Thomas P.M. Barnett :: Weblog

Dateline: in the Shire, Indy, 17 August 2005

Three kids all starting a new school today, so a lot of ferrying around. But all attending the same place, so that helps plenty. Also runs to YMCA and post office for a box (anticipating the mailed-in books for signing) and to mail uncorrected proofs of Blueprint for Action to my partners. Plus oil change on van plus stop for new plates. Wife's out picking granite. Setting up golf lessons for me and kids. Catching up on mail. Setting up online banking. Usual multitude of phone calls to various agents, editors, etc. Need to set up my LLC in Indiana. Picked up interim electric piano for apartment cause our big one's in the POD! Gotta get in another run with son Kevin. Promised kids we'd all hit the complex pool at sunset . . . and I'd really like to catch "Family Guy" on Adult Swim tonight.

Sigh! Might miss that last one.

My one full day home this week. Behind on three writing projects but working hard to catch up.

Sign of my times: I've started outsourcing PowerPoint slide generation. Just can't get off the dime on building new slide deck for BFA because offers keep rolling in to give talks on PNM, but I need that slide package to come into being. So first cut will be done by someone else, just to get the ball rolling. This is not the first time I've done this, and I think it'll be the route I take from here on out.

Getting the Post and Times online (haven't settled that issue yet), I come across two op-eds and a book review that catch my eye.

First one is by mainstay David Ignatius at WP. Here's the best bits (full story found at: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/08/16/AR2005081601179_pf.html
):

'Hard Slog' for Bush

By David Ignatius

Wednesday, August 17, 2005; A13

President Bush is saying the right thing about Iraq, which is that there is no easy fix for a war that his defense secretary correctly termed "a long, hard slog." But Bush is conveying this message in a detached way that upsets and angers growing numbers of Americans. The evaporation of political support at home is palpable. If the administration can't explain its war aims better, it may soon face a Vietnam-style tipping point.

First, let's look at what the president is doing right: At a time when anguished Americans are calling for a quick withdrawal from Iraq, Bush is telling them a painful truth …

The administration's Micawberesque approach to the Iraqi constitution also seems correct, if somewhat disconnected from reality. Nobody knows if Iraq's fractious political leaders can agree, but the president was right to praise "the heroic efforts of Iraqi negotiators" …

Finally, I credit the spirit of realpolitik that undergirds the administration's upbeat talk. Last Sunday's story in The Post headlined "U.S. Lowers Sights on What Can Be Achieved in Iraq" mirrored what you hear privately from generals and senior officials …

Now, let's look at what Bush is doing wrong. In speaking about Iraq to the nation, the president often seems tone deaf. Taking a nearly five-week vacation when U.S. troops are experiencing a living hell is a mistake. It reinforces what's cruelest about this war, which is that the soldiers in Iraq are doing all the suffering. Meanwhile, people back home go about their business …

I have no doubt that Bush grieves for every fallen soldier. But he undercuts his leadership role with his seeming insensitivity to Cindy Sheehan … a presidential listening mission would have seemed like a no-brainer -- except at this White House, which appears to regard any concession to a critic as a mistake …

Somehow the president must find a way to level with the country and build support for a sustainable policy that puts more of the burden on Iraqis …

Some solid advice, and I think it's the general direction being pursued by the military on the ground: shifting the burden to Iraqis with all deliberate speed but being careful not to buy ourselves a full-blown civil war by going too fast -- especially with the constitutional debate still unfolding.

But what I think Ignatius' op-ed really points up is the new reality: no matter how well the war goes, if you can't win the peace, your public will interpret the entire venture as a failure in political-military terms.

That is the huge change 9/11 and the Global War on Terrorism have wrought: in the 1990s it was just good enough to kick ass in combat and not worry about the aftermath, as we proved so ably in places in Somalia and Haiti -- and Iraq for that matter. Now, you either enter the situation ready to win the peace -- in full -- or frankly, you shouldn't bother with the war, because it won't be worth the political capital expended.

Second piece is by Frederick Kagan (another WP op-ed, the full text of which is found at: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/08/16/AR2005081601181_pf.html

It Takes the Right Army:
Security in Iraq is not as simple as decreasing our troops and increasing theirs
By Frederick W. Kagan
Wednesday, August 17, 2005; A13

The Bush administration is making it clearer day by day that it intends to withdraw American troops from Iraq rapidly and roughly in step with the increase in the number of Iraqi troops deemed capable of taking over security responsibilities. Even while denying rumors of a rapid withdrawal of U.S. forces, President Bush has declared that "as Iraqis stand up, we will stand down."

