It sure looks like the Iraq prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki is jumping on board with Obama’s 16-month, 12-month, 10-month, whatever time line for troop withdrawal. No one with more than 10 IQ points can really fault al-Maliki for taking this position, being that John McCain has more or less said he would like to have a presence in Iraq until the universe burns up all the available hydrogen and goes cold. Incidentally, John McCain’s position is the very one that would almost guarantee al-Maliki swinging from the gallows within a few years.

Of course, Obama, McCain and everyone else in the world are rushing to heap praise on “The Surge” (lemon-lime flavor) for its successes without any real idea of what has been accomplished. Yes, violence is down, the streets are quiet, things seem to be improving, but this has all been bought at the expense that Iraq is now more reliant on U.S. forces than before. Post-surge troop levels are higher still than pre-surge levels. No one really knows that fewer U.S. forces mean, but its a fair guess that the bad guys have read Mao and Lao Tzu even if we have not. No one was looking to kick up trouble when the boys were in town.

Being that a good portion of these guys are still around and waiting for the green flag, the best option for Al-Maliki is showing the Americans the door and tapping his foot impatiently until we leave.

This is only the opening shots of what looks suspiciously like a good old fashioned power struggle in Iraq. The U.S. got real cozy with Europe after the fun times of kings and monarchs alternately killing or sleeping with each other, so its experience in messy political arrangements could probably fit on the back of an envelope. Besides that, the U.S. has some of the best natural barriers ever designed - the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans on the sides and two non-military powers to the top and bottom. Throughout a nasty, brutish and short history the U.S. hasn’t had to cut many deals with the end goal of staying the hell alive.

Iraq, on the other hand, aint the U.S. Iraq sits smack dab on top of some of the nastiest most blood soaked soil in the world. If you don’t believe me, try this fun little bit of compressed world history:

If you really want to score extra points you’ve also got to realize that Iraq is also the major fault line between Sunni and Shia Islam, not to mention half a dozen or so break aways up north in Kurd land.

The end of the story is that living, and especially governing in Iraq is a story of busting heads, knees and caps. We thought we had it bad during the Civil War when folks lined up like they were going to the movies and marched in step toward each other like a bunch of morons. You can just imagine some old timey biblical warriors, the ones that thought raping and killing and all was what you did when the battle was over. Sherman might have thought he was tough when he leveled Atlanta — his one foul up was that after burning the city he should have slaughtered the survivors THEN salted the earth to make the land uninhabitable. Point is, at the end of the day your Americans don’t know much about keeping your head on your shoulders in a bad neighborhood but you can bet al-Maliki and the current bureaucrats in Iraq are putting in their overtime to keep the shrouds over their asses when the Americans eventually leave.

What this mean isn’t much of a shock. Nouri Al Maliki is a Shia Muslim so was the guy before him, Ibrahim al-Jaafari. The president, Jalal Talabani, is Sunni but Kurdish, and the rest of the Sunni in Iraq have a pretty good recent history of killing the Kurds. The recent hold up over elections stem from Kurdish gripes about trying to continue the de-Kurdification of Kirkuk started under Saddam Hussein. Guess what group Hussein, a Sunni Muslim, moved up there to route the Kurds out? That would be the same group that just rejoined the government upon the likely realization that Sunni voices were about to get a lot quieter in Iraq.

So the obvious choice for Iraq to buddy up with is their dear, sweet neighbor - Iran. Well, what do you know - there they are! And can you imagine a worse outcome for Washington, the U.S. military and the Republican Party than five years worth of effort, thousands of folks dead, mauled or deformed and round abouts of a trillion dollars only to have our pet country snuggling up with the regions biggest anti-American antagonist? There isn’t a writer alive that can conjure up irony like father time. It’s like the MasterCard commercial from hell. The social discontent that would follow an Iraq-Iran alliance — priceless.

But it’s not like there are any other cards on the table. The Shia majority in Iraq isn’t going to have anything to do with the Wahabbi nuts in Saudi Arabia, the Kurds aren’t going to agree to any agreement with Turkey, Syria can’t even manage Lebanon. Who’s left - Jordan and Kuwait? Boy, there’s a security alliance you can hang your hat on. Not to mention all the good press you get by buddying up with the most pro-Israel country in the region or of going to a nation you steam-rolled 20 years ago with your hat in your hands.

