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"Ain't Gonna Study War No More"

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Right-To-Life Party, Christian, Anti-War, Pro-Life, Bible Fundamentalist, Egalitarian, Libertarian Left

Saturday, March 05, 2005

Fateful Axis



And then there is Syria, replacing North Korea on the “axis of evil”, which was a convenient addition to deceive the world in believing that the so-called “war on terror” is not a euphemism for war on Muslims and Islamic nations resisting US hegemony. The continuing negotiation with North Korea and the threat against Syria is evidence. North Korea, a past victim of Western aggression, is developing a defensive deterrence strategy against any US aggression. Throughout history, the US is not known to attack strong nations. To qualify for a US attack, a nation has to be a defenceless. Without any evidence, the US, Israel and Britain are unfairly accusing Syria of responsibility for the assassination of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafiq Hariri, and supporting “terrorism”, including the Iraqi Resistance against US Occupation. Syria has rightly called the accusations preposterous. In addition, the US is demanding that Syria withdraw its 15,000 security troops from Lebanon, but allowing Israel to continue its illegal military occupations of Syria’s Golan Heights and Palestinian land. The best resolution would be to get Syria out of Lebanon, Israel out of Syria and Palestine, and the US out of Iraq.

In his State of the Union Address to Congress on January 29, 2002, and in preparation for the invasion and occupation of Iraq, President Bush said; “States like those [Iraq, Iran and North Korea], and their terrorist allies, constitutes an axis of evil, arming to threaten the peace of the world. By seeking weapons of mass destruction, these regimes pose a grave and growing danger. They could provide these arms to terrorists, giving them the means to match their hatred. They could attack our allies or attempt to blackmail the United States. In any of these cases, the price of indifference would be catastrophic”.

Unlike the US, Britain and Israel who are allies and share a common imperialist ideology, Iraq, Iran and North Korea are not allies. Hence, Iraq, Iran and North Korea do not constitute an axis in the way did Germany, Italy and Japan during World War II. Iran and Iraq were technically at war since 1981. Iraq had no diplomatic relations with North Korea and Iran. Neither Iraq, North Korea, nor Iran has threatened or has the capacity to threat the US and its allies. There is also no evidence to support the allegations that anyone of the three nations supports “terrorism” or in possession of weapon of mass destruction (WMD). Iraq was a case in point. A defenceless country illegally invaded and occupied.

The price paid by a defenceless Iraq is truly catastrophic. In March 2003, under the pretexts that Iraq had WMD and supported “terrorism”, the US and its British ally waged illegal war of aggression against the Iraqi people. In an effort to end a civilisation that stretches back more than 8000 years and to ensure there is no future challenge to Israel’s terror, the US and Britain inflicted complete destruction on the Iraqi society and the Iraqi state- including its infrastructure, cultural heritages, ministries, archives and treasures. Nearly two years of war and occupation have left more than 100,000 Iraqi civilians dead, hundreds of thousands Iraqis are still imprisoned and hundreds of thousands of Iraqis are displaced.

Although, the pretexts for the war on Iraq had changed several times, they always proved to be fabricated lies to justify “war crimes” against the Iraqi people. The reasons for the war were clear: The removal of independent government, the control and exploitation of Iraq natural resources, including oil, and support Israel’s Zionist policy in the Middle East.

Israel’s roles in the war on Iraq are not unknown; they are just unreported in the mainstream media. Israeli mercenaries were involved in the abuse and torture of Iraqi prisoners at Abu Ghraib, and Israeli commando units were deployed in Northern Iraq. The Israeli intelligence agency, the Mossad were responsible for criminal assassination and murder of prominent Iraqi politicians and scientists. The war on Iraq provides Israel with good diversion. Israel’s illegal Occupation of Palestinian land and its dispossession of Palestinian people continue. In short, Israel is the main beneficiary of the war on Iraq. Israel is cleverly using the US, by way of the Israeli lobby in the US, as its proxy soldier to attack Iraq and possibly Syria and Iran.

Iran is a major regional power in the Middle East. The current Iranian government poses no threat to the US or any other nation. Iran cooperated with the US in its wars against Afghanistan and Iraq. Iran is also a major influence on the religious leadership in Iraq. However, unlike the other regimes in the region, Iran is independent and is not a US client state. Further, given its size and resources, Iran could pose a challenge to Israel’s unchecked policy of ethnic cleansing and expansionism.

The same old pretexts to wage the war against Iraq are now against Iran. Like Iraq, Iran is accused of supporting terrorism and developing WMD. Britain’s PM Tony Blair said recently; ‘I have no doubt in my mind that Iran is a sponsor of state terrorism’. Unchallenged he repeated the same accusation used against Iraq in 2002 when Mr. Blair said; ‘I have no doubt in my mind that Iraq possesses active programmes of WMD’. We know now that this was a lie, which brought catastrophic misery to the people of Iraq.

Unmentioned in this charade, is Israel’s huge nuclear, chemical and biological weapons arsenal, and Israel’s terror against the Palestinian people, particularly against Palestinian school children. Israel has a well-developed nuclear weapons arsenal and Israel is not a signatory to the Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty (NPT). Further, Israel has a history of aggression against other nations which included the threat of using nuclear weapons, and that Israel remains a major nuclear threat not only to the Middle East.

The Iranian program, in comparison to so many others, and Israel’s in particular, is less developed and for peaceful nuclear energy purposes. Iran has specifically renounced the development of nuclear weapons, and is a signatory to the most stringent NPT agreements. Iran’s nuclear policy is consistent with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) and international laws governing the proliferation of nuclear technology. Indeed, the IAEA has inspected Iran nuclear facilities and found no evidence of any illegal activities.

The US has long advocated the so-called “the peaceful uses of atomic energy”, which is also the right of every nation. Only one country, the US, has used nuclear weapons to attack other nations with devastating results to the civilian population. However, US policy towards Iran is of double standard and consistent with Western hypocrisy.

Yet attack by the US or Israel against Iran's reactors is building, despite the danger and potential threat to peace in the region. The US is arming Israel with the latest ‘bunker buster’ BLU-109 bombs for the purpose of attacking Iran. It is warned that the threat may force Iran to embark on nuclear enrichment program.

And then there is Syria, replacing North Korea on the “axis of evil”, which was a convenient addition to deceive the world in believing that the so-called “war on terror” is not a euphemism for war on Muslims and Islamic nations resisting US hegemony. The continuing negotiation with North Korea and the threat against Syria is evidence. North Korea, a past victim of Western aggression, is developing a defensive deterrence strategy against any US aggression. Throughout history, the US is not known to attack strong nations. To qualify for a US attack, a nation has to be a defenceless. Without any evidence, the US, Israel and Britain are unfairly accusing Syria of responsibility for the assassination of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafiq Hariri, and supporting “terrorism”, including the Iraqi Resistance against US Occupation. Syria has rightly called the accusations preposterous. In addition, the US is demanding that Syria withdraw its 15,000 security troops from Lebanon, but allowing Israel to continue its illegal military occupations of Syria’s Golan Heights and Palestinian land. The best resolution would be to get Syria out of Lebanon, Israel out of Syria and Palestine, and the US out of Iraq.

Israel is immune from criticism. All fingers are pointing at Syria. Tony Blair is making accusations against Iran and Syria. He urged Syria to ‘comply with its international obligations’. He did not specify what obligations, but Blair had never made such warning to Israel, which is in violations of all UN resolutions and international law calling on it to withdraw from Arab lands.

