by hilzoy
From the NYT:
“As British troops pull out of their last base in Basra, some military commanders and civilian government officials in the area are concerned that the transition could leave them and a major supply route to Baghdad at greater risk of attack.
The route, a lifeline that carries fuel, food, ammunition and equipment for the war, crosses desert territory that is home to rival militias and criminal gangs. In interviews, Americans stationed in the southern provinces and Pentagon planners say they are closely watching the situation there as the British pass security responsibility to local Iraqi units.
There is little talk of increasing the American troop presence along the major supply route, which links Baghdad and Kuwait and is called M.S.R. Tampa, although officials in Baghdad and Washington say other options include increased patrols by armed surveillance aircraft, attack helicopters and combat jets. (…)
General Petraeus said the security mission in three of the four provinces in southern Iraq already had passed to Iraqi forces with no discernible impact on the supply routes. And he said bypass routes now being used allow convoys to skirt some trouble areas. (…)
According to officers at the American Third Army forward headquarters in Kuwait, which oversees the vast shipments of supplies flowing north into Iraq, on any given day more than 3,000 vehicles are on the road in convoys hauling food, fuel, ammunition and other equipment.
To keep the war effort going each day requires about 3.3 million gallons of fuel, the equivalent of filling the tanks of 150,000 automobiles, as well as enough food to serve 780,000 meals, according to statistics at the Third Army headquarters. (…)
At the American military headquarters in Baghdad, Lt. Col. James Hutton, spokesman for the Multinational Corps-Iraq, said military statistics showed “a recent drop in both the number and effectiveness of attacks on these convoys.” The most significant threat in the south continues to be roadside explosives, he said.
Colonel Hutton said commanders attributed this decline in attacks to “aggressive patrolling,” and he added that the recent call for a cease-fire by the Shiite cleric Moktada al-Sadr, whose Mahdi Army militia is the biggest in Iraq, might “lead to further reductions of violence in the southern provinces.”
But Iraqis in the Basra region fear that the Iraqi security forces are too heavily infiltrated by the militias to ensure order in the city, a vital oil hub where smuggling, banditry and carjacking have long been a way of life for powerful criminal gangs.
Iraqi policemen in Basra privately concede that they are afraid to confront the militias, who have powerful backing in the religious Shiite parties that run Basra, and that if they arrest criminals they face retribution from powerful tribes and criminal gangs. (…)
Concerns about M.S.R. Tampa are based on experience. When Sadr militia fighters rose up in the spring of 2004, a number of bridges were attacked, threatening the supply lines. With that in mind, before Iraqi national elections in January 2005, commanders ordered the stockpiling of ammunition, food and fuel, partly motivated by the desire to halt military convoys before the vote, depriving insurgents of a target.”
This seems like a good time to link to two analyses of what would happen if some group made a concerted attempt to cut our supply lines: Pat Lang’s and Andrew’s. Short version: a concerted effort to cut our supply lines, by a competent group, would be very bad.
It’s worth noting that one of the many, many reasons not to bomb Iran is that it would give them a very strong incentive to do just this. The Iranian border is very near Basra, and they have a lot of proxies in the region.
Steve Gillard, may he rest in peace, pointed out the same thing years ago. I wonder if the MSM noticed.
Um…if we bomb Iran…then we are at war with Iran.
There may be Iranian troops in Basra cutting our supply lines.
There may even be Iranian troops in Kuwait, Dubai, Qatar…or even America.
Iran doesn’t have to accept the neocon’s definition of what a war between Iran and AAmerica is.
yeah, this is pretty much a nightmare scenario for people who actually care about american troops.
for bush, as for fred and bob kagan, it’s no problem. more war is good, and the prospect of a lot of u.s. troops in peril just means we get to nuke iran sooner, and that’s all good, too.
the trouble is that there are no incentives in place for the people in power to care about the right things.
Registering an objection to characterizing any of the Shia factions as “Iranian proxies”.
To grasp my point, imagine who in Iraq you would refer to as a “U.S. proxy”. We pay plenty of factions, but none of them are that, eh?
The Iranians may help fund/supply several Shia factions, but that’s not what will cause any of them to cut our supply lines if Iran is attacked.
The oil fields in Basra are clearly visible from commercial aircraft flying over Iran.
Oh, and tomorrow is the 6th anniversary of “Wanted Dead Or Alive Day”.
“To grasp my point, imagine who in Iraq you would refer to as a ‘U.S. proxy’.”
Mohammed Abdullah Shahwani?
Iyad Allawi seems to repeatedly volunteer.
Few puppets are pure and utter puppets; that doesn’t mean they can’t be largely puppets/proxies.
But your point that few puppets/proxies are wholly so, or even close, is well-taken.
OT (although perhaps this somewhat ties into the broader subject of US proxies): I wish von still hung around here. Would love to see if this would cause him to at least reconsider his stubborn contention that Ethiopia =
teh good guysteh lesser evil.Related: Human Rights Watch also fails to see the inherent wisdom of “realism” (to the bellicose consternation of the Ethiopian Gov’t).
(Yes, I’m blatantly attempting to rouse von out of self-imposed exile. I miss him–and his punk-themed posts. More von-bait: Current – Continued Rantings [live in Indy @ The Sitcom, ’94])
“Defeat in detail” is a military term for what can happen when you’ve got your forces split up into small units that can’t support each other (like we now have in Iraq) and the other side gains local superiority and overwhelms those small units one-by-one.
Scattered forces with vulnerable supply lines could result in the US forces in Iraq playing Little Bighorn in the sand.
What is an “armed surveillance aircraft”, and how is it different from a normal fighter plane?
Perhaps they mean the Predator remote control aircrafts that are mostly for surveillance, but sometimes also have arms.
@MobiusKlein: I’d back your Predator guess. The ones that are armed shoot Hellfire missiles; especially creepy death by remote control.
