Walking Into A Tree  

Paying attention to Bush's crazed ravings isn't something I like to do all that often, but every now and then it's illuminating to see what new set of lies he's begun spouting as an indication of what the future may hold for whichever unfortunates are going to bear the brunt of his newest "strategy".

From his widely panned recent muttering to the troops it appears the previously discredited Al-Qaeda - Saddam "link" to 9/11 is being recycled as the reason for the invasion again (while also helping him to provide a possible reason for negotiating with the Iraqi resistance, while blaming the continuing fighting on mysterious jihadists who never seem to be among the dead or captured). Maybe Osama could make another one of his convenient video appearances to declare his friendship for Saddam so that the validity of this wild theory could be made clear to all (the credulous).

Billmon doesn't think "Failure is not an option" is a wise phrase to be using at this point in time either.

To paraphrase Leonard, the psychotic Marine in Full Metal Jacket: We (or rather, our troops) appear to be in a world of shit.

Under the circumstances, the mindless chants of "failure is not an option" are starting to sound like the desperate prayers of the terminally ill. Failure is always an option -- particularly for morons who launch a war of choice under the impression that they can't possibly lose it.

Is the war hopelessly lost? I tend to think so, although I'm realistic enough to admit that I don't have all the facts, and couldn't interpret them all correctly even if I did. I know there are some military analysts whose opinions I respect who think the war is lost -- analysts such as William S. Lind, who, for all his wing nuttery on cultural and social issues, is one smart cookie when it comes to "Fourth Generation" warfare:

"There's nothing that you can do in Iraq today that will work," said Lind, one of the original Fourth Generation Warfare authors. "That situation is irretrievably lost."

Now - I usually like "Seeing The Forest" and its slightly paranoid liberal world view, but Dave Johnson has managed to get it half right and half completely wrong with his post on oil and Iraq earlier this week.

The good - recognising part of the problem (although ignoring peak oil as the driver of it) - we currently need control of the oil, and we're fighting (immorally) to make sure we keep it:

America leaving Iraq now means leaving the people and the oil there under the control of the Islamic Republic that arises after we leave. It probably means that much of the rest of the Middle East also becomes an Islamic Republic, and their oil (and the resources that oil control brings) will eventually be denied to the West, perhaps even used against the West.

He also recognises that energy inefficiency leads to dependence on energy from the middle east.

And, yes, a lot of this IS about control of the oil now. Our way of life depends on oil. That includes the fertilizer that feeds billions of people. It includes the gas to transport food and everything else we all consume. This is just today's reality. We don't have alternative energy sources in place (compare the waste from nuclear to the consequences of just dumping carbon and other pollutants into the air). We don't have efficient public transportation. We don't have energy efficient buildings.

WAIT - before you say it, think about how much you might be part of the problem. Are you absolutely and completely energy efficient? Do you think about the energy consequences of everything you routinely do -- and encourage others to do the same? Do you own a hybrid, or take public transportation or ride a bike to work? Do you have passive solar heating installed? Do you keep your furnace off except for a few blast each day? Do you go around your house turning off every light? Do you take elevators instead of stairs? Do you have any electronics on "standby" - using energy even when turned off? Think it through before you say what you were about to say.

Unfortunately, in this case recognising the problem isn't sufficient, as he then decides to keep following the current insane path with absolutely no clue as to how this could ever be successful - along with totally ignoring the fact that peak oil renders this whole strategy futile in the longer term anyway if there isn't a massive effort to encourage huge efficiency gains and convert to other energy sources in the meantime.

So I think we have to SOLVE the Iraq problem, not just leave. Advocating that we just up and leave Iraq is similar to using energy in the wasteful ways we have gotten used to: It puts off the resulting problems for a while, but ultimately makes them worse.

I think that restoring order, if done right, would mean much LESS violence than we are seeing now. It means having enough people there to help a legitimate government start tracking down and jailing the people who are setting off bombs, which would enable Iraq to start building a real police and justice system.

We broke it, we HAVE TO fix it. Even if it means restoring a draft. It would certainly be nice if we could only draft the kids of people who voted FOR this war.

Words pretty much fail me when I see a supposedly liberal blogger suggesting that the draft be instituted in order to put more troops into Iraq. So instead I'll move on to Bruce Schneier, who posted the following interesting bit of information about the adaptive tactics being used by the insurgents (who clearly aren't as deranged as our leaders would like us to believe).

Counterinsurgency experts are alarmed by how fast the other side's tactics can evolve. A particularly worrisome case is the ongoing arms race over improvised explosive devices. The first IEDs were triggered by wires and batteries; insurgents waited on the roadside and detonated the primitive devices when Americans drove past. After a while, U.S. troops got good at spotting and killing the triggermen when bombs went off. That led the insurgents to replace their wires with radio signals. The Pentagon, at frantic speed and high cost, equipped its forces with jammers to block those signals, accomplishing the task this spring. The insurgents adapted swiftly by sending a continuous radio signal to the IED; when the signal stops or is jammed, the bomb explodes. The solution? Track the signal and make sure it continues. Problem: the signal is encrypted. Now the Americans are grappling with the task of cracking the encryption on the fly and mimicking it—so far, without success. Still, IED casualties have dropped, since U.S. troops can break the signal and trigger the device before a convoy passes. That's the good news. The bad news is what the new triggering system says about the insurgents' technical abilities.

No matter how many extra soldiers are put into Iraq (even igmoring the morale and motivation levels of drafted ones), its hard to see that they will do anything more than provide extra targets for the bombers. And the real goal (securing Iraq's oil supplies) is likely to remain as elusive as ever - it isn't possible to guard all of the oil infrastructure, as you can see by the endless number of attacks on it.

So where does that leave us ? In a bad situation really - the best thing to do is to try to wean ourselves off oil as rapidly as possible (a war on oil dependency) and stage some sort of dignified retreat from Iraq while we are doing this - really handing over power to the recently formed government as opposed to pretending to do it. As we aren't doing the former of course, the latter will never happen.

What will happen then ? James Kunstler has also pondered this question recently (June 20), but fails to come to any comclusion other than "we are about to see the first act of the Hooverization of George W. Bush." (while remaining stuck in Iraq).

My own is theory is that the war is a desperate attempt by a nation desperate over its energy supplies to retain a foothold, and therefore an economic claim, on the region where the oil is. Iraq was supposed to be our police station in a strategically vital bad neighborhood. The salient questions are: 1.) assuming we can't stay there forever, how long might we hope to stick around there? And 2.) at that point somewhat short of forever, will we lose our ability to even buy Middle East oil?

So it would seem that we (those who are paying attention anyway) will be seeing more reports like this one from Fallujah for quite some time, along with reports that the US is deliberately trying to start a civil war (ie. divide and conquer) or to implement a new version of the Salvador option.

What are we to make of the news reports that Baghdad is to be encircled and divided into smaller and smaller sections by 40,000 Iraqi and 10,000 US troops backed by US air power and armor in order to conduct house to house searches throughout the city to destroy combatants?

Is this generous notice of a massive offensive a ploy to encourage insurgents to leave the city in advance, thus securing a few days respite from bombings? Is the offensive a desperate attempt by the Bush regime and the Iraqi government to achieve a victory in hopes of reviving their flagging support? Or is it an act of revenge?

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