According to Brian Smith of WSWS, “Britain, meanwhile, it has been revealed, is selling arms to Israel in breach of its own guidelines, knowing full well that the [weapons are] intended for use in the Occupied Territories [against defenceless Palestinian civilians]. Exports approved by the British government this year cover categories including leg-irons, electric shock belts [for torture], and chemical and biological agents. They also include categories covering mortars, rocket launchers, anti-tank weapons, military explosives, and infrared and radar sensors”. Britain and the US are not only allowing Israel to develop its own large arsenal of WMD, they are also the major financiers and supporters of Israel’s policy of occupation and expansion.

Speaking to the Jewish Council for Public Affairs on March 1, 2005, Democrat Senator Hillary R. Clinton (NY) called Syria and Iran ‘bad neighbours’. Clinton said; “We need to send a very clear message that we will not tolerate what we believe to be and have reason to know is the continuing support for terrorism that comes out of Syria and Iran”. Consistent with the White House accusations and unfriendly policy levelled against Syria and Iran.

Republican Congressman Sam Johnson of Texas has recently recommended to George Bush personally attacking Syria with Nuclear bombs. According to Amy Goodman of www.DemocracyNow.org, Johnson told a Church gathering at Suncreek United Methodist Church in Allen, Texas, on 19 February 2005: “Syria is the problem, Syria is where those weapon of mass destruction are, in my view. You know, I can fly an F-15, put two nukes on ‘em and I’ll make one pass. We won’t have to worry about Syria anymore”. It is clear where the threat to world peace and to humanity comes from.

Like Iraq, Iran and Syria pose no threat to world peace. To the contrary, a recent European Commission public opinion poll has found that 59 percent of respondents believe Israel represents an enormous threat to world peace. Followed by the US in second place at 53 percent. In fact the poll shows clearly that more Europeans apparently see Israel as a threat to world peace not the US.

Geared toward a war fighting mentality to dominate the world, the US, Israel and Britain have advocated the use of nuclear weapons against nuclear and non-nuclear nations in violation of the NPT and world peace. To allow history to repeat itself today will constitute human failure to reconcile differences and would be catastrophic to humanity.

Ghali Hassan lives in Perth, Western Australia. He can be reached at e-mail: G.Hassan@exchange.curtin.edu.au

Copyright © Information Clearing House.

They Have Fooled Lots of People for Most of the Time

Headlines, Beliefs and Deceptions

The headline of February 22 was eye-catching and unambiguous. It read "Europe, Canada and Mexico Opposed to Spread of Democracy", which isn't the sort of thing you see every day. It not only caught my attention, it made me sit up and stare in disbelief. How could any sane person imagine for an instant that the twenty-five nations of the European Union and two other democratic countries could actually oppose the spread of the very system of governance they have themselves chosen? Could anyone believe this rubbish to be true?

Yes, they could. The crackpots of The Conservative Voice believe it. They must do, otherwise they wouldn't have published that plain and clear-cut headline. But the truth, hidden in the text, was that an Associated Press poll showed "a majority of people in Britain, France, Germany, Italy, Mexico, South Korea and Spain do not believe that the United States role should be to spread democracy throughout the world." To be blunt : The Conservative Voice headline was an outright lie. The words "Opposed to Spread of Democracy" and "do not believe that the United States role should be to spread democracy" convey very different meanings. But this doesn't matter to the cretins whose idol, Bush, has set a standard of flagrant mendacity they are trying hard to equal. Unfortunately, the lying doesn't stop there. And the effects of the lies are both startling and depressing.

Last month a Harris poll showed that 64 per cent of Americans believe Saddam Hussein had strong links to Al Qaeda, that 47 per cent believe Saddam helped plan and support the 9/11 attacks, and that 44 per cent believe several of the 9/11 hijackers were Iraqis. It is staggering that so many millions of Americans can have got it entirely wrong. Surely they must have read at least some coverage of the 9/11 Commission Report which states "We have no credible evidence that Iraq and al-Qaeda cooperated on attacks against the United States"? There wasn't a newspaper or radio or television station, even in deepest, darkest Bushland, that claimed the 9/11 terrorists included Iraqis. It appears that millions of people are so grotesquely gullible as to continue to imagine there were "strong links" between Saddam and Al Qaeda when an independent Commission determined that this was not so. Do they not read the responsible newspapers? - for example, the Washington Post recorded "The Sept. 11 commission reported yesterday that it has found no "collaborative relationship" between Iraq and al Qaeda". How can so many people be fooled for so much of the time?

The reason they believe that up is down, round is square, lies are truth, is that Bush and Cheney told them there was cooperation between Al Qaeda and Saddam Hussein. In his 2003 State of the Union Address Bush declared "Evidence from intelligence sources, secret communications, and people now in custody reveal that Saddam Hussein aids and protects terrorists, including members of Al Qaeda." There is no double-meaning in that pronouncement. The words are as clear as the headline in The Conservative Voice about Europe being opposed to the spread of democracy. And they are equally false and deceitful. The President assured the American people that Saddam Hussein aided and protected members of Al Qaeda. He said he had evidence to prove it. He lied.

This isn't a matter of Clinton's "I did not have relations with that woman" or even Nixon's "You can say I don't remember. You can say I don't recall." The lies of Clinton were absurd and pathetic, and those of Nixon dark and squalid. But their lies were not told with the intention of encouraging the American people to support an illegal and disastrous war that would kill or main thousands of young Americans and tens of thousands of blameless Iraqi citizens.

Clinton's lies didn't work, and he was disgraced. Neither did Nixon's, and he was forced to resign. But the lies by Bush have worked very well. And he goes from depth to depth, telling more and more lies that are believed by many millions of Americans.

Bush and his coterie were determined to invade Iraq, and there was no better way of whipping up support for the attack than the Nazi device of the Big Lie. If the people of the United States were to be deceived into supporting his war, then it would take the biggest lies conceivable - real whoppers - to persuade them. And that's what they got : exactly what Hitler's Germany got in the 1930s. Little wonder the people who see only Fox News and consider their patriotic local newspapers to be next thing in credibility to the Gospel failed and still fail to realize they are lied to by experts. But they aren't the only ones. It may seem bizarre, but some quite intelligent people believe that Saddam and Al Qaeda worked together. Last June Cheney told the James Madison Institute, a conservative organisation based in Florida that Saddam Hussein "had long established ties with al-Qaeda'." This is a flat, outrageous and easily identifiable lie, but these people lapped it up, and they are not low in the IQ department. Yet they cannot believe - they refuse to credit - the 9/11 Commission's finding that "We have no credible evidence that Iraq and al-Qaeda co-operated on attacks against the United States."

Let there be no doubt : if the 9/11 Commission had found the slightest, tiniest, most miniscule pointer that might possibly have indicated the remotest connection between Saddam Hussein and Al Qaeda, they would have told the American people about it. But there wasn't, so they didn't. But it made no difference. The brainwashed faithful believers follow the false prophets.

Thirty years ago Nora Beloff, a British political analyst, wrote that "a Communist will always put the interests of the party and class war above the bourgeois concept of objective truth". She wrote in the context of Marxist influence in the UK press, but her observation is applicable today in Washington. All we have to do is replace 'a Communist' with 'Bush', 'Cheney', Rumsfeld' or 'Rice', to realize that truth is no longer important or even relevant to the country's rulers. The present 'class war' is between the regime in power and the people they are willfully deceiving.

