“The British admitted defeat in North America and the catastrophes that were predicted at the time never happened. The catastrophes that were predicted after Vietnam never happened.”
– former General Michael Rose, urging a retreat from Iraq.
Ok, so the defeat in North America in 1782 did not result in catastrophe (unless you happened to be an American Tory of course) and that somehow tells us something about Iraq circa 2007 according to the former General. But Vietnam? Thirty years of communist totalitarianism are not a catastrophe? Presumably the Boat People were just Vietnamese tourists looking for Disneyland and everything was really just peachy after the fall of Saigon in 1975.
What would constitute a catastrophe, I wonder?. A couple Croatian chums of mine had the dubious pleasure of meeting Michael Rose in Bosnia (which is a story I would love to tell but do not feel I can) and they told me some rather uncomplimentary things about him and they certainly felt they got the better of him ‘professionally’. If that is his ‘take’ on Vietnam, he does not sound like someone whose judgement I would much care to rely on, that is for sure.
I once found a reference to a British newspaper editorial from the late 1940s or early 1950s that essentially said that we must be careful in dealing with the Soviet Union because “if it were to become unstable and Stalin were to fall, the hardliners might take over”.
Of course, if catastrophe was defined as the last nail being pounded in the British Empire, it certainly did bring about catastrophe.
And if you were a citizen of the South or Cambodia, you would be hard to convince that everything was A-OK after the loss in Vietnam.
I bet he thought that sacking of Rome wasn’t a big deal because the capitol of the Empire moved to Constantinople. Everything is OK then!
To be as charitable as possible to General Rose… No it wasn’t the Apocalypse in any of these places.
Being more pragmatic, if you fight a war in territory x and the end result is losing in territory x then surely that is pretty much the worst that usually happens.
It sounds like Gen Rose would’ve spun the Falklands campaign (if it had been lost) as not being too bad really because an Argentine Armada wasn’t going to land at Folkestone.
Not to mention Cambodia. Withdrawal of American advisors and support, while being assured by the press that Pol Pot was not that bad, led to the Killing Fields.
But no doubt those predicted catastrophes don’t really count.
It appears that some former British generals are as perceptive as some former American generals regarding what to do now in Iraq.
Their most important contribution to British and American military strategy in Iraq now is their absence from that decision-making.
For that contribution, we can all sleep better tonight!
It was a disaster for individual Vietnamese, but it was not a world geopolitical disaster.
The dominos didn’t topple as expected. Thailand, Malaysia, Burma, Indonesia, Australia and New Zealand didn’t go commie. On the other hand, if you are going to be so insouncient about losing a war, why bother fighting them?
Besides, I think he is just plain wrong. Islam isn’t going to collapse with everyone abandoning it any time soon.
Lee Kuan Yew, Singapore’s elder statesman, has said the reason his country and others didn’t fall to the communists was BECAUSE of the the US’s heavy involvement in Vietnam.
And last time I looked, the Viet Cong weren’t a transnational terrorist organization whose primary purpose is attacking the West, not fighting in Vietnam.
Al Qaeda has called Iraq the main battlefront in the war against the West. Why not take this at face value?
As for Rose, one is predisposed to admire a man with his credentials, but I long ago noticed that he’s bit of a flake.
The loss of the American states was far from the last nail being pounded in the British Empire… it wasn’t even the first nail really. The Empire continued to grow and did not reach its peak for well over 100 years after that. It was not until World War I that the Empire went into decline.
If Gordon Brown were to fall into a pool and not be able to get back out, that would be a disaster.
If anyone rescued him, That would be a catastrophe!!
(Apologies to Disraeli, I think)
I think the General means that the withdrawal of the army did not cause a catastrophe in the home territory of the army, but that would not be the case here. Any withdrawal, and any timetable of such, would be seen as a victory for the guerillas. How did he get to be a general if he can’t figure this out for himself?
The one in 410 wasn’t. What was a big deal was the hordes of unassimilated German immigrants who’d been rampaging around the countryside since Adrianople in 376.
ITYM capital.
ITYM Ravenna.
