Where is the Quid Pro Quo?

The "Campaign Season" in Afghanistan is spreading. An Australian Special Air Service patrol was ambushed after a mission in Oruzgan province. While none of the Aussies were killed, one soldier is in critical condition and eight others were wounded, five of them seriously.

Before anyone shrugs their shoulders and moves off to refill the coffee cup, this report hit the Australian press on Thursday with a certain amount of alarm. This is the largest number of casualties the Australian task force in Afghanistan has taken in a single engagement since they initially deployed... and it immediately raised the ghost of another of Australia's wars.

AUSTRALIA has suffered one of its worst battlefield incidents since the Vietnam War, with one soldier left fighting for his life and eight others wounded in an ambush launched by Taliban forces in Afghanistan.

The lede in the Sydney Morning Herald was similar:

AN ambush of Australian troops in Afghanistan has left nine special forces soldiers injured - including one fighting for his life - in a battle that resulted in more casualties than any encounter since the Vietnam War.

Most other Australian media outlets used the same connection, referring to Australia's military involvement in Vietnam, with at least one giving a brief description of the 21 September, 1971, battle of Nui Le, a 14 hour engagement which left five Aussies dead and 24 wounded just six weeks before Australia ended its combat operations in Vietnam.

It was the reference to Vietnam which raised my curiosity. Not because I was suprised to see it, but because it was so prominent. The Australian involvement in Vietnam ran nearly as long as the United States, starting with the deployment of advisors and eventually reaching a peak of almost 7000 ground troops in 1967 which included a rifle company from New Zealand.

The Australian committment to Vietnam was less mysterious than one might think. Given Australia's proximity to Southeast Asia, weak and unstable governments immediately adjacent to them generate genuine concerns for the safety of their frontiers. Looking into it, I discovered this, sent to the prime minister of Australia from the Australian ambassador to the U.S.:

'Our objective should be ... to achieve such an habitual closeness of relations with the United States and sense of mutual alliance that in our time and need, after we have shown all reasonable restraint and good sense, the United States would have little option but to respond as we would want.'
'The problem of Vietnam is one, it seems, where we could ... pick up a lot of credit with the United States, for this problem is one to which the United States is deeply committed and in which it genuinely feels it is carrying too much of the load, not so much the physical load the bulk of which the United States is prepared to bear, as the moral load.'

So, the question of involvement in Vietnam had less to do with the unstable Diem government at the time and more to do with an opportunity to lever the United States into a position favourable to Australia in the future.

Countries do that. I'll scratch your back, you scratch mine when an itch develops. Mutual alliance.

Unfortunately, Australia's Vietnam history runs close to parallel with that the of U.S. in the same period, including resorting to conscription to fill army ranks and jailing protesters opposed to the war.

But it was the fact that Australia's primary reason for entry into Vietnam had little to do with Vietnam itself. It was to elicit a form of guarantee that Australia could demand U.S. military and political favour, quickly and without question, should the need ever arise. As ugly as it sounds, the Australian government was prepared to, and did, shed the blood of its own people in a conflict in which they had less than serious interest to enhance the relationship with the United States, gain a position under the U.S. military umbrella and develop a level of influence.

It struck me that perhaps a similarity exists now with Canada's involvement in Afghanistan. That Harper is trying to gain leverage with the Bush administration.

Except that Harper is accomplishing the opposite.

Harper is giving it away for free. He's not asking for anything. No ties have been strengthened and no influence has been gained.

Harper, like a six-year old looking for praise, is happy with a pat on the head. Far from attempting to establish a position of sovereign independence he's more than happy to truck anything the Bushies demand to anywhere the Bushies want. In return he is demanding, and getting, zip.

Even in Afghanistan the rotating command, which saw Canada in charge of operations in its AO every six out of eighteen months, is about to evaporate. Future U.S. plans include placing Canadian forces under U.S. or British command.

When Harper went with Bush to Bucharest whining for more troops from the NATO allies the response was predicatable. The long established European NATO members view every such U.S. plea with great skepticism. They know all too well that favours are seldom returned in such cases and particularly from the current U.S. administration. The NATO members that did offer to increase their committment were the newer ones. There is every reason to believe that the backroom session was not a negotiation but a reminder: We got you into this alliance, it's good for you and now you owe us. Cough up.