Contrary to the ideals of providing (or permitting) objective truth, there was constant repetition of the false claim that Al Qaeda was linked to Iraq. On October 7, 2002 Bush said "We know that Iraq and the al-Qaeda terrorist network share a common enemy: the United States of America. We know that Iraq and al-Qaeda have had high-level contacts that go back a decade . . . We've learned that Iraq has trained al-Qaeda members in bomb-making and poisons and deadly gases." All lies. But clever lies, because the American people were mesmerized by terrorism to the point of believing anything. When Bush strung together 'terrorist', 'al-Qaeda', 'poisons' and 'Iraq' in his speech, his audience leapt to the obvious conclusion they were meant to draw : Iraq was a deadly threat to the United States.

On January 21, 2003, Cheney announced on NPR that "There's overwhelming evidence there was a connection between Al Qaeda and the Iraqi government. I am very confident that there was an established relationship there." There was no evidence whatever. Little wonder that Conservatives and Madisons and hosts of others have been thoroughly brainwashed. They are brought up to believe that a Republican president and vice-president can think no wrong, say no wrong, do no wrong, and they lack the strength of will to question anything. Just like poor little Britney Spears they believe that "Honestly, I think we should just trust our president in every decision that he makes and we should just support that, you know, and be faithful in what happens."

Even when evidence is produced by impeccable sources and shows, absolutely without doubt, with no possibility of it being contradicted, that Bush and Cheney were and are lying in their teeth, the loony tunes team continue believing the lies. They have to. They have no alternative to unconditional belief, even when the lies are so blatant and obvious. Because if they were to begin to question what Bush and Cheney tell them as truth, the whole edifice, the whole artifice, of the Bush administration would crumble to dust.

Three days after his lying announcement that Saddam Hussein "aids and protects" members of Al Qaeda, Bush was asked a penetrating question (not, of course, by one of the White House press spaniels) at a joint press conference with the equally mendacious Tony Blair, prime minister of Britain:

QUESTION. One question for you both. Do you believe that there is a link between Saddam Hussein, a direct link, and the men who attacked on September the 11th?

BUSH : I can't make that claim.

BLAIR : That answers your question.

No; Bush avoided the question. Blair came to the aid of his fellow-conspirator and finessed the potentially embarrassing situation, but nobody was allowed to pursue the subject to the point that Bush would have to answer "No", which, to anyone less devious and deceitful, would be the honest answer. But even if he had been honest for once in his life, and actually dared to say 'No' (although "I can't make that claim" is pretty clear, at that), the Conservatives and the Madisons and their like would continue to believe that up is down and black is white because "we should just trust our president"
.
We are caught in a sticky web of sordid mendacity, spun by swindlers whose only loyalty is to the cause of power. A lying headline in a third-rate amateur publication may not seem of much importance; but it is, because it is an example of what Bush and Cheney have sponsored and encouraged, and of what they stand for. They have lost touch with truth. That wouldn't be too bad in itself, if it wasn't for the fact that they have dragged an awful lot of good people down into the gutter with them.

Brian Cloughley writes on military and political affairs. He can be reached through his website www.briancloughley.com

Why the U.S. Cannot Correct Its Military Blunders in Iraq

NPR journalist, Deborah Amos, threw up her hands and declared that, between escalating dangers and American military control over reporting, the state of Iraq was essentially an unreportable story for American journalists. "When you read a news report, look at the second line. More and more you will find it reads: ‘according to the U.S. military' or ‘according to officials.'" She added, "You can no longer just rely on your news du jour, whether it's NPR or the New York Times," and went on to describe NPR's offices in Iraq in this way: "She said most NPR reporters are holed up in a compound on a hilltop that resembles a base for a Colombian drug lord. The guarded compound has a vault that journalists can step into if ‘they' come to get them."

Tomgram: Schwartz on Why the Military Is Failing in Iraq

"'If you look back over the last year we estimate we have killed or captured about 15,000 people as part of this counter-insurgency,' [Gen. George] Casey, the only four-star American general in Iraq, told reporters." (January 26, 2005)

"[Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. Richard] Myers said getting an accurate count of insurgents is difficult. ‘I'd say the insurgents' future is absolutely bleak. So precise numbers in an insurgency where people, some people, come and go is always going to be hard to estimate. And that's what we're trying to say,' Myers added." (House Armed Services Committee, February 16, 2005)

"It's frustrating, because we can't be everywhere at once," Lt. Col Stephen Dinauer, who commanded the 3rd Light Armored Reconnaissance Battalion in operations in the Iraqi city of Hit, told Dan Murphy of the Christian Science Monitor. "… These sentiments echo the scaled-back expectations among troops on the ground. Gone is the talk about breaking the back of the insurgency that was floated before the November battle for Fallujah, where hundreds of militants were dug in and ready to fight." [This week. Lt. Col. Dinauer's unit was part of "River Blitz," the latest major American military operation in Sunni-dominated Anbar province.]

"Sergeant David Phillips, 23, sighed and patted his flak jacket. ‘I just want to stay alive and go home with all my body parts.' He spoke for 150,000 American soldiers in Iraq. Yesterday the number of US military deaths since the March 2003 invasion crept over 1,500. There was no official acknowledgment of the milestone, just curt statements that three soldiers had died in two separate attacks on Wednesday. ‘Names are being withheld pending notification of next of kin.'" [British Guardian reporter Rory Carroll with American troops patrolling Mosul this week.]

In fact, in the week when the American death toll crept over another grim mark almost without notice and, just this Friday, four American soldiers were reported killed in Anbar Province and a fifth in a vehicle accident, oil and gas pipelines also went up in the northern part of Iraq; politicians dithered and negotiated and argued over a future Iraqi government that may have little power and less ability to rule the country; while, as a BBC headline had it, "Iraq insurgents seize initiative"; one of the most devastating car bombs of the war hit a gathering of potential police recruits in Hilla; a judge, his son, and a trade unionist were among the assassinated; suicide bombers hit the Ministry of the Interior; numerous Iraqi policemen and army troops as well as recruits and potential recruits were slaughtered; more roadside bombs killed American soldiers; uncounted civilians died; America's detention centers in the country, themselves incubators for insurgents, were reported to be bursting with prisoners; the contested oil city of Kirkuk grew yet more combustible, given Kurdish demands, Shiite desires, and Turkish threats ("Turkish Foreign Minister Abdullah Gul has said that ‘in case of fighting in Kirkuk, Turkey cannot remain a spectator'); and in a bizarre twist which caught something of the madness of the situation (though it is also a commonplace for Iraqis), as the week ended, a kidnapped Italian journalist, freed by her captors, and in a car driving towards Camp Victory at Baghdad International Airport to return home, was wounded and an Italian intelligence officer with her killed by quick-to-shoot American troops, potentially tossing Italian politics and a close Bush ally in the "coalition of the willing," Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, into turmoil; and finally, an NPR journalist, Deborah Amos, threw up her hands and declared that, between escalating dangers and American military control over reporting, the state of Iraq was essentially an unreportable story for American journalists. "When you read a news report, look at the second line. More and more you will find it reads: ‘according to the U.S. military' or ‘according to officials.'" She added, "You can no longer just rely on your news du jour, whether it's NPR or the New York Times," and went on to describe NPR's offices in Iraq in this way: "She said most NPR reporters are holed up in a compound on a hilltop that resembles a base for a Colombian drug lord. The guarded compound has a vault that journalists can step into if ‘they' come to get them."

Under the circumstances, it might be reasonable to ask exactly whose future in Iraq was, in General Myers phrase, "absolutely bleak." Certainly, Iraq's was. And yet, amid that bleakness, the American military effort barrels on, as Michael Schwartz explains below, based on a strategic theory of the Iraqi insurgency which is only likely to lead to further failure, more chaos, more slaughter, and an ever stronger insurgency. When you've read Schwartz, check out the striking collection of quotes that acts as a perfect illustration for his piece at Ari Berman's Daily Outrage blog at the Nation magazine on-line. Tom


"Going to War with the Army You Have"

By Michael Schwartz

The Latest American Theory about the Iraqi Resistance

In early February, a Newsweek team led by Rod Nordland produced a detailed account of current theorizing among American and Iraqi officials about the structure of the Iraqi resistance.

