Into The Whirlwind
I found it difficult to get through listening to all of President Bush's speech Tuesday night. The whole thing had an air of unreality to it. Mr. Bush just doesn't have any credibility left on the issue of Iraq. As my friend, Tim Frasca, put it in an email to me:
"It's like listening to an autistic child describe his private relationship to the patterns on the windowpane. Nothing can penetrate that mental landscape."
Yes, it was plenty detached. Indeed, the more you buy into the President's new rationale for the war in Iraq — that it is where international terrorism has decided to make its big stand against us"”then the more painfully obvious is this fact: it's that way because the President's policy made it that way.
No credible analyst on the left or right ever argued that pre-invasion Iraq was a staging ground for terrorists. The best argument the White House could come up with at the time was that a spiteful Saddam might pass along WMD technology to terrorists to use against us.
But in the wake of 9-11 this administration decided that instead of deploying the bulk of our might against actual terrorist threats we would mire ourselves in Iraq (and in so doing brew up what the President himself now calls the new central front of the anti-terror war).
Quite a dandy little scenario, no?
Anyway, we learn from the President tonight that we shall proceed to pay any price and bear any burden to carry out whatever his project is in Iraq (first it was to strip Saddam of WMDs; then it was to build a democracy; now it was to win the war on terror).
Rather shamelessly, Bush once again squeezed the tragedy of 9/11 for every drop of partisan juice available, obliquely and falsely linking Al Qaeda and Osama Bin Laden to the ongoing Battle of Baghdad. Break out your archived LBJ recordings for a refresher course in how these things play themselves out.
As someone who opposed this war (at least as proposed by the Bushies) I thought it would be a troublesome, nasty go. I have to admit I never imagined it would reach quite these disastrous proportions. Disastrous, I emphasize, because unlike Vietnam, there appears to be no satisfactory way out of this one. I have the sinking feeling that we are nowhere near the trough of this doozey. And in any case, this White House is not about to back down.
Defenders of this war cross into political never-never land when they ask, "But isn't Iraq better off now than under Saddam?" Well, sure it is. Or eventually will be. But the President's number one job, as he defined it tonight, was to make America, not Iraq, safer. I can give Bush — and his supporters - a long, long list of countries that would be better off if American troops came in and took out their leaders... maybe 100 or more countries on that list. We could start with our closest allies in Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Pakistan. So, please, save the BS about liberating the world. Right now, this is little more than the administration trying to save its own rear end.
In poker terms, if you permit me, Bush went "all-in" tonight holding only a 9-high hand and with a four-to-the-flush on the board. A reckless move, especially when you consider who pays the price of this policy failure. What we heard tonight bodes very poorly for us as a nation and very poorly for the Iraqis. And if I were a Republican, which thanks to the stars I am not, I would be very, very afraid. I see few ways that this presidency won't eventually be consumed by a monumental miscalculation and an ideological blindness that has led us smack dab into an endless war.
June 28th, 2005 at 9:18 pm
Couldn’t stand to watch it, but this sounds about right. Very depressing…I’ve come to the conclusion that if I’d supported the war I’d be even more upset with the administration than I am as someone who thought it was pretty foolish, a diversion from unfinished business and risked creating precisely this magnet for jihadists that really has nothing to do with Iraq and everything to do with our presence there.
June 28th, 2005 at 9:19 pm
> be very, very afraid…
Marc, is there a “satisfactory way out of” Europe? In the seventh decade since the end of hostilities, we have 100,000 troops there. Quagmire or commitment?
The Flypaper theory gets backhanded respect in your post. The political vibes of Pakistan, Egypt and Saudi Arabia are getting squeezed pretty well. There’ve been more bombings in Riyadh than in Manhattan since the invasion. We shouldn’t decry partisanship, that’s how issues are sharpened and sorted. And when people suggest that we be “very, very, afraid” it’s difficult to take them seriously: The tone is too teenaged.
Hate the war if you want. 9/11 taught us that business as usual with the middle east was not working out:
http://images.google.com/images?q=saddam+handshake+rumsfeld
It’s decades, and perhaps centuries too late for the west to feign virginity with respect to violations in the region. Bush is trying something new.
June 28th, 2005 at 9:30 pm
Very well said, Marc. (I don’t know how you do it so well, so quickly.)
““It’s like listening to an autistic child describe his private relationship to the patterns on the windowpane. Nothing can penetrate that mental landscape.â€
And the Tim Frasca comment felt dead on—in an extremely disquieting sort of way.
June 28th, 2005 at 9:30 pm
Thanks RD…
Crid:
The flypaper theory is for the autistic. It makes no sense from any angle whatsoever. Iraq is merely one more front that we have opened against ourselves. I dont know about you, but Id be a lot happier if we had spent the $200b pissed away in Iraq on domestic homeland security.
As to Europe…well… you tell me. WHY is it again that we still have tens of thousands of troops there? Against which threat?
Bush is “trying something new?” He’s ending “business as usual with the middle east?” At the cost of $500 million per day, with a tax decrease instead of increase? Yeah, OK THAT is something new in human history.
I will note you down as one of those willing to stick out a war in the Middle East for the next four or five decades. By then it will be old, but certainly worth the sacrifice for sure.
June 28th, 2005 at 9:38 pm
> Id be a lot happier if we had spent the $200b
> pissed away in Iraq on domestic homeland security.
Do you sincerely maintain that the maroon sweaters have made us safer?
> WHY is it again that we still have tens of
> thousands of troops there? Against which threat?
Not being a historian or nuthin’, but some folks say we’ve given the region its first three generations of peace in 6 centuries.
> with a tax decrease instead of increase?
Bush deserves ridicule for his financial insanity. But clucking about the money, so contiguously with complaints about his other (many) faults as a president, distracts from your arguments about middle east policy. Let’s not pretend we were ever going to glide through this millenium without paying for our past misconduct with our sleep, treasure and blood.
June 28th, 2005 at 9:39 pm
me, sorry
June 28th, 2005 at 9:42 pm
I believe you have me confused with a certain Mr. Cheney who is, alas, the Glucker-In-Chief. And you’re final suggestion is slightly out of phase: it is FUTURE generations that will lose sleep, blood and treasure as a result of our CURRENT misconduct.
Indeed, Maroon sweaters have not made us safer. but $200b to upgrade urban first responders, public health clinics, infrastructure security etc etc would be one helluva a lot better bulwark against terror than mucking into Iraq. But little point in arguing…
June 28th, 2005 at 9:49 pm
I’d better there are many many Kurds who are grateful for the discussion… And a whole lot more.
June 28th, 2005 at 9:49 pm
P.S. one more comment on europe… well, yes, our permanent bases in europe and asia have indeed given Germany and Japan a generation of peace AND prosperity. Both cases demonstrate how quickly even war-devastated economies can expand and prosper when massive investment is made in r & d, industry, and social infrastructure instead of pouring billions into planes, tanks and foreign military bases. By relieving those nations of paying for their own defense they have jumped ahead of us in many ways… the joke’s on us!
Thirty years from now, with our public schools delapidated, millions still without health care, with the Chinese owning our industry and the Japanese our real estate, we will be able to proudly review our military victories in Fallujah and Mosul.
June 28th, 2005 at 9:52 pm
Well, here we go again Crid. I predicted this in the current post, didnt I? That supporters of the war will remark upon those who are now better off because of our invasion policy. Yes we have liberated the Kurds. I have celebrated that fact many times on this blog. It is one of the few silvery products of an otherwise failed policy.
Now. tell us, which other countries would you like to liberate at the cost of national blood and treasure? Please list them here so that we know in advance why our troops will be fighting.
June 28th, 2005 at 10:05 pm
If Iraq comes off fairly well, lots of other hotspots will take care of themselves. Imagine those Libyans who watched expat Iraqis casting their votes in the January elections IN POLLING PLACES IN TRIPOLI, where they could not vote for their own government. Ironies of that magnitude don’t simply vanish.
This war could be lost. But having played such a rich part in the enslavement of those people, I’m pleased that we’re taking a shot at bringing a mediaeval political culture into the 21st century. Do supposed we’re NOT going to need to do this again?
This is not a planet where you can map things out… Folks who insist on ‘exit strategies’ are insisting on nothing nobler than paralysis. Those who demand a policy without risk want something even worse.
June 28th, 2005 at 10:09 pm
> By relieving those nations of paying for their
> own defense they have jumped ahead of us in many
> ways… the joke’s on us!