None of this really matters if al-Maliki can’t shuck the Americans off his back, which he seems to be doing with a sudden spring of enthusiasm. Contrary to the noise from the cable pundits Al Sadr is not defeated, the Sunni separatists are not run out and the Kurdish militants aren’t giving up. As bright as General Petraeus is, when it comes to understanding Iraq he’s going to have a 1,000 point handicap to even an idiot that is from there. If al-Maliki can’t prove he’s the top dog then someone will be along to replace him, and someone who might not sit so well with the U.S. Chances are, even if we do luck up and keep al-Maliki the pretense of a kinder, gentler, democratic Iraq will likely go out the window. The Middle-East has always been a place of conflicting cultures and civilizations and it probably always will be.

What we’re seeing is a gamble in Iraq. We’re seeing whether ours will pay off, whether we have the good sense to leave when asked. If we don’t we’ll delegitimize Al-Maliki and anyone chosen to replace him as an American puppet. Then we’ll see if al-Maliki can steer the cart without any help. If it doesn’t work, we’ll see how well Americans handle excruciating dissapointment.

Hat tip to Abu Muqawama

It was to be the big shiny jewel of the Iraq war.

Anbar province, that grimy hole that was home to the Sunni insurgency was to officially leave the hands of the U.S. Marines and fall to the Iraqis.

It was scheduled, then rescheduled, and now… canned until later in the year.

  BAGHDAD — In a sign of the bitter political struggle playing out in western Iraq, the Anbar Provincial Council appealed Saturday for the American military to delay its handover of provincial security responsibilities to Iraqi forces until at least the end of the year, according to the council chairman.

Any long-term delay in the transfer would be a blow to American efforts to portray the province, once a Sunni extremist stronghold, as having nearly completed a security turnaround. And the request is likely to intensify fears among Anbaris that quarrels between the two powers in the province — the entrenched Iraqi Islamic Party and the up-and-coming political movement of pro-American Awakening Councils — could escalate into armed conflict.

Golly. What a shock.

PS - TWO Ball Gunner updates in one day. It’s like Christmas!

If you own a computer, a TV or a radio you’ve heard about the assault that killed 9 U.S. soldiers and wounded 15 in Afghanistan. It doesn’t take a dynamo like the Ball Gunner to point out that things do not appear to be going well in the mountain lands.

Whatever brain trust operates in the State Department feeding whatever passes for human intelligence to Defense these days continues to look like a clumsy, fat kid trying to swat a fly. It’s all flailing and flopping and chubby arms waving all over the place.

“We just don’t get it. They’re coming from Pakistan, but we aren’t at war with Pakistan. Why do they keep coming? What is going on? Who am I? Why am I wearing this dress?”

Since the books of grand military failure are always chronically unpopular (as opposed to books of stirring success which fly off the shelves) the answer remains shrouded in mystery except to us grand cynics who realize that the nation-state model is a grand ruse of modern living. The solution, so evasive to the PhDs, is that the Pashtun, the ones we are currently fighting, don’t known and don’t particularly care about state boundaries and national sovereignty.

On this mountain, they are Pashtun. On that mountain over there, they are Pashtun, too. That a cartographer in London decided that this mountain is Afghanistan and that mountain is Pakistan is not relevant. What is relevant to the Pashtun is the Pashtun. 

This, of course, doesn’t preclude fighting among the Pashtun tribes, which the Pashtun do with aplomb. The Gilzai Pashtun, for instance, love to go to war against the Durrani Pashtun. As luck would have it, the Gilzai have a golden opportunity to fight the Durrani by fighting against president Hamid Karzai and the largely Durrani government.

All this crazy tribalism is a tough sell, end even über geeks like the Ball Gunner can’t really wrap their heads around it. But all you really need to figure out is that Afghanistan is one of the toughest places on the globe to eek out a living. The people that do it are some tough bastards, and when resources like food, shelter and habitable land are in short supply you had best be ready with a big stick when someone tries to shove you off of yours.

When it’s an all in or all out sort of game - with staying alive as the take-home, it forges some pretty tight knit and wild groups. Taking a look at just the various tribes, sub-tribes and sub-subtribes of the Pashtun ethnic group is like reading like the spreadsheet from hell, and you’ve not even factored in a half-dozen other groups from Tajiks, to Uzbeks, pseudo-Iranians, people left over from 30 failed invasions of Afghanistan through out several thousand years of history; it’s like a big party of multi-culturalism with everybody either oppressing or alternately being oppressed by somebody else. Go to certain areas of Afghanistan and you might find definitely non-regional traits like blond hair and blue eyes.

