"US won't pull Marines from Iraq"

[randy_byers]

Okay, I know that my political posts are about as interesting as, oh, every other uninformed political post on the intertubes, but sometimes I can't help myself.

Anyway, a while back I read that the Marines had requested that there be a restructuring of deployments so that the Army handled Iraq and the Marines handled Afghanistan. I thought at the time that this was the Marines saying that Iraq was an idiotic waste of time and resources. Today the Seattle Times reports that the Secretary of Defense has turned down the proposal, and it contains some black comedy along with an interesting insight into the military perspective.

Marine Corps Commandant James Conway is quoted as giving several reasons for the proposal. First he indicates that things are getting so quiet in Anbar Province that "lance corporals are complaining that they don't have anybody to shoot." Ho ho ho! "But that doesn't drive strategic thinking, of course," he is quick to assure us. Nice to know!

Next comes a more feasible reason: "There's a little bit of a recruiting consideration here in this," he said. More baldly: "Switching to Afghanistan at lower numbers would give Marines more time between combat tours, while appealing to those potential recruits who like the idea of fighting in the country that gave haven to al-Qaida before it carried out its Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the United States, Conway said." So it's apparently easier to motivate people to fight their actual enemies! How surprising.

Then comes the punchline: "He referred to the Marines' current duty in Iraq's Anbar province as almost like occupation duty." Yeah, almost! "Occupation is not the right word here, but the long-term security forces, that's not a Marine function," he said.

If "occupation" is not the right word, why is it the first one that occurs to him before he remembers the politically correct one? Still looks to me as though the Marines are saying that Iraq is an idiotic waste of time and resources.

Comments

[pigeonhed.livejournal.com]

War Plan Iraq by Milan Rai cites reports in The Telegraph and other news agencies detailing these stories. The 1997 deal was brokered by the pakistan Foreign Minister and took place shortly before the US attacks. It is reported that mullah Omar had become frustrated with binLaden's unpredictability but it is also quite likely that he feared US reprisals (rightly as it turned out.) and sought to avoid them.
The 2001 deal was negotiated by one of the Saudi princes who has strong links with bin Laden but was scuppered by the US government's refusal to acknowledge the jurisdiction of The Hague and by their unwavering determination to defeat the Taliban. Many sources link this to the Taliban opposition to the oil pipeline (hence Saudi support for The taliban and Iraqi opposition for instance.)

As for the Al-Quaeda itself, there are disputed theories as to how it operates. One that has some credence is that it actually acts as a sort of clearing house/funding agency for disparate smaller groups by offering funds, weapons or knowledge/training as much as it actually acts in itself as a terrorist group. In this respect the saudi government has effectively supported bin Laden as much as the Taliban (partly familial links, partly because of the usefulness re the pipeline, and other reasons.)

[randy-byers.livejournal.com]

I do remember reading in the newspapers at the time that the Taliban had offered up bin Laden sometime after 9/11 and before the US attack, although I didn't remember any of the details about the deal. Whether they really could have delivered him (and what, if any, effect that would have had on al Qaeda) is an interesting question.

[voidampersand.livejournal.com]

Any 1997 deal would not be "shortly before" the U.S. attacks which were in August 1998. Also, going back to the original statement, the U.S. air strikes (actually cruise missiles) were not on Kabul, but on an Al Qaeda training camp just inside the Afghanistan border from Pakistan, about 94 miles from Kabul. And I repeat that it is exceedingly unrealistic to think that the Taliban would hand over the man who had just helped them conquer the city of Mazar-e-Sharif.

When was this supposed deal in 2001? In 2001 the Bush administration was in power. Before September 11, they didn't have any interest one way or the other in the Taliban or Bin Laden. Only after September 11 is there any determination at all to defeat the Taliban. (Keep in mind that the U.S. at the time was controlled by religious conservatives who have much more in common with the Taliban and Bin Laden than with you and me. Also, the Bush administration foreign policy was focused (if one can use that word) on reviving discredited cold war policies against the Soviet Union, um, Russia, and China.) I don't know but I would expect that at the time all sorts of people were popping up and offering to hand over Bin Laden. The tough question is whether any of those offers were credible. I'm very dubious. At the time Bin Laden was protected by a very large force of experienced soldiers and was executing a successful retreat to Tora Bora and the Pakistan border region. Any offer to hand over Bin Laden would have to include penetrating his security and getting back out with him. It would be slightly less unrealistic to consider an offer to get in and assassinate him in a suicide operation, but that was exactly what Bin Laden's organization did to Massoud, and I think the chances of being able to do that back to Bin Laden were basically nil.

The idea that an oil pipeline across Afghanistan was any real factor in this is great fodder for conspiracy theories, but it is completely unrealistic. The Taliban actually was quite happy to have a pipeline crossing their territory and signed a deal in 1998 with Unocal and a Saudi company to construct one (for gas, not oil). The pipeline was not built because of the minor detail of Afghanistan being in an ongoing civil war. Work is still stalled.

The story line seems to be that the U.S. could have gotten Bin Laden in 1997 and 2001 but failed because of U.S. attacks which were motivated by Taliban opposition to an oil pipeline. I'm very unhappy with U.S. policy under the Bush administration, and there were some serious problems under Clinton. I believe in taking any criticism seriously and trying to get to the bottom of it. But this is just ridiculous.

[randy-byers.livejournal.com]

The oil pipeline theory has always reeked of conspiracy theory to me as well. I think it was Victor who argued at the time of the Iraq invasion that the plan all along had been to put Iran in a pinch between US-controlled Afghanistan and Iraq. That makes a lot more sense to me, although that whole "US-controlled" aspect sure hasn't worked according to plan.

[voidampersand.livejournal.com]

Yeah. What a mess.