I’m inclined to give Rose the benefit of many a doubt, given that the man is probably the most experienced special forces commanding officer in the British army in modern times (he commanded the Iranian embassy siege as well as British special forces in the Falklands plus numerous other commands). Unfortunately, as special forces commanders are wont, he is unable to keep his mouth shut on areas he knows he should not comment on, as was exemplified in his command in Bosnia and is again being shown up in his comments on Iraq.
Without arguing about the merits or demerits of invading Iraq in the first place, a subject I’m sure many Samizdata readers are exhausted from reading about, whatever General Rose or Samizdata Towers HQ think, the British and the Americans will be coming out of Iraq, and probably sooner rather than later. They have lost. The rest is merely detail.
The longer this US-led occupation army remains, the more people are going to die, so the sooner they leave the better. Yes, it will be an utter catastrophe and a disaster when they do leave, which is where Rose may be off the mark, but as long as they continue to stay there will be an even worse ongoing catastrophe and disaster. Take your pick. I’ll go for the one where British soldiers stop being killed off on an almost daily basis, and come back home to defend these shores, rather than being used as imperial pawns by US armchair neocon generals in Washington.
Unless armies are prepared to decimate (or even exterminate) hostile populations under their control, they almost always lose, just as the British lost in North America and the Americans lost in Vietnam; this may be the point Rose was trying to make. Who knows?
But Iraq is not our country. We should get out of it and let the people there sort themselves out. Iraq itself isn’t even the country of the people who live in that area, but an artificial construction of the French and British Empires. It is probably three separate nations, and possibly more, and once we do leave and stop trying to engineer a single American-controlled state, to please the Turkish government, this natural breakup will eventually do everyone there a lot more good than our staying, as the breakup of the United Kingdom will do us all a lot of good here in Britain, despite short-term fractures when Scotland goes in three years time (I hope).
You may accuse me of being cavalier with a lot of people’s lives, but I can only foresee a lot more deaths by our remaining in situ than will occur when we leave. And even if I was a supporter of the US-led occupation of Iraq, isn’t it clear now that the US really has lost? They’re going anyway. They may as well make the best of it while they can, to avoid having to fly helicopters out of the Baghdad green zone on the last day of the occupation, as with Vietnam, or try to avoid leaving such administrative horrors as the British did when they left the Asian sub-continent, eventually resulting in Pakistan and India pointing nuclear weapons at each other – well done, Britannia.
It may be that George Bush has to leave the Whitehouse first, before this US withdrawal gets underway, but the withdrawal is now virtually inevitable. The sooner the US government gets back to the foreign policies of Jefferson, and stops meddling with the rest of the world, the better for all of us.
I tend to think the intra Islamic genocide that will follow a US/UK departure will be far greater than the current level of sectarian murders.
Much may be avoidable by splitting Iraq into three parts – Sunni, Shi’ite and Kurdish, but the third would cause problems from Turkey, which makes it politically unacceptable. I wonder if the Turks could be bribed somehow to allow a united, independant Kurdistan?
Jack, you’re as clueless as Michael Rose. The VAST majority of deaths in Iraq are Iraqi people being killed by other Iraqi people. That will not stop just because the USA and UK pull out, quite the contrary in fact, it will reach a crescendo as soon as the last troops are gone and that really will be a catastrophe. Saddam was a catastrophe and the aftermath of Saddam is a catastrophe.
i dunno if im being retarded, but i really dont get samizdatas “line” on foriegn wars. i find antiwar.com, who are libertarians too, a lot more consistent- if you dont want your state ruling you, then why allow it to rule other people in other countries?
The sooner the US government gets back to the foreign policies of Jefferson, and stops meddling with the rest of the world
And the chances of the rest of the world not meddling with the United States are exactly what? Pray tell?
to avoid having to fly helicopters out of the Baghdad green zone on the last day of the occupation
And how do we achieve this without first achieving victory? A retreating force will always have to do this in some form or another. I understand that the final British troops to leave Dublin did so walking backwards with their rifles pointed forwards.
Rob:
“i find antiwar.com, who are libertarians too, a lot more consistent”
Only if you find having your head buried in the sand regarding foreign policy as consistent.
ITYM Ravenna.
The Western Empire was the junior partner in all this.