“The joke’s on us”? Can you SERIOUSLY maintain that peaceful, prosperous and economically sound powers of the magnitude of Germany or Japan are not a benefit to the United States, let alone the rest of the world? ECONOMICS IS NOT A ZERO SUM GAME.
In any case, the beauty of Iraq is that it’s people live atop the greatest known pool of petrochemical wealth in the known universe. When they pull their political shit together, they’re going to have a LOT of good tools to work with.
June 28th, 2005 at 10:10 pm
Sorry about the known knowns above. Sleeptime… Love your blog, love your commentary
June 28th, 2005 at 10:12 pm
The golden question for me is what the hell will happen when we leave? Iraq was a hell-hole before we arrived, but if the Jihadists gain control, it just might end up being worse. The possibility of this being a MASSIVE mistake the war is.
I think the US is really fucked. No better way to describe it. I don’t like the idea of the US leaving because the thought of the Jihadists… man it is just really hard to take. Beyond the Kurds, the lefties, democrats, and secularists will all suffer. People I consider like minded, that I have solidarity with will be the first to get chopped up.
I cannot resort to isolationalism and worry about our crumbling schools. That has to do with rich assholes who want to cheer on the war but not pay for it.
Look, we owe the people of Iraq BIG TIME. The question is what is the right thing?
I don’t think anyone knows. Bush sure as hell doesn’t. His critics do not present a solution.
We are fucked. Catch 22. Double bind. No win situation. Winless race.
The US has NO good choice. Nobody has the correct answer.
I understand your frustration Marc. I loath Bush as well. But how can we pack up and leave? I just don’t see how.
June 28th, 2005 at 10:15 pm
“Yes we have liberated the Kurds. I have celebrated that fact many times on this blog. It is one of the few silvery products of an otherwise failed policy.”
Yeah but…so far as the Kurds go, weren’t they effectively autonomous PRIOR to the second Gulf war ?
June 28th, 2005 at 10:43 pm
Reg.. in a word, no. The Kurds were getting gassed in the late 80′s by Saddam, remember? The Kurds gained effective autonomy only after the 1991 war and the imposition of a “no-fly” zone over northern Iraq. The US air cover umbrella created Kurdistan as we know it today.
June 28th, 2005 at 10:50 pm
“Disastrous, I emphasize, because unlike Vietnam, there appears to be no satisfactory way out of this one.”
Yep. Disastrous and deeply depressing. Abandoning the country now would almost certainly mean (further) chaos and civil war, and could possibly engender a real domino effect in the region, destabilizing neighboring countries as well. And of course Bush Co has no intention of doing that so why even bother mentioning it right?
At the same time, given the plummeting recruitment numbers, a draft is going to become necessary in the next year or two just to maintain the current force levels in country, let alone expand them. Short of literally an insurgency in *this* country the return of the draft in the near term would seem almost inevitable.
My prediction: they start with a skills draft, and expand it to a general draft in short order. There will of course be no exemptions this time.
June 28th, 2005 at 10:55 pm
PS Count me thankful now that I had the good sense to a) be born in the 70s and b) go to business rather than medical or engineering school.
June 28th, 2005 at 11:11 pm
“The Kurds gained effective autonomy only after the 1991 war and the imposition of a “no-fly” zone over northern Iraq. The US air cover umbrella created Kurdistan as we know it today.”
So the correct answer to the issue of whether the Kurds were effectively autonomous prior to the SECOND Gulf war – the one we started in 2003 – would be, in a word…yes.
June 28th, 2005 at 11:17 pm
That was a rhetorical question when I first posed it, by the way. Of course the Kurds were autonomous by the time we launched Gulf 2.
June 28th, 2005 at 11:37 pm
“…To complete the mission, we will prevent al-Qaida and other foreign terrorists from turning Iraq into what Afghanistan was under the Taliban – a safe haven from which they could launch attacks on America and our friends…..”
— GWB June 28, 2005
Crazy-fucking-making logic.
June 28th, 2005 at 11:43 pm
So as not to sound like a nitpicker, it seemed like you were pairing the Kurd issue as being one benefit of an “otherwise failed policy”. Since the first Gulf war wasn’t a “failed policy”, it certainly sounded like you are attributing Kurdish autonomy as a beneficial result of the second war. True for the Shia, but not really true for the Kurds. As for what transpired between the wars, our provision of air cover as the Kurds carved out a rough independence was the ONLY “silvery product” as regards the Iraqis themselves, and even that came a bit late in the game. Our non-response to the Shia and Kurd uprisings in the immediate aftermath of the first war was disgraceful. I don’t have the precise chronologies in front of me, but I do know that we let at least the Shia twist in the wind when they rebelled against Saddam at our behest, and I believe that also was the initial situation with the Kurds. While we’re recounting old news, it’s also relevant that when Saddam was gassing Kurds, we were feeding the murderous bastard military intelligence that assisted his war crimes against Iranian conscripts.
So much of this stuff gets fuzzed over in an attempt to rationalize the invasion, I think it’s important to hold the war-supporters – and opponents for that matter – to arguments that are as reality-based as possible.
June 28th, 2005 at 11:50 pm
“a safe haven from which they could launch attacks on America and our friends…..”
Are people who specialize in suicide bombing really looking for “safe havens” or merely opportunities ? Otherwise they wouldn’t be flooding over the borders INTO Iraq by the thousands.
Sometimes my head just hurts when I think about the rhetoric the administration uses to obfuscate the obvious.
June 29th, 2005 at 3:15 am
–
Are people who specialize in suicide bombing really looking for “safe havens” or merely opportunities ?
–
Suicide bombing, in particular, really does require _both_ a safe haven and an opportunity. That factoid about there having been no proven cases of (voluntary) Iraqi suicide bombers is probably relevant.
soru
June 29th, 2005 at 3:28 am
I, too, am horribly conflicted about Iraq and the WOT. I am bothered by our military fighting in Iraq for Iraqis – rather than to protect America(ns). I supported the war 100% until we found that there were no WMD in Iraq (maybe they were shipped out) but following that discovery, believe we should have left. I understand, but don’t fully accept, the notion of the flypaper strategy of remaining in Iraq – seems to me that that theory comes with some difficult moral questions. And then there is the fact that there have been no terrorist attacks in the United States in the nearly four years since 9/11.
Yup, my head hurts too.
June 29th, 2005 at 4:11 am
Marc writes: “Bush is “trying something new?” He’s ending “business as usual with the middle east?” At the cost of $500 million per day, with a tax decrease instead of increase?”
Business as usual is still business. Ending business as usual means going onto new business. And what’s the business of the Middle East?
$500 million is, in today’s oil prices, around half of one percent of the market value of the cheaply-extractable oil in the ground in the Kirkuk region.
I haven’t run the numbers yet, but I think if you average out the oil price increases over the last few years, the appreciation of this once-and-future “Kurdish” oil alone exceeds $500 million a day. Perhaps by quite a margin.
Oh, hell, let me do it back-of-the-envelope for you. In 2003, Kirkuk oil was probably worth about $300 billion. So it’s about $700 billion up, over about 700 days. Do you need a calculator for this one? You do not need a calculator for this one. That’s an even ONE BILLION DOLLARS A DAY of Kirkuk oil reserve appreciation.
How separatist is Kurdistan? How strong is the Kurds claim on Kirkuk? In the runup to the Iraqi election, allied soldiers had to travel around Kirkuk, taking down the Kurdish flag. And some Kurdish leaders speak of Kirkuk as their Jerusalem. Kurds in Kirkuk seriously debate whether an Arab family resettled by Saddam in Kirkuk that’s gone on to have children there should be subject to forced return. Why, how civil of them! Guess what happens if a full-on Sunni/Shi’a civil war breaks out? Would anyone blame the Kurds for a full-on secession move at that point? Would anyone be much surprised to see them grabbing up as much of the Kirkuk region as they could, even if it meant playing one side off against the other?
Yes, there is a (partial) exit strategy that leaves America in the black. As it were. It’s just an exit strategy that this administration dare not talk about. In fact, it’s an exit strategy in which Washington has to be seen as protesting, to the extent that it involved the Kurds moving toward virtual sovereignty. But that doesn’t mean they wouldn’t greet such a move with relief, if the rest of Iraq really starts going south. “No, please don’t throw me into that briarpatch!”
Yes, Kurdistan is the silver lining here. In some sense.
