Tag: iraq war
Ukraine Isn't One Big War -- It's A Hundred Little Wars

Ukraine Isn't One Big War -- It's A Hundred Little Wars

The way the war in Ukraine is covered in the news makes it seem like a singular thing – the attack Russia launched against its neighbor country eight months ago that is still ongoing. We get reports of missile and drone strikes on cities like Kyiv and Kharkiv; the same kinds of strikes on power plants and other crucial infrastructure; movement of Ukrainian forces near Kherson; the big offensive when Ukraine took back nearly 3,500 square miles of its territory in the northeast which had been lost in the early weeks of the war.

No war is a single thing, a gigantic battle that one side wins and the other loses, or even a series of a few major battles, even if, as has happened so far in Ukraine, the two sides fight each other for nearly a year.

I make this mistake myself all the time. Recently, I wrote a column that said British defense officials believe that Russia has suffered 90,000 casualties since the war began. That is a terrible figure, and it does reflect serious damage to the Russian war effort, but it is not of much use in describing what is going on over there. Each casualty on either side, Ukraine or Russia, is an individual tragedy for the family that loses a soldier who has died or been seriously wounded, even crippled for life. It's a loss to the unit in which the soldier serves. It doesn’t take heavy losses in a unit for morale to flag, for the unit’s discipline and cohesion to be damaged enough to render it ineffective as a fighting unit.

This happens because the guys who get killed or wounded are the friends of the soldiers who survive. The survivors are damaged by the loss of their buddies. They can begin to lose confidence in their leaders if they come to blame the loss of their friends on incompetence by platoon leaders or company commanders or higher commanders like colonels and generals.

It's almost unknowably hard for a unit to lose soldiers in combat. I’ll give you one rather small example from the time I spent with the 101st Airborne Division in Iraq in 2003. I was embedded, as it was said, with a company that held a small base camp in downtown Mosul. The day I arrived, a two-vehicle convoy had been hit by machine gun fire, killing a sergeant major and his driver, who was a private first class from the company I was with. It was just two soldiers, but you could feel the strange mix of depression and anger in the air that accompanies such a loss. The sergeant major was popular with everyone in the battalion. The PFC from our company was a kid from Illinois who was fond of practical jokes and was really good at the video games the troops played during their downtime. Everybody liked him. There was a box containing his personal effects in the hallway just outside the company command center. Within hours of his death, soldiers had already left notes and cards that would be sent with the man’s effects back to his family in the States.

That night, two of the company’s platoons were dispatched on a patrol to either kill or take prisoner the insurgents responsible for the attack. They had been located in a neighborhood on the south side of Mosul some distance from the company’s basecamp in town. One platoon was given the task of approaching the house where the killers were thought to be hiding. The platoon I was with was held in reserve a short distance away in case fighting broke out that the other platoon couldn’t handle by itself.

I was astounded when the compound where we were held in reserve turned out to be occupied by another company in a different battalion. Their basecamp was literally just down the street from where the insurgents were hiding, and yet they were not dispatched to bring them in or kill them. Two platoons from the company of one of the men who were killed were sent.

It was obviously a revenge mission. The guys who lost their friend wanted to get the Iraqis who killed him. The mission succeeded without a fight. Three Iraqi insurgents were taken prisoner and driven to the brigade base camp where they would be held. When we returned to the barracks late that night, the soldiers were jubilant.

That’s just one little story about a loss suffered in combat in another war nearly 20 years ago, but it is illustrative of how the bigger war we caused by invading Iraq was really a series of little wars fought by units as small as a platoon of 25 or 30 men against an enemy that consisted in this case of three insurgents. The company in the 101st had nothing to show for their victory except the satisfaction of bringing the killers to some sort of justice. No land was taken and occupied. There was no retreat by enemy forces. No surrender was offered or taken.

The situation in Ukraine is different, because they are fighting to retake land that was theirs to begin with, land that is now occupied by an invading army. The front lines in the war stretch from the border with Russia in the north to the Black Sea in the south. Because it’s not a straight line, it is at least several hundred miles long. There is fighting along nearly its entire distance. That means a company of Ukrainian soldiers and their artillery may be fighting in a section along the Dnipro River in the south less than five miles from where a platoon is holding territory it took from Russians a few days ago. And so on.