LOL! I fleshed out my OT comment into a post for Comments From Left Field. Reuters just picked it up as a BlogBurst post.
von, there’s nowhere you can hide…
😉
“armed surveillance” reeks of double speak. If it has guns, it’s not an observer. I don’t see why the media has to parrot the spin uncritically.
I can imagine it. The drone spies some iraqis filling in a small hole in the road. That’s suspicious behavior so it sends a Hellfire missile at them.
Result: Iraqis gone, big hole in the road.
That’ll teach em.
Did people see this recent post by Andrew?
If it has guns, it’s not an observer.
This is patent nonsense. Carrying a gun does not make it possible to observe things; I have carried a weapon many times, and I have yet to lose my vision when I’ve done so. Armed reconnaissance simply means a surveillance asset that is capable of engaging threats as well as finding them.
As for Iraqs filling in holes in the road being suspicious…well, yes, it is. I was under the impression the media had relayed the fact Iraq doesn’t have a particularly efficient public sector back to the United States. If you were not aware of that, however, I can assure you that the next road crew I see working to repair the myriad holes in Iraqi roads will be the first. I’ve been trying to get one road repaired for two months without success. So if you see someone filling in a pothole, especially after dark, it’s not a sudden burst of efficiency from the Iraqi Department of Public Works, it’s someone burying an IED.
I, too, remember Steve Gilliard talking about this at least a year ago. And now, the British are leaving Basra and the Bush Administration is talking about bombing Iran. Only a fool would fail to connect the dots.
So if you see someone filling in a pothole, especially after dark, it’s not a sudden burst of efficiency from the Iraqi Department of Public Works, it’s someone burying an IED.
If the United States bombs Iran, and the bad guys get to work choking off our supply routes to Baghdad, then IEDs are going to be the very least of our worries.
For what it’s worth, some thoughts on BlogBurst.
G’Kar, I’m not disagreeing with you or criticising you. It just struck me as sad and somehow perverse that when somebody in iraq tries a minor civic improvement — even in the heat of the day — they may be immediately killed for it by somebody in virginia.
I can see that it’s the right thing tacticly, it’s just sad.
If the United States bombs Iran, and the bad guys get to work choking off our supply routes to Baghdad, then IEDs are going to be the very least of our worries.
It sounds like the switch from IEDs to professional-quality landmines is already underway.
And if our supply routes ever come into serious question, we can announce a policy that anybody but coalition forces will be immediately killed if found within 1000 yards of a road we need, and enforce it. Iraqis can use their roads after the emergency is over.
All I want is a better phrase that is not a euphemism.
And as others note, it better be used with discrimination, or the US is guilty of using very very expensive IEDs.
I’m confused: how is armed reconnaissance a euphemism? The primary purpose is recon, locating enemy forces. But it is armed and is therefore capable of engaging when the situation dictates that action. What phrase would you prefer to armed reconnaissance that would adequately express the situation?
Not only is a.r. not a euphemism, it’s not even a new expression. It was in use in the American Civil War, and probably well before. It makes perfect sense to have the people going somewhere to look around have the ability to protect themselves.
Oh yes, armed reconnaissance is a well-known term to me, too, although I’ve always favoured the term “violent reconnaissance” which involves things like capturing prisoners and small-scale reconnaissance attacks towards the enemy. I don’t think it is an euphemism. Armed reconnaissance is probably one of the bloodiest and most violent things I can imagine.
Military reconnaissance is rarely by unarmed forces/crafts (except satellites) and never was. Think light cavalry, (sailed) frigates etc.
It generally doesn’t make sense to ask why military names and acronyms are the way they are. It’s jargon, and jargon makes sense to the particular people who first invent it in their own particular context, and then it takes on a life of its own.
But when there’s very seldom any unarmed reconnaissance, why call this armed reconnaissance?
And the obvious answer is that they *can* have unarmed reconnaissance, where a light plane or light drone spots things for, say, ground troops or helicopter-borne troops to investigate. But what they’re doing instead is armed reconnaissance, where a plane or a drone spots something that looks suspicious from the air and destroys it on the spot.
This is not something I would want happening in my country, and I doubt it’s reassuring to iraqis that it happens in their country. You’re sitting on your doorstep doing something that seems perfectly innocuous to you, and suddenly a missile destroys your house, They don’t ask questions first, they don’t ask questions later, they just move on to the next target.
I sure wouldn’t want that going on in my country. And yet, it probably will. We have the technology, we have the machinery in stock, we have the training programs. Why *wouldn’t* we start selling it to local police?
If it will, what’s been stopping it up until now? We’ve had military aircraft equipped with targeting systems for at least a couple of decades, now.
Targeting and surveillance have substantial overlap, just to clarify.
Gary: I may need some further advice re: BlogBurst, as the contract is with CFLF’s site owner, not myself. I was unaware of the terms, which, upon reading your post, appear to violate my CC licence (in addition to engendering generally leery feelings).
Feel free to email me at your convenience, bastardlogic-at-gmail.com.
(further info: the post[s] picked up by BlogBurst were originally cross-posted from my blog to CFLF.)
Thanks for the pointer to Andrew’s post, Katherine. The whodunit explanation was lost on me due to my failure to learn every freaking milspeak acronym used in this occupation. Anyone know what ‘AIF’ is?
If it’s ‘armed irregular forces’, then the acronym is actually less useful information than saying “some guys”.
Is this a Shia, Sunni, or mixed area? Is it an area with a Sunni-Shia battle going on, or an intra-Shia factional battle, or both? Or does the U.S. Army have no better idea than the readers of the Rocky Mountain News?
(And, in case simply supplying the words the letters stand for does not explain much, who is being referred to?)
Nell, its Anti Iraq Forces.
It means anybody who shoots at us or at the iraqi army.
