My Reaction

For presentation, I give the President a good grade, an "A" I think. It was clear he knew that his rating is down near what Nixon's was during Watergate ... and his speech reflected a more subdued manner. But I thought it was one of his best in terms of delivery.

But, as I told my husband, it is difficult to compare State of the Union speeches to any other ... they are like the Super Bowl for speech writers, and are almost always eloquent, poised, and rock solid.

Did he say anything ground breaking? It's hard to say anything surprising when the press, pundits and Congress had the speech hours before it was delivered. And had the talking points days in advance. So everyone knew what he was "expected" to talk about. No last minute changes, no earth shattering revelations.

I loved the people they had in the First Lady's box ... including my favorite hero of the year Mr. Autry (spelling?) who jumped on the train tracks in New York and saved a man having a siezure by laying under a train as it rolled over head. Amazing. And the serviceman who took multiple shots in Iraq trying to protect his gunner and refused medical attention because he still had work to do. Amazing. The world is full of good, genuine, awesome heros. Real heros.

What I don't like about the State of the Union? The people that didn't stand when the President talked about Victory in Iraq. Why didn't they? Do they not want to win? Do they want to lose? Or are they so jaded, so biased, so against anything the President may want that they can not stand when victory in Iraq is mentioned.

I heard a guy talking last night that the best thing that can happen is that the President's plan succeed. And that Lt. General Petreaus (the three star about to become the new Commander in Iraq, replacing General Casey) believes that the plan can succeed if given time.

And I think we all need to become more educated on what this plan entails. The 21,500 troops are going to be concentracted mostly in Baghdad, the city which has the most sectarian and insurgency violence. These troops are going to help combat the problems there and stabilize the city, giving the new government more "breathing room" as it tries to run the country.

We also need to realize what's happened, and Petreaus (during his confirmation hearings) outlined things he thought were done wrong in Iraq. Linked is his full testimony yesterday, but below are the things he outlined as missteps. It's long, but worth reading. We can not move forward correctly without first talking about what we've done wrong in the past.

First, there were a number of assumptions and assessments that did not bear out. Prominent among them was the assumption that Iraqis would remain in their barracks and ministry facilities and resume their functions as soon as interim governmental structures were in place. That obviously did not transpire. The assessment of the Iraqi infrastructure did not capture how fragile and abysmally maintained it was (and this challenge, of course, was compounded by looting). Additionally, although most Iraqis did, in fact, greet us as liberators (and that was true even in most Sunni Arab areas), there was an underestimation of the degree of resistance that would develop as, inevitably, a Shi’a majority government began to emerge and the Sunni Arabs, especially, the Saddamists, realized that the days of their dominating Iraq were over. Sunni Arab resistance was also fueled by other actions noted below.

Beyond that, as noted recently by President Bush, there were a number of situations that did not develop as was envisioned:
- There was the feeling that elections would enhance the Iraqi sense of nationalism. Instead, the elections hardened sectarian positions as Iraqis voted largely based on ethnic and sectarian group identity.
- There was an underestimation of the security challenges in Iraq, particularly in 2006 in the wake of the bombing of the mosque in Samara, coupled with an over-estimation of our ability to create new security institutions following the disbandment of the Iraqi security forces – which was not helped by the planning issues described
below.
- It repeatedly took us time to recognize changes in the security environment and to react to them. What began as an insurgency has morphed into a conflict that includes insurgent attacks, terrorism, sectarian violence, and violent crime. Our responses have had to continue to evolve in response, but that has not always been easy.

A number of mistakes were made by both political and military leaders during the course of Operation Iraqi Freedom:
- The very slow (if that) execution of the reconciliation component of de-a’athification left tens of thousands of former Ba’ath Party members (many of them Sunni Arabs, but also some Shi’a) feeling that they had no future opportunities in, or reason to support, the new Iraq. To be fair to CPA, AMB Bremer intended to execute reconciliation (or exceptions to the de-Ba’athification order) and gave me permission, e.g., to do so on a trial basis in Ninevah Province; however, when we submitted the results of the reconciliation commission conducted for Mosul University and subsequent requests for exception generated by Iraqi processes with judicial oversight, no action was taken on them by the de-Ba’athification Committee in Baghdad. As realization set in among those affected that there was to be no reconciliation, we could feel support for the new Iraq ebbing in Sunni Arab majority areas.
- Disbanding the Iraqi army (which was, to be sure, an army that Iraq did not need in the long term as it had vastly more senior officers than were remotely required and was more of a jobs program than a competent military force) without simultaneously announcing a stipend and pension program for those in the Army, the future plan for Iraq’s defense forces, and provisions for joining those forces undoubtedly created tens of thousands of former soldiers and officers who were angry, feeling isrespected, and worried about how they would feed their families. (The stipend plan was eventually announced some 5 weeks after the disestablishment was announced, but it did not cover senior officers, who remained, therefore, influential critics of the new Iraq.) This action likely fueled, at least in part, the early growth of the insurgency and anti-coalition feeling.
- We took too long to recognize the growing insurgency and to take steps to counter it, though we did eventually come to grips with it.
- We took too long to develop the concepts and structures needed to build effective Iraqi security forces to assist in providing security to the Iraqi people.
- Misconduct at Abu Gharyb and in other less sensational, but still damaging cases, inflamed the insurgency and damaged the credibility of Coalition forces in Iraq, in the region, and around the world.
- We obviously had inadequate plans, concepts, organizations, resources, and policies for the conduct of Phase IV (stability and reconstruction) operations; consequently, we were slow to move into Phase IV operations.
- We had, for the first 15 months or more in Iraq, an inadequate military structure. With hindsight, it is clear that it took too long to transform V Corps HQs into CJTF-7 HQs, and that even when we had CJTF-7 HQs, it was not capable of looking both up and down (i.e. performing both political-military/strategic functions and serving as the senior operational headquarters for counterinsurgency and stability operations). Moreover, it is clear that we should have built what eventually became MNSTC-I HQs and the TF-34 HQs (which oversees detainee/interrogation operations) much sooner, along with the other organizations that were eventually established (e.g., the Gulf Region Corps of Engineer HQs).
- Although not a problem in the 101st Airborne Division AOR during my time as 101st commander, it is clear that in certain other AORs there were more tasks than troops, especially in Anbar Province for at least the first year and likely in other areas as well.
- Finally, the strategy pursued in the wake of the bombing of the Al Askariya Mosque in Samarra in February 2006 was unable to arrest the spiraling violence and rise of harmful sectarian activities. Repeated operations in Baghdad, in particular, to clear, hold, and build did not prove durable due to lack of sufficient Iraqi and Coalition Forces for the hold phase of the operations.

