Stan Goff on the war so far

North Carolinian Goff served in the US special forces during the Grenada 
invasion. He thus has a certain level of insider knowledge of the US military 
most of us lack. His analysis is just after the note about Senator Jon Edwards 
(democratic presidential hopeful).

Steven Sherman
> --- Begin Message ---
> NC Coalition for Peace and Justice Listserv
>
> SENATOR EDWARDS SPEAKS ABOUT IRAQ
>  
> "In this time of war, our thoughts and prayers are with the men and
> women of our armed forces who have committed themselves to standing up
> for the values of our nation and defending the security of our world.
>  
> "Make no mistake, Saddam Hussein alone has chosen war over peace.  He
> has defied international law rather than disarm his weapons of mass
> destruction.  Our world will be safer when he is gone."
>
>
> I rest my case.  Here's an update on Edward's pet war. See if it sounds
> like a safer world to any of you.
>
> MILITARY MATTERS War Bulletin #2
>
> Visions & Revisions
> March 28,2003
>
> Stan Goff
>
>
> There have been two predictable aspects of Bush's war, one political and
> one related to the actual conduct of the war.  These are not separable.
> The political destruction of Bush and his clique was stamped and waiting
> for delivery before the first tank rolled across the line of departure
> in Kuwait.  And the Law of Unintended Consequences is operating with a
> vengeance on the ground.
>
> The rest is unpredictable.
>
> The junta's diplomatic vandalism had systematically alienated the masses
> around the world, a force they underestimated wholly, and the underlying
> intent of the Bush cabal - a military solution for economic war - was
> understood clearly by the northern capitalist metropoles, by Russia, and
> by China.  The Latin American supra-colony, already in a process of
> break-up and rebellion, had inaugurated its second big wave of
> anti-colonial struggle, as others from the global south watched.  The
> hegemon was breaking up, and war was seen by the Bush faction as its
> best, last chance.  Even America's former multilateralist partners -
> stung by disrespect and alarmed by the bright-eyed bellicosity of Bush,
> et al - had begun to thirst for US humiliation.
>
> Now they are being slaked.
>
> The depth of US bourgeois (and therefore generalized cultural) decadence
> has been on display for months, as impunity and falsehood characterized
> political discourse, and the last crumbs of American journalism were
> lapped up into the maw of the media-military nexus.  Half the US
> population had accepted one central and demonstrably idiotic assertion,
> that Iraqi leadership played some facilitative role in the September
> 11th attacks.  Now enough of American-society-in-denial - especially
> white society - had its rationalization.  The international legal
> framework that took six decades to assemble was ripped apart and shipped
> to the same landfill as the detritus of US bourgeois democracy -
> similarly cast off in 2000.
>
> The entire adventure we are witnessing was conceived from a
> really-existing condition of weakness
> http://www.freedomroad.org/milmatters_5_overreach.html.  I have said
> that for some time.  Even progressive forces have been intimidated by
> the raw power of the US military machine and the demonstrated
> willingness to use it.  There was the sense that it was a juggernaut.
> That's how bullies
> http://www.freedomroad.org/milmatters_4_victoriesover.html operate;
> through intimidation.
>
> But they miscalculated.
>
> I miscalculated, too.
>
> We learn most from our errors, and it is through examining errors we
> refine our analysis and get closer to the truth of things.  Now is a
> good time to critique what was written just as the war began in earnest.
> In "Rolling Start"
> http://www.freedomroad.org/milmatters_12_rollingstart.html, I identified
> several variables that would complicate the conduct of the war for the
> US; the loss of the Turkish front, the last minute changes in the plans
> growing out of that loss, the canalization of the ground attack along a
> single south-north axis and corresponding vulnerability of supply lines,
> and the terrific impact of weather.  We are still waiting to see if my
> dire prognostications related to Kurdistan materialize.
>
> But I made two very significant errors.  I underestimated the quality of
> Iraqi resistance, and I overestimated the scope of the initial air
> campaign.
>
> I stated:  "The Iraqi military won't prevail because they can't. They
> are weak, under-resourced, poorly led, and demoralized. What the delays
> mean is that the US will depend on sustaining the initiative and
> momentum through brutal, incessant bombing designed to destroy every
> soldier, every installation, every vehicle, every field kitchen in the
> Iraqi military."