Harper's leverage wasn't there. His position on his beloved "world stage" was wholly dependent on the presence of his divine hero. If the Bush administration position had been different, Harper would have found himself several rows back in the audience, the major European allies being at odds with his demands.

Where the Australians were clearly looking for a way to enhance their national security and international influence by supporting the United States (Vietnam was a "fill-in-the-blank" conduit), Harper is out to stroke his own ego. Canada is little more than an instrument to sate his thirst for validation from something or someone he views as greater.

Harper is embarrassing this country.

It was difficult enough in the past to get the average European or Asian to believe there was a difference between the U.S. and Canada on any level. It took some convincing to get most to believe that Canada pursued an independent foreign policy and, aside from the well-known mutual defence alliances, cautiously engaged countries the United States shunned.

Since the arrival of Harper the independence of Canadian foreign policy has started to wither away. Where Canada once had international leverage it is now viewed as uncharacteristically tied to the U.S. The greatest evidence of this is Canada's apparent adhesion to U.S. positions taken at various United Nations conferences and on issues before the UN.

Harper hasn't earned Canada any new position on the "world stage" at all. We used to have a well-respected, albeit quiet, place all along. What Harper has gained is a place for himself among his American neo-con brethren on the "American stage" and given the degree to which the U.S. is now loathed internationally, it is not only the wrong place to be, it is, at absolute best, temporary.

What is even more incomprehensible is that Harper does not seem to understand that his position as a player on the American stage is so obviously insignificant. His ego won't allow him that self-examination or that self-awareness.

Australia, during Vietnam at least, expected something in return for their support of U.S. foreign policy. Whether that actually worked for them or not is open to considerable debate. Whether Harper's similar behaviour has resulted in anything but a pillaging of Canada's resources, the co-opting of our military and a loss of international favour, is not.

==============

Only slightly related to topic is this little piece from Australia. It seems the Australian army is also being scrutinized for their treatment of prisoners.

Since you mentioned Vietnam...

In the interest of promoting laziness, Jonah Goldberg offers himself up, once again, as a piece of low hanging fruit.

The mainstream media and a lot of liberal-leaning analysts seem to think it's politically foolish or reckless for Bush to compare Vietnam to Iraq because they have one very specific narrative in mind when it comes to that war: America shouldn't have gotten in, couldn't have won, and then lost. What they have long failed to grasp is that's not the moral of the story in the hearts of millions of Americans who believe that we could have won if wanted to and it was a disaster for American prestige and honor that we lost (whether we should have gone in is a murkier question for many, I think).

Millions of Americans? Well, yes. Given George W Bush's popularity, (or lack of it), at around 26%, and using the 2004 census figures indicating 216 million eligible voters, that would translate to about 56 million people. So, yes, millions of people, so blinded to the realities of today that they continue to support the worst administration in American history, quite likely do support the notion that the US could have won in Vietnam.

The question remains: Won what?

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In other Pantload news, Goldberg's long awaited and constantly delayed book now has an availability date of December 26th, 2007, so don't expect to find it in the stocking you hang by the chimney. By then, who knows what the title will be?

Why does Goldberg hate Christmas?

The Oosterdam weekend

They all got together to reinforce their warped view of the world. The guts of the Republican party on the National Review cruise. They chose as their venue the opulence of a modern cruise ship. No longer a conveyance which brought throngs of immigrants to their young country, today such vessels are an "almost all inclusive resort".

In the lounges and on the decks of MS Oosterdam they could cheer on their war, backslap their achievements and let the testosterone flow undeterred by any form of rational argument from any quarter outside their privileged clique.

Johann Hari of the Independent documented his observations in The New Republic. (Registration required). Beyond the clash of egos which would be inevitable at such a gathering, he illustrates the prejudice and bigotry of the modern conservative ruling class. But more than that, he provides the proof of what they really believe to be the truth.

They know. And by knowing and not honestly addressing that which they know to be fact, they are liars.

There is something strange about this discussion, and it takes me a few moments to realize exactly what it is. All the tropes conservatives usually deny in public--that Iraq is another Vietnam, that Bush is fighting a class war on behalf of the rich--are embraced on this shining ship in the middle of the ocean. Yes, they concede, we are fighting another Vietnam; and this time we won't let the weak-kneed liberals lose it. "It's customary to say we lost the Vietnam war, but who's 'we'?" Dinesh D'Souza asks angrily. "The left won by demanding America's humiliation." On this ship, there are no Viet Cong, no three million dead. There is only liberal treachery. Yes, D'Souza says, in a swift shift to domestic politics, "of course" Republican politics is "about class. Republicans are the party of winners, Democrats are the party of losers."

