Iraq in Retrospective

 This is a comment I posted on Kevin Drum's post looking back at Iraq, which you should read:

"Wish I was blogging then so I'd have a good record of what I was thinking. As best I can remember I was dubious of Afghanistan, given the Soviets failure there, our failure in Vietnam, etc. But it went surprisingly well, and the aftermath seemed to be working well with Karzai getting support.

So with Iraq I was torn. The Post had a reporter who was filing good stories challenging the official line. I still had some skepticism about war. But on the other hand Bush did have Blair on board, and Blair seemed capable and had worked well with Clinton. So I think my attitude when the bombs began to fall was to the effect: I don't think I'd do this if I had the power, but I don't so I hope you're right and can do as well in Iraq as you seem to have done in Afghanistan.?

Nation Building--Napoleon, Ataturk, Kagame, Petraeus

 Reading "The Fourth Star" by David Cloud and Greg Jaffe, which deals with the interwining careers of Generals Casey, Abizaid, Chiarelli, and Petraeus, who all were associated with the Iraq war.  So far I'm up to roughly 2004, when Petraeus has left the 101st Airborne for the States, then returned to Iraq to train the new Iraqi army.  During the division's occupation of Mosul in the north of Iraq Petraeus was a forceful presence in nation-building, or at least patching together a semi-operational local government.  

We all know the results of our involvement there.  

I got to thinking about leaders who were successful in nation-building: Napoleon's imprint on France is present today, as is Ataturk's on Turkey. Kagame's rule of Rwanda has now lasted longer than either of the foregoing and looks to be as impactful.

As best I can tell, Petraeus has a comparable big personality and intelligence as the other three, so what accounts for his failure and the success of the other three?

The obvious thing is longevity, which points to a big weakness in American nation-building efforts: rotation.  As a democracy we don't feel able to tell our generals and our troops you're in for the duration. We rotate them out after a year or so.  I wonder what would have happened if the troops who had 3 to 5 tours of duty in Afghanistan or Iraq had instead spent 3 years (with R&R) in the same area. Perhaps more importantly, if our generals had spent that time.

I'm reminded of a lesson Bob Reynolds, who was then the deputy director of the Administrative Services Division, ASCS gave me when I screwed up. It was to the effect that people, employees, cared more about consistency than charm; you can figure out how to deal with someone who's the same asshole every day, but dealing with someone who's different every day is much more difficult.

I think that's true with nation building.  Petraeus may not have had the right ideas, but he was forceful.  Reminds me of old corncob pipe Dougie, our near-fascist general, Douglas MacArthur,  who lasted 6 years in a nation building exercise which was very successful, much as I hate to admit it.

"The Situation" (Good Money-Losing Movie)

 According to IMDB this movie had a $1 million budget and made $48,000 at the box office. That must be close to a record for losing money on a film which actually made it to the theater. 

It's a lot better than that, at least if you can get past the lousy sound job (very uneven but often the music/background obscures the dialog),  It would be redeemable if it had captions, but it doesn't. Having said that, most of the reviews at IMDB are respectful.

Anyway my wife and I stuck it out.  Perhaps our receptivity was enhanced by having been watching the first 23 episodes of Fauda (season1 and part of 2). "Fauda" seems to equate to SNAFU.  It's based on an Israeli special ops unit fighting against Hamas and eventually ISIS with a reasonably balanced view of both the Israeli heroes and the Palestinian villains.  It describes a complex situation in the West Bank, a complexity which is related to the complex situation of the American-Iraqi relationships in "The Situation".

The Situation was written and produced by Wendell Steavenson, a (female) war correspondent based on experiences in the Iraq war.  It was released in 2006, perhaps just as the US was turning against the war, so it should have done well. It really would be worth someone's time and effort to fix the sound.  

To Start a War

 I like this book by Robert Draper.  A 3-star review on Amazon says there's no new stories in it, which may be true.  We know the outline of the decision to go to war, true enough.

I like these things:

• the book covers a broad area, but it doesn't sprawl.  Draper seems to do it by focusing each chapter on a key play so you get a balance of characters and narrative flow.
• Draper goes deeper into the bureaucracy than just the major players at the Cabinet and subcabinet level.  
• it comes off as a balanced appraisal, sympathetic to the players but appropriately critical.  (That means I don't see any intentional villains, just humans operating with their preconceptions and priorities which often led them astray.

Iraq and Suleimani

Some thoughts on Suleimani's death 

• last week at this time an optimist like me could look at the Middle East and seen some good signs.

• in Iran there had been recent demonstrations against the government

• in Iraq there were protests against the influence of Iran on Iraqi affairs.

• today there seems to be unity both in Iraq and Iran against the US.  We'll have to see how long it lasts, but it will be a while
• I'd like to think the decision memo presented to our President would have predicted these consequences and he would have weighed them in making his decision, but I doubt it.

Vietnam on TV and in Iraq and Afghanistan

Have now watched most of the Burns/Novick Vietnam series (missing the first one but I'd just completed the Lagevall book) and the last minutes of the longer episodes.  Had my memory refreshed but didn't learn a lot that was new, given that I'd lived through the period, following the media closely, and ended up in Vietnam for a shortened tour (11 months/11 days).  That's my general take, but I did learn more about the divisions in the North's leadership, i.e, the role of Le Duan.

While I found the range of individual stories and responses on the American and South Vietnamese side to be familiar, the stories from the other side were newer, particularly when critical.

Came close to tears twice, once when an American recounted his first glimpse of women in ao dais

which tracked my reactions when arriving in the early morning at Tan San Nhut airport, once in reaction to the piece on the Vietnam War Memorial. 

I'd say the series missed a couple areas which seem important to me, but which aren't the focus. 

One is the ways in which Vietnamese and American societies started to intermix and separate.  The usual way in which this gets covered is prostitution, with the real blend of the offspring of Americans and Vietnamese.  That got mentioned in the series.  But the blending, the intermixture was more than that.  As soon as Americans arrived, we started hiring help, slowly at first but then more and more.  For example by the time I left in May 67 we had barbers, laundry workers, hootch girls, generator helpers (don't know their exact title, but they helped with the generators), and others which time has erased.  Also mentioned briefly in the series was the black market.  I remember buying my jungle boots (with canvas uppers instead of leather as in the standard issue boots) through the black market--more comfortable than the regular boots but at that time restricted only to combat troops.  In both cases, as in our Afghanistan war, the influx of American money had a great impact on the Vietnamese economy and on the people--some good, some bad.  (Not a new phenomenon--recall the complaints of the Brits in WWII--Yanks were overpaid, over-sexed, and over here.)  

The blending, the intermixture, was accompanied by increasing separation.  When I arrived we were operating generators in compounds in Saigon.  I was then stationed at Long Binh, the main logistical base outside Saigon where we did our best to separate from Vietnamese society--we ended up with aluminum hootches on concrete pads, not the tents we started with.   Think of the "Green Zone"  

in Baghdad.  The logic is understandable: we don't want our soldiers killed so the best way to do that is to isolate them. 

The other point not covered was standard in accounts of the war: the fact that most troops were REMF's, as I was.  Lots to be said about that, but not today.