A little bit of good news to cheer you guys up.

The Dow is at a new all-time record high.

And unemployment is at close to record low.

Have a nice day.

This is a critical and timely point, ahead of the next war with Iran (**). What will stop the neocon march to war in Iran? The legacy of responsible decision-making in the US military is the most likely possibility. An emphatic "no" from the global financial markets is another, maybe.

We don't deserve better from our military leadership, we need and insist on better.

** now that the Iranians have cleaned our clock, strategically, in the Iraq war

Umm..."official" unemployment is low, the real unemployment rate is high, something above 30% (less than 70% of employable adults are employed) which is much higher than it has ever been

I forgot to add since the last depression

I remember when the Joint Chiefs told Clinton that invading Haiti would be too hard, that the military was overextended - a lie, of course.
The Audubon Society could have conquered Haiti. In reality the Chiefs were resisting a Presidential decision that they thought utterly stupid - which it was, of course.

But then someone spilled the beans. Hard to guess who it was - hard to imagine anyone in our political classes actually knowing anything about war.

we told you so

Until Americans stop equating militarism with patriotism (the Founding Fathers certainly didn't), the downward spiral of the American empire is inevitable.

Umm..."official" unemployment is low, the real unemployment rate is high, something above 30% (less than 70% of employable adults are employed) which is much higher than it has ever been

Nowhere near 30%. Even considering the "discouraged worker" concept, The Washington Post and many other major media outlets cite it at around 7%.

http://www.heritage.org/Research/Labor/wm456.cfm

The Dow is at a new all-time record high.

Great, so we've gotten back to exactly where we were on Jan 14,2000. Bush and his tax cutting hordes have taken 6 years to get us back where we started.

"And you know what that means? Now we can start making some real money!" The Kinks, circa 1970

sportsfan79:

100% due to our reliance on foreign oil - which got cheap all of a sudden two months before the election.

Gee - I wonder how that happened?

Gee - I wonder what oil prices (and DJIA and unemployment reaction) will be on November 8th?

Answer: The neighborhood heroin dealer saw his best customers trying to get into rehab after his last price-hike, and is sneaking junk into the clinic to make sure they stay hooked.

The simple and honest answer is to cashier and imprison anyone above the rank of Major. Simply cashier and strip citizenship from all other officers and start clean with a national service program.

Todays mercenary force has so poisioned and embaressed the US that there is no saving it. Best wipe the slate clean and start anew.

With the publication of "Cobra One" and "Fiasco," as well as more topic-specific pieces like Chehab's "Inside the Resistance," it's hard to imagine anyone informed letting Franks, Sanchez, et al off the hook. In 2003, I was already hearing senior non-flag officers complain that the leadership had no idea how to fight a counterinsurgency conflict, or even seemed to be aware we were in one. (Telling fact: the grand-pere of COIN ops, David Galula, was so hard to find that even Hammes doesn't cite him in his "Sling and the Stone." I ended up scanning my copy and offering to send it to serving officers, until a small military press finally republished it.)

Fact is, the military got stuck in a -- let's say it -- quagmire it wasn't prepared to fight. Had the Chiefs actually thought about what was best for the country and the military, rather than for themselves and their services, we might not have ended up in Baghdad without a Phase IV OPLAN.

sportsfan79:

check the following graphs -
http://finance.yahoo.com/q/bc?s=%5EDJI&t=my&l=on&z=m&q=l&c=
http://finance.yahoo.com/q/bc?s=%5EXOI&t=my&l=on&z=m&q=l&c=
http://finance.yahoo.com/q/bc?s=%5EOIX&t=my&l=on&z=m&q=l&c=

Note the CBOE Oil index volume spikes earlier in the year. Someone stocked up while price was ramping, in order to provide some downstream price relief. Maybe that was just panic, maybe it was planned. Who knows? Only those in Cheney's secret energy meetings know for sure.

Gen. Peter Pace is an absolute disgrace to the uniform he wears

The others are probably just as bad

"Every once in a while, you've got to do something hard, do something you're not comfortable with. A person needs a gut check." - Corporal Chad Ritchie, U.S.M.C

yeah, i've frequently wondered what those uniformed officers who worked so hard to undermine clinton and who thought the gravest threat to the military was faggots in the foxholes think now when compared to the contempt with which bush, cheney, rumsfeld and gonzales think of them.

The real question is;
While the Republican House leadership is self-destructing over the Foley-Pedophilia scandal, will we all be so distracted over this that we miss out on the impending NK nuclear test?

The problem with your reasoning is that military leaders had no incentive to provide sound analysis and good judgement. The first person who tried that was Shinseki, and after that it became pretty clear that the civilian leadership was uninterested in any analysis that did not fit their preconceptions and would act punitively towards any military officials who undermined Rumsfield by providing alternative analyses that did not fit the party line. So seeing no upside, the Joint Cheifs decided to shut up and keep their careers afloat, an entirely rational course of action from their point of view.

The same thing happens in organizations all over the world every single day. If you know that your boss only wants to receive information which supports his/her viewpoint, you realize pretty quickly that espousing an alternative viewpoint is a career ending move. If organizations do not create an environment where a variety of opinions are welcomed, leaders never hear the bad news until its too late because everyone below them is too afraid to tell them.

The Pentagon Civilian Leadership == AIPAC

Just yesterday, after the funeral of a 20-year-old who died in combat in Iraq, an active-duty, one-star Army general home between Iraq deployments spoke privately to a small group about how Iraq is destroying our armed forces.

