Sunday Times 19 Aug

[LateArmLive]

Anyone else read the article on the pullout from Basra? Apparently we'll be using "Tornado fighters" to divert missiles aimed at our Tristars, while Harriers will give our Warrior convoys air cover.

Has anyone told the MOD this?

[Distant Voice]

Not only will the Brits have to fight their way out, but so will the Americans. Their lost will be greater. In the end the sooner we get out of this "George Bush Hell Hole" the better.

All this to kill one man?

DV

[XV277]

A use for soon-to-be-redundant F3 airframes?

[rmac]

The most interesting part of the article is the invitations for comments from the public on the online version. Amazing the amount of transatlantic bickering and falling out.

Just picked a copy of "The Art of War" - Sun Tzu from my bookshelf and pulled out a couple of interesting comments which are pertinent.


"If the enemy general is obstinate and prone to anger, insult and enrage him, so that he will be irritated and confused and without a plan will recklessly advance against you" - 9/11 followed by GWB going to both Afghanistan and Iraq ?

Advice on waging war:

"When the army marches abroad the treasury will be emptied at home"

"Victory is the main object of war. If this is long delayed weapons are blunted and morale depressed. When troops attack cities their strength will be exhausted"

" When your weapons are dulled and ardour damped, your strength exhausted and treasure spent, neighbouring rulers will take advantage of your distress to act" cue China and Russia...

"Thus while we have heard of blundering swiftness in war, we have not yet seen a clever operation that was prolonged"

"Those adept in waging war do not require a second levy of conscripts nor more than one provisioning"

"When a country is impoverished by military operations, it is due to distant transportation, carriage of supplies for great distances renders the people destitute"

"As to government expenditures, those due to broken down chariots, worn out horses, armour and helmets, arrows and crossbows, lances, hand and body shields, draft animals and supply wagons will amount to sixty percent of the total"

"Hence what is essential in war is victory, not prolonged operations"


So if this stuff was apparent in the sixth century BC, what are we (or should I say our leaders), missing ?


And to put the entire Iraq war in to perspective from the insurgents point of view, someone in their camp has clearly been studying Sun Tzu. Mao Tse Tung used the following four guerilla principles of Sun Tzu to keep the Japanese at bay and ultimately defeat the Kuomintang with his peasant army, and I am sure Uncle Ho Chi Min followed on from him.


1. When the enemy advances we retreat.
2. When the enemy halts we harrass.
3. When the enemy seeks to avoid battle we attack.
4. When the enemy retreats we pursue.

It could be that we are about to enter phase 4, as far as Iraq is concerned, and I believe that AQ and any other extremist group will intend to carry that pursuit all the way back to the UK and USA.


What a f#$king mess, and like all good messes, we are in too deep to have a reasonable plan to sort it out IMHO.

And and while on the subject, what about Afghanistan, well to put a good old Scottish regimental phrase to use, it wulnae be lang befor wur havin oor arses felt thur tae.

[Melchett01]

Saigon, 1975 or Basrah 2007?

As much as I would hate to admit it, but an embarrassing retreat from Basrah would be about par the course in what has - for the best equipped military partnership - been an unmitigated disaster of a campaign. One that went on for at least 3 years too long and suffered from undue interteference from politicians wanting to secure their legacy and deluded enough to believe that if we just give it one more push we will win. Sorry, but you won't; you can throw all the troops at it you like, but the insurgents have one thing we don't have - time. And they aren't answerable to an electorate.

Well fellas, I take my hat off to you - you've really f*cked it this time haven't you. If nothing else, Iraq demonstrates that politicians have no place in the running of a war. They should set the objectives and then leave us to get on with the job until it is done rather than interfering at every stage and being half hearted about the prosecution of the campaign.

So what will we learn from this? Sadly, very little that will be of any use. There will be lots of scratching of heads, plenty of sucking of teeth and lots of senior officer huddles as people defend their reputations, hastily creating excuses and denying all responsibility for what has gone wrong. Doctrine teams will disappear into offices at Shrivenham and produce countless turgid papers and booklets whose only practical application is to set on fire next time the heating fails in the MQ over winter or to throw at the enemy or bore them to death with when we next run out ammo in the middle of an op. And the politicians will defend their reputations, proudly stating that the world is a safer place for their intervention despite all evidence to the contrary.

The photo is the famous one of the Air America cab on the appartment
rooftop in Saigon in 1975. Give it a year and it could easily resemble the scramble of very senior officers, campaign planners and politicians retreating from the blame and responsibility of screwing up what should have been a properly thought out and executed campaign.

