SPINNING DEFEAT

"We can afford a strategic defeat in Iraq, and a diplomatic reversal, but what we can't afford is a perception of a military defeat," Former Army intelligence specialist Ralph Peters says, "Given how our security is intertwined with the region, we must at a minimum make it clear that our military has not been defeated." That others in the region have long seen the inefficacy of applied military force in establishing democracy in Iraq as a serious strategic defeat incapable of being divorced from the military tactic or lack thereof employed in service to that strategy, it might only now be news to Mr. Peters-- How do we "make it clear our military has not been defeated"....annihilate the Sadr City slums??-- Emulate the Israeli thrust into southern Lebanon in the final hours of last summer's IDF defeat??-- Striking Iran with aerial bombardment seems more like petulant confirmation of the very defeat, perception cannot afford--Tasked to execute the Bush Neocon strategy of bringing ringing democracy to Iraq and thereby transforming the entire middle east has become impossible to achieve-- Maybe not a classic definition but defeat nonetheless and the whole region trepidatiously knows it--

Worrying about perceptions and appearances of military defeat instead of the actual defeat itself and what can be done to repair the real damage is a vain intellectual expedition to no good but a self-deceptive end-- The military defeat that Mr. Peters feigns acknowledging in no way reflects on troop performance-- They were committed to a situation they were untrained for and to a mission whose goalposts were constantly shifted for political reasons until the mission itself fell to irrelevance in the face of the sectarian war none of our esteemed leaders could ever figure out whose side if any they would join-- The camouflage of denial hides as well the blow our confidence must unavoidably suffer when a factual admission of technological under-performance couples itself to the military setback-- The strategery itself was built on using military coercion once it became clear the Sunni elements of Iraq especially after losing their military livelihoods and self respect were not keen to welcome our troops as the newsreel liberators American war salesmen had trumpeted them to be-- Unfriendly as well as friendly governments, tribal leaders and sectarian allies in the region would not kowtow in abject fear of the unmatched US firepower unleashed in the savage crescendo of Shock and Awe opening this Eternal War and would not cede control to the under-armored, under-equipped and under-manned US troops but would aid and abet the Sunni insurgents and the Shiite militias not to mention oddball psychotics like al-Zarquawi who seemed to appear suddenly and without warning proliferating mayhem everywhere like a violently a contagious fungus--

Every Iraqi with a grievance and there were manymany, legitimate or not, watched the blustery American President on worldwide television from the hubris laden security of the White House incite them and instigate them to vicious action and random murder-- "Well Bring It On!!!!"-- And On they have brought it but not at the tempo our amply skilled troops trained for-- and not on terrain our courageous troops expected and certainly not with any lack of courage and fight the cloistered Neocons once reserved only for those anachronistic Rumsfeldian 'deadenders' who couldn't quite get with the surrender program-- In fact there was never any surrender-- Just a rooster strut down an aircraft carrier in glowing hollywood twilight and a declaration of combat cessation before the war really began--The insurgency metastasized like cancer-- The Sunnis began to fight for their lives-- Without oil profits they are dead-- Why wouldn't they fight ferociously--

Mr. Peters, templates exist from the last half of the last century right up to the present day delineating how weak little insurgent guerrillas may stalemate powerful armies of rich and more techno-advanced states and in some cases expel them from their bases of occupation-- The deadender outcasts of the world know now as before lining up toe-to-toe with world power armies out in the open is a prescription for failure--Sometimes merely staying alive to fight another day acts as a military defeat for the Occupation even if a super knockout blow never arrives as in Afghanistan-- Sometimes the sophisticated media savvy these so-called anti-modern fifth-century fanatics employ inestimably out-performs a vaunted Abrams tank--Cunningly the insurgency frustrates the Occupier because the aggressor has to win quickly as the costs of continuing operations in men and material climb at least somewhat exponentially-- Two billion dollars a week now in Iraq nearly ten billion a month including Afghanistan--Sometimes it is better to bleed the enemy than kill him-- The first maxim of Guerrilla warfare is Never Be In A Hurry--

The aggressor/occupier must knock out the opponent as quickly as possible and in the case of Iraq the inability to arrive at the second stage of occupation where job creation and infrastructure repairs would give the iraqi undecideds an alternative to insurgency can't happen because lack of security won't logistically allow it-- Security crackdowns by foreign doorbusters that inevitably lead to revenge and basic physical hunger drive the decisions of those who climb off the fence starved of neutrality and join the mayhem--The inability to restore pre-war electrical capability alienated the relatively cushy Sunni middle class who awoke the next day to discover their employment in the Iraqi state-run industries had been dissolved-- With friends like Bremer why they would refuse to climb aboard the American Liberation train is inescapably obvious, little if any common sense needs PhD credentials to figure this out--

