I watched General Zinni on Meet The Press yesterday. He was plugging a book and explaining that the Bush Administration doesn’t have a clue about what it did wrong in Iraq and what is happening there now. He cited General Sheehan as still another top military mind who is bewildered by the Bush policy [or whatever it is]. General Sheehan was approached in the past few weeks by Bush to become Iraq War Czar [don’t you love it], but he wouldn’t even begin to consider the notion.
When Bush announced his Iraq “surge” a couple of months ago, it was so apparently dumb that I thought I must be missing something. I am no military expert certainly, so I guessed that there may be some kernal of validity to the surge notion. After all, Bush persuaded General Petraeus to lead the effort and Petraeus seems to be well-regarded. But, it turns out, Petraeus must simply be a good, follow-the-directives-of-the-Commander-in-Chief type of general because Iraq is, almost incredibly, sinking deeper into the morass despite his best efforts. The increased US presence in Baghdad neighborhoods has fomented greater opposition and violence – a logical and predictable result.
Most recently, Al-Sadr has essentially declared war on the US. Al-Sadr has gone underground since Bush declared we were going to be “surging.” Only last week, he directed a massive anti-US rally seeking the removal of US troops. He may not be highly respected in the West, but Al-Sadr is the apparent leader of many Shiites in Iraq. Just yesterday, he ordered six Iraqi cabinet ministers loyal to him to withdraw from the government because of the government’s failure to endorse a US withdrawal timetable. The Democratic leadership in the US still supports a timetable for withdrawal [though that support may be weakening]. Bush, of course, is adamant in his opposition to a timetable – as is the current Iraqi government.
Zinni says there is no quick fix in Iraq and that a timetable is not the way to go. He says we need to stay for 5,6, or more years. But that’s the “general” in him speaking. An alternative is to get the hell out now. Bow to the will of the majority of Iraqis and get the hell out now. Will there be continuing “hostilities”? Yes. Can it get much worse than it is with the US in there? Possibly, but it is very, very bad there now – surge or no surge. With the US no longer a target [principally in the form of road-side bombs and sniper attacks], the hostilities may begin to wind down. The years of separation and hatred between the Sunnis and Shiites could support years of killing. But without the US in Iraq, the Iraqis will have less of an excuse to continue fighting. They could even direct their attention to the other foreigners in their midst, such as Al-Qaeda, and put them down. The US should take the cover that the Shiites are offering [i.e., the demand that we get out] and – with some further cover from Iraq’s neighbors, which would likely come – we should simply leave – our soldiers should come home.
U.S. Foreign Policy
And, Another Miracle
Followng the news that King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia has cancelled out of his scheduled April state dinner with President Bush, we read now that King Abdullah of Jordan – another old friend of the United States has decided he cannot possibly make a planned trip to Washington – and a state dinner – in September.
It seems the chicken-hawks have come home to roost. Bush’s Iraq adventure is continuing to offend old friends while creating new enemies.
Bush’s Newest Miracle
Having changed major parts of the constitution into near-meaningless paragraphs, turned the U.S. military into a shadow of its former self, reduced the Iraqi population in Iraq by an estimated 20 percent, turned a budget surplus into a record-breaking deficit, Bush had at least one more miracle left in his bag of tricks.
In 2000, the Washington Times published a glowing report on the strength of the relationship between Saudi Arabia and the U.S. It began:
“For more than 60 years, Saudi Arabia and the United States have enjoyed a strong relationship based upon mutual respect and common interests….
This special relationship dates to the early 1900s, when King Abdulaziz bin Abdulrahman Al-Saud, the founder of the modern Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, was impressed by President Woodrow Wilson’s call for the self-determination of nations. Over time, the relationship between Saudi Arabia and the United States has reflected President Wilson’s ideals of independence, justice and peace.â€
The strong relationship between the Saudi royal family and the Bush family has been well documented and the mutuality of the U.S. Saudi relationship has been clear. The Saudis have kept the oil coming, maintained a moderate stance in the Middle East and Persian Gulf, and allowed – until recently – large U.S. military bases on their soil. In return the U.S. has provided for the defense of Saudi Arabia, assisted in the development of their oil fields and, perhaps most important, provided a huge market thirsty for Saudi oil. The friendship endured in spite of the extreme fundamentalism of the Saudi brand of Islam and the fact that the majority of the 9/11 attackers were Saudi born and bred.
