I've been spending some of my spare time these past few weeks rummaging around in the Whiskey Bar archives, trying to decide what, if any of it, is worth keeping and what could just as well be consigned to the electronic garbage can. If nothing else, the task drove home for me just how central the Iraq War has been to this blog -- beginning with my very first post, which was written the day after the fall of Baghdad in April 2003.
By my rough guess, at least two thirds, if not more, of the almost three thousand posts I've written since that day have concerned the Iraq War, directly or indirectly. Over the past three-and-a-half years the war has come to define my thinking just as thoroughly as it has come to define Shrub's presidency -- not to mention the world we now live in.
What I also realized, ploughing through hundreds of forgotten or half-remembered posts, is that much of what I wrote back then proved not only true but also extremely prescient -- especially in the first few months after "mission accomplished," when the corporate media by and large was still drinking the White House Kool-Aid and the conservative movement was proclaiming the deification of Emperor George.
It's not that the story wasn't being told. Then as now, most of what I understood to be true about Iraq came from reading between the lines of the semi-official media (New York Times, Washington Post) from the samzidat journalists at Knight-Ridder, from the foreign press (the Guardian and the Independent in particular) and from the Juan Cole's crucial work translating and analyzing Iraqi and other Arabic-language sources. The downward trends could even be seen in the bare factual bones of wire service reports with obscure datelines like Fallujah and Haditha and Tikrit.
But to piece together the truth in those days you had to scrounge for it, ignore the ignorance and lies pouring out of Donald Rumfeld's mouth and defy the prevailing political tide of arrogant triumphalism. Very few journalists, and even fewer politicians, were willing to do that. Some in Left Blogistan were (Kos, Needlenose and Steve Gilliard, among others, also come readily to mind). As a result we presented a far more accurate picture of the war to our readers than the corporate media -- with a few honorable exceptions -- did to its own. I'm proud enough of that to want to remind the world, and the moronic media blog bashers in particular, of it.
What follows, then, are some selected passages from the Whiskey Bar in that first fateful year of the war, from the fall of Baghdad to the capture of Saddam. They have been edited for length, but not for content or context -- or at least so I think you will find, if you check the orginal posts.
Far be it from me to suggest yesterday's Iraq "liberation" is rapidly descending into tomorrow's Middle East quagmire. I couldn't be heard anyway -- certainly not over the chestbeating and the Tarzan cries from the freepers, the neocons and other assorted Bush babies. But at least consider this gem of a quote, plucked from deep down in the BBC reporters web log:One of my close Iraqi friends went up to an American marine and said to him: "I'm going to exercise my right of free speech for the first time in my life -- we want you out of here as soon as possible."
The Day After
April 10, 2003
By appearing to ally itself so openly and so closely with one side of the sectarian division in Iraq, the Coalition risks alienating the other side. This could make it easier for Baathist remnants to regroup as a new, pro-Sunni ethnic faction hostile to the occupation government . . .The Iranian example, however, suggests the Shias are not the best instruments for an American neo-colonial order in Iraq. While the Islamic Revolution’s political hold over the Iraqi Shiite imagination was always exaggerated -- by the Baathists as well as by their enemies – the cultural influence is real and deeply rooted. Here, too, geography is destiny: Iran will always be near at hand and America will always be far away. Proximity eventually may trump raw imperial power -- at least over the long run.And the Sunni elite? It's living through the final moments of its historic domination of Mesopotamia . . . The Baath is fading away. The future is molten, like lava. Attitudes formed now, decisions made now, could endure after the lava cools.Elites driven from power usually have much to fear. Fearful people need protection. If the invaders are seen as fundamentally hostile -- or worse yet, allied with a domestic enemy . . . well, the Reconstruction Era KKK wouldn’t be the first terrorist organization to flourish under such circumstances. Or the last.
Geography is Destiny
April 11, 2003
Sunni resistance would raise the premium on Shia cooperation, which would make intra-Shia factional friction even more dangerous . . . Iran, and only Iran, has the KY jelly needed to lubricate that particular problem. But the neocons don't seem to mind rough sex, geopolitically speaking.
Mosul Match
April 15, 2003
Bremer’s skill set may serve him well as he tries to reconcile the conflicting interests behind the U.S. occupation of Iraq. After all, knowing how to pull the strings back home is one of the first bullet items on a Proconsul’s job description. But it’s also a relatively narrow skill set to take to a place like Iraq . . . Bremer may discover the secret to running a neo-imperialist colony in the Middle East isn’t in his book of tricks.
How to Succeed in Diplomacy Without Really Trying
May 7, 2003
In the imperialism business, troops equal money, and the neocons are under-capitalized. The Iraq deal was sold and leveraged on the assumption that the invasion and "stabilization" forces could be drawn down relatively quickly after Saddam was gone. But now the deal is starting to go south. The debt service costs are threatening to eat the neocons alive. At some point they're going to have to tell the CEO, and then the board of directors. The regulators (voters) may be slow, but even they may figure it out sooner or later. Heads could roll.
The Imperial Stretch
May 18, 2003
Before the invasion, if you recall, the administration told us the support of countries like Japan, Poland and Denmark (not to mention Uzbekistan, Azerbajian and the Maldive Islands) would more than make up for the loss of our traditional NATO allies in "old" Europe -- insignificant countries like Germany and France . . . [But] the hawks can't force their allies to send troops, and seduction clearly isn't their strong suit. Which leaves only one way to get some action: paying for it -- the way King George paid for his Hessians. Could be a big bull market for mercenaries.
Coalition of the Less Than Willing
May 29, 2003
Even now, there are hawks who firmly believe we invaded Iraq to fight the "Islamofascists." Some of us tried to tell them they were wrong -- that the Baath were secular nationalists, and that America risked repeating Israel's mistake in the early '80s of building up Hamas as a religious counterweight to the secular nationalists in the PLO:"I’m afraid the Bush Administration is about to make a similar mistake – but on a vastly larger scale. By knocking Arab nationalist thugs like Saddam out of the box, aren’t we just taking out the competition for Al Qaeda?"We may soon learn the answer to that question. The hawks wanted to go to Iraq to fight "Islamofascism." They may get their wish.
Al Qaeda Recruitment Center
June 1, 2003
Whatever chance Iraq had to eventually emerge from Baathist dictatorship into some less horrific form of government has been blown. The only options now are Lebanon-style chaos or an expensive, bloody U.S. occupation -- followed by Lebanon-style chaos once we finally give up and withdraw . . . Bottom line: The conservatives, their beloved president and his neocon revolutionaries have made an ENORMOUS mistake -- of the kind that keep historians busy arguing for decades: How could they have done something so stupid? It's the March of Folly, heading straight over a cliff.
Question of the Day
June 3, 2003
The deception was not in the claim that Saddam had WMDs . . . although that claim indeed may turn out to be a falsehood. The deception was in the claim that Saddam's WMD capability posed an immediate, critical threat to the security of the United States, urgent enough to require a massive military invasion to overthrow his regime. This is the conclusion the administration cooked the intelligence estimates to produce, this is the lie. And every piece of evidence we have seen since the "end" of the war -- up to and including the discovery of Bush's precious trailers -- has demonstrated that it was a lie.
Rope-a-Dope
June 4, 2003
The Sunni guerrillas may be making all the noise right now, but another, much quieter resistance movement also is emerging in Iraq. In the end, it may pose the more potent challenge to the neocons' imperial project:Clerics Vie With U.S. For Power
Shiites Widen Role In Reshaping Iraq"In the latest contest over Iraq's uncertain future, the most activist and influential of Baghdad's Shiite clergy have declared their intention to begin shaping a civil society that is tentatively emerging in the capital . . . "This kind of gradual, patient organizing work isn't something that can simply abolished by decree -- or rooted out by the 3rd Infantry Division.
