Trust Us

One obvious question surrounding the new policy in Iraq of paying groups of former Sunni Arab insurgents to start calling themselves Concerned Local Citizens and helping us fight al-Qaeda in Iraq is how do we know that the people they're fighting are really AQI? After all, the main thing the CLCs give us is information not firepower, but if we depend on them for our information then we have no way of knowing that it's good. Or maybe we do. Spencer Ackerman asked MNF-Iraq spokesman Rear Admiral Greg Smith about this and revealed that MNF-Iraq needs to come up with some better spin:

"The sense is, as we partner with tribal chiefs, the chief knows who’s working for him," Smith said when I asked him about the reliability of these bands on a blogger conference call this morning. "You’ve got to put some trust and confidence in these people." That trust, he said, isn’t built overnight, and the U.S. will have a "relationship" with a tribal leader before committing resources to him or including him in a program.

But is that all it amounts to? Trust?

"It boils down to trust," Smith confirmed. "And over time, you can earn it or lose it." In response to a follow-up from Cogitamus’s Nicholas Beaudrot, Smith reminded that in Diyala Province, Colonel David Sutherland, commander of the 3rd Brigade of the 1st Cavalry Division, had to fire and even arrest some CLC members. (Sutherland confirmed that to me in an October conference call.) He meant that as a defense of the U.S. military’s vetting process, but it also gives a sense of the trustworthiness of these so-called allies.

But look: If you can't trust the militiaman who was shooting at you a year ago until you started bribing him, then who can you trust? Honestly, it's almost enough to make me nostalgic for the days when we were using The Arab Mind as a guide to understanding Iraq. Sometimes people lie!

Comments

There are never, ever any negative consequences which could result from paying, arming, or protecting thugs, terrorists, criminals and drug-runners to carrying out U.S. foreign policies, and shame on you for even thinking that could be possible. Why do you hate freedom?

Posted by El Cid | January 23, 2008 11:42 AM

Nice and glib, Matt, just the way we like it!

Seriously! I don't know about other folks, but I'm here for tapioca! Keep it coming! (!!!)

Posted by JA | January 23, 2008 11:48 AM

I mostly agree with you on the merits, and yet the tone of this post made me want to disagree with you. It also made me want to smack you, and tell you to at least feign seriousness and thoughtfulness.

If the only thing you're adding is sarcasm, you should just post a link to the work of the person who's actually done some reporting and provided some analysis.

Posted by JB | January 23, 2008 11:55 AM

By the way, I realized that I used the dreaded word "seriousness" in my post above. Rest assured, I don't mean it in the sense of, "You must support militaristic policy X in order to be seriousness." I mean it more conventionally, as in, "You must provide some evidence that you're thinking if you want me to take your writing seriously."

Posted by JB | January 23, 2008 11:58 AM

We should outsource the Occupation to the British. They know how to occupy a country of non-whites much larger than Iraq for hundreds of years with only a fraction of the troops that we have in Iraq. And they are infinitely better at sowing the seeds of conflicts that last for generations, so that the natives are too busy fighting each other to screw with the occupiers.

Posted by gregor | January 23, 2008 11:59 AM

"in order to be seriousness"

I like it! I'm going to start working this into my vocabulary intentionally.

Posted by JB | January 23, 2008 12:01 PM

This is a pretty dumb post. Of course we need to base our relationship with our former enemies on trust - along with verification.

Matthew wants to negotiate a resolution of our conflict with North Korea, Iran, etc. If the Obama administration negotiates a treaty in which Iran agrees to get rid of its nuclear program, is Matthew planning on doing a post attacking such a stupid treaty? After all, according to Matthew, "Sometimes people lie!"

Posted by Al | January 23, 2008 12:12 PM

I think you're being unfair with this post. First, to some extent the proof is in the pudding with these alliances. Has forming these alliances reduced violence against the coalition and/or al Qaeda attacks? I think the evidence is overwhleming that it has.

It may be (in fact almost certainly is) the case that many of the folks we're allying with were fighting against us a year ago, but is that a bug or a feature? Isn't coopting the other side and getting them to stop shooting at you a good thing? (Of course, there's the question of who's coopting whom here.)

