Northman's Fury

As in the US thought they may have almost been close to capturing who they think might of been bin Laden, or maybe Zawahiri, or maybe somebody else who may have been important.

A rather less than dramatic story when you think of it. There are a couple of newsworthy points further down, though.

The operation closely parallels the killing of Abu Musab al Zarqawi last year. NBC News reported at the time that the U.S. military did not positively determine that Zarqawi was in the house that was bombed. Instead, they had surveillance on Zarqawi's spiritual adviser who led them to the house, and the decision was made to take the shot because they didn’t want to miss the chance to get Zarqawi. One general predicts, "That's the way we'll get Bin Laden." They may not have that positive ID, but there'll be enough intelligence to prompt an air strike and they'll find Bin Laden in the rubble.

This is alright when it works like it did in Zarqawi's case, but they've already tried it a couple of times in Pakistan and probably Afghanistan, with the only result being slaughtered civilians and increased anger against those dropping the bombs, making the Taliban and al Qaeda more popular in comparison.

Michael Sheehan, a former Army Special Operations colonel and counter terrorism ambassador, says he is not surprised.

“Our response is normally too big, too slow, too cumbersome and too risk adverse and those factors normally come from Washington,” said Sheehan. “The operators normally want to go in much smaller, much more low profile in order to be able to get to the target without being identified and as those plans go up the chain of command they normally get much bigger and much more cumbersome.”

But the bigger part of the picture is the question of allocation of resources from Afghanistan to Iraq. All Delta Force and “dark side” Rangers were moved to Iraq, said a special operations officer involved in the Afghanistan operation. Left behind in Afghanistan were SEAL Team Six and some Rangers. But apparently in this case, not enough “dark side” were available. The 82nd, said a second special operations officer, “is a poor substitute … [it is] a blunder to use them on an op with dark side operators.”

As much as I hate repeating myself, there is always room to point out instances like this one above on how the War in Iraq has damaged the effort against al Qaeda. The diversion of resources, along with the recruitment propaganda that war has given the extremists, still strikes me as one the most idiotic strategic blunders the Bush Administration has made.

As per usual, it is hard to actually verify whether or not the claims made happen to be true, but protesters yelling "Death to Canada" isn't something I ever expected to hear.

John Robb has a blurb up about a few inconvenient truths about Private Military Contractors. The most important one is the quote he has on the top from an Iraqi government spokesperson saying that if they drove Blackwater out of the country, there would be a security vacuum. The Iraqi mission is dependent upon PMC's, in large part because the US continues to try and fight the war with its military still on a peacetime footing and manpower level. It also fits in nicely with his second point.

Scalable. There are currently 20,000 PMC trigger pullers in Iraq. These men are guarding facilities and key people across the country. This is likely nearly the same number of trigger pullers (as opposed to support personnel) as the entire US military currently has in the country. Without these men, the US military would barely be able to field a force large enough to patrol Baghdad.

As for Robb's other points, they are good in general terms, but I don't think they apply all that well to the Iraq conflict specifically.

Efficient. If you count the costs of 8 to 9 support personnel (in the DoD's extremely long bureaucratic "tail") needed to field every US soldier in the field and state-side rotations, the high pay for individual private military employees is a bargain (certainly less than half the cost for a government soldier, not even counting the savings associated with medical care/retirements).

Ordinarily this might be true, but two things regarding Iraq make this less true. For one, the PMC's are supplied and otherwise looked after much like the regular military troops are, and thanks to the lovely "cost-plus" contracts most of these companies have, it has encouraged them to create as many layers of bureaucracy as they can.

What it does allow the US to do, is hide the cost in casualties. While the number of US military dead is widely kept track of, the number of contractors killed is far less clear. Even the best numbers are estimates based on insurance claims and other sources. The last such number I had seen listed the death toll at over a thousand, but those are a thousand deaths you won't see in any official tally.

Contingent. Unlike the hordes of bureaucratic Defense contractors that will permanently infest the halls of the DoD, private military companies field mission specific employees. IF there is a withdrawal from Iraq, there will be bust in the PMC industry as firms quickly shed employees.

This is the point that has always worried me. While I think Robb may be too optimistic about some of the PMC's not becoming permanent fixtures within the DOD, there should certainly be less demand for their services by the US government. What worries me, of course, is that companies faced with a slow-down in one market usually look to expand their operations to off-set that slow-down.

However you slice it, the prospect of tens of thousands of unemployed mercenaries experienced in counterinsurgency operations against a civilian population in urban settings should cause some concern. Blackwater has already shown up on America's streets, providing security in New Orleans after Katrina, and there are likely to be other cases where the hiring of politically-connected contractors will appeal to certain US leaders.