The real joke is that despite all the quips about barbarism and how wonderfully advanced “us folks over yonder in ‘Merica is” a good swath of the uneducated Afghan hillbillies are bi- or tri-lingual (even if they are illiterate.) So the next time the chest-thumpers gripe about how their children “aint never gunna learn them no Spanish” kindly remind them that hicks in the “uncivilized” part of the world know three languages, most of which aren’t even from the same language family.

So that’s the short answer for ongoing problems in Afghanistan. The U.S., like the Russians, the Greeks, the Mongols, the Romans and a long line of others are learning that when the cards hit the table the Afghan tribes stick with the Afghan tribes. They might tolerate you, feed you, wave when you go by, they might even like you. But if you expect the loyalty of the Gilzai to point anywhere but the Gilzai then you’re obviously thinking in terms of West Europe rather than Central Asia.

At the end of the day, the U.S. is appearing more and more to have somehow found itself on the wrong side of the fight in Afghanistan. Whatever the intentions going in, we’re now fighting the absolutely last people on the world you want to fight in the last place in the world you want to fight them.

There’s been all sorts of stuff just begging to be ballgunned (TM) lately. I won’t play catch up, if you read the Ball Gunner then you’re obviously a person of refining cast among the common rabble. Congratulations.

But I simply can’t pass up what is currently happening in Afghanistan. It has sneezed rigor on to these arthritic bones of mine. Plastered across Fox News even as I type is “NATO and Afghan troops to take back villages from the Taliban.” I doubt Taliban commander Mohammed Omar himself could have picked a better line to set the stage for what’s coming.

What the gulls in Washington haven’t figured out is that the front has shifted from Iraq back to Afghanistan. Iraq is done for by any and all estimates. The hapless goobers in the big media have snuggled up to the “security gains” of late, except nobody has really let slip the slimy truth that we are paying all sides to play nice and behave for awhile. No one is asking, because once that question gets asked someone is just going to be FORCED to ask, “Well, what are they spending the money on?” and the short answer is that they are making down payments on dead Americans, collaborators and rivals with our own money. The British financed their own defeat in Afghanistan long back when Kipling was writing about it. Now, we’re doing the same in Iraq.

But since we’re feeding our own flames in Iraq, the folks we’re fighting, the ones we still believe are some clueless ‘tards with an AK and an RPG, are shifting funding, logistics and operations to Afghanistan. The story is that the Taliban has “seized” a bunch of small towns around Kandahar, the Ball Gunners speculation is that there wasn’t any “seizing” like when the Germans “seized” Stalingrad (however briefly) or the French “seized” Dien Bien Phu. These sorts of “seizings” imply that you fought your way in, I’d imply the Pashtun “seizing” the area around Kandahar is more like Raiders fans “seizing” the Oakland Colliseum, except that the Pashtun have fewer guns and are better mannered.

Simply put, you can’t seize something that’s yours to begin with. This is something the U.S. grapples with - you can’t liberate a place from the people who live there. After the liberators are gone the people are still there, except now they hate you.

Speaking of things the U.S. grapples with, how about diversity? The Afghan army is held up as a model of people from different tribal regions and groups and ethnicities palling around like they’re the A-Team. Which is great, and gets you about 5 feet outside the military base before it breaks up. What it means for current operations can be pretty well summed up.

I. An army full of Uzbeks, Turkmen, Tajiks and a half dozen other groups is going to be sent into the heart of Pashtun country to fight. 

For settling down a region, this strategy would rank right up with sending in the Klan to calm down the L.A. street riots. Which is to say, it will not only not work, it will probably fail spectacularly.
Even assuming the combined armies manages to pacify the area you still don’t get past your first stumbling block - the people you’ve liberated are still there, except now they hate you. You’ve shown the Pashtun that you’re on the side of the people they’ve been fighting since long before the U.S. was even a feeble idea. You’ve shown a proud people that you’re going to make them subservient to others. You’ve, in essence, rammed hell down their throats.

Trying to do anything in Afghanistan has historically been shown to be a pretty pointless venture. Everyone from the Soviets to Alexander can attest to the fact that once you enter that realm everything you know about how people organize and function rewinds about a thousand years. But the one rule, the BIIIIIIG thing you JUST. DON’T. FORGET. is that once you alienate the Pashtun your options are limited to 1) retreat  or 2) a repeat of General Elphinstone’s disaster.