He said we are now five brigades short of the minimum needed to maintain forces in Iraq, and already the Pentagon is cutting rotations home from 12 to 11 months to try to cover the shortage. He said that within months, the Pentagon will either have to:

a) call up three brigades of the National Guard (about 9,000 troops), thus breaking Rumsfeld's promise not to deploy the Guard more than once every five years, or

b) re-institute the draft.

I didn't know whether to congratulate him on his candor, or condemn him for his cowardice in not standing up to rumsfeld and bush.

"So seeing no upside, the Joint Cheifs decided to shut up and keep their careers afloat, an entirely rational course of action from their point of view.

The same thing happens in organizations all over the world every single day. "

It would be nice to think that this would not happen in organizations where shutting up and letting the boss beleive what he wants to beleive leads directly to the deaths of large numbers of people, while getting fired leaves you with a full government pension, but clearly it still happens.

"And unemployment is at close to record low."

Sorry, Bub. Books on that one are cooked. Better to look at the U.S Bureau of Labor Statistics survey of Labor Force Participation Rate, which measures the number of adults from 16-65 years of age who have jobs.

When your boy W took office in 1/2001, it was just under its ten-year high (which took place in 1/2000), and had been trending upward for the previous five years, then trending slightly lower in 2000. Since W took office, it has been trending steadily downward, with a slight recovery in the last year to reach the best point it has reached during W's entire misadministration. That point is still significantly lower than its ten-year average.

Carol's comments are much more in line with real data than are yours.

Source:
http://data.bls.gov/PDQ/servlet/SurveyOutputServlet?data_tool=latest_numbers&series_id=LNS11300000

Keep in mind that Heritage is notorious for not letting actual facts get in the way of their ideology.

WatchfulBabbler wrote:

In 2003, I was already hearing senior non-flag officers complain that the leadership had no idea how to fight a counterinsurgency conflict, or even seemed to be aware we were in one.
_________________

It does take a while to shift to a counterinsurgency mindset. However, one would be hard-pressed to refer to Galula's component comparison chart and decide just how our military is not following his script. It's also hard not to notice how unlike most other insurgencies the Iraqi one is, with it's apparent unconcern for capturing the hearts of the populace and without any viable ideology at all.

CN -
No fair; all those people who aren't in the "Labor Force Participation Rate" are making a great living selling stuff on ebay!

And those who ARE working are making more money, because their dental plans are better now.

Plus - the Boskin commission says that the CPI overstates inflation by 1% or more! Hedonic adjustment!

And Lieberman has the softest hands. . .

What's probably worse is that the Bush administration, as they have everywhere else, not only staffed the Joint Chiefs with "pliable" replacements, they have staffed every possible niche throughout government with partisan Republican replacements who will undermine a future Democratic administration at every turn.

Until Americans stop equating militarism with patriotism (the Founding Fathers certainly didn't), the downward spiral of the American empire is inevitable.

In line with that, kudos to Mr. Drum (and the LA Times, I guess) for highlighting Bacevich's work. To my mind, he's the most astute military/foreign affairs writer in the country today. The Dems would do very, very well to pay attention to his perspective, rather than treating foreign affairs as an afterthought.

(The Republicans, of course, are simply hopeless. Maybe, just maybe, when the current gang of lying criminals is swept away, the GOP might notice that it's not 1979 any more.)

"Sorry, Bub. Books on that one are cooked. Better to look at the U.S Bureau of Labor Statistics survey of Labor Force Participation Rate, which measures the number of adults from 16-65 years of age who have jobs."
_______________

Nevertheless, does anyone expect the next party in charge to change the stats back so they look worse?

I didn't know whether to congratulate him on his candor, or condemn him for his cowardice in not standing up to rumsfeld and bush.

Well, in fairness, even thought they're called "generals", I kinda doubt that most one-stars would have many opportunities to talk to Rumsfeld directly. There are hundreds (thousands?) of flag rank officers in the armed forces.

Bush and his administration deserve the lion's share of the blame for the disastrous decline in our national security that we've suffered over the past three years.

Have we suffered a disastrous decline in our national security over the last 3 years? Is that the new Democratic talking point that they are going to hammer home in the last month of the campaign?

13 dead US troops in Iraq over the last two days.

Stick that up your Dow Jones average.

generals are politicians. Generals who do not engage in politics, are Captains and Majors.

Sportsfan79, did the high Dow Jones and low unemployment cheer you up during the dark, dreadful Clinton years?

yeah, i've frequently wondered what those uniformed officers who worked so hard to undermine clinton and who thought the gravest threat to the military was faggots in the foxholes think now when compared to the contempt with which bush, cheney, rumsfeld and gonzales think of them.

Me too, Linda. Sadly, they will probably still mostly vote Republican. It is really hard to change entrenched views, and the military has decided that Republicans treat them better, against all evidence.

After reading "Fiasco" it's hard not to conclude that Tommy Franks was just a bootlicker.

CN Wrote:

Sorry, Bub. Books on that one are cooked. Better to look at the U.S Bureau of Labor Statistics survey of Labor Force Participation Rate, which measures the number of adults from 16-65 years of age who have jobs.

Thanks CN, but I think I'll keep referring to the same index that I always have, even during the Clinton Presidency.

Consistency is important to some people. Just not on this board.

Speed wrote:

Sportsfan79, did the high Dow Jones and low unemployment cheer you up during the dark, dreadful Clinton years?

Yes it did. Part of the reason I voted for him.