The highlighted portions are the main points, and added by me. This list is long, and at first read it pretty much sounds like we didn't do anything right. And while a google search for "What's Going Right in Iraq" doesn't turn up much ... there was an article written by Bill Crawford on January 9th. I've linked to it here, when you have time ... read it. You might be surprised at how much has been done. Or maybe you won't be ... I don't know.

I don't pretend to know what's the right thing to do. I know what I feel ... what I believe ... but I don't know that that is what's right. That that course of action is what history will view as correct. I know that if what Dean Barnett over at Hugh Hewitt says is true, and that some in this country just want us to lose so we learn a lesson and don't go start any other wars ... than I am depressed.

An exceprt from Why Iraq Matters:
Does victory in Iraq matter? Why must American fighting forces remain indefinitely in a country that has never known democratic governance and a region that has been at war for what seems centuries? It appears the Iraqis are not interested in domestic tranquility and therefore the United States should not waste another dime or drop of American blood to quell the violence… All of these platitudes are wonderful sound bites for US politicians and graduates of journalism schools but they fall far short of considering the true importance of success in Iraq, or more critically the consequences of US failure either by true defeat or the more likely defeat being engineered by Democrats, craven Republicans and the mainstream media who unwittingly, or perhaps with full knowledge, are doing exactly what the enemy hopes they will do when they react this way. By so doing they vindicate bin Laden’s assessment of America’s endurance for a long war.

Why has that "rogue" television station in Iraq started using English subtitles? To target the US military and the US press. So they can report more clearly on the propaganda being vomitted up.

Again, I don't know what the "correct" answer is. But I do know that what happened after we pulled out of Vietnam was a disaster for all the citizens in Vietnam, and Cambodia. We can not let that happen here. If we value the lives of others, if we are a nation of plenty that must help those without, we can not let what happened to so many happen again.

An Excerpt from what happened after we left:
On April 17, 1975, thousands of Phnom Penh residents celebrated in the streets as victorious Khmer Rouge troops entered the capitol. This joyous celebration, however, was not because the people of Phnom Penh were supporters of the Khmer Rouge; instead, they felt great relief that the five-year civil war had now come to an end. For the first several hours of that sunny morning it didn't matter which side you were on - Cambodia was finally at peace. This morning revealed a moment of hope.

But hope quickly turned to fear as residents noticed that the Khmer Rouge troops weren't celebrating with them. Embittered and toughened after years of brutal civil war and American bombing, the Khmer Rouge marched the boulevards of Phnom Penh with icy stares carved into their faces. The troops soon began to order people to abandon their homes and leave Phnom Penh. By mid-afternoon hundreds of thousands of people were on the move. "The Americans are going to bomb the city!" was the answer given to residents if they asked why they had to leave Phnom Penh. No exceptions were made - all residents, young and old, had to evacuate as quickly as possible.

As the Khmer Rouge knew well, there were no American plans to attack the city. The deception was a ploy to get people into the countryside, away from the urban confines of the city. The Khmer Rouge believed that cities were living and breathing tools of capitalism in their own right - KR cadres referred to Phnom Penh as "the great prostitute of the Mekong." (Chandler, The Tragedy of Cambodian History, 247) In order to create the ideal communist society, all people would have to live and work in the countryside as peasants. Peasants, in fact, were the Khmer Rouge communist ideal, not unlike the blonde-haired, blue-eyed Aryan of Nazi Germany. Peasants were seen as simple, uneducated, hard-working and not prone to exploiting others. Their way of life had not changed for centuries, yet they always managed to survive. It was this perception that caused the Khmer Rouge to view peasants - old people, to use their political jargon - as the ideal communists for the new Cambodian state.

It gives me shivers to think what Iran and Syria will do with an Iraq they see ripe for the taking ... we made mistakes ... but we can not compound those mistakes by making more still, and perhaps making worse ones.