Summer sure got hot early.

It’s the big news that the heap-big “Surge” doctor is going to be taking over at Central Command (CENTCOM) and the number two in Iraq (slightly less heap-big ) Lt. Gen. Raymond Odierno is getting promoted to full-bore “heap big.” Stars and Stripes had a glowing article about how the nomination means the military is going to “embrace counterinsurgency” and that the move is “…part of a shift in the military’s warfighting philosophy to the counterinsurgency tactics that both men embrace.”

But let’s take this pill with a bit of realism.

The last CENTCOM commander just got patted on the head and shuffled off somewhere nice and quiet and away from the media for being rather blunt about his disagreements with the Heap-Biggest in Chief who resides in the White Teepee in DC. Admiral William Fallon didn’t mince many words about the powers rooting for attacking Iran when he said ”This constant drum beat of conflict is what strikes me which is not helpful and not useful. […] I expect that there will be no war and that is what we ought to be working for.” (USA Today) This didn’t sit to well with the democr-issars, partly because rumors have been floating around for some time that either we’re already set for a bombing strike into Iran or we’re already set to act shocked when the Israelis execute a bombing strike into Iran.

Given CENTCOM’s dirty laundry flapping gently in the breeze for the world to enjoy, President Bush nominating his shining champion of Iraq to take up the banner is about as shocking as sand on the beach. But this also represents a pretty big tossup for the big military command. Petraeus made his bread and butter during the surge. Everyone’s lined up to pat him on the back, but the long and short is we don’t know if the tree is going to bear good fruit or just those crappy apples the squirrels knock down before they’re ripe. If Iraq winds up good to go as the Surge forces decline (not looking likely as agitations continue in Basra and Sadr City) then our new CENTCOM commander can ride is as the hero who saved the day. But if Iraq continues circling the bowl we’re going to be dealing with a powerful military commander whose face has been thoroughly egged.

If the latter turns out to be the case it will likely appear that Bush the Junior (just like Clinton the Male-er) packed up a military full of administration-friendly commanders. The military can afford infighting in the post-November maelstrom like I can afford a Ferrari.

Petraeus’ legacy as a counter-insurgent strategist won’t be fully played out for a few year. But as the chief of CENTCOM his ability at politicking will be judged much quicker.

He might find that he enjoyed Iraq better, if you lose there, all they cut off is your head.

There’s a choice bit of newsy cotton-candy at the Washington Post about how the U.S. and Iraqi forces are back in Sadr City. This would be extraordinary news if they had asked why this trip into Sadr-ville as opposed to the bajillion other trips.

Always fans of glorious military battles, the American public, aided by news services that really are ignorant about war, like to think these forays into guerrilla territory are some sort of frenzied armored lozenge rammed down the throat of hell where snarling demons chomp at the heels of soldiers.

The truth (always more mundane than reality) is that when the superheroes barreled into Sadr City they probably found……
barbers, shop keeps, mechanics, children, bums, restaurants, tailors, etc…

These sorts of wars make for boring reporting, atrocious fiction and movies like “Jarhead,” which four whole people went to see. We love to think of the military charging bravely through the Ardennes Forest during the Battle of the Bulge because it sounds exciting and we get to ignore the grimmer details. But, these grand “decisive battles” just aren’t happening in Iraq. No matter who wishes it were so.

To get a better idea, a friend of mine who spent time in Vietnam described the experience as “months of boredom followed by a few minutes of sheer terror.” Unfortunately, guerrillas are very, very, good at using those few minutes to kill lots of people.

But this is where people foul up. There isn’t and won’t be any excitement in Sadr City. Guerrillas don’t fight when they’re outnumbered. Instead, the U.S. and Iraqi forces will go in there and make a lot of noise, they’ll probably rough some people up, somebody in a tank will accidentally smash grandma’s falafel stand, someone will impose a curfew, then lift it, then impose it again, they’ll bottle up an area of 2 million people and set up one entrance and exit point making it hard to bring in supplies or food. Then, to claim success, they’ll snatch up about 20 people that the press releases will call senior leaders and scram.

Once they leave, the Mahdi Army will help rebuild grandma falafel stand, they’ll deliver food and medical supplies, and once the U.S. and Iraqi forces shove off and leave a mess, the local guys will wind up looking like the Eagle Scouts.

