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Blogger Michael Totten has been travelling through the Middle East these last few months. After a trip through Iraqi Kurdistan, he experienced some minor difficulties getting back into Turkey, including smuggler-taxi drivers, bribes and lots of hand gestures...
Many analysts have attempted to draw parallels between Iraq and Malaya - suggesting that the Americans follow the counter-insurgency pattern used by the British in late 1940s South East Asia. However, as Caroline Elkins explains, that might not be apt:
To be sure, Britain's counterinsurgency operations in Malaya were a short-term success. British forces reestablished order and disengaged from imperial occupation. But the hearts-and-minds campaign, the theoretical backbone of Britain's counterinsurgency strategy, was more myth than reality. To seize civilian control, the British created a police state and invoked draconian powers ranging from movement-restriction and collective punishments to detention without trial. Winning the war against insurgents came at a high price for the local civilian population and for the independent state that picked up the mantle from its former colonizer. Rather than serving as a historical precedent for a successful hearts-and-minds campaign, the British campaign in Malaya illustrates the dangers of continuing our current strategy in Iraq.
OxBlog weighs in on the Anti-Rumsfeld General's Revolt in Washington:
Retired Air Force Gen. Ronald R. Fogleman told journalist George C. Wilson that things had changed dramatically after the new Secretary of Defense arrived. Wilson writes that:
"[Fogleman] did not feel he could dissent vigorously without being penalized in the minds of his civilian bosses. "Your position was not looked upon as a legitimate disagreement from a professional but as an act of disloyalty.""
Fogleman resigned as Air Force Chief of Staff and entered retirment in order to protest the Secretary's refusal to accept Fogleman's professional opinion about who was responsible for unnecessary US casulaties in the Gulf.Fogleman's quote is from p.43 of Wilson's book This War Really Matters...which was published back in 2000 when Bill Cohen was the Secretary of Defense. In other words, this bit of information disrupts a lot of narratives being spun out of the recent attacks on the current secretary.
The Coup Eighty doesn't believe that Donald Rumsfeld ought to be given the boot for "not listening to the generals." In this country, the military is absolutely subservient to its civilian master - that is the only way that the people of the United States (in theory) have any democratic accountability over the only legal militia in the land. This is the bedrock principle of civil-military relations, and cannot be compromised. However, the "SecDef" ought to be fired for deliberately ignoring the vast amount of planning done for post-war Iraq, in the rush to go to war, and consequently botching the occupation. If that doesn't suffice, we're also saddled with the guilt of Abu Ghraib.
With all the hoo-hah surrounding the visit of Hu Jintao, the visit of another head of state has been overshadowed: that of Ilham Aliyev, the (sort-of elected) president of Azerbaijan. Philip Stephens, at FT, finds this latter visit to be more symbolic of the direction of US foreign policy:
So why wouldn’t Mr Bush welcome such a stalwart ally at the White House? The answer is that Mr Aliyev has consistently brushed aside calls from Washington to edge his country closer to freedom and democracy – and the US president has put the spread of political pluralism front and centre of his foreign policy.
Now, if it wants to preserve any credibility, Washington must be seen to act where it can. And, in truth, Azerbaijan is one of the easiest cases. Its relationship with the west is grounded in mutual dependency. For all that Mr Aliyev might threaten to turn towards Moscow, he has no desire to embrace Russia. He wants the west’s approval and investment in Caspian oil. He is susceptible, in other words, to pressure.
Iraq the Model is skeptical that Iraq's new PM-nominee, Jawad al-Maliki, will be able to create the aura of a 'national unity government' and effectively deal with the insurgency:
Iraq will–in my opinion-continue to descend for the next four years in the same way it's been doing since the interim government was installed last year. And after all, the UIA's decision to replace Jafari with al-Adeeb or al-Maliki is a solution designed for preserving the brittle unity of the UIA and not for the creation of a unity government because they know very well that the rest of blocs were hoping to see Abdul Mahdi replace Jafari...
Many analysts have attempted to draw parallels between Iraq and Malaya - suggesting that the Americans follow the counter-insurgency pattern used by the British in late 1940s South East Asia. However, as Caroline Elkins explains, that might not be apt:
To be sure, Britain's counterinsurgency operations in Malaya were a short-term success. British forces reestablished order and disengaged from imperial occupation. But the hearts-and-minds campaign, the theoretical backbone of Britain's counterinsurgency strategy, was more myth than reality. To seize civilian control, the British created a police state and invoked draconian powers ranging from movement-restriction and collective punishments to detention without trial. Winning the war against insurgents came at a high price for the local civilian population and for the independent state that picked up the mantle from its former colonizer. Rather than serving as a historical precedent for a successful hearts-and-minds campaign, the British campaign in Malaya illustrates the dangers of continuing our current strategy in Iraq.
OxBlog weighs in on the Anti-Rumsfeld General's Revolt in Washington:
Retired Air Force Gen. Ronald R. Fogleman told journalist George C. Wilson that things had changed dramatically after the new Secretary of Defense arrived. Wilson writes that:
"[Fogleman] did not feel he could dissent vigorously without being penalized in the minds of his civilian bosses. "Your position was not looked upon as a legitimate disagreement from a professional but as an act of disloyalty.""
Fogleman resigned as Air Force Chief of Staff and entered retirment in order to protest the Secretary's refusal to accept Fogleman's professional opinion about who was responsible for unnecessary US casulaties in the Gulf.Fogleman's quote is from p.43 of Wilson's book This War Really Matters...which was published back in 2000 when Bill Cohen was the Secretary of Defense. In other words, this bit of information disrupts a lot of narratives being spun out of the recent attacks on the current secretary.
The Coup Eighty doesn't believe that Donald Rumsfeld ought to be given the boot for "not listening to the generals." In this country, the military is absolutely subservient to its civilian master - that is the only way that the people of the United States (in theory) have any democratic accountability over the only legal militia in the land. This is the bedrock principle of civil-military relations, and cannot be compromised. However, the "SecDef" ought to be fired for deliberately ignoring the vast amount of planning done for post-war Iraq, in the rush to go to war, and consequently botching the occupation. If that doesn't suffice, we're also saddled with the guilt of Abu Ghraib.
With all the hoo-hah surrounding the visit of Hu Jintao, the visit of another head of state has been overshadowed: that of Ilham Aliyev, the (sort-of elected) president of Azerbaijan. Philip Stephens, at FT, finds this latter visit to be more symbolic of the direction of US foreign policy:
So why wouldn’t Mr Bush welcome such a stalwart ally at the White House? The answer is that Mr Aliyev has consistently brushed aside calls from Washington to edge his country closer to freedom and democracy – and the US president has put the spread of political pluralism front and centre of his foreign policy.
Now, if it wants to preserve any credibility, Washington must be seen to act where it can. And, in truth, Azerbaijan is one of the easiest cases. Its relationship with the west is grounded in mutual dependency. For all that Mr Aliyev might threaten to turn towards Moscow, he has no desire to embrace Russia. He wants the west’s approval and investment in Caspian oil. He is susceptible, in other words, to pressure.
Iraq the Model is skeptical that Iraq's new PM-nominee, Jawad al-Maliki, will be able to create the aura of a 'national unity government' and effectively deal with the insurgency:
Iraq will–in my opinion-continue to descend for the next four years in the same way it's been doing since the interim government was installed last year. And after all, the UIA's decision to replace Jafari with al-Adeeb or al-Maliki is a solution designed for preserving the brittle unity of the UIA and not for the creation of a unity government because they know very well that the rest of blocs were hoping to see Abdul Mahdi replace Jafari...
posted by Saket Vemprala at
11:13 AM
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