Here, in brief, is what these officials told Newsweek: The initial American assault on Iraq was so successful that Saddam Hussein's plan for systematic resistance fell apart almost immediately, leaving a dispersed, unruly guerrilla movement with little or no coherent leadership. In the two subsequent years, however, the Saddamists formed a wealthy and savvy leadership group in Syria. In the meantime Abu Massab al-Zarqawi, the Jordanian terrorist with ties to Al Qaeda, asserted his domination over the on-the-ground resistance. Pressure from recent American offensives drove the two groupings into an increasingly comfortable alliance. Here is how Newsweek described developments since last summer, based on an interview with Barham Salih, the Iraqi Deputy Prime Minister:

"According to Salih, ‘The Baathists regrouped and, in the last six or seven months, reorganized. Plus they had significant amounts of money, in Iraq and in Syria.' Those contacts and networks that Saddam's key cronies began developing months before the invasion now paid off. An understanding was found with the Islamic fanatics, and the well-funded Baathists appear to have made Syria a protected base of operations. ‘The Iraqi resistance is a monster with its head in Syria and its body in Iraq' is the colorful description given by a top Iraqi police official…. Zarqawi's people supply the bombers, the Baathists provide the money and strategy."

The current situation was succinctly summarized for Newsweek by Brig. Gen. Hussein Ali Kamal, the Deputy Minister of the Interior: "Now between the Zarqawi group and the Baathists there is full cooperation and coordination."

This portrait has been further fleshed out in other accounts, including a New York Times report in which U.S. Commanding General George W. Casey declared that the Baath Party in Syria was "providing direction and financing for the insurgency in Iraq."

This new theory about the nature of the Iraqi resistance helps to illuminate the renewed saber-rattling against the Syrians, which began even before the assassination of the former Lebanese Prime Minister. On January 25, for example, former Secretaries of State Henry Kissinger and George Shultz, writing together for the first time, made the connection explicit in a Washington Post op-ed. They asserted that the Bush administration must have a "strategy for eliminating the sanctuaries in Syria and Iran from which the enemy can be instructed, supplied, and given refuge in time to regroup." The new theory may also help to explain why (according to such diverse sources as Newsweek and former U.S. weapons inspector Scott Ritter) the U.S. is considering using assassination squads to eliminate enemies. One whole category of targets for these squads (if formed) would certainly be the Syrian-based leadership of the resistance.

And then, at the end of February, came news of the first fruits of American operations based on this new insight, the capture in Syria of Sabawi Ibrahim Hassan, a half brother and political lieutenant of Saddam, and one of only 11 of the original "deck of cards" Saddamist leaders who still remained at large. The capture vindicated the saber-rattling as well, since high level Iraqi officials told reporters on February 28 that the "capture was a goodwill gesture by the Syrians to show that they are cooperating" with the new American campaign to decapitate the insurgency by removing its Syrian-based leadership.

The New Theory Is Probably Not Accurate

This new portrait of the Iraqi resistance may be an accurate description of one aspect of the ongoing war; and its key new element -- a working alliance between Saddamist exiles and Zarqawi's fighters inside Iraq -- may be an important new development. But the foundation upon which these descriptions are built -- that these forces now dominate the resistance, supply its leadership, or provide the bulk of its resources -- is likely to prove profoundly inaccurate.

This is most easily seen by consulting -- of all sources -- the CIA, which issued a contrary report about the time the Newsweek article appeared. According to the CIA, the Zarqawi faction and his Saddamist allies were "lesser elements" in the resistance, which was increasingly dominated by "newly radicalized Sunni Iraqis, nationalists offended by the occupying force, and others disenchanted by the economic turmoil and destruction caused by the fighting." There is, in fact, a vast body of publicly available evidence in support of the CIA's perspective, including, for example, most first-hand accounts of the resistance in Falluja and other cities in the Sunni triangle.

In the short, dreary history of America's Iraq war, our leaders have repeatedly acted on gross misconceptions about whom they were fighting -- sometimes based on faulty intelligence, but sometimes in the face of perfectly accurate intelligence. This is, in all likelihood, another instance where they believe their own distortions, and it is worthwhile attempting to understand the underlying pattern that produces this almost predictable error.

One way to characterize this propensity to mis-analyze the resistance is to see that all the portraits thus far generated of the Iraqi resistance have been based on the assumption that it is organized into a familiar hierarchical form in which the leadership exercises strategic and day-to-day control over a pyramid shaped organization. Such a structure is described by both military strategists and organizational sociologists as a "Command and Control" structure. After the battle of Falluja, Air Force Lt. General Lance Smith even used this phrase to characterize Zarqawi's operation: "Zarqawi… no doubt …is able to maintain some level of command and control over the disparate operations."

This command-and-control image applies well to a large bureaucracy or a conventional army; but invariably provides a poor picture of a guerrilla army, which helps explain American military failures in Iraq. Whether or not Zarqawi maintains command and control over his forces (who are, as far as we can tell, not guerrillas) no one exercises such control over the forces that fought against the Americans in Falluja or Sadr City and those that are currently fighting a guerrilla war in Ramadi and other Sunni cities that boycotted the recent elections.

Guerrilla wars violate the command-and-control portrait in two important ways: local units must, by and large, supply themselves (since an occupation army would be likely to interdict any regular shipments of supplies); and they are likely to have substantial autonomy (since hit-and-melt tactics do not lend themselves well to central decision making).

This lack of command and control is a curse and a blessing. On the negative side, lack of central coordination means that guerrilla armies are normally doomed to small, disconnected actions -- a severe limitation if the goal is to drive an enemy out of your country. On the positive side, they are less vulnerable to attacks on supply lines and to the targeting of commanding officers -- two key strategies of conventional warfare.

The resistance in Iraq reflects this dialectic of guerrilla war. The mujaheddin in Falluja, for example, seem to have been notoriously decentralized; even local clerical leadership reportedly achieved only a tenuous discipline over the troops. This same lack of discipline, however, made it impossible for the U.S. to identify and eliminate key leaders. During the second battle for the city in November, their hit-and-run tactics allowed them to hold out for over a month against a force with overwhelming technological and numerical superiority.

The command and control portrait is not a useful tool when it comes to analyzing a large component of the Iraqi resistance, and it is of little use if it is applied to the movement as a whole.

The Drumbeat of Command and Control

Nevertheless, the U.S. military has assumed such a structure at every juncture in the war.

In the Fall of 2003, when the resistance first began to trouble the occupation, U.S. military strategy was based on the conviction that the resistance was led by Saddam Hussein and the "deck of cards" leadership. Here we see command-and-control logic applied for the first time.

By mid-December 2003, the occupation forces had arrested or killed the vast majority of the men on that deck of cards, while Saddam's sons Uday and Qusay Hussein had died in a spectacular gun battle, and Saddam himself had just been captured in a dirt dugout. Occupation authorities confidently predicted that the Baathist "bitter enders" were done for and the resistance would subside, since without its leaders, local fighters were expected to be rudderless and ineffective.

Instead the disparate parts of the resistance became stronger, and in April 2004 emerged with a victory in Falluja -- after a siege of the city, the Marines pulled back without taking it -- and a bloody standoff in Najaf. By then, American intelligence had discovered Abu Massab al Zarqawi and declared that he was actually the linchpin of the resistance.