In this case it’s people who shot at iraqi civilians, maybe random iraqi civilians — at least the reporter didn’t say anything about why they got shot at — so it isn’t at all obvious that it was people who’d shoot at US or iraqi troops.
But the natural assumtion is that it must be bad guys because the people we’d support wouldn’t do that kind of thing.
Maybe Bush should have used (instead of the naughty “preemptive war”) the NATO euphemism of “forward defence”.
I expect that some day State and Defense will fuse to form a Department of ther Exterior with the subsections Smooth and Rugged Diplomacy.
Nell, AIF is, in my opinion, one of the more insidious acronyms in use. Anti-Iraq Forces. Its use by anyone, especially the armed forces of the United States, is evidence of lazy thinking at best, misdirection at worst.
That’s a terrible acronym.
I somehow read it as “Armed Iraqi Forces” & thought it meant the interior ministry or something. In retrospect, that doesn’t make a lot of sense.
“Anyone know what ‘AIF’ is?”
“Anti-Iraq Forces.” We’ve had several unproductive conversations here as to the appropriate applicability of this term, and of subsuming such a field of disparate players into such a homogenous concept.
@Hilzoy: When I raised the point about your use of the term ‘proxies’ in the post, I wasn’t as direct as I should have been. Please change it to ‘allies’.
Petraeus said on Capitol Hill last week that Iran is “fighting a proxy war in Iraq” aginst the U.S. Right-wing, warmongering outlets have been running with the phrase ever since.
In the context of the last three weeks, when the U.S. government has significantly stepped up the its accusations against Iran wrt activity inside Iraq, inflammatory and inaccurate language like ‘proxies’ works against the goal of analysis.
The term I objected to was “surveillance”, not “reconnaissance”. If there is a surveillance camera at the bank, it does not have a gun.
Just call the bloody devices ‘unmanned fighter planes’ and be done with it. It is however just about the least of the euphemisms we encounter in war.
The notion of IEDs – Improvised Explosive Devices – is outmoded now that they are said to be manufactured in Iran with high tech shaped charges. Calling them improvised belies their danger and the strength of the combatants in this civil war.
An update on the air war, including the ever-more-heavily-armed (and heavily-used) reconaissance drones:
Take me now, Lord.
Nell: when I used it, I meant: people who would, if one asked, do things one was not willing to do oneself, on one’s behalf. I think thats what ‘proxy’ means. In this context, I meant: Iran would, for obvious reasons, rather not invade Iraq, and I think this is a very good thing, personally. But there are people there who would do something if Iran asked.
This doesn’t make them puppets or slaves, any more than it would make me your puppet if I attended a shareholder’s meeting and voted in your stead. I mean, I might do that just because we were friends. But if I cast your vote as you asked, and on your behalf, I would be acting as your proxy.
There are groups in Iraq who have long-standing ties to Iran, and other groups who have more ambiguous relations that might or might not cover a given request. If any of them were inclined to attack our supply routes on Iran’s direction, I don’t see why it would be wrong to call them proxies.
Another meaningful passage from the linked article:
They’re pretty busy pounding the hell out of Iraq and Afghanistan, which I think means that carriers will still be a factor in any attack against Iran.
“Just call the bloody devices ‘unmanned fighter planes’ and be done with it.”
Some 99.999 percent of armed reconnisance in the military is done by humans, and human-piloted vehicles. A Kiowa helicopter, for just a single instance, is neither a plane, nor a fighter, nor unmanned, but other than that, you might be right.
It’s really not useful for people to be commenting on jargon they don’t understand, but purely on ignorant assumptions, no matter how much is hardly a secret.
(Nell’s guess about unmanned armed drones is perfectly reasonable, but not remotely the only use or type of “armed reconnisance.” Ask Jeb Stuart.)
(For that matter, a “fighter” fights other aircraft; presumably you meant “ground attack planes.”)
You want to argue about damaging euphemisms, I’d go with “Anti-Iraq Forces.”
Hilzoy, thanks for responding.
‘Allies’ is another term for actors who will do something they might not have done on their own at the request of another.
We’re not talking about a stockholder vote here.
In the context of Petraeus’ inflammatory remarks*, and their use by people promoting a U.S. attack against Iran, choosing to stick by the more highly charged term with a technical defense requires pretending that connotations don’t matter. Uncharacteristic of you.
*“It is increasingly apparent that Iran, through the use of the Quds Force, seeks to turn the Iraqi Special Groups into a
Hezbollah-like force to serve its interests and fight a proxy war against the Iraqi state and coalition forces in Iraq.”
I thought it was a deliberate choice not to give the Iraqis any heavy weapons or anything both armed and flying because that could lead them to the impression that they have anything to say about matters. Cf. Lawrence of Arabia and the British refusal to give the Arabs artillery because that would give them (undesirable) operational independence.
SIIC, aka SCIRI, the organization that dominates the Iraqi government, was founded by Iran, entirely dependent on Iranian funding until the US installed them into the Iraqi government, and called the Ayatollah Khamenei of Iran their ultimate leader until this May. I think “proxy” is a pretty reasonable term for that.
“They’re pretty busy pounding the hell out of Iraq and Afghanistan”
“Busy” in the sense of being highly active, yes. “Busy” in the sense of “too busy to do more,” I’m skeptical of that, given the ratio of assets to possible targets.
The article: “Improving the runways has allowed the Air Force to move B1-B bombers from Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean to Balad, where the big aircraft have been carrying out daily strikes.”
That’s significant, I agree.
Over here, we get some numbers.
That’s simply not compatible with the idea of hundreds of strikes per day, though.
That there are daily B-1 strikes in Iraq, though, if true, I agree entirely is a major amount of ordnance, and notable. I’d definitely like to see further specific numbers, though, rather than take Conn Hallinan’s word.
