Situation Called Dire in West Iraq

[Uboat509]

Interesting how the same story is presented differently by the two different sources. The Washington Post piece by Ann Scott Tyson comes across more as simply presenting the facts and some of the political wrangling around whereas the NYT piece comes across all doom and gloom, all is lost we can't win.

SFC W

[jcustis]

If we want to take Iraq, and Al Anbar seriously, gloom and doom and be what is required. I wouldn't want to see the argument of "all is lost", but at least a pessimistic appraisal of what lies ahead. If it gets people (particularly policymakers) to sit up and take notice, then great.

Devlin offers a series of reasons for the situation, including a lack of U.S. and Iraqi troops, a problem that has dogged commanders since the fall of Baghdad more than three years ago, said people who have read it. These people said he reported that not only are military operations facing a stalemate, unable to extend and sustain security beyond the perimeters of their bases, but also local governments in the province have collapsed and the weak central government has almost no presence...

I personally don't know the issues of slant with either the Post or the Times, and frankly don't care, but none of this is new information unless you've been oblivious to the named operations and casualties that have taken place in Anbar.

One of the few positive articles I've seen written about Al Anbar was in an Oct or Nov Economist magazine IIRC, detailing the exploits of a special forces team that swooped into Ar Rutbah in 2003 and started to get governance back on its feet. The downside is that the writer should have visited Ar Rutbah anytime in the last two years. He'd have quickly decided to scrap the article, as Rutbah quickly turned to crap, through no fault of the 82d Airborne and Marine units that have rotated through there.

I'm curious to know if policy-makers have decided to accept a level of violence on the fringe (Anbar) to protect the center (Baghdad), because I think they have the risk calculations all wrong. If we lose Baghdad (though defining loss is squishy), we certainly lose Iraq and it would turn into pure anarchy. But if we lose Anbar (and terrible security is a reasonable index), there are secondary effects that we cannot ignore, because the center could implode as a result.

[SWJED]

12 September Associated Press - Zilmer: U.S. 'Stifling' Iraq Insurgency by Robert Burns.

A senior American commander in Iraq said Tuesday that U.S.-led military operations are "stifling" the insurgency in western Anbar province but are not strong enough to defeat it.

Marine Maj. Gen. Richard C. Zilmer told reporters in a telephone interview from his headquarters in Fallujah that he has enough U.S. troops - about 30,000 - to accomplish what he called his main mission: training Iraqi security forces...

Zilmer, who has commanded U.S. forces in western Iraq since February, said increasing the number of U.S. troops there would help in the short term, "but at the end of the day I don't think it's going to be the significant change that is necessary to achieve long-term security and stability out here in Anbar."

What is needed, he said, is progress on the economic and political fronts that will undercut support for the insurgency...

On Edit: The Stars and Stripes also is reporting on General Zilmer's comments - Report Overlooked Anbar Province Progress

On Edit: Tom Ricks follows up in the Washington Post - General Affirms Anbar Analysis

[Jedburgh]

...One of the few positive articles I've seen written about Al Anbar was in an Oct or Nov Economist magazine IIRC, detailing the exploits of a special forces team that swooped into Ar Rutbah in 2003 and started to get governance back on its feet. The downside is that the writer should have visited Ar Rutbah anytime in the last two years. He'd have quickly decided to scrap the article, as Rutbah quickly turned to crap, through no fault of the 82d Airborne and Marine units that have rotated through there...

It was Foreign Policy, not The Economist, the Nov/Dec 05 issue:

The Mayor of Ar Rutbah

Amid the chaos in Iraq, one company of U.S. Special Forces achieved what others have not: a functioning democracy. How? By relying on common sense, the trust of Iraqis, and recollections from Political Science 101. Now, their commander reveals the gritty reality about nation-building in Iraq, from the ground up...

[SWJED]

It was Foreign Policy, not The Economist, the Nov/Dec 05 issue:

The Mayor of Ar Rutbah

Major Gavrilis submitted it to the SWJ Magazine with the caveat that we could publish if FP did not pick it up... Oh well - glad it got published and read by a wide audience.

[jcustis]

I knew it wasn't in Foreign Affairs, but one of the glossy mags on the periphery.

As good as it was at portraying what happened during that small snapshot of time, the reality of Rutbah today is 180 degrees away.

[SWJED]

Herschel Smith at the Captain's Journal - Will we Lose the Anbar Province?.

... To refer to politics in al Anbar is to refer to something that doesn’t currently exist. The brass in Iraq, by diminishing force projection in al Anbar in order to let “reconstruction win the hearts and minds of the people,” are deferring to a phantom. The very people whose hearts and minds we want to win are being protected by the enemy who destroys their political institutions and prevents reconstruction.

The Strategy Page from a few months ago is correct. There isn’t civil war in Iraq, and there can never be civil war in Iraq. If the factions war with each other, the Kurds will be left along (or defended by themselves alongside the Kurds in Turkey), and the Shia majority will utterly destroy the Sunni minority. Rather than speak of civil war, we should speak of genocide.

The only force in the region who is capable of winning the war on the battlefield is the U.S. Reliance on the Iraqis to effect the victory is a losing strategy...

...Maintenance of the peace can be accomplished by the Iraqi troops alongside U.S. troops, and the political process can be protected by both the U.S. and Iraqis. Reconstruction can be assisted by the most versatile force in the world, the U.S. military. But winning the war on the battlefield is necessary prior to winning it politically. Unless and until the enemy is killed or captured, politics is irrelevant because it doesn’t exist.

We can still win this war, but we need to dispatch a division of Marines as soon as possible to begin operations in Ramadi, Fallujah (yes, it has regressed), Hamdaniyah, Haditha and al Haqlania. Generals who learned the wrong lessons from the wrong war and who are applying them in the wrong place at the wrong time for the wrong reasons with the wrong understanding are decreasing our chances of success in al Anbar....

Much more, check it out.