Who Could Have Guessed

I, for one, am totally shocked to learn that the Bush administration's efforts to flood the Iraq war zone with weapons hasn't so much generated law, order, and security as it has created a situation where "U.S. military officials do not know what happened to 30 percent of the weapons the United States distributed to Iraqi forces from 2004 through early this year as part of an effort to train and equip the troops."

This is the kind of thing that makes proposals to refuse to admit defeat in Iraq by maintaining an indefinite "train & equip" mission there so potentially dangerous. Introducing more and more weapons and expertise in using them into the civil war dynamic runs the risk of just making things worse. The good news, however, is that as best I can tell from the article the GAO thinks things are better in 2006-2007 than they were in 2004-2005. The bad news is that the especially bad period for the equipment program when "weapons distribution was haphazard and rushed and failed to follow established procedures" came "when security training was led by Gen. David H. Petraeus, who now commands all U.S. forces in Iraq."

Photo by Flickr user Joe Logon used under a Creative Commons license

Comments

What's the weapon on the top of the rack? I've never seen one of those before.

Posted by Gordon Lightfoot | August 6, 2007 10:43 AM

But Matt, I thought more weapons = less crime?

Posted by DJ | August 6, 2007 10:47 AM

An armed society is a polite society.

Posted by monkey.dave | August 6, 2007 10:54 AM

DJ, you are correct. According to extremely sciencific surveys and analysis, the U.S. Gov't should have given Iraqis even more weapons to make them and us safer.

Posted by M. Rosh | August 6, 2007 10:56 AM

Wow, this was a *much* better policy than failing to guard the weapons depots scattered throughout Saddam's Iraq.

After all, who would have ever thought of securing the enemy's weaponry in enemy territory? Oh, I forgot, they were all going to be too busy growing flowers to give to us and baking chocolates to feed our forces.

Posted by El Cid | August 6, 2007 10:58 AM

The top gun is the French FAMAS assault rifle.

In addition to our own weapons undoubtedly being used against us in Iraq, there have been more subtle ways in which this lack of control over our own weaponry has hurt us. About a month or so ago, surrendered PKK fighters revealed that the PKK had been given guns from the American army. Presumably these were simply missing weapons that the PKK had gotten their hands on, but it is has furthered fueled the idea here in Turkey that the US is colluding with the PKK, a notion that is largely responsible for relations with our (supposedly) strongest Muslim ally hitting rock-bottom.

Posted by Andrew | August 6, 2007 11:03 AM

1) Actually, the best barrier against genocidal conflict in IRaq would be for all factions to be heavily armed.
2) You get genocide in places like Yugoslavia --where the US government disarmed the Muslims and then left them to be killed by the Serbs.
3) Racist killers quickly loose their aggression when their asses start getting shot. They are only brave when shooting unarmed civilians with no fear of retaliation.
4) Yet, such a conflict will split Iraq into three pieces along religious lines. But the factions there will never halt their revenge killings until it is clear that there is a price to be paid.
5) Mao Tse tung was wrong. Civil rights and freedom are what come out of the barrel of a gun.
That's why Southern governments tried to use gun control laws to disarm the Afro-Americans after the Civil War -- in order to make them more vulnerable to Ku Klux Klan killings and intimidation by terrorism.

6) The unsolved mystery is who in Iraq will be getting the HEAVY weapons -- artillery, tanks, etc. If one faction has near exclusive control of heavy weapons, then you could have a massacre.

Posted by Don Williams | August 6, 2007 11:16 AM

1) Actually, the best barrier against genocidal conflict in IRaq would be for all factions to be heavily armed.

Well, that does sort of assume that the "factions" which would be most likely to control small arms supply and flow are co-terminous with the civilians who are typically on the receiving end of the bullets.

Which is not to say that some more 'equitable' distribution of arms might not be on the table, just that things like this really need to be thought about deeply, rather than making quick theoreticals.

For example, in the Yugoslavian example, arms were in fact distributed throughout the country -- by Tito, as he intended the population be able to defend itself from invasion should the central government be taken out.

Saddam Hussein distributed weapons depots throughout the nation as well, but for the opposite reason -- so that his local military could crush any uprising without waiting for re-supply.

Posted by El Cid | August 6, 2007 11:24 AM

It's all President Maliki's fault--he's the CinC.

WASHINGTON, Sept. 7, 2006 – Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki is now officially the commander in chief of his troops. Coalition forces handed over operational control of Iraq’s navy, air force and the 8th Iraqi Army Division in a ceremony today at the Ministry of Defense in Baghdad’s International Zone.

Well, sorta. The rest of the Iraqi Army is under US military control, apparently.

Posted by Don Bacon | August 6, 2007 11:25 AM

Cool. FAMAS assault rifle. It seems like we're just giving weapons to everyone in the the middle east now. I am relatively sympathetic to the PKK myself, but the whole Kurds/Turks thing is a touchy issue. I'm sure we are arming the Kurds in Iraq, and it wouldn't surprise me if some of those weapons were falling into PKK hands. It would be strange to hear that we were deliberately arming faction members of the PKK for the express purpose of fighting the Turks, but if it were true, it would just be yet another incomprehensible arms deal to stack on top of all the rest.

It occurs to me that maybe all this seemingly senseless arms distribution is maliciously deliberate. I had heard that some neocons were saying that instability in the Middle East was actually good for American interests. I can't remember who was writing that, and it seemed like a reckless way to excuse oneself from responsibility for the fiasco over there. It doesn't really make sense if we take Bush at his word that he really wants Iraq to blossom into a stable democracy. But Bush couldn't say that he was for a continuation of the current conflict, could he? So, while I don't really think the odds are good on this one, I find myself open to the very narrow possibility that the current weapons sales are actually a part of a concerted attempted to ensure a stalemate of violence in Iraq.

Posted by Gordon Lightfoot | August 6, 2007 11:30 AM

This war would be a whole lot more popular if the American people were getting free guns or maybe just a little cheap gas. That Bush Sr. fellow seems to have understood this.

Posted by Linus | August 6, 2007 11:32 AM

. . .that instability in the Middle East was actually good for American interests.

Exactly. That explains the brutal, needless occupation of Iraq, the US-trained death squads, the US military complicity in the Samarra mosque bombing, the current (purposeful) arming of the Sunnis, the arms deals with the two largest dictatorships in the Middle East--it explains all this, and more, including this latest "slip-up".

Divide and conquer.

Posted by Don Bacon | August 6, 2007 11:56 AM

Apart from the dig at Saint Petraeus of the Blessed Surge, the most striking aspect of this in my mind is that the United States is supplying the Iraqi Army with AK47s, rather than American-made weaponry.

I suppose there are several good reasons for this. It makes logistical sense, obviously, to buy the cheapest, most widely available firearms. The fact that veterans of the Iraqi Army would be familiar with how to properly handle and maintain the weapons would also be significant. There may also have been an understanding that some of those weapons would find their way into the wrong hands and we wouldn't want top-of-the-line military hardware being used against our own soldiers.

But I can't help but feel the difficulty involved in tracing these weapons would be seen by the war planners as a positive feature. After all, during the Afghanistan campaign when many people were lamenting the fact that the CIA had armed the Mujahadeen and those weapons were being used against us, the right-wing blogosphere hewed to the line that the Taliban had virtually no American-made weapons, and therefore we mustn't think about the war in terms of blowback from our past military adventurism. No, it was all the enemy's fault and only America-haters would dare suggest that our own past policies had played a role in the threat we were facing.

And naturally, when we point to the unguarded weapons dumps and the misguided "training" policy as a source of the seemingly inexhaustible insurgent stockpile that's killing American soldiers and Iraqi civilians every single day, they'll insist that we're wrong. The weapons are coming from Iran, of course, and therefore we must move quickly to address the grave and gathering Iranian threat to our national security.

Posted by LaFollette Progressive | August 6, 2007 11:58 AM

You get genocide in places like Yugoslavia --where the US government disarmed the Muslims and then left them to be killed by the Serbs.

Anybody other than this poster remember the US occupation of Bosnia in the early 90's? Because, curiously, I don't remember it, and the internets don't seem to have anything indcating that it took place . . .

Posted by rea | August 6, 2007 12:05 PM

This notion that an armed populace is inoculated against totalitarianism or genocide is simply not supported by the historical record. It's a line thats been repeated over and over and over again by the pro-gun crowd-- the Nazis took the guns! the Soviets took the guns!-- but the truth is never as simple (both of those examples are distortions) and history is riddled with counter-examples. And it takes a truly myopic world view to have the Iraq example staring you in the face and still not see the horrible consequences that can come from a "polite society." Iraq is the place libertarian fantasies go to die.

Posted by Freddie | August 6, 2007 12:13 PM

The big thing about AKs is that they are extremely easy to maintain. The M16A2 rifle, which is the standard issue US Military rifle, is actually a real pain in the ass to keep up to spec-it needs constant cleaning, and can jam relatively easily even when it's properly cared for. And it's cheap, and it's a well known weapon, all of that. At any rate, there are real solid reasons why you would arm foreign armies with AK47s; doing so just rules out a lot of potential problems. As cynical as I am, I still wouldn't suspect that their relatively widespread use would be considered an important feature because it decreases the chance the weapons will be recognized as part of American arms deals. Some military personnel would be quite keenly interested in tracing the movement of the weapons they're handing out, just to see what kind of use they were being put to.

Posted by Gordon Lightfoot | August 6, 2007 12:15 PM

"Iraq is the place libertarian fantasies go to die."

I thought that was funny. I should toss that bomb at a libertarian, just too see what the reply would be.

Posted by Gordon Lightfoot | August 6, 2007 12:18 PM

AK47 vs M16 video

Posted by Don Bacon | August 6, 2007 12:33 PM

I am relatively sympathetic to the PKK myself

You might want to rethink your stance, that's about as nice as I can put it. Apart from their well-known terrorist activities and recruitment of child soldiers they're also a major mafia-like organization involved in the drug-trade and violent extortion.

Posted by novakant | August 6, 2007 1:49 PM

When I noted "You get genocide in places like Yugoslavia --where the US government disarmed the Muslims and then left them to be killed by the Serbs."

Rea replied "Anybody other than this poster remember the US occupation of Bosnia in the early 90's?"
------------
The US government maintained an arms embargo on Bosnia for several years prior to intervening. During those years , a large number of Muslims were killed by the Serbs. The US got involved only after Islamic fighters started going to Bosnia to give help.

The war ran from March 1992 to Nov 1995. The US intervened slightly in 1995 with NATO bombing raids.

When REA speaks of "US occupation of Bosnia " she is probably thinking of the US occupation of KOSEVO in 1999 under Wesley Clark. A different state and different time.

From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bosnian_War
"Of the 97,207 documented casualties in Bosnia-Herzegovina, 83 percent of civilian victims were Bosniaks, 10 percent were Serbs and more than 5 percent were Croats, followed by a small number of others such as Albanians or Romani people. The percentage of Bosniak victims would be higher had survivors of Srebrenica not reported their loved-ones as 'soldiers' to access social services and other government benefits."

Note: The Bosniaks are Muslims.

Posted by Don Williams | August 6, 2007 2:20 PM

Am I the only one who sees a gaping linguistic chasm between "disarmed" and "maintained an arms embargo?"

Posted by LaFollette Progressive | August 6, 2007 3:19 PM

This is yet another in one of Matt's bizarrely tangential photos. It's about AK-47s, so let's put up a picture of (cue Keanu voice) guns, lots of guns.

Posted by Klug | August 6, 2007 3:39 PM

Sure, the PKK isn't a nice organization, but they emerged like such organizations often do in response to the repression of the Turkish government, which has paid lip service to the notion of pluralism in its own country while systematically neutralizing Kurdish representation in the Turkish government. Until 1991, it was illegal to speak Kurdish in Turkey. The PKK may be full of bastards, but they didn't pop out of thin air, and their desire for a state in which they won't be told they can't organize politically is entirely legitimate.

Posted by Gordon Lightfoot | August 6, 2007 5:56 PM

well, I'm perfectly aware of that, but you kind of have it backwards: what started out as a resistance movement with legitimate grievances has, as happens so often, become an utterly corrupted and vicious organization, only paying lip-service to the cause in order to secure its perpetual raison d'etre - seriously, just have a look at how they're oppressing their own people in Germany and other countries, they're just like any other mafia

that said, Barzani and Talabani haven't been a whole lot better, Barzani once even invited SH to come up north in order to get rid of his political rival and they're both corrupt beyond belief

it seems to be the fate of the Kurds to be blessed with horrible leadership

Posted by novakant | August 6, 2007 6:58 PM