Thomas P.M. Barnett :: Weblog

Ah, a Black commander over Africa. Perhaps the military is waking up?

Perhaps then you could answer some questions that have perplexed me for some time as regards the US military. For example, why wasn’t our apparent campaign commander of Arab descent during the invasion period of Iraq? I mean sure, the real commander could have been anyone, but why ignore such an easy ploy as using an Arab general - even if he had to be quickly promoted through the ranks from private? I mean considering the Muslim’s innate disdain for any uninvited non-Arab standing in their territory, (racism actually) why did we ignore such an obvious tactic from the start? Having Tommy Franks leading the charge into Iraq was a little like marching our men in with red coats and brass buttons. Wasn’t it?

Then there are some tactical questions I had, like remember all those attacks made from the highway overpasses near Baghdad? The first one was sad. But as these silly attacks continued to multiply in the news it all became more and more like the attack against the French held castle in Monty Python and the Holy Grail. I mean, weren’t our guys like driving allterrain vehicles or something? Did they really have to drive under Eeeeevery last one of the overpasses? Couldn’t they go around? Or at the very least knock the overpasses down and replace them with four-way intersections? Having our troops kick or shoot the stuffings out of happless Iraqis who happened to be around these dog fights certainly made less sense than avoiding the overpasses.

And this brings up the IEDs, when that all started I kept wondering when our troopers would just start driving off road – when ever possible – making their own plexus of dirt trails that they could randomly follow and thus, making it impossible for the “insurgents” to know where to plant that day’s bomb. I mean, aren’t troop carriers and tanks designed for off road travel? Sure the fuel and suspension costs might increase, but wouldn’t that be cheaper than building a whole new tank or training a whole new crew, or caring for a hospital full of amputees?

I recall how in the Fall of 2003 I wrote a few emails to the Joint Chiefs of Staff (likely to the email waste-bin) pointing all this out and adding also details about the need to remove all nonessential civilian vehicle traffic from the roads in Iraq (placing their cars and trucks in large vehicle-parks surrounded by wire) and only allowing emergency and supply vehicles access to the roads until the situation was cooled off. In this way the “insurgents” would be forced to walk slowly around from point to point with their ‘sawed off artillery shells’ – and in war slowing the enemy’s speed of travel, is…. like right up their with not forgetting to load your rifle!

I mean I notice this is being done NOW (like a bit too late) in localized areas, such as Baghdad, but why was this not done earlier? Before we dropped in the puppet government or the later Iranian-proxy-Shiite government, wouldn’t it have made more sense spending less time making OOHRAHs and more time doing something to actually stop the blasting to bits of our own troops?

And then there was the traffic problems. I mean I am just happy our cops don’t control traffic by popping rounds off toward our cars while we are barreling along distracted by the drive. Would glowing traffic signs written in Arabic have been more trouble to issue, rather than telling our troops to blast away and then spend hours mopping up the brains on roads and having all that rolling around in hideous dreams at night as our troops lay on their cots? And this nincompoop method of ‘high velocity ballistic traffic signs’ continued for years, and still often does.

This whole sequence of events perplexed me – for about 3 months – until finally after playing through my Medieval Total War game, where my favorite tactic was to invade a country, burn and plunder it, and then stand back and watch its throne dissolve into the chaos of rebels and bandits, that it suddenly dawned me! “Oh, I get it, the ‘ole Viking Raid Routine!” Sure, Rummy and his bevy of neocons couldn’t just march into the Joint Chiefs of Staff and say, “Men, our plan is to make a Viking raid into Iraq, trash it, turn it into a big Beirut, start a civil war and divide that sucker nation up into three small chunks (just like the plan proposed in the Israeli articles back in the mid 1980s), and then build Fort Apache, Grab the oil, and loot the US tax payers to fund our asymmetrical companies.”

But the only trouble was the plan was allowed to become too Verdundant – I mean sure, bleeding the enemy white must have made some neocon sense, but like Verdun, they became just too attached to the new goals of mission-creep and it was Der attackers who bled white. I mean losing 3000 men, and those other thousands who died as their hospital planes lifted their wheels one inch off the runways of Iraq, or those who perished like unknown soldiers on Der German Front (in hospital), was really a great big GdD waste!

But you know my devious mind is ever ascribing attributes of wisdom to those who follow the path of asymmetrical politics and government, and so of course I had to assume that even in this apparent wastage that somehow every sinew was used to purpose and that nothing was actually wasted from the Buffalo – sort of speak. However it soon became painfully apparent that such loses were not really part of the original plan, but that the US government was winging it as it went. Of course I enjoyed the great joke about ‘Bringing democracy to the Muslim nations’, to those 14th century conglomerations of tribal peoples, whose tribes have more in common with the Sicilian Mafia than to the usual usage of the term ‘tribe’.

Yeah, I’m the same Jim Eagle Feather who used to warn the Iraqis on the INC website back before the war that they didn’t really want Uncle Sam in there – it would just evolve “into Fort Apache, and once a year the Great White Father in D.C. sending his Long knives out to distribute blankets, tobacco, sugar and coffee to the Iraqi tribes on their reservations.” But I admit most of my conversations with them was in the spirit of subtle taunting, since I had no truck with a civilization that so malformed its denizens, that knifing one’s sister was considered an honorable action. I mean my view of warfare is strictly Sun Tzu/Genghis Khan/General Sherman, (I view the Geneva Conventions as just another form of PsyWar used by the West on your Gap countries) but when it comes to killing one’s own sister or treating one’s own women folk like dirt, that’s where I draw the line.

So answer this for me Mr. Barnett. Were the neocons really as crafty as I supposed they were, or were they really as dumb as the Mega-corporate-media wants me to believe?

"...I kept wondering when our troopers would just start driving off road – when ever possible – making their own plexus of dirt trails that they could randomly follow and thus, making it impossible for the “insurgents” to know where to plant that day’s bomb. I mean, aren’t troop carriers and tanks designed for off road travel?"

Jim, most of the military traffic is actually with convoys that include trailer trucks, which need protecting and are unable to go off road. I would be willing to speculate (perhaps rightly or wrongly) that the majority of IED's (51% or higher) have impacted these convoys/patrols and not our kinetic operations.

Even with this threat, I don't believe the amount of IED's is statistically high enough to do away with using highways and main roads even for kinetic operations. In fact, once an area of road is used for IED placement, our engineers monitor then go in and fill in any explosion holes and remove concealing trash, etc. so they can't be used again.

As you know, however, when MNF soldiers do have deaths and casualties, IED-related deaths/casualties are a large percentage of the total (although I think IED success rates are lower than in the past, I am not sure how the absolute number of IED finds has fluctuated). Obviously, the best defense is to eliminate IED production/producers--kill IED's at their source. Next is road monitoring. Third is armor reinforcement and better vehicle introduction.

Just my two cents from absorbing information on the subject and my very basic understanding of logistics transport in Iraq.

Well as an Iraq vet I have clear up some of these misconceptions. First most operations occur within cities and towns since this where the people live. Being in a city there is no way to simply go off road. When it is necessary to go between cities, as Shawn in Tokyo pointed out, we are using larger flatbed trucks and other supply vehicles like Mercedes 18 wheelers, that can’t just roll around in the desert. Otherwise why wouldn’t we just fly between all the locations? IEDs have a higher rate of kills simply because they are everywhere all the time, but I would say that 75% go off and never even touch a vehicle. This is dependent on where you’re at in Iraq of course. In Ramadi there are a lot of IEDs but the real threat was snipers. Shawn description of how to counter the IED threat is also spot on- Intel, observation, and then armor. Remember they can always make a bigger bomb.

The description of how we handle traffic is also inaccurate. We actually do have signs, lights, cones etc. that we use to warn traffic where are vehicles and checkpoints are located. Even on patrols when we stop we put out cones, at great personal risk from snipers. Iraqis know the drill they see the Americans they are supposed to turn on their four way flashers and either pull off the side of the road. As a soldiers if a vehicle isn’t slowing and putting on its’ lights there are rules of engagement to be followed. Warning shot in the ground, warning shot in the hood, warning shot through the windshield, killing shot on the driver and at point we were firing pop up flares at the cars until one bounced off and burned a kid in a wheelchair. I'm not sure why some Iraqis choose to ignore the checkpoints. I never saw any do this personally except the ones with 500 pounds of explosives in the trunk.