June 29th, 2005 at 5:12 am
There is no exit strategy for a good reason. Bush doesn’t want to leave. It really is just for the oil. Fourteen permanent bases and the largest embassy in the world. That doesn’t sound like we’re going anywhere. We should announce we’re leaving after the next election and let the Iraqis get serious about their own security. Once we’re gone, the attacks will dwindle. Using a group of people as “fly paper” is the most arrogant and evil motive I can think of.
June 29th, 2005 at 5:23 am
” Id be a lot happier if we had spent the $200b pissed away in Iraq on domestic homeland security.”
You mean if Halliburton and Bushco got the $200b in Texas you would not be outraged?
I doubt it Marc — your blog is so good because you ARE outraged at so much, often with good reasons.
But this one of yours is so wrong … it’s outrageous:
“Disastrous, I emphasize, because unlike Vietnam, there appears to be no satisfactory way out of this one.”
We left Vietnam and there was thousands of murders; hundreds of thousands; and in Cambodia, millions.
Nobody who cares about other human beings can honestly call that satisfactory. I know, the Left is dishonest; “Peace Now (thru genocide)” was their big anti-war victory (over Nixon the liar).
Fighting evil in Vietnam was good; it was bad to leave; when the US left (no more US caused My Lais!), evil won. Calling the commie genocides satisfactory is despicable, usually the Left is more careful. The US lost Vietnam; but it was really the SE Asian people who LOST THEIR LIVES by the HUNDREDS OF THOUSANDS.
Fighting evil Saddam was good. Rebuilding Iraq is good. It IS expensive. It’s not clear it couldn’t be done cheaper; especially if slower was OK. The US can not win — only the Iraqi people can win. The US can make sure Iraqis who support democracy, rather than death squad gov’t, are the ones with gov’t power. (And it can do this with LESS troops.)
Michael T’s “worst case” (for US?) tri-country split should be expanded to include an offer by Kurdistan to base US troops there — to protect the Kurds (and the US influence). Turkey and NATO could take a hit — but Kurds in Syria and Iran could rapidly become big allies. The 25 million “nation” of Kurds is the largest in the world without a “state” — the EU constitution failure shows the lasting power of nation-states.
Which country should be next? Sudan, over Darfur. With or without the Org of African States. Then maybe Mugabe. Marc, didn’t you object to Ian Smith and Rhodesia and racism? Is the evolution of black rule and starvation really superior? How many must die before it is NOT “satisfactory”?
The US should create, with Japan, India, Australia, and the UK, and other democracies (only), a NATO-like Human Rights Enforcement Group. A coalition of willing international troops to execute regime change over the “worst” regimes, when feasible. Neither China, Russia, nor France will ever be feasible; nor Pakistan. (But trust Leftists to want the US to attack allied dictatorships first, if there’s ever a choice!)
“So, please, save the BS about liberating the world. Right now, this is little more than the administration trying to save its own rear end.”
Why not push Dems to be a little more realistic about HOW to liberate the world, like who’s next, so that Bush DOES do the work … to get more votes. Sudan & Zimbabwe are waiting; and their people are dying.
June 29th, 2005 at 5:56 am
A few points:
1. The analogy to Europe is faulty. In the sixty plus years we have stationed troops there no one has shot at us. In fact we created a succesful alliance (NATO) which contained the USSR. Duty in Germany, for the Army, was better than the British had in the Raj – it was the plum overseas assignment and a recruiting tool. Can’t say that about Iraq.
2. Germany and Japan were destroyed so utterly in WWII that militarism was pretty much discredited for all time in both countries. And Europe is now the kind of place where a new round of armed conflict is unthinkable. The Germans were adamantly opposed to fighting this war. That is a bad thing?
3. Forget the argument over when the Kurds became independent or autonomous. A truly “free” Kurdistan would almost surely bring the Turks into Northern Iraq and make a bad scene worse.
This is worse than Vietnam since walking away will be hard. We’ll end up doing that but it will be hard. After all, the world didn’t get its oil from Indochina.
June 29th, 2005 at 6:02 am
Here’s what Bush said on victory:
“The only way our enemies can succeed is if we forget the lessons of 11 September 11 if we abandon the Iraqi people to men like Zarqawi and if we yield the future of the Middle East to men like Bin Laden.
For the sake of our nation’s security, this will not happen on my watch.”
Do Dems want Zarqawi or Bin Laden to win in Iraq? It seems to me that Dems would rather have a Dem win the white house AND accept a genocide, than a Rep win and fight genocide.
June 29th, 2005 at 6:19 am
“Do Dems want Zarqawi or Bin Laden to win in Iraq?”
The kind of question that says to me, when I see it, don’t bother arguing with somebody this far off the map. They’ll probably try to pin the Camobodian genocide on you before it’s over (or maybe even before it starts.)
June 29th, 2005 at 7:00 am
Blame America/Understand The Terrorists Files:
Here’s Watergate convict, born-again as a prison preacher – and current Rove adviser on “evangelical affairs” – Chuck Colson on why America doesn’t exactly deserve it, but sure as hell is asking for it:
“We must be careful not to blame innocent Americans for murderous attacks against them. (Throat clear – ed.) At the same time, let’s acknowledge that America’s increasing decadence is giving aid and comfort to the enemy. When we tolerate trash on television, permit pornography to invade our homes via the internet, and allow babies to be killed at the point of birth, we are inflaming radical Islam.”
He stops short of a Full Fred Phelps, the ultra-right “Christian” preacher who now pickets the funerals of dead soldiers as well as dead gays, but Colson drives a few miles down that road – with his Plastic Jeezus as a hood ornament – parking his Hummmer beside “Jeeezus” Jerry Falwell and Pat “Moonbat” Robertson.
June 29th, 2005 at 7:03 am
Note to “too many” and I’m out of here…
From the transcript I’ve scanned, Bush didn’t mention “weapons of mass destruction” once in his speech.
June 29th, 2005 at 8:08 am
“They’ll probably try to pin the Camobodian genocide on you before it’s over ”
He already did in an earlier comment.
June 29th, 2005 at 8:55 am
Liberty Dad, your comments on Vietnam are crazy.
I wonder how many times you used the very Biblical word “evil” to describe America’s enemies before Bush started using it (that’s just a little Orwellian observation). And what was evil about the NVA except that they were commies? The United States, by getting involved in that place in the ’50s, made Vietnam what it was to the tune of 40,000-some American lives lost, and I don’t even know what sickening number of Asians lost. America created the clusterfuck that occurred after the airlift because the whole war was a 20 year fiasco, without little strategy and no exit plan.
And that’s what the two wars have in common.
Here’s your fucked up quote: “Fighting evil in Vietnam was good; it was bad to leave; when the US left (no more US caused My Lais!), evil won.”
And the real winner: “Calling the commie genocides satisfactory is despicable, usually the Left is more careful. The US lost Vietnam; but it was really the SE Asian people who LOST THEIR LIVES by the HUNDREDS OF THOUSANDS.”
You would’ve stayed in Vietnam? To the tune of how many more American and Asian lives? If you had it your way, it wouldn’t be hard to imagine that the US would’ve still been there.
And here we are, back to the year 2005.
“Fighting evil Saddam was good. Rebuilding Iraq is good. It IS expensive. It’s not clear it couldn’t be done cheaper; especially if slower was OK. The US can not win — only the Iraqi people can win. The US can make sure Iraqis who support democracy, rather than death squad gov’t, are the ones with gov’t power. (And it can do this with LESS troops.)”
What war are you looking at? What information are you using? Every day, a dozen or so people are killed. Two weeks ago, the United States had to drop a bunch of 500 pound bombs, something they haven’t done since close to the beginning. A few helicopters were just shot out of the sky.
Training of the Iraqi security forces is way, way behind.
And because you are a fan of this Presidency, you simply want to stay the course. You claim that this war will alter the course of the violent history that region has endure for centuries. But historically, it’s just another example of invaders coming in and stiring up the hornets nest, once again.
Like celestial clockwork, the United State is playing the role of the invaders of the past: The Turks, Pope Urban II, the Mongols, the Ottomans, the Europeans, etc etc etc.
I’m not sure what it means, but historically, it doesn’t look good. Force rarely does a good job changing ideologies.
It seems like the Iraqi’s who desperatly just want to live their life’s peacefully with respect to others don’t have a chance. They are on survival mode and are getting no direction from the occupating force on what to do other than join the security team. What a horrible position to be in. They have no idea how long it will take. They are literally living in limbo.
