2Sa
15:1 KJV And
it came to pass after this, that Absalom prepared him chariots and horses, and
fifty men to run before him.
Heroic
is as heroic does.
One
Cheer for Gen. Petraeus
http://j.mp/0GOPMyth or http://pjmedia.com/spengler/2015/01/12/one-cheer-for-gen-petraeus/
PJMedia David P. Goldman (Spengler) January 12th, 2015 - 2:34
pm
The Obama administration is still deciding
whether to bring felony charges against former CIA Director Gen. David
Petraeus, according to Attorney General Eric Holder. As a senior DOJ official
in the Clinton administration, Holder arranged a presidential pardon for
fugitive tax cheat Marc Rich. As attorney general, he ignored the
unconscionable use of the IRS against conservative-leaning organizations
seeking tax-exempt status.
This is a political prosecution. Petraeus’ supposed
crime, leaking classified information to a girlfriend, is the sort of
victimless infraction that never has been brought to the point of criminal
prosecution at any time in the past. Petraeus’ offense, rather, is political:
He is credited with the 2006-2007 surge that in Republican mythology won the
Iraq War before President Obama snatched defeat from the jaws of victory. One
risks being run out of the Republican Party on a rail for questioning this
mythology, but someone has to say that the emperor has no clothes.
Petraeus improved the optics of the Iraq mess
at the end of the second Bush administration, to be sure, but he also helped
set in motion the catastrophe that has now engulfed the Levant.
The story already has been told in depth by
Lt.-Gen. (ret.) Daniel Bolger, whose memoir Why We Lost appeared last year. I
reviewed it in Asia Times Online after observing that not one of the mainstream
media reviews mentioned the most important assertions in Gen. Bolger’s
excellent book: First, that American success in imposing majority rule on Iraq
in 2006 set in motion the Sunni insurgency, and second, that America’s
sponsorship of the Sunnis in 2007-2008 (the “Sunni Awakening” built with
American funds as part of the “surge”) made the insurgency intractable.
Below is an extract from my Nov. 21, 2014
review:
Proof that America has set out to destabilize
the Persian Gulf region, a well-regarded Chinese specialist argued recently
before a Beijing foreign-policy seminar, is that the Islamic State is led by Sunni
officers armed and funded by General David Petraeus, the US commander during
the 2007-2008 “surge”. The observation is correct, to be sure: ISIS shows
impressive leadership capacity and mastery of large-unit tactics involving
sophisticated equipment, and it learned much of this from the Americans. But
the Americans acted out of short-term political expediency rather than
medium-term malevolence.
America did not have to choose the wrong
mission, Bolger argues:
Bush’s war began narrowly, knocking out al-Qaeda
and its Taliban backers in Afghanistan. Within weeks of 9/11, the basic goals
were fulfilled, not perfectly, not completely, but probably close enough. Had
we stopped there and reverted to the long, slow Clinton-era squeeze of terror
cells and Islamist supporters , it might have done the job. … Again, as after
the fall of Kabul, the swift seizure of Baghdad offered another opportunity to
close out the conventional military phase and go back to the slow, steady,
daily pressures of global containment of Islamist threats. That moment passed.
Instead … with minimal domestic debate – and, notably, no known military
objection – the administration backed into two lengthy, indecisive
counterinsurgency campaigns.Careful what you wish for: by 2006, the US had sponsored
national elections in Iraq and brought to power the Shi’ite leader Nouri
al-Maliki, who promptly purged Iraqi’s security forces of Sunnis. Fearful of
Shi’ite vengeance, Iraq’s Sunnis revolted and Iraq dissolved into violence. In
response, junior officers operating in Sunni-dominated Anbar province devised
the stratagem that lay at the heart of the “surge”. The commitment of 20,000
additional combat troops helped suppress the Sunni insurgency, but paying the
Sunnis not to fight for the time being was more effective. As Bolger reports,
The Anbar tribes had always helped AQI
[al-Qaeda in Iraq]. … When individual tribal sheikhs objected, the elders lost
their heads. Families were attacked. Houses were demolished and cars burned.
The AQI men began to impose Wahhabi discipline – no gambling on horses, no
drinking alcohol, and no smoking. The AQI leaders had crossed the line at last.
The Persian-influenced sheruggis in Baghdad were far away from Anbar Province.