Uh-oh. I smell "concern troll ... "

Bob

Consistency is important to some people. Just not on this board.
Posted by: sportsfan79

reliability is probably more important ...

"while getting fired leaves you with a full government pension"

I haven't read Boobie on Tommy Franks. But I do remember that in the run-up to the war, when planning was at a crucial stage, there were reports that Franks was fighting with Rumsfeld to go in "heavy".

Next thing you know an investigation is announced-- Franks may have taken his wife on military planes without paying her fare. *Next* thing you know, Rumsfeld's happy as can be about Franks's new "light" plan. The investigation disappears.

If that probe went forward and found him guilty, which it would have, he'd have lost his pension.

Now I agree in theory that he should have stood up for his honor and for the lives of the people under his command, not to mention all those Iraqis. A pension is nothing compared to that. But it takes a really rare kind of guts to tell a vicious asshat like Rummy "you can have your war and do it your way, but it'll be without me" and have to scrabble for money the rest of your life.

Seems to me everybody else got the message of this, and I think it was more importaant inside the uniformed military than what happened to Shinseki.

It's the bush way: defy me, and not only will you lose your job, but you'll lose your house and your pension, your kids will never find work, and you might wake up with a horse's head in your bed one day.

That was standard MO in the early years (say up until last year). I think it's what kept Powell quiet until now.

It is so nice that we don't have to deal with record market highs every month, like we did under Clinton. And thankfully, we don't talk about the rate of employment any more, just the small, limited measure of unemployment.

Please, people, don't paint the entire military red. This is a common misconception and my personal windmill to tilt at. In actuality, it is more purple than blue or red.

No political party owns the right to claim an exclusive on the loyalty of the troops in uniform.

The split is pretty even. And I can tell you first hand, the officers are not happy right now.

Since the Goldwater Nichols Act in the mid 80s reorganized things, the Chiefs of the individual services are no longer directly involved in operations. Those are the responsibility of the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs and the commmanders of the various theaters (Centcom, Paccom, Eurocom, Southcom, etc.) The service chiefs are responsible for equipping and training the members of their services for their type of missions.

It's ironic that what little backbone has been exhibited by JCS level officers has been on the part of a couple of the service chiefs, namely the former Army chiefs Gen. Eric Shinseki early on and Gen. Peter Shoomaker recently when he stood up to Rumsfeld on the Army budget. Myers was a disastrous non-entity as Chiefs Chair, and although Pace has occasionally shown a sign of life or two, he hasn't been much better as far as I can see.

sglover, there are 307 flag-rank officers in the Army by statute, with a little under half BGENS.

This Administration remains fairly popular with the troops and especially with the officers. There are a few who have run up against Rumsfeld to the detriment of their careers (just as a few collided with Secretaries Aspin and Cohen). But for the most part, the leadership just seems more comfortable with Bush than they were with President Clinton. President Bush has always been very much at ease with uniformed people, while his predecessor always seemed uncustomarily out of his comfort zone.

The military is a bit strange that way. They don't want to be treated as just any other constiutency, much less victims. And losses have always been part of the business, to be endured for as long as the mission remains viable. Even most of the dissenting retirees want to continue the fight, disagreeing only with the way in which it is being executed.

The leadership isn't rebelling against the Administration because they do not judge that we have been defeated in any meaningful way. In any case, professional ethics will keep most of their counsel in private unless they are asked direct questions by Congress.

That was standard MO in the early years (say up until last year). I think it's what kept Powell quiet until now.
Posted by: Altoid on October 3, 2006 at 5:00 PM | PERMALINK

I suspect that Jeff Gannon was a blackmail tool. Any player who didn't toe the line, and had their IP address appearing in Jeff Gannon's "Hot Military Studs" web server access log, was risking being exposed - like Foley.

Although for Powell, I assume that the blackmail leverage had something to do with his son's position as FCC chair.

Members of the Joint Chiefs deserved to be skewered for their selective (and ultimately misguided) loyalty. If any of them are still around when the next Democratic administration takes over, they should be publicly and rudely cashiered.

After reading "Fiasco" it's hard not to conclude that Tommy Franks was just a bootlicker.

Since this thread is about a Bacevich essay, it's only fair to link his review of Franks' self-laudatory "memoir".

sglover, there are 307 flag-rank officers in the Army by statute, with a little under half BGENS.

Ah, thanks. But that's just in the army. Include the other services, and the number ought to be around 1000, right? Lotta competition for Rumsfeld's ear.

Please, people, don't paint the entire military red. This is a common misconception and my personal windmill to tilt at. In actuality, it is more purple than blue or red....

The split is pretty even. And I can tell you first hand, the officers are not happy right now.

The services as a whole might be evenly split between both parties (which I'm not sure is quite true), but my understanding is that well over half of the officer class self-identifies as Republican, and trending more in that direction every year. As Bacevich points out in his other writings, this is even more noteworthy when you recall that many officers of generations not too long gone followed George Marshall's extreme example of apolitical conduct, and pointedly abstained from voting. (Not that this never got in the way of gaming politicians for appropriations. You think Billy Mitchell got turned into a latter-day Joan of Arc because of his spirituality?!?)

While it's likely that many officers in the ground forces are (justifiably) disillusioned, I wonder if those in the other services feel the same way. In particular, I'm guessing that Air Force generals (there's no problem that $100 million technology can't solve!) are pretty happy with how Rumsfeld's "transformation" scam has worked out.

Left-wingers have not been great admirers of the military since Vietnam when many of them greeted returning veterans by spitting in their faces and calling them "fascists" and "baby-killers." That generation of undisciplined, doped-up and spoiled middle-class college students decided that the great evil in the world was their own country. John Kerry, the three-month war wonder, and the bearded Billy Clinton who demonstrated abroad against his own country set the standard for the modern left and the Democrat party.

Yo, fuckwit -- you wanna compare DD-214's?

John Kerry, the three-month war wonder, and the bearded Billy Clinton who demonstrated abroad against his own country set the standard for the modern left and the Democrat party.
Posted by: mhr on October 3, 2006 at 5:31 PM | PERMALINK

Yeah, because the rest of us in this country couldn't get deferrments or magical National Guard slots that let you skip past waiting lists, snort coke, crash jets, and miss the optional roll-call for months in a row.

CT wrote:

Members of the Joint Chiefs deserved to be skewered for their selective (and ultimately misguided) loyalty. If any of them are still around when the next Democratic administration takes over, they should be publicly and rudely cashiered.
________________

They serve at the convenience of the President and the next one can do what he or she wishes. But coming into power with a grudge wouldn't cement friendly relations with the uniformed Services.

mhr - So, how many tours of duty have you done in Iraq and Afghanistan? And if the answer is none, why don't you get your sorry ass out there?

sglover wrote:

While it's likely that many officers in the ground forces are (justifiably) disillusioned, I wonder if those in the other services feel the same way. In particular, I'm guessing that Air Force generals (there's no problem that $100 million technology can't solve!) are pretty happy with how Rumsfeld's "transformation" scam has worked out.
_______________

By most polls, between 2/3 and 3/4 of military officers are registered Republicans. This trend started in the late 70s and only increased in the 80s and 90s.

From one who was around during Vietnam, the feeling among officers is just not the same as back then. Though many today are tired of back to back to back deployments and worry about their men, very few officers (of any Service) give the impression that they think we are losing on the ground.

The overall feeling one still gets is determination to get the job done, rather than simply surviving through one's tour.

By the way, the Air Force has suffered its cutbacks under transformation. But belt tightening is also part of the job. Somehow, one doesn't get the impression that the next President is going to go crazy with new weapons systems or vast numbers of more troops. The understanding is that the lean years are a'coming.

So tell me, Mr. Never-Uses-Paragraphs mhr: was the Vietnam War a mistake or not?

I have a hard time knowing where you guys stand. When it suits your purposes, Vietnam was a "Democrats'" war that hangs around their necks like the proverbial millstone. But at the same time, the "Left" is to be blamed for protesting against it.

So which is it? Was Vietnam a mistake? Was it wrong for the left to protest it?

And by the way, the story of people "spitting" on returning Vietnam vets is an urban legend.

Especially troubling to me has been the commitment of military pundits and active duty military leaders to a narrative, which uses strategic "persistence" to hide all other aspects of the situation in Iraq.

By continually falling back on the idea that we can "win" in Iraq by simply persisting, and repeatedly worrying over whether the American People have sufficient "will" to persist long enough -- decades, in some analyses -- they have obscured the extent to which civilian leadership has precluded success by failing to provide sufficient resources and by failing in their strategic committment to actually achieving critical goals.

The U.S. has failed in Iraq -- massively and, possibly, irretrievably. Yet, the most common narrative "analysis" treats our failures as if their only effect is to turn the "sure thing" we were sold at the outset into a gamble. If we keep rolling dice long enough, somehow things will turn out all right. The course of events -- the "outcome" in Iraq -- is always a "Friedman" or two away.

The only purpose of this choice of narrative analysis is to blame failure on the poor responsible fool, who finally pulls the plug on this whole fiasco. And, the military, thru the current leadership and thru the semi-retired military analyst/pundits, who populate the airwaves, actively encourage this narrative setup of some future stab-in-the-back crap.

Bruce Wilder wrote:

By continually falling back on the idea that we can "win" in Iraq by simply persisting, and repeatedly worrying over whether the American People have sufficient "will" to persist long enough -- decades, in some analyses -- they have obscured the extent to which civilian leadership has precluded success by failing to provide sufficient resources and by failing in their strategic committment to actually achieving critical goals.
___________________

The trouble with this sort of analysis is that it does not conform to objective military measurements. Sometimes, one indeed does win simply through persistence. Sometimes, the strategic and tactical choices become very constrained. Sometimes the outside observer fails to discern progress because they are looking for the wrong indicators.

Soldiers will sacrafice their lives for their country, but not their careers. You can blame the flag officers for choosing career over country, but the truth is that to a career soldier, emasculation is a fate worse than death. Rumsfeld knew this keenly, and used it ruthlessly to turn the Joint Chiefs of Staff into Stepford Generals.

Shinseki stood up and spoke truth to power. Congress, rather that follow up on the flags that he raised, instead watched Rumsfeld cut his legs off and did nothing.

Success has many parents but failure is an orphan, and nowhere is that truer than in the American military. They didn't lose the Vietnam war, it was the fault of the politicians and the media.

If the 1979 rescue of the Iranian hostages had succeeded, there would have been no end to the fanfares to the military. Movies would have added to the legend. But once they turned it into a Keystone Kops routine in the desert, it was ALL CARTER'S FAULT. To this day, when people talk about Carter's presidency, the rescue debacle is always listed as one of his failures.