Why don’t we just stop all traffic? As Dr. Barnett has pointed out the answer to finishing the job in Iraq are jobs. Hard to have commerce with no vehicle movement and even our entry check points that we have around the cities hinder businesses.

The idea that Iraqis are tribal is also off. They are in tribes and this plays into some of what happens, but they live in cities, go to universities, and have Internet and cable television. In the mountains of Afghanistan you’ll find the kind of tribes your talking about. In Iraq the Sheiks are more like heads of a business than a true leader. Some won’t even leave their compounds because they are afraid that the insurgents will knock them off. We had a plan for after the invasion it just wasn’t the right plan (or more accurately it needed updating) but we have just had to adapt and that takes more time.

Thanx Shawn and Seth. I realized that the traffic conditions had changed since the invasion period. The video of several of the early overpass areas seemed to show very open ground. In many of those cases I saw no Mercedes 18 wheelers. In one case it was mentioned that only several humvees were involved. The tribal aspect was explained to me by Iraqis from 1997 through 2003. THEY would often complain about it and wonder if that condition was the reason why their people had failed in devoping Democracy. Most of the guys on that site where business men, teachers and so forth. But I'd often see them really tie in to one another over their ethnic differences (like making statements like: "filthy" followed by an ethnic tag and so forth - to the point that I finally decided that Saddam was likely the only type of leader that could hold a nation like that together.

I know when the US troops were celebrating their victory and smiling at the waving Iraqis I was laughing to myself that that wasn’t going to last long. The Iraqis I met on the INC sight were all people who had fled Saddam’s Iraq. I called them the Hotel Soldiers in a friendly way. What I recall about their attitude was that the US should invade, throw out Saddam, then get out of Iraq the next day! But then they would usually add another caveat, the US should return and rebuilt everything and get out! That more or less formed my attitudes about them. So when I saw US troops waving at waving Iraqis my only thought was: “this is going to get messy!”

I suppose the Mercedes 18 wheelers problem points up the fact that the US forces need something better for carrying suppies other than depending on Mercedes.

The civilian vehicles come from the use of civilian contractors. We could develop something better but our military resources are better spent doing what the military does best, killing people. We also like to hire local to help jump-start the economy.

Remember any time you go around something there is usually something else in the way-rivers buildings etc. and either way there are limited ways to get from point A to point B. Preferably we tried not to go off the road because IEDs and mines are easier to bury in the dirt and if you over one-well that's a bad day. I saw vehicle that looked like they had gone through a blender and everyone walked away. I wouldn’t always trust what you see in the media about over passes or any military operation they are notoriously inaccurate, Hummvees can take a lot of punishment and we tend not to keep repeating things that get us killed-we’re funny that way. But there are dozens if not hundreds of things that we could have and should still be doing different so keep thinking because our enemy is always thinking and plotting.

After reading you’re above comments about tribalism I think that you may be referring to the Sunni, Shiite, and Kurd situation. Also, among the Shiite in the south there is a larger tribal culture. But we're not really having a problem with them. They after all are the winners in this whole equation. The Sunnis on the other hand have lost all their power and that tends to upset people. Not to mention their dislike of the Shiites, it’s a strange bigotry since it’s not based on race or ethnicity or even really religion since they are both Muslim. There is thought that only a strong man can only rule Arabs, I wonder though why you can’t have both democracy and a strong leader (haven’t many of our presidents fit this bill). I wrote in an earlier post that almost every Iraq that I talked to was grateful, understood why we were there, wanted democracy, wanted security, wanted a job and wanted us to leave as soon as possible.

I tend to agree with those that say that the country should be split into several nations. Dr. Barnett writes about how squiggly border nations are more peaceful than straight border nations. The only drawback to this is that the Sunnis have no oil and no other economy, so they are against this idea. The Shiites and the Kurds on the other hand would love to cut the Sunnis free. The Sunnis could have a vibrant economy if we could get their former agricultural system back on track. From the town of Hit to Fallujah they use to produce enough food to feed the entire Middle East, now the field are barren thanks to Saddam.

