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General Babaker Zebari, center (photo: Stephen Baack on Flickr)
BBC is reporting Thursday that Iraq’s highest ranking army officer has said that his country is not ready to take responsibility for its own security:
Lt Gen Babaker Zebari warned that the Iraqi military might not be ready to take control for another decade.
/snip/
Gen Zebari told a defence conference in Baghdad that the Iraqi army would not be able to ensure the country’s security until 2020 and that the US should keep its troops in Iraq until then.
"At this point, the withdrawal [of US forces] is going well, because they are still here, but the problem will start after 2011," he said.
It should be kept in mind that the myth of training Iraqi forces to take over their own security is a product of General David Petraeus’ long history of spinning the media. Remember that Petraeus entered the realm of politics by publishing an Op-Ed in the Washington Post on the eve of the 2004 elections. His overly optimistic description of his "success" in training Iraqis is thought to have played at least a partial role in helping George W. Bush to a second term as President. Here is the heart of Petraeus’ 2004 spin:
Nonetheless, there are reasons for optimism. Today approximately 164,000 Iraqi police and soldiers (of which about 100,000 are trained and equipped) and an additional 74,000 facility protection forces are performing a wide variety of security missions. Equipment is being delivered. Training is on track and increasing in capacity. Infrastructure is being repaired. Command and control structures and institutions are being reestablished.
Less than three years later, of course, Petraeus then led the political spin surrounding his "surge" in Iraq, sending in more troops and starting anew on the training mission. The previous claims of training success were discarded without note and training started all over.
Today, the Obama administration is employing semantics to claim the end of combat operations in Iraq this summer while leaving 50,000 combat-ready troops in Iraq under a re-designation as advisers. This move allows the myth of Petraeus’ training of Iraqi forces to remain in operation, while the advisers stand ready to fill the gaps left by the poorly trained Iraqi forces.
Thus, Zebari’s plea can be read as a request to keep these advisers in Iraq for another ten years. Heaven forbid anyone should try to pierce the political aspirations of Petraeus and admit that his claims to training are a total scam perpetrated on the US government and the citizens who have funded his self-aggrandizement. Just consider the adulatory tone of this American Forces Press Service article from April, 2009:
Army Gen. David H. Petraeus, the author of the military’s counterinsurgency manual, yesterday explained the principles that led to success in Iraq and how they apply to the fight in Afghanistan.
The commander of U.S. Central Command spoke to a packed stadium at Kansas State University, invited as part of the prestigious Alfred M. Landon lecture series on public issues hosted there.
To a resounding ovation, he stepped to a podium that has seen three standing presidents and five former presidents, the current and three previous defense secretaries, a slew of politicians, ambassadors, Pulitzer and Nobel prize winners, but only a handful of military generals since the series began in 1966.
With his own Ivy League doctorate degree and tours as a military professor, Petraeus is no stranger to academia and is friends with the university’s president.
This article should remove all doubt on the question of whether Petraeus has political aspirations. Not only does he have them, but he is willing to use the military press to start building a presidential aura. As long as the government and the corporate press hold onto the myth that his superior ability to train foreign forces allows those countries we have destroyed to eventually take over their own security arrangements, he will continue on his path of eventually running for President.
Should General Zebari continue to provide evidence against the Petraeus training myth, it would not be surprising for him to be replaced soon. The Petraeus myth is quite fragile at this point and I would suspect that anyone who is seen as a threat to it would be slated for silencing.
19 Comments
“At this point, the withdrawal [of US forces] is going well, because they are still here.”
downright rummyesque. This Zebari guy “gets it.” what about state’s blackwater merc contract to provide security for civilian advisors trying to build a more secure Iraq? what could Iraqis- even the ones not on the payroll- possibly have against Xe’s team america?
Rummy’s memoir to one of the few Bushie’s that I’m looking forward to reading. Mainly because of the clever way he will use to rationalize. It should be a hoot ‘n a half. And the longer it takes him to come out with it, the more eager I get.
Please get Rummy’s kiss and tell from a library. I abhor these muthr fckrs making more war profits.