But once they turned it into a Keystone Kops routine in the desert, it was ALL CARTER'S FAULT. To this day, when people talk about Carter's presidency, the rescue debacle is always listed as one of his failures.
Posted by: wally on October 3, 2006 at 6:15 PM | PERMALINK

But notice;
nobody talks about how the Iranian Revolution was blowback for American Meddling, replacing the democratically-elected leader with a fascist thug dictator, the Shah.

By the way, the Air Force has suffered its cutbacks under transformation. But belt tightening is also part of the job. Somehow, one doesn't get the impression that the next President is going to go crazy with new weapons systems or vast numbers of more troops. The understanding is that the lean years are a'coming.

Well.... I'll never get over my resentment over the F-22 and JSF acquisitions. Talk about white elephants! Honestly, I think there's a good case for abolishing the Air Force entirely.

I so love pretending I know all sort of insider things about soldiering and those big strong military fellas. I just shoot all over my mother`s basement floor as I read about them in their pretty magazines and cruise all those really cool pretend military websites. I am so excited when people talking about killing brown people I just gush all over. Maybe someday they will even let me wear one of those uniforms for Halloween or something.

If the 1979 rescue of the Iranian hostages had succeeded, there would have been no end to the fanfares to the military. Movies would have added to the legend. But once they turned it into a Keystone Kops routine in the desert, it was ALL CARTER'S FAULT. To this day, when people talk about Carter's presidency, the rescue debacle is always listed as one of his failures.

Posted by: wally

Honestly, I think it's civillians that do that, not the military. Anyone who's ever been in a combat unit knows that bad weather happens; it's just that in this case a sand storm caused the loss of eight good men, not so much anything President Carter did or didn't do.

Bruce Wilder wrote:

By continually falling back on the idea that we can "win" in Iraq by simply persisting, and repeatedly worrying over whether the American People have sufficient "will" to persist long enough -- decades, in some analyses -- they have obscured the extent to which civilian leadership has precluded success by failing to provide sufficient resources and by failing in their strategic committment to actually achieving critical goals.
___________________

Trashhauler wrote, in response:
The trouble with this sort of analysis is that it does not conform to objective military measurements. Sometimes, one indeed does win simply through persistence. Sometimes, the strategic and tactical choices become very constrained. Sometimes the outside observer fails to discern progress because they are looking for the wrong indicators.
_______________________________

Yes, and sometimes the military leaders choose the wrong measurements, and sometimes, incompetent civilian leadership has handed them incoherent political goals without the means to achieve them.

Iraq is a largely urbanized country, where the average is 19, electricity, potable water and sewage are erratic and uncertain, the unemployment rate is something north of 25%, there's a huge and ready supply of munitions and large numbers trained to use them. Just imagine any U.S. city, where the government is bankrupt and incompetent, the population is very young and unemployed, there are blackouts everyday and sewage has backed up in the streets, the temperature is over 90F, and, oh yeah, everyone owns automatic weapons and can readily get high explosives. Now, hold that image in your mind, and try to imagine that, having failed to address electricity, water, sewage, disarmament, security or employment adequately, all is going to made better because the Mayor (Prime Minister) is making nice over the city charter (constitution). That's what we are constantly told on CNN and by Tom Friedman.

There's something bizarre and unreal about continually focusing on political negotiations, which have little relation to social and economic conditions.

I know people have little patience for "social engineering", but in the case of Iraq, our political discourse is off in Wonderland.

I am sure, on the professional level of military intelligence, among the colonels and majors, the factors I cite are considered. But, the Generals, active-duty or retired, focus elsewhere in front of the cameras, and it is a disservice to the country, to debase our national discourse in this way, with irrelevancies, whose only purpose is to cast blame for the failure of a policy, on those who had the least to do with its adoption and execution.

Trashhauler wrote:
Sometimes the outside observer fails to discern progress because they are looking for the wrong indicators.

I agree that it's important for the American public - and the political leadership - to understand and hopefully work toward agreement on a set of indicators for judging the merit of our ongoing war in Iraq.

Why don't we debate precisely that issue? How do we measure success in Iraq. There were stated (and often changing) justifications for the war...why don't we start there?

If we look back at why we went there in the first place, we could easily construct a set of indicators that could then be measured:

* the extent to which we are safer from the possibility of being attacked with weapons of mass destruction (nukes?)
* the extent to which we are objectively safer from the threat of terrorist attacks on the US mainland or on US assets/interests overseas
* the extent to which Iraqis are demonstrably safer than they were under the dictatorship of Saddam Hussein
* the extent to which critical oil supplies of the Middle East are safer and better secured for our future access to those supplies
* the extent to which we have succeeded in filling the world with respect (and fear) for us, as a result of our forceful "projection of power" demonstration

I'd be more than willing to debate the wording of a set of indicators and the data elements/sources that would comprise such a set. Until that happens, complaints that outside observers are not discerning progress because we're looking at the wrong indicators is just empty rhetoric, pure and simple.

Asshauler wrote:

I so love pretending I know all sort of insider things about soldiering and those big strong military fellas.
_________________

LOL

Bruce Wilder wrote:

"Iraq is a largely urbanized country, where the average is 19, electricity, potable water and sewage are erratic and uncertain, the unemployment rate is something north of 25%, there's a huge and ready supply of munitions and large numbers trained to use them. Just imagine any U.S. city, where the government is bankrupt and incompetent, the population is very young and unemployed, there are blackouts everyday and sewage has backed up in the streets, the temperature is over 90F, and, oh yeah, everyone owns automatic weapons and can readily get high explosives.