That said, I really don't see how the American administration can throw stones in our direction. The withdrawal from Baghdad is going to be one hell of a fighting retreat.

"Middle East foreign policy is very much like making love to a beautiful woman - it's horrendously expensive, very messy and you always leave it too late to pull out - Swiss Tony"

[VinRouge]

Currently reading a book called "Fiasco" funnily enough, about the pre-war planning in iraq and the causes of the current mess. Its written by a yank, but is well-thought out, unbiased, non-political and more importantly unrefutable.

From what I have read so far, I am ashamed to take any part in the campaign. And from what I have read, there is one current world leader that should be up for war crimes, and one former world leader very much in the same boat...

If anyone else wants a gander its here.
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Fiasco-Ameri...7556598&sr=8-1


BTW, as an aside, recently read Sun Tsu also, anyone else get the feeling the Chinese are about to use their Strategic Currency Reserve to cripple the yanks? If the fed cut rates, the Chinese are not going to sit round whilst their hard-earned cash gets rapidly eroded by inflation... I think the next 12 months are going to get quite bad for the yanks starting with a pretty horrific recession. I cant see support for flits of fancy round the globe once people are stuggling to keep a roof over their head.

[Whossat Forrus]

Where Dubya goes Broon is sure to follow

Time to shove two pencils up my nose and wear pants on my head
http://www.military.com/NewsContent/...=airforce-a.nl
Report t' Town 'all, wun rifle, wun tin 'at, sign 'ere you little bl***er, and stand up straight when oi is torkin too yahhhh. Leptroightleptroight, termorra is bay-o-nets so loits out ten sharpish, don't want yer mam finkin' oi is not lookin' after yers now do we????
And all for 2 bob a day. Unemployment down among the 18-24 yr old males, crime down, hoodlums off the street (safe to walk the streets at night), delinquency a thing of the past. Could the Jock To$$er resist??? I think not.

[MrBernoulli]

Conscription? Brilliant! I'll certainly support that one. That'll give the work-shy little ****s that are Britains 'yoof' a rocket up their pampered little arses.

[GOLF_BRAVO_ZULU]

Are you volunteering to train the "work-shy little ****s"? because some poor bugger would have too.

[foormort]

Quick question from me. If the Brits do pull out and leave an unstable Basrah behind does that cause a lot of problems for the ongoing operations remaining in country? Sure another unstable area or will the US be forced to back fill as the UK folks leave? If the answers are yes how can the UK government say the job is done?

[Re-Heat]

It is not as though the job is ever going to be done now though is it - anywhere in the country. It is such a fiasco of planning and loss of initiative, that the whole place would be better with a withdrawal, probably following by a better-planned attack on Iran and Iraq together once the religious zealots gain control.

A least then the population might actually welcome us in the country again...

[Re-Heat]

The Draft

Clearly, if they are seriously considering that, they have no idea what they are talking about. That argument was settled years ago in the US and UK at least. Anyone who thinks it is a good idea should seek out Colin Powell's views on the subject...!

[ORAC]

What is it trying to achieve?

[rmac]

Foormort

For what its worth, I imagine that you Americans will have to backfill or face an Iranian base in country.

Of course you can then give the local inhabitants a taste of unrestrained artillery harrasing fire, airstrikes and free fire zones. The things we Brits don't have too much of a taste for as we much prefer the subtle approach, although it hasn't done much good in this case.

The mallet approach won't do you too much good either, but it might make you feel better for a while

[Pontius Navigator]

As I mentioned before, when we pulled out of Aden we had about FIVE flat tops out there.

Can't rember which ones but we had Ark, Eagle, Vic, Hermes, Centaur, Albion, Bulwark to chose from. Some for people some for top cover. Went like a dream.

And for Iraq we will have .........

[Wiley]

Interesting to read rmac's selections of Sun Zhu's dicta and the way the Americans, since WW2, seem to have quite consciously ignored them. One could be forgiven for thinking that since the 1950s, there are faceless forces close to the top in the US hierarchy who see a long but limited (and remote from US shores) war as a preferable option to a quick victory, which could and should be attainable for the US given their overwhelming logistics and firepower superiority of any and all likely foes.

Well might you ask what such faceless people high up in the US system (note I didn't say 'government') might think they could be achieving in seeing their forces bled white - and on more than one occasion humbled - by vastly inferior forces. I think it all comes down to money. A long war means massive profits for the military-industrial complex that is corporate America. it keeps a lot of lower class kids off the streets (all too many of them permanently) and most importantly, it keeps companies like Haliburton and many others literally reaping in the dough for years on end, making infinitely more profits than they would in a Sun Zhu-style campaign.

