I'm just posting the article. It's a good read. It makes sense in some places, in others it doesn't. But I'm not commenting. Everyone here knows how I feel.

***

Stratfor is an intelligence summary and evaluation service. The following
Stratfor assessment is forwarded by Russ Wiley, an ex- US Army Military
Intelligence officer.

It is anything but a rosy forecast, and bears a careful read. The term
'mission creep' is one familiar to all strategists, and in one form or
another has dogged geostrategic and geopolitical efforts by all nations
since the first projections of force and influence across transnational
borders.

There are always Cassandras (sometimes a full Greek chorus of them...), but
it is folly to ignore reasoned assessment. This is going to be a long, long
war. Iraq may prove to be, like the North African campaigns of World War II,
a place where the US is forced to learn lessons the hard way, in order to
carry the 'global war against radical Islam' (the correct, non-p.c. term for
it) forward successfully, and expand it as and if necessary to other
theaters.

Best,
Phil



THE GEOPOLITICAL INTELLIGENCE REPORT

Facing Realities in Iraq December 30, 2004 1840 GMT
By George Friedman

On May 17, 2004, Stratfor published a piece entitled "Iraq: New Strategies."
In a rare moment of advocacy, we argued that the war in Iraq had evolved to
a point where the United States was unlikely to be able to suppress the
insurgency.

We argued then that, "The United States must begin by recognizing that it
cannot possibly pacify Iraq with the force available or, for that matter,
with a larger military force. It can continue to patrol, it can continue to
question people, it can continue to take casualties. However, it can never
permanently defeat the guerrilla forces in the Sunni triangle using this
strategy. It certainly cannot displace the power and authority of the Shiite
leadership in the south. Urban warfare and counterinsurgency in the Iraqi
environment cannot be successful."

We did not and do not agree with the view that the invasion of Iraq was a
mistake. It had a clear strategic purpose that it achieved: reshaping the
behavior of surrounding regimes, particularly of the Saudis. This helped
disrupt the al Qaeda network sufficiently that it has been unable to mount
follow-on attacks in the United States and has shifted its attention to the
Islamic world, primarily to the Saudis. None of this would have happened
without the invasion of Iraq.

As frequently happens in warfare, the primary strategic purpose of the war
has been forgotten by the Bush administration. Mission creep, the nightmare
of all military planners, has taken place. The United States has shifted its
focus from coercing neighboring countries into collaborating with the United
States against al Qaeda, to building democracy in Iraq. As we put it in May:
"The United States must recall its original mission, which was to occupy
Iraq in order to prosecute the war against al Qaeda. If that mission is
remembered, and the mission creep of reshaping Iraq forgotten, some obvious
strategic solutions re-emerge. The first, and most important, is that the
United States has no national interest in the nature of Iraqi government or
society. Except for not supporting al Qaeda, Iraq's government does not
matter."

Most comparisons of Iraq to Vietnam are superficial and some are absurd, but
one lesson is entirely relevant to Iraq. In Vietnam, the United States
attempted to simultaneously re-engineer Vietnamese society and wage a
counterinsurgency campaign. That proved impossible. The United States is
attempting to do precisely that again in Iraq. It will fail again for the
same reason: The goals are inherently contradictory.

Creating democracy in Iraq requires that democratic institutions be created.
That is an abstract, bloodless way of putting it. The reality is that Iraqis
must be recruited to serve in these institutions, from the army and police
to social services. Obviously, these people become targets for the
guerrillas and the level of intimidation is massive. These officials --
caught between the power of U. S. forces and the guerrillas -- are hardly in
a position to engage in nation building. They are happy to survive, if they
choose to remain at their posts.

Even this is not the central problem. In order to build these institutions,
Iraqis will have to be recruited. It is impossible to distinguish between
Iraqis committed to the American project, Iraqis who are opportunists and
Iraqis who are jihadists sent by guerrilla intelligence services to
penetrate the new institutions. Corruption aside, every one of the
institutions is full of jihadist agents, who are there to spy and disrupt.

This has a direct military consequence. The goal of the Untied States in
Vietnam was, and now in Iraq is, to shift the war-fighting burden -- in this
case from U. S. forces to the Iraqis. This can never happen. The Iraqi army,
like the Army of the Republic of Vietnam, is filled with guerrilla
operatives. If the United States mounts joint operations with the Iraqis,
the guerrillas will know about it during the planning stages. If the United
States fights alone, it will be more effective, but the Iraqi army will
never develop. For the United States, it is a question of heads you win,
tails I lose.