It’s nearly impossible for commanders to keep track of it all. When I was in Iraq, I attended multiple BUP’s, or Battle Update Briefings, of different sizes: I attended one in the division headquarters outside of Mosul when General Petraeus sat in front of three flat screen televisions as brigade and battalion commanders reported the situation in their areas. Behind Petraeus was a kind of bleachers, where staff officers sat with laptop computers linked to the screens showing their reports on supplies, operations, intelligence, casualties, unit locations and movements. It was an impressive aggregation of a whole lot of very complicated information. Similar BUP’s were held daily at brigade, battalion, and company levels throughout the division. It’s the way the various commanders kept up with what was going on in their units of varying sizes and their areas of operations.

To give you an idea of what’s going on in Ukraine in just one section of the front, the Kharkiv and Luhansk regions, I’ll turn to a report filed yesterday by the Institute for the Study of War (ISW), the Washington think-tank which has been excellent in the way it has followed the war. Here is the text of the report; the bracketed numbers indicate the source for the information in the report, when available:

Russian sources claimed that Ukrainian troops continued counteroffensive actions along the Svatove-Kreminna line on November 5. Russian sources, including the Russian Ministry of Defense (MoD), reported that Ukrainian troops conducted an assault in the direction of Kuzemivka, 13km northwest of Svatove.[16] A Russian milblogger claimed that Ukrainian troops crossed the Zherebets River west of Svatove and are probing Russian positions along the Kuzemivka-Kolomyichykha line.[17] Geolocated footage shows Ukrainian troops conducting strikes on Russian armored vehicles about 30km northwest of Svatove, indicating that Russian troops maintain positions in the Yahidne-Orlianka area.[18] A Russian milblogger claimed that Ukrainian forces are regrouping in this area after a failed assault on Yahidne.[19] A Russian milblogger reported that Ukrainian troops continued attempted attacks towards Kreminna.[20] The Ukrainian General Staff reported that Ukrainian troops repelled a Russian attack on Bilohorivka, 10km south of Kreminna.[21] Russian sources also claimed that Ukrainian forces conducted a HIMARS strike on Russian positions in Svatove and Kreminna and shelled Russian positions along the Svatove-Kreminna line.[22]

That report contains information about at least seven separate actions along a front that is approximately 250 km, or 150 miles long. You can see in the individual pieces of information that some of the reported attacks or artillery strikes are within 30 miles of one another. The Svatove-Kreminna line, for example, is about 15 miles long, according to the map below. One of the reports says a Russian attack 10 km or six miles south of Kreminna was repelled by Ukrainian troops. It’s unknown how large the Russian or Ukrainian forces were, but they could have been as large as a battalion of 250 men or as small as a platoon of 25. Here is a map of that region, showing areas of recent combat circles in green and black:


Another report by ISW about the front lines around Kherson described no less than five major actions along a front of about 80 km, or 48 miles. A third report about the Donetsk region described nine separate incidents of combat along a border about 250 km, or 150 miles long. The combat included Russian attempts to cut off a highway, separate attacks on two villages south of Bakhmut, a center of intense fighting over the past week, and Ukrainian counterattacks around five villages surrounding Bakhmut in preparation for an attempt to take the town itself. Here is a map of the region showing recent areas of combat circled in green and black:


A more general report by ISW described Russian artillery, drone and missile strikes on nine separate cities in Ukraine, with Ukrainian air defenses shooting down at least eight Russian drones.

All of this happened on one day.

It would be inaccurate to say some wars are not as intense as the war in Ukraine. The wars that have been reported on in Africa, the battles still raging in Syria, the internecine battles in Iraq – they’re all like this.

Every war in this way is war only more so – a greater hell on earth comprised of a lot of little hells on earth, with civilians perishing along with soldiers. All of them die from bullets, from fragments of artillery rounds and rockets, from explosions caused by drones and missiles, and by war crimes committed one by one, sometimes in multiples.

We can only hope that such hell is not visited upon us and that all we have to do is read about it and see photographs of the destruction and sometimes the dead. It’s a fragile hope, but it’s all we’ve got.

Endorse This! Colbert Returns To Roots Of Mocking George Bush (VIDEO)

Endorse This! Colbert Returns To Roots Of Mocking George Bush (VIDEO)

Ever since the Republican party was hijacked by a clownish, failed businessman and reality tv host turned fascist dictator, many on the left have pined for the simpler days of George W. Bush. Putting aside his obvious failure of a lifetime in launching a brutal, unnecessary, and costly war in Iraq, the not-so-bright former president would probably be considered a leftist by today's deranged Republican party of rabble-rousing misfits. Stephen Colbert, like many of us comedians at the time, took great pleasure in jostling George Bush over his failures in Iraq.

