The Price of Iraq

Here's my chosen excerpt from Evan Thomas' Newsweek cover story on the hunt for bin Laden:

When Franks refused to send Army Rangers into the mountains at Tora Bora, he was already in the early stages of planning for the next war. By early 2002, new Predators—aerial drones that might have helped the search for bin Laden—were instead being diverted off the assembly line for possible use in Iraq. The military's most elite commando unit, Delta Force, was transferred from Afghanistan to prep for the invasion of Iraq. The Fifth Special Forces Group, including the best Arabic speakers, was sent home to retool for Iraq, replaced by the Seventh Special Forces Group—Spanish speakers with mostly Latin American experience. The most knowledgeable CIA case officers, the ones with tribal contacts, were rotated out. Replacing a fluent Arabic speaker and intellectual, the new CIA station chief in Kabul was a stickler for starting meetings on time (his own watch was always seven minutes fast) but allowed that he had read only one book on Afghanistan.

At any rate, you're welcome to pick your own paragraph, but that's my favorite. Certainly, it's a point that I think Democrats are going to want to emphasize in the 2008 election, which is why I think it would be smart for Democrats to, insofar as possible, not nominate people who think authorizing the invasion of Iraq was a good idea.

Comments

Not to quibble, but I wonder if the Arabic speakers were really of any more utility in Afghanistan than the Spanish speakers. Arabic is not spoken in Afghanistan (other than in religious contexts, I suppose). The primary Afghan languages are Persian and Pashto.

Posted by Rob Mac | August 27, 2007 4:49 PM

I wonder if the Arabic speakers were really of any more utility in Afghanistan than the Spanish speakers.

While I don't pretend to know whether the imminent surmise is accurate or not, I'd guess that it's much more useful in that you'd be more likely to run into people who had (some) Arabic, and work out conversation in that way, than people who had Spanish. French is of most use in France, but it's also probably more useful in Italy and Germany than it is in China.

Posted by Quarterican | August 27, 2007 4:54 PM

Since many of the mujahideen were arabs rather than pashtuns, arabic would be very useful in intel in Afghanistan.

Posted by MikeJ | August 27, 2007 4:59 PM

If they were saying at the time that Iraq was going to be such a cakewalk, why did they need Delta force, new Predators, top CIA officers, and all the other high level assets? Since Iraq was going to be so easy, couldn't the Spanish speakers handle it?

Posted by SP | August 27, 2007 5:07 PM

It's also worth remembering that spending money on Iraq before it was appropriated, which was about the only useful information revealed in Woodward's book, was illegal.

Posted by Ginger Yellow | August 27, 2007 5:11 PM

Since many of the mujahideen were arabs rather than pashtuns, arabic would be very useful in intel in Afghanistan.

Posted by MikeJ | August 27, 2007 4:59 PM
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Think please. By early 2002 the muhajadeen were already scattered to the winds. Spanish is about as good as Arabic if you didn't speak Pasthto

Posted by Campesino | August 27, 2007 5:28 PM

Re: Arabic versus Pashto, the 5th Special Forces Group is also the one with Central Asian language skills as well as Arabic.

Posted by Matthew Yglesias | August 27, 2007 5:35 PM

Since many of the mujahideen were arabs rather than pashtuns, arabic would be very useful in intel in Afghanistan.

Agreed, but Pashtu itself, like Persian, is an Arabic derivative.

I've always wondered, given our obvious interests in the region, why, militarily speaking, Middle Eastern languages aren't compulsory.

Posted by Monty | August 27, 2007 5:41 PM

In fairness to Franks, Senator Bob Gramm --Democratic Chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee at the time -- related in his book "Intelligence Matters" how Franks called Gramm into his office at USCENTCOM in Feb? 2002, closed the door, and informed Gramm that he was being directed to cut back the war in Afghanistan in order to support an invasion of Iraq. This was over a year before the invasion in March 2003.

So Franks gave the Democrats an early headsup on what was in the works.

Posted by Don Williams | August 27, 2007 5:42 PM

As Rob Mac said, Arabic might be useful as a kind of pidgin sign language with Afghans given all the related vocabulary between Persian and Pashto on one hand and Arabic on the other (like speaking Latin or French in upstate New York), but, as a purely linguistic tool, it is of limited importance.

However, the large amount of cultural paraphenalia an Arabic-speaker picked up along the way would of course be very useful: a knowledge of (and sympathy with) Islam and Islamic culture in the broader sense, familiarity with the Qur'an and its terminology, and so on. A little goes a long way.