Shiite Happens
June 7,2003
Baghdad, like Kabul before it -- and Saigon before that -- is about to be hived away from its own country and converted into a Westernized oasis in a desert (a literal one in this case) of war and poverty. An oasis, moreover, largely inhabited by U.S. military officers, civilian bureaucrats, international aid workers and their assorted camp followers . . . In other words, a place where the American can learn to hate and despise the Iraqis, and the Iraqis can learn to hate and despise the Americans. A classic case of toxic codependency.
Midnight at the Oasis
June 9, 2003
Bitching . . . has always been a soldier's lot -- and probably always will. But the bitching out of Iraq is taking on the particular venomous tone of an army that doesn't know why it is doing what it is doing, and is beginning to believe the guys in charge don't know what they're doing, either . . . A volunteer army can vote with its feet. These guys may be pros, but how much more can they be expected to take? Maybe not enough to sustain the neocons' grand imperial design for the Middle East.
Letters Home
June 24, 2003
In April the Pentagon estimated the occupation would cost $2 billion a month. By early June, the price tag had risen to $3 billion a month. Now it's almost $4 billion -- a 50% increase in less than three months. That's pretty good, even for government work. And, as the Times points out, there may be other unexpected costs coming down the pike . . . Before this mess is finished, we may have to invade Saudi Arabia to get the oil to pay for our Iraq occupation.
Money Honey
July 11, 2003
The war, the weakness of our puppet government and our deteriorating relations with the radical and pro-Iranian elements of the Shi'a community won't go away because the Saddam boys -- or their pop -- are frying in the infernal regions. But the all-in-one PR excuse will . . . Which means that once Saddam Sr. has finally been Fedexed back to hell, the task of persuading the American people to continue chasing the neocon mirage of "democracy" in the Middle East could get really hard, really fast.
Sons of Saddam
July 22, 2003
Public opinion polls show America already has very few friends in the Arab world, other than those it has bought and paid for . . . Arab support and solidarity with the resistance in Iraq will shore up [its] morale, which otherwise is going to be pretty badly battered by the kind of firepower and technology the USA will eventually bring to bear on the guerrillas and their civilian supporters.This, in turn, increases the odds that the war ultimately will be lost, just as Vietnam and Algeria were lost -- not because the insurgents won, but because they were able to hang on and deny the counterinsurgents the clear proof of victory needed to maintain support for the war back home.
From Saddam to Solidarity
July 24, 2003
In the end, policy mistakes -- particularly big ones -- tend to produce a kind of circular reasoning -- in which those in charge try to justify the policy by citing the need to avoid, at all costs, the failure of the policy. So it was in Vietnam. So, too, with our latest misadventure in Iraq . . . Because America in Iraq, it must fight the "terrorists." And because it must fight the terrorists, America has to be in Iraq.This kind of circular logic permeates the entire enterprise. Why has the high command proclaimed that current U.S. troop strength in Iraq -- about 140,000 men, give or take -- is the "optimal" force? Could it be because that also happens to be the maximum force that can be scraped together by the hard-pressed Army?Calling the war in Iraq the central battle in the war against terrorism ignores the distinct possibility that it is in fact a monumental diversion from the real struggle against terrorism -- a strategic distraction that will make huge demands on the American military and the American intelligence community for years, if not decades.
The Self Inflicted Wound
July 28, 2003
It would appear the coalition has only a few months left -- a year at best -- to meet some extremely demanding political and economic expectations. It must also deal with a hard core of 5-10% of the population (and a much higher share of the Sunni minority) that is actively rooting for a Ba'athist comeback. And it has to reckon with an even larger -- but mutually antagonistic -- grouping that desires either a Shi'a or Sunni Islamic government.As a reporter for the British newspaper The Independent observed a few months ago, America's big problem in Iraq isn't that it has so many enemies -- the problem is that it has so very few friends.