The second President Bush has apparently destroyed a 65-year-old relationship in just the four years from 2003 to the present. A miracle. Who would have thought that it could be done and would be done by a Bush. Yesterday at the meeting of the Arab League, King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia said that the U.S. occupation in Iraq was “illegal†and called for the end of the international boycott of the Palestinian government, Earlier this year, the Saudis helped negotiate agreement between the two major Palestinian factions and met with the President of Iran; two actions apparently designed to announce their independence from American hegemony.
So our relationship with Saudi Arabia is moving toward becoming one more casualty of the Bush Fiasco. Ironically, the Bush foreign policy, pushed so hard by neocon supporters of Israel, could add to the threat to Israel – a stronger Iran, a more unified Arab world, a weakened America, a less supportive Western Europe. It is also apparently increasing the power of al Queda by increasing hatred of America in the Arab world, and providing a recruiting and training ground for jihadists.
Since blood is thicker than patriotism, old man Bush has kept his silence but he must wonder how the hell he could have sired this guy.
Shock and Awe or Humiliation and Shame?
Until recently, there has been little focus on the costs to the citizens of Iraq of Bush’s War. The American mainstream press has largely chosen to look at the Iraq war through the prism of U.S. politics – that is, who voted for it and who did not; who will vote for withdrawal of U.S. troops and who will not; how can funding be stopped without those who vote for it being accused of “not supporting the troopsâ€; what percent of the American people support the war; when will the Iraqis clean up the mess we produced? Etc. ad nauseum. It is, for them, mostly all about America.
What are the trade-offs for the Iraqis? The estimates of Iraqi civilian deaths range from a low of 60,000 to as high as ten times that number. Estimates of Iraqi refugees are in the 2-3 million range – most internal as the various religious sects band together in limited geographic areas, but over a million in Jordan, Syria and Iran. The Kurdish region of Iraq – the most developed, stable and modern – now has some 100,000 refugees from the rest of Iraq with nowhere to put them and minimal humanitarian aid from the U.S. The fact that the U.S. has accepted only a few hundred Iraqi refugees is a disgraceful indictment of the American government that created this horror show. A previously secular society with the highest literacy rate in the region, and equal rights for women is becoming an Islamic fundamentalist state with all that that will mean for whoever is left living there.
In return for this “investment†the Iraqi people are rid of Saddam Hussein, one of the nastiest dictators of the past thirty years. But now having determined that getting rid of Saddam was a good thing, the Iraqi people are asking themselves whether it has been worth the costs. Their answer is “noâ€. The euphoria of U.S. troops marching into Baghdad has been replaced with the reality of the mind-numbing incompetence of the U.S. in creating chaos with no way out – for the U.S. or for the Iraqi people.
A powerful description of what we have done to those Iraqi people who have been our allies, appears in this week’s New Yorker, in George Packer’s article, Betrayed, in which he comments that:
“The arc from hope to betrayal that traverses the Iraq war is nowhere more vivid than in the lives of these Iraqis [i.e. Iraqis who worked for the U.S. forces as interpreters, etc.]. America’s failure to understand, trust, and protect its closest friends in Iraq is a small drama that contains the larger history of defeat.â€
It is tempting to quote Packer’s piece extensively, but it needs to be read in its entirety to capture the full dimension of our shame and guilt in this political and human disaster. One small part of the article discusses the likelihood or possibilities of large numbers of the millions of Iraqi refugees being welcomed into the U.S. – that is, the country that turned them into refugees. We are reminded of what President Gerald Ford once said about his decision to admit a hundred and thirty thousand Vietnamese after the fall of Saigon: “To do less would have added moral shame to humiliation.†The United States has welcomed between 200 and 300 Iraqis to date.
According to Packer, Richard Armitage, former Deputy Secretary of State under Colin Powell, and a longtime State Department professional, when asked about the likelihood of the U.S. doing much more, commented that:
“I guarantee you no one’s thinking about it now, because it’s so fatalistic and you’d be considered sort of a traitor to the President’s policy,†he said. “I don’t see us taking them in this time, because, notwithstanding what we may owe people, you’re not going to bring in large numbers of Arabs to the United States, given the fact that for the last six years the President has scared the pants off the American public with fears of Islamic terrorism.â€
The Surge: Good Money After Bad
The press and politicians are currently focused on the tactic of Bush’s “surge†of 21,000 added troops into Iraq while the overall situation is worse than most of the press admits or even considers. Typical is today’s Boston Globe op ed by a veteran of the Iraq conflict and now law school student at Harvard who continues the myth of the importance of giving the surge a chance to succeed while ignoring the larger, more significant consequences of the war.