Posted by CG | August 27, 2007 5:42 PM

Ginger Yellow: spending money on Iraq before it was appropriated, which was about the only useful information revealed in Woodward's book, was illegal.

An impeachable offense, as a matter of fact. But who's counting?

Posted by Nell | August 27, 2007 5:46 PM

I'm pretty sure Osama bin Laden and his chums speak arabic.

Posted by ed | August 27, 2007 5:49 PM

Think please. By early 2002 the muhajadeen were already scattered to the winds.

That's why we were, make that are, still hunting them. OBL is an arab and a muj. Fuckwit.

Posted by MikeJ | August 27, 2007 5:50 PM

Monty, you are completely wrong about "Persian, like Pashto" being an Arabic derivative. Here's a primer:

They are completely unrelated languages. As should be widely known by now (but, for predictable reasons, isn't), Arabic is a Semitic language, closely related to Hebrew and Aramaic, and, more distantly, Amharic and Berber; while both Pashto and Persian (or Farsi or Dari or Tajik) are Indo-European languages related to Hindi and Urdu, which branched off from Romance and Germanic languages in a place similar to where Greek, Armenian, and Slavic did.

Both Pashto and Persian, of course, have many Arabic loan words due to the influence of Islam -- thousands of them, in fact -- just the same as English, a Germanic language, has gotten much of its vocabulary, and almost all of its high vocabulary, from French as a by-product of its forcible integration into Latinate Europe.

But the grammatical structure of Persian and Pashto remains fundamentally Indo-European. And that makes a big difference: Persian is as easy to learn, for an English speaker, as Spanish is, while Arabic is sometimes said to be as difficult as Chinese.

Posted by CG | August 27, 2007 5:55 PM

Think please. By early 2002 the muhajadeen were already scattered to the winds.

That's why we were, make that are, still hunting them. OBL is an arab and a muj. Fuckwit.

Posted by MikeJ | August 27, 2007 5:50 PM

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So you're going to interrogate the Pashtun that they're hiding among in a language they don't speak. Very bright

Posted by Campesino | August 27, 2007 6:20 PM

Monty, you are completely wrong about "Persian, like Pashto" being an Arabic derivative. Here's a primer:
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Beat me to it. Thank you for a good explanation

Posted by Campesino | August 27, 2007 6:22 PM

Sorry; my understanding was that Persian is a derivative of Arabic from vocabulary.

..."the same as English, a Germanic language, has gotten much of its vocabulary, and almost all of its high vocabulary, from French as a by-product of its forcible integration into Latinate Europe."

I'd imagined the reverse: Latin-as-root-language providing the fundament for French/German/English. Did I misread?

Don't know much about Semitic v Arabic syntactic structures; as stated, I assumed similarities via vocab.

Posted by Monty | August 27, 2007 7:31 PM

I'm sure Persian has picked up a lot of vocabulary from Arabic, but then again so has Spanish.

Posted by mwg | August 27, 2007 8:47 PM

Ginger Yellow: spending money on Iraq before it was appropriated, which was about the only useful information revealed in Woodward's book, was illegal.An impeachable offense, as a matter of fact. But who's counting?
Posted by Nell

What a saphead.

The Pentagon, allocating assets between commands inside the approved budget under civilian leadership - is never an impeachable offense.

How do you think the Clinton Administration of Haiti happened without Ted Kennedy's approval and a formal vote?

Magic Fairy Dust?

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As for the Lefty faked anger and pursuit of the White Whale - Moby Bin Laden - no one in the military thinks No-Balls Obama, the gay Nutroots community, or even Hillary who does have balls -are actually serious in their public statements
that "getting Osama" will end the Jihadi threat. It's a convenient partisan bit of sophistry. "Getting" Binnie is just some emotional gratification. One that would actually be cheaper by killing his 22 offspring we know of and wiping out his line as consequence of 9/11 if you really swallow the faux Lefty revenge line.
But we all know that half the Far-Left would like to say they would like to suck Osama's cock for striking a mighty blow against white male oppressors, the cancer of Western Civilization - if they could get away with it.

((((((((((((((((((((((

Posted by Chris Ford | August 27, 2007 8:49 PM

I support presidential candidates and political leaders who recognize the everyday needs of Americans. People of this country wants to see immediate action of withdrawing troops from Iraq as well as ending this enormous mistake President Bush got us into. On the other hand, this administration needs to recognize the war in Iraq is a complete failure and mistake. There are more critical issues that affecting the lives of millions of Americans and people world wide that our president is not taking actions against. Now the war has proven to be a failure and is causing more violence, terror and poverty in this world. According to the Borgen Project, it only takes $19 billion dollars annually to eradicate world hunger and poverty. However, our government has already spent more than $450 billion dollars over this fruitless war in Iraq. It is time for the Bush Administration to take a real interest in the lives of the American people as well as people who are in desperate needs around the world. Stop the lies and stop poverty now. Put away the arrogance and put the needs of the people before political gains.

