Seeking yet another Friedman Unit in Iraq

January 22, 2008

As soon as “six months” became a ridiculous cliche overused by supporters of Bush’s Iraq policy, I’d hoped we’d have a moratorium on the phrase. No one should ever be able to say, “We need six more months” in relation to the war again, without being laughed at.

Too harsh? Tell you what, take a look at this timeline ThinkProgress put together last August, and notice how many times, over many years, the White House and its allies said if they could just get six more months, we’d finally see tangible, encouraging progress in Iraq. Six months would go by, and they’d ask for another. Lather, rinse, repeat.

And yet, there was Gen. David Petraeus this morning, asking for — you guessed it — six months.

Gen. David Petraeus, however, appeared on NBC this morning and rebutted the declarations of mission accomplished and said that he’ll need at least another Friedman Unit before he can make a judgment:

“We think we won’t know that we’ve reached a turning point until we’re six months past it. We have repeatedly said that there is no lights at the end of the tunnel that we’re seeing. We’re certainly not dancing in the end zone or anything like that.”

If this sounds vaguely familiar, it’s because Petraeus recommended to Congress in September that “decisions on the contentious issue of reducing the main body of the American troops in Iraq be put off for six months.” That was about five months ago.

Just for people who may not read a lot about wars and may not know it: not all generals are expert and incredibly skilled in warfare and leadership. Military history has been populated probably by many more incompetent generals than outstanding ones.

Just saying.

  • Another limit on the ability of generals to effect things is the non-military aims of civilian leaders that run counter to the military necessities of combat. All the talented generals in the world can’t do a thing about a a civilian leader who has command over them who says “Make it come out this way” or “Do it just this way” and that’s not a matter of military judgment or expertise, just a matter of the civilian’s own personal insistence or wants.

  • Right. Military leaders may be saying they want to get out of Iraq and go to Afghanistan now all they want, but if Bush wants to “stay the course” on this Iraq thing, he’ll have some kiss-up hatchet-man- like Petraeus- give this kind of a message, and leave the informed military opinion of everyone else commanding troops in the dust.

  • There can not be a light at the end of a tunnel that only goes half-way through the mountain—and given the “blunt dullness” of a Friedman Unit, I doubt it’ll ever be sharp enough to finish the tunnel….

  • I’ve been running a chart like this for over four years now. The only significant change in it, no matter how many “turning points” claimed, is the relative flattening of the line since Sadr went beck to seminary. That is scheduled to end at the end of next month.

  • A Friedman Unit here, a Friedman Unit there, and pretty soon we’re talking about a really, really long American commitment. Iraq exceed the length of WWII some time ago.

    The recent news about Petraeus being considered for a kick upstairs to NATO made me wonder if perhaps Patraeus has stopped telling his commander-in-chief whatever his commander-in-chief wants to hear.

  • Maybe if the Friedman Unit was renamed the Wimpy Unit it would have more of a stigma to it. Wimpy was the character on the Popeye comic strip who used to say “For a Hamburger today I will gladly repay you on Tuesday.” For more concessions today, the neocons will gladly repay us with a victory in six months. … Yeah right.

  • Someone should tell Bush’s General PetRock that he has to account for the 110,000 AK-47’s and 90,000 pistols that he misplaced while being in charge of training the Iraqis before there will be any discussion about another freaking “Friedman Unit”.

  • swan@1, all
    these links might be intermittent, anyway, this is a recording of The Art of War by Sunzi, notable for a free reading of the text by one (female) voice that’s very well done. Not that big of a file compared to some others. Think there’s stuff in there about bad generals, bad rulers too. Nice recording anyway. (another recording by one reader well done is from-october-to-brest-litovsk-by-leon-d-trotsky, another political in an odd way, thats one reader, good voice, good for falling asleep to is secret-chambers-and-hiding-places-by-allan-fea

    well, here they are on archive.org maybe
    archive.org art_of_war_librivox
    archive.org trotsky_brest-litovsk_librivox
    archive secret_chambers_librivox

    I mention the other 2 as they are well done ones i stumbled on, there might be more.

  • If this sounds vaguely familiar, it’s because Petraeus recommended to Congress in September that “decisions on the contentious issue of reducing the main body of the American troops in Iraq be put off for six months.” That was about five months ago. — CB

    It is quite obvious that, despite your Carpetbagger moniker, you have little knowledge of the Southern customs 🙂 Have you ever heard someone ask “May I sweeten this (drink) for you?” This question is asked, *always*, before your glass is empty. If you get a refill after your glass is empty, you’re getting *another* drink. If, however, you “sweeten” the existing one, you’re still on your first drink. If your host is adroit and tactful, you may spend 4 hrs drinking, you may get totally pie-eyed, but you have — still — had *only one drink*.

