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July 8, essay, “Worried about quicksand of war in Iraq”

By Captain Eric May

When we were about to begin our war against Iraq, we expected to soon capture, control and convert it – then make a lot of money in its Reconstruction. Erstwhile allies complained that we were playing with matches in the world’s most flammable region, but we told them that they could go to Helsinki.

When our bombs started falling March 20, the United Nations made a silent protest by putting a shroud over Pablo Picasso’s famous painting Guernica, which encanvassed the horror of modern war. That story didn’t get around much, though. After all, we had already dismissed the UN as even less relevant than NATO.

On May 1 President George W. Bush stood on the deck of USS Abraham Lincoln and proudly declared an end to major combat operations, but just this week Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld stood before reporters and testily told them that while major combat operations are indeed at an end, the United States is still at war. The president’s words were naiveté; the secretary’s were nonsense.

Since we began the war in Iraq, the Bush administration has threatened (in order) Turkey to the north, Syria to the west, Saudi Arabia to the south and Iran to the east. Many Americans think we need to get more aggressive. This week in the Chronicle, Bush apologists loudly banged the war drums: Austin Bay opined that it was a good thing we recently attacked Syrian border guards in Syrian territory, since respect for national borders only hinders us in the war on terror. Sometimes it seems like we’re at war – or may soon be at war – with lots of folks. Columnist Thomas L Freedman stated his belief that we should double our troop commitment to Iraq. Throughout the piece, he skillfully avoided the disturbing word escalation.

The LOOK BEFORE YOU LEAP! George Bush/Powell Doctrine has been replaced by the JUMP RIGHT IN! George W. Bush/Rumsfeld Doctrine. The results so far suggest that the father picked his strategy and his strategist better than the son. The First Gulf War required a mere 100 hours of ground operations to end, while the Second Gulf War has passed its 100^th day, and is just beginning. The forces that were supposed to be home by summer are still over there, and we’re committing ourselves to a long occupation.

The Pentagon now admits that we have an Iraqi insurgency on our hands. Insurgency is what we tried to deal with in Vietnam, and what the Soviet Union tried to deal with in Afghanistan. Both attempts failed, after around ten years of war and around 50,000 deaths, showing that superpowers don’t necessarily get super results.

OK, I’m worried. In fact, I was worried on April 3, when my essay “Visions of Stalingrad: Claim victory in Iraq now” appeared in the Chronicle’s Outlook Section. That piece earned me the nickname of “the April Fool,” because in it I wrote that Operation Iraqi Freedom was a bold leap forward – straight into quicksand.

Nowadays I take some comfort because General Wesley Clark is worried, too. In a June 25 CNN Crossfire interview, Clark launched a broad attack on the president who attacked Iraq:

· Asked about recent reports that the Bush administration had pressured intelligence officials to mangle data and justify war, Clark went even further than the question: “There was a predetermination that started back in the 1990s to go after Saddam Hussein. 9/11 provided the opportunity to mobilize public opinion to do that.”

· Asked why the Bush administration had invaded Iraq in the first place, Clark cited “belief that somehow there was a window of opportunity, that the United States had a period of maybe 10 or 15 years before China would become too strong, where we could use our unchallengeable military muscle and clean up the area.”

· Asked about the problems of our occupation of Iraq, Clark repeatedly stressed that we needed to make our presence “legitimate,” a reminder that the reasons we gave for going there in the first place seem illegitimate today. He suggested a major role for the United Nations and other international organizations.

· Clark made another good suggestion: “I think that the American people deserve a hearing on Iraq. I think it needs to be openly, transparently presented as to what exactly the issues were.”

Critics may say that Clark is merely another Democratic presidential wannabe taking pot shots at the Bush administration, but the general has acted with courageous integrity before: As NATO commander, he repeatedly pushed a vacillating President Clinton to stick it out in war torn Bosnia, and in doing so helped bring that country under control. After the job was done, Clinton canned Clark out of spite, thus earning the general praises from Republicans for being a true patriot. It’s hard to see why the man who uprightly talked sense to Democrat Clinton is crooked when he talks sense about Republican Bush.

Clark seems more like a voice of sanity to worriers like me, and as a former Army intelligence officer and Desert Storm volunteer, I worry a lot: I worry about wobbly war plans; I worry that Rumsfeld is canning generals who fail to tell him what he wants to hear; I worry that the US body count could climb from one per day to one per hour; and I worry that the president who as a young American prudently avoided the sweltering jungles of Vietnam and Cambodia will send a generation of young Americans to the sweltering deserts of Iraq and Afghanistan. In short, I worry that we are sinking deeper into the quicksand – and we’re trying to thrash our way out.

I believe that the next presidential election will be about the missteps and misstatements that have misled us into this war. In that case, a victorious general might be as welcome a candidate in 2004 as General Eisenhower was in 1952, when voters liked Ike for promising to get us out of Korea.

I hope we will soon have the public hearings that General Clark has called for. In the meantime, I’ll continue to worry when the Bush administration says that things are well in hand. Maybe what we have well in hand is a time bomb.