Posted by Mstessyrue | August 27, 2007 9:56 PM

I agree. The war has gone on for far too long and wasted an inordinate amount of money for the tiny amount of progress we have made. Hopefully the next President will make more sensible decisions pertaining to effects of the war on the Iraqi people as well as the American people after Bush is gone.

Posted by Erika | August 28, 2007 12:37 AM

i agree, bush's administration was more intrested in capture hussein, who had a bad history with his father, then capture the man who helped plan one of the worst terrorist attacks our country has had. we should have gone one step at a time instead of jumping from one thing to another.

Posted by robbie armstrong | August 28, 2007 2:06 AM

Still got a standing offer here: a billion in advance, bin Laden in ninety days (assuming he's still alive.)

Still no takers.

Meanwhile, some nitwit named Retired Vice Admiral John Scott Redd, head of the National Counterterrorism Center, who looks like John Bolton (why do all neocons have white moustaches? Is there some neocon grooming code I haven't been informed of?) says in Newsweek that Al Qaeda is about to hit us again.

Get this quote:

"Al Qaeda has an active plot to hit the West. The United States knows about it but doesn’t have enough tactical detail to issue a precise warning or raise the threat level."

In other words, they STILL don't know what's going on (ostensibly). In reality, they know because they're letting it happen in order to give Bush his push on to Iran. Even if Iran isn't directly blamed for this supposed operation (never mind that Al Qaeda has nothing whatever to do with Iran), they'll use any such attack as a justification for attacking Iran.

Why do you think they're planning on labeling the Iranian Guards as a "terrorist organization"? Because it would allow them under the Authorization of Force legislation to attack Iran without Congressional approval.

Of course, he dithers and blathers about how he can't talk about it - but basically this is popping up exactly as another 9/11 rolls around and we have plenty of rumors of "Middle Eastern-looking men" (i.e., Israelis) running around in the Western US.

And get this brilliant piece of bullshit:

"What I’ll tell you about bin Laden is if we knew where he was, he’d either be dead or captured. It’s that simple. [He’s] obviously a tough target. That whole area is a tough target. And my standard answer on OBL is: remember [convicted Atlanta Olympics bomber] Eric Rudolph. Nobody likes to hear it but, I mean, here’s a guy [who was on the run] in the United States of America. We had unlimited access—the FBI, local law enforcement—and the guy hid out for an awful long time just by keeping a low profile. One reporter said the other day, “Well, gee, you’ve got all this great overhead stuff and various surveillance things.” I said, “Yeah. I’d trade those for about three great human sources.”

In other words, this moron is comparing one lone guy in the US to bin Laden who has an entourage and numerous associates throughout Pakistan, Afghanistan and who knows where else.

There's no comparison. The only common factor is the incompetence of the people looking for him.

It's doesn't matter what part of the world he's in. There are people there. They know who he is, where he is - and many of them aren't even his followers, and many of them would happily give his ass up if they could get some benefit out of it and do so without getting killed in revenge by others either connected to bin Laden or their tribe.

So if you can't find three human sources for bin Laden, you just ain't looking hard enough. It's that simple.

It's bullshit.

Posted by Richard Steven Hack | August 28, 2007 2:35 AM

The Fifth Special Forces Group, including the best Arabic speakers, was sent home to retool for Iraq, replaced by the Seventh Special Forces Group—Spanish speakers with mostly Latin American experience

It is wrong of me to find this as hilarious as I do. I have this image of C-130s full of hard-eyed, heavily-armed, bearded, Arabic-speaking SF operators, all dressed in pakul caps and salwar kamiz, flying out of Kabul in early 2002. Flying in to replace them are more C-130s full of equally heavily-armed SF operators with large, droopy mustaches, bandoliers and sombreros, who start wandering around the Hindu Kush saying "Hey! Senor! You seen thees Bin Laden muchacho?" and wondering why they don't seem to be blending in very well.

Posted by ajay | August 28, 2007 5:09 AM

This is an important point. Had we not been in such a rush to invade Iraq, we could have invaded Pakistan to go after Bin Laden... Oh, that's right -- there wasn't a snowball's chance in hell of us ever doing that.

Posted by Harry | August 29, 2007 5:31 PM