I can’t read a book without a pen in hand, and I have every intention of marginalian Rummy’s to death with sarcastic comments. So the library route is out, but perhaps if I wait a bit, I can find a used one for one cent + $3.99 shipping.
Afghanistan is more fractured and intractable than Iraq was. Petraeus will no doubt try to pull off a public relations coup there but he will find the going far more difficult and the spin much harder to sell. Generals who preside over defeats don’t have political futures.
Not even generals who lost wars after their states became empires? I’ll bet there are plenty of examples of those in history, though I don’t know history well enough to be able to name names.
OT-Was reading a comment by you re: eggplant/cardboard in another thread.
Stay tuned for Foodie Sunday and Eggplant Recipe!
*G*
I regifted the eggplant to someone who likes it and declined further eggplant gifts. But I’ll look for your recipe anyhow & perhaps either be convinced, or forward it to the eggplant lovers. I like so many different fruits & vegetables that I never feel shy about revealing when there’s one that does not appeal. *g*
Not to worry. NATO has stated the Afghan force training is apace and doing splendidly; well discounting internecine fights between our trained national police and our trained Afghan Army. I’m sure they got that reinsurance from our own Betrayous.
To put the Q a different, shorter way: How come Iraqis and Afghans never had any trouble fighting wars until the U.S. got their to train them?
It would appear Zebari is our new Chalabi!!
Ten more years! Ten more years! Ten more years!
(cue Fleetwod Mac’s ‘Don’t Stop Thinking About Tomorrow’)
Mr. White this diary is a nice catch of the issue at hand.
Thank you and rcc’d.
I’ll only suggest it’s a thin line between Zebari and ‘Ten More Years’ as being positive spin vs. Zebari screwing up the Petreaus Myth Of Training. So I’m not completely sold on THAT one yet.
However, your insight to Petreaus’ comfort zone with academia is a chilling observation in regards how he could climb into presidential contention for 2012, despite Obama putting him into the failing spotlight of AfPak after Petreaus was in the failing spotlight of Iraq.
We progs see Petreaus as a failure, the avg. American voter will see a hero.
Bad news when military leaders/failures become politically electable in this day and age. Eisenhower should be the last one and we were lucky with him that we didn’t nuke Korea.
A Petreaus as Prez would take the corporate fascism ownership of our lives to a whole new level of Big Brother.
And if elected, Iran would be done in a heartbeat and hello Armygeddon and Xtian Ascension.
We have much to fear from this one.
The general might want to avoid small, or any, aircraft if he is going to continue to utter such unutterable truths.
Jim: I have to believe (for now anyway) that the American electorate would not elect Petraeus, if only because they’d have to think he’d be ready to start another war somewhere. Or am I deluded?
Recommended, and soon to be tweeted & facebooked.
Training Iraqis to oppress Iraqis so we can steal their oil…
Training Afghans to opprss Afghans so we can build oil and gas lines through their country…
Recall the overlap between Petraeus’s Surge and the slaughter of civilians in New Bagdad, July 12 2007. His strategy is to spin success to the media and to lay down suppressive fire in all directions. We can expect many, many civilians to die in any theatre in which he is assigned to command troops. He spits on the rules of engagement.
Thanks to Wikileaks and Bradley Manning you can see Petraeus’s handiwork in photographs of paintings numbered 19,20,21, and 22 here:
http://web.mac.com/ctb3/Site/Welcome.html
The problem, as I understand it, is that the Iraqi Army we “stood up” consists of a bunch of guys with assault rifles and some armored vehicles. If the goal is a modern army with combat support and combat service support units, adequate supply and transportation, aircraft etc. then Iraq does not have that without the U.S. filling in for the foreseeable future.
“How come Iraqis and Afghans never had any trouble fighting wars until the U.S. got their to train them?”
I’d like to know that, too. We just handed the Afghans some weapons and money, and they beat back a superpower. But now after intensive training they can’t handle the Taliban? Seriously, what is going on there?
Yech. President Betrayus? Ralph.