting itself is just fascinating - Glaspie is very sympathetic to Sadaam over a rather nasty ABC story about Iraq where he is called a dictator. Imagine...

Of course this is barely 2 years after the US has provided active support for the Iraqi invasion of Iran... and at that point Iraq had hundreds of thousands of troops on the border of Kuwait. In short, when asked for a position on the proposed Iraqi invasion of Kuwait, the US representative says - short form: "Fuck Kuwait, its yours. Have fun."

I note in passing that the US never attempted to charge Sadaam with either of his two invasions. There was simply rather too much evidence pointing at current members of the US government for that to be a viable option.

b) Kuwait was also a business partner (read: active backer) of Iraq during the war against Iran. Kuwait was also a family dictatorship that had (in 1986) eliminated the parliament, and retained / reinvigorated the old system of indentured labour that looks, from a distance, remarkably similar to the 1925 system of slavery that was supposed to have been eliminated. In short making the Kuwaiti government look like the good guys was going to take some work.

In the event the US just made up some stories. The most famous of which was to use the daughter of the Kuwaiti ambassador to the US to pretend to be a nurse, she appeared on October 10 1990 under the name of Nayirah. The minor issue? It wasn't true. Although this didn't stop people like George Bush (snr) using her fairy-story everywhere they went.

A rather interesting on the subject book is: MacArthur (1992) Second Front: Censorship and Propaganda in the Gulf War, University of CA Press, Berkeley

My current irritation is mostly aimed at the 150 or so page book called the "Rape of Kuwait" produced by a Kuwaiti governments front organisation used for lobbying in the US. Around 200 hundred thousand copies of this were issued to US soldiers prior to Desert Storm. Bear in mind that we come in on this from my comments that only 20k copies of the writings of Bin Laden were created and you'll see why it grates.

Despite this its easy to forget that many people were very hesitant to support the Kuwaitis. As late as December 1990, a New York Times/CBS News poll said that 48% wanted Bush (snr) to wait beyond the January 15 deadline set. It was only after the war that it was obvious that the UN coalition (US, UK, France) massively outweighed Iraq, at the time no-one had any real recent experience of massive armoured operations.

Even so, the fact that many Americans remember "Iraqi atrocities" in Kuwait is a telling indication of how effective well organised propaganda is, even if it is untrue. That said, there were almost certainly atrocities - as 2003-8 has demonstrated you cannot drop highly trained regular professional US infantrymen into a city and expect a happy outcome, so why expect better from Iraqi conscripts?

Back to Kuwait, they had loaned Iraq some $15bn for the Iran-Iraq war. Iran did not take Kuwait's support lying down and tried to dissuade the Kuwaitis, by air raids on Kuwaiti defence posts in November 1980, and in October 1981 they blew the Kuwaiti oil refinery at Umm Aayash to bits. As is traditional, attempts at high explosive diplomacy failed dismally. It did not stop Kuwaiti support and during the war around a thousand trucks a day went from Kuwait to Iraq carrying military supplies because, as today, Kuwait had the functioning port.

b1) The problem with the $15bn is that Iraq couldn't / wouldn't pay it (in 1980 Iraq's oil exports were only worth $30bn a year - the Iraqis borrowed nearly $100bn to fight the Iran-Iraq war). So the Kuwaitis (according to the Iraqis) rather neatly drilled diagonally ("slant drilling") into an Iraqi oil field and started extraction. This came up in a 1989 OPEC meeting when the Iraqis demanded $1bn as a fine / compensation. Quite why the hell the Kuwaitis thought the Iraqis would do nothing further about this remains a mystery. Kuwait had a population less than a quarter of that of Baghdad, and a military that was made of up 3 men and a dog named Colin (it took the Iraqis, never particularly brilliant on the offensive, around 36 hours to chew through the whole lot of them).

b2) So quite a lot of people - probably including Glaspie - expected some Iraqi military action, if only waltzing in and blowing Kuwaiti oil rigs to bits.

b3) It turns out that the Iraqis were a bit more ambitious. Sadaam's troops took all of Kuwait, giving him control of a majority of the world's oil supply. In short, in 1991 Iraq paid its credit card bill by invading the bank.

The rest is history.

c) The UN only had authority to liberate Kuwait. Getting rid of Sadaam in 1991 (and after) had always been a US / Israeli / Saudi / Kuwaiti thing, and in 1991 the US was a lot more hesitant than the Israelis were. By comparison the UK was for keeping Sadaam in power, for pretty much the same reasons that we supported him in 1979 onwards. The Saudis were terrified of the thought of a resurgent secular leader going towards them - there was no way on Earth the Saudi military were up to dealing with a serious enemy force. And the Kuwaitis were pretty damn upset over what had happened to their houses (their often cheerfully pro-Iraqi indentured servants, mainly Palestinian, were easily replaced from the Philippines). Neither the Saudis nor the Kuwaitis were bothered enough to do anything about Iraq post-1991 though, they had the Americans for that.

d) The ceasefire, and subsequent US-led sanctions, did kill around a half million Iraqis - mostly under 5 and over 50 years old. This is a point that Bin Laden makes quite often but its worth remembering.

e) The US violated the Iraq ceasefire on any number of occasions, particularly with occasional bombings of Iraq and the random attempts to overthrow the Iraqi government. The most famous of which was Desert Fox. Whether that gives either side any moral authority depends on your point of view, I suppose.

f) Bin Laden is certainly on the side of Iraqis (although not the side of the secular Ba'athists). Any number of his speeches over the years have decried the lack of humanity that the US - and her Middle Eastern allies - have shown in Iraq.

Bin Laden was certainly upset that his mujahedeen were not considered as part of the defences of Saudi. Although I think the Americans play the whole thing up a lot more than might be expected - its more than a bit: "The Saudis think more of our troops than they do of Bin Laden. We rock, dude!".

The real issue is that the Saudis did not want the richest non-ruling family in Saudi to suddenly gain a loyal military strength - and if there is one thing that was clear in 1991 was that Bin Laden's followers were hellishly loyal. The Saudi's remember their history all too well - in the 12 years between 1916 and 1928 alone there were 26 rebellions against Saudi rule and the Eastern provinces of Saudi remain turbulent to this day. I should add here that the British should be proud of their role here. The RAF supported Saudi forces with air strikes and as poison gas was part of the TO&E at the time, and we were using in Iraq, I'd assume mustard gas as well... Oddly the RAF official history goes very quiet on this point. Hooray for us!

In short, in asking to form a military force to defend the Saudis, Bin Laden was being excessively religious (or naive). The Saudis arming a potential political rival? Don't think so. Bring in some expendable foreign mercenaries? Now we're cooking.

Bin Laden considers it a dreadful sign that the Defenders of the Holy Cities cannot field sufficient forces to stop one secular rulers without calling in foreigners. Of course the Saudis consider it a good idea - the US wasn't going to overthrow them, as it needed them too much. The alternatives were worse, arguably they still are.

And yes, Bin Laden does consider US actions in Saudi and Israeli actions in Palestine to be equal to the Crusaders. For that matter so does George Bush. In another of his cretinous speeches (surely a tautology) Bush said so.

The question is of course why was Bin Ladens propaganda effort successful? The simple answer is that it struck a chord with a lot of people that it was true. And that's the problem we need to confront head on.