Once again, a command-and-control portrait of the enemy remained dominant, and the second battle of Falluja was fought in good part on the basis of that theory: to disrupt or destroy the Zarqawi leadership group. But despite the expulsion of the guerrillas (and just about the entire population of Fallujans) from the city, the rebellion quickly spread to other cities and intensified, refuting the claim that the decapitation of the movement would be incapacitating.

The command-and-control theory has, in fact, turned out to be as resilient as the resistance itself. American commander Lt. Gen. Thomas F. Metz, for instance, explained the post-Falluja battle of Mosul to the New York Times by saying that Zarqawi and/or his leadership team had moved to that city and fomented the uprising, ignoring the indigenous character of the mujaheddin who were fighting there. Later, it would be announced that Zarqawi had set up a new "nerve center" south of Baghdad and a major new search-and-destroy operation would be mounted there.

Even after these actions failed to quell the fighting, the occupation forces clung to command-and-control logic. General Kamal, for example, told Newsweek, "Even if Zarqawi continues to elude capture, nailing al-Kurdi [one of Zarqawi's lieutenants] was a critical score. It might -- just might -- -eventually help change the course of this war." Similar statements were made a month later when Saddam's half-brother, identified as a key leader and funder of the insurgency, was captured in Syria.

Evident in all of this is the faith that American military leaders have in a strategy of identifying and targeting the supposed leaders of the insurgency. Despite the direct evidence of an increasingly ferocious movement, the capture of a key leader, it has repeatedly been claimed, could "change the course of the war."

Why the U.S. Military Can't Abandon "Command and Control" Logic

So why does the U.S. military relentlessly build its anti-insurgency strategy around the idea of decapitating the leadership of the Iraqi resistance? The answer lies just beneath the surface of Donald Rumsfeld's now infamous statement, "You go to war with the Army you have."

This is a comment pregnant with meaning for organizational sociologists, because it illustrates a familiar pattern of organizational problem-solving. If a product is not selling well, for example, an engineering organization might conclude that better engineering of the product was in order; a manufacturing firm, that more efficient production technology was needed; and a marketing company, that better advertising would do the trick. This sort of organizational idée fixe has led to some truly horrendous failures in business -- and military -- history. For example, when a flood of automobile buyers began to demand fuel-efficient cars during the first oil crisis in the early 1970s, the American automobile industry did not have the capacity to produce such vehicles. Instead of investing vast resources in developing that capacity, it tried to use its superior marketing skills to win Americans back to luxurious gas guzzlers. That is, the Big Three "went to war with the army they had" and convinced themselves that they were facing a marketing problem. The results: a permanent crisis at General Motors (during which it lost world leadership in the industry), a fundamental restructuring of Ford, and the demise of Chrysler.

Or take the French in World War II. They knew about the new German tanks that had made World War I trench warfare obsolete, but the French army was only equipped to fight in the trenches. So they "went to war with the army they had," devising a trench-war strategy that they managed to convince themselves would contain the German Panzer divisions. They lost the war in three weeks.

The American army is also fighting with the army it has. This army is the best equipped in the world for advanced conventional warfare -- with tanks, artillery, air power, missile power, battlefield surveillance power, and satellite imaging to support highly mobile, well equipped, and superbly trained soldiers. No supply route is safe from its firepower, and no conventional army would be likely to hold its ground long against an American assault. But the most intractable part of the resistance in Iraq is fighting a guerrilla war: they do not have long supply lines and they rarely try to hold their ground.

Guerrilla armies hide by melting into the local population. (Everyone knows this, including, of course, American military men.) To defeat them, an occupying force must have the intelligence to identify guerrillas who can disappear into the civilian world; and it must station troops throughout resistance strongholds in order to pounce upon guerrillas when they emerge from hiding to mount an attack. American military strategists know this, too. But these lessons -- painfully drawn from Vietnam -- can't be implemented by the army that Donald Rumsfeld sent to war.

The Americans, in fact, have neither of these resources. Anti-guerrilla intelligence, after all, requires the cooperation of the local population, which, at least in the Sunni-dominated areas of Iraq, the U.S. has definitively alienated, largely through its use of blunt-edged conventional army attacks on communities that harbor guerrillas. And it cannot station enough troops in key locations because too small an occupation force is spread far too thinly over contested parts of the country. Estimates for the size of an army needed to pacify Iraq range upward from General Eric Shinseki's prewar call for "several hundred thousand" troops.

The American military simply lacks the tools it needs to fight the guerrillas, just as in the 1970s the Big Three automakers lacked the production system needed to produced fuel-efficient automobiles, and the French army lacked the technology it needed to defeat German tanks in 1940. In response, military leaders are doing exactly what their organizational forbears did: They continue to develop theories about how to win the war "with the army they have." This backward logic leads inevitably to imagining an enemy that might be far more susceptible to defeat with the tools at hand; that is, an opponent with long supply lines (from Syria, for example) and a command-and-control leadership (Zarqawi and his Saddamist allies, for example) capable of being "decapitated." This portrait of the enemy then justifies a military strategy that seeks, above all, to kill or capture the theorized leaders. Such tactics almost always fail (even when leaders are captured); and in the process of failing, only alienates further the Iraqi population, producing an ever larger, more resourceful enemy.

The newest portrait of the resistance as a Zarqawi-Saddamist led amalgam will sooner or later die a lonely death -- in all likelihood to be replaced by yet another command-and-control portrait of the insurgency whose features are as yet unknown. As long as the U.S. continues to fight "with the army it has," it will also continue to generate -- and act on -- distorted (sometimes ludicrous) descriptions of the nature of the rebellion it faces.

Michael Schwartz, Professor of Sociology at the State University of New York at Stony Brook, has written extensively on popular protest and insurgency, and on American business and government dynamics. His work on Iraq has appeared on the internet at numerous sites including TomDispatch, Asia Times, MotherJones, and ZNet; and in print at Contexts and Z magazine. His books include Radical Politics and Social Structure, The Power Structure of American Business (with Beth Mintz), and Social Policy and the Conservative Agenda (edited, with Clarence Lo). His email address is Ms42@optonline.net@optonline.net


Copyright 2005 Michael Schwartz

NPR journalist, Deborah Amos, threw up her hands and declared that, between escalating dangers and American military control over reporting, the state of Iraq was essentially an unreportable story for American journalists. "When you read a news report, look at the second line. More and more you will find it reads: ‘according to the U.S. military' or ‘according to officials.'" She added, "You can no longer just rely on your news du jour, whether it's NPR or the New York Times," and went on to describe NPR's offices in Iraq in this way: "She said most NPR reporters are holed up in a compound on a hilltop that resembles a base for a Colombian drug lord. The guarded compound has a vault that journalists can step into if ‘they' come to get them."

Tomgram: Schwartz on Why the Military Is Failing in Iraq

"'If you look back over the last year we estimate we have killed or captured about 15,000 people as part of this counter-insurgency,' [Gen. George] Casey, the only four-star American general in Iraq, told reporters." (January 26, 2005)

"[Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. Richard] Myers said getting an accurate count of insurgents is difficult. ‘I'd say the insurgents' future is absolutely bleak. So precise numbers in an insurgency where people, some people, come and go is always going to be hard to estimate. And that's what we're trying to say,' Myers added." (House Armed Services Committee, February 16, 2005)

"It's frustrating, because we can't be everywhere at once," Lt. Col Stephen Dinauer, who commanded the 3rd Light Armored Reconnaissance Battalion in operations in the Iraqi city of Hit, told Dan Murphy of the Christian Science Monitor. "… These sentiments echo the scaled-back expectations among troops on the ground. Gone is the talk about breaking the back of the insurgency that was floated before the November battle for Fallujah, where hundreds of militants were dug in and ready to fight." [This week. Lt. Col. Dinauer's unit was part of "River Blitz," the latest major American military operation in Sunni-dominated Anbar province.]

