JVLV: FALL OF RAMADI -- “THE END OF THE BEGINNING?” By Jiri Valenta with Leni Friedman Valenta, May 21, 2015

“This is not the end.  It is not even the beginning of the end. But it is perhaps the end of the beginning.”  So said Winston Churchill forging strategy with FDR against the brutal Nazis who occupied continental Europe and northern Africa at the early stage of WWII.

Let´s hope that now, at a time when Western civilization is threatened by medieval Islamo-fascist barbarism, our president will finally wake up to the enormous challenge and follow Churchill´s dictum.  One of course wonders, when you see the present occupant of the Oval Office, once shared by such giants as Woodrow Wilson, FDR, Harry Truman, JFK and Ronald Reagan, preaching about climate change as the most important threat to our national security to our graduating military cadets.  

The president´s speech was a surrealistic absurdity as it came on a day when the old city of Iraq, Ramadi, was being looted and hundreds of Christians killed,  and at the same time, the precious architecture of the old anxious Syrian city of Palmyra fell into the hands of the savages.  The fall of these cities should ring bells and flash red lights throughout our national security establishment.

ISIS barbarism represents not only a threat to western and Middle East civilizations, but also directly to our vital national interests.  Yet, the fall of Ramadi was triple sugar-coated by Obama´s administration.   First, the forthcoming defeat was announced by retiring Joint Chief of Staff General Martin Dempsey, who incredibly stated, “…it wouldn't be a symbolic defeat for the Iraqi government.”   Imagine the occupants of a top military command office that was occupied by a military legend like George Marshal excusing the failure of his military strategy

Then came a raid by our Delta Forces in Syria who killed a mid-level, ISIS official. And lo and behold, a day after the fall of Ramadi came revelations of some carefully selected documents by the White House that our heroes captured from the 2012 raid on Osama Bin Laden earlier.  Why now?  Why did nobody even analyze those documents for most of a year? Clearly politics is being played with our precious national security as it was during Benghazi-gate.

True, Churchill also mitigated the pain of the disastrous fall of Norway in 1940 by sending a joint task force of British commandos and Norwegian resistance fighters to the country o Fjords for a raid.   However, he did not sugar-coat the challenges in our war against the Nazis.  He spoke about tears, blood and sweat and prepared the British and American people for the gigantic struggle between western civilization and consummate evil.   

An important Anbar capital, Ramadi sits on the Euphrates River and on a strategic highway from Baghdad to Syria and Jordan.  It’s fall, the second in nine years, was a symbolic and major defeat, and not only of Iraq.  Decades hereafter, will historians  write, “It was here where Iraq, the artificial state, died?”  The debacle was also ours.  This is the second time we lost Ramadi.  This time, like decades ago when America left Saigon, we lost not only our strategic advantage, prestige and honor, but also tons of precious equipment and ammunition.  If ISIS decides to attack Baghdad they will come in our Shermans and Humvees.    

The defeat must suggest to our allies in the Middle East and Europe that we are not serious about winning the war.  Will American boots on the ground come only after the fall of Baghdad? Imagine if Woodrow Wilson had continued to refuse sending boots to Europe as General Ludendorff’s 1918 offensive against Paris was in progress.  For ISIS, Baghdad is their Paris

A second conquest will not be easy.  During the Iraq War, we reconquered Ramadi with the surge, but only at the total wartime cost of over 4,000 Americans killed and thousands injured.  Sacrifices will again be necessary.  But we have to consider what´s at stake.  The Ramadi catastrophe has serious repercussions on our efforts to contain the competing Great Powers, Russia and China.

First regional:  We must not allow Ramadi to be liberated by pro-Iranian Shiite militia.  This move could well fit into President Obama´s strategy, which foolishly put forth a bungling nuclear deal with Iran above all strategic considerations in the Middle East.  However, it is a folly of historical proportions!  The liberation of Ramadi by pro-Iran proxies would further strengthen Teheran´s control over Baghdad after their advances in Lebanon, Libya and South Yemen.  In short, it would destroy the regional equilibrium between Shiites and Sunnis in the Middle East. It would also mean definitive loss of confidence of our Sunni Gulf allies in our leadership.  This was already suggested by the failure of Obama´s recent summit at Camp David.

Second, global:  Can you really expect Vladimir Putin will take us seriously and forge with us a lasting peace in the Ukraine and perhaps thereafter form a global partnership with us against the Islamo-fascists if we are perceived as losers the Middle East?  Can we really  the pivot to the Far East to be taken seriously by the Chinese, who are following Putin´s model of carving and adding new territories in their own way, by building artificial islands in disputed international waters of the Far East?   In sum, Ramadi’s fall should be an awakening that our anti-ISIS strategy, if we indeed have one, is unraveling and posing a threat to western civilization and to us.  Imperative now are realistic assessments and bold actions

General David Petraeus should not be forgotten at this juncture.  His crime was of the heart – sharing bed and information with his lover, a military officer-biographer. Imagine Ike being treated like this for loving his attractive chauffeur.  Political correctness has run amok.   One wonders what David may know as a CIA director about the whirlwind of Benghazi that made it necessary to silence this contemporary Patton.  But no efforts should be spared to make him a senior advisor to Ashton Carter. 

