Hello tooearly, <<selling calls on NEM for a while>> ... we may have to adjust our stance and adapt to new reality at some point, especially if:
(a) The House of Saud starts to wobble
(b) The US announces 'new' strategy of quickly handing control of Iraq to, no, not the governing council, for the folks in it have no legitimacy, experience, necessary cruelty, needed cunning, but say, an ex-Saddam loyalist general who was out in the field against Iran while Saddam was doing the murdering in the cities … you know, a ruthless puppet; or
(c) 2004 regime change in Washington becomes truly uncertain
Geopolitical Diary: Wednesday, Nov. 12, 2003
Nov 13, 2003
stratfor.biz
The war council in Washington appears to have ended. It was framed by the Nov. 12 guerrilla attack on Italian forces in Iraq and a report from the CIA saying that the U.S. political position in Iraq is deteriorating, while opposition to the United States is intensifying. Thus, as we discussed Nov. 11, the main intelligence evaluation has flipped extremely negative -- the proper default setting when you just don't know and the guerrillas are continuing a Ramadan offensive.
The Bush administration is now into a fundamental crisis of confidence. These happen in all wars. Britain faced the fall of Singapore. The Soviets bore the crisis in front of Moscow. The North Vietnamese saw the failure of the Tet offensive. All were able to rally back, not only militarily, but also intellectually and strategically. The crisis forced them to confront the fundamental weaknesses in their positions and to invent ways to compensate for them. Some nations don't get through their crises: France in 1940, facing the disaster in the Ardennes, could not will itself out of paralysis.
The question confronting the Bush administration is whether it has the depth and will to think its way out of the crisis. Indeed, in a certain sense it is absurd to compare the battle in the Sunni Triangle with Singapore, Moscow or Tet. The scale is simply not there. But the responsibility for that rests with the administration. The Bush team so vastly underestimated the insurgents' capabilities and so consistently deprecated their enemy that the administration itself has been stunned to encounter resistance. It is not the critics of the administration that have it tied up in knots. Rather, it has tied itself up in knots. The administration left itself psychologically unable to deal with what is inevitable in any war: unpleasant surprises.
This has magnified the crisis dramatically, because apart from not anticipating a resistance, the administration clearly had no coherent strategy for dealing with one. Therefore, the crisis is not on the battlefield, but in Washington, where dismay has become a substitute for an operational plan. Where Winston Churchill, Joseph Stalin and Vo Nguyen Giap all pushed through their crises to redefine the war on their terms, the will and energy simply doesn't seem to be there in Washington.
The problem is not in Iraq. The problem is in Washington, where there is an intellectual and spiritual crisis. Intellectually, President George W. Bush's team appears unable to conceptualize a war plan to deal with the guerrillas. Spiritually, the team appears to be exhausted, lacking the will to accept the guerrilla war and maintain its momentum in other theaters in spite of it. It is not just Iraq: The United States is on the defensive in Afghanistan and has failed to mount expected attacks in Africa. The broader war on al Qaeda appears to have shifted to the defensive.
Such crises happen. One way through them is to recognize that your team has hit its wall -- and fire the lot. That works only if you have a team to replace it with, and if the new team can show rapid progress with new ideas. There does not appear to be a B team in the wings. Another solution is to decide that the particular campaign was an error and withdraw. Bush already has said that that isn't an option, and the results of a withdrawal after having invaded would be far worse than never having invaded at all.
The leaked CIA report indicates that the White House is going with the worst-case scenario. In war, accepting the worst-case scenario is frequently the first step to wisdom. The second step is accepting that radical action must be taken and taking that action, even in the face of danger. That is the hard part. And that is the crisis of the war. Having accepted that things have not turned out as expected and that the current situation requires radical change, taking risky, radical steps is the next logical process.
U.S. administrator for Iraq Paul Bremer is being asked to go back to Iraq to convince the interim governing council to take over. That is not a strong move. Begging someone to take responsibility for the country you just conquered -- and having them say no -- does not, shall we say, project the requisite "manly" image. Now, Bremer might have other instructions he is taking back to Iraq with him. However, if his comments to the press were indicative, he does not seem to be heading back with the spirit of Churchill seared into his soul by the president.
And that -- not the guerrilla movement in Iraq -- is the defining crisis of this war.
Copyright 2003 Strategic Forecasting LLC. All rights reserved. |