With Friends Like These . . .
July 29, 2003
What we have here is a classic demonstration of asymmetrical warfare -- except in this case, the asymmetry is all in favor of the resistance, and all against the coalition. Making a country an ungovernable hell is clearly a lot easier than turning it into a stable, functioning democracy . . .The problem is the absurdly ambitious goal the administration has set -- not just to conquer and subjugate Iraq, but to build it back up again as a functioning, self-governing state, moderate, pluralistic and friendly to the West. Classic counter-insurgency tactics, ruthlessly pursued, won't lead to the New Iraq®. But neither will the current halfway measures, which -- at best -- can only maintain the current stalemate.
Made in America
August 17, 2003
As others have already pointed out (even Tom Friedman now grasps the point), when the administration disbanded the old Iraqi Army, it destroyed the only cohesive national organization in Iraq that wasn't owned lock, stock and gun barrel by the Baath Party. Like Cortez, Shrub has burned his boats.
Et Tu, Brute?
August 27, 2003
Muqtada al-Sadr, the young firebrand who's been most aggressive in attacking both the Coalition and the Shi'a factions that support the occupation, would seem to be both a natural target and a natural preemptor . . . More of a target, though, since any move on Sadr's part would give the Coalition the excuse it's been longing for to arrest him and crack down on his movement. Which would be another stupid mistake, since it would probably trigger the very civil war that the Coalition desperately needs to avoid. But since when did the Bush administration stop making stupid mistakes?
The Ayatollah Sleeps With the Fishes
August 29, 2003
Having committed one huge error in disbanding the old Iraqi Army, the Coalition appears to be on the brink of committing an even worse one: letting the various factions on the Governing Council put their supporters on the street with guns . . . Given the way the Council has handled its business so far -- carefully partitioning everything (seats, ministries, the rotating presidency) among the its various factions, it's hard to believe a new militia wouldn't be created in the same fashion. This is how private armies get created. This is how Lebanons get created . . .
It’s Working
August 30, 2003
A wise hegemon goes to great lengths to conceal the true extent of its power. It always leaves something in the tool kit, so to speak, so that enemies and allies alike can never be sure exactly what's in there. But the Bush Administration has let the cat out of the bag. It has exposed to the world the limits of U.S. military power -- both in terms of the size of the forces (divisions, troops) and the relative ineffectiveness of those forces on a complex social and political battlefield like the one America faces in Iraq and throughout the Middle East. These events no doubt will be noted, and closely studied, by friend and foe alike.
The End of the American Century?
September 3, 2003
There's absolutely no guarantee the combat attrition rate in Iraq will stay as low as 4%, and many reasons to think it may go higher as the insurgents continue to refine their strategy and tactics . . . This would appear to be a damned serious problem for the Pentagon, and there doesn't seem to be any obvious solution -- other than the Coalition's increasingly desperate attempts at "Iraqization." After three decades of swearing it would never allow itself to be dragged into another meat-grinding war of attrition, the military has allowed itself to be dragged into one.
War of Attrition
September 14, 2003
The American people have to choose: They can support the war, and pay the bloody price, or they can demand a speedy end to the American occupation and a withdrawal of U.S. forces from Iraq. The idea of throwing more money at the corporate crooks who gave us Halliburton, and Enron, is nauseating. So is the thought of sending more troops to die in the desert. But the status quo is simply unbearable. Either the troops have to come home -- all of them -- or the money and the reinforcements have to start flowing the other way. And the sooner the American people (and the administration) get that through their tiny little heads, the sooner we can finally start having a realistic debate about the war in Iraq.
The Enron War
September 15, 2003
Under the circumstances, it's hard to see how the Coalition can expect to simply fort up its troops, draw down its forces and hand over key security tasks to a hastily created, semi-trained Iraqi Army -- not without completely losing strategic control of the country . . . In the end, the White House might have to consider a fresh commitment of U.S. troops to Iraq, in order to prevent either the complete collapse of the country or the rise of a new regime (Sunni or Sh'ia) hostile to the United States and the existing order in the Middle East. But that's a worry that can be left for the 2008 election, I suppose.