The cockiness of Bush and Co. really did screw a bunch of people. Bad planning and arrogance is responsible for more deaths than the insurgents.
June 29th, 2005 at 9:30 am
Didn’t watch the speech and I don’t buy the flypaper theory, however if nothing was done about Iraq – if the Kurds and Shia (i.e. the majority of Iraq) where left to fend for themselves, the ME would have gotten far, far worse. This notion doesn’t even enter the minds of anti-war people, because it can’t be proven obviously.
However, look at Lebanon, where the Syrians and/or their henchmen just assassinated another dissident, this time the leader of the Communist Party. But it looks like they’re losing. Does this mean Israel is winning? Withdrawl from Gaza doesn’t seem like the path a winner would pursue, at least not in the ME.
Rice just lectured Saudi Arabia and Egypt again that they need to democratize. If we had left Saddam alone, let him have the north and south back, and lectured our “allies” it would have had less than the minimal effect it’s having. Neither of them, nor Pakistan wanted the US going into Iraq. Jordan’s King warned of rising Shia crescent from Iran through Iraq to Lebanon. Saudi Arabia is now treating its Shia minority better.
Syria had to end its occupation of Lebanon, which makes one less thing Israel can point to.
Leaving the ME alone was more of a recipe for disaster, i.e. more terrorists, than going in was.
That’s what happened to Afghanistan. It wouldn’t have been a failed state, it would have been a failed region, like the Congo.
This isn’t to say Marc and others haven’t made some good points.
June 29th, 2005 at 10:26 am
“…if the Kurds and Shia (i.e. the majority of Iraq) where left to fend for themselves, the ME would have gotten far, far worse. This notion doesn’t even enter the minds of anti-war people…”
No, of course not…never thought about it, never will. Unless of course it’s hyped relentlessly by the war’s supporters.
Without going into a detailed response, I’ll add that the thought that we had no means of engaging Eqypt or Saudi Arabia other than invading Iraq (!) isn’t convincing and brushes past the many decades of ass-kissing and bribery traded for oil and influence. And your point about Gaza and Israel seems based on the idea that Israel can “win” against Palestinian nationalism, which it can’t. It’s got to accomodate it or face perpetual war. Also, the notion that the events in Lebanon were the result of the U.S. being in Iraq is, among other things, an insult to that faction of Lebanese who responded to a domestic political crisis/crime so overwhelmingly. It’s also an insult to historical memory – although it’s totally un-PC to state this fact – to treat the Syrian intervention into Lebanon’s civil war as an unalloyed evil that worsened the region. Of course they exploited their presence, imported their own dirty politics and had long overstayed any pretense of a welcome, but they helped staunch the bleeding and enforced some stability when it was desperately needed. Reagan proved, probably rightly, that we weren’t up to the task. Ooops! This is turning into a detailed response and I said I wouldn’t and I’ve got stuff sitting here in non-virtual reality I need to deal with.
Just some thoughts. Also, I just don’t get these nuanced, Kissingerian rationales for the war that seem to have completely displaced what was a high-concept enterprise when it was launched. Is this bait-and-switch for fear of acknowledging deception and failure, or am I just one of those boobs who needs to be bamboozled by my Straussian betters in order to know what’s good for me ???
June 29th, 2005 at 11:15 am
Tom Grey wrote: “Do Dems want Zarqawi or Bin Laden to win in Iraq? It seems to me that Dems would rather have a Dem win the white house AND accept a genocide, than a Rep win and fight genocide.”
You know, I wasted a perfectly good afternoon reading hysterical tirades on conservative blogs regarding Dick Durbins recent controversial comments, and was left with the distinct impression that some conservatives think liberals are a bigger threat to the USA than the terrorists.
June 29th, 2005 at 11:33 am
I see this simply as the difference between a conservative president who takes action versus liberals who offer lip service. Any action is subject to criticism, while no action is only subject to more study. I’ll take action, mistakes and all, over pretending to make progress.
June 29th, 2005 at 11:55 am
“I’ll take action, mistakes and all, over pretending to make progress.”
What you’ve been served up, Woody, is mistaken action followed by pretending to make progress. Of course, if it comes from a conservative President, you’ll swallow it. I think we already knew that.
June 29th, 2005 at 11:57 am
That’s it, Woody? That’s the whole rationale? There’s absolutely no criteria on which any actiion can be judged, save that it wasn’t inaction? Liberals proposed no action whatsoever? The trouble is, there’s a scenario you leave out: A complete cock-up caused by massive incompetence that makes the situation worse.
Speaking to earlier comments regarding the Vietnam war and its aftermath: Of course, the 2 million or so people killed by the United States were killed by Good rather than Evil, so that’s okay.
June 29th, 2005 at 12:26 pm
reg, I don’t accept everything that Bush says or does. He’s too liberal for me.
_____________
RF, mideast attacks go back to the time of Reagan’s presidency with the bombings of our barracks in Lebanon and the Pam Am flight over Scotland and the nightclub in Germany, the issues with Iraq started when they invaded Kuwait under Bush-41, the attacks of terrorists in the U.S. occurred under Clinton with the first bombing of the WTC and Hussein’s attempted assasination of Bush-41, and the worst attacks happened under G.W. Bush on 9-11.
I’m not trying to be “smart” with this, but can you tell me what better actions were proposed or taken before or during the terms of President Bush by liberals that worked? Except for some minor military interventions, attacks against us were treated as matters for police and generally ignored–with little to show for it. I don’t remember a lot of great ideas from the left. Now, we have someone who will try to protect us and take the fight to our enemies rather than let them bring it to us.
I’ll take almost anything over nothing and nothing that had worked so far.
June 29th, 2005 at 1:32 pm
Marc’s wish that there was some way that the US military could do much of anything to improve the situation seems to be based on a wishful thinking approach. For some reason he thinks that it is possible to construct democracy in Iraq *and* maintain larger numbers of troops. And even funnier [and quite John Sweeney of him I might add], he believes that we should also simultaneously increase public spending on economic reforms like health care that would benefit working people. Huge war debts and public spending on domestic needs in a time of economic stagnation. Brilliant political economy there. Ever heard of Seymour Melman Marc? Or was he patriotically incorrect?
June 29th, 2005 at 2:12 pm
“He’s too liberal for me.” I have to say that on deficit spending he’s too “liberal” for me too.
As for your second set of queries, I wouldn’t let any administration off the hook on the terrorism issue – for example the Reagan administration has one of the consistently worst records in contributing to this mess – but if you want to actually gain some perspective in terms of previous administrations and alternative views of not a “liberal” but a non-neocon, read Richard Clarke’s book. Anybody who hasn’t read it shouldn’t shoot from the hip about how pro-active and brilliant Bush has been. And there’s a lot more in it than what you read about Clarke on Newsmax or were fed on FOX.
June 29th, 2005 at 2:15 pm
Bush came out and said the same old shit last night. With leadership like this, it is no wonder that the war is losing support. I would have felt a lot better if, in his speech, Bush had laid out why things were not going well in Iraq, what mistakes were made, and how these errors have been or were being corrected. That would have shown me that they have a plan to win this, but he didn’t. According to the polls, I am probably in the minority of people who think that this war can still be won. Although, it can only be won, if we have competency and accountability at the top. In order to boost my support, I need to be shown that. Invoking the day of 9/11 six times in a speech won’t cut it. For people who think that this is another Vietnam (it’s not) and that this is a hopeless quagmire (it’s not), I urge you to read Fareed Zakaria’s latest column. Unfortunately though, whatever hope that can be garnered from reading that, can be dampened by a tired, recycled speech like last night’s.
June 29th, 2005 at 2:19 pm
A frisbee is tossed up on the roof in an area that’s inacessible. For years they just leave it up there. Suddenly somebody decides something has to be done, so he hires a bulldozer, knocks over the columns supporting the house, the house collapses, the frisbee is irretrievably lost and the bulldozer operator is killed by crashing debris.
The rationale: “Well, at least I tried to do something about it!”
June 29th, 2005 at 2:23 pm
Here’s the Zakaria link, for anybody who’s interested. Reasonable and measured but not particularly reassuring.
http://www.fareedzakaria.com/articles/articles.html
June 29th, 2005 at 2:41 pm
If you’re really, really into this…
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/theblog/archive/david-rees/my-old-bus-stop_3394.html
A meditation on the Michael Ignatieff essay on “why Iraq?” in Sunday’s New York Times by the guy who does the “Get Your War On” cartoon. Regarding Iraq, Ignatieff is sort of a Hitchens without all of the attitude and bluster. I generally have taken his arguments more seriously than I can now take Hitchens. The “Get Your War On” guy, David Rees, obviously doesn’t.