I am sure, on the professional level of military intelligence, among the colonels and majors, the factors I cite are considered. But, the Generals, active-duty or retired, focus elsewhere in front of the cameras, and it is a disservice to the country, to debase our national discourse in this way, with irrelevancies, whose only purpose is to cast blame for the failure of a policy, on those who had the least to do with its adoption and execution."
______________________

Those aren't measurements of military progress, though they are important political considerations. Operational measurements focus on the enemy, considering his weaknesses as well as his strengths and matching them against your own. By most measurements, our enemies in Iraq cannot shape the outcome - they can only delay their own destruction.

Kevin, you should be aware that Rummy has put his yes men in the top Pentagon positions. Rummy got rid of everyone who stood up to him (early retirements) and promoted toadies instead. The JCS is more politicized today than it has been in a long time.

Wonderin wrote:

If we look back at why we went there in the first place, we could easily construct a set of indicators that could then be measured:

* the extent to which we are safer from the possibility of being attacked with weapons of mass destruction (nukes?)
* the extent to which we are objectively safer from the threat of terrorist attacks on the US mainland or on US assets/interests overseas
* the extent to which Iraqis are demonstrably safer than they were under the dictatorship of Saddam Hussein
* the extent to which critical oil supplies of the Middle East are safer and better secured for our future access to those supplies
* the extent to which we have succeeded in filling the world with respect (and fear) for us, as a result of our forceful "projection of power" demonstration
____________________

Those are war aims, Wonderin, not indicators of military progress. At the practical level, CENTCOM has several assigned tasks (the order of importance is probably off slightly):

1. Protect the Iraqi government until it can protect itself.

2. Train and equip sufficient Iraqi military and police units to take over the fight.

3. Seek and kill the enemy, limit or destroy its capability to wage war.

4. Protect US and coalition forces.

5. Protect the Iraqi public and infrastructure.

6. Encourage the Iraqi public and sectarian leaders to support the legitimate government and turn against the insurgents.

What our practicioners of war measure (with increasing specificity the further one goes down the chain of command) are things such as:

Estimates of enemy numbers and capability. Do their losses exceed their recruiting or reinforcements from external sources?

Does the enemy refuse battle or seek it? Are they on the strategic or tactical offense or defense?

Are the areas of enemy strength increasing or decreasing?

What are the enemy tactics and what is their impact on the capability of our forces and on our allies?

Are the enemy tactics making converts or making enemies. Is the enemy becoming more or less popular among the public at large?

What are the enemy goals and are they any closer to achieving them? What can we do to counteract them?

Do our own capabilities remain intact? How does the enemy action affect them?

Are our tactics effective for each of the assigned tasks? What can we do to improve?

Are we gaining or losing the support of the population and its leaders? Specifically, which leaders can we count on and which should we distrust?

What is the condition of our troops? How is their esprit de corps and what is the state of their moral?

There are other indicators, many of them logistical in nature. But, of necessity, the American public and the press are largely ignorant of the actual scoring of most measurements. But the US military is not.

And note that the indicators are unaffected by US public opinion or things like global national intelligence estimates. Those things are important on a national level, but less so at the theater operational level.

nobody talks about how the Iranian Revolution was blowback for American Meddling, replacing the democratically-elected leader with a fascist thug dictator, the Shah

Ah yes. That madman Mossadegh had to go, and the Brits would not be placated. They didn't care what he offered, they wanted their oil company back, and his head on a pike.

John Foster Dulles - the Rove of his day - was a real ends-justify-means kind of guy. "I have here in my hand a plan to get rid of that madman Mossadegh." Kermit "Kim" Roosevelt (CIA higher-up) would later say that no one even considered the gravity of the situation and the long-reaching after effects of the coup. A servant does not, after all, confront his lord and master with such impudence.

Yeah, the west has never acted in a manner that could be seen as self-serving in the eyes of the locals who for years got screwed over. Nothing. Ever. Fucking ingrates.

Trashhauler dishonestly claimed:

1. Protect the Iraqi government until it can protect itself.

Inasfar as "democracy promotion" goes, if we're promoting a democracy, then that means the government is essentially the people. And they demonstrate spectacularly on a daily basis that we are neither protecting them, nor will they be able to protect themselves anytime soon. They're being murdered at a rate of 100+ per day.

That's a spectacular feat of negligence.

2. Train and equip sufficient Iraqi military and police units to take over the fight.

Uh - great idea!.
When do we start?

3. Seek and kill the enemy, limit or destroy its capability to wage war.

Considering the ramp in violence, they're pretty much striking with impunity.

4. Protect US and coalition forces.

Uh yeah, was that 12, or 13 killed TODAY?

5. Protect the Iraqi public and infrastructure.

See #1.

6. Encourage the Iraqi public and sectarian leaders to support the legitimate government and turn against the insurgents.

Given that Sistani has now bowed out and handed the reigns to Sadr, I'd say that's yet another sign of failure.

What our practicioners of war measure (with increasing specificity the further one goes down the chain of command) are things such as:

Estimates of enemy numbers and capability. Do their losses exceed their recruiting or reinforcements from external sources?

To date, that has not been demonstrated. We're killing them, to be sure. But again, given the increasing number and lethality of attacks, they seem to have found a formula for growing their capability. That formula is:
1. Commit attrocities to piss off enemy.
2. Goaded enemy commits attrocities in return (ie. Abu Ghraib, Haditha, Falluja, etc.).
3. Sign up more recruits!