Certainly even Bush must realize that he has committed the country to an enormous folly; ergo the re-definition of victory has become making Iraq’s capital city nearly as safe as it used to be before the Fiasco. Weapons of mass destruction disappeared as a rationale weeks after Shock and Awe; a true democracy in Iraq is now recognized to be fantasy; peace in the Middle East as a result is simply nutty, as is the concept of Iraq as a grateful nation.
A list of current and emerging consequences of Bush’s Fiasco is depressing:
• Destruction of the Iraqi infrastructure
• Millions of Iraqi refugees, both within Iraq and in neighboring countries;
• Over 3000 American lives; between 65,000 and 600,000 Iraqi lives lost
• Thousands of Americans seriously wounded
• A U.S. military pushed beyond its limits and no longer capable of responding to additional conflicts that could arise
• Provision of a training ground for terrorists
• Provision of a recruitment program for Jihadists
• Billions of U.S. dollars spent and not available for social programs such as health insurance, education, etc.
• Contribution to a budget deficit that will punish the young and the unborn
• Huge future need to support wounded and mentally-damaged veterans
• Inability to focus on other issues properly – e.g. Afghanistan, Russia, Africa
• Enormous amounts of international ill will
But perhaps the most significant consequence is the increased instability in the region. The Bush policy has made Iran a stronger force in the region, has reduced Iraq’s independence from Shiite domination, has changed a secular country into a fundamentalist country, and has produced a situation in which neighboring countries with Sunni populations (e.g. Saudi Arabia) will inevitably become involved with supporting Iraqi Sunnis with finances and weapons.
A poll of Iraqis taken this week indicates that a large majority believes their country was better off under Saddam than after the U.S. invasion. And there is no evidence that Bush has a clue on how to end it without it being a total disaster for U.S. foreign policy and the Iraqi people.
Bush’s Last Chance??
Graham Allison has written an op ed about diplomacy and power in the Kennedy era for today’s Boston Globe. Reading the piece suggests that the Bush administration – after six years – may be beginning to look for a philosophical center for its foreign policy. The piece compares the recent negotiations with North Korea and the planned multilateral discussions with Iran, to the approaches taken by Kennedy with the Soviet Union. The article quotes former Bush advisor and UN ambassador John Bolton and Secretary of Defense Robert Gates on the merits – or lack thereof – of negotiating with the likes of Iran and N. Korea. The money quotes are:
From Gates in 2004:
“Iran is not on the verge of another revolution . . . The durability of the Islamic Republic and the urgency of the concerns surrounding its policies mandate that the United States deal with the current regime rather than wait for it to fall.”
From Bolton in 2007 re: the agreement with N. Korea:
“[The N. Korea agreement] contradicts the fundamental premises of the president’s policy he’s been following for the past six years.” (Vice President Cheney is quoted: “We don’t negotiate with evil, we defeat it.”)
Bolton’s and Cheney’s comments represent the Bush-Cheney approach of power without diplomacy that has given us the Iraq “thingâ€, N. Korean nuclear weapons, and a stronger Iran headed for nuclear self-sufficiency. While it is late in the game for the Bush presidency, he actually has an opportunity to leave a legacy that will not be the raving insult that he currently courts with history.
The N. Korea agreement, while only a beginning, is after all, better than we had come to expect from this administration. Similarly, the movement towards talking with Iran hints at possible advances. The question is whether the Cheney gang will come back into dominance or whether diplomacy can proceed. Cheney is unlikely to watch the latter happen without a fight. We shall see.
A tale of two countries.
Condoleeza Rice made short hop up to Ottawa last week, perhaps to try to smooth ruffled feathers after George Bush once again failed to mention Canada in his discussion of countries contributing to the war effort in Afghanistan. But she was there long enough to be confronted by the unanimous verdict of the Canadian Supreme Court – 9-0 – that it was unconstitutional for the government to override the judicial system or the Canadian Charter of Rights in dealing with suspected terrorists. Shortly after that a solid majority in the House of Parliament voted to retire special legislation that had made circumvention of the usual legal practices in the wake of the attack on New York and Washington a possibility. The differences between the two countries five years after that attack could hardly be more startling.