The Americans were right there, and they had little interest in what sheikhs
did with their tribes. Forced to choose between the AQI boot on their necks and
the US military, [tribal leaders] decided to try the Americans.That did the
trick. Petraeus, lobbying for the Iraq command from his post at the staff
college in Leavenworth, Kansas, took careful note of the junior officers’
proposals. Bolger has no patience for Petraeus’ politicking. “Junior soldiers
wondered about his real motivations. Service or self? With Petraeus, you never
knew for sure, but you often suspected the latter, and it meant trouble.”
With the whole of the senior Army staff
opposing the surge, president Bush looked for an officer who would improve the
optics in Iraq, and Petraeus was his man. Bolger adds:
“Combined with the troop surge in Baghdad, the
Sunni Awakening effectively ended the sectarian bloodshed by the summer of
2007. It split the Sunni resistance, and they stayed fragmented during the
remainder of the U.S. campaign. It was not a victory, not by any of the
criteria the optimistic Americans set for themselves back in 2003, seemingly in
another lifetime. But it was something like progress.
“… The Sunni Awakening expanded rapidly … Ever
conscious of marketing, [Iraq commander Gen David] Petraeus and his inner
circle settled on a more inspirational name. With the approval of Prime
Minister Nouri al-Maliki, the Sunni became the Sons of Iraq.
“Although the troop surge made the news in
America, in country, the Sunni Awakening delivered the real and lasting
difference in the rate of attrition. … The Sons of Iraq proved overwhelmingly
loyal. Nearly a hundred thousand strong, half of that number in and near
Baghdad, the Sahwa movement allowed the Sunni to carry weapons lawfully and get
paid, effectively removing much of the incentive for the “honorable
resistance.” It was by far the most successful and widespread jobs program in
Iraq … The Sahwa, however, paid tens of thousands of Sunni Arabs to kill each
other, not Americans. Cynical it might seem, but you couldn’t argue with the
results. The Sons of Iraq fielded some six times as many Sunni with firearms as
the highest estimate of enemy strength. It showed the potential depth and
resiliency of the Sunni insurgency.”One might put the matter even more
forcefully: by funding and training the “Sons of Iraq”, Petraeus and his team
assembled the elements of the new Sunni insurgency now using the name of
Islamic State (also known as Islamic State of Iraq and Syria). Andrew McGully’s
2007 report in Agence France-Pressedescribes the first meeting of Sunni tribes
near Baghdad with Petraeus and his team.
“Tell me how I can help you,” asks
Major-General Rick Lynch, commander of US-led forces in central Iraq … One
[tribal leader] mentions weapons, but the general insists: “I can give you
money to work in terms of improving the area. What I cannot do – this is very
important – is give you weapons.”
The gravity of the war council in a tent at the
US forward operating base at Camp Assassin is suspended for a few moments as
one of the local Iraqi leaders says jokingly but knowingly: “Don’t worry!
Weapons are cheap in Iraq.”
“That’s right, that’s exactly right,” laughs
Lynch in reply.”Having armed all sides of the conflict and kept them apart by
the threat of arms,” I wrote in a 2010 essay on Asia Times Online, titled “Gen
Petraeus’ Thirty Years’ War”, “the United States now expects to depart leaving
in place governments of national reconciliation that will persuade well-armed
and well-organized militias to play by the rules. It is perhaps the silliest
thing an imperial power ever has done. The British played at divide and
conquer, whereas the Americans propose to divide and disappear. At some point
the whole sorry structure will collapse, and no-one knows it better than
Petraeus.”
Petraeus doesn’t deserve criminal charges. But
he shouldn’t occupy a pedestal in the Republican pantheon, either.
Related
Notes
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fingers incompetent Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki. Or is Barack Obama
cul...
Analysis: Arab Winter is coming to Baghdad |
JPost | Israel News 06/15/2014 03:30 The conquest of ISIS may be short-lived,
but their success should be viewed in historical perspective. Fighters of the
Islamic State of I...
Al Qaeda militants flee Iraq jail in violent
mass break-out | Reuters Related Topics By Kareem Raheem and Ziad al-Sinjary
BAGHDAD/MOSUL, Iraq | Mon Jul 22, 2013 3:06pm EDT (Reuters) - Hundreds of
convicts, inc...
I2C 150113aa 2Sa15v1 GOP Myth | I2C | 150115 1326
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