Politics and Press

The interaction of the press and politics; public diplomacy, and daily absurdities.

Iraq

Bush’s Foreign Policy: The Perfect Storm

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President Bush continues to wallow in the consequences of his own arrogant miscalculations. The situation America finds itself in can be traced to his and Cheney’s so-called tough guy approach to the world, as evidenced in the insane war in Iraq. Among what “Shock and Awe” and “Mission Accomplished” missed were the ripple effect consequences that followed and that continue to arrive.

Turkey asked that the U.S. avoid invading Iraq for reasons of its own security and their recognition of the likely bloodbath to follow, but agreed to work with the U.S. in providing staging areas for U.S. troops. At the same time it warned of the potential difficulties with the Kurds, a warning of which the U.S. apparently took no note. So having considerable responsibility for the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Iraqis AND the increased power and influence of Iran in the region (incl. Iraq) the U.S. now has the problem of a possible micro war between two of its allies – the Iraqi Kurds and the Turks. Bush is saying that he will help Turkey flush out the PKK (Kurdish rebels) but that is clearly an empty promise given our incompetence and unwillingness to put the thumbs to the Iraqi Kurds, who will at least passively support the PKK. It is a dog’s breakfast.

Pakistan has been presented as the bulwark of our “war on terrorism” which is beginning to sound a bit like the help that our friends in Saudi Arabia have given us leading up to and following 9/11. Pakistan is a nuclear power led by a dictator who views himself as the country’s savior while the majority of his citizens seek the democracy that Bush has presented as his foreign policy’s grandest wish. We continue to provide massive defense aid to Pakistan while it allows al Quada to operate more or less unfettered within its borders, the Taliban to operate out of its borders into Afghanistan and its peoples’ dream for democracy to wither and die. It is impossible to know what would happen in Pakistan without Musharraf but the best long-term hope is for a true democracy to develop while finding a way to ensure that Pakistan’s nuclear arms remain out of the hands of extremists. So, does the U.S. continue to support Musharaf or pull the plug and risk democracy? There are echoes of what the U.S. did in Iran by shoring up the Shah, providing massive military aid, turning our eyes from the Shah’s human rights abuses and getting pretty much what we deserved – a belligerent Iran with whom we continue to squander diplomatic possibilities to a point where it might be too late. Another dog’s breakfast cooked up by this administration.

Afghanistan is the place that might have been a success for the administration but that too is being pissed away largely because of our Iraq folly. Pakistan passively provides cover for the Taliban which continues to operate at considerable strength in the South and increased strength elsewhere in Afghanistan while most of the U.S.’s troops are spinning their wheels helping to build a stronger Iraq which will probably eventually ally politically with Iran. Were it not for the Canadians, the British and the Dutch, Afghanistan might very well be lost already (no thanks to the Germans, French, Spaniards and Italians who hide their troops in the relative safety of the North). Defense Secretary Gates commented on this as recently as 25 October speaking to a group of unimpressed European generals:

”A handful of allies are paying the price and bearing the burdens,” he said in remarks that were notably critical of European governments. He spoke hours after leaving a two-day meeting of NATO defense ministers in the Netherlands, where he pressed for more troops for Afghanistan. There were no promises. ”If an alliance of the world’s greatest democracies cannot summon the will to get the job done in a mission that we agree is morally just and vital to our security,” he told the European generals, ”then our citizens may begin to question both the worth of the mission and the utility of the 60-year-old trans-Atlantic security project itself,” meaning NATO, which was created in 1949. His remarks drew little reaction from the generals, who applauded politely when he finished.” – AP

Clearly the U.S. will need to step up its commitment to Afghanistan but cannot do so as long as it is mired in an endless war in Iraq – that is, as long as G. Bush is president and no one with Rudy Giuliani’s views is elected in his place.