The panel nods, but it doesn't want to stray from Iraq. Robert Bork, Ronald Reagan's one-time nominee to the Supreme Court, mumbles from beneath low-hanging jowls: "The coverage of this war is unbelievable. Even Fox News is unbelievable. You'd think we're the only ones dying. Enemy casualties aren't covered. We're doing an excellent job killing them."

Then, with a judder, the panel runs momentarily aground. Rich Lowry, the preppy, handsome 38-year-old editor of National Review, announces, "The American public isn't concluding we're losing in Iraq for any irrational reason. They're looking at the cold, hard facts." The Vista Lounge is, as one, perplexed. Lowry continues, "I wish it was true that, because we're a superpower, we can't lose. But it's not."

Was it a good ride? Not the cruise; the last seven years.

As they bask in the delights of formal dining rooms, a multitude of bars and rich furnishings, their countrymen fight and die in a hellhole. A country is shattered beyond recognition. Countless thousands of people have died or have been displaced or simply rot in despair because of this luxury absorbing crowd.

They are not at war. They are playing at it. Suffering is the lot of others, be they Iraqis they care nothing for, or their own countrymen, separated by class and privilege. This is their war only in the sense that the American flag pin they wear on their formal dining attire is similar to the patch worn on the shoulder of some tour-extended, hapless grunt who only wants to get out of the whole mess alive.

It's clear now. These are the spawn of the Reagan Cold Warriors. Iraq is nothing more to them than a "redo". This is the make-up exam for the failure in Vietnam.

No matter what excuse they produce for invading and laying waste to Iraq, the real reason is now out there for all to see. The war in Iraq is being fought to even the score.

And, as in Vietnam, the privileged-class does none of the fighting. That falls to the "wasted" class. Nothing but movable pieces on a folding game board. The real war is the one they are waging on their own citizens as they exact a price for their sense of humiliation over Vietnam.

They are walking disasters; a waste of good air. May they choke on the failure they are about to perpetrate on themselves.

MORE, MORE!! Sadly, No!, Steynwatch and James Wolcott all have different cuts on the oceanic gathering of the worst of the right-wingers.

On the road to Pinkville

The more things change the more they remain the same.

Rushed by President Bush’s decision to reinforce Baghdad with thousands more U.S. troops, two Army combat brigades are skipping their usual session at the Army’s premier training range in California and instead are making final preparations at their home bases.

Some in Congress and others outside the Army are beginning to question the switch, wondering whether it means the Army is cutting corners in preparing soldiers for combat, since they are forgoing training in a desert setting that was designed specially to prepare them for the challenges of Iraq.

[...]

“It tracks with what we should expect when we hurry the units up in their last three months” before a deployment, said Kevin Ryan, a retired brigadier general and former Army planner who is now at Harvard University’s Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs. Army commanders are compelled to make “economies,” he added, when an accelerated deployment plan forces them to compress some aspects of training.

ArmyTimes, 28 Feb 2007

"I don't know who I'm fighting most of the time,"

Staff Sergeant Joseph Lopez, northern outskirts of Baghdad
27 Feb 2007

"The same guys who sold us beer during the day were wearing black pajamas at night."

Rick Lucas, Vietnam riverine veteran
Relating his experiences in Vietnam

It's just a month early, right? Only a few corners are being cut, right? The training and leadership for units which are being sent early will be adequate, right?

Troops with not quite the best possible training, troops with not quite the proper amount of protective gear, troops rotating early with not quite sufficient time out of action sent on a specific mission to root out an enemy they can't identify and can blend in with the general population.

What the hell could possibly go wrong?

Or, has the US Army forgotten the events of 16 March, 1968?

An unworkable strategy, a corrupt puppet government. How is that NOT like Viet Nam?

Back here I raised the ghost of Operation Cedar Falls, the US attempt during the Viet Nam war to crush the Viet Cong in the Iron Triangle around Saigon. It failed because,

The Viet Cong choose not to fight and instead melt away into the jungle.