"Sergeant David Phillips, 23, sighed and patted his flak jacket. ‘I just want to stay alive and go home with all my body parts.' He spoke for 150,000 American soldiers in Iraq. Yesterday the number of US military deaths since the March 2003 invasion crept over 1,500. There was no official acknowledgment of the milestone, just curt statements that three soldiers had died in two separate attacks on Wednesday. ‘Names are being withheld pending notification of next of kin.'" [British Guardian reporter Rory Carroll with American troops patrolling Mosul this week.]

In fact, in the week when the American death toll crept over another grim mark almost without notice and, just this Friday, four American soldiers were reported killed in Anbar Province and a fifth in a vehicle accident, oil and gas pipelines also went up in the northern part of Iraq; politicians dithered and negotiated and argued over a future Iraqi government that may have little power and less ability to rule the country; while, as a BBC headline had it, "Iraq insurgents seize initiative"; one of the most devastating car bombs of the war hit a gathering of potential police recruits in Hilla; a judge, his son, and a trade unionist were among the assassinated; suicide bombers hit the Ministry of the Interior; numerous Iraqi policemen and army troops as well as recruits and potential recruits were slaughtered; more roadside bombs killed American soldiers; uncounted civilians died; America's detention centers in the country, themselves incubators for insurgents, were reported to be bursting with prisoners; the contested oil city of Kirkuk grew yet more combustible, given Kurdish demands, Shiite desires, and Turkish threats ("Turkish Foreign Minister Abdullah Gul has said that ‘in case of fighting in Kirkuk, Turkey cannot remain a spectator'); and in a bizarre twist which caught something of the madness of the situation (though it is also a commonplace for Iraqis), as the week ended, a kidnapped Italian journalist, freed by her captors, and in a car driving towards Camp Victory at Baghdad International Airport to return home, was wounded and an Italian intelligence officer with her killed by quick-to-shoot American troops, potentially tossing Italian politics and a close Bush ally in the "coalition of the willing," Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, into turmoil; and finally, an NPR journalist, Deborah Amos, threw up her hands and declared that, between escalating dangers and American military control over reporting, the state of Iraq was essentially an unreportable story for American journalists. "When you read a news report, look at the second line. More and more you will find it reads: ‘according to the U.S. military' or ‘according to officials.'" She added, "You can no longer just rely on your news du jour, whether it's NPR or the New York Times," and went on to describe NPR's offices in Iraq in this way: "She said most NPR reporters are holed up in a compound on a hilltop that resembles a base for a Colombian drug lord. The guarded compound has a vault that journalists can step into if ‘they' come to get them."

Under the circumstances, it might be reasonable to ask exactly whose future in Iraq was, in General Myers phrase, "absolutely bleak." Certainly, Iraq's was. And yet, amid that bleakness, the American military effort barrels on, as Michael Schwartz explains below, based on a strategic theory of the Iraqi insurgency which is only likely to lead to further failure, more chaos, more slaughter, and an ever stronger insurgency. When you've read Schwartz, check out the striking collection of quotes that acts as a perfect illustration for his piece at Ari Berman's Daily Outrage blog at the Nation magazine on-line. Tom


"Going to War with the Army You Have"

By Michael Schwartz

The Latest American Theory about the Iraqi Resistance

In early February, a Newsweek team led by Rod Nordland produced a detailed account of current theorizing among American and Iraqi officials about the structure of the Iraqi resistance.

Here, in brief, is what these officials told Newsweek: The initial American assault on Iraq was so successful that Saddam Hussein's plan for systematic resistance fell apart almost immediately, leaving a dispersed, unruly guerrilla movement with little or no coherent leadership. In the two subsequent years, however, the Saddamists formed a wealthy and savvy leadership group in Syria. In the meantime Abu Massab al-Zarqawi, the Jordanian terrorist with ties to Al Qaeda, asserted his domination over the on-the-ground resistance. Pressure from recent American offensives drove the two groupings into an increasingly comfortable alliance. Here is how Newsweek described developments since last summer, based on an interview with Barham Salih, the Iraqi Deputy Prime Minister:

"According to Salih, ‘The Baathists regrouped and, in the last six or seven months, reorganized. Plus they had significant amounts of money, in Iraq and in Syria.' Those contacts and networks that Saddam's key cronies began developing months before the invasion now paid off. An understanding was found with the Islamic fanatics, and the well-funded Baathists appear to have made Syria a protected base of operations. ‘The Iraqi resistance is a monster with its head in Syria and its body in Iraq' is the colorful description given by a top Iraqi police official…. Zarqawi's people supply the bombers, the Baathists provide the money and strategy."

The current situation was succinctly summarized for Newsweek by Brig. Gen. Hussein Ali Kamal, the Deputy Minister of the Interior: "Now between the Zarqawi group and the Baathists there is full cooperation and coordination."

This portrait has been further fleshed out in other accounts, including a New York Times report in which U.S. Commanding General George W. Casey declared that the Baath Party in Syria was "providing direction and financing for the insurgency in Iraq."

This new theory about the nature of the Iraqi resistance helps to illuminate the renewed saber-rattling against the Syrians, which began even before the assassination of the former Lebanese Prime Minister. On January 25, for example, former Secretaries of State Henry Kissinger and George Shultz, writing together for the first time, made the connection explicit in a Washington Post op-ed. They asserted that the Bush administration must have a "strategy for eliminating the sanctuaries in Syria and Iran from which the enemy can be instructed, supplied, and given refuge in time to regroup." The new theory may also help to explain why (according to such diverse sources as Newsweek and former U.S. weapons inspector Scott Ritter) the U.S. is considering using assassination squads to eliminate enemies. One whole category of targets for these squads (if formed) would certainly be the Syrian-based leadership of the resistance.

And then, at the end of February, came news of the first fruits of American operations based on this new insight, the capture in Syria of Sabawi Ibrahim Hassan, a half brother and political lieutenant of Saddam, and one of only 11 of the original "deck of cards" Saddamist leaders who still remained at large. The capture vindicated the saber-rattling as well, since high level Iraqi officials told reporters on February 28 that the "capture was a goodwill gesture by the Syrians to show that they are cooperating" with the new American campaign to decapitate the insurgency by removing its Syrian-based leadership.

The New Theory Is Probably Not Accurate

This new portrait of the Iraqi resistance may be an accurate description of one aspect of the ongoing war; and its key new element -- a working alliance between Saddamist exiles and Zarqawi's fighters inside Iraq -- may be an important new development. But the foundation upon which these descriptions are built -- that these forces now dominate the resistance, supply its leadership, or provide the bulk of its resources -- is likely to prove profoundly inaccurate.

This is most easily seen by consulting -- of all sources -- the CIA, which issued a contrary report about the time the Newsweek article appeared. According to the CIA, the Zarqawi faction and his Saddamist allies were "lesser elements" in the resistance, which was increasingly dominated by "newly radicalized Sunni Iraqis, nationalists offended by the occupying force, and others disenchanted by the economic turmoil and destruction caused by the fighting." There is, in fact, a vast body of publicly available evidence in support of the CIA's perspective, including, for example, most first-hand accounts of the resistance in Falluja and other cities in the Sunni triangle.