That leaves every president’s greatest challenge – the Middle East. Bush has all but ignored the Middle East for seven years – barring the talk of a “roadmap to peace” (remember that one?), his refusal to accept that the democratic election in Palestine was valid because the people elected the wrong guys, and of course his support for Israel’s disastrous bombing of Lebanon. Secretary Rice is now spending more time in the Middle East than in Washington and according to David Brooks in the NY Times – not exactly an objective observer – she is putting together an anti-Iran alliance, which would include Israel, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, the Palestinians and the U.S. He goes on to say that:

“It’s slightly unfortunate that the peace process itself is hollow. …But that void can be filled in later. The main point is to organize the anti-Iranians around some vehicle and then reshape the strategic correlation of forces in the region.”

This alliance will then face off against the alliance that will include Iran, Syria, Hamas, Hezbollah, and – in all probability – Iraq. This is a hope and a wish but certainly not a foreign policy based on reality.

1/20/09 – that is the key date – the time when sophisticated, intelligent people can begin to dig us out of Bush’s Perfect Storm created from a rare combination of American incompetence, arrogance, ignorance, and naiveté.

Desperate Acts of a Desperate Man? Bush and Iran

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The visit to New York of Iran’s President Ahmadinejad has highlighted America’s paranoid fear of a third-rate clown from a second-tier power. Having placed Iran within his Axis of Evil, President Bush now must deal with the fact that his invasion of Iraq handed Iran the strategic gift of unparalleled influence in the likely Iraq of the future (for a detailed analysis of why this is so, see Peter Galbraith’s The Victor in the October 11 issue of the New York Review of Books).

While the United States begins the long and painful process of coming to grips with the Iraq reality of – at best – stalemate and at worst – defeat, it has proven all too tempting to lay the blame as far away from the White House as possible. And what better place than Tehran? Ergo, the ongoing stories of weapons being smuggled into Iraq from Iran, ignoring the unpleasant fact that the U.S. has basically armed both sides of a civil war in which its own soldiers and marines are caught in the middle. The American press dutifully reports every account of Iranian weapons found in Iraq, joins in the jingoistic threats of bombing Iran’s nuclear facilities and ignores the unpleasant reality that the vast majority of deaths in Iraq can be traced to Sunnis and Shiites killing each other and even some of their own – frequently with American weaponry.

The recent Israeli flyover of Syria led to hints of North Korean-Syrian cooperation on nuclear weapons development; hints  given the same credibility the press gave Saddam’s non-existent weapons of mass destruction in the run-up to the invasion of Iraq in 2003. At the same time the Cheney wing of the administration sees an opportunity to scuttle the talks with North Korea, something they have tried to do from the beginning of those negotiations. All of which begs the question: what is Bush planning for his swan song?

One possibility is for Bush to continue to pressure for more sanctions on Iran; another would be open direct negotiations with Iran and yet another would be to initiate bombing attacks on Iran’s nuclear and military facilities. At this point it seems the first of these options has been chosen, the second is almost surely not going to happen but the third option remains viable. President Bush is not known for his subtlety of mind – indeed his behavior suggests an impatience with those who disagree with him and a schoolyard bully’s tendency to use others to fight his battles for him – in this case it could be his own Air Force and/or the Israeli Air Force. A bombing attack on Iran would feed some of his more vocal neo-con supporters and leave one more mess for his successor to clean up.

An analyst friend theorized this week that perhaps the best solution to the perceived nuclear threat from Iran would be to do what was done to the Soviet Union in the Cold War: serve notice that a nuclear attack on any country by Iran would be met with subsequent annihilation of the Iranian nation and its people. Détente was never a perfect solution – but it worked for 50 years against a foe a whole lot tougher than Iran and it could possibly put an end to foolish posturing by American politicians and media editorialists.

The Failure of Bush’s Surge

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President Bush, his GOP Congressional supporters, and a large proportion of the American news media have cooperated in pulling off the great Petraeus shell game. It goes something like this: you start with 130,000 troops in a failed occupation in Iraq and make a case for a short-term surge of an additional 30,000 troops to provide time for the Iraqis to put together a strong central government with all factions in Iraq sharing power. You report in six months that the surge has been successful and that you expect to begin withdrawing from Iraq in a year or so by removing 30,000 troops. So, of course, we are right back where we started and – at this writing – no closer to a strong government in Iraq than we were a year ago. But the withdrawal of 30,000 troops is an illusion. The U.S. military has simply run out of available troops and 30,000 would need to be removed regardless.

