Good Morning. Sharing this with you because you need to see the level of genius that is hard at work in your Marine Corps. Larry Adams, the author of this diatribe, got out as a Captain because he didn't like doing sit-ups, but he's an absolute savant. He's profane, sure, but read the points in hereand you'll see that he offers some truly unique insight into what is going on in Iraq. If you
haven't read Hobbes or Locke, you should. Larry gives good Cliffs Notes on both below. Provided for your entertainment and education only. Read with a cup of coffee or something stronger.
Subject: Bile XLII: Hobbes Again
As the Texas Rangers continue to rebuild for the eighth consecutive year (1999 being their last playoff appearance) and with a similar second-division team fighting to stay out of the NL Central basement out in Houston, my thoughts have not been on baseball, strangely enough, even though the bloom of summer nods its weary head at the thought of fall.
My brothers from 2nd Battalion, 7th Marines have returned from Iraq here lately, and though I have seen nothing in the popular media, I hear stories of successful counterinsurgency coming from the mouths of the same people who were, like myself, mired in a crisis of confidence since the end of the Iraqi national elections in October and December of 2006...when we saw
virtually no gains following those auspicious days. It has been difficult to sort through the amalgam of bullshit that we see,
read, and hear each day in order to find a ray of hope. But it is here, and has been happening under the radar for months, unreported by anyone. Tonight, my friends I will do...well, not an end-zone dance...but at least A fist pump. Plus, it will be entertaining for you, because I have the better part of a bottle of Smirnoff's, and a half rack of Uncle Sam to help
me(Sam Adams. He's family. We've met)...and you know how funny I get when I've Set my mind to emptying the liquor cabinet... Ladies and Gentlemen, it's like the burning bush without the ashes, it's... BILE, Volume XLII, The Hobbesian Ooze, and why the media is STILL all fucked up.
1. "Al Asad: home of the Ballsackians"... We're into year four in the big game in Iraq. The late innings, so to speak, with the fans booing the reliever (a right hander named Petraeus), the interim-manager (Secretary of Defense Gates), while screaming for the ouster of the General Manager (Secretary of State Rice), and demanding that the owner (President Bush) sell the team. When suddenly the leadership of the team catches a flight to a road game and meets the pitcher in the dugout during the seventh inning stretch! As the article that I sent out widely last night proclaimed, this road trip was a huge statement of confidence in al Anbar, but for additional reasons that I think the goose-stepping Neo-Con, Mr. Kagan, missed. Consider the job of the Secret Service and CENTCOM in attending to the security of the President during a trip to a war zone. In those jobs, you'll fly him into the most secure place in that country. No? The last thing you want in this war, that has been waged in the press as it has on
the ground, is for the President of the US to get shot the fuck down in a combat zone. Irreparable harm would be done to the entire war-effort. No one could say that they control anything without doubt being cast, ever again. Folks, he didn't land at Baghdad International, where they've got security about 25 levels deep to keep the missileers from shooting down planes,
they landed in fuckin' al Asad. Do ya think that woulda happened in '04? Get a piss test, Jack. Nottafuckingchanceinhell. I couldn't even get a fuckin' Huey pilot to fly over Hit in '04, for Chrissake.
So what does that say about al Anbar in general? It says that the people who watch over the President are more confident in the security being provided by whichever Marine Battalion lives in that shithole right now than we do in the security being provided in Baghdad... (Hey Chicken, what kind of madness would've ensued if we had gotten that FragO from Ripper, to secure the approaches to the airfield in the Ball Sack, IOT ensure the safety of the POTUS? I can just see Kyle Ellison's face now...)
My friends, this is tangible proof that we are winning in al Anbar, the nastiest place in Iraq. Marines were sent there to pacify it, but were told by the embedded media that we hadn't, told that we didn't have a fuckin' condom's chance in a whorehouse of coming out successfully, told that the schism and chaos was too deep. They were wrong then, they're fucking wrong now. The worm is turning. Keep fuckin' reading, I'm on a roll...
2) "Hobbes was NOT a fuckin' tiger in a cartoon, Goddamnit!" As lately as last spring, we heard in Marine circles (by way of the Marine Corps Intelligence Activities) that we would be lucky to get out of al Anbar without singed testicles and a bleeding rectum. Despite the fact that this war, unlike any we have ever fought, has not resulted in the overrunning of any unit larger than a sniper team. Despite the fact that we could go and hold ground pretty much wherever the fuck we want to go and hold ground.