This could be a big mistake. It is likely to simply sustain the current level of security in Iraq -- which is poor -- rather than take advantage of increasing numbers of Iraqi troops to improve the security situation …

The United States is engaged in creating a force of light infantry in Iraq that will ultimately number nearly 250,000 troops. This force will be well suited to conducting patrols in fixed locations, maintaining a presence in threatened areas, doing searches and sweeps, and performing high-end police functions. As more of these troops become available, we can expect improved intelligence and less friction between U.S. forces and local Iraqis …

It will not be able, whatever its numbers, to conduct a counterinsurgency by itself for many years, and it will not be able to do so at all unless certain critical deficiencies are remedied …

Iraqis thus rely on coalition logistics when they must move from their home bases -- or, more commonly, they simply do not move from those bases at all. Their transportation assets are minimal, and so they lack the ability to project their forces within Iraq. As a result, they would not be able to concentrate force rapidly in particularly violent areas or to destroy insurgent concentrations quickly …

It is also important to understand that the current Iraqi forces rely heavily on the availability of responsive U.S. airpower … conditioning the Iraqis to rely on a capability that only a significant U.S. presence can provide.

The efforts the U.S military has made to train the Iraqi forces should not be in any way disparaged. They have achieved remarkable results in a much shorter time than anyone had a right to expect. These efforts will, over the long term, prove essential to allowing the coalition to transfer responsibility for Iraqi security to Iraqis. But Americans should not imagine that this transfer is likely to come quickly …

As a rule, I find anyone with the last name of Kagan to be a bit too hard-core on military and strategic matters, but I tolerate Frederick the best. This is some solid analysis that points out the reality that we've generated an adequate SysAdmin-lite force among the Iraqis, but not one ready for our more Leviathan-like forces to leave. In short, Iraq now has the capacity to do its own SysAdmin absent a counter-insurgency, but that counter-insurgency -- the result of our own bad employment of our forces in the SysAdmin function following Saddam's defeat -- means that we can't withdraw as Iraq's Leviathan for some time to come.

Or to decode my own, sometimes overwrought reliance on my particular buzzphrases: If we had done the transition from the war to the peace better, we wouldn't still have a war-like insurgency going on and our efforts to train Iraqis to do their own internal security would be paying off in spades now. Instead, we're only a certain length down the ultimate pathway of nationbuilding in Iraq.

Kagan is absolutely correct in this analysis, and it shows the long-term costs we pay for doing the SysAdmin bit weakly. By now, the Iraqis would have been strong enough for us to walk, and that is the painful legacy -- along with the almost 1,500 combat-related deaths on our side-of the Pentagon's poor planning for postwar peace that almost was in Iraq.

Third piece is a book review of a volume on Saudi Arabia and the many challenges faced by the House of Saud in coming years -- a topic we should all care about if we hope the Bush Administration's Big Bang in the Persian Gulf will ultimately bear lasting fruit. Here's the key bits, with the full article found at: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/08/17/books/17grim.html

August 17, 2005

A Glimpse of Forces Confronting Saudi Rule

By WILLIAM GRIMES

Western reporting on Saudi Arabia has been in attack mode ever since Sept. 11. Not since the Borgias has a ruling family received such bad press as the House of Saud, and the United States-Saudi connection is probably the one that Americans would most like to sever, if it could be done without raising gasoline prices.

In "Saudi Arabia Exposed," John R. Bradley, a British journalist who spent two and a half years as a newspaper editor and reporter in Saudi Arabia, will not make Americans feel any better about the Saudi royals, whom he calls "perhaps the most corrupt family the world has ever known." But he does provide a highly informed, temperate and understanding account of a country that, he maintains, is an enigma to other Arabs, and even to the Saudis themselves . . .

The House of Saud and the religious establishment, fired by the puritanical form of Islam known as Wahhabism , hold sway in the central region, al-Najd; elsewhere rifts and tensions abound …

In the 1920's and 1930's, Ibn Saud created a unified state from the disparate tribes of present-day Saudi Arabia by force, imposing a brand of Islam that, in many areas of the country, is regarded as alien …

In the southwest, Shiites, who constitute a majority, chafe under religious oppression and an official policy intended to convert them to Wahabbism. One official put the matter starkly: "We don't eat their food, we don't intermarry with them, we should not pray for their dead or allow them to be buried in our cemeteries" …

Saudi Arabia's young people make up another worrying constituency. Mr. Bradley strolls the malls and sits in secluded bedrooms with many disaffected Saudis. Those who travel to the West seem to bring back little more than a degree and a pile of consumer goods. Those who do not travel sit and fester. Waited on hand and foot, they watch satellite television or, using illegal computer cards to bypass the censors, log on to X-rated chat rooms on the Internet. Parents, Mr. Bradley writes, have delegated traditional responsibilities to a despised class of mostly Asian drivers, servants and nannies. As never before, young Saudis have been left to their own devices and easily fall prey to jihadist recruiters …

Mr. Bradley tends to leap at the merest glimmer of light. His liberals and reformers, however attractive, hold very weak cards, and the regime has shown itself extraordinarily resistant to change …

Interesting and accurate description, based on all the intell I've ever come across, including the author's slim hopes for change.

But in the end, it's the demographics that house-breaks the Sauds.