Exit Strategy
September 18, 2003
An actual Tet-style offensive seems very far fetched. This isn't Vietnam, and the Sunni insurgents . . . don’t appear to have the men, the resources or the command-and-control networks needed to launch anything so ambitious. A more plausible risk would seem to be something comparable to the 1968 urban riots here in America -- a wave of civil unrest that breaks out in many cities at once, and quickly spirals out of control. The insurgents, no doubt, would be happy to fan the flames any way they can.Such a scenario could leave the Coalition with two choices: Crack down very hard, with indiscriminate use of lethal force, or, let the riots burn themselves out before trying to restore order. Either way, the Bush administration would be looking at a PR disaster, one that would make it impossible to pretend that things are gradually "getting better" in Iraq.
Burn Baby Burn
October 7, 2003
What's really facinating aren't the Shi'a factions that oppose the American-backed Governing Council, but the factions that are on it. According to Cole, persons affiliated with the al-Da`wa Party hold four seats, while SCIRI holds one. Remember: SCIRI hews to only a slightly more moderate version of Khomeinism, and al-Da`wa includes factions that have associated in the past with Hezbollah and Islamic Jihad -- although most of the party's anti-American hardliners apparently have yet to return from their Iranian exile. And these are the Coalition's allies!
A Shi’a Scorecard
October 14, 2003
Some of you may be wondering why I've been spending so much time recently writing about the obscure battles of even more obscure Iraqi Shi'a factions. It's because I think the ultimate fate of the occupation -- and thus, the war in Iraq -- is going to rest on the Coalition's ability to manage those same factions without tipping them over into armed resistance. So far, the results have been decidedly mixed, to say the least.
Shiite Storm
October 17, 2003
As this Washington Post article notes, the administration's policy has been set by default: Iraqification. This is supposed to be accomplished through a crash program to create a new Iraqi Army, a new police force and a Vietnam-style civil defense militia, plus the construction of a new intelligence service, using -- if possible -- the less bloodstained elements of the old Mukhabarat. But it seems to me that trying to do all this in a rush -- before next summer, say -- vastly increases the odds that the whole effort will eventually suffer a catastrophic and very bloody failure.
Operation Bug Out
October 29, 2003
Saying Iraq is "no Vietnam" is about as silly and simplistic as saying it is just like Vietnam. The problem for the neolibs is that the differences may not be nearly important as the similarities -- particularly on the American end of the war . . . The competence and strategic skill of the military and civilian officials running this war don't seem to be noticeably superior to that of their Vietnam War predecessors. If those who forget the past are condemned to repeat it, these guys appear to have gotten life sentences.
Neolib Group Think
October 30, 2003
Officially, the Coaltion's wariness about the use of paramilitary forces -- at least until now -- has stemmed from fears the plan would institutionalize the strong sectarian tendencies within the embryonic Iraqi government. The major ethnic/religious factions represented on the Governing Council (Kurdish, Sunni, Sh'ia, Turkoman, etc.) already have divided up the various government ministries largely along sectarian lines. Extending that same spoils system to the armed forces could cause all kinds of trouble down the road -- especially if the division of spoils becomes a less amicable process.
Building Another Lebanon
November 5, 2003
I'm reasonably sure that driving around a hostile city taking random pot shots at "suspected" insurgent hideouts and dropping bombs on uninhabited mud flats are not part of any generally accepted counterinsurgency doctrine. They're not nearly brutal enough to terrify the population into submission, but they're a great way of showing the insurgents you've been reduced to a helpless, impotent rage -- which is pretty much the state of mind they're trying to induce.