Putting the surge into context requires understanding that there remains no end game strategy from Bush; that the U.S. military is in a highly weakened state with generals predicting problems responding to additional threats; that the violence in Iraq remains high and is mostly not connected Al Queda; that 2 and a half million Iraqis (largely the middle class professionals) have left the country; that the British pulling their troops out of Basra is already leading to increased sectarian violence there; that the cost to the United States will soon be over a trillion dollars; that the war in Afghanistan is suffering due to our inability to supply adequate troops there: that Iran remains the likely big winner in Iraq because of Bush’s inability to even consider the real consequences of his fiasco; that much of the billions spent on reconstruction in Iraq has been wasted on shoddy construction or simply stolen by corrupt contractors; that soon the American military death toll will be over 4,000 and the number of wounded over 30,000; that hundreds of thousands Iraqis have been killed in the aftermath of the invasion; that the basic infrastructure in Iraq is worse than it was under Saddam; and that no longer does anyone use the word “victory” when discussing the future of our efforts in Iraq. It would be impossible to make up a perfect storm of ignorance and arrogance to match what the Bush presidency has done in Iraq.

As for General Petraeus and Ambassador Crocker, it is, in my view, wrong to fault them for trying to make the best of the rotten hand dealt to them. They were careful to avoid making the kind of stupid boasts that regularly come from their President – “bring it on”, “mission accomplished”, “we’re kickin ass in Iraq”. etc. – and while they put the best face they could on the situation, the blame must be laid at the President’s desk – with the complicity of the American electorate who elected him not once, but – for God’s sake – twice!

Arms to the Poor: From Krupp to Bush

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The military-industrial complex that Eisenhower warned against is alive and well – even if their products are sometimes shoddy and ineffective. The arms business has become one of America’s great exports as it arms countries like India, Pakistan, Afghanistan and Iraq. These days it is reminiscent of the Krupp family business which discovered that it was possible to sell arms to just about anyone in the 19th century, leading to their selling arms and defenses to both sides during World War I. And of course the company was instrumental in arming the German armies during WW II, making huge amounts of profit and paying little in labor since the government kindly supplied them with slave labor. I suppose it is something of a come down for the family now to be selling coffee grinders and espresso machines.

But not to worry, there are plenty of companies willing and able to take on the challenge of arming the world. And while it can be argued that everyone does it, the United States remains in first place in maintaining its post WW-II leadership in finding ways to arm countries or selected rebels around the world. The rationale for doing this is not always clear and is usually done for transitory reasons, and not infrequently with mixed consequences.

The U.S. government and arms manufacturers armed Iran under the Shah and of course saw those armaments fall into the hands of the revolution. Adding insult to injury, the Reagan administration provided arms to Iran as part of its Iran-Contra policy/scandal. (The income from these sales of weapons to Iran under Reagan were then used to provide arms to the Contras in Nicaragua). At around the same time the U.S. provided arms to Saddam Hussein in an effort to support its war against Iran. More recently the U.S. provided arms support to the forces of Osama bin Laden to fight the Russians in Afghanistan. The list goes on and the positive consequences have mostly fallen to the American companies that are heirs to the Krupp value system – and the politicians whose campaigns are funded by the arms manufacturers. In any case the arms provided to Iran, Saddam Hussein, and bin Laden have all been used against our national interest at one time or another.

Now we have the latest proposed handout to the arms companies. Having totally screwed up Iraq and most of the Gulf region with Bush’s fiasco, we are searching for ways to cut our losses and one way is to bribe Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, Egypt and Bahrain with upwards of $20 billion in sales to this group of gulf states and some $30B of new sales to Israel. All of this is in addition to whatever arms remain in Iraq after a war that is now estimated to cost over a trillion dollars. The hope and the wish seem to be that all these new weapons in the region will keep our Iraq adventure from becoming the beginning of a monstrous disaster in the region. Also that these countries will all work to keep Iran at bay.