June 29th, 2005 at 3:26 pm
Something else that’s worth a look…
http://www.newyorker.com/online/content/articles/050704on_onlineonly01
June 29th, 2005 at 3:54 pm
I see this simply as the difference between a conservative president who takes action versus liberals who offer lip service. Any action is subject to criticism, while no action is only subject to more study. I’ll take action, mistakes and all, over pretending to make progress.
Posted by: Woody | June 29, 2005 11:33 AM
So when are you signing up to fight terrorist in Iraq?
June 29th, 2005 at 4:00 pm
CRID,
You are right, Crid.
Enough Americans voted for Bush; they get it.
Woody voted for Bush. He gets it.
I can’t believe that public support would wane if there was a draft. Americans are always willing to do whatever it takes to defend freedom.
It’s not like this war was about scapegoating an ineffectual has been dictator for the actions of al qaeda. Nor is it about oil and permanent bases from which the oil can be protected.
No! Saddam would have turned our civic centers – right here at home – into smoldering unihabitable fields of death.
So we had to stop him by invading. And by invading we are drawing terrorists out of very democratic and very friendly regimes like Saudi Arabia. Now we can kill them in Iraq instead of in Manahattan.
Americans know that the war was necessary. It was us or them; just like WW2. So Americans will be happy to do their duty and be drafted; just like WW2. They probably have not been rushing down to the recruiting centers because they were told that troop levels were sufficient and they didn’t want to overburden the military with the need to requisition more boots.
We are the land of the free and the home of the brave. Freedom is on the march! Who’s afraid of a little draft?
Posted by: avedis at June 29, 2005 12:21 PM | Permalink to this comment
June 29th, 2005 at 4:17 pm
I’ve just been reading all kinds of good stuff. Here’s the latest on another group of Bush supporters.
Captives: Terrorists hoped for Bush re-election
Associated Press, THE JERUSALEM POST Jun. 29, 2005
Two French journalists who were held hostage in Iraq told a British documentary program that their captors believed George W. Bush’s re-election as US president would help radicalize Iraqis.
Christian Chesnot and Georges Malbrunot, who were seized in August and released after four months, told the British Broadcasting Corp.’s “Panorama” program that they were allowed to interview the leader of an Islamic militant cell within the group that seized them.
“We felt we were on planet bin Laden,” Malbrunot said on the program, which airs Wednesday night.
The cell leader trained with terror leader Osama bin Laden in Afghanistan and told them the insurgents supported a Bush presidency because they believed it meant that “there will be confrontation, occupation and radicalization of the Iraqi people,” Malbrunot said.
June 29th, 2005 at 4:47 pm
reg, Richard Clarke is a Democrat and a liar–not meaning to be redundent. He is a Democratic contributor, he supported Kerry, he committed perjury by giving conflicting testimony, he didn’t recognize and report terrorist threats in his job, his “apology” to the American public for this Administration was theatrical, phony, and not his place, and he profits from the tragedy of others with his stories. That was the perfect formula for the media to fawn over him. However, Condi Rice interrupted the love fest between Clarke and the major media in her testimony to the 9-11 Commission. I don’t have to listen to Fox when Clarke’s own words show him to be a liar. However, you and others can believe what you want, just as you did from my buddy Michael Moore.
Also, your sources are two Frenchmen reporting what some unknown terrorists said? Don’t ever criticize me for reading Ann Coulter.
_____________
RF, regarding your analogy, it’s as bad as some that I have done. Terrorism is not a frisbee on a roof. Terrorism is more like your bulldozer that knocks over the buildings. (And, it’s more likely that the frisbee was thrown on the roof by a bunch of know-it-all leftisits who were playing on the campus quadrangle rather than attending to studies.)
June 29th, 2005 at 6:21 pm
I think Josh Gibson has a point, why does Marc push all these FDR type Labor Party plaforms of social spending and then want to spend more money on military expenditures to send more soldiers to Iraq? That is senseless in a time of economic slowdown, no?
June 29th, 2005 at 6:35 pm
Woody, not to put too fine a point on it, but regarding your dismissal of Richard Clarke, you are full of crap. Really don’t know what the hell you’re talking about, other than the desperate attempts to smear him. If you’re looking for serial liars, try Condi and Big Dick for starters. Just for starters. Neither one of those partisan midgets could hold a candle to Clarke in terms of understanding the nature of what we’re up against in al Qaeda. He was dealing with it head-on when Condi was Dean of Women or whatever and Cheney was sucking on the government contract tit. And Clarke couldn’t hold a candle to them in terms of lying to the public to cover incompetence because they’re both pros. As for not believing the testimony of people who have experienced this war in a way that, to put it mildly, FOX couch potatoes such as yourself never will because they are French…well, that’s pretty pathetic. The day Ann Coulter puts herself in danger of getting kidnapped by jihadists, I will quit laughing at your useless analogy. You and she are safely on the cheerleading squad thousands of miles from the front yapping and yammering, while the journalists in Iraq risk their lives daily if they really want to tell more of the story than Green Zone handouts. If you linked me to a report by a journalist actually in Iraq who was pro-war, like John Burns, I wouldn’t lamely dismiss his report because (a) he’s British, (b) he supported the war and I didn’t, or (c) because he works for the New York Times. I’d at least credit his experience for what it’s worth, whether or not I drew the same conclusions from the information.
I’ll stop now because you just piss me off with your lame responses.
June 29th, 2005 at 6:42 pm
And Woody, you really hate being on the same side as the jihadists so far as Bush’s relection was concerned, don’t you. It’s a relatively trivial issue, but I still just love watching you squirm.
June 29th, 2005 at 6:42 pm
BobP: “You would’ve stayed in Vietnam? To the tune of how many more American and Asian lives? If you had it your way, it wouldn’t be hard to imagine that the US would’ve still been there.”
Yep; stay BUT train the S. Vietnamese to fly the jets and choppers and let THEM bomb N. Vietnam, including Haiphong and Hanoi. Until the Nth accepts a division, like the N/S Korea model. (And the US does, still, have troops in Korea, 50 years later; 60 years after Germany.)
The US voted in 1972 to have Nixon “win” in Vietnam. But the US couldn’t win, only the S. Vietnamese (or North). Just because we’re fighting, killing, and dying, doesn’t make it our war to win or lose.
Cheney was wrong to say “last throes” (even if it’s true, which I doubt). Helping democracy grow is long & hard.
As long as more Iraqis are joining their security service than are being killed, progress is being made. The constant doom mongering of the Left and the Leftist MSM is depressing — and is designed to depress people so they “want it to stop”.
But it won’t stop. Not even if the US left and let the head chopping terrorists murder and intimidate their way into power. In fact, especially not then.
Yet Marc is right about dozens of other countries that need regime change (prolly more like 50) — most will see their leaders changed without US military action.
… until we live in a world without dictators. We will NOT have “peace” until then. How to get there with the least killed? Invade Iraq.
June 29th, 2005 at 6:49 pm
Train the Vietnamese and teach them to fly jets and choppers…yeah…we should have tried that. Also, bombing Hanoi and Haiphong would have been turned the tide of the war. Given that we were in Vietnam for over twenty years with military advisors, civilian advisors and ultimately hundreds of thousands of troops, it’s really incredible that nobody thought of that. Where were you when we needed you ???
June 29th, 2005 at 7:50 pm
Marc — you wonder WHY Bush gets a pass on so many things? It’s because Liberals don’t have a clue as to the state of the world, and the appropriate responses.
For Liberals, 9/11 really didn’t exist, or if it did, it was all because Bush plotted or whatever (ala Howard Dean’s “speculating”). Or, for John Kerry, 9/11 was a job for Law Enforcement (with full ACLU/Human Rights Watch/etc representation), but only with “legal” extradition no “funny business” of kidnapping terrorists from countries where they are protected. In other words, wait till the dead are counted, then impotently prosecute and go back to sleep because the threat isn’t real if you wish really hard.
It is true that Saddam was not our main enemy. It is unarguably true that Saudia Arabia, Pakistan, Iran, and Syria are much more dangerous, in that they actively finance bin Laden or provide shelter to his organization. Iran and Pakistan are able to give bin Laden nukes now or very soon.
