Beware of chaos–and the wounded neocon tiger

Just how deeply has the U.S. national-security establishment
(and therefore, its ability to make rational decisions on national-security
issues) been damaged by the accelerating confusion marking the conduct
of its policy in Iraq and elsewhere?

My first answer is that the damage goes far beyond the few Military
Police and Military Intelligence units at the epicenter fo the Abu Ghraib
torture scandal. (This, even on the day that the WaPo has published
some of what seem to be the shocking
photos and videos
of Abu Ghraib torture that were shown to lawmakers earlier this week, as
well as a collection of
sworn statements
from former detainees, collected as part of an internal military investigation
into the Abu Ghraib abuses as long ago as January 16-18.)

Policy on Iraq, in general, is in evident turmoil:  

• The question of who–at the highest levels of the chain of command–
  commanded and authorized the torture techniques at Abu Ghraib continues to
  be both revealed and very revealing.  Today’s WaPo has a good
  
  story by Brad Graham
  that spells out that Rumsfeld himself was the one, in late 2002, to explicitly
  authorize the first use of abusive interrogation tactics in the Gitmo branch
  of the Global Gulag (from where, many of them were later transferred by Gen.
  Geoffrey Miller to the Abu Ghraib branch).  The NYT has a good
  
  story
  about how interrogation techniques developed and used in the Afghanistan
  branches of the Gulag were transferred to Abu Ghraib–along with a good,
  short
  timeline
  showing some of the key decisions along the way there.
• The President of the quasi-puppet Interim Governing Council got effortlessly
  blown up near the gates of the US Imperial Compound in Baghdad earlier this
  week.  Meanwhile, the question of who commanded and authorized the raid
  against the home and office of IGC member and close (until two days ago)
  Pentagon ally Ahmad Chalabi remains shrouded in mystery. US-trained Iraqi
  Police were directly involved, along with US agents not in uniform who were
  identified as belonging to the FBI and CIA. But what about the US military,
  which is supposed to be running the whole occupation? Where were they on
  this?
• There is zero evidence that the Bush administration has any plan at
  all–let alone a workable one–for how Iraq will be governed after June 30th,
  a date that is only 40 days away.  (For a few really macabre
  cheap laughs, go check out the
  ‘Countdown to Sovereignty’
  website the CPA has put up.)
• Meantime, Reuters is reporting that “U.S. troops pounded Shi’ite militia
  in the holy city of Kerbala on Friday [i.e., today] in a bid to crush insurgents
  whose demands for Americans to leave Iraq are gaining support among
  Iraqis frustrated with the occupation.” (emphasis by HC there). This reporter,
  Sami Jumaili, also noted that Moqtada al-Sadr was able to slip out of Najaf
  to nearby Kufa to deliver his Friday sermon there.
• The big question of who is currently making the decisions regarding
  the use of US power in Iraq remains very mysterious. It was mysterious
  back in early April, when someone– Bremer? Feith? Sanchez? Or even, as reported,
  the President himself?– made the disastrous triple decisions to (1) force
  an escalation in Fallujah, (2) force an escalation against Moqtada, and (3)
  align strongly with Sharon on his unilateral plan for the Palestinians. It
  is even more mysterious today, especially since Generals Sanchez and Abizaid
  are nowhere near the theater of operations but rather, back in Washington
  …

(Time to exit that bulleted list there, since I’m getting to the crux of
my argument.)

Okay, so we see that primarily because of the Abu Ghraib revelations, Sanchez
and Abizaid are back in DC. Evidently, while there, they will be engaged in
intensive discussions about the upcoming (phantom) “transition”… But
who will they have them with?

Who, in short, is in charge of this process?

Yesterday, Rumsfeld–who is formally the “boss” of these two guys in the
normal chain of command–shephereded a visit they made to the White House,
to go visit the “commander in chief”. Secretary of State Powell, meanwhile,
was headlining the opening of a meeting at the State Department at which
diplomatic “sherpas” from a number of un-named countries were just starting
to discuss the content of the UN Security Council resolution that will be
needed as an essential part of any even-half-workable “transition to democracy”
process inside Iraq.

His comments
there were quite interesting, and extremely important. Indeed,
getting the political/diplomatic part of the transition right is the
only way to head off complete and total disaster in Iraq and the rest of
the Middle East over the months ahead. Powell’s comments to the gathering
of international sherpas were, however, notably under-reported by the major
media.