Ravenna was the capital sort of in the way any swamp would be when compared to say, London or New York.
Hell, even York was the capital for a short time.
To pull out of Iraq now would lead to a bloodbath and the coalition forces would never, ever be trusted again. There are people out there who simply want to rule the world and will stop at nothing to win. They have seen how we capitulate to terrorists and will copy those methods, rocket science it ain’t. If we capitulate is Rose and the BBC going to take the blame when it becomes a catastrophe.
this natural breakup will eventually do everyone there a lot more good than our staying,
Like the ethnic cleansing and the wholesale murder, and all-out war between the intermingled minorities. That is “a lot more good…”
What Gen. Rose meant to say is: it wasn’t a catastrophe for us. A couple of million small yellow chaps getting murdered by their brethren is no catastrophe for us.
Same goes for the opponents of the Iraqi war. Let the Suni, Shia, Turkmen and Kurds murder each other as much as they like. It is no concern of ours.
“The VAST majority of deaths in Iraq are Iraqi people being killed by other Iraqi people. That will not stop just because the USA and UK pull out,”
No, but it WILL stop American and UK soilders from being killed, which is what I’m personally much more conerned about.
You can certainly argue that “victory” may be possible, if you could first detail what that means. But it must be admitted that there is a valid arguement that the war in it’s current state will not be won. In that case, losing any further American lives defending something other than American’s is unacceptable.
There are many reasons why we shouldn’t declare defeat in Iraq — that there is no defeat is certainly one of them — but it never ceases to amaze me that people who favor a withdrawal have somehow convinced themselves that the war will end.
Al-Qaeda is focusing on Iraq because it rightly understands that a successful capitalist democracy in the heart of the Middle East could trigger more of the same throughout the region, probably neutering the anger and frustration that currently feeds the Jihadi movement.
But if we abandon Iraq, al-Qaeda will emerge triumphant and, newly emboldened, will return to attacking Western countries directly.
Defeat has severe ramifications. Is anyone confident that Reid, Pelosi et al have seriously considered them?
What are the winning conditions for Iraq?
Serious question.
Any regime less mass murderous and wicked than Saddam’s Ba’athists and which is not friendly to Al Qaeda. That is perfectly attainable. Fostering ‘democracy’ should NOT be anything more than an incidental aim.
Personally I favour splitting the country into three parts (Shi’ites, Sunni and Kurdish).
I tend to agree – Iraq is after all an artificial creation in the first place, that like many similar African creations has degenerated into tribal conflict. I’m not entirely convinced that the conflicts would stop, but at least we might see an end to mass murder in the streets.
The other problem is of course that the country is by no means easy to partition. If we saw the sort of butchery that occurred in India and Pakistan in 1947 but on a tri-partite basis teh consequences would be horrific.
Jack,
It appears you may have been serious with your remark about Jefferson.
The terrorists of the middle east Islamic states have always projected their extortion and violence as far as they can. “Tribute and subsidies” have never been a viable plan.
As a curious side note for someone who signs Jack ‘Maturin’, was this sentence – “In fact, the Roman Catholic Religious Order of Mathurins had operated from France for centuries with the special mission of collecting and disbursing funds for the relief and ransom of prisoners of Mediterranean pirates.”
Given that Rose is quoted as saying “The catastrophes that were predicted after Vietnam never happened” I would recommend that he studies the any proposed holocaust denial law very carefully before he addresses a Cambodian audience.
Alan,
Are you proposing that after failing to attain Victory in VN we should have gone West and tried to take over Cambodia? BTW, the catastophes were the “domino effect,” the failed theory that dumbya used to internally justify the attack in the first place.
Midwest,
Isn’t the key difference in your comparison the fact that we were opposing “states,” rather than some combination of criminal and terrorist NGOs? A nation has something to lose. Suicide bombers clearly don’t and they and their handlers must be dealt with differently.
Perry.
I agree. The Balkanization of Iraq is the only way to end wholesale intersectarian violence. Then the world can can get back to fighting militant Islamisism (is that a real word?).
chip,
Withdrawl from Iraq is not defeat. We already won by removing Saddam. The Iraqis have decided to kill themselves, so be it. AQI is being created by our presence, leaving will remove their number one recruiting tool. And, as I opined above, will let us focus our resources better.
