US foreign policy – Page 17 – Just World News with Helena Cobban

The President’s “mind”

Does the President think the citizens he serves are that stupid? Does he assume everybody has minds turned to jello by 24? In the face of mounting bi-partisan criticisms of his “surge” plan for Iraq, and huge public opinion poll margins against it, George III from his bunker declared in his weekly radio address that:

Members of Congress have a right to express their views, and express them forcefully. But those who refuse to give this plan a chance to work have an obligation to offer an alternative that has a better chance for success. To oppose everything while proposing nothing is irresponsible.

Strange. Is he that shameless? What was the Baker-Hamilton Commission (BHC) report all about? It indeed is a plan – just one that the Bush-Cheney Administration and their neocon propagandists refuse to consider. But even the most ardent Fox-head surely knows there are many plans out there – including Helena’s here. What, if anything, was going through George III’s mind when he claimed his critics oppose everything “while proposing nothing?”
Alas, all too much of Congress, especially Democrats, was lukewarm to Baker-Hamilton (aka, “the Iraq Study Group” report) at first, particularly as it so frontally challenged core assumptions from “the lobby” regarding talking to Iran and Syria and linking what isn’t happening in the Israel-Palestine “peace process” to what isn’t happening in Iraq.
Yet it seems many in Congress are belatedly latching onto the BHC plan – as it’s “on the shelf.” To hear House Democratic Caucus Chair Rahm Emanual tell it, “We have all endorsed the Iraq Study Group — that is our plan.”
It’s obviously not the President’s plan, snow-job denials by his press secretary notwithstanding. In a crazily patched together paragraph in his Saturday radio address, George III declared:

America will expand our military and diplomatic efforts to bolster the security of Iraq and protect American interests in the Middle East. We will address the problem of Iran and Syria allowing terrorists and insurgents to use their territory to move in and out of Iraq. We will encourage countries like Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Jordan, and the Gulf states to increase their economic assistance to Iraq. Secretary Rice has gone to the region to continue the urgent diplomacy required to help bring peace to the Middle East.

Let’s see now, our approach to Syria and Iran is purely military – forget Baker-Hamilton and that “talk” softness. Yet our outreach to Saudi Arabia, Jordan, et. al. is merely to solicit money — no mention of the Salafi jihadis and financing for them coming from those quarters.
And just what “urgent diplomacy” is Rice being sent to “continue?” That one doesn’t pass the screaming laugh test.
George III’s resistance (lately that is) to the idea of talking with Iran is no doubt music to neoconservative and certain Israeli ears who seem capable only of conceiving Iran as an “existential threat” – one that can only be, by definition, contained, (or nuked – if one takes recent Israeli threats seriously).
Former Republican Senator (and BHC member) Alan Simpson (as quoted in WaPo) has it about right:

“Nothing is ever solved by not talking to somebody,” he said. Simpson said he was stunned by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice’s statement that Iran could use talks with the United States to extort concessions. “Where did that come from?” he asked. ” What the hell is gained by not thinking of some kind of system to talk? It makes no sense.”

Agreed – in spades. Alas, the only “bold” action since the President’s surge speech has been to capture and detain Iranians in raids on an established Iranian “consulate” in a Kurdish area of Iraq. Iran insists they are diplomats and demands their release.
Various Bush spokespersons counter that the captured Iranians are not diplomats – but then hedge their bets and imply, vaguely but confidently, that the arrested Iranians were engaged in activities not consistent with being diplomats.
Swell. Almost 28 years ago, when the Iranian students stormed the US Embassy (e.g., the “Den of Spies”) out of plausible fear the US was about to return the Shah to the Iranian throne (as we did in 1953), the world united in condemning the Iranian revolutionaries for conduct in flat contravention of all accepted international law.
Today, for George III, international law is something you invoke only to beat your opponents with, not apply to yourself. Besides, the bogey is Iran, and surely no one in the mainstream US media will actually ask for evidence…. Or will they? (He asks rhetorically, wondering if he still believes in miