My old friend Noel Toertt, free-lance ‘street’ journalist and contributor to the monthly political magazine New Dawn, is just back from Iraq. If you are merely interested in the handouts from the U.S. Embassy or press conferences by Central Command in order to find out about the situation there pass this by. However, if you want to know what the situation is on the ‘street’ Noel will more times than not give you some insight into what is happening and why. Sometime I will give a real biographic sketch on the man but for now know that he is of Russian-German heritage. His grandfather was a Czarist general at the time of the Russian Revolution. An uncle fought in the Ernst Thaelmann Battalion of the International Brigades in Spain during the Civil War. Those seemingly contradictory facts will tell you part of the tale of his life. Make no mistake, as the interview below will make clear, we do not share the same political universe for the most part. What we do share is the need to turn the world upside down. This interview took place on October 21, 2007. More of the interview will follow in later entries. Any transcription problems are mine. Any political problems you can be the judge.
Markin: Noel, long time no see. How are you doing? You look at little tired?
Tortt: Ya, my flight back from the Middle East was a nightmare. I think I would rather have been on a cargo plane at least you have room on them. And the booze is better.
Markin: Just to set the frame for the interview when did you first go to the Middle East?
Tortt: Actually I started covering the area at the time of the Soviet intervention in Afghanistan, about 1980; I worked out of Pakistan first. Iraq about 1990 during the build up for the first Iraq war. Afghanistan again in 2001 and Iraq again, off and on, since late 2003. I have written about all of this maybe a hundred times.
Markin: Okay now that we have established your ‘credentials’ here is the first ‘softball’ question. I have been arguing, unhappily, since late spring that, all things being equal, that the Bush troop ‘surge’ in Iraq by placing more troops on the ground would be successful in the short haul. As long at the American troops stayed in the lead. Now several months later and after the Petreaus/Crocker reports to Congress and the tamp down on known acts of violence it looks to me like that is the case. What is your take on this?
Tortt: Look, let’s look at this from this perspective. A conventional army like the American one, and especially the American one, can rain hell down on any other conventional army if it has the will. Adding a few more troops, more or less, doesn’t really change the mix. This asymmetric warfare is a different baby though. Once the numbers for the ‘surge’ and where they would be concentrated became general knowledge insurgent decisions had to be made. For the various insurgent operations you noticed what amounted to a self-imposed tamp down on confronting the American forces. So yes, today, and I only speak of today in an almost literal sense, the ‘surge’ has had some successes. But listen, the atmosphere in places like Baghdad is so tense you could cut a knife through it. That’s the real situation. Waiting for the other shoe to drop.
Markin: Waiting for the other shoe drop and do what?
Tortt: Waiting for the Americans to back off enough to go back on the ‘offensive’ and this time with more sophistication and probably more co-coordinated attacks. One thing that gets forgotten in the mix is that these guys have nothing but time. Hell for the most part it’s their country so they aren’t going anywhere. They also know that the Americans have to leave sometime so like smart guys they prepare, keep up enough of a presence to worry the American generals and move when the time is right. Not a nice picture from the American side but that is the story.
Markin: How do you know that they, the insurgents, have not just decided that there is no way forward on the road they were pursuing and have decided to close up shop?
Toertt: Let’s go back to that tension in the air business I mentioned a while ago. Nothing indicates that they have given up the struggle. Let me tell a little point to bring that home. I ran into a kid, and I do mean kid, who was carrying about a half dozen cell phones in need of various repairs. He approached me and asked me for some batteries that I did not have. I asked since the phones did not seem to work what he needed batteries for. He replied that a ‘friend’ would have them working pretty soon. The way he said it made me think that something more than calling his girlfriend was on his mind. No, they are getting ready believe that. By the way those cell phones were thrown away by the Americans in the Green Zone if that kid was not lying, and I do not think he was. Shades of Vietnam all over again.
Markin: What do you mean?
Toertt: Well, the American army in Vietnam supplied, incidentally and unintentionally, a fair amount of material to the South Vietnamese Liberation forces that they turned around and used as ammo, etc. against the Americans. Also remember the Iraqis are smart people. Hell this area is the cradle of civilization and although they have lost a few steps over the centuries they are still smart. It never did anyone any good to underestimate a determined foe, although the Americans repeatedly do so.