In the short, dreary history of America's Iraq war, our leaders have repeatedly acted on gross misconceptions about whom they were fighting -- sometimes based on faulty intelligence, but sometimes in the face of perfectly accurate intelligence. This is, in all likelihood, another instance where they believe their own distortions, and it is worthwhile attempting to understand the underlying pattern that produces this almost predictable error.

One way to characterize this propensity to mis-analyze the resistance is to see that all the portraits thus far generated of the Iraqi resistance have been based on the assumption that it is organized into a familiar hierarchical form in which the leadership exercises strategic and day-to-day control over a pyramid shaped organization. Such a structure is described by both military strategists and organizational sociologists as a "Command and Control" structure. After the battle of Falluja, Air Force Lt. General Lance Smith even used this phrase to characterize Zarqawi's operation: "Zarqawi… no doubt …is able to maintain some level of command and control over the disparate operations."

This command-and-control image applies well to a large bureaucracy or a conventional army; but invariably provides a poor picture of a guerrilla army, which helps explain American military failures in Iraq. Whether or not Zarqawi maintains command and control over his forces (who are, as far as we can tell, not guerrillas) no one exercises such control over the forces that fought against the Americans in Falluja or Sadr City and those that are currently fighting a guerrilla war in Ramadi and other Sunni cities that boycotted the recent elections.

Guerrilla wars violate the command-and-control portrait in two important ways: local units must, by and large, supply themselves (since an occupation army would be likely to interdict any regular shipments of supplies); and they are likely to have substantial autonomy (since hit-and-melt tactics do not lend themselves well to central decision making).

This lack of command and control is a curse and a blessing. On the negative side, lack of central coordination means that guerrilla armies are normally doomed to small, disconnected actions -- a severe limitation if the goal is to drive an enemy out of your country. On the positive side, they are less vulnerable to attacks on supply lines and to the targeting of commanding officers -- two key strategies of conventional warfare.

The resistance in Iraq reflects this dialectic of guerrilla war. The mujaheddin in Falluja, for example, seem to have been notoriously decentralized; even local clerical leadership reportedly achieved only a tenuous discipline over the troops. This same lack of discipline, however, made it impossible for the U.S. to identify and eliminate key leaders. During the second battle for the city in November, their hit-and-run tactics allowed them to hold out for over a month against a force with overwhelming technological and numerical superiority.

The command and control portrait is not a useful tool when it comes to analyzing a large component of the Iraqi resistance, and it is of little use if it is applied to the movement as a whole.

The Drumbeat of Command and Control

Nevertheless, the U.S. military has assumed such a structure at every juncture in the war.

In the Fall of 2003, when the resistance first began to trouble the occupation, U.S. military strategy was based on the conviction that the resistance was led by Saddam Hussein and the "deck of cards" leadership. Here we see command-and-control logic applied for the first time.

By mid-December 2003, the occupation forces had arrested or killed the vast majority of the men on that deck of cards, while Saddam's sons Uday and Qusay Hussein had died in a spectacular gun battle, and Saddam himself had just been captured in a dirt dugout. Occupation authorities confidently predicted that the Baathist "bitter enders" were done for and the resistance would subside, since without its leaders, local fighters were expected to be rudderless and ineffective.

Instead the disparate parts of the resistance became stronger, and in April 2004 emerged with a victory in Falluja -- after a siege of the city, the Marines pulled back without taking it -- and a bloody standoff in Najaf. By then, American intelligence had discovered Abu Massab al Zarqawi and declared that he was actually the linchpin of the resistance.

Once again, a command-and-control portrait of the enemy remained dominant, and the second battle of Falluja was fought in good part on the basis of that theory: to disrupt or destroy the Zarqawi leadership group. But despite the expulsion of the guerrillas (and just about the entire population of Fallujans) from the city, the rebellion quickly spread to other cities and intensified, refuting the claim that the decapitation of the movement would be incapacitating.

The command-and-control theory has, in fact, turned out to be as resilient as the resistance itself. American commander Lt. Gen. Thomas F. Metz, for instance, explained the post-Falluja battle of Mosul to the New York Times by saying that Zarqawi and/or his leadership team had moved to that city and fomented the uprising, ignoring the indigenous character of the mujaheddin who were fighting there. Later, it would be announced that Zarqawi had set up a new "nerve center" south of Baghdad and a major new search-and-destroy operation would be mounted there.

Even after these actions failed to quell the fighting, the occupation forces clung to command-and-control logic. General Kamal, for example, told Newsweek, "Even if Zarqawi continues to elude capture, nailing al-Kurdi [one of Zarqawi's lieutenants] was a critical score. It might -- just might -- -eventually help change the course of this war." Similar statements were made a month later when Saddam's half-brother, identified as a key leader and funder of the insurgency, was captured in Syria.

Evident in all of this is the faith that American military leaders have in a strategy of identifying and targeting the supposed leaders of the insurgency. Despite the direct evidence of an increasingly ferocious movement, the capture of a key leader, it has repeatedly been claimed, could "change the course of the war."

Why the U.S. Military Can't Abandon "Command and Control" Logic

So why does the U.S. military relentlessly build its anti-insurgency strategy around the idea of decapitating the leadership of the Iraqi resistance? The answer lies just beneath the surface of Donald Rumsfeld's now infamous statement, "You go to war with the Army you have."

This is a comment pregnant with meaning for organizational sociologists, because it illustrates a familiar pattern of organizational problem-solving. If a product is not selling well, for example, an engineering organization might conclude that better engineering of the product was in order; a manufacturing firm, that more efficient production technology was needed; and a marketing company, that better advertising would do the trick. This sort of organizational idée fixe has led to some truly horrendous failures in business -- and military -- history. For example, when a flood of automobile buyers began to demand fuel-efficient cars during the first oil crisis in the early 1970s, the American automobile industry did not have the capacity to produce such vehicles. Instead of investing vast resources in developing that capacity, it tried to use its superior marketing skills to win Americans back to luxurious gas guzzlers. That is, the Big Three "went to war with the army they had" and convinced themselves that they were facing a marketing problem. The results: a permanent crisis at General Motors (during which it lost world leadership in the industry), a fundamental restructuring of Ford, and the demise of Chrysler.

Or take the French in World War II. They knew about the new German tanks that had made World War I trench warfare obsolete, but the French army was only equipped to fight in the trenches. So they "went to war with the army they had," devising a trench-war strategy that they managed to convince themselves would contain the German Panzer divisions. They lost the war in three weeks.

The American army is also fighting with the army it has. This army is the best equipped in the world for advanced conventional warfare -- with tanks, artillery, air power, missile power, battlefield surveillance power, and satellite imaging to support highly mobile, well equipped, and superbly trained soldiers. No supply route is safe from its firepower, and no conventional army would be likely to hold its ground long against an American assault. But the most intractable part of the resistance in Iraq is fighting a guerrilla war: they do not have long supply lines and they rarely try to hold their ground.

Guerrilla armies hide by melting into the local population. (Everyone knows this, including, of course, American military men.) To defeat them, an occupying force must have the intelligence to identify guerrillas who can disappear into the civilian world; and it must station troops throughout resistance strongholds in order to pounce upon guerrillas when they emerge from hiding to mount an attack. American military strategists know this, too. But these lessons -- painfully drawn from Vietnam -- can't be implemented by the army that Donald Rumsfeld sent to war.

The Americans, in fact, have neither of these resources. Anti-guerrilla intelligence, after all, requires the cooperation of the local population, which, at least in the Sunni-dominated areas of Iraq, the U.S. has definitively alienated, largely through its use of blunt-edged conventional army attacks on communities that harbor guerrillas. And it cannot station enough troops in key locations because too small an occupation force is spread far too thinly over contested parts of the country. Estimates for the size of an army needed to pacify Iraq range upward from General Eric Shinseki's prewar call for "several hundred thousand" troops.