Another very shocking question that needs more examination: how do they hope
to be able to explore all the many extremely serious diplomatic issues involved
in crafting this resolution, and to get the resolution through the Sec Council,
in time for the UN to be able to make all the preparations that will be needed
if it is to play the serious political role required of it starting July
1?

Are Powell, and behind him the serried phalanxes of all the neo-cons in the
Bush administration, just setting the UN up for failure there?  

How can that be avoided?

Not an easy question to answer… Though I think we all need to be totally
aware that it was the Bush administration that got the world into this
mess, and that should bear the whole responsibility for the current chaos,
suffering, and failure.

However, recognizing that fact does not provide many of the actual answers
on how to deal most effectively with this whole transition issue…

It is not only in Iraq that the neocons’ unconscionable hijacking of US national-security
decisionmaking has had multiple, extremely destabilizing consequences:

• Palestine is of course another major case in point; one that, moreover,
  has its own well-known resonance throughout the whole of the rest of the
  world.  
• The tattered state of US-Europe relations is another glaring
  example.
• Instability in East Asia also looks considerably more possible now,
  after the Pentagon “strategists” decided they needed to pull ten percent
  of the American tripwire force out of South Korea, to send them over to Iraq… 
• The culpable imperial over-reaching in Iraq has also had terrible effects
  on stabilization efforts in Afghanistan, and elsewhere.

In general, I think it is good for the world system, and for the true longterm
interests of the US citizenry within that system, that the criminal follies
of the neocons’ imperial over-reach have been revealed so fully and so (relatively)
fast within Iraq. But so much pain and suffering has been inflicted along
the way– on Iraqis, on Afghans, on Palestinians, on Israelis, on the families
of US soldiers killed or mutilated in a totally unnecessary war, and on the
long-term ability of the US government to fund basic educational and health
services for its citizens…

Still, right now, I am most concerned that a way be found for the leaders
of the United States to negotiate new “rules of engagement” between the US
and the rest of the world: new rules in which the US is recognised as
a leader in world affairs, but not the leader; new rules in which
the basic rules and norms of the international order are applied equally
as between the US and the other nations of the world, with no allowance
for any “exceptionalism” by any party.

So my concerns in this process of  the broad renegotiation of Washington’s
engagement with the rest of the world are as follows:

1. Can we think of the Bush administration as ever being capable of participating
   in good faith in such a negotiation? (Answer: definitely not, if it
   continues as currently configured; just possibly, if Powell were made VP
   and all the neocons were swept off to sit out the rest of their days in Gitmo
   with bags over their heads.)
2. Does John Kerry present himself convincingly as someone who could successfully
   undertake this vital task? (Answer: he hasn’t done so yet.)
3. Finally, have the major institutions of US national-security decisionmaking
   and national domestic decisionmaking been so badly harmed that it is almost
   impossible to think of any national leader being capable of acting rationally
   in this domain? (Answer: quite possibly.)

This latter possibility is one I have just recently started to entertain.
The neocons, their allies, and what they project as their “vision”
are still very powerful in national life, including inside key national institutions
and in broad segments of American public opinion. I do not see them
as individuals who will just calmly admit, “I was wrong”, and go home or
take up a less harmful and less powerful occupation.
They are a deeply wounded tiger and can lash back at all the rest of us inside the US and
around the world in ways that may not be at all rational, and are impossible
to predict.

Indeed, given the current, very evident, chaos and confusion in the command
of the levers of US power in Iraq and elsewhere it will be particularly easy
for dedicated groups of neocons to create chaos in Iraq before or after June
30th, or indeed elsewhere.

So we all need to be careful and very wise in the way we deal with the neocon
leaders.

Just think, for a moment, how their dreams have all been shattered over the
past 12 months. Twelve months ago, they were at the pinnacle of their
power and influence– swaggering across the whole of Iraq with their plans
for massive privatization and for the installation of their vaunted pal Chalabi
as ruler; rudely threatening Iran and Syria that “they would be next”; laughing
at the concerns of “Old Europe”; confident that their overthrow of Saddam
would bring about warm Iraqi-Israeli relations and a rapid end to the Palestinian
intifada…

Oh, where are those dreams now? Dissolved on the shit-stained buttocks of
a sodomized Iraqi man whose fate was, at the end of the day, the logical
consequence of the neocons’ desire to impose their vision on the rest
of the world, by force if necessary.

Yes, where are their dreams…

But more to the point, how can we all, calmly and rationally, now set about
fashioning a world in which the desires of any group of fanatics to impose
their visions on the rest of the world by force finally have no place? That,
I think is our current task.