Outside the US, there are more than a few countries and corporations who could make use of such individuals to help "pacify" unruly populations standing in the way of resource exploitation.

And the one that has always given me pause for thought; what if some of these enterprising and looking at the unemployment line mercenaries take Robb's Global Guerillas lessons to heart and set themselves up as both problem and cure? The oil disruptions in Iraq and Nigeria have shown that GG's can make a state pay a hefty price if their demands are not met.

Oil bunkering and protection money are just other types of mercenary activity. Once your loyalty and mission are no longer attached to the state, the legal constraints on your behaviour are also lifted. My guess is that more than a few of these PMC employees, if not the companies themselves, will join in the global bazaar of violence that Robb has been tracking.

By massively increasing their use of mercenary forces to help fight their little war in Iraq, the US has helped sow the seeds of its, and other states, destruction, by giving away its monopoly on violence into private hands with their own agendas.

Nice to see that whole suspension of their "license" by the Iraqi government, forbidding their operations in the country, has had a big impact.

The US security firm Blackwater has resumed limited operations in the Iraqi capital Baghdad four days after a deadly shootout involving the company.

The company provides security to all US state department employees in Iraq.

Puppets.

The U.S. military has introduced "religious enlightenment" and other education programs for Iraqi detainees, some of whom are as young as 11, Marine Maj. Gen. Douglas M. Stone, the commander of U.S. detention facilities in Iraq, said yesterday.

Stone said such efforts, aimed mainly at Iraqis who have been held for more than a year, are intended to "bend them back to our will" and are part of waging war in what he called "the battlefield of the mind." Most of the younger detainees are held in a facility that the military calls the "House of Wisdom."

And to think some people have the gall to suggest that some of the US's tactics over the last few years bear some resemblance to regimes like the Soviet Union.

I normally no longer bother to read Christopher Hitchens, but when he comes up with an article titled, “We were right to dissolve the Iraqi Army”, I just had to see what makes Hitchens believe he knows better than every decent military strategist since Sun Tzu.

everybody knows that unless the United States affirms its iron determination to stick around and to hold the ring, every faction in Iraq will start making its accommodations to a future that will be arbitrated instead by local militias and cross-border neighbors.

Because they’re not already doing that?

However, one thing has become even clearer in retrospect than it was at the time: It was absolutely correct to dissolve the pre-existing Iraqi armed forces and to begin again with local and national elements who have been trained by, or are willing to work alongside, the coalition itself or the still-vestigial Iraqi government.

So it was right to dissolve the Iraqi Army so we could arm and train the local militias supported by cross-border neighbours you warned us about in the last paragraph? Excuse me while I pour myself some more vodka.

If there was one thing about U.S. foreign policy that used to make one shudder, it was the habit of ruling by proxy through military regimes. Especially beloved by the CIA, this practice befouled us in Chile, Greece, Indonesia, and numerous other cases where we made ourselves complicit in the policies of a local uniformed elite.

Apparently doing it now in Pakistan, Egypt, Ethiopia and other places is no longer shudder-inducing.

Take a moment to imagine what would have been written in the liberal press had the old military class been preserved and utilized to "stabilize" Iraq. I can write the headlines for you: "Baathist War Criminal Gets Second Career as American Employee"; "Once-Wanted Man, Brigadier Kamal Now Shares Jokes With 82nd Airborne"; "Kurds and Shiites Say: What Regime Change?"; "From Basra to Kirkuk, America Brings Saddamism Without Saddam."

The headlines are pretty catchy, but the really remarkable thing is that Hitchens apparently misplaced the last several months where the US has been reaching out to former Baathists and other Sunni insurgents to try and stabilize Iraq. And that's not even including the speculation about the need to "replace" Maliki that was being bandied about.

Sunni fighters in more than one region are getting former Baathists to repudiate their alliance with al-Qaida.

No, I guess he hasn’t missed it. He just decided to forget that the Baathists would have never, well, not allied but tolerated, Sunni fundamentalists like al Qaeda if they didn’t have a common enemy in the US occupation forces to fight.

Almost all anti-war critiques proceed from the weird assumption that Iraq, if left alone, would have managed itself better under a combination of Saddam plus sanctions than if de-Baathified.

Incredible that. To think that some people believe that if the US hadn’t invaded, totally destroyed the country’s infrastructure, and than proceeded to kick out the entire professional class capable of administering the country, that it may not be the mess it is today. Honestly, where do people come up with these ideas?

Hitchens may no longer be a drunkard, but reading him while drinking is the only way he could possibly make sense.