From an American standpoint, it's extremely frustrating, because OUR troops should be smarter than to fall for about the oldest trick in the book. It doesn't help that their civilian leadership is FUCKING INCOMPETENT.

Does the enemy refuse battle or seek it? Are they on the strategic or tactical offense or defense?

They certainly don't fight us on our terms. And we don't fight them on their terms either (duh!). 2am bombing raids with $30 million dollar radar-invisible planes; that kind of warfare is considered "sneaky and dishonorable" in some circles. Remember the storyline behind "The Last Samurai" - this history behind that was a disenfrachised class of aristocrats with their armor and swords - war craftsmen, being replaced my mechanized warfare of cannons and rifles, which was an exceedingly dishonorable way to fight a war from a Samurai's point of view. So is midnight bombing raids with radar-invisible planes. So is white phosphorous. So is using lasers to blind troops. So is torture. So is suicide bombers. So is sawing hostages heads off. "Dishonorable" is when an opponent refuses to fight a war on your terms.

Are the areas of enemy strength increasing or decreasing?

No objective measure I've heard in the last 6 months tries to claim they're decreasing. We've finally exhausted the public's patience with mendacious "turning the corner" and "dead-enders" rhetoric.

What are the enemy tactics and what is their impact on the capability of our forces and on our allies?

Frankly, I think that if we could put enough troops in theater, and get rid of the Rumsfeldian automated $$$=kills style of warfare, we could defeat the insurgents, and decisively, and begin to work towards winning over the Iraqi people. But as it stands now, your question is a meaningless one - because fighting the Rumsfeld-way, with two hands tied behind our backs, just for the sake of proving his "theory" of warfare, which was born of the Cold War, planning to fight WW III, (which these guys seem to have a never-ending hard-on to fight) - is doing nothing but pissing the Iraqis off, killing our boys, and prolonging the conflict (and the lovely instable oil-price market that goes with it, and is fucking each and every Working American in the ass, each and every day they drive to work).

Are the enemy tactics making converts or making enemies. Is the enemy becoming more or less popular among the public at large?

I think I've already answered this question - though you can live in your little fantasy world of "dead-enders" and "turning the corner" if you like.

What are the enemy goals and are they any closer to achieving them?

Their goal is to persist, and continue to be a thorn in our side. Didn't Hezbollah just declare victory after gettting the shit kicked out of them in Lebannon?

To win - we need to consider OUR victory condition, which entails us staying there FOREVER, simply to prevent the enemy from being able to claim victory when we withdraw. Isn't that absurd?

What can we do to counteract them?

We have three options. . .

1. Leave now, take our lumps, send troops to bolster Afghanistan, and at least fucking get bin Laden.
2. Start a draft, and put 500k troops into Iraq, get the job done right.
3. Stay the course, until the American Economy collapses into a ruinous pile of debt, and withdraw anyway - except this way, when the two jihadists left alive in Iraq say "praise Allah, we won!" . . . they'll be RIGHT.

Do our own capabilities remain intact?

No. Obviously so. Even Frist said that we can't defeat the Taliban miltarily, so we have to let them have Afghanistan. (boy, I bet Karzai loved hearing that!).
Did you hear that? That's the sound of us - THE REPUBLICAN LEADERSHIP - surrendering to our primary enemy in the War On Terror.
Because Bush diverted our effort to Iraq. Yes, our capability is severely degraded because of that diversion.

How does the enemy action affect them?

It keeps us shackled to the Halliburton Gravy Train, while we SHOULD be paying attention and credibly rattling our sabers at REAL threats, like Iran, Afghanistan, Pakistan, and North Fucking Korea.

Are our tactics effective for each of the assigned tasks? What can we do to improve?

Return to our American Values - the Powell Doctrine, WINNING wars, kicking ass when necessary (as was in Afghanistan), and doing so from a moral high ground. (as opposed to a Relatively Moral High Ground - ie. "we don't cut their heads off! therefore we can waterboard them.")

Are we gaining or losing the support of the population and its leaders?

Clearly losing.

Specifically, which leaders can we count on and which should we distrust?

distrust Ahmed Chalabi, Iranian Spy, who scammed the idiot Bush into starting a war in Iraq, thus creating a power vacuum, allowing Iran to take over control in the region. This is no joke.

What is the condition of our troops? How is their esprit de corps and what is the state of their moral?

What does that matter? Sure it matters to them - but they're ultimately there to do a job, and the job that Bush has told them to do. They're going to do it as long as they can. The question is - how long can we keep borrowing money from China to finance it? What is going to happen to our economy when interest rates shoot up even more? What is going to happen to our economy when Iran gets the bomb, and we are forced to impose sanctions (or preemptively strike) and they cut off the oil? It's a real fine mess the Bush Neocons have gotten us into - but hey, as long as the Halliburton execs have their golden parachutes, it's all right. Right?

There are other indicators, many of them logistical in nature. But, of necessity, the American public and the press are largely ignorant of the actual scoring of most measurements. But the US military is not.

Um yeah - like I said, put the goal posts wherever you like them. In 10 years, when we're $2 Trillion dollars into this effort, and Iran is nuking Israel and we can't do a damn thing to stop them, and NK is nuking SK, and we can't do a damn thing to stop them, you'll be wondering why the liberals didn't back up Bush's effort in Iraq to create yet another failed state Southern Asia.

And note that the indicators are unaffected by US public opinion or things like global national intelligence estimates. Those things are important on a national level, but less so at the theater operational level.