As far as building trust, my impression is that fairly close working relationships have been formed with some of these councils, so I think it makes sense to use the word. Do their tips pan out? Does information they give correlate with other information we've gathered? DO they cooperate with US forces? Has working with them reduced violence and pacified areas?

On a larger scale, in any type of counter-insurgency or occupation, the only way you're going to succeed is by allying yourself with local powers. (Unless you're willing to engage in large scale exterminations, which the US is no longer willing to do.)

The local tribes were the obvious choice in the west and north of Iraq. And on a tactical level, it's worked. Now, there's the larger strategic issue of whether these local alliances advance any of our Iraq-wide goals, but that's a different issue than you're arguing here.

Posted by Doug T | January 23, 2008 12:13 PM

"We should outsource the Occupation to the British. "

i think this is precisely Petraus's strategy -- certain amount of low-level conflict among the various tribes allows the occupier to maintain loyalty on the cheap. True, some of the "wrong" people might get bumped off from time to time, but it's all good as long as you keep the pot simmering. And as long as all hell isn't breaking loose, people back home won't care and business can get done. When it all collapses, you get on the ship and sail off for the next adventure.

Posted by jim | January 23, 2008 12:26 PM

I think you're being unfair with this post. First, to some extent the proof is in the pudding with these alliances. Has forming these alliances reduced violence against the coalition and/or al Qaeda attacks? I think the evidence is overwhleming that it has.

Sure it has. Mainly because we're now paying people not to fight us. A lot of the same people who were bombing us before are now taking our protection money instead. I guess you can call all these folks "Al Qaeda" to use the customary honorific. Who knows who it is they're killing or turning over to the US military. Probably mainly just rivals for control over the neighborhood rackets.

Posted by Dan Kervick | January 23, 2008 12:27 PM

I have seen more than a few sources indicating that the support is based on the money and weapons.

The implication being, once that source of revenue dries up they'll begin fighting against the US again.

Sounds like a recipe for disaster.

-GSD

Posted by GSD | January 23, 2008 12:37 PM

In Defense of The Arab Mind. As someone who has actually read The Arab Mind, I would just like to point out a few things. Number one, the book is flawed in many ways and represents sociological thinking that has since the book's publication seriously been revamped. Number two, it isn't all wrong. There are entire sections on tribalism and the relationship between Islam and arab ruling structure. Sex a taboo subject in Islamic and Arab culture who would have thunk it?! The point I am trying to make is that, the Arab Mind reads more like a historical chestnut than a blueprint for invasion. In fact, what it really means, is that the neocons and members of the U.S. military, I'm afraid, have done is seriously warp a difficult anthropological, historical and sociological work to fit their own means. In fact, after reading the Arab Mind, particularly the sections on tribalism, honor, Islam, and the seemingly pervasive Arab need for third party negotiators, I couldn't understand how the neocons could have gotten everything so wrong. Patei would probably be flabbergasted to find that people were using his work like this, if he were still alive. The section on sex isn't meant to highlight a way to torture Arabs, it is meant to present a conservative religious and societal issue in Arab culture. It's like saying Christian fundamentalists have a problem with openly discussing sex. Some might not, but a lot of them do. Anyway, as a fellow scholar, I feel bad that Patei is being used this way. It reminds me of when Bush uses Vietnam as a metaphor for Iraq when it suits his purpose. Just more politicians abusing the work scholars, even if it is flawed.

Posted by doterpolilli | January 23, 2008 12:41 PM

Nostalgic for "The Arab Mind?" Matt, say it's not so! As Brian Whitaker notes in the 2004 Guardian article you referenced, the author of this racist book claimed Arabs hate us and understand only force, footnoting fellow Princetonian Bernard Lewis. Lewis is the warmongering arch-Zionist prominently featured in the current Newsweek's excerpt of Weisberg's "The Bush Tragedy." Lewis had a series of lunches with Cheney convincing him to invade Iraq because "force is what Arabs respect." The truth is that neither brute force nor bribery is the answer.