One of the clever strategies of the family Krupp was to sell defensive armor to one side and then stronger weapons to the other and then the first side would need even stronger defensive armor, and the cycle would continue. With all of the new weapons around the world it is clear that the U.S. will need to improve its weaponry and defenses and so the Krupp strategy is alive and well and the cycle can continue.

Canada goes to war

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Sixty-six Canadian soldiers have died in Afghanistan. The death of each one of them has received front-page coverage in leading Canadian papers, and the CBC runs the risk of becoming repetitive with its films of funerals and returning coffins. Sixty times as many US soldiers have died in Iraq, but in total their stories have probably not been told as prominently, movingly and dramatically as have those of the dead Canadian soldiers in their home media.
The US effort in Iraq now surely seems doomed to catastrophic failure, at least partly because, as Senator Joe Biden recently put it, Americans have lost any desire to keep sending their kids to their deaths in the meat grinder of Iraq. At the same time the Canadian armed forces are having no trouble finding record numbers of recruits, despite the daily scenes of violence and death in Afghanistan. There is certainly some opposition to the war in Afghanistan. The socialist NDP Party wants the troops brought home immediately, the opposition Liberal Party wants a withdrawal at the end of the current mandate in 2009. But in general there is a perhaps surprising amount of general public support for the sudden display of Canadian military strength in what is considered a just cause.
Prime Minister Harper announced this week that Canada would design and build, at a cost of 3-4 billion dollars, 6-8 frigates with moderate ice-breaking capabilities to patrol Canada’s increasingly threatened Arctic water routes, particularly the Northwest Passage. For the first time, a Canadian submarine will be present in the Arctic this summer and Harper has promised to build a deepwater port in the Arctic. Critics of Harper’s announcements demanded more not less for the Arctic, including the 3 full icebreakers he had claimed he would build. These are enormous expenses for the world’s second-largest country, with one-tenth the US population, caught in the Arctic between the first and third largest, both of whom have shown they can afford nuclear ice breakers. But it seems to be an expense that Canadian citizens are willing to pay and that’s at least partly because the Canadian military has managed to begin to regain something of the stature it once enjoyed as a result of its powerful presence in both the First and Second World Wars. It may not yet be punching above its weight, as it did back then, but it seems at least to be returning to the weight class to which it rightfully belongs

The Omnipotent Mr. Cheney

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The Washington Post is running a 4-part report on the Vice Presidency of Richard Cheney. The report, prepared by Barton Gellman and Jo Becker and entitled “Angler” which is Mr. Cheney’s secret service code name, paints a picture of our Vice President as the man behind the throne, pulling strings, Oz-like, that direct many of our most critical domestic and foreign policy programs. One example is the role Mr. Cheney played in how the United States would handle “terrorists” captured during the apparently unending “war on terror”. Mr. Cheney developed the draft order that Mr.Bush signed, putting into operation the policy permitting the indefinite confinement of foreign terrorism suspects without any access to the courts. Secretary of State Colin Powell and National Security Advisor Condi Rice, nominally in charge of such things, knew nothing about the order until after it was executed. The secrecy is typical of Cheney’s modus operandi. As stated in the Gellman/Becker report:

“Across the board, the vice president’s office goes to unusual lengths to avoid transparency. Cheney declines to disclose the names or even the size of his staff, generally releases no public calendar and ordered the Secret Service to destroy his visitor logs. His general counsel has asserted that “the vice presidency is a unique office that is neither a part of the executive branch nor a part of the legislative branch,” and is therefore exempt from rules governing either. Cheney is refusing to observe an executive order on the handling of national security secrets, and he proposed to abolish a federal office that insisted on auditing his compliance.

“In the usual business of interagency consultation, proposals and information flow into the vice president’s office from around the government, but high-ranking White House officials said in interviews that almost nothing flows out. Close aides to Cheney describe a similar one-way valve inside the office, with information flowing up to the vice president but little or no reaction flowing down.”