I realize the Petraeus policy has been a sensible form of counter insurgency looking to avoid just this sort of scenario. But a platoon of infantry in the heart of Sadr City doesn’t have time for that touchy-feely crap. They’re well aware that a good number of eyes on them aren’t friendly.

Thing is, the Mahdi Army knows that, too. In fact, they’re probably counting on it.

Seriously. These guys are the best at what they do. This isn’t some vague term, as in “they are one of the best,” or “they are pretty good,” or “gee, golly, these guys are neat.” The army Special Forces and Delta operators are the best at what they do.
That being said, why someone with a Meritorious Freeway Driving medal, carpal tunnel and fallen arches is allowed to jerk the tools out of these guys’ hands is just a freaking mystery.

Via the Army Times

The Army has stripped the Asymmetric Warfare Group of its weapon of choice - the Heckler & Koch 416 - saying that its mission requires the unique outfit to carry the standard issue M4 carbine.

The decision reverses a policy that allowed the AWG to buy 416s instead of carrying M4s when it was established three years ago to help senior Army leaders find new tactics and technologies to make soldiers more lethal in combat.

Members of the AWG have declined to comment on the issue, but sources in the

416s, arguing that they outperform the Army’s

community told Army Times that the unit fought to keep its several hundred M4 and require far less maintenance.

I don’t know who finds themselves qualified to argue with these guys about what weapons work best. I’m more than willing to have a discussion about what I do. But if you try to criticize my writing style while being illiterate, yourself, I’m not likely to take you seriously. The guys of Army Special Operations don’t use their weapons in some vague laboratory setting with such and yon variable to determine functionality in this and that environmental condition, they take their boom sticks to far and nasty places and use them to complete their missions and come home.

Having hauled the M-16 (which, internally is the exact same as the M-4) through Kuwaiti dust storms, I can attest to the fact that the damn thing didn’t work as intended. It jammed, it fouled, it would fire, at most, two shots before remedial action was required to get it to go BANG again. The crappy direct impingement gas system, as opposed to piston-driven, simply lacks the reliability to perform in the field. This has been proven and tested time and time again.

More from the Army Times:

This is the latest round of controversy surrounding the M4 since late November, when the weapon finished last in an Army reliability test against several other carbines.

The M4 suffered more stoppages than the combined number of jams by the three other competitors - the Heckler & Koch XM8, FNH USA’s Special Operations Forces Combat Assault Rifle (SCAR) and the H&K 416.

Army weapons officials agreed to perform the dust test at the request of Sen. Tom Coburn, R-Okla., in July. Coburn took up the issue following a Feb. 26 Army Times report on moves by elite Army Special Forces units to ditch the M4 in favor of carbines they consider more reliable. Since then, Coburn has questioned the Army’s plans to spend more than $300 million to purchase M4s through fiscal 2009 rather than considering newer and possibly better weapons available on the commercial market.

This is the same Army full of fire and brimstone for Rumsfeldian “transformation.” How about we worry less about a go-go gadget army and more about the basics, like functioning rifles.

Congress is looking at the Army’s Future Combat System with an increasingly jaundiced eye. Recently, they threatened to strip $900 million from the program, prompting the Army to send some suits down to the Hill to threaten dread results.

Last year, lawmakers cut funding for FCS as they faced mounting pressure to protect troops in combat. They initially tried to “reallocate” as much as $900 million that was earmarked for the program to help pay for body armor for soldiers, up-armored Humvees, Mine Resistant Ambush Protected (MRAP) trucks, and other war needs.

Army officials balked, sounding what one staffer on Capitol Hill called a “general alarm,” and dispatched several senior Army officers to the Hill to repair the damage. They feared that the cuts were the first of attempts to entirely kill off the program. Their efforts led to much of the funding being restored and ultimately only about $200 million was cut from the program.

Cut it now or cut it later, it really doesn’t matter. At current funding levels, the U.S. Army will field Future Combat Systems right about the time the sun supernovas. The bottom line, is that this program represents the “legacy” of a wide swath of military officials, just as it represents billions of dollars in government contracts.

As for needing the tools to win in the “next-generation of warfare;” I would recommend the history section at the Library of Congress. The tools are all there and have been polished by thousands of years of human history. Certainly, Army officials salivate over Robocop warriors marauding, casualty-less, through the bad guys, and it sure sounds like a good time. Reality, however, has a way of injecting itself into these fantasies.