One may note: “Balad, which currently conducts 10,000 air operations a week, is strengthening runways to handle the increase in air activity.”
That’s however, got to be mostly transports; my guess would be that only a fraction are attack missions.
The main point, though, is that you seem to have the impression, Nell, that the number of attack planes in Iraq/Afghanistan is such that current levels are keeping our air forces so stretched that they couldn’t attack Iran without carrier support. That’s unlikely.
(If there’s an attack, it will probably include carrier planes partially because naval assets are useful, but mostly because the Navy will have lobbied for it and forced it, as always, to make the case for their usefulness, and thus for more appropriations. Typical military politics.)
For instance, from the linked AP piece:
But the Air Force:
2,231. Some have gone out of service, but a dozen or three dozen, here and there, is trivial.
B-1s, to be sure, we only have 92 of. A-10s, there were 715 built, but how many are left in service, I’m not clear. Far fewer.
Here’s the Ninth Air Force order of battle, but it looks pretty dated. FWIW: “When mobilized, more than 60,000 members of the Air National Guard and Air Force Reserve, along with about 859 aircraft, are assigned to ACC. In total, ACC and ACC-gained units fly more than 2,000 aircraft.”
Here’s a snapshot of a day. They’re definitely “busy” in the normal sense of keeping busy. But they’re not “busy” to the point of being overwhelmed, or close.
Gary, feel free to direct your arguments to someone in a better position to evaluate them, e.g. commenter Dan here:
using these airbases [Balad, Bagram] to attack Iran would necessitate the cessation of current US air operations, and it would still require the extensive utilisation of airpower from other regional bases and naval carriers.
With due respect to Dan, military operations and civilian operations have little to do with one another. Comparing combat operations to Heathrow is, I think, inapt.
Gary, there’s about 150 F-16s in storage (read, stored as spare parts) at Davis-Monthan AFB, but even those are a drop in the bucket. Ditto the 45-50 A-10s there.
Regarding B-1s, they’re really not autonomous conventional precision-guided weapons platforms yet. They’re ok for dropping LGBs and even (possibly) JDAMs, but for the latter, you need target coordinates. Which you don’t have, autonomously. The LGBs, of course, need someone designating the target. B-1s are being prepped for targeting pod support, which means they can self-target, but that modification hasn’t been widely fielded yet, to my knowledge. Soon, though.
In this one matter, my knowledge is rather good. For what that’s worth, anyway.
“Gary, feel free to direct your arguments to someone in a better position to evaluate them, e.g. commenter Dan here”
commenter Dan’s position seems to be to poo-poo the idea of an attack on Iran being at all likely, so I’m unclear what point you’re making by quoting him as a reliable source. Are you saying he’s right, or wrong?
He also seems to be claiming it’s impossible to fly B1s out of Iraq (which would have been true until recently, so he’s not so much wrong as not up-to-date):
As you’ve noted, this isn’t true anymore, so add that however you like to the fellow’s credibility.
I’ll re-emphasize that I do find the fact that we’ve moved B1s to Iraq, and are using them, to be significant as to our air actions in Iraq, and the possibilities regarding Iran.
Slart: “…JDAMs, but for the latter, you need target coordinates.”
What the hell, Tehran has a Chinese Embassy, doesn’t it?
Another little tidbit, from Pincus, on ground forces strain.
CharleyCarp: “AIF is, in my opinion, one of the more insidious acronyms in use. Anti-Iraq Forces. Its use by anyone, especially the armed forces of the United States, is evidence of lazy thinking at best, misdirection at worst.”
I can see two ways of reading this comment:
(a) The people in the army who adopted it were guilty of lazy thinking at best, misdirection at worst. Individual soldiers who use it are probably just using military terms, which function sort of like a dialect of English in which all sorts of acronyms have established meanings.
(b) Anyone who uses this term, including individual soldiers, is guilty of of lazy thinking at best, misdirection at worst.
In the first case, I agree, though I would note that in Andrew’s piece, the forces in question seem to deserve the term: shooting people who are just trying to pay their respects at a relative’s grave is a pretty loathsome thing to do, and I have no problem calling it ‘anti- Iraq’. (Likewise, I would have no problem calling, say, the KKK ‘anti-America’, on the grounds that they are doing things that any reasonable person should see as harmful not just to their victims, but to the country.)
In the second case, I don’t agree, since (as I said) I think individual soldiers might well be using it as a part of the military language, the accepted term for the people in question, which it is not up to them to accept or reject, and since in the case at hand, if Andrew had stopped before he wrote and asked himself: self, is this an appropriate term here?, I think he might without any laziness or misdirection have answered ‘yes’.
There might be posting rules implications to the second interpretation, since Andrew comments here.
hilzoy – I think you’d have to assume Charley read Andrew’s post (though I guess it’s fairly clear from Nell’s comment that that the acronym comes from the linked post).
ugh: yes, but the question is: was CharleyCarp criticizing whoever in the army adopted the term to begin with, or Andrew and anyone who uses it?
I criticise people who use it stupidly.
Andrew wrote about finding some random people who’d been shot at an impromptu checkpoint. He didn’t say anything about the people who got shot except that they were visiting the grave of a relative who “drowned in a canal”. He apparently didn’t know anything about the attackers except maybe how many of them there were and they had a checkpoint. So he calls them AIF.
Were they sunnis killing shias? Shias killing sunnis? Were they police? Official government death squads? Sadrists? Insurgents? Did they support or oppose the occupation? Did thy support or oppose the iraqi puppet government?
All he knew about them was they had an illegal roadblock and they shot some iraqis. He appeared to have no inkling whether they were AIFs who were his enemies or AIFs who were his allies.
Maybe they really do need a word like that there. A word that means “People in iraq who do things we officially don’t want them to do”. “Criminals” has other associations. “Outlaws” likewise.
A new word that means “People who do bad things in iraq”.