>
> What I did not know, which is becoming very apparent, is that while
> Donald Rumsfeld was imposing his vaunted "Revolution in Military
> Affairs," his crackpot theory of "network centric warfare" that
> substitutes technology for leadership (against fierce resistance from
> the Army and Marines) on the US armed forces, there was another
> revolution in military affairs going on inside Iraq.  The Iraqi military
> was reorganizing from the ground up for an agile, decentralized,
> urban-based warfighting capability, that abandoned Soviet-style
> conventional armor-centric doctrine for something more akin to doctrine
> that was taught but seldom practiced by Special Operations forces in the
> US during the Cold War, particularly "stay-behind" disruption of enemy
> lines of communications, once the primary mission of 10th Special Forces
> in the event of a general conflict with the Warsaw Pact.
>
> And the massive bombing.
>
> It remains to be seen, but it was not used as I thought it would be,
> probably for two reasons; political pressure to paint a humanitarian
> face on the invasion, and reluctance - given the ongoing economic crisis
> in the US - to impose too high a cost on post-invasion infrastructure
> repairs.
>
> I am reminded now of T. S. Eliot's poem, The Love Song of J. Alfred
> Prufrock, where Prufrock's neurotic internal voice tells him there will
> be "time yet for a hundred indecisions, And for a hundred visions and
> revisions. In a minute there is time, For decisions and revisions which
> a minute will reverse."
>
> Surely, if we sent a copy of "Prufrock" to the Bush cabinet, they might
> weep with recognition.
>
> Everything that could have gone wrong with the American invasion is
> going wrong, and the longer it goes, the wronger it gets.  And with
> these reversals, the danger to everyone increases by orders of
> magnitude.  Especially Iraqis.
>
> The efficacy of Iraqi tactics is being met with revisions of the Rules
> of Engagement (ROE in military-speak).  These are the rules related to
> when soldiers can and can not "engage" (that means attempt to kill)
> enemy soldiers and civilians.  As the invasion began, the ROE was
> comparatively strict.  Embedded reporters were pretty close to the
> action, after all, and there was the underwriting assumption that there
> would be no significant resistance.  On Tuesday, March 25th, CENTCOM
> began openly saying they would change the ROE to reflect the "new
> reality."
>
> With the end of the sandstorms, the US Air Force and Navy resumed its
> air assault, this time testing its 4,700 pound bunker busters on
> Baghdad.  Army Apache helicopters and Air Force A-10's (the weapons
> platform that fires depleted uranium rounds) are hitting forward of the
> Army and Marine axis of advance, using the "new" ROE, and reports are
> already filtering out of Iraq of nightmarish scenes of scorched and
> shattered vehicles and bodies that include passenger cars, buses, and
> plenty of civilians.
>
> It has become apparent, given the continued furious resistance of the
> Iraqis, including audacious attacks on both US supply lines and combat
> units, that Baghdad will be no cakewalk.  Bush and his generals are now
> at a fork in the road, where they must choose either to wreck Baghdad or
> lay siege to it.  House to house fighting in Baghdad will begin a
> televised file of military caskets returning to America.  That will
> quickly become intolerable, and the administration will collapse.  The
> other unthinkable option Bush has is to quit.  Quit.
>
> That must be our demand.  Out of Iraq, now!
>
> But they won't.  They are now caught in the same deadly trap they have
> built for Iraq.
>
> The sad truth seems to be, we are witnessing the certain political
> self-destruction of Bush & Co., but it will come at a cost paid for with
> many Iraqi lives.  I expect a renewed American assault before the
> weekend is past, and this one with a shattering display of air power.
>
> It is costing American lives now, too.  More than we know.
>
> On Thursday, the 27th, during a CENTCOM briefing, the charming and
> affable Brigadier General Vincent Brooks became short with reporters and
> flatly stated that CENTCOM would not release US casualty figures any
> longer.
>
> The night prior, an embedded CNN reporter had broadcast in real-time
> that Marines near Nasiriyah were engaged in a firefight with Iraqis that
> wounded 21 Marines within one hour.  Eleven from Camp Lejuene, NC, near
> where I live, are dead.
>
> Things are gong very badly for troops on the long northbound column.
> Vehicles are deadlined from the sand.  People are frightened,
> underslept, and they stink.  The tempo that exhilarated them three days
> ago is now turning to deep muscular and psychological fatigue.  Many are
> now wondering what they have gotten into.  Thoughts of dying in a state
> of discomfort are popping up, thoughts of being maimed for life.
> Tempers are flaring.  The food is all starting to taste the same.  The
> mosquitoes and sand flies are thick at night.  Supply disruptions have
> created a tobacco shortage.  Home is unreachable.  People are crying
> silently in the dark.  A goodly number of these people haven't yet
> reached their 20th birthday.
>
> These are the lads who will be driven forward soon in the next assault.