Anyone who doubts this (as I'm sure many would) should seek out "IBM and the Holocaust: The Strategic Alliance between Nazi Germany and America's Most Powerful Corporation (ISBN: 0375419330). It will leave you utterly in despair as to how US (and, I suspect, not just US) Big Business thinks and operates in time of war.

Korea was as much to stave off recession after WW2. John Paul Vann's excellent "A Bright Shining Lie" tells in graphic detail how Viet Nam was mishandled, particularly in the early "advisor only" days. One could be forgiven for thinking that there were people in the US Administration who went out of their way to make sure the situation was allowed to deteriorate to the point where large US main force intervention was required - and after those forces were committed, also forgiven for thinking that a quick victory was the last thing the US hierarchy wanted.

Someone once said to me that if you wanted to illustrate the Viet Nam war in one photograph that would encapsulate the most accurate picture of the war, it would not be a Huey helicopter or a B52 or a VC captive getting shot in the head by a policeman, but a balding, pot-bellied, middle aged corporate agent in ill-fitting jeans and ‘journo’s photo vest’ cadging a freebie lift on a military transport on his way to oversee some lucrative building contract for the military. He’d almost certainly be an ex-serviceman, usually a SNCO, because as one, he’d have all the contacts and know how best to work the System.

I’m lucky not to be involved directly in the current fiasco in Iraq and Afghanistan, but I suspect the same would almost certainly be true of this war.

[Wyler]

The Telegraph carried some rather scathing comments about the state of Basra and the fact that the Brits had 'lost'. All comments came from the higher echelons of the US Military, but there was undoubtedly political backing for it.
I think it highlghted the ongoing state of denial the US still seems to be in. They are putting a lot of faith in the soon to be released report regarding the surge. Some may think it has already been written, or should I say 'Spun'.
The fact is Iraq is a lost cause. It was ill thought out, poorly executed and has been shamefully lacking in leadership ever since. It is unpopular with the home crowds and the political backing, in this country, has never been anything other than like warm.
We have tried to give the Iraqis something that they have absolutely no use for: Democracy. They are feudal, always have been, and always will be. What we are seeing in Basra is a smaller version of what will happen when the Americans pull out. There will be a Civil War and from that will emerge the true successor to Saddam Hussein. All that needs to be finalised is of what persuasion he is, Sunni etc.The true folly of the Iraq war will then come to light as there is every likelihod that this individual will be in some way aligned to Tehran and we will be left with a bigger headache than the one we sought to remove.
The leadership in this country is trying to deflect the fallout by telling us that we are winning in Afghanistan. Really? This is another country that has no natural bent toward Democracy. I, personally, am horrified that British Soldiers are almost safeguarding the Opium Crop by their very presence.

Looking at the British Armed Forces, I see our top General is dismayed that there is not more obvious Home Support for the effort and daily breathtaking bravery being shown. It is sad. However, the role of the British Armed Forces has always been to protect the homeland. This current venture that they have been forced into has, in some ways, had the opposite effect. It has, without doubt, increased the terrorist threat in this country. Add to that the unseemly haste of the politicians to magnify that threat in order to force more restrictions/taxes on the British people and you are faced with a country that is resentful of the added restrictions (airport security etc). It is a sad day and the damage done to the credibility of the Armed Forces will take years, decades even, to rectify. It will also be a long time before any British Politician has the gumption to send troops to war. That in itself may lead to further downsizing and intigration into a bigger, and utterly useless, European Defence Force.

I listened to a Whitehouse Politician on Radio 4 the other evening. He was putting forward the case for attacking Iran in order to head off the Nuclear threat. I was horrified, not only by his real hunger for further conflict, but by his almost schoolboy like justification.

We are in a mess. The US was wrong and we were wrong to follow. Time to wake up and smell the coffee folks.

[ORAC]

However, the role of the British Armed Forces has always been to protect the homeland.

Apart from the period between 1170 and 1960? (I'll be generous and exclude everything after the Mau-Mau in Kenya.....)

[GeeRam]

I was working with an disdent Iraqi engineer back at the time of the start of the current misguided 'adventure'.

He eloquently pointed out at the time comments similar to that posted above, and predicted then just about 100% of what has ended up happening.

[rmac]

Wyler,

I was with you all the way until the comment which ORAC has so kindly passed judgement on

But at least the British empire new how to use the locals to do most of the dirty work (I think you will find that in Sun Tzu's to do list as well).