The United States cannot win the intelligence war on the ground level. Its
operations to penetrate the guerrillas depend on Iraqis working with the
United States and these operations will be quickly compromised. The
guerrillas on the other hand cannot be rooted out of the Iraqi military and
intelligence organs because they cannot be distinguished from other Iraqis.
Some will be captured. Many might be captured. But all of them cannot be
captured and therefore no effective allied force can be created in Iraq.
This was the center of gravity of the problem in Vietnam, the problem that
destroyed Vietnamization. It is the center of gravity of the problem in
Iraq.

Missed Opportunities

There were two points where the problem could have been solved. Had the
United States acted vigorously in May and June 2003, there is a chance that
the guerrilla force would have been so disrupted it could never have been
born. U. S. intelligence, however, failed to recognize the guerrilla threat
and Donald Rumsfeld in particular was slow to react. By the summer of 2003,
the situation was out of hand.

There was a second point where effective action might have been fruitful,
which was in the period after the Ramadan offensive of October-November
2003, when Saddam Hussein was captured, and the beginning of the April 2004
offensives in Al Fallujah and the Muqtada al-Sadr rising. Those four months
were wasted in diffused action in several areas, rather than in a concerted
effort to turn Sunni elders against the guerrillas.

It is interesting to note that the attempt to break the Sunni guerrillas in
a systematic way did not begin until November 2004, with the attack against
Al Fallujah and an attempt to co-opt the Sunni elders. For a while it looked
like it might just work. It didn't. Abu Musab al-Zarqawi's jihadists had
become too strong and too well organized. Whatever inroads were made among
the Sunni elders was blocked by al-Zarqawi's ability to carry out reprisals.
The Sunnis were locked into place.

The U. S. military is now carrying out an impossible mission. It is trying
to suppress a well-organized guerrilla force using primarily U. S. troops
whose intelligence about the enemy is severely limited by language and
cultural barriers that cannot be solved by recruiting Iraqis to serve as
intelligence aides. The United States either operates blind or compromises
its security.

Unless the Iraqi guerrillas are not only throwing all of their strength into
this offensive, but also using up their strength in a non-renewable fashion,
the Jan. 30 elections will not be the end of the guerrilla war. There will
be a lull in guerrilla operations -- guerrillas have to rest, recruit and
resupply like anyone else -- but after a few months, another offensive will
be launched. There is, therefore, no possibility that the Sunni guerrilla
movement will be suppressed unless there is a dramatic change in the
political landscape of the Sunni community.

There is one bit of good fortune that arises out of another of Rumsfeld's
failures. His failure to listen to Gen. Erik Shinseki's warnings about the
size of the force that would be needed in Iraq after the war meant that the
U. S. force structure was never expanded appropriately. In most instances,
this is a terrible failing. However, in this case, it has an unexpectedly
positive consequence. We do not doubt for a moment that Rumsfeld would throw
in more forces if he had them. They would not solve the problem in any way
and would add additional targets for the guerrillas. But Rumsfeld doesn't
have the needed forces, so he can't send them in.

Facing the Facts

The issue facing the Bush administration is simple. It can continue to fight
the war as it has, hoping that a miracle will bring successes in 2005 that
didn't happen in 2004. Alternatively, it can accept the reality that the
guerrilla force is now self-sustaining and sufficiently large not to flicker
out and face the fact that a U. S. conventional force of less than 150,000
is not likely to suppress the guerrillas. More to the point, it can
recognize these facts:

1. The United States cannot re-engineer Iraq because the guerrillas will
infiltrate every institution it creates.

2. That the United States by itself lacks the intelligence capabilities to
fight an effective counterinsurgency.

3. That exposing U. S. forces to security responsibilities in this
environment generates casualties without bringing the United States closer
to the goal.

4. That the strain on the U. S. force is undermining its ability to react to
opportunities and threats in the rest of the region.

And that, therefore, this phase of the Iraq campaign must be halted as soon
as possible.

This does not mean strategic defeat -- unless the strategic goal is the
current inflated one of creating a democratic Iraq. Under the original
strategic goal of changing the behavior of other countries in the region,
the United States has already obtained strategic success. Indeed, to the
extent that the United States is being drained and exhausted in Iraq, the
strategic goal is actually being undermined.

We assert two principles:

1. The internal governance -- or non-governance -- of Iraq is neither a
fundamental American national interest nor is it something that can be
shaped by the United States even if it were a national interest.

2. The United States does require a major presence in Iraq because of that
country's strategic position in the region.

It is altogether possible for the United States to accept the first
principle yet pursue the second. The geography of Iraq -- the distribution
of the population -- is such that the United States can maintain a major
presence in Iraq without, for the most part, being based in the populated
regions and therefore without being responsible for the security of Iraq --
let alone responsible its form of government.