J Thomas: We are talking about an actual human being, who (if you read the post we’re talking about) saved someone’s life, and had to deal with four bodies that were, from the sound of it, not in a particularly pleasant state. Please tell me that the salient feature of that post, for you, wasn’t the fact that he used a standard military term in a standard military way that you think has the wrong connotations.
If you do want to get into questions of word choice, I offer myself up as a substitute target. I have, for instance, recently used the term ‘GOP’ to refer to the Republican party, despite the fact that it is, I think, inaccurate to call it ‘grand’ in its present condition. Or we could get into the accuracy of the names ‘Democrat’ and ‘Republican’. Maybe we can question whether, in this age of signing statements and illegal wiretap programs, it is accurate to refer to the highest court in the land as ‘Supreme’. Exploring any of these fascinating (cough) questions would, imho, be better than our present topic.
I think J Thomas has a point, actually. The gentleman saved someone’s life, saw something horrific, and automatically ascribed an identity to the perpetrator(s).
But of course, that identity — AIF — is so amorphous as to be useless. And it is a tidy shorthand to avoid calling the perpetrators “unknown killers”. Which of course they are.
I agree that this horrific incident is made worse, somehow, by the very anonymity of the killers. It is a symptom of the awful anarchy that is Iraq in 2007. And besides, as has been pointed out upthread, “AIF” is a euphemism, which should be avoided on principle and especially in this case.
I have, for instance, recently used the term ‘GOP’ to refer to the Republican party, despite the fact that it is, I think, inaccurate to call it ‘grand’ in its present condition.
Well, to be pedantic, the Republican party is also not as “old” as the Democratic party, since the GOP was only founded in the 1850s. But of course Hilzoy and the entire commentariat here already knew that.
stickler: yeah, but as I understand the term, it is pretty deliberately amorphous, even vaguer than “sectarian killing” (or “ethnosectarian killing”, to include the Kurds.) I completely agree with criticisms of the people who chose it for use in the military — I don’t think it’s a particularly enlightening term, especially since some of the AIF are presumably militias aligned with the present government — but I think it’s worth separating out criticism of the term, and the people who chose it, from criticism of anyone who uses it when it’s the term that seems to be, for better or for worse, standard in the military.
yes, but the question is: was CharleyCarp criticizing whoever in the army adopted the term to begin with, or Andrew and anyone who uses it?
I think he deserves a more charitable reading of his comment than the latter interpretation.
Ugh: I agree. But it seemed like a good idea to clarify it, just in case. I should probably have said: I go with the charitable one (i.e., the one in which the criticism is directed at whoever introduced the term into the military, not at individuals.)
@Gary: I don’t read Dan as someone trying to pooh-pooh the reality of a possible attack on Iran, just the imminence of same. He’s putting the emphasis on the ways in which the military does not seem quite ready.
It might be productive to engage him with questions and contradictions you raise. But tone counts for a lot: What tires me out in these kinds of military logistics discussions is that many participants tend to approach it as a competition and a defense of firmly held positions, where I’m just trying to gather and evaluate information.
My sense right now is that an attack in December or January or next spring as far more likely than in the next month or so. That’s not primarily because of military/logistical reasons but because I foresee a whole lot of “exhausting the diplomatic route” to be gotten out of the way in October and November. Our regime’s going to make a big push for more (and more punitive) sanctions. The IAEA-Iran resolution of outstanding questions is supposed to be done by the end of November (if they’ll be given some breathing room to work, which the frenetic U.S. threat-hyping and hostility is designed to discourage).
Some military aspects also point to late fall/winter: The ridiculous provocation-bait base at the Iraq-Iran border is to be completed in November. The Truman carrier group will join the Enterprise in November.
And there are other logistical issues that I wonder about and don’t pretend to have any idea how to research or track. One is the disposition of U.S. troops in Iraq. I believe our ruling regime sees the loss of some of those now in eastern Iraq as a feature not a bug for the sake of firming up support for massive retaliation, but I wonder what the plan is to concentrate in more defensible areas the bulk of those troops now dispersed in mini-forts, particularly ones in the midst of big Shia populations.
And, to nod to the main topic, I really do wonder what the plan is for supply lines.
The possible disruption of oil supplies and likely effect on oil prices still strikes me as the aspect of an attack on Iran most likely to give the ruling clique pause.
Slarti: even those are a drop in the bucket. Ditto the 45-50 A-10s there.
Am I reading this correctly as saying that there are 45-50 A-10s in storage (as parts or at any rate in not-ready-to-fly condition) at that base, but that there are many, many more in deployable shape at other locations?
I ask only because I remember posting here a while ago from memory the “news” that 30 or 50 or some big number of A-10s had been shipped to Iraq, and you (quite correctly) questioned the accuracy of the statement based on that number being some big proportion of the whole existing stock of A-10s. I went and looked up the article I’d been misremembering, and acknowledged that yes, the number of A-10s being sent was only five or something. (Since then a dozen or so more have been added at Balad.)
So I think I must not be correctly interpreting your comment now. Can you clarify? Thanks.
Hilzoy, apart from the emotional sense of an individual tragedy, the message I got from that article was that there was no indication who did it or why. Our forces simply aren’t tracking that, we’re in a fog of violence with perhaps hundreds of sides — our goal is supposedly to step between hostile forces and make them stop killing each other, and we only vaguely know about those mutually-hostile forces.
The AIF term is an extra twist on that because I have the strong impression that despite the sounded-out name, americans tend to interpret AIF as anti-coalition-force force. And there’s often no clue what a given AIF thinks of us. Likely they’re convinced we’re on our way out and they’re thinking in terms of what will happen when we’re gone. Like, we’re a wild card, a strong temporary force that forms temporary alliances almost at random. But that’s just my guess, they mostly don’t say who they are or what they want and I don’t trust them when they do.