However, all that being said, we were not at “peace” with Iraq or Saddam. We had fighters doing combat air patrol in combat operations. We had permanent troops stationed in Saudi Arabia to protect the critical oil supplies for the world (if we hadn’t China would simply have stepped in). Bill Clinton had bombed (impotently) Saddam in a futile attempt to force Saddam to let inspectors in (which failed). Regime change was official US policy as the result of an Act of Congress proposed by Bill Clinton. ALL the major players, including at the time Vladimir Putin, Jacques Chirac, Gerhard Schroeder, and Hans Blix during the run-up to the Iraq War maintained that of course Saddam had WMDs, just that the appropriate action was “negotiations.” Recall too the political issues around Saddam: support for Sanctions and the combat air patrols (no fly zones) had collapsed, Saddam would in a matter of months be free from inspections, sanctions, and free to spend whatever he wanted on any weapons systems or WMDs from willing Western and Chinese companies. Saddam was unfinished business that we had to address (gee thanks George HW Bush) simply because he was a constant threat to the ME oil supply and was reflexively hostile to the US (alone he “celebrated” officially 9/11 and “invited” Al Qaeda to join Iraq).
To say that Saddam was not a threat denies all these facts above. Was he the biggest threat? No. Pakistan and Iran both provided sanctuary for Al Qaeda but there was then and exists now NO willingness to actually attack our real enemies. The same can be said for the House of Saud; who are sworn enemies of the United States and all it stands for, but not a single member of either party is willing to say so (Saudis spread a lot of cash around).
You wonder WHY Bush is still around (his unpopularity has more to do with oil prices than anything else)? Its because Rove was correct, Dems in reaction to 9/11 IMMEDIATELY and reflexively opposed military action, with everyone from Moveon to Joe Biden carping about the War in Afghanistan. Bush picked a stupid and pointless fight, but he at least FOUGHT. At a time when ANYONE can die in a nuclear blaze in this country, Bush will fight. That counts for something (anyone thinking we’re re-running Vietnam ought to check their history, Ho Chi Minh never wanted to nuke America).
June 29th, 2005 at 7:53 pm
Green — the Kurds lives depended on the US combat air patrols, which weren’t sustainable politically forever. Given our failure to do the right thing because GWHB wanted to play Kissingerian games with Iraq and Iran, and listened to Colin Powell instead of Norman Schwarzkopf, it is America’s responsibility at least to see that they weren’t slaughtered again.
Allknowing — if it was “all about the oil” we could have easily and cheaply made a deal with Saddam. It was all about 9/11 and looking to make geopolitical points by finishing off unfinished business. Proving bin Laden was wrong by taking out Saddam while not disturbing bin Laden’s patrons in Riyadh or Islamabad.
reg — Palestinians won’t take “Yes” for an answer. They went from Bill Clinton leaning all over Barak to get the deal of the century, and Barak begging Arafat for a counterproposal, to another terror wave and Sharon and the defacto “deal” of Gaza plus “some” of the West Bank and a huge frickin WALL to keep the terrorists and suicide bombers out. Israelis wrote off peace because they know the Palestinians won’t accept it or Israel’s existence; the only solution is separation and armed vigilance. The “myth” of jihad (really, would anyone with a brain think that 9/11 would cause the US to collapse, or that poking the nuclear Eagle is a good idea no matter how sharp the stick?) But there you go, that myth/image/etc of jihad substituting for a modern society is the Muslim equivalent of the late night diet pills that promise lots of pizza and a slender you.
Clarke? He publicly said whisking bin Laden’s relatives out by the chartered flights was correct because ugly old Islamaphobic Americans would have killed them. Clarke’s an idiot just like Scheuer. Ironically Pentagon officials (read: military) predicted a 9/11 plot along the general lines along with Tom Clancy and Frank Miller. Yet this even after the Bojinka plot of 1996 never seems to have occurred to Clarke or Scheuer.
The captives? Funny how Bin Laden all but endorsed Kerry, even offering not to attack “blue” states and quoting from F 911.
Good link on Zakaria. Seems the good read.
June 29th, 2005 at 8:06 pm
“For Liberals, 9/11 really didn’t exist, or if it did, it was all because Bush plotted or whatever”
Oh, go screw yourself…
June 29th, 2005 at 8:22 pm
“Richard Clarke is a Democrat and a liar–not meaning to be redundent”
I’m a Democrat also, Woody. I think you’re full of it politically, but I’ve never called you a liar.
Grow up.
June 29th, 2005 at 8:26 pm
Also, from The N.Y.Daily News, in re the bin Laden tape released four days prior to the last election that Rockford referenced:
“We want people to think ‘terrorism’ for the last four days,” said a Bush-Cheney campaign official. “And anything that raises the issue in people’s minds is good for us.”
A senior GOP strategist added, “anything that makes people nervous about their personal safety helps Bush.”
He called it “a little gift,” saying it helps the President but doesn’t guarantee his reelection. (end clip)
And of course there was the “press release” from the Spanish al Qaeda head explicitly expressing glee at the prospect of Bush’s re-election. Of course it was mocking and there’s something silly about such speculation, but when you look at the CIA reports on how Iraq has been turned into the biggest magnet for recruiting jihadists since the war in Afghanistan, it all starts to fit together and raises more serious questions about what Dubya’s recklessness and studied ignorance has wrought.
June 29th, 2005 at 9:07 pm
Sorry, Randy. Try not to take personally general remarks that I make about a political party or a movement to which you might belong–especially since some remarks are made flippantly. I’ve learned that you, Rich, rosedog, Mavis, and a few others are individuals who don’t like to be placed into molds–and, I don’t blame you. (You should hear what I say about the way Yankees drive on our expressways, but I wouldn’t mean you unless you drive 35 MPH in the left lane.) My apologies for offending you.
By the way, I’m not always right politically, but I rarely see better solutions to problems from the left–just complaints. Why would I want to follow the Democrats when they would rather follow and criticize rather than lead and take action?
June 29th, 2005 at 9:55 pm
Rockford: “For Liberals, 9/11 really didn’t exist, or if it did, it was all because Bush plotted or whatever”
*Sigh*. Jim, would you name one liberal who has said this, supplying a full quote in context? Please also substantiate why you think this person is a liberal, as opposed to a radical or a wingnut?
Do you really want to make a point, or persuade anyone of anything? Or do you just like pissing people off?
June 30th, 2005 at 1:16 am
All these comments by Jim and Woody claiming that “liberals” are defeatist tools who sold us out before in Vietnam and are preparing to do so again in the sands of Mesopotamia tell me how desperate they are getting as the siutation in Iraq grows more hopeless by the day. Already the same “stab in the back” nonsense is being wheeled out to explain the coming debacle.
I really don’t think I’ll try to argue with Jim and Woody anymore. They are true believers and faith has its reasons that reason knoweth not. But for the rest of you just ask yourselves if you have any faith in the judgement of our current rulers. At least LBJ’s people were known as “The Best and the Brightest.” No one will even mistake this crowd as anything other than second raters at best.
We have lost and we know it. The Army will crase effectiveness in another year or so as we lose a BTN a month in killed and wounded with not enough replacements in the pipeline. And a draft is out of the question for a reelection minded Congress. And we are now getting a two-front war as Afghanistan blows up. So it is over and all the wishing of Woody and Jim will not make it otherwise.
June 30th, 2005 at 4:53 am
“At least LBJ’s people were known as “The Best and the Brightest.” No one will even mistake this crowd as anything other than second raters at best.”
I wouldn’t go that far. Sure, Dubya himself is not the brightest bulb, but he has surrounded himself with some pretty smart people. If they seem dumb sometimes, just remember: in politics, it’s far better to be seen as having screwed up in a well-intentioned manner than to be seen as conniving.
Will the “Democratic Dominoes” start to topple in the Middle East? Will they topple in a way that doesn’t mostly empower Islamists? Gee, Nabih Berri just got elected in Lebanon, courtesy of Syrian-supported Hezbollah; the Shi’ites are using their majority clout in Iraq; the Palestinian Authority is scrambling to reschedule elections that might otherwise be won by Islamists there, and Iran has just elected a hardliner as PM. Meanwhile, Mubarak (second largest beneficiary of the U.S. foreign aid budget, after Israel) is caught between the rock of overt (if not seriously-intended) U.S. pressure for more democracy and freedom of speech, and the prospect that might only bring the Muslim Brotherhood to power if he capitulates to that pressure. Democracy in the Middle East — be careful what you ask for, because you might get it. It doesn’t look real good for democracy in that region, and it doesn’t look like good democracy where democracy is at all likely to happen, but you can’t Bush & Co for holding out the slim possibility.