> An image on the television. a Marine Amtrack rolled over, upended in a
> swamp; literally, a quagmire.
>
> Donald Rumsfeld has taken to threatening Iranians and Syrians,
> excoriating the press for their "mood swings."  Rumsfeld is living to
> regret his Orwellian propaganda ploy of "embedding" the press.  Now many
> will become witnesses.
>
> His "revolution in military affairs" has become a "revolution in
> rationalizations."
>
> The conventional Generals, steeped in their own orthodoxies, are saying
> Rumsfeld's mistake was trying to "do it on the cheap," that he didn't
> put enough forces on the ground.  He stretched them thin along their
> primary avenue of approach to Baghdad and exposed their supply lines.
> This is all true, but it's very incomplete.
>
> My outgoing Battalion commander when I first reported in the 2nd Ranger
> Battalion in 1979 was then-Colonel Wayne Downing.  Downing is a retired
> General now, and a pundit working for MSNBC.  He had a different take.
>
> "These are people who love their country," he said, "and apparently
> they're willing to fight to defend it from an invader."
>
> When Downing and I were assigned to the early Rangers, we trained
> incessantly on the same kinds of tactics that are now being employed by
> the Iraqis.  Reconnaissance, ambush, and raid.
>
> Rumsfeld's error is not only the size of his forces.  What the media has
> failed to recognize is the role technology plays not only in projecting
> violence onto the battlefield, but in replacing the intuition of field
> commanders for making decisions.  I predict that some day, when the dust
> settles and someone takes a serious look at what happened militarily in
> Iraq in 2003, this subordination of thinking to technology - along with
> the small unit decentralization of Iraqi forces, forces who were willing
> to fight an invader - will be identified as the decisive factors in what
> is shaping up to be a very Pyrrhic victory for the US, and a world
> historic turning point in relations between the global north and south.
>
> For the first time, I am slightly less than 100 percent sure there will
> be a victory at all.  That is a hugely qualified statement, but the
> improbable can become the real as abruptly as an accident.  Another
> enormous sandstorm, new variables from outside the country, an open
> outbreak of guerrilla war in Afghanistan, a colossal act of American
> stupidity. these are the stuff of catalysts.
>
> The administration has impressed the whole chain of command into the
> service of lies.  The US kills civilians in a marketplace.  The Iraqis
> did it.  The Iraqis are "forcing their own people to wage suicide
> attacks".  What began with an insipid conversation about whether or not
> Saddam was dead has progressed through a chemical factory that wasn't
> operational, a Basra uprising that didn't exist, thousands of phantom
> Iraqi prisoners of war, the miraculous rediscovery of the Geneva
> Convention, to this lurid tale retold by Washington Post reporter Walter
> Lippman on March 28th:
>
> "As U.S. warplanes pounded Iraqi defenders with bombs and missiles,
> several Army and Marine units engaged in close combat with Iraqi
> paramilitary forces and regular army units. Brooks said they 'conducted
> active security operations to eliminate identified terrorist death
> squads,' a reference to Iraqi cadres who U.S. and British officials say
> are threatening Iraqi civilians to compel the men in their families to
> fight.
>
> "Rumsfeld said these 'death squads' take orders directly from Hussein's
> family, and he denounced them in some of the strongest language he has
> used since the war began.
>
> "'Their ranks are populated with criminals released from Iraqi prisons,'
> he said. 'They dress in civilian clothes and operate from private homes
> confiscated from innocent people and try to blend in with the civilian
> population. They conduct sadistic executions on sidewalks and public
> squares, cutting the tongues out of those accused of disloyalty and 
> beheading people with swords. They put on American and British uniforms
> to try to fool regular Iraqi soldiers into surrendering to them, and
> then execute them as an example for others who might contemplate
> defection or capitulation.'"
>
> Cutting out tongues.  They have finally outdone the Kuwaiti incubator
> story.  Other rumors suggest "the Fedayeen also run after dogs in the
> capitol, capture them, tear their limbs one by one, and sink their teeth
> into them."
>
> Lt. Gen. William S. Wallace of the US Army had a moment of clarity when
> he spoke the real truth:  "The enemy that we're fighting is different
> from the one we'd war-gamed."
>
> Saddam Hussein has become the embodiment of a resurgent Arab pride.
> Bush as been reduced to one of those dolls with a string on its back
> that you pull to hear "Iraq will be free, Iraq will be free, Iraq will
> be free."
>
> It might be funny if it weren't for the grim truth that the price of
> admission to this farce shall be a river of blood.
>
>
>
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