Mr. Cheney has played a similar role in approving use of extremely inhumane treatment of “terrorist” prisoners (which many believe amounts to torture), gatekeeping Supreme Court nominees, and squelching environmental initiatives – all with a degree of secrecy that is startling. Past vice-presidents have attended state funerals and promoted run-of-the-mill programs, such as Mr. Gore’s efforts to improve the bureaucracy’s efficiency. Not so Mr. Cheney. While the President signs the executive orders and makes the public appearances, Mr. Cheney pulls the strings from his undisclosed locations. The Post report confirms that Mr. Cheney is in fact our co-President, exercising power as Vice-President as it has never been exercised before.

The Candidates and Iraq: Avoiding Reality

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A recent Op-Ed piece in the Washington Post recognizes what should by now be obvious to any serious candidate for the presidency: by any reasonable definition the Iraq War is lost. The decision to invade was based on a combination of ignorance, arrogance and deception; the waging of the war was naïve and simple-minded, and the management of the follow-up has been nothing short of a disaster. The surge is most recently defined by General Petraeus as a ten-year effort; that is a time line the American people will not accept. Nor will they accept the Bush/Cheney concept of a new “Korea-type” 50 year involvement. The American people have determined that it is not in the national interest and they are – finally – smarter than their leaders.

So, what is going on with the primary campaigns among both Republicans and Democrats? It seems obvious that the major foreign policy challenge facing America is first, how to extricate itself from Bush’s Iraq fiasco and second, and perhaps more important, to begin to define an appropriate role for the United States in the Middle East and Gulf region post-Iraq. But the campaign rhetoric is largely confined to how long to stay in Iraq, how many troops to leave behind, can Americans face the fact of defeat, and isn’t it about time the Iraqis cleaned up the mess we made.

No one can know what will happen when U.S. troops leave Iraq but we can certainly predict what will happen if we stay because it is happening already – more American deaths, more Iraqi deaths, throwing good American after bad, more Iraqis leaving their country, and a terrific training and recruiting ground for Al Queda.

But to read the press and listen to media news one would think that staying in Iraq was an actual option. It is not and the more time spent pretending otherwise is time lost to the serious effort needed to redefine America’s role in the world in a way that reflects both reality and America’s real national interest. This public discussion needs to begin now and needs to be led by those who would be our next president.

The Iraq Solution: Let’s Give Them Guns!

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As evidence of the likely failure of the surge strategy in Iraq begins to surface the U.S. is reported to be moving toward a strategy of arming Sunnis so they can defend themselves against Al Queda. It is an almost breathlessly desperate idea, forged in the failure of a four-year disaster and reminiscent of the arms we provided to the Taliban in Afghanistan while they were fighting the Russians. While there are many lessons available from that adventure perhaps the best one would be that the weapons ended up with the forces of Osama bin Laden and Mullah Omar. We all  remember them.

A lengthy piece in the NY Times describes some of the risks:

“But critics of the strategy, including some American officers, say it could amount to the Americans’ arming both sides in a future civil war. The United States has spent more than $15 billion in building up Iraq’s army and police force, whose manpower of 350,000 is heavily Shiite. With an American troop drawdown increasingly likely in the next year, and little sign of a political accommodation between Shiite and Sunni politicians in Baghdad, the critics say, there is a risk that any weapons given to Sunni groups will eventually be used against Shiites. There is also the possibility the weapons could be used against the Americans themselves.”

So, we invade Iraq for whatever reason is the current rationale, accomplish the mission in weeks but forget to deal with the aftermath. Four years later the winners appear to be the Shias which creates a little problem with our Sunni friends in Saudi Arabia and Jordan but is welcomed by our ‘enemies” in Iran and Syria. Arms would be provided only to those Sunnis promising not to use them against their Shia neighbors and only against Al Queda. It is understandable that failure can produce desperate measures but will the U.S. really do something this risky?