Not only did the Sunnis lose their jobs and their oil, they lost their government in tainted elections to their historical enemies, the Shiites-- That the Iraqi Shiites might be mutually receptive to help as in arms and money and intel and training from Iranian Shia somehow seemed lost on the Bush warcons-- An obviously de-stabilized Iraq not recently under a pro-Iranian rule but from the purple finger get-go of the elections Bremer and Bush forced on the Sunni and it seems Mr. Bush is only now becoming cognizant of the fact that our invasion and occupation actually elevated Iran into a position of huge regional influence-- Surprisingly now only to those neocons still not fully aroused from the slumber of their truculent illusions but the subsequent politically charged demonization of Amadinejhad only increased the Iranian power and middle eastern resistance to the US-- The best laid plans of mice and men...............

The deterioration of the oil infrastructure and failure to secure the pipelines eliminated a once lucrative source-potential to defray the redoubling cost of the entire mistaken enterprise-- All the while the Def Sec, the State Sec and the White House espoused a ham-fisted recalcitrant denial that an insurgency even existed-- Even amidst charges the Def Sec was excessively micro-managerial this almost paralytic refusal to acknowledge the insurgency enveloped the war cabinet in an air of acute denial from which it couldn't act (Even Mr. Rogers can say 'civil war'--)How can they alter failing tactics if they refuse to see basic problems in realistic light??-- Is this a strategic or a tactical failure??--Does it matter, if those tactically experienced boots on the ground tasked to implement a successful occupation, to "impose our will on Iraq"(Bremer) have to submit to inexperienced supervision from civilian hacks employed only because they correctly answered the "Roe Versus Wade" litmus test??-- How out of touch with reality is this??--The canard that we just didn't use our massive firepower in a brutal enough way or that our rules of engagement hamstrung our soldiers doesn't explain why the Russians with all their brutality and weaponry at their disposal and a willingness to use them freely (with the exception of nukes) have failed to thwart the Chechnyan resistance--

The fact is, Mr Peters, if the world perceives us as weak, it is not mis-perception because we are weak-- Explosive capability isn't the only measure of strength nor in many cases is it the most effective-- The Neocon architects and the Big Money behind their indulgent mahogany think-tanks and sycophantic cheer-leading media and all the professional go-along-to-get-along politicians and their elitist health-insured fund-raising staffs and the double-dipping palm-greasing defense industry moguls and the money grubbing lobbyists sitting this one out sipping wine in some stylish and richly gated community in a suburban enclave somewhere sunny did not see fit to engage any of their offspring in the quintessential Battle of Civilization in the most decisive ideological struggle in our history-- (The one honorable exception to my knowledge is Senator James Webb and I'm sure quite a number of others unbeknownst to me echo the risk of such sacrifice to which I salute)-- But when the only voices raised to protest the ugly treatment our individual soldiers experience at the careering hands of the military court martial system are the young men's families and the vigilant heroic work being done at http://jaghunters.blogspot.com/ something is seriously off-kilter here-- This is more than an affordable "diplomatic reversal".....way more--

Mr. Peters, by any other definition this inability to accept the idea of defeat still denotes weakness-- The urge to 'spin' defeat into something else is not strength in eyes of those you seek to fool-- The facts circulating even now worldwide concerning White House ineptitude coupled with similar readings about the DOD and State Dept. are open source for the world to see-- The current DC echelon (Congress or lack of it, included) can run from those facts but they can't hide-- The world knows we are not economically strong enough to finance this hysterical mis-adventure ourselves--US consumers haven't saved so much as a nickle over the course of the last two years and as a result foreign lenders have gained a much larger measure of influential power over our ability to act independently-- Veterans benefits and Veterans hospitals are being scissored and this isn't a defeat???-- Our culture is too weak, too decadent and too self-absorbed be attentive to world affairs or to fight for itself or its spoils-- While the lower class young men and women bleed out the primes of their lives defending the American exceptionalism and irresponsibility that allows middle and upper class kids to dis-engage from duty and struggle and self-defense through the hideous manufactured alienation of the likes of Ipods, ecstacy and heroin to name only a few-- Who wants to die for an IPOD of American Idol fantasy for Christ's sakes??-- Bread and circus has made us soft, indulgent and abjectly tuned-out if not autistically dis-connected-- Peril impending??...... Defeat???........ Call it.........??....... whatever!!--