While the US has allowed that terrible day to turn it into something of a rogue fortress state, demanding visas for citizens of the great majority of countries and passports for all visitors including soon neighbours travelling by car, Canada has changed very little other than by displaying increased vigilance by police authorities at border crossings and closer surveillance of suspicious groups in urban areas. A recent poll showing that almost 50% of foreign travellers considered the US (and not Russian or China) to be the most unwelcoming place to try to visit, while 2% chose Canada, shows one of the potential long-term consequences of these policies. According to a recent article in the NY Times, foreign business people are beginning to avoid travel to and meetings in the US. It may be that Canada will prove to have been a bit too naive in its mild response to terrorist threats, but it would be a hot winter day in the Yukon before you’ll find any Canadians who wish they were holed up behind the walls of a fortress.
Peter Galbraith on the “Surgeâ€
Peter Galbraith discusses at length Bush’s “surge†strategy in Iraq in the current issue of the New York Review of Books. He is not optimistic and presents a convincing argument that the “war†as defined by Bush is lost and that everything from now on is a delay that will cost lives and bring us no closer to an acceptable solution. One small point in the Galbraith piece is a reminder of the unwillingness of Bush to take responsibility for his actions (not unusual given his personal history) and, more significantly, his ability to blame the victim – in this instance the Iraqi people. Galbraith quotes Bush when asked whether he owed the Iraqi people an apology for not providing adequate post- invasion security:
“Well I don’t, that we didn’t do a better job or they didn’t do a better job?… I think I am proud of the efforts we did. We liberated that country from a tyrant. I think the Iraqi people owe the American people a huge debt of gratitude. That’s the problem here in America. They wonder whether or not there is a gratitude level that’s significant enough in Iraq.”
The article provides a detailed analysis of the situation in Iraq that is very different from what we are being told by the administration. Read it and make your own decision and think about what we are getting from not only the administration but also the mainstream press who are giving the “surge” the benefit of the doubt in the face of a lot of evidence that it is doomed to fail.
North Korea: Another Intelligence Failure?
We may need to come up with a new term to replace “Intelligence Community†when referring to what we are told about countries’ nuclear capabilities. Maybe “Idle Speculation Community†as in: “Sources in the Idle Speculation Community (ISC) told this reporter yesterday that weapons of mass destruction might be being stockpiled by Saddam Hussein.â€
The record of the ISC is not good. In the 1980’s it missed the coming dissolution of the Soviet Union, in 2001 it missed the rather strong warning signals on 9/11, and in 2002-3 it guessed wildly off the mark on WMD in Iraq. Now, according to administration officials cited in today’s NY Times, it appears the ISC speculated incorrectly on North Korea’s nuclear program and that, in a strange irony, it seems that the Bush administration’s cutting off of oil deliveries in 2002 may actually have pushed the North Koreans to proceed with developing a plutonium-based nuclear arsenal which they did not previously have.
But the problem is less one of inadequate intelligence than of inappropriate use of intelligence in politicians’ decision-making processes. Certainly that was the case with Iraq and now we see the possibility that the basis of the Bush policy toward North Korea from 2002 on was largely based on questionable intelligence on its nuclear program that fulfilled political desires. And we are left to idly speculate about Iran. Skepticism might be the right approach.
Déjà vu, Iran
It is not at all clear about the administration and its plans for Iran, but it seems that an attack of some kind is still on the Bush-Cheney agenda. Among the troubling signs:
*The briefing by unidentified officials held in Baghdad about Iran-produced armor penetrating bombs;
*Secretary Rice either forgetting or lying about a May 2003 offer to negotiate delivered to Washington by the Swiss ambassador in Tehran (the Swiss represent U.S. interests in Iran);
*The report by Michael Gordon in the NY Times last week taking unnamed administration sources at face value in a way very much like what the Times’ Judith Miller did in sexing up the weapons of mass destruction stories in the run-up to Iraq;
*The U.S.’s sending a second aircraft carrier into the Persian Gulf;
*The fact of Bush’s lame duck status, along with his unwillingness to recognize the incredible folly of his Iraq fiasco and his visions of himself morphing into some mix of Harry Truman, Teddy Roosevelt and George Washington.
While Bush seems to be flirting with one last blast, so to speak, the Iraq Study Group urged diplomacy with Iran and that idea has developed increased resonance since the administration finally negotiated directly with N. Korea in Berlin with some positive possibilities emerging. And while the U.S. military can apparently mount a more or less surgical air strike against Iran, anything beyond that involving ground troops would push the limits of current capabilities.