In other words, the US has done this before in another war in another time, but not so long ago that it should be forgotten. It should have been a lesson. Unfortunately, there is a pervading cranial blockage in both the Pentagon and the White House that will not permit a comparison between current day situation in Iraq and the not-ancient history of US military performance in Viet Nam.

In raising that failed strategy, I suggested that exactly the same thing would happen in Baghdad. The "why" is really quite simple. Sending in almost two divisions will only work if the people the US is trying to subdue or destroy actually stay there to let it happen.

Which brings us here:

DEATH SQUAD leaders have fled Baghdad to evade capture or killing by American and Iraqi forces before the start of the troop “surge” and security crackdown in the capital.

A former senior Iraqi minister said most of the leaders loyal to Moqtada al-Sadr, the radical anti-American cleric, had gone into hiding in Iran.

Among those said to have fled is Abu Deraa, the Shi’ite militia leader whose appetite for sectarian savagery has been compared to that of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the leader of Al-Qaeda in Iraq, who was killed last year.

The former minister, who did not want to be named for security reasons, backed Sunni MPs’ claims that Nouri al-Maliki, the Iraqi prime minister, had encouraged their flight. He alleged that weapons belonging to Sadr’s Mahdi Army had been hidden inside the Iraqi interior ministry to prevent confiscation.

Maliki said last week: “I know that senior criminals have left Baghdad, others have left the country. This is good — this shows that our message is being taken seriously.”

Sadr has been unexpectedly subdued about the coming purge, prompting allegations of a deal between the radical cleric and the Iraqi prime minister.

The flight from Baghdad could impede American plans to target the leaders of death squads. An extra 17,000 US troops are being sent to Baghdad as part of the surge in forces promised by President George W Bush.

Although Sadr’s militia has been promised no quarter, American and Iraqi forces hope to avoid having to fight their way through Shi’ite strongholds such as Sadr City, home to 2m impoverished people.

With Bush facing heavy criticism at home over the surge, death squad leaders have every incentive to wait out what could be the president’s last-ditch effort to pacify Baghdad. Zalmay Khalilzad, the outgoing US ambassador to Baghdad, said last week he was concerned that militants were “lying low, avoiding conflict now in order to fight another day”.

I remember, many years ago, sitting talking with some American friends in Honolulu who were quite eager to inform me that the reason the US would never win in Viet Nam is that they had not yet accepted the fact that the traditional application of military force and tactics would never defeat the Viet Cong guerrilla army. Further, they said even if the US changed tactics, it was too late. The Viet Cong had long controlled the countryside.
An interesting theme emerged during that conversation. These US military officers felt that the example of what not to do had been more than demonstrated by the British in various parts of the world after the end of the 2nd World War, including the situation in Palestine from 1945 to 1948.

It was a surprize that these junior officers had it figured out. It is now surprizing that the corporate knowledge and "lessons learned" from past conflicts seem to be shut out of today's planning. Although, the mindset of the US Department of Defense recently departed leader probably hampered the ability to make reference to past events.

It's a different time, it's a different era, it's a different place.

Donald Rumsfeld, July 2003.

But, it's the same problem. And, if you tell them you're coming with two divisions, well, there will probably be a change of tactics to greet you.

Bush's escalation is going... not so good.

Apparently George Bush forgot to talk to the Iraqis about his "new" plans for Iraq. (Emphasis mine)

Just days after President Bush unveiled a new war plan calling for more than 20,000 additional American troops in Iraq, the heart of the effort — a major push to secure the capital — faces some of its fiercest resistance from the very people it depends on for success: Iraqi government officials.

American military officials have spent days huddled in meetings with Iraqi officers in a race to turn blueprints drawn up in Washington into a plan that will work on the ground in Baghdad. With the first American and Iraqi units dedicated to the plan due to be in place within weeks, time is short for setting details of what American officers view as the decisive battle of the war.

But the signs so far have unnerved some Americans working on the plan, who have described a web of problems — ranging from a contested chain of command to how to protect American troops deployed in some of Baghdad’s most dangerous districts — that some fear could hobble the effort before it begins.

First among the American concerns is a Shiite-led government that has been so dogmatic in its attitude that the Americans worry that they will be frustrated in their aim of cracking down equally on Shiite and Sunni extremists, a strategy President Bush has declared central to the plan

“We are implementing a strategy to embolden a government that is actually part of the problem,” said an American military official in Baghdad involved in talks over the plan. “We are being played like a pawn.”