IRAQ UPDATE: Good Money After Bad

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As we enter the fifth year of the Bush Iraq Fiasco, there continue to be amazing stories of rampant corruption, mind-boggling incompetence and a pig-headed obstinate inability to face reality.

The country has been entertained for five months as President Bush resists the congressional majority’s calls for “deadlines” in its funding bill for Iraq. Refusing to accept the inevitable, Bush continues to dream of an as yet undefined “victory” in Iraq while the Congress searches for a veto proof funding bill that will set a timetable for the U.S. to begin to move troops out of Iraq.

The latest move in this political dance macabre is away from “deadlines” to “benchmarks” – apparently a less inflammatory word for Bush but still not acceptable if there are any specific dates applied. This in spite of – or maybe because of – a lack of evidence that the “surge” will be effective in anything other than raising the American death toll while merely delaying the inevitable.

However, one group that is moving toward deadlines is the Iraq Parliament, with a majority of its members signing on to the principle of deadlines for American troops to leave – but agreeing with the American view that the withdrawal should not be precipitous and should be timed to the readiness of Iraqi troops to maintain security. While this might not satisfy either Bush or the Congress, (it is, after all, their country) they are moving toward reality at a faster pace than Bush. Meanwhile the death toll mounts, ca. 100 Americans per month and ca. 100 Iraqis a day.

Another development in Iraq is reminiscent of Paul Wolfowitz’s comment in 2003 that Iraqi oil would pay the costs of reconstruction after a brief victorious battle. That has turned out to be as good an idea as Wolfowitz’s handing his girlfriend a $60G raise and foisting her on the State Department. Turns out that having paid for destruction of Iraq’s infrastructure we are now paying for its reconstruction as well and it is not going well. Iraq oil production is not close to the predicted levels and the NY Times reports today that a draft report by the U.S. Government Accountability Office describes a situation in which from $5 to $15 million a day of Iraqi oil is disappearing – either through government corruption, smugglers or – worse yet – insurgent theft. The latter translates into an oil production program that in effect is bankrolling the insurgents who are killing American troops.

The press cannot seem to come to grips with all of this – choosing to argue about the when and how of withdrawal without ever coming out and saying that withdrawal is inevitable. Defeat is in the air and is a tough pill for politicians and bloviating journalists to swallow with their pride in their throat. It looks an awful lot as though the day is coming and it would seem to be a good idea to start thinking about the future and how we can undo the damage of the miserable mistakes made by Bush and his band of fools. Bush predicted a new world after Iraq and he is going to get it and would be well advised to start thinking about how to interact with that new world.

Finally, it seemed somehow appropriate to have Dick Cheney threatening Iran on a aircraft carrier deck just four years after Bush got into his costume and declared “mission accomplished” – also on a carrier deck. Fact is that Cheney and Bush are in many ways headed for the kind of irrelevance that Tony Blair faced and at least had the sense to resign from office.

Censoring the Troops

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Two recent news items indicate the lack of respect this administration holds for the soldiers and marines it sends to Iraq to fight and sometimes to die for the Bush-Cheney Fiasco.

While much of the American press remains huddled in the Green Zone, blogs managed by U.S. servicemen and women in Iraq and Afghanistan have been interesting and useful sources of information for those wishing to understand what life is like for them. While some blogs – or at least some entries on some blogs – have been critical of American strategies and tactics (and rightly so), most have been attempts to communicate reality to readers back home and to share thoughts among themselves.  And there is evidence that the blogs have provided a morale lift for the troops. But, alas, the was is not going so well and since “war is hell” is more than just a slogan the Defense Department has determined that all blogs must be approved by commanding officers.  That is, each entry must be approved. What insulting arrogance!

At almost the same time, a Defense Department official announced this week that servicemen and women below a certain rank would not be allowed to testify before Congressional committees.  Never mind that this regulation will probably not stand (assuming the Congress locates its backbone). It is just one more indication of how this administration really feels about its troops. Insufficient armor, insufficient numbers, lousy medical care at home, extended tours, an incoherent strategy, reduced VA funding and now, an attempt to shut them up.