Although he has since dropped his more arcane Colbert Report far-right character after taking over hosting duties at the Late Show, Colbert is as political as ever. Having been said, Colbert mocked George W Bush, who gave a speech in Dallas on Wednesday for an event called “Elections – A More Perfect Union”, which focused on how elections work.

We’ve actually acquired Dubya’s PowerPoint on how elections work,” the Late Show host deadpanned. “Step one: get fewer votes than your opponent. Step two: have the supreme court hand it to you." Colbert, however, really laid into the former President after his gaffe on Iraq.

Watch the segment below:

American flag is unfurled at the Pentagon on the 19th anniversary of the September 11th attacks.

A Disturbing Decline, From 9/11 Unity To Pandemic Division

The 21st century in America has so far been bracketed by two terrible mass-casualty events. The first was the 9/11 attacks, 20 years ago today. The second is the COVID-19 pandemic. The radically different public response to these episodes reveals a lot about us, and much of it is not flattering.

The airline hijackings were the worst terrorist attacks in U.S. history. They catalyzed a wave of fear and anger that permanently reshaped our foreign and domestic policies — or, rather, warped them.

The near-panic that gripped the nation back then is understandable. But it's plain today that our leaders, with broad public support, grossly overreacted. The consequences afflict us even now.

No one could have imagined on September 10, 2001, that an American president would authorize the use of torture against alleged enemies in secret prisons. Or that hundreds of American Muslims would be arrested and detained without charges for days, weeks or months. Or that hostility toward Muslims would grow widespread enough to require a new term: Islamophobia. Or that the government would soon be collecting millions of records of phone communications — many of them in violation of the law.

Worse yet, though, were the two protracted wars the United States launched after the 9/11 attacks. The invasion of Afghanistan was a legitimate response, because the terrorist group behind the attacks had been operating there. But after toppling the Taliban and routing al-Qaida, we stayed on in a foolish quest to remake the country — a quest given up only recently.

Then there was the invasion of Iraq to topple Saddam Hussein. He had nothing to do with the attacks, which didn't stop President George W. Bush and those around him from using 9/11 as a pretext for war. Between Afghanistan and Iraq, the U.S. sacrificed more than 6,800 American lives and trillions of dollars. But the president who initiated them was rewarded with reelection.

All this came in response to attacks that cost fewer than 3,000 lives. This pandemic will kill more Americans than that in the next three days — on top of the 649,000 who have already died from COVID-19.

The risk to each of us is hundreds of times greater than the risk of being killed by terrorists ever was. But the spirit of unity that arose after 9/11 has been conspicuously absent in the face of the virus.

What accounts for the disparity? Americans may not be unique in finding it easier to rouse themselves against violent human enemies than against microbes that spread silently through the populace. Osama bin Laden was easy to hate. The pathogen, visible only under a microscope, doesn't stir the same primal fury.

The 9/11 attacks produced a pervasive alarm that vastly exceeded the real danger. The low mortality rate of COVID-19, by contrast, has been used to downplay the need for basic public health measures, such as vaccinations and face coverings.

Leaders matter, for better or worse. Bush used his bully pulpit to call for a "crusade" against "evil-doers," and soon was vowing action against an "axis of evil" consisting of North Korea, Iraq, and Iran. In hyping the threat of terrorism, he commanded broad support and little meaningful resistance.

President Donald Trump, however, used his office to minimize the risks posed by COVID-19 and undermine public health guidance from experts. In March 2020, he admitted to journalist Bob Woodward that he had deliberately downplayed the virus in the full knowledge of how dangerous it was.

Publicly, he compared it to the flu and repeatedly promised it would soon disappear. He refused to wear a mask in public, mocked the government's chief infectious disease expert, Dr. Anthony Fauci, and held indoor rallies in packed arenas.

Trump declared war not on foreign enemies but on Democratic governors such as Michigan's Gretchen Whitmer. His credulous followers soon came to see the pandemic as a hoax cooked up to keep Trump from being reelected.

Perhaps the best explanation for the sharply contrasting public reactions is that the war on terrorism caused a negligible inconvenience to the vast majority of Americans. COVID-19 demanded significant changes in how we live — and millions of people not only refused to cooperate but celebrated their defiance.

