By Col. W. Patrick Lang (Ret.)
“BAGHDAD, Iraq – Bomb blasts killed six Marines in western Iraq, and U.S. forces killed 29 militants in U.S. offensives aimed at uprooting al-Qaida insurgents ahead of the country’s vote on a new constitution, the military said Friday.” Yahoo News/AP
 Col. Patrick W. Lang (Ret.), a highly decorated retired senior officer of U.S. Military Intelligence and U.S. Army Special Forces, served as “Defense Intelligence Officer for the Middle East, South Asia and Terrorism” for the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) and was later the first Director of the Defense Humint Service. Col. Lang was the first Professor of the Arabic Language at the United States Military Academy at West Point. For his service in the DIA, he was awarded the “Presidential Rank of Distinguished Executive.” He is a frequent commentator on television and radio, including PBS’s Newshour, and most recently on MSNBC’s Hardball and NPR’s “All Things Considered.” His CV and blog are linked below. |
My Time in Hell: Memoir of an American Soldier Imprisoned by the Japanese in World War II was a book, and then a television production, about the Second World War in the Pacific. Lee Marvin, a WW2 combat marine narrated the TV show. At the end he said that as they died off it would be appropriate for the survivors to announce their arrival at the Pearly Gates with the words. “Another Marine reporting, sir. I’ve served my time in hell.” Now they have hell on the Euphrates. They, and their Navy medical corpsmen brothers, deserve the gratitude of us all.
Yesterday, the president spoke. He said many things, but the one that stands out in my mind is his repeated insistence that the enemy in Iraq is ONE and that this enemy is the international jihadi movement. Recently, a new chief military intelligence officer in Baghdad has taken to saying the same thing. Everyone I know who is recently back from Iraq says that this is not true, that in fact AQ Iraq and its allies are a small portion of the total strength among the insurgencies although they make a lot of noise and kill many. I think the president and the general in Baghdad are wrong about this. I think it is clear to everyone fighting the insurgents that what the president and the general have said is untrue.
Why would they say that?
The president’s rationale for intervention in Iraq has disintegrated into progressively more embarassing disarray. WMD? Out. AQ-Saddam Alliance? Out. Fight them there rather than in Cleveland? Madrid and London pretty much defeat that argument. Fightng Terrorism wherever we find it? the number of lethal terrorist incidents is dramatically up the last two years. What is left? What is left is the assertion (made yesterday) that Iraq is THE central battlefield in the war against religious fanatics (now specifically Islamic) who are the most fell enemy the human race has faced in millennia, and who threaten the very existence of life as we know it. It is interestng if a few thousand jihadis from 3rd world countries are that potent. Interesting.
In any event, this assertion is the president’s last ditch defense against those wish him ill as well as those afflicted with sadness because more marines and soldiers are reporting for duty in heaven every day.
If the majority of the insurgents are Iraqis fighting us for specifically Iraqi reasons, then the president’s argument over Iraq falls to bits. He doesn’t have many more places of refuge in his rhetoric.
The military intelligence general in Baghdad?” Oh, well…
Pat Lang
Personal Blog: Sic Semper Tyrannis 2005 || Bio || CV
Recommended Books || More BooTrib <a href="Posts
Novel: The Butcher’s Cleaver (download free by chapter, PDF format)
“Drinking the Kool-Aid,” Middle East Policy Council Journal, Vol. XI, Summer 2004, No. 2
This rips me up inside.
Those marines and soldiers will go to heaven.
Bush et al. will go to hell … for making the lives of those marines and soldiers a living hell.
You ask; “Why would they say that?”
I’m somewhat reluctant to continue flogging a perspective that apparently is not widely shared but here it is again, in somewhat different terms.
BushCo needs to define the “enemy” in terms that transcend the boundaries of Iraq for the simple reason that the Bush regime’s agenda is to widen the war throughout the region, and in order to do so, they need to convince the American public that the enemy is broader-based, and ultimately more demonic. Hence the absurd claims that the Al Qaeda type jihadis are the prime element in Iraq.