Meanwhile, the fall of Ramadi will even more resurrect the acrimonious debate over W´s 2003 invasion of Iraq, to the detriment of brother Jeb, who stumbled on a reporter´s question about what he would have done.  Marco Rubio also had a hard time with the question, and make no mistake, a new deleterious, Washington debate over who lost Iraq is on the way as happened with Vietnam.

To fellow Floridians, Jeb is one of our best governors; centrist, bilingual in Spanish and accomplished.  Having dealt with him, I can attest to his remarkable intelligence.  But to be elected he needs to put his loyalty to the country before his loyalty to his brother and W´s close associate, Condi Rice.  The stumble was not serious.  But if we believe Don Rumsfeld´s, Dick Cheney´s and George Tenet´s recollections about Condi´s role in decision-making on Iraq, but also on North Korea, than bright and honorable Jeb, has to fully and irrevocably disassociate himself  not just from his brothers policies, but from his brother´s  team.  

I know Condi too, as I co-authored her first academic essay ever published and coached her at the beginning of her career.  I enthusiastically supported her. However as we found out, her boundless desire for power is not matched by her analytical capabilities.  May I be daring?  She knows more international politics than W, but she ain’t Henry Kissinger.  Moreover,  her presence with Jeb, e.g.  as a vice presidential candidate, will not necessarily attract black voters, but would surely bring  her association with W to haunt Jeb´s candidacy.  Jeb is the best Republican candidate to bring home Hispanics and independents, but  Jeb needs to be his own man.  

Although W acted remarkably well in the wake of 911 and in Afghanistan, NSA Rice, and some of her associates, continually failed him.  Driven by her fight for turf, she did not anticipate 911, although repeatedly warned by the CIA Director, George Tenet and NSC anti-terrorist section head Richard Clarke.   Her team also rushed to war with Iraq. Her poor management is recalled by Rumsfeld and Cheney, her prevarications by reputable analyst Peter Bergen.

“The Decision Was Made,” Rice told Richard Haas.  In July 2002, Haas, the current president of the Council on Foreign Relations, was the Director of the Policy Planning Council at the State Dept.  He is not only formidable, but very honest.  He was surely surprised when Rice told him additional vetting and discussion about the invasion of Iraq was not necessary by his Council.  But it was!   Condi and her team, engaged in group-thinking, did not examine the evidence for the invasion carefully enough and even at times, as Tenet revealed in his memoir, manipulated it.  Finally it was she who vetted Nouri al-Maliki becoming Iraq´s Prime Minister—another mistake. Yet Condi is back serving as Jeb´s influential advisor along with Paul Wolfowitz, another architect of Iraq´s disaster.  Robert Gates, her present business partner, will hopefully not advise Rice to push her candidacy.  Jeb, and above all the country, need a clean sweep.

Meanwhile, the second catastrophe of Ramadi is on Obama.  Had he left a residual force in the country, Ramadi would not have fallen.  Had he taken the ISIS threat seriously a year ago, the catastrophe could have been avoided.  Instead, as watchdog group Judicial Watch, has revealed, he knew that even while he was pushing his supposed decimation of Al Qaeda in 2012 to win an election, that ISIS planned to build a caliphate.  Sadly he was helped to victory by a smear campaign initiated by George Stephanopolous and deceptive and surely prepared stagecraft with Candy Crowley in the second presidential debate.

The president and his team now have to come to grips with the overall battlefield – the globe!   Seemingly missed by the White House is that ISIS strategy in Europe is not a blitzkrieg with tanks. It consists of deadly selective attacks on the military and security personnel of the allied nations helping with our air campaigns in Syria and Iraq.  How many Americans know that NATO soldiers in various countries have been asked to appear and live anonymously without uniforms?

 ISIS is planning a similar strategy for America as the recent Texas incident suggests. The Islamo-fascists don´t need a sophisticated network.  Social media is sufficient unto the purpose. Therefore, immigration must now be regulated in such a way that it will not impinge on our national security particularly at our southern borders. As some of our generals warn, the open southern borders are a natural ingress for terrorists.  The time has come for this country to retake our borders!

The remaining European holocaust survivors, like my mother and uncle, regard the ISIS threat as a new coming of the Nazis.  Indeed, together with NATO soldiers, the miniscule Jewish community is in danger, as much hated by ISIS as the large number of Christians in the Middle East.  

We hope that Defense Secretary Carter and the new chairman of the Joint Chiefs will prevail upon the president to augment our presence in Iraq beyond trainers and Special Forces.  The perception of our allies must be changed dramatically. They have to know that we will not allow ISIS to hold Ramadi and Mosul and threaten Baghdad.  In short, if you want to stop the rush of young Muslims to Syria and Iraq, you have to win the war and retake Ramadi ASAP.  Moreover, you can´t “downgrade” ISIS; you must destroy them.

We know that President Obama removed the bust of Winston Churchill from the Oval Office. Nevertheless, Churchill´s wisdom and spirit must remain with us.  We must recognize the Islamo -fascist threat for what it is.  We must send at least 10,000 troops, ground to air controllers, combat units and Special Forces, to Iraq and develop effective public diplomacy to explain the need for a more assertive strategy to the American people and the world.  To save western civilization in the nuclear age, they must finally understand the threat.  To again quote Winston, “This must be the end of the beginning.” 

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