What did you get from Andrew’s message about iraq beyond the particular incident?
For what it’s worth, here are some numbers asserted from here:
That’s active service Air Force, planes assigned to the Reserves, and to the Air National Guard.
And, incidentally, though not directly relevant:
I’d missed that last until now.
Hilzoy:
With this I totally agree:
but I think it’s worth separating out criticism of the term, and the people who chose it, from criticism of anyone who uses it when it’s the term that seems to be, for better or for worse, standard in the military.
It’s just that I teach US History, and the phrase “if it’s dead, and it’s Vietnamese, it’s VC” leaves a really bad taste in my mouth. And “AIF” seems, somehow, far worse, not least because there actually was an organization that called itself the Viet Cong. But no such “AIF” cognate, to my understanding, exists in Iraq.
“And ‘AIF’ seems, somehow, far worse, not least because there actually was an organization that called itself the Viet Cong.”
Er, well, sorta, kinda, maybe, kinda, vaguely. And I don’t read Vietnamese.
But there was the Viet Minh, the League for the Independence of Vietnam. They kinda became the Front National pour la Libération (FNL).
Việt Nam Cộng Sản meant “Vietnamese Communist,” but that seems to have been a term invented by Ngo Dinh Diem, not the communists.
So, well, basically the claim that the Viet Cong called themselves that has almost no basis in fact, but other than that, it’s true. 🙂
The valid point that stickler was probably best reaching for is that the VC, by any name, was, although very decentralized, nonetheless a single organization, with a more or less overall single loyalty, which is utterly unlike the situation extant in Iraq, where a huge number of disparate groups, fitting into a pattern of overall shifting alliances, in at least three major groupings, with numerous subgroupings, all bumping elbows and killings and power drills against each other, exist, and which is extremely different from the situation in Vietnam.
That’s a point I sense stickler was trying to make, and which is utterly valid.
(Other names: People’s Liberation Armed Forces, or PLAF; People’s Army of Vietnam (PAVN). To Americans, the VC, or “Charlie,” or “Victor Charlie,” just as we were “hey, GI!” or “hey, Joe!”)
“and the phrase ‘if it’s dead, and it’s Vietnamese, it’s VC’ leaves a really bad taste in my mouth.”
Sorry, I should have emphatically agreed that noting and remembering and understanding the history of this is really important, and a most excellent point.
I don’t blame any individual in the Army or military for using the phrases the hierarchy issues. You work with the masters you serve, and the bureaucracy that issued you, and the jargon you’re given.
But I certainly hope that all the individuals given this concept to work with do their best to understand how misleading it is, conceptually, and understand the need for specific intelligence — which I’m sure they do, as that’s doctrine — and to avoid the sort of lumping inherent in the silly term (which, given their closeness to the situation, is probable).
hilzoy,
I can see how we might make allowances for someone like Andrew writing a short piece soon after such an intensive event. But I don’t understand why we should extend those allowances to all military folk. I mean, there are all sorts of allowances we might make for soldiers’ behavior in the immediate aftermath of such an experience, but we still hold soldiers to reasonable standards of behavior and truthfulness the rest of the time, right?
The term AIF is premised on an understanding of the conflicts in Iraq that is simply garbage. It doesn’t make sense outside of that understanding. If soldiers have to adopt the dishonest language when they’re talking to other soldiers or speaking to the public in an official capacity, that’s fine, we’re used to having soldiers intentionally deceive us. But if they want to talk to the public in their own time, why must we accept deceitful language from them without comment? They already have to translate all sorts of abbreviations and special phrases when speaking to civilians, why is this one so very special?
Turbulence: it’s a standard military term that people who did not invent it use on a regular basis. And while you might think it’s non-optimal, and I might agree, I think deceitful is way over the top, at least absent some clarification of who, exactly, you mean to be accusing of deceit.
Gary Farber summarizes my point rather better than I was able to do myself. And with the proper diacriticals.
The whole “AIF” thing is not a minor matter. It’s not a cause of misunderstanding, it’s a symptom of a broader failure to comprehend the situation on the ground.
AUGGH!
On re-reading, I see that my words might be misconstrued to imply that any US soldier is broadly complicit in the obfuscation inherent in the use of the acronym “AIF”.
Unless that soldier is wearing a lot of pretty scrambled eggs on his (or her) head or shoulders, I do not wish to implicate him (or her) in the plot to blame the Very Evil AIF for all the bad stuff that happens in Iraq.
If only all you brilliant folk who’ve diagnosed the problem so well from 6,000 miles away could come over here and explain to us poor beknighted intellectually lazy, deceptive soldiers how it all really is in Iraq.
We were arguing about this earlier here and in the neighborhood.
“us poor beknighted intellectually lazy, deceptive soldiers”
Most of us don’t believe in any such thing. Emphatically.
The contrast between our debate of words, and the real life debate of blood spilled on one’s uniform, and people’s brains splashed where one looks, and the rest of the heat and horror and disgustingness and frustration, has to be galactic-sized, I can imagine, kinda, maybe.
I wish there were more to say than “thanks.” Word has it that the invention of the transporter is still long off, alas.
But your frustration is completely understandable, and I’ve literally punched walls under provocation that’s only trivially comparable.
Most of us don’t believe in any such thing.
I am aware of that, and it is appreciated. But dashing that off was remarkably cathartic, so consider this a touch of group therapy. 😉
Andrew,
I’m curious: do you believe that American military officers consistently told the truth when addressing the public in an official capacity during Vietnam? Do you believe they do so now in Iraq?
I mean, the US military is an amazing institution in many ways filled with many amazing people, but as far as I can tell, it doesn’t have a really great record for truth telling when addressing the public. Do you dispute that? It is certainly possible that my understanding of history, both very recent and from Vietnam is unbelievably defective…
“But dashing that off was remarkably cathartic, so consider this a touch of group therapy.”