Was anyone aware of this condition before Bush tossed the die for his latest turn at Risk™? Apparently, not talking with each other about plans is standard operating procedure.

Along with those problems, the Americans cite logistical issues that must be solved before the new plan can begin to work. Intent on using the large numbers of additional American and Iraqi troops that have been pledged to the plan to get “boots on the ground” across Baghdad, they are planning to establish perhaps 30 or 40 “joint security sites” spread across nine new military districts in the capital, many in police stations that have been among the most frequent targets in the war.

But in many areas, there are no police stations, at least none suitable as operational centers, so the planners are seeking alternate locations, including large houses, that will have to be fortified with 15-foot-high concrete blast walls, rolls of barbed wire and machine-gun towers

There are no solutions yet to longstanding problems like who — the American forces, or the Iraqis’ own anemic logistics system — will supply the fuel required to keep Iraqi Humvees and troop-carrying trucks running, at a time when the American supply chain will face new strains in supporting thousands of additional American troops.

The plan gives a central role to the National Police, viewed as widely infiltrated by Shiite militias and, despite an intensive American retraining program, still suspected of a strongly Shiite sectarian bias. One American officer said that the National Police commanders have been “dragging their feet” over their role in the new plan and that they could seriously compromise the operation.

There's a picture forming here. It's familiar, but I can't put my finger on it.

... factors have thrust American military planners into the equivalent of a two-minute drill, trying to develop a plan that will yield rapid gains in regaining control of Baghdad neighborhoods that have slipped into near-anarchy as Sunni insurgents and Shiite death squads have run rampant. While American officers are confident the additional troops will make a major impact, they worry about what will happen when the American troop commitment is scaled down again, and Iraqi troops are left facing the main burden of patrolling the city. That prospect raises the specter of repeating what has happened on several other occasions in Baghdad: Americans clearing neighborhoods house-by-house, only for insurgents and militiamen to reappear when Iraqi security forces take over from the Americans and prove incapable of holding the ground, or compliant with the marauding gunmen. That was the pattern with Operation Together Forward, the last effort to secure Baghdad, which began with an additional 7,000 American troops over the summer, and effectively abandoned within two months when Iraqi troops failed to hold areas the Americans handed over to them.

Another concern is that the target of the new Baghdad plan — Sunni and Shiite extremists — may replicate the pattern American troops have seen before when they have embarked on major offensives — of “melting away” only to return later. Some officers report scattered indications that some Shiite militiamen may already be heading for safer havens in southern Iraq, calculating that they can wait the new offensive out before returning to the capital.

“This is an enemy that will trade space for time,” one officer said.

I think I'm getting it now. Operation Cedar Falls comes to mind... back in 1967.

America forces begin Operation Cedar Falls, which is intended to drive Vietcong forces from the Iron Triangle, a 60 square mile area lying between the Saigon River and Route 13. Nearly 16,000 American troops and 14,000 soldiers of the South Vietnamese Army move into the Iron Triangle, but they encounter no major resistance. Huge quantities of enemy supplies are captured. Over 19 days, 72 Americans are killed, victims mostly of snipers emerging from concealed tunnels and booby traps. Seven hundred and twenty Vietcong are killed. Operation Cedar Falls occurs. It is the largest combined offensive to date and involves 16,000 American and 14,000 South Vietnamese soldiers clearing outViet Cong from the 'Iron Triangle' area 25 miles northwest of Saigon. The Viet Cong choose not to fight and instead melt away into the jungle. Americans then uncover an extensive network of tunnels and for the first time use 'tunnel rats,' the nickname given to specially trained volunteers who explore the maze of tunnels. After the American and South Vietnamese troops leave the area,Viet Cong return and rebuild their sanctuary. This pattern is repeated throughout the war as Americans utilize 'in-and-out' tactics in which troops arrive by helicopters, secure an area, then depart by helicopters.

Those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it. You would think that somebody would be able to take that Southeast Asian cluster-fuck and learn something from it. Isn't there a book in some library or something?

If they find a tunnel complex in Baghdad, filled with insurgent stuff, I'll make myself available for other comparisons which CENTCOM might be overlooking.

(Yes. They're going to find tunnels. They will call the people who search them tunnel gophers because they will forget what the name of the preceding unit used to be.)