Despite the fact that we continued to learn how to fight a counterinsurgency while maintaining contact with the enemy throughout the entire period. Which bears stark contrast to past wars, where we fight...then learn...then prepare to fight the war we just fought. The reason for this is something that I hinted at several years ago, but didn't realize the full truth of until this week. Thomas Hobbes once argued, following the regicide of English King Chucky Uno by Oliver Cromwell, and the later re-assumption of the throne by King Chucky Dos, that the beginning of human government evolved slowly out of chaos. He called that chaos a "state of nature", and he argued that any people put in a similar situation would opt for the course of action that would ensure
that their family and their possessions would be secure. People in this state of nature, Hobbes claimed, would band together in small, regional groups to form what has been called by Nozick "mutual protection societies". Eventually, those groups would evolve into ever-larger groups until an entire nation (a people distinct) would emerge. Then, by the time that happened, the smaller mutual protection societies would have given up their rights to pursue justice and reciprocity against those who would harm
them in favor of allowing a "Leviathan", or a strong central government, endowed by the Creator to rule, to exact those critical outcomes. Now, Hobbes' argument sought to justify the Devine Right of monarchism, but instead became a treatise on the human condition that is still examined by political philosophers today (many of whom are undergrads and viscerally hate reading 180 pages of prose written in 1651's England). With the exception of the Devine Right of the Maliki Regime, Hobbes predictions
have run true in Iraq.
Follow the bouncing ball.
We went in there in 2003, and pretty much kicked the shit out of any guy who even slightly resembled Keith Hernandez (I still think that Keith was actually Saddam, and is doing "Just for Men" commercials now, while letting some schmuck swing the gallows' pole in his stead. I pause to let all of the non-baseball communists an opportunity to Google Keith Hernandez. After we did all of that, the first report out of Baghdad was of people rioting. Stealing air-conditioners, ripping copper wire out of abandoned government buildings, you name it. We had, at that point, arrived at the place that we avoided in 1990 when we didn't head
north at Udairi, Kuwait...a complete power vacuum. We couldn't speak Iraqi, most of them didn't speak English, and to a guy who lives in fucking Iraq after April, "Stop right there" sounds an awful lot like "steal that
fucking A/C unit with my compliments" in Arabic. Even worse, you had two sides of the population who had been pummeled by the minority since the English bailed out, and were looking to even the score. So you saw what I predicted in May 2003: Picture an Iraqi father, with five or six kids, sitting in his living room with his head in his hands, considering how the fuck he gets the fam through this morass. So he went back to basics, he kowtowed to a local Sheikh who suddenly had his power multiplied by a factor of ten, in the absence of the Hussein Leviathan,and he went and did whatever that Sheikh told him to do. So, that Sheikh
thinks that we'll leave soon after consolidation/Phase III ops, and in order to get us to get out sooner (they saw Vietnam/Beirut/Mogadishu) they started fighting us. Even better, some guy from Jordan, Syria, or East Bumfuck, Egypt came in and tried to help. This douchebag gave him money, guns, and artillery projectiles to make IEDs. Showed him how to rig a device to a cordless phone. The media started showing footage of these fucks blowing us up. The election of last November turned over the Congress to the Pussies (as shall the Democratic party be ever known in this space, my apologies to those who sail in the mainstream of polite society). Everything was on rails. We were running. They were getting press. Beautiful. Then that guy, who in 2003 was sitting with his head in his hands, comes home one night late last year, from a long and dangerous mission of
planting IEDs on an American patrol route, and finds that the guy from East Bumfuck has beaten his wife, put diapers on his sheep, and is threatening him with castration for smoking a shitty, shitty tasting Iraqi cigarette. (Shitty)
So that guy goes to his Sheikh, a man he plighted his troth to, in order to survive, two years ago. He says to him, he says "Hey, the Americans were bad, but at least they didn't eat all the food out of my fridge, beat the shit out of the old lady and run up my long-distance bill. If you can't do something about this, I'm moving to Khalidiyah and getting a job as head sheep rectum checker with Jeremy Sullivan. Oh, by the way, did'ja hear that those assholes banned smoking?"
Now I'm sorry, but I'm gonna do some adjunct to the FM 3-24 Counterinsurgency publication dealing with the whole aspect of smoking cigarettes in the successful conduct of this counterinsurgency, 'cause it's the fucking truth. The Camel that broke the Sheikhs' back in all of this was when the al-Queda fuckheads told the peasantry of Iraq that they couldn't smoke...
Fuck. That.
It was a done deal for al-Queda in Iraq. (Perspective: As disciplined as the Marines serving in defense of this great nation are, I guaranfuckingtee that, were the Commandant, (or more likely, the House under Nancy fucking Pelosi, with the complicity of an
emasculated Senate), to ban the consumption of tobacco, there would be about 173,000 Marines walk off their post as soon as their contract was up.)
The smoking ban by al-Queda was the true turning point. (Any who have been over there can testify that making an Iraqi do without a cigarette for more than thirty seconds is a more difficult than masturbating with your feet.)
That just fucking cut it for the Sheikhs. When faced with an entire constituency demanding to smoke whenever the fuck they want to on one side, and a bunch of inconsistent, hypocritical assholes on the other side...they sat down at their desk and lit up a square, baby.