The American military simply lacks the tools it needs to fight the guerrillas, just as in the 1970s the Big Three automakers lacked the production system needed to produced fuel-efficient automobiles, and the French army lacked the technology it needed to defeat German tanks in 1940. In response, military leaders are doing exactly what their organizational forbears did: They continue to develop theories about how to win the war "with the army they have." This backward logic leads inevitably to imagining an enemy that might be far more susceptible to defeat with the tools at hand; that is, an opponent with long supply lines (from Syria, for example) and a command-and-control leadership (Zarqawi and his Saddamist allies, for example) capable of being "decapitated." This portrait of the enemy then justifies a military strategy that seeks, above all, to kill or capture the theorized leaders. Such tactics almost always fail (even when leaders are captured); and in the process of failing, only alienates further the Iraqi population, producing an ever larger, more resourceful enemy.

The newest portrait of the resistance as a Zarqawi-Saddamist led amalgam will sooner or later die a lonely death -- in all likelihood to be replaced by yet another command-and-control portrait of the insurgency whose features are as yet unknown. As long as the U.S. continues to fight "with the army it has," it will also continue to generate -- and act on -- distorted (sometimes ludicrous) descriptions of the nature of the rebellion it faces.

Michael Schwartz, Professor of Sociology at the State University of New York at Stony Brook, has written extensively on popular protest and insurgency, and on American business and government dynamics. His work on Iraq has appeared on the internet at numerous sites including TomDispatch, Asia Times, MotherJones, and ZNet; and in print at Contexts and Z magazine. His books include Radical Politics and Social Structure, The Power Structure of American Business (with Beth Mintz), and Social Policy and the Conservative Agenda (edited, with Clarence Lo). His email address is Ms42@optonline.net@optonline.net


Copyright 2005 Michael Schwartz

Is the Potential AIPAC/Neocon Scandal About to "Blow Up"?

I am often surprised that some investigations in Washington draw much (leak-fueled) attention in the media and others proceed far below the radar. The intricacies and overall shape of Patrick Fitzgerald's investigation of the Wilson leak affair has eluded Washington reporters. What does draw coverage is his very public--and seemingly maniacal--pursuit of reporters Matt Cooper (of Time) and Judith Miller (of The New York Times). What progress he has made in determining which administration officials leaked the identity of a CIA undercover official to columnist Robert Novak is unknown. There also are no good indications of whether he has pressed Novak--rather than reporters who are peripheral to the alleged crime--to reveal his sources. Compare this to Kenneth Starr's investigations of Monicagate and Whitewater, the confidential details of which were in the newspapers practically every day.

Another under-the-radar investigation is the AIPAC inquiry. But, I'm told, this may soon change.

First, some background. The FBI has twice raided the offices of the influential pro-Israeli lobby and subpoenaed AIPAC officials. The feds are apparently looking at whether AIPAC officials passed classified information obtained from Bush administration officials to Israel. If true, this could be a rather explosive scandal. Yet it hasn't garnered much notice. For a quick primer, here's how The Washington Post described the mysterious investigation last September:

For more than two years, the FBI has been investigating whether classified intelligence has been passed to Israel by the American Israel Political Action Committee, an influential U.S. lobbying group, in a probe that extends beyond the case of Pentagon employee Lawrence A. Franklin [who has come under investigation for allegedly passing information to Israel], according to senior U.S. officials and other sources.

The counterintelligence probe, which is different from a criminal investigation, focuses on a possible transfer of intelligence more extensive than whether Franklin passed on a draft presidential directive on U.S. policy toward Iran, the sources said. The FBI is examining whether highly classified material from the National Security Agency, which conducts electronic intercepts of communications, was also forwarded to Israel, they said.

Israel said the characterization of the probe is speculative. "We are aware of all the speculation, but that is all it is. We have not heard anything official, and U.S.-Israeli relations remain as strong as ever and, as far as we are concerned, it's business as usual," said David Siegel, spokesman of the Israeli Embassy here. AIPAC has forcefully denied that any of its personnel received classified information.

National security adviser Condoleezza Rice and her deputy, Stephen J. Hadley, were apprised of the FBI counterintelligence investigation of AIPAC as a possible conduit for information to Israel more than two years ago, a senior U.S. official said late yesterday. That official and other sources would discuss the investigation only on the condition of anonymity because it involves classified information and is highly sensitive.

The investigation of Franklin is coincidental to the broader FBI counterintelligence probe, which was already long underway when Franklin came to the attention of investigators, U.S. officials and sources said. Franklin, a career analyst at the Defense Intelligence Agency who specializes in Iran, is suspected of passing the proposed directive on Iran to AIPAC, officials said, which may have forwarded it to Israel. According to friends and colleagues, Franklin spent time in Israel, including during duty in the U.S. Air Force Reserve, in which he served as a specialist in foreign political-military affairs. Franklin now works for Douglas J. Feith, undersecretary of defense for policy.

Reports on the investigation have baffled foreign policy analysts and U.S. officials because the Bush administration and the government of Prime Minister Ariel Sharon already cooperate on intelligence matters and share policy views. Despite some rocky moments, the relationship has been among the United States' closest in both policy and intelligence sharing since Israel was founded almost six decades ago.


What's going on is not all that clear. But it does seem to spell bad news for the neocons, since Franklin leads to Feith, a leading neocon (who has announced he will be leaving his post at the Pentagon). Perhaps that's why some neoconners--those pioneering cheerleaders of the war in Iraq--have been suggesting that the FBI used Franklin in a "sting" operation to set up AIPAC. Tugging on the neocon thread, Washington Post columnist David Ignatius last month wrote,

What adds a sharp edge to the Bush II ideological debate [between neocons and so-called "realists"] is the fact that the FBI is continuing an investigation of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, or AIPAC, which, like the neoconservatives, is strongly supportive of Israel. The investigation appears to have touched some prominent neoconservatives who are friendly toward AIPAC. Journalist Edwin Black discussed the fallout in a Dec. 31 article in the Forward newspaper, headlined "Spat Erupts Between Neocons, Intelligence Community." He described an apparent effort by the FBI to use the Pentagon official whose contacts with AIPAC triggered the investigation, Larry Franklin, in an unsuccessful "sting" operation to draw [neocon leader Richard] Perle into passing information to the neocons' favorite Iraqi leader, Ahmed Chalabi.

The FBI investigation has received surprisingly little publicity in the mainstream press, but it continues to rumble along. A prominent former government official with access to highly classified information told me this week that he was interviewed in late January by two FBI agents and quizzed about his luncheon meetings with Steve Rosen, AIPAC's director of foreign policy issues. He said he told the agents that he had never given Rosen classified information and that Rosen had never asked for it. The FBI investigation seemed, to this former official, to be largely a "fishing expedition."

...Meanwhile, I'm told that more than a half-dozen officials in the Bush administration who are apparently suspected of leaking classified information to AIPAC have had to retain defense lawyers.


Six Bushies on the run? That sounds like major news. But no details have leaked out. So let me contribute in my own small way. A reliable source of mine reports that he recently chatted with one of the principle figures in the investigation and that this fellow said the AIPAC scandal was about to "blow up," meaning there would be new, noteworthy developments that presumably would generate headlines. The person talking to my source was in a position to know and in a position to hope for the opposite.

Consequently, I would assign a fair degree of confidence to this person's prediction. If that comes to pass, perhaps the Washington media will finally get around to providing more thorough and penetrating coverage of this potential scandal.

David Corn.com