What are the winning conditions for Iraq?
It was clearly stated by the US: having the Iraqi government (Maliki, or any other) firmly in control, i.e. – not in immediate danger of being overthrown by Islamic terrorists.
In other words: making sure Iraq is not run by the terrorists like Afghanistan was.
A tall order, may take many years, but definitely achievable.
Withdrawal from Iraq is not defeat. We already won by removing Saddam. That would have been true if we withdrew the day after Saddam’s statue was pulled down, or maybe even the day his teeth have been inspected, after he was found in that hole he was hiding in. Note, I am not saying that this is what we should have done, all things considered. This leads me to the main problem I have with this war: the fact that its real goals have not been clear from the beginning.
Chip, I agree with you that the Vietnamese were not a transnational terrorist organization. In the eyes of the West, though, they certainly were billed as such. We got that war a little cockeyed–we thought they were Reds first, hell-bent on tumbling dominoes, Vietnamese distant second. We let our fear of communism cloud our understanding. Americans then said we had to fight them in Vietnam or we would end up fighting them in the US.
In fact, they were just as you said–Vietnamese fighting a war of national liberation. After all, they broke with the Chinese and invaded Cambodia soon after we left–they were self-interested Vietnamese first and selfless communist revolutionaries a distant second. Westerners often err in the same way when they discuss Iraq. Iraqis are not attempting to reconquer Spain or march on Vienna. They are trying to recapture their own country and Islam is a banner to rally around. No doubt there are fervent Muslims in Iraq the way there were loyal communists in Vietnam, but that does not mean we should embrace the worst case scenario to the exclusion of equally plausible ones.
Derek, coalition forces are not trusted now. Too many Shiite insurgents swung from lightposts after following Bush I’s encouragement to fight Saddam.
Perry, if we Balkanize Iraq, what should the UK and US do if/when Turkey attacks Kurdistan as its generals have promised, Saudi Arabia makes good on its threat to aid its fellow Sunnis militarily and Iran consolidates its influence over the Shia? Turkey’s in NATO, SA has Shah-like legitimacy issues, and we cannot handle Iran now. Kirkuk and Baghdad will be killing fields under partition.
Any plan will need to have reasoned responses before we start redrawing maps.
Withdraw the allied forces into Kurdistan as part of the wind-down (their close proximity also has a useful ‘long shadow’ effect elsewhere nearby) and make it clear to the Turks that a ‘stability’ force will remain in Kirkuk long enough to legitimise the Kurdish state and greatly raise the political cost to Turkey for interference. In fact, moving the assets from Incirlik in Turkey to Kirkuk in Kurdistan makes quite a lot of sense both strategically and politically. Turkey did not hesitate to act in its interests during the war against Saddam and so the US should do likewise. The Kurds can be pressured into not supporting their terrorist brethren in Turkey (but should be encourage to do precisely that in Iran) as a very reasonable price for independence (at least for a few years).
Yes, the Saudis will try to interfere in Sunnistan-Iraq… and the US should pump money into the opponents of the Saudis in Iraq and just let them play whatever political games they want. Still cheaper in the long run. Clearly a more secular order does have its supporters, so just back them and let them fight their own corner.
Shia-stan… yeah, that one is a bit of a problem, no doubt about it, and there may be no viable solution that has a good outcome. However keeping it part of a unitary Iraq also does not mitigate the problem. At least Iran is a regional threat rather than an Al Qaeda super-national threat (small comfort, I know, particularly if you live in Israel).
“What are the winning conditions for Iraq?”
An example of asking the wrong question. 🙂
History doesn’t work that way: problem fixed, job done, everybody goes home and lives happily ever after. It’s one of the problems with this war; in order to sell it to the short-sighted they had to tell people it was just Afghanistan and Iraq – Saddam and the Taliban. Get rid of them and everything will be peachy.
But it isn’t about Saddam; its about Islamism and Arab Nationalism and anti-Westernism. Ultimately it’s about our survival as a culture. It’s the long war, and Iraq and Afghanistan are merely the first campaign of many.