Markin: Well, if the Bush strategy is a temporary success at least what about the other part of the puzzle- turning the war over to the Iraqi national army and police forces?
Toertt: That, Markin, is a whole different ball game. Let me take a couple of steps back on this. Saddam build a pretty good national army in his time. At least it looked like it could fight or be used, as is the usual case, for any internal disturbances. However, he squandered that army in the Iran wars in the 1980’s. Then the cream got decimated in the Kuwait fiasco in 1991. After that the thing was a bleeding hulk. By the time 2003 rolls around it is essentially human dust. Nothing since then has indicated that a national army, or for that matter police force, can be built that will do the job of defending the government or put a stop to foreign interventions. Look it is hard to create a real army. You need cadre. As I mentioned above that, for the most part, has been liquidated. So what you have now are a bunch of kids who have seen nothing but failure being forced usually out of economic necessity to take up the gun. Add in the sectarian aspect and the stigma of working with the occupiers and that does not present a very good picture. That is what the American generals scream into the night about.
Markin: That sounds like a recipe for a very long occupation
Toertt: Right, do not let anyone kid you, nobody I talked to realistically thought about being out of Iraq for five to ten years with the ten years being more likely. And they were not sure even then that the army they trained could do the job. Believe me when they invented the expression between a rock and a hard place they had something like Iraq in mind. More than that though I do not see a will to create an army. There are just a bunch of scared kids (justifiably so) in a place they do not want to be in. The proof of that are the exceedingly few operations the Iraqis do on their own. You made me laugh one time when you said in one of your commentaries that you would like to see the Iraqis do an operation without half the 82nd Airborne beside them. You hit the nail on the head on that one.
Markin: Well here is the ‘hard’ question. We have talked earlier today and at previous times about this. As you know for the last year or more I have been arguing for a change in orientation for the anti-war movement away from the futile parliamentary maneuvering and linking up with the rank and file troops in Iraq to end the war. I asked you before you left for Iraq this time to get a feel for this for me. What did you think?
Toertt: Markin, you have got to move away from your love of the Russian Revolution and all that happened there. It is starting to unbalance you. Sure the Russian troops then were ready to lead the fight against continuing the war and they did it with their feet. Hell, they tried to boil my grandfather the General in a barrel. But that was different. They were war weary, they had land hunger and mainly they were tired of the offensives that led nowhere except to death. Rather exceptional circumstances won’t you agree. And nothing like today.
Markin: I figured I would have to take a verbal beating from you on this but as I have pointed out before the whole point of making propaganda for this position was to change the axis away from reliance on essentially Democratic parliamentary maneuvering to bring about a troop withdrawal. Believe it or not I realize that conditions in Russia in 1917 and today are different but the task is the same.
Toertt: Okay, Okay we have been through that before but to answer your question I do not see any movement like that today. First, the ‘success’ of the surge has tended to solidify the rank and file back to at least neutrality about what they are doing there. Secondly these kids are a long way from home and want to get home fast. The shortest way seems to be to do their time and rotate. I also think that the effects of being a part of a professional force tend to militate against those kinds of actions. In Russia, and even in the late stages of the Vietnam War, these were actions of citizen-soldiers fed up with the way things were going. I got no sense of that. Sure there is some opposition to the war among the rank and file. And also some confusion about why they are there. And importantly, some resentment toward those who they perceive are not respectful of their mission. All those things are normal and to be expected.
Markin: Okay, that is a fair enough evaluation although it does not negate the need for a change in orientation. One last question for this round. Where does all this go? If parliamentary maneuvering is doomed, if the troops will not lead us out- then what?
Toertt: You like to call yourself a hard socialist realpolitik politician. I like to call myself a tough liberal realpolitik observer. Here is the hard reality. Korea and Germany. Yes, a long term occupation force smaller than today’s for a very long time, make that a very, very long time no matter what administration is in power, except if your guys take political power before. Ouch.
Markin: Thanks, I will take that under advisement.
No comments:
Post a Comment