Yes, and what is important at the Theater operational level is;
How long are we going to have to stay, and how many daily bombings are there, and when will this country's economy ever get back on it's feet, and is there any hope at all for a Secular Iraq, or have we plunged them eternally into a fundamentalist nightmare of repression, poverty, and killing?

Global Citizen (tounge in cheek)>"...Yeah, the west has never acted in a manner that could be seen as self-serving in the eyes of the locals who for years got screwed over. Nothing. Ever. Fucking ingrates."

Samuel says it best

"...the West won the world not by the superiority of its ideas or values or religion...but rather by its superiority in applying organized violence. Westerners often forget this fact, non-Westerners never do." - Samuel P. Huntington

osama_been_forgotten >"Trashhauler dishonestly claimed:..."

Well, like many of the posters here, Trashhauler is a dishonest pretentious clown so what did you expect ?

Not someone I`d ever trust in a foxhole/ranger grave anywhere near me

Losers

"The future will be a struggle between huge competing systems of psychopathology." - J. G. Ballard

Understand that Kansas State University, er Silo Tech, is going to endow a chair for Gen Richard Myers, (Rt-USAF) - They will of course place it upon a giant lily pad so General Toady will feel at home.

osama_been_forgotten wrote:

Yes, and what is important at the Theater operational level is;
How long are we going to have to stay, and how many daily bombings are there, and when will this country's economy ever get back on it's feet, and is there any hope at all for a Secular Iraq, or have we plunged them eternally into a fundamentalist nightmare of repression, poverty, and killing?
_________________

Again, despite spending an entire post snarking at the relevance of the actual military indicators, you've misunderstood the whole thing and asserted what is really important to you. That these things are important is undeniable. But they are not measurements of military success. Our success or failure in Iraq will be determined by such things as I mentioned and snarking about it serves not much purpose.

I listed those things quite honestly - they are the things being measured, about which most people are largely ignorant. Take it or leave it, those are the indicators in use.

Fuckin Myers. Tom knew him when he was a Bird. What an ass-kissing jackass. Two of my sons classmates from Bishop Ward (Go Cyclones!) were grad students there and another is a returned vet undergrad. Two transfered to KU (Rock! Chalk! Jayhawk! - what does that mean by the way?) and the third to Wichita State (Go Shockers - to Kirby's Beer Store) as soon as that announcement was made.

deCascadian wrote:

Well, like many of the posters here, Trashhauler is a dishonest pretentious clown so what did you expect ?

Not someone I`d ever trust in a foxhole/ranger grave anywhere near me

Losers
_________________

Pretentious clown, maybe. On some things, almost certainly. :)

But, dishonest? What sort of history do we share that would give you any experience upon which to judge my honesty? Are you saying the things I mentioned are not battlefield and campaign metrics? Or are you just blowing smoke?

If you were any kind of soldier, you'd have some sense of what the military profession means.

Instead, you try insults. Am I supposed to slink away now, because deCascadian doesn't like me? Oh, please.

Trashhauler >"...you'd have some sense of what the military profession means..."

Since I do I label you what you are, a pretender, a pompous ass

Try starting to get it by putting down the text books & actually joining the military

"Eventually, the truth will emerge. And when it does, this house of cards, built of deceit, will fall." - Robert C. Byrd

deCascadian wrote:

Since I do I label you what you are, a pretender, a pompous ass
_________________

Well, what's the purpose of that, friend? Trying to get me to tell you in what class I graduated from the Air Force Academy? Where I went to pilot training? What the rule of thumb fuel consumption per hour was for the C-141? Tell you what the Nipa Hut was? What year I graduated from Air War College? You trying to get my name, bubba?

You might notice I haven't demanded your bona fides. Mostly because I don't care what they are - your posts either make sense militarily or they don't. Mostly, they don't.

So please buzz off - I don't do pissing contests and I won't be frightened by someone who, when it comes right down to it, is more of a blowhard than I can ever be.

Trust me - this guy is a pilot. (Said the wife of the missile man flatly.)

They also serve who sit in silos. ::grin::

Tom was no launch crew asshole - he was an electrical engineer - he made that fucker "green" against all odds (Titans would break just sitting there) because nobody wants to be the guy who has to call the president.

Those aren't measurements of military progress, though they are important political considerations.

Its a mistake to think that there is a meaningful separation here. Military efforts exist only to serve a political outcome; war has never been separate from politics, and this is rarely more clear than in the case of counterinsurgency warfare which is, in a sense, a heavily-armed, high-stakes political campaign—a use of force to facilitate the spread of a select set of memes and to inhibit the spread of an opposed set of memes, where the ultimate objective that defines victory is not to destroy or incapacitate a fixed, well-defined enemy but to suppress a set of unwelcome ideas and behaviors within a population.

Global Citizen wrote:

Tom was no launch crew asshole - he was an electrical engineer - he made that fucker "green" against all odds (Titans would break just sitting there) because nobody wants to be the guy who has to call the president.
_______________

Even more admirable. Reminds me of the old saying: The Air Force has two types of personnel, support and non-support.

cmdicely wrote:

"(Quoting me) 'Those aren't measurements of military progress, though they are important political considerations.'

Its a mistake to think that there is a meaningful separation here."
________________

cm, there really isn't a separation. The overall goals are briefed and explained throughout the chain of command. However, the actual conduct of operations is a matter concrete actions and specific measurements.

I passed along some of those measurements because folks here seldom mention the actual metrics of our efforts in Iraq. I didn't even speculate on the the actual values of any of the measurements - I merely stated what they were.