This is all “lessons learned” and next time we hopefully won’t make the same mistake just a whole set of different ones.

Well it wasn't me refering to tribalism, it was the Iraqis on the INC forum before 2003. They spent a great deal of time trying to figure out what kind of democracy they wanted to create. Anyway some tried to figure out what it was about their civilization that had prevented them from following the Western model. Tribalism came up. What I recall was that they were all raised never to question the authorities of their tribe and families. They didn't mention religion in this context because I think Muslims tend to avoid complaining about that for obvious reasons. Islam was like a huge rock in the road of thought that they all just drove around. Yes, they would also attack one another according to religion and other ethnic background: such as being Assyrian, Chaldean, Kurd and so forth.

I lived in Sierra Leone from 1966-1999. It struck me as self evident that following the British withdrawal, the best thing would have been that a contingent of SysAdmin political, economic and educational experts would have descended on the country and helped develop the traditional cultural requisites for a long term healthy period of growth leading to connection the the Core (yeah, easy to say 40 years later).

But that was our (unspoken, unrecognized, uncomprehended) goal within the Peace Corps.

I spent the first two years at Methodist Boys High School in Freetown. I "taught" the sons of civil servant, who expected to inherit their parents jobs in the government. No recognition of 'ability', let alone 'creativity'.

While there, I hooked up with the 'African Primary Science Program' (APSP). We worked on curriculum material for primary science classrooms. The work was open ended, question oriented material.

At the end of my second year in Freetown, I was asked to move up country to the Bo Teacher Training College.

My objective was to translate the experimental work we had done with elementary students and their responses to the material presented, into steps the typical primary school teacher could take within their classroom in the bush. (interested parties as to methods and results can write to drdave@dataimages.com).

My point here is that, while the Peace Corps had one segment of the answer to nation building, and USAID was present in Sierra Leone, we did not have the requisite 'full blown package' that many of us now recognize as necessary for a successful transition out of the Gap.

Thirty-five years later, as scoutmaster of a troop in Phoenix Arizona, I was required to work with a 13 year old scout, a refugee from Sierra Leone, who had spent the previous ten years hiding in the bush with his mother and siblings. His behaviour (having witnessed hands and feet being cut off) was perplexing to our troop, themselves members of single parent families, and other inner city and near-suburban families. The fact that I spoke Sierra Leone Krio to him was a shock, but a welcome shock. Nevertheless, he never integrated with the troop.

My observation from all of this is that we pay far more when we fail to take care of the world than when we do.

Unfortunately, frequently in our rush to 'take care', we make a mess. Taking care requires knowledge, caution, humility, and brash, risk taking.

OK, its contradictory. But so be it.

Hi Mr. Fischer,
What you said points out to me that to attain viable Globalism – or semi-effective world government - which I am for simply because of the degradation of the environment, and because I believe we really do need to end war – we will need to create a true UN along the lines of the type of style and attitude seen in the work of Dr. Barnett. The US army really is not designed for nation building (witness Iraq) and it likewise needs to be completely redesigned. Not just as regards becoming lighter and more cost effective (per Rumsfeld), but mainly from a whole philosophical standpoint. My ironic sardonic comments about how the US army was used, center around the fact that, no matter how well the intentions were for the US military in its Conquistador-like invasion of Iraq, those kinds of actions are not going to lead to a world united around Globalism. It would be like trying to use an M60 machine gun as a nail gun to build a house - what you will end up with is a bunch of splinters.

With Russia and China sneaking stealthily behind the Bushes (http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Global_Economy/HH25Dj01.html) in their united oil-market club, and the way other nations are slyly moving this direction, it appears to me that the world unity on the war on terrorism has already failed, and that what still pretends to be that ‘unity’ is little more than lip-service. After this next recession (2007-08) we will have to see how much of the US Globalism paradigm is still standing.

The posts were long, but fun to read; a person could learn more from these 8 posts than from 80 posts on Slate's Fray.

If this isn't an appropriate place for this discussion, where is? That's a place I'd like to visit.

Michael,

presuming you're referring to my review of the comment policy, this wasn't particularly one of the offending threads. most of the comments were very informative (especially by those who had been in theater or have special expertise).