People who want things to be simple keep asking about when the Iraq war will be won, as if they expected to be able to win it here and now, as if that was our purpose in fighting there. We will win the war when the Islamists stop fighting back, but that isn’t going to happen any time soon. But in the short-term we can certainly win the battles and can define clearly what we are fighting for.
We have fought (successfully) to remove at least one imminent danger. We have fought to drag at least one Islamic country out of the 7th century and into maybe the 19th or 20th, and are fighting now to keep it there. We are fighting to prove that it is possible for Muslims to be free, to prosper, to benefit from Western values. We are fighting to have at least one nation out there that isn’t brought up from birth to hate us. We are fighting to give the Islamic terrorists and Caliphists and assorted nutters a bloody nose and to discredit their propaganda: that we are weak and cowardly and that they’re going to win so you’d better join them if you want to be on the winning side. Because you don’t want to be on the losing side against Islamists, you really don’t.
We’re fighting for lots of things in Iraq, and some we will be able to achieve soon, and others will take a long time with Iraq as only the first step. Some we have already achieved, of course. We won against Saddam and the Baathists, and had that been all there was arrayed against us, all the fighting would have been over by now. But of course the enemy we face is far greater than just the Baathists, and because they know what we’re up to they’re obviously going to fight back. Governments fund and train and arm people to attack us, and watch with a smirk because they know we can’t do anything to get to them yet. They pump up the bad news, stir up chaos, because they can watch CNN too and see all the people calling for us to give up, to surrender, to try to do deals. They like the sound of that. They know they can’t defeat us directly, but they can get us to defeat ourselves. They use our strengths against us.
This is a war about cultures and values and beliefs. It is a war fought as much or more with words and ideas in small-town America or Europe as with guns on the battlefield. Is freedom worth fighting for? Should freedom spread? Do you want to start fighting for it now, while we can still win fairly easily, or must we wait until the enemy is inside our own gates before we will act? If we selfishly do not help others win or defend their freedom, why would anyone help us when it is time to defend our own? Do most of us even understand that there is an enemy, or what their intentions for us are?
We are fighting to bring freedom to Iraq, and I don’t see how any libertarian worthy of the name can argue with that. We need to give hope to everyone else around the world who wants freedom, to convince them it is worth joining our side, that we will stick with them through the hard times and will never surrender. We need to convince everyone that the Islamists can’t be believed or trusted, and that joining them is both suicidal and pointless. And that the methods they use and the laws they impose where they temporarily win are evil. We need to be seen as the winning side, and the side people should want to win.
Freedom must grow, or it will die.
Alisa,
The first aim was for the 2nd Bush President to finish the war that his father had started in the Gulf War.
The 2nd aim was to install a democracy in the middle east, a democracy composed of fellow-Arabs, so the ordinary Arab in the street could think to himself ‘Democracy is possible for Arabs.”
There may have been a third aim, of securing Oil supplies for the future.
And the other aim was to get rid of all them weapons of mass destruction. We succeeded! When we got there, they had no WMDs at all! Must have destroyed them all, when they heard we were coming….
Nicholas: I am not feeling so sarcastic on either of these. All are legitimate in my view, to a certain extent. Well, except for the democracy thing. Not that it was not legitimate, but it was
sillynaive. The problem I have is that all of the above are educated (?) guesses from observers. I expect our leaders to actually tell us in plain terms what the goals are. Yes, there was much talk about WMDs, but as you point out, it was obvious to everyone that that was only part of the story.“When we got there, they had no WMDs at all!”
Well, only about 500 of them. That’s hardly anything. Barely noticable, really. Not even worth mentioning. In fact, forget I mentioned them at all.
Pa’s longer comment above is what I had in mind. I wish Bush has said that.
My friend Murray has just posted this. The guy who wrote it makes an excellent point.
Damn. Here’s the link.
I think the general has forgotten something; the British Army was obliged to fight a second war after the Americans invaded Canada.
They were also obliged to destroy Washington in a punitive campaign.
It was virtually a terrorist campaign to ensure that the Americans didn’t do it again.
“This time is an hour of maximum danger to freedom… Our generation has been given the role of defending it…I do not shrink from this responsibility, I welcome it. America would pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe, to ensure the survival and success of liberty.”