The measures deemed necessary to fight terrorism exploited our eagerness to hate our enemies, which we had no trouble doing. Those required to combat COVID-19 required us to love our neighbors. Somehow, that's a much harder sell.

Follow Steve Chapman on Twitter @SteveChapman13 or at https://www.facebook.com/stevechapman13. To find out more about Steve Chapman and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate website at www.creators.com

Afghan evacuees at Hamid Karzai International Airport in Kabul.

Leaving Afghanistan Shows Wisdom, Not Weakness

The suicide bombing that killed 13 U.S. service members and at least 169 Afghans was an atrocity that evoked horror in Americans of every political persuasion. But among those who want to continue the war, the loss was taken as proof that the U.S. should have persisted in a mission that had previously claimed the lives of more than 2,400 Americans.

Had we been willing to go on spilling American blood to stay in Afghanistan, we would not have had to spill blood leaving it. The logic is peculiar.

But the hawks always find a way to justify endless war. They can't very well pretend that we could win in Afghanistan, now or ever. So they find boundless reasons to criticize the manner of our withdrawal, which was bound to be a messy, dangerous process.

They also resort to hollow cliches. Former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo accused the administration of "weakness." Sen. Ben Sasse (R-NE), asserted that "China and Russia will look to capitalize on Biden's weakness." Council on Foreign Relations President Richard Haass said the outcome "will reinforce questions about U.S. reliability."

Some of our European allies joined the chorus. A Conservative parliamentary leader in Britain said the withdrawal is "the biggest foreign policy disaster since Suez" — as though the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq were not gargantuan catastrophes.

Carping about alleged displays of weakness and loss of credibility is the familiar fallback of those trying to sustain a pointless military undertaking. They insist that ending it will have harmful effects on how others perceive us — a claim so vaporous it is impossible to disprove.

Their logic is that if we do something stupid, we have to keep doing it no matter what, because, you know, only weak people repent of their stupidity.

But if committing 20 years — as well as nearly 25,000 American casualties and more than $2 trillion — didn't persuade other governments of our resolve and staying power, it's hard to believe that Year 21 would be a game-changer. Foreigners might instead marvel at our willingness to lavish so much for so long on a mission that did little or nothing to enhance our security. They could deduce that when genuine U.S. interests are at stake, the sky is the limit on what we'd be willing to do.

Biden has shown a dedication to strengthening our alliances that his predecessor did not. President Donald Trump showed much fonder feelings for Russian President Vladimir Putin than for German Chancellor Angela Merkel or French President Emmanuel Macron.

Trump, in fact, bitterly resented our support of NATO. He even raised the possibility of refusing to honor our obligation, under Article 5 of the alliance treaty, to come to the defense of any member of the alliance who was attacked. Privately, he repeatedly expressed his desire to pull out of NATO.

Biden, by contrast, proudly wore a NATO lapel pin to a summit with European leaders in Brussels and declared: "Article 5 we take as a sacred obligation. I want NATO to know America is there." His principal difference with Merkel and Macron at that meeting lay in his desire to take a tougher line against China.

History offers additional evidence that ending a foolish, costly war will not degrade our international standing. Hawkish types said our 1973 withdrawal from Vietnam would speed the march of communism throughout the world. But it somehow failed to prevent the collapse of the Soviet Union, the liberation of Eastern Europe, or the capitalist transformation of China.

Our adversaries have good reason not to test the proposition that the Biden administration is weak. Our military spending, after all, amounts to more than that of the next 11 countries combined. Our Navy has a dominant worldwide reach that no other country can come remotely close to matching.

Our ground forces have decades of combat experience that Russian and Chinese troops lack. Our peerless air power is a deterrent to adversaries from Tehran to Pyongyang.

Ending our involvement in Afghanistan doesn't weaken our posture against our adversaries. It strengthens it, by letting us direct our resources and attention to matters that directly implicate our national security. Biden, for better or worse, is not presiding over a retreat from our role in the world — merely a sensible reshaping of it.

Thursday's bombing was a disaster. But staying in Afghanistan would only have guaranteed more like it.

Follow Steve Chapman on Twitter @SteveChapman13 or at https://www.facebook.com/stevechapman13. To find out more about Steve Chapman and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate website at www.creators.com