So these guys sat, and thought, and smoked, and talked to one another. Finally, they realized that we were less malignant to their way of life than these al-Queda assholes. And so they came to the Americans, and pointed out the assholes sitting back at their house, in their easy-chair, with their feet up, smoking a cigarette, watching al Jazzeera on their TV, and hooting like they were on the set of Arsenio Hall.
Suddenly, someone in the upper ramparts of Multi-National Forces, West said, "Hey!" And so, in the majority of al Anbar, we have an acceptable level of violence. My old boss told me last week, regarding Zaidon, one of the nastiest agrarian places in that whole country, that "you could ride a bike through there without fear." Amazing.
So how does the media trumpet this progress? Progress exemplified by 3/7, who deployed to Ramadi for the second time in 18 months? On their last deployment they suffered 22 killed, over 100 wounded, with over 700
incidents in which they declared "troops in contact" (TIC) in their 7 months in the city. Now, it's been 6 weeks since they have had a TIC and they started a soccer league in town. Accident? I don't think so. (Thanks, Boss) Silence in most cases. In others, they argue that this example won't work in other provinces that are not as homogenous as the Sunnis in al Anbar. This is utter bullshit at it's most basest level. (Tell your friends)
Know why? These fuckers are human, just like everybody else, that's why. Even in the Shiite areas, the rejection of the Iran-supported Shiite militias is in the offing. "Why", you ask? A quick quote from an article
that appeared in the Christian Science Monitor:
"In the area near Yusufiyah, Sunnis are coalescing in these groups and, along with the surge of US forces this spring, that has contributed to a decline of attacks across the region by 26 percent, says Army Maj. Gen. Rick Lynch, who commands the 3rd Infantry Division there. He says he believes success in Anbar can translate to Shiite areas, too. 'Just like the Sunni population is tired of Al Qaeda, there are elements of the Shiite population that is tired of [Shiite] ... militia influence,' he says. 'They
just want to be safe.'"
Well. No shit.
The good news is that the Shia are more organized than the Sunni. I asked the Rainman (Joel Iams, intelligence officer, ebullient Heeb, and venerable sage with whom I shared an office for about 2 months during OIF II) "Why is it that when Sistani tells the Shia to 'chill the fuck out' they do it, but the Sunnis won't follow a single leader?" He explained to me, in a one hour lecture in which he cited history dating back to just before the Earth cooled while taking just a single breath, that the Shia are much more structured and will accept the decisions of their senior Imam as the law of the fuckin' land. Which, in my Hobbesian construct, is not fundamentally different, than what happened with the Sunni tribes, just in a more organized manner. Simply put, it was absolutely critical that we pacify the level of violence in Sunni al Anbar before the Shia would believe that they could trust the nascent ubberment that they elected. I predict that Sistani, or his successor, will issue a fatwah to basically "fucking stop this insanity"
so that the leadership of the Iraqi government (who are primarily Shia) can engage with the Sunni and establish the Leviathan. Thus, the "mutual protection societies" band together as a nation, the Iraqis become self determinate, and we can come home with our head high.
3) "$250,000 dollars for sheep-diaper clean up? WTF?" An ancillary contributive point: The most important sentence in the article that I sent yesterday was this one:
"Instead of talking about how to convince the Anbaris that the Sunni will not retake power in Iraq any time soon, Bush, Maliki, Petraeus, Talabani, and Crocker talked about how to get American and Iraqi aid and reconstruction money flowing more rapidly to the province as a reward for its dramatic and decisive turn against AQI and against the Sunni rejectionist insurgency." Since 2003, one of the most frustrating aspects of this counterinsurgency has been the frenetic way that we have spent reconstruction funds, in order to stimulate growth and stability. You figure all of al Anbar equals about 10-12 Marine and Army Battalions (give or take, work with me here).That equals about 10-12 differing attitudes with regards to the priorities of money to rebuild the country that we blew up, because of the different priorities of each battalion commander who occupies his given Area of Operations. And each one of those differing (Marine) attitudes changes every 7 months. (Unless you're 3/4, then it changes every 10 months, and
it sucks being you.) Rainman and I identified this in April of '04, that the two critical disconnects in theater, since we've been fighting this counterinsurgency, has been the lack of continuity with regards to intelligence and a viable reconstruction plan. What you see in the quote above is the inauguration of a fucking continuous reconstruction plan for the entire province...which we have NOT had since the OIF I guys came home in March of '04. Once this begins to spread over the al Anbar province, and is successful, then one-by-one, the other provinces will understand. Shia, Sunni, Kurd. All of 'em.
Then we draw down. Not before, because someone is faced with re-election. Only when we've won. Because SSgt Marvin Best deserves that much. Because SSgt Danny Clay deserves that much. And because 1st Lieutenant Shaun Blue deserves that much.
If Locke was right, and we get the "government we deserve", than it is up to us to talk to as many people as we can, to hold the line, and to push. You. Me. Them. Everybody. Everybody.
Immundus saecula saeculorum,
Unclean