I figure the Bush crowd understands the whole range of possibilities — don’t take Bush’s Tuesday speech at face value, he’s only saying what’s politically palatable — but also knows that more “people power” (albeit of alarming tendencies in many cases) is a likely long-term trend in that region no matter what they do. They may have known there was no real WMD threat in Iraq, but might also figured that a Saddam who thought he *did* have WMD presaged an eventual regime implosion, with all kinds of dangerous regional fallout.
The real question for Bush & Co, I think (and as Powell made rather clear at one point, before dashing some mud over the remark), is how to nail down friendly oil-rich territory in the Middle East. If all they get out of it is a Kurdistan that includes Kirkuk, that’s probably not so bad from their point of view
I once calculated the U.S. could run on Kirkuk oil for half a decade as its *sole* source of petroleum imports — and that’s a pretty absurd hypothetical given Canadian tar sounds (profitable starting at world prices of about $20/bbl), Nigeria, Venezuela, and other existing reserves and fields opening up, even if Saudi Arabia falls to al Qaeda sympathizers. I really should revisit those calculations.
It’s a figure to think about. After all, we get all bent out of shape about Alaskan oil, which I don’t think represents more than a couple months of U.S. consumption, at best. The incredible latent wealth of the oil-bearing regions of the Middle East (especially as prices climb, as they must) combined with the need to make it look like that’s not really a factor in foreign policy decision-making, produces rhetoric like we heard from Bush on Tuesday in a weird distortion field, the way Einstein’s theory of gravity predicts light bending as it passes massive stars. We see signs in the sky — and they don’t make sense! Of course they don’t make sense. They are seen through the gravity lens of What Can’t Be Said, a normal star’s light appearing as some numinous, saintly, celestial halo, while the black hole that creates the effect is itself unseen.
June 30th, 2005 at 5:13 am
Legere writes: “Iraq was a hell-hole before we arrived, but if the Jihadists gain control, it just might end up being worse.”
The Jihadists will not gain control. They simply aren’t big enough. A real Iraqi civil war will likely be Sunni Ba’ath elements vs. Iran-aligned Shi’ites — colossal forces consisting of millions of men under arms on each side, dwarfing what could only be gnat-like interference from a few thousand foreign fighters. In the event, I see Syria stepping in and saying to Iran, “Let us manage the Sunni Triangle while you manage what YOU’re good at; we’re Shi’ites like you (sort of), but we’re also Ba’athists with a Sunni majority we know how to control. And: leaving Lebanon has given us that many more troops for a presence in Iraq. We can put it all under something like the Ta’if Agreement that we used for Lebanon. Everything will cool down. Trust us. It’s worked in the past, hasn’t it?”
And if this turns out to be the only plausible path to regional stability, U.S. foreign policy makers will bitch and moan through the entire trajectory on which they’ve been launched, from the road on which they were waylaid, to the depths of that nice, safe briarpatch. Especially if they get a Kurdistan+Kirkuk out of it, and can bribe those notoriously corrupt Turkish politicians into silence and consent with some “fair” share of what begins to flow so smoothly through the Kirkuk-Ceyhan pipeline. At $80/bbl — lo! on the horizon! place your bets now! — there will be more than enough to go around, more than enough to get everybody (except those annoying, die-hard jihadists) to shut up, sit down, and start having a life again. The etymology of the word “pay” is kissin’ cousins with the etymology of the word “peace.” That’s no accident.
June 30th, 2005 at 5:30 am
rlc – I actually think there’s more hope. But very probably not under current political leadership since their record of anticipating and/or correcting course is so godawful. Since the insurgency clearly is split in its goals between two factions, the Baathists who do have political goals related to their position in Iraq and the jihadists who have goals related more to the U.S. and the region, it’s conceivable that it could be weakened and isolated even among the Sunnis were a political deal cut with the Baathists by an Iraqi government that included a commitment by the U.S. to end the occupation and not establish permanent bases. (This crap analogizing being in Europe for decades to basing troops in Iraq is crazy from at least three different directions. The last great post-WWII analogy I recall was when that idiot savant, Professor Rice, who deserves an honorary PhD in dissembling, was claiming that the growing insurgency in Iraq was simply a last sputter from a handful of “dead-enders” analogous to the Nazi “Werewolves” who putzed around for a few months in 1945 after Berlin fell and were responsible for exactly zero GI deaths. That’s one I’ve filed and not forgotten. Rumsfeld – probably the most worst Secretary of Defense in the history of this nation – made similiar statements.)
But forcing responsibility for their own security on Iraqis and pushing for a negotiation, that would involve probably the same level of autonomy for Sunnis that the Kurds have effectively had, could isolate the jihadists. The worst scenario for the jihadists would be if the Baathist wing of the insurgency turned on them and cooperated in trying to root them out. It’s possible given certain conditions. But of course, given the “border” and oil politics and general bad blood between Sunnis and Kurds, and the inability of this administration to correct course pragmatically and set terms that would force the Iraqi pols to cut some deals, we’re more likely to be treated to a long, slow grind that’s going to not-so-slowly demoralize both Iraqis and Americans. I can’t really see the insurgents “winning”, but since they can achieve their foremost goal which is humiliating the U.S. by perpetuating chaos in Iraq without winning, “winning” isn’t everything. The pundits are right in that how long this war drags on in it’s present incarnation will increasingly be determined by the resolve of the American people. But since that resolve must include resolving to keep the faith with politicians they increasingly realize lied to them relentlessly – and possibly even lied to themselves, which is the worst thing pols can do – and resloving to continue to send their sons and daughters (whether the fighting Mr. Hitchens comprehends the words or not) into the breech of a war that makes less and less sense to them with each passing day, it would take something like LSD in the water supply for that resolve to hold much longer beyond the religious and political fundamentalist factions.
Frankly, my analysis isn’t that different from Fareed Zakaria’s, who could hardly be accused of having been anti-war or defeatist on this one, except in tone and what I’m willing to be explicit about regarding the Baathist wing of the insurgency. Since field commanders are already exploring precisely the negotiations I suggest, I’m obviously not drawing this probable necessity from my “liberal, 9/11 – what’s 9/11 perfidy” but the news from the front. Unfortunately, the record of people actually responsible for boots on the ground effecting the people responsible for asses in chairs to formulate reality-based plans in a timely fashion has been pretty poor. And the current intensification of fighting in Afghanistan proves that we’re likely facing better, more cunning, more regionally saavy strategists than our own. Given their strategy, they most likely are also holding more “trump cards”. That’s scary. I won’t be shocked if their plan is to add a major domestic act of terrorism to their current intensification of the insurgency in Iraq and intensification of ground war in Afghanistan. Frankly, I can see Bush-Cheney-Rove welcoming such, as they obviously did 9/11, because it might be their only chance to get their numbers back up in time for 2006 and force a shaken country back behind their “leadership”. Although I can see alternate scenarios to a Bush ascendency in that event. Who knows…
I guess I believe it’s likely that what really happens, as opposed to what might-have-been, will probably continue to be a slide downhill. But I don’t think it’s inevitable. Except possibly with these clowns who are “in charge”.
June 30th, 2005 at 5:38 am
Thought provoking stuff Michael…and I realize that even those of us who consider ourselves “realists” here and aren’t just licking Kool Aid off our lips, are still arguing inside of rhetorical and political paradigms that have been calculated to appeal to the way Americans see themselves rather than illuminate how the grand strategists, who are always at work and always standing just behind the folks whose hands appear on the levers of power, see the world and want to reshape it.
June 30th, 2005 at 5:49 am
“probably the most worst” – that was a deliberate, ironic rhetorical flourish to add emphasis to my point about Rumsfeld. Really…
June 30th, 2005 at 6:04 am
Ahhh, “democracy”
http://www.antiwar.com/blog/comments.php?id=P2179_0_1_0
Life in “Liberated” Iraq
Gee, I’m so glad that we sacrificed 1,700-plus dead, thousands more horribly wounded, and hundreds of billions of dollars — for this:
“Physicians have been beaten for treating female patients. Liquor salesmen have been killed. Even barbers have faced threats for giving haircuts judged too short or too fashionable.
“Religion rules the streets of this once cosmopolitan city, where women no longer dare go out uncovered.
