Something radical has begun in Iraq, but it has flown under the radar of the media and the public. For the first time since 1970, the U.S. Army is court-martialing a civilian; and not an American civilian, but a Canadian civilian. Charged with aggravated assault for attacking another contractor during an altercation, this civilian contractor now faces trial by a military court, with a jury, judge and defense counsel all in uniform, without the benefit of indictment by grand jury, and with a potential federal criminal conviction awaiting him at the end of the process. To understand why this is [...]
“Beware the twelve-division strategy for a ten-division Army.” The man who spoke those words is probably the only person in America who actually suffered for being right on the Iraq War from the very start: Gen. Eric Shinseki. It’s worth remembering Shinseki’s maxim, especially in any attempt to re-vision American foreign policy in the post-Iraq War era. Because eventually we’ll leave Iraq, but unless we address the temptations that led us to invade that country in the first place, we’re likely to give in to them again. According to Dissent magazine’s tribute to Gen. Shinseki, the dispute between him and [...]
The result in Basra clearly did not reflect well on the Iraqi Security Forces. But American officials and other prominent advocates of the idea that victory is within reach — or at least possible — in Iraq are saying in the wake of the Basra fighting that the Iraqi Security Forces’ poor performance was more a consequence of the poor planning of ISF commanders and Iraqi government officials — all the way up to Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki — than of ground-level combat unreadiness. In an essay title “Maliki’s Missteps” on the Web site of the neoconservative journal Commentary today, [...]