May, a Desert Storm Volunteer, served on the general staff of the Houston’s 75^th Division. In April he sat for two weeks in front of his alma mater, the University of Houston Honors College, to take up a collection for US war dead. After 40 hours he had received $20. He spent the next three weeks riding a bicycle to Ft. Stewart, Georgia to deliver the money to the headquarters of the 3^rd Infantry Division.

July 8, email to Professor G

Dear Professor G,

I am glad that you enjoyed the essay that ran in the Chronicle today. Please remember that you wrote the Guernica paragraph when you gave me the idea. Like the great poet Shakespeare, I only steal ideas from the most enlightened people.

The part of the thing I’m happiest with was written by another hand…, or sort of. You see, I have been suggesting from the start that this is “quicksand” with the idea that it will give antiwar voices a good phrase. It’s elementary Goebbels, I know, but every good trick needs to get invented by a new bright boy every few years.

By the way, have you noticed lately that the number of American killed keeps going down? They stopped telling us lies about how many people were killed before the commander in chief heroically took a jet ride, and began to start a new count of people getting killed after the “end of significant hostilities.” About two week ago, that number began to get close to one hundred, so they began to tell us “67 have died since May 1, but only 20 have been combat deaths.” Last week they began to improve: US forces have suffered their 25^th combat death, out of some 75 deaths since the war ended. Over the weekend the forgery was perfected. Just look in any paper (New York Times, included, alas!) or watch any newscast and you will read or hear that we have now suffered 29 killed since the war ended! The American “Ministry of Propaganda” is still in operation – at least for now. Oh well, at least it gives me something to write about.

I am sorry that it has taken so long for me to avail myself of the technology of the internet. I often wonder whether the world wouldn’t be a better place without so much of our technology, but since “the genie is out of the bottle,” we might as well put him to our good use before he gets around to destroying us all!

I hope Mrs. Guenther liked the essay as well. My parents both read and approved it, though my father is a bit nervous about my writing on such controversial topics. I’m a bit anxious myself, to tell you the truth, but my belief is that when you’re a critic of an emerging strong-arm government, the best thing you can do (if you can’t shut your mouth), is to be as conspicuously critical as possible. Your notoriety is your best protection. It saddens me to have to think of my own security against my own government.

Oh well, we just had our Independence Day, and I am reminded that it was men who were about as anxious as I am who became the founding fathers. I suppose fear of tyranny is as old as the United States; it’s probably as old as government. You were, by the way, the only person who encouraged me to fly the national flag. The most unlikely people are the best Americans.

Thanks for the continuing inspiration I gather from our talks and correspondence. Incidentally, I carried few documents with me to Ft. Stewart, and your letter in response to my April 3 Chronicle essay was one of them. In it you said that it was men like me who had to think and act now. I considered it a commission, and am honored to have received it from you.

E. May

July 10, email to Dr. Pesikoff

Dear Dr. Pesikoff,

I’ve enclosed my most recent essay (published in the Houston Chronicle July 8). I hope you will enjoy it, if you haven’t read it yet. I know you have friends in media, and I invite you to share it with them. Of more importance, though, is the second piece I’ve attached, about the massacre of American forces at the Baghdad Airport April 5. I wrote it April 13 after waiting a week for the commander in chief to come clean about the cost in lives for the battle of Baghdad. I’m still waiting for some brave journalist to ask as serious question about why it is that the body count going into the battle of Baghdad was ten per day, and the body count coming out was ten per day…, but the body count during that crucial weekend was only five (two Saturday, three Sunday). As an intelligence officer, I would call this a bit anomalous. Deaths usually rise during heavy fighting – why did they drop this time? Answer: because the deaths were high enough to need to be covered up. One entire unit, the 3/7 Cavalry, endured a devastating attack in which it sustained massive casualties. Incidentally, a senior official at Ft. Stewart confirmed my suspicions when I arrived there to take relief funds on May 14.

It should be of interest that the number of deaths in Iraq has been shrinking steadily. On May 1, the Pentagon admitted to over 100 deaths. After May 1 the major media “spontaneously” began a new count, starting at zero. The last week in June the death toll began to rise into the 70’s, and it was clear that the magic “100” number would be reached yet again… But, going into the Independence Day weekend, a new system of counting was universally adapted by our Independent Media: There was a “high” number of total deaths (nearing 100), and a “low” number of combat deaths. The high/low was around 70/30. By the end of the holiday weekend the high number was universally dropped by the major media, and only the low number was reported.

The in and the out of it is that the total (admitted) body count of over 200 has been buried in the “news.” The un-admitted body count is probably twice of the admitted one, and it has been buried in the news. So we have the new math of “200+200”= 30!!! Orwell said that we would get to 2+2=5 in 1984. Thank God we have gotten past 1984, and that we have a media with integrity. Otherwise this media writer would be worried.

You know, when I was a boy watching TV from the Vietnam War, there were a lot of journalists who would take on a government running the country into a quagmire. Now that we’re sinking into quicksand, where have they all gone?

Regards, Eric May

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