John F. Kennedy, inaugural address, 1960.
JFK was a Democrat. How times change….
That is, of course, 1961.
Yes. Well … JFK was an American, a citizen of the USA, its culture and its values, and the President of the American people.
Today’s Democrats are ‘Citizens of the World’, with ‘principles’ and ‘loyalties’ to match.
I was against the judgement to go into Iraq again (although it was legal – due to Saddam’s endless breaches of the 1991 cease fire agreement).
However, this is not the same thing as being in favour of pulling out now. Pull out and it will shouted as a victory for the worst interpretations of Islam (both in the Sunni camp and in the Shia camp) and victory in Afghanistan (or anywhere else) will become much harder (if possible at all).
“The West has already lost” – simply not true. There is not even a military danger of defeat on the ground – only the threat of a political defeat back home (due to media propaganda).
“It is not libertarian to support the enslavment of populations overseas” – I quite agree, but no such thing is being done.
“It is not libertarian to support any war other than a war against invaders on ones own land”.
Even if we ignore the invasion of 9/11 (and, contrary to the media, there were A.Q. people in Iraq under Saddam and they were working with Saddam inspite of considering him not a proper Muslim – working with him on the “enemy of my enemy” grounds) this would (for example) rule out Korea and World War II (an intervention by Britain against Germany long before there was any attack on British lands) as well as Vietnam and Iraq.
“And quite right to” would say (for example) the Rothbardians at the Ludwig Von Mises Institute. However, Ludwig Von Mises himself would not have agreed.
As for General Rose.
There is a popular myth that someone who fights for his country must be a good man – this is quite false.
For example, Edward Heath fought in World War II and he was a total scum bag.
Nor does being a General (even a good General) mean your words should be trusted. The most famous case is that of Bendict Arnold (a fine General – much better than Washington), but there are many other cases of good soldiers who are not to be trusted.
One case in particular springs to mind (because of its political effect).
There was a head of the U.S. Marines (I think his name was Butler) who in retirment made a big name for himself as a radical leftist (cooperating with Communists and so on). He claimed that the Marines had been used to prop up the commercial interests (i.e. defend the property) of American companies in varous Latin American countries – and that this was a terrible thing to do.
He also played the class war card at home – for example rounding up varous wealthy people in Philadelphia (during his time as head of the police their in the early 1920’s) on the, plausible, grounds that prohibition should not just apply to the poor – but really to earn points with his new friends.
However, in spite of year after year of open cooperation with the left (including the most extreme elements of the left) he was widely believed when he lauched a propaganda move in the early 1930’s.
According to Butler various businessmen had approached him as part of a coup plot against F.D.R. – they wanted to set up a “Fascist dictatorship” with him as its head, but he had expossed their evil plot instead.
This got a lot of media coverage (and is still found in various books, and parts of the internet to this day).
Why businessmen should approach someone who was known to be a fanatical hater of capitalists was not explained. Nor was their desire for a “Fascist dictatorship” when F.D.R. himself had based his economic policy (the N.I.R.A. and so on) on Italian Fascism. Surely pro Fascist businessmen would have supported F.D.R. (as some big corporate types did) rather than have plotted to depose him.
Still all counter arguments were dismissed by the left – after all General Butler was a great fighter for the United States with a stack of medals. So any piece of crap he came out with must be true.
Still odd things happen I suppose.
After all I was approached to be a Conservative party candidate for a local election – even though I have been quite open in my contempt for the national leadership and in my opposition to local policy (there does not seem to be much national policy for me to take a position on). And I accepted – I had nothing better to do.
However, I do not think anyone will be asking me to be the leader of a Revolutionary Communist government in Britain any time soon.
“Yes we know you despise Marxism – but your name is similar to that of the great Karl, and you have nothing else on at the moment so why not……”
Does General Rose also support defeat in Afghanistan?
If he does not, how does he think we can be defeated in Iraq and go on to victory in Afghanistan?
Does he not understand that it is the same enemy (who, internationally, would be overjoyed by a Western defeat in Iraq – and by the defeat of the majority of decent Muslims there). An interpretation of Islam (both by some Sunni and some Shia) that is radically hostile to the West.