Well, sure, speaking only for myself, as I am able, I think it’s pretty much an almost sure thing that I’d be probably a lot more declarative and — hey, wait, has anyone ever said I’ve been sarcastic? — sarcastic and emphatic and back-of-the-hand-boyo, myself, in the same position.
I mean, personally, I can’t imagine what situations you might be in that might make you cranky. But that’s just because, as you may or may not be aware, us Americans don’t get irony. So that’s just one of my ethnic flaws.
I completely appreciate the desire to put questions to Andrew to when he shows up here.
Similarly, I equally appreciate the desire to ask questions of the other members of our military, who are serving in Iraq, who sometimes show up here, such as G’Kar.
But it’s damned important to remember that anyone in Iraq showing up here from the U.S. military is doing it in off-hours, under highly difficult conditions, under time they’re sparing from sending and getting messages from their own close family and friends, under time they’re sparing from spending with their wife, and soldiers under them, and their needs, and the general desire to read and relax, as well as read general news, and so on.
Presenting such a person with queries as if they were our personal stand-ins for The War is perfectly understandable, but utterly unfair.
If someone volunteers for that, fine. But otherwise, well, anyway.
Complications loom throughout life that can’t be spoken of.
Gary,
What are you talking about? Do you really think I’m ignorant of what time constraints might exist for soldiers serving in Iraq?
By what possible leap of mind-reading would you conclude that I think of Andrew as a “stand-in for the War”? What does that phrase even mean?
If Andrew is unwilling to answer my questions he has the option of…not answering them. Just like anyone else. And if he simply didn’t answer them, then I imagine that…nothing would happen.
Nevertheless, if Andrew does choose to engage with people here and discuss things (as he has sometimes in the past) I prefer to treat him like an adult rather than some pathetic china doll liable to fall apart if I fail to treat it with the absolute deference it requires. It seems that doing otherwise would be rather disrespectful.
I’d answer this in e-mail, if ObWi hadn’t taken a huge step in destroying community by eliminating display of e-mail addresses, which thus prevents resolutions of such questions, and thus makes the place a much more unresolvedly unhappy place than it would otherwise be. It was a deeply destructive decision, whomever made it, since it prevented private resolutions, or introductions, or any number of positive possibilities.
I was under the impression that the supression of email addresses wasn’t a decision made by the crew here, but came along with an upgrade to the blogging software in order to prevent harvesting, so I don’t think ObWi “took a huge step”, though I may be wrong.
If only all you brilliant folk who’ve diagnosed the problem so well from 6,000 miles away could come over here and explain to us poor beknighted intellectually lazy, deceptive soldiers how it all really is in Iraq.
This comment is intended as disparaging towards you, Andrew, but the irony of seeing this whipped out against left-wing commenters — who have been levelling this precise argument against the 101st Keyboarders for more than four years now — is a bit mind-blowing.
I can’t actually recall the situation you referred to with anything other than, well, dimness, but I can say that the A-10 is not exactly your flight-endurance aircraft (range is only about 800 miles), and that up until now (perhaps not even now) the A-10’s role didn’t fit with having a whole lot of them in Iraq and/or Afghanistan. I don’t think I might have argued against having a lot of A-10s ferried over to the ME because there just weren’t that many of them; I suspect that it was more because it would mostly be a waste.
What there are very few of, as far as I know, are upgraded A-10s. A-10s have been primarily an antiarmor platform, engaging tanks and such with its main gun, mostly, but able to carry things like Mavericks and Sidewinders as well as LGBs and dumb bombs. The problem with nearly all of these weapons stores is that the A-10 can’t really self-target with much other than its main gun, hence the upgrades Gary referred to upthread. Although these upgrades are very close to complete (if not actually complete) now, I don’t think the upgrade process has advanced very widely through the fleet. Certainly equipping the airplane with a targeting system is a step forward in keeping the A-10 alive as a deployed combat system, and that, as far as I’m concerned, is a good thing.
So, the usefulness of having a lot of A-10s over in the ME is still, to me, questionable, but I expect that will change very soon.
Probably this is unsatisfactory in resolving the disconnect you perceived between what I’ve said in this thread, and what I’ve said earlier. If so, I ofer my apologies. If you could point me to the earlier discussion you referred to, I may be able to reconstruct my argument better. The only one I can find is here.
And while you might think it’s non-optimal, and I might agree, I think deceitful is way over the top, at least absent some clarification of who, exactly, you mean to be accusing of deceit.
There are the people who know what they’re doing, and then there are the ones who’re confused.
I guess it’s over-the-top to accuse the ones who’re confused of knowing what they’re doing. But is that really such a big deal? I’d think the important thing is that it’s wrong, whether they know what they’re doing or not.
There’s a rule that our soldiers have to capitalise Soldier, but there’s no rule they have to repeat the term AIF. Anybody who wants to be a little bit clearer can say “unknown iraqis” instead, or “unknown persons” when it isn’t known it was iraqis.
It is unpatriotic to repeat the liars’ lies.
Concerning AIF
There was a series of Doonesbury cartoons about the changing description of “the other side” in Iraq some time ago. My favorite term was “Benchmark haters”.
Here is a link to one of those.
Hi Andrew!
I think people are quibbling over your acronym choice in part because there’s no adequate way to respond to what you actually described. Thank you for doing what you did & for writing about it, and for posting here even if it’s to yell at us.
Everyone: this previous post of Andrew’s on the terminology is relevant. Not convincing to me* (I think I’d prefer “bad guys” to “AIF”–it’s equally neutral, equally informative, and less confusing because it doesn’t pretend to be otherwise), but relevant. Note also the comment by Charley.
And Nell: more acronyms are available here.
Andrew, please stay safe from AIF, JAM,FF, IRLs, IEDs, SVBIEDs, and especially DBMRLPs**. And please remember that the ABCPG*** is only trying to protect you from EAIC****.