If BushCo were to acknowledge that it was Iraqis leading the charge against us there, it would undo their entire rationale for why it’s important for us to stay there.
If you look back across mankind’s historical record, you see clearly that virtually all tyrants and aggressive dictators use this tactic of characterizing their enemy in terms that support what they want to do, rather than aligning their actions with the reality of whatever the situation might be. In short, they shape the “facts” to fit their intent, rather than fixing their intent around the “facts”.
And whenever this sort of inverted “cause and effect” flawed rationale is present, the results are always disastrous.
Well. And you sit here just complaining about it. Isn’t it time some of you shouldered the responsibility to bring them into the padded cells that are awaiting them?
If the war is identified as an Iraqi problem, it can be solved politically by Iraqis. However, if the enemy are foreigners, the war requires the USA to continue to be in the fight and shifts the blame for the death and destruction from the presence of American troops to outsiders. Also, blaming the chaos on infiltrators supports the neo-con’s aggressive designs against Syria and Iran.
A war based on lies continues in lies. If at any point the USA decides that staying in Iraq is not worth it anymore, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi will cease to exist.
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“Baghdad – US-led forces have bombed eight bridges on the Euphrates River in western Iraq to stop insurgents using them, US military spokesperson Major General Rick Lynch said Thursday.”
Now we are blowing up bridges. For the first time I believe we have lost. For the first time as a military professional I think we have no way of winning this. We are willing to destroy the basic structures of the country to deny the enemy their use.
Army Times by Antonio Castaneda (AP)
HAQLANIYAH, Iraq Oct. 4 — The U.S. military launched a major offensive in a cluster of cities in the Euphrates River valley, an operation aimed at insurgents using the area as a safe haven in a region where 20 Marines were killed in August.
Air strikes by U.S. warplanes and dozens of helicopters set off explosions that lit the city skylines of Haqlaniyah, Parwana and Haditha before dawn. Bridges across the Euphrates River between Haqlanaiyah and Haditha were bombed to prevent insurgents from using them.
About 2,500 U.S. Marines, soldiers and sailors, and hundreds of Iraqi troops, took part in the operation, codenamed River Gate, the largest U.S. offensive in Anbar this year, the military said. More Iraqi soldiers appeared to be participating in the operation than any other offensive conducted in the region.
“The operation’s goal is to deny Al-Qaida in Iraq the ability to operate in the three Euphrates River valley cities and to free local citizens from the insurgents’ campaign of murder and intimidation of innocent women, children and men,” the U.S. military said in a statement.
It was the second U.S. offensive launched against al-Qaida in Iraq militants in the western Anbar region in the past four days.
Last Saturday, about 1,000 service members launched a separate U.S. offensive, Operation Iron Fist, farther to the west in the Euphrates River valley near the Syrian border in the village of Sadah and two nearby towns, Rumana and Karabila.
Is it still breaking news what is happening in Iraq – 33 minutes ago ::
Six Marines Killed in Iraq Bomb Attacks
An Iraqi woman grieves next to the body of her 6 year old daughter killed by a car bomb in Samarra, Iraq yesterday. Three other people from the same family were wounded in the explosion. AP Photo/Hameed RasheedThe U.S. rhetoric has been adjusted: we’re fighting Al Qaeda in Iraq, just check all the reports, speeches, press releases and MSM journalism and TV coverage. Iraq transformed by Bush neocons into a hotbed of terrorists within 2½ years and growing.
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Talibani a Kurd – he himself was occupied in London planning
a new venture: War on Iran!
Kurdistan anno 2005
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Bush can’t admit that the insurgents in Iraq are primarily resident Iraqis. That would be admitting that he created the insurgency himself with his ill-considered invasion of Iraq.
So unless he admits he caused the insurgency, then it has to be run by al Qaeda. Whether that is true or not.
You’re right that claiming the insurgency is part of the world-wide anti-American jihad was his last gasp hope as a justification for his invasion of Iraq. Looked at carefully in light of the facts, and it is totally clear that he had no justification at all.