June's Bustin' Out All Over

It was from us they learnt the secret of life:
that we grow old without growing wise 
--A Murder of Quality, John le Carre

I'd kill for a Nobel Peace Prize
--Steven Wright  

When you told me 
You didn't need me anymore 
Well you know I nearly broke down and cried 
--Oh! Darling, The Beatles 
______________

 

Subtitles: Deadneck Hootenanny; Sisyphus; House of Cards

Iraq, such it was, is disintegrating. Goodbye U.S.A.; don't let the door hit you on the way out.

Absolutely NO surprises here, no siree, Bob. Take a cauldron of seething generational hatreds (Sunnis, Shiites and Kurds), throw in hundreds of Billions of United States greenbacks and strong soldiers and materiel on a jihad-to-overthrow-a-jihad, a little apocalyptic fervor, overthrow the country's Head Honcho (the late Mr. Hussein) who was keeping a lid on the boil and -- Bob's your uncle -- June, 2014 Iraq.

It's a not-proud day for American war hawks everywhere. Just like after the fall of Saigon in the Vietnam debacle (1975), the words are already forming: "We should have stayed there longer!" "We could have headed this off at the pass." But the truth is, should we have done that we would have merely hemorrhaged more precious tax dollars and lives for the arrogant privilege of staving off the inevitable Iraq civil war for another -- five years? Ten?

It's not our job, man (like Chico said.) Not our job to prop up our straw men, like Nouri al-Maliki. Not our job to train up security forces who drop trou at a moment's notice. Not our job to "spread democracy" at the tip of a gun, because it can't be done.

Building an Army and a police force does not = building a society.

In a sad attempt to snatch some failure from the jaws of defeat, CBS news reported last night that the Iraq government has "lost all the advantages and victories and progress that our soldiers bought with their lives." What piffle.

The PWOT has been an example of faulty logic and monumental stupidity and ego posing as strategic national policy from the start. It is cold comfort to re-state the obvious: the Iraqi Army is throwing down their arms and uniforms and melting into the woodwork like the cockroaches we constantly opined they were.

The building of the Iraqi Army and Police was an act of folly not founded in any historical reality.

We were going to link to some humdinger pieces we had written, but why? The raison d'etre of RangerAgainstWar has been to oppose the Phony War on Terror (PWOT©) since its inception. We have never wavered (unlike former Secretary of State Clinton who said on NPR's "Fresh Air" today that she just didn't know it was wrong at the time; she's "learned". ) Type in any relevant identifiers and you will get back tons of insight here on RAW as to why this pathetic expedition was doomed to failure.

The big cities have fallen (Mosul, Fallujah and Ramadi) to the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) -- the the bigger and better al Qaeda, constituted of battle-hardened pros mentored by generations of occupiers. Kirkuk has just been taken by the Kurds, perhaps the most reasoned members of the Iraqi cock-up. They have wisely been sitting on their haunches, licking their talons and waiting to join the fray to claim for their piece of the pie in the North.

Iraqi officials told the Guardian that two divisions of Iraqi soldiers – roughly 30,000 men – simply turned and ran in the face of the assault by an insurgent force of just 800 fighters. Isis extremists roamed freely on Wednesday through the streets of Mosul, openly surprised at the ease with which they took Iraq's second largest city after three days of sporadic fighting.

Senior government officials in Baghdad were equally shocked, accusing the army of betrayal and claiming the sacking of the city was a strategic disaster that would imperil Iraq's borders.

The developments seriously undermine US claims to have established a unified and competent military after more than a decade of training. The US invasion and occupation cost Washington close to a trillion dollars and the lives of more than 4,500 of its soldiers. It is also thought to have killed at least 100,000 Iraqis. (Iraq Army capitulates to ISIS militants in four cities)

Hang it up, America. We are the designated losers in this misguided war. We cannot via force of arms change the flow of history or reality.

We told you so. It's cold comfort.

--Jim & Lisa

Warriors Without Borders

 

The sacrifice of brave men
does not justify the pursuit of an unjust cause 
--Our Kind of Traitor, John LeCarre 

You must go on. 
I can't go on.
I'll go on 
--The Unnameable, Samuel Beckett 

You say "Yes", I say "No". 
(I say "Yes", but I may mean "No").
You say "Stop", I say "Go, go, go".
(I can stay still it's time to go) 
--Hello Goodbye, The Beatles
_________________

The trait characterized by all terrorism is that the violence -- though symbolic -- is ultimately nihilistic, and nihilism does not build great civilizations or institutions. Terrorism does not assist the progress of man.

Fights like Wanat, Waygul and Kamden are symbolic of so many others, but for our purposes let us assume they are representative of the entire war, a microcosm of the gestalt. This is not a heartening thought.

If the U.S. Army in 2009 with the compliance of NATO allies and the Afghan Army are needed to (barely) hold isolated Command Outposts, why should we assume the Afghan government will continue to do so after the U.S. leaves the country? They are as unable to do this as they were at the war's outset. Instructive is the example of Vietnam, the United States first counterinsurgency (COIN) war, the war which informed the late great General David Petraus to compose Field Manual 3-24, everyman's guide to fighting the COIN way.

The drawdown of U.S. assets led to the 1972 North Vietnamese offensive, and ultimately the April '75 fall of Saigon. The NVA achieved this military objective despite having been strategically bombed for at least seven years. Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan were as nihilistic from the U.S. side as are the acts of today's terrorists.

The NVN had a realistic and understandable military goal; in contrast, the U.S. goal was simply to kill the NVA and Vietcong into submission, a goal not achieved. As in Vietnam, fighting remains our raison d'etre, yet we marvel at the senseless nature of terrorism. We refuse to see that our response to terrorism is as senseless as the precipitating event.

Bombing Hanoi did not defeat the NVN venture, and drones will not thwart the will to fight of our current adversaries. Drone strikes will not defend America. In fact, they are an extralegal approach to a criminal problem (terrorism).

It is surreal to realize that we have fought and do fight wars without military objectives, we have tried to build nations that do not want to be re-built and we do all of this with money that we do not have to squander. Even the direness of the sequester is inadequate to shake our resolve to press the fight in which we have nothing to gain. It is Hamburger Hill, in perpetuity.

A simple question: If Chinese and Vietnamese Communism were bad and worth fighting the Korean and Vietnam Wars, why are both nations now major trade partners of the U.S.?

Perhaps to look into the gaping maw of that zed is too much to bear, so we press on, like Beckett's Vladimir and Estragon in Waiting for Godot. They do not realize their project is D.O.A., for Godot is not coming (Gott es Tod), or perhaps they do, and substitute an eternal march and cogitation in place of actually achieving something, like meeting their goal.

Much like the characters in Waiting for Godot, we are not even sure what we are waiting for, or what that might look like. Like them, our project has a foregone nullity for a conclusion.

The day that Saigon fells did not impact one iota upon the freedoms and liberties of U.S. citizens. If the Vietnamese, Afghans and Iraqis cannot achieve a national consensus without nasty civil wars, so be it. Ditto Libya, Syria and the whole shooting match. Let them fight it out, without us, as we alone did in the creation of our nation -- through the time-honored bloody slog that is how men decide who's top dog.

--Jim and Lisa