Ev’ryone considered him the coward of the county.
Hed never stood one single time to prove the county wrong.
His mama named him Tommy, the folks just called him yellow,
But something always told me they were reading Tommy wrong.

Roger Bowling/Billy Edd Wheeler

In the Friday NY Times article I referenced yesterday John Burns wrote about the recognition by American generals in Iraq that one of the primary goals of these operations has failed.

Leaving aside for a moment the bullshit propaganda tactic of now titling all elements in Iraq resisting American military forces as al Qaeda, the “senior leaders” of whatever-the-heck-they-are have supposedly left the set, (probably to re-establish the next round of whack-a-mole back in Anbar.)

I noted this:

BAGHDAD, June 22 — The operational commander of troops battling to drive fighters with Al Qaeda from Baquba said Friday that 80 percent of the top Qaeda leaders in the city fled before the American-led offensive began earlier this week. He compared their flight with the escape of Qaeda leaders from Falluja ahead of an American offensive that recaptured that city in 2004.

This escaping was in defiance of the American plan to put a cordon around the city of Baquba to catch them. And now they've done it twice! Failing to catch these leaders prompted LTG Ray Odierno, the ground commander in Iraq, to lash out in a pique that I doubt he learned at Army Vo-Tech, where he graduated in 1976.

Lt. Gen. Raymond T. Odierno, the second-ranking American commander in Iraq, told reporters that leaders of Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia had been alerted to the Baquba offensive by widespread public discussion of the American plan to clear the city before the attack began. He portrayed the Qaeda leaders’ escape as cowardice, saying that “when the fight comes, they leave,” abandoning “midlevel” Qaeda leaders and fighters to face the might of American troops — just, he said, as they did in Falluja. [emph added]

Again, leaving aside the nonsense about every armed man resisting American forces belonging to the a-Q union, a smart commander would have expected that if they did it in Fallja, they could be expected to do it in Baquba, and said smart commander would have made sure that he had planned and prepared a cordon that worked.

LTG Odierno has probably forgotten Tactics 102 as it is taught at West Point. The subject of the course covers establishing delaying forces known as “rearguard” forces during a retreat to buy time for the rest of the unit to escape. It’s just my opinion, but labeling this action as “cowardice” seems a bit silly. I’ll bet if a massive insurgent attack threatened to overwhelm Camp Victory, where MNF-I gets its mail, LTG Odierno would be on the first helicopter out because he’s more valuable as a commander than as a member of a forlorn hope unit.

Speaking of the enemy, whether really al Qaeda or just the same old insurgents/Ba’athist dead enders/Sunni resistance/Mahdi Army death squads, or whatever as cowards is a dangerous sort of mindset. When you speak of your enemy in contemptuous tones there’s a good likelihood you’re thinking that way, and you get careless, and the next thing you know that contemptible “coward” bites you in your fourth point of contact.

As Gorilla’s Guides notes this morning,

The current set of U.S. offensives has already failed and in response to that failure one of the Generals who devised and implemented the failed tactics is complaining about “run away cowards” while neglecting to point out that the said “run away cowards” are busily bringing the mighty U.S: army to a grinding halt. That’s not news either. Once a year the Americans re-occupy Irak and once a year the Irakis deny them control of it by … killing them. That’s no longer news and incidentally “not fair” is rarely said by commanders of victorious forces.[emph added]