“‘We can’t sing in public anymore,’ said Hussin Nimma, a popular singer from the south. ‘It’s ironic. We thought that with the change of the regime, people would be more open to singing, art and poetry.’
“Unmarked cars cruise the streets, carrying armed, plain-clothed enforcers of Islamic law. . . . Shiite religious parties now control both the streets and the council chambers. And though Basra has not suffered the same level of bombings and assassinations as major cities to the north, the trade-off for law and order appears to be a crackdown on social practices and mores that were permissible under the secular, if repressive, regime of [Saddam] Hussein.
“. . . A local businessman who did not want to be identified for fear of reprisal compared the current strict rule to life under Hussein. ‘The same thing is happening now,’ he said. ‘During Saddam, we had the secret police. Now it’s coming again. If you say something bad, they shoot you in the night.’”
Andrew Sullivan, Christopher Hitchens, Glenn Reynolds, and all the smarty-pants know-it-alls who hailed the “liberation” of Iraq as the triumph of modernity, and “democracy, whiskey, sexy,” owe everybody — and especially the people of Iraq — an abject apology.
What’s happening in Basra today is more like “theocracy, thuggery, creepy.”
More here:
http://redstateson.blogspot.com/2005/06/more-from-liberation.html
June 30th, 2005 at 6:45 am
“Proving bin Laden was wrong by taking out Saddam while not disturbing bin Laden’s patrons in Riyadh or Islamabad.”
Huh? and why not take out bin Laden’s patrons?
Answer: oil.
Islamic fundamentalism is financed by Saudis. Get rid of that, and you go along way to solving the problem. Can’t do that because — oil –.
So its about oil, moron.
June 30th, 2005 at 7:38 am
The insurgency doesn’t need to, and won’t, “win” — especially if one defines victory as *militarily* defeating the occupation force.
All it needs to do is fight to a standstill, and make the occupation so costly in terms of blood and treasure that the occupiers decide to pack up and leave.
Wars and occupations never end due to moral dilemmas or crises of conscience. They end when accountants walk into offices of state power, briefcases or laptops in hand, and say “we gotta talk.”
This at least is how it usually works. The flaw in this theory is that someone is bound to come along who is so attached ideologically to a particular “intervention”, who takes military Keynesianism to new heights, who flips off the accountants and literally fucks the people of his country for generations to come, just to make a point! Somethin’ about evildoers and freedom.
http://jameshowardkunstler.typepad.com/
http://www.lewrockwell.com/roberts/roberts109.html
http://www.counterpunch.org/roberts03012005.html
http://www.counterpunch.org/roberts03212005.html
http://www.counterpunch.org/roberts02152005
It’s gonna be an interesting downhill ride. Gibbon, I’m sure, is looking down on us from wherever he is, nodding his head and checking off a list.
June 30th, 2005 at 8:55 am
“Andrew Sullivan, Christopher Hitchens, Glenn Reynolds, and all the smarty-pants know-it-alls who hailed the “liberation” of Iraq as the triumph of modernity, and “democracy, whiskey, sexy,” owe everybody — and especially the people of Iraq — an abject apology.”
Since those clowns are mostly still asserting that people who questioned the war need to apologize, I don’t think they are about to be afflicted with an onslaught of humility. If they were capable of such, they’d have thought twice about this business in the first place.
June 30th, 2005 at 11:37 am
One very disturbing bit of information I got from following Abbas’ links was a poll conducted in the Detroit area, which is probably the capital of “Arab-America”, that showed Iraqi-American approval of the war had gone from around 75% down to something less than a third. Since they obviously are in touch with their relatives back in Iraq and are, probably, drawn predominantly from people who didn’t want to continute living under Saddam, that’s a damning bit of news and suggests that the cost-benefit factor for the Iraqi people is rapidly escalating on the “cost” side. Or maybe they just don’t like being treated used as flypaper.
Note to Woody – there’s no reason this should bother you. They are more than likely just a bunch of Democrats.
June 30th, 2005 at 1:03 pm
Iraqi-Americans in the Detroit area are predominantly Shiites, which makes their drop in support for the war and occupation even more sobering.
Clearly, Iraqi opinion is continuing to evolve, as evidenced in the recent joint statement by workers representing three major Iraq labor groupings who toured the U.S. over the last few weeks. The first major point in the statement is that the occupation is the problem, not the solution.
http://uslaboragainstwar.org/downloads/Iraqi%20USLAW%20Joint%20Statement.English.pdf
June 30th, 2005 at 1:29 pm
Thanks so much for the links, Abbas—particularly the one on repression in Basra (which I somehow managed to miss in Monday’s LA Times).
Now, I see the Times also ran a companion piece to the one you’ve linked, on the shut down of Baghdad’s last nightclub. This is not to say that nightclubs are the ultimate in culture… or the best evidence of personal and/or political freedom… but if one views them as one of the canaries in the mineshaft, the fact that this particular canary kicked the bucket becomes a mournful and ominous sign.
Here’re a few ‘graphs from the article.
“….’Before Iraq’s wars and troubles we used to have a lot of nightclubs with bands, music and dancing,’ said Majid, 46, who has a penchant for open-collared shirts. [Majid is the club's owner, a man who had finally opened a place of his own, five years ago, after two decades managing restaurants, hotels and kebab stands.] ‘Now, the atmosphere makes it very difficult.’
“…Since the March 2003 U.S.-led invasion, Shiite Muslim militias and puritanical Sunni insurgents have begun enforcing fundamentalist Islamic prohibitions against alcohol and night life in cities across Iraq. They’ve firebombed liquor stores in Shiite-run Basra, once a lively and freewheeling port city, and slain alcohol merchants in primarily Sunni Fallouja…
“…Iraq’s small Christian minority, which traditionally dominated the country’s liquor industry, has borne the brunt of much of the religious crackdown. Christian community leaders say that many of their flock across Iraq have fled to Syria and elsewhere….
“..Although Iraq’s newly elected political leaders — many of them members of Shiite religious parties — speak high-mindedly of creating a tolerant new order that includes their onetime Sunni Arab tormentors, many apparently are loath to allow what they see as Western decadence….”
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-nightlife27jun27,1,4413105.story
PS: I’m just now getting around to “Reading Lolita in Tehran,†Azar Nafisi’s wonderful memoir cum social history of post revolutionary Iran as seen through the lens of an Iranian literature professor’s secret book group. Nafisi’s vivid and heartbreaking descriptions of the fundamentalist crackdown on any form of non-fundamentalist approved creative expression in Iran….and these reports from Basra….suggest a pattern fearful and ill-omened symmetry, one that— frankly—many of us predicted, but that I still truly, deeply hope doesn’t come to pass.
June 30th, 2005 at 3:46 pm
“Green — the Kurds lives depended on the US combat air patrols, which weren’t sustainable politically forever. Given our failure to do the right thing because GWHB wanted to play Kissingerian games with Iraq and Iran, and listened to Colin Powell instead of Norman Schwarzkopf, it is America’s responsibility at least to see that they weren’t slaughtered again.”
So I guess you support a draft then?
June 30th, 2005 at 3:57 pm
I have to say that Bush’s crumbling numbers don’t particularly make me feel any better about the American people, or their capacity to make wise and reasonable political decisions. The American people, as much as the president and congress, got us into this mess, and they’re simply in denial about the fact now that we can neither leave nor continue without a draft.
On a personal note, when I was in bidness school I had gotten a concurrent degree in international studies (with a focus on East and South Asian business), and every month or two I get a call from an outsourcing firm wanting to hire me to assist in their looting of the last good jobs in America. I have to date never returned their calls (despite the fact that they pay a great deal more than I make), but I’m getting so tired of the stupidity and mindlessness of the American people one of these days I just might snap and not simply take the job, but *enjoy* it.
June 30th, 2005 at 8:19 pm
Amen Brother.
June 30th, 2005 at 8:24 pm
Jesus Christ.
“You should hear what I say about the way Yankees drive on our expressways, but I wouldn’t mean you unless you drive 35 MPH in the left lane.) My apologies for offending you.”
Yeah all you fast-moving Georgians would know about that; Real fast talkers and drivers.
June 30th, 2005 at 8:29 pm
Hey speedy, “I’m not trying to be “smart” with this, but can you tell me what better actions were proposed or taken before or during the terms of President Bush by liberals that worked?”
Can you name something Bush had up his sleeve before the attacks from our allies in Saudi Arabia? Anything in the wings at all?
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