Showing Them We’ve Got Teeth
November 7, 2003
By putting Iraq in play, [Bush and Blair have] opened up an entirely new front, one that sucks up people and resources at an alarming rate, but yields absolutely no offsetting advantages in the struggle against jihadism. It's become the 21st century version of Gallipoli -- at best, a bloody stalemate; at worst, a disastrous strategic defeat . . .It seems more obvious than ever that neither man has the slightest idea what kind of war they're fighting. They're as clueless as the British politicians who fed men into the meat grinder of trench warfare during World War I, or the French generals who tried to hide behind the Maginot Line in World War II. They have no strategy. They don't even have a concept of a strategy. All they have is warmed over Churchillian rhetoric, as uninspiring as it is irrelevant.
The Price of Folly
November 20, 2003
"In war," Napoleon supposedly said, "the moral to the material is as three to one." By moral, he meant not so much the correctness or justness of the respective causes, but rather the elan and effectiveness of the respective combatants. Surely, in a war such as this, that ratio is more like 10 to 1 or even higher.Judging from events -- by the stupidity and the arrogance of the neocons, the Pentagon's over-reliance on brute force, the Bush administration's easy tolerance of incompetence, corruption, and careerism, and the raw political opportunism displayed by the Republican machine -- I'd say America is coming up way short on the moral end of that equation.Failure, the hawks like to say, is not an option. But failure is always an option. And unless the powers that be and their witless supporters get that through their thick skulls, failure is what we are most likely to get.
Is Osama Winning?
December 10, 2003
Having destabilized Iraq, America will have to live with the consequences, which probably won't be much more pleasant than they were before Saddam was captured. If the insurgency collapses completely (and even the coalition's professional optimists don't seem to expect this) the political Lebanonization of Iraq is still likely to continue, providing a breeding ground for extremism and terrorism -- the very threats we supposedly invaded Iraq to prevent . . .How much more fuel will the coalition's Israeli-style pacification campaign add to the fires of jihad throughout the Islamic world? And how long will it be before an American president -- maybe this one, maybe the next -- will have to choose between the collapse of a weak but friendly government in Baghdad, and an even deeper military commitment to Iraq?The truth is that while the rat has been caught, the rat catcher is also trapped -- and in a hole much bigger, and deeper, than the one Saddam was found cowering in.
Trapped Like a Rat
December 14, 2003
If blogs in general, or this blog in particular, have ever served a useful purpose, it should have been then -- when the consensus had overwhelmingly embraced a policy doomed to catastrophic failure, and mainstream dissent had been cowed almost into silence. But, of course, there were too few of us and our voices weren't nearly loud enough to make a difference. Certainly not compared to the power and majesty of the corporate media.
If I sometimes seem bitter to the point of blind rage at reporters like Tom Ricks or columists like David Ignatius, who now recite the ignorant mistakes and outright crimes that led us into this hellhole, it's because they couldn't see them while they were being committed -- or, if they did see them, kept silent.
To be sure, nobody has a especially good track record in this war. I could just as easily have gone through my old posts and picked out sound bites that would now look as boneheaded and clueless as anything the corporate media foisted on its readers back in the day -- like my repeated predictions that the Cheney administration and the Pentagon would soon seek a quick exit from Iraq. I thought the strategic and political necessity for a withdrawal was so obvious that even a chowderhead like Shrub would soon grasp it. Who knew?
I also consistently misjudged how quickly events would unfold. Reactions or policy changes I expected to take months instead took years. The American public was far more willing to let Bush lead them deeper into the swamp for much longer than I would have thought possible. I was misled by my own cynicism.
If nothing else, though, the Whiskey Bar archives prove to my satisfaction that it was possible, even for a nonspecialist (which is all I'll ever be in the fields of foreign policy or military affairs) to see at least an outline of the disaster as it started to unfold. What was lacking in the corporate media was not the opportunity, but rather the insight, the courage and the independence to say what needed to be said -- at a time when the both the powers that be and the paying audience were unwilling to listen.