The withdrawal of U. S. forces west and south of the Euphrates and in an arc
north to the Turkish border and into Kurdistan would provide the United
States with the same leverage in the region, without the unsustainable cost
of the guerrilla war. The Saudis, Syrians and Iranians would still have U.
S. forces on their borders, this time not diluted by a hopeless pacification
program.

Something like this will have to happen. After the January elections, there
will be a Shiite government in Baghdad. There will be, in all likelihood,
civil war between Sunnis and Shia. The United States cannot stop it and
cannot be trapped in the middle of it. It needs to withdraw.

Certainly, it would have been nice for the United States if it had been able
to dominate Iraq thoroughly. Somewhere between "the U. S. blew it" and
"there was never a chance" that possibility is gone. It would have been nice
if the United States had never tried to control the situation, because now
the U. S. is going to have to accept a defeat, which will destabilize the
region psychologically for a while. But what is is, and the facts speak for
themselves.

We are not Walter Cronkite, and we are not saying that the war is lost. The
war is with the jihadists around the world; Iraq was just one campaign, and
the occupation of the Sunnis was just one phase of that campaign. That phase
has been lost. The administration has allowed that phase to become the war
as a whole in the public mind. That was a very bad move, but the
administration is just going to have to bite the bullet and do the hard,
painful and embarrassing work of cutting losses and getting on with the war.

If Bush has trouble doing this, he should conjure up Lyndon Johnson's ghost,
wandering restlessly in the White House, and imagine how Johnson would have
been remembered if he had told Robert McNamara to get lost in 1966.

(c) 2004 Strategic Forecasting, Inc. All rights reserved.

http://www.stratfor.com

I am not entirely certain of how to interpret that statement.

It seems to be saying, "Even though things look completely fucked in Iraq, the true goal of invading, which, even though the American people were told was to remove an imminent threat from weapons of mass destruction, was actually to influence surrounding nations to behave differently so that terrorists would attack them instead. So, in a sense, it's worked great!" I think. I'm not sure. I don't think anyone really knows why the hell we went into Iraq in the first place anymore. I certainly don't think it was some grand, five-year plan to reshape the Middle East. I don't believe that because we all know how poorly planned the aftermath of the initial invasion was. Sounds like more excuses and attempted justifications for a campaign that has been far from successful at anything, aside from deposing a dictator.

Precisely, the entire article dissects the Bush Administrations plans for post-war Iraq cautiously sidestepping the issue of whether or not we have the capacity to succeed. They do however believe it was a good idea to invade Iraq. It seems like the article is a series of contradictions and odd conjectures which do not comprise anything resembling a forceful argument.

OK, after a careful re-read(when I responded earlier I just read the passage that dbf quoted), here's how I feel about this piece.

Except for a few fundamental differences, it is the most accurate description of how I feel the situation in Iraq is, and how it will be. I agree with them 100% that it's time to get out. Rebuilding Iraq to our standards is an absolutely ridiculous notion, and IMO, it shows just how little many Americans know about world culture. It seemed so painfully obvious to many of us that this would never work. Soon, everyone will see it, whether they want to or not.

Unfortunately I disagree with their assessment that invading Iraq was the right thing to do, as a way of influencing the surrounding countries and drawing the terrorists away from the US. Again, it should seem painfully obvious that if we can't change a country by attacking it and taking over, we're probably not going to have much influence on the guys next door. If anything, I would imagine there's cats in Iran and Syria just waiting for the US to try something. But it's not going to happen, because we're stretched too thin trying to build a house of cards.

Furthermore, I don't agree with this:


Bin Laden would still be going after the Saudis today. He's got just as much of a beef with them as he does with us. I don't believe al-Qaeda's been disrupted, I think they've enjoyed a huge wave of new recruits, and we've seen the rise of al-Zarqawi as the leader of the brutal insurgency. Do I even need to mention that we haven't got Bin Laden yet?
People don't seem to understand that terrorist plots like 9/11 were developed over the course of years. Just because we haven't been attacked since, or because we're fighting them in Iraq, doesn't mean they're not cooking something up right now for the US. It didn't take hundreds of them to pull off 9/11. Only a handful. And the guys at the top, who are still out there, did most of the planning. That's why I think it's ludicrous to say "We've killed X number of al-Qaeda" as if that's some sort of way of gauging victory in this, while Bin Laden is still free. The people like Bin Laden, Zwahiri, they're calling the shots. The guys who fly the planes into the buildings will do whatever they say.

Let's face it folks, George W. Bush and his administration have fought the "war on terror" by the seat of their pants. Their dicks got big because Afghanistan was relatively easy, so they went after Iraq. They fucked up. And it's a shame that it will probably take 2,000 US men and women dead before they realize it. If they ever realize it.

Who's that for?

The first post.
It also summarizes, quite succinctly, my thoughts on Iraq at this time.