    It is the same here. The six months have not expired (ie your glass isn’t empty yet); you can get a 6-months “refill” and count it as a single period, because you’re still only at the 5-months mark.

  • BTraven, if a reading of Sun Tzu (or however you want to spell it) is good to fall asleep to, I think that’s because it’s pretty opaque for a book about something you want to have an informed opinion about! Hopefully liberals won’t treat anything they want to have an informed opinion about the same way.

    There are some ideas in Sun Tzu I know military commanders in the west from I think the 1800s to the present have found pretty valuable. It’s probably best to find those in another source that discusses Sun Tzu or an essay that paraphrases Sun Tzu for modern readers. At least the translations I’ve seen of it into English are iffy at best.

    Honestly, (to anyone out there) I think if you want to learn more about military matters your best bet is to try something other than Sun Tzu to start- maybe military blogs or war blogs, or articles on military matters in popular periodicals like the Economist, major newspapers, and tech magazines.

    BTraven, if you have some specific point to make based on the Sun Tzu that elaborates on what I wrote, it would be considerate just to write in in a comment instead of giving us links to a bunch of recordings. They may be great recordings but it’s a lot less helpful than just telling us what’s on your mind.

  • My point in my original comments was, I’m sure you noticed, “Petraeus and Bush might just suck a lot (because of their approach to the war).” If your point was (as written about in, for example, Sun Tzu) that there are a lot of other things that can go wrong in war besides dumb generals or dumb leaders, that doesn’t really add much to the discussion. It goes without saying that there are many things that can go wrong with a war effort. If I say, “It’s X,” you might as well write why you think, “It’s not X, it’s something from between A-Y and / or Z” instead of just putting the bare claim there.

    If you have some claim to make about how Bush and Petraeus are doing just fine, but it’s all this other shit out there that’s getting in the way, you should by all means try to make it. Write why you think that.

  • People have been talking about and writing about a whole lot of things that have been going wrong with the Iraq war for a long time…

  • 11@Swan –

    I assumed you knew the book, you know how to spell the authors name. don’t know if it’s good or not, i said the recording is good.
    Maybe this translation is light, it’s short and – opaque maybe, but just for grins, listen to how many chapters, first half of book. Score this war on anything he says – zero zero zero zero – The short message seems to be, make a plan, do it quick, dont bankrupt the kingdom doing it the other way.
    Since this was a nice recorcording, I mentioned the ‘secret chambers and hding places book’ as it was tolerably done. Ummm, not a modern thing, but the copyright is expired and a nice reading, long book, nice to fall asleep to. It is interesting in a, dont think draw and quarter anyone, but some of the book does have to do with religious intolerance, persectution, yah know, regular holy wars, but i just threw it in there..

    The russian revolution one uses terms that are in the new in iraq, parliment, populace raiding the armorys, but again, just threw it in their, cause it was read well.

  • 11@swan, all

    so, you know, nice reading vocie, compared to some others, and when you asked, what ere you thinking, yeah, first however many chapters, thats the stratigic stuff. And there’s just some quotes in there, put them in your e-mail sig, they will think your talking about Bush.

  • Swan wrote:

    BTraven, if you have some specific point to make based on the Sun Tzu that elaborates on what I wrote, it would be considerate just to write in in a comment instead of giving us links to a bunch of recordings.

    In addition to being inconsiderate, it’s misleading. If there’s really nothing to whatever it is you were pointing to- if it’s not a good point you had to make- not only have you not given the readers of the comments anything to evaluate it by, but you also made it look (to the uninformed) as if maybe Swan’s criticism wasn’t the whole story, when in fact whatever you were talking about doesn’t detract from his point at all. If only we could see what you were talking about to evaluate that, instead of having to listen to presumably long-winded readings of a whole book.

    BTraven wrote:

    I assumed you knew the book, you know how to spell the authors name. don’t know if it’s good or not, i said the recording is good.

    Yeah, I think it’s usually written Sun Tzu– I don’t know what Cool Club may be calling him Sunzi, but, as I’ve never seen the spelling BTraven used even once before, it doesn’t exactly advance the knowledge of the uninformed.

  • i took it off the web page, i assume project gutenburg spells it that way, what do i care, i’m just giving a gift to anyone who ‘might’ be interested in a well read recording from there, and I should of said, well i said, bad generals *and bad rulers* mentioned. Thats in the front of the book, I you wanna give a little listen. I did not make a point for, or against, cripes i think even Condi says we’ve made 1000’s of mistakes, but she said there were all tactical. i should of said, just listen a bit if you care to, the front of the book are strategic mistakes. Didnt mean to be opaque myself, so sorry there.

  • General Petraeus continues to Betray US. The increments are to appease but the goal is to stay in Iraq. when does this stop!!!

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