*Andrew may use the term out of deference to the election results, but according to Slate the Pentagon’s started in December 2003.
**Donkey-Borne Mobile Rocket Launching Platform, which Newsweek claims is real.
***Annoying blog commenter peanut gallery.
****Excessive-acronym-induced catatonia.
Excuse me, sir. Seeing as how the VP is such a VIP shouldn’t we keep the PC on the QT, ’cause if it leaks to the VC he could end up an MIA, and then we’d all be put on KP.
TMTLA.
HTH.
HAND.
J Thomas: if you’re going to call one of our commenters unpatriotic because he disagrees with you about an acronym, that violates the posting rules. Goodbye.
Sorry, folks, for the drive-by nature of that comment.
I think the use of the term AIF in insidious. I don’t think that everyone using it is engaging, each time it’s used, in intentional misdirection. I’m confident, actually, that people like Andrew and G’Kar actually think about the various opponents we (ie they), and our allies (of recent or longer vintage) encounter in this way, as opposed to members of particular factions with their own contexts. That is, the term AIF sounds undifferentiated, while I’m sure that differentiations of one type or another are critical on the ground.
This is a very non-binary world. AIF is a decidedly binary term.
I think a useful parallel is WMD. There are contexts in which the use of the term WMD in policy-making or poilicy-describing purposes might be useful. In more contexts, it’s an invitation to misleading — of others or onesself. The danger presented by an active nuclear program is very different than the danger presented by a cannister of mustard gas left over from 1987. A term that covers both can be used to imply the former from the latter. I won’t say that everyone who ever used the term WMD was thereby intenbding to mislead. I will say that some people who used the term knew of, and were not disappointed about, its capacity to mislead.
To Hil’s above, I don’t think you can say that shooting people going to a funeral, or a graveside, is itself sufficient evidence to call some ‘anti-Iraq.’ You’d have to actually want to know why they did it. I don’t think that members of criminal gangs who kill people in drive by shootings in Los Angeles are ‘anti-American’ nor indeed do I think it’s an accurate description of the KKK. I don’t think one would refer to Emiliano Zapata as ‘anti-Mexican’ — doing so conflates General Huerta (or whoever) with the country in a way that leads to misunderstanding.
don’t think!
Putting aside for a moment the debate on the insidiousness of AIF and similiar terminology, there may–may–be a good reason (eg, OPSEC* and the potential violation thereof) why the vague term ‘AIF’ was used in this instance. Better safe than sorry, and all that.
*Operational security
I should say: I banned J Thomas because I took him or her to be implying that Andrew was, if not too simple to grasp these things, unpatriotic. I thought that was well over any number of lines.
“I was under the impression that the supression of email addresses wasn’t a decision made by the crew here, but came along with an upgrade to the blogging software in order to prevent harvesting, so I don’t think ObWi ‘took a huge step’, though I may be wrong.”
Yeah, I was having an outburst of crankiness there. Apologies for that.
Katherine,
Thank you. Missed an IED by maybe an hour today; if we hadn’t been delayed by a meeting, I could have gotten my CAB. But maybe next time.
Oy. I’d say “stay safe” but given that your job doesn’t allow for that, really, just stay as safe as you can.
“Everyone: this previous post of Andrew’s on the terminology is relevant.”
Andrew’s comment included:
The problem with this is similar to that frequently taken by officers in the Vietnam War: that local politics is local politics, and off-limits for comment, and the official comment is that things are getting better.
But, back in reality, they aren’t, and there’s no perceptibly legitimate Iraqi government acceptable and endorsed by most Iraqis. So there’s a major disconnect, to put it mildly, in our Army acting as if, or under the assumption that there sorta is, any such generally accepted Iraqi government.
And this isn’t remotely the same as a system in which the players know perfectly well that they trade power from time to time peacefully; Iraq has no such tradition whatever, and comparing their elections to that of an established democracy as in any way establishing any sort of similar legitimacy to the system simply isn’t justified by the facts.
In other words, the comparison of the relative lack of legitimacy of the Iraqi government — the very nature and frame and nature of this government — to the U.S. government, firmly established for over two centuries, doesn’t bear a lot of weight, I’m afraid.
I wish it were otherwise. Because I dearly wish Andrew was fighting for a real government. But there are no signs of it.
And absent that generally-accepted-as-legitimate Iraqi government, acting in a mostly non-sectarian way, what is there to fight for?
“Missed an IED by maybe an hour today; if we hadn’t been delayed by a meeting, I could have gotten my CAB. But maybe next time.”
Worth at least an oy vey.
The comparative risk aspects of conversing with you are unnerving. There’s some dissonance in doing anything other than worrying like crazy about your safety, and then knowing that does no good whatever, and wanting to help things be normal for you, and knowing that’s not possible either, and so on.
It’s a very modern issue. Nearly-realtime communications with soldiers living in an environment with no clear front is new.
I imagine I’m not the only one torn between impulses towards over-emotionalism, caution, and otherwise, when saying hi, and no you’re wrong.
The disparity in mutual safety, and living conditions, is grotesque.
It comes with the job. I volunteered to do this. If anything, people ought to be questioning my judgment. 😉
Stay safe, Andrew.
Gary–
your post of 2:03 is very well put and expresses something that’s been itching at the back of my mind since Andrew went overseas. Thanks.
@Slarti:
Aaack; thanks for responding, but now I’m embarrassed to have raised the question — just realized that in that thread (which I can’t find, either) we were talking about the very, very different AC-130. So until I put up cue cards with pictures to keep the damned flying machines straight in my mind, I should probably retire from these kinds of discussions altogether.
Though I learned a lot from the thread linked in your response, which is the only one I found when I searched last night, and from the article on the Warthog makeover you linked there.
Best of luck, Andrew.