Posted by J.E. Dundee | January 23, 2008 12:53 PM

how do we know that the people they're fighting are really AQI? After all, the main thing the CLCs give us is information not firepower, but if we depend on them for our information then we have no way of knowing that it's good.

We know it's working because we check on the capturees to see where they came from, query neighbors and other Iraqis to see if any complaints of "innocents" are registered.

We examine the effects of Jihadi terrorist corpses we or the Sunni allies kill for documentation and even forensically have the ability to pull a tooth and determine country/region of origin in many instances from trace minerals.

We have police and investigators kindly checking in with the Jihadi's family and friends and seeing why they happened to end up in Iraq. Also in many cases to drop off friendly hints that the young buck was no martyr, but died like a bitch, shot in the back running from the justice of his Sunni Arab brothers. Told the Iraqis that killed him urinating on the pit he is tossed into, and an Iraqi mullah summoned to condemn the Jihad terrorist to hell for butchery, not purified by true Jihad. As a message to others in Arabia, N Africa, Europe, and South Asia now contemplating the glories of joining Al Qaeda or some other ISlamoid group.

Three years delayed by Bremer's idiotic de-Ba'athification, we are finally turning Iraq into the AQ death trap we wanted it to be - luring in Jihadis from terrorist cells in their native lands to be effeciently identified, targeted, captured or butchered. And learning huge new intel value from the capturees (now over 2,000 - and far away from Gitmo, and ACLU types that love terrorist rights).

Some aspects of the "kill them there so they don't bother us here" philosophy would have far more appreciation if we would tell how many psychopaths we are bagging.

Just one program, Project Odin, has killed over 2400 Al Qaeda, Al Qaeda sympathizers. Those were only the ones we set up to detect planting road bombs and whack with air ordnace or ground artillery. We also captured 200 maimed. Set up orginally without native help fingering Al Qaeda in Iraq, using air surveillance and ground sensors, it was made 3 times as effective once Sunnis started pouting in tips.

That toll does not include the several thousand more radical Islamoids engaged and killed by US/Iraqi forces on the ground, safehouses isolated and hamburgerized by a 500-lb precision bomb, or AQ chased out into the desert by Iraqis then finished off by Apache gunships or cluster bomb.

The success of Americans working constructively with local forces now has Pakistan thinking of exterminating their radical terrorist problem with the Taliban and Arab fighters by retaining sovereignity and still calling the shots, but letting US air elements deliver them.

Posted by chris ford | January 23, 2008 1:06 PM

Trust sounds like an excellent policy to me. In fact, there's no alternative. Getting out of Iraq - and all the words written about Iraq are not going to have the corrective effect that will be felt from the market's cracking - is going to require letting Iraq be Iraq - that is, pursue its interests, many of which are not the interests of the U.S. Such is sovereignty. Trust is also what we need to call upon when we negotiate recognition of Iran.

The way the Middle East looks to the U.S. at the moment is, I would be, about to change. The luxury of spending hundreds of billions doing squat in that region, and advancing no known U.S. interest, is about to be cut off. Such a losers war - the bloodthirsty crewe of cretins who started it lost - the Dems, who should have opposed it, lost - and even the most adamant of the war critics, lost, as they never seemed to be able to find a political tool they could use to pressure the bubble inhabitants in D.C. And of course, then there's the 200-600 thousand Iraqi dead, the two million refugees that are going to fuel the next generation of war and terrorism - they lost too.

Posted by roger | January 23, 2008 1:47 PM

Chris Ford expects me to believe that we go to these great lengths to ensure we're not getting manipulated by paid informants and picking up the wrong guys when we're still holding demonstrably innocent people in Gitmo? Chris, I doubt it.

Don't get me wrong. I can see we really have no choice but to pay off the Sunni in order to keep the peace. I even think this strategy might help us track down true jihadi, though from what I've read the Sunni don't need incentive to kill jihadi - they hate them. I'd just like people like Chris to admit the obvious downside to this strategy, namely arming one of the sides in a dormant but not extinguished civil war. (Hell, we're arming both sides really.)

Posted by Kurzbein | January 23, 2008 2:48 PM

Matt, you really nailed this one. I mean, these Army officers are merely on the ground, working with and watching the tribal leaders every day, knowing that misplaced trust can get the soldiers under their command killed or maimed, whereas you are in DC and write a blog. So of course your basis for writing snark about their efforts is totally validated.

Keep that great analysis coming!

Posted by santamonicamr | January 23, 2008 3:10 PM

The posts about Matt's tone are pretty amusing.

It's almost like they had never heard of mockery or satire used as a common tool against the more powerful.

I guess some people are only able to look at something seriously when someone else sets the tone. No Candide for you!

Posted by jvill | January 23, 2008 4:27 PM

The posts about Matt's tone are pretty amusing.

It's almost like they had never heard of mockery or satire used as a common tool against the more powerful.

I guess some people are only able to look at something seriously when someone else sets the tone. No Candide for you!

I'm trying to figure out the appropriate level of mockery I should use on someone who implicitly compares Matthew Yglesias to Voltaire.

Satire's a fine way to tear into bone-headed politicians and policies. But it needs to be insightful and (usually) funny or else it's simply ridicule.

And, in any case, Yglesias supported the war. He's perfectly entitled (obligated, even) to have changed his mind. But he's poorly positioned to mock, satirize or ridicule the people in the military who are now confronting a disaster that resulted from policies Yglesias supported. He's argued elsewhere that the best way forward is simply to leave. That's a credible argument. But it doesn't entitle him to be flippant about the military's attempts to formulate the best possible strategy.

Yglesias can just say that he thinks we should leave; the military has to stick around on orders from civilian leaders who aren't going to pull US troops out anytime soon. The gap between US aims and what the US can hope to actually accomplish is fertile ground for some dark satire, but I have a feeling Washington, DC, is a poor vantage point from which to write it.

Posted by JB | January 23, 2008 5:08 PM

We examine the effects of Jihadi terrorist corpses we or the Sunni allies kill for documentation and even forensically have the ability to pull a tooth and determine country/region of origin in many instances from trace minerals.

Listen, I'm a scientist, and this sounds fantastically stupid. Although the ill-informed nonce you've picked up from the drama box may speak otherwise, the ability to determine COO from the trace metals present in a tooth is absolute nonsense. Try again.

Posted by Wha...? | January 23, 2008 7:01 PM

Three years delayed by Bremer's idiotic de-Ba'athification, we are finally turning Iraq into the AQ death trap we wanted it to be - luring in Jihadis from terrorist cells in their native lands to be effeciently identified, targeted, captured or butchered. And learning huge new intel value from the capturees (now over 2,000 - and far away from Gitmo, and ACLU types that love terrorist rights).

Uhhh...Iraq has basically become a graduate course for terrorist trainers worldwide -- AQ 'types' from as far as Pakistan come to Iraq to learn systematic methods to bypass and thwart American methods to eliminate terrorists. The only ones gaining 'intel' in this affair are the terrorists. Are you really that deluded?

Posted by Wha...? | January 23, 2008 7:10 PM

Chris Ford ramps up the old "honey trap" concept of the Iraq war: "We'll lure all the Al Qaeda guys there, then kill them - and there'll be no more Al Qaeda!"

How this loony tune notion ever got a hearing I'll never know. It's complete fantasy.

Read this for the reality:

US MILITARY BREAKS RANKS, Part 1
A salvo at the White House
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/JA23Ak02.html

US MILITARY BREAKS RANKS, Part 2
Troops felled by a 'trust gap'
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/JA24Ak01.html

Posted by Richard Steven Hackr | January 23, 2008 9:27 PM

This article establishes that the Iraqi military and police are being sidelined by the "Awakening" groups - and they're not happy about it - but the Iraqi civilians are. This of course merely emphasizes the weakness of the US supported Shia central government.

Concerned Iraqi citizens shoot straight
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/JA24Ak05.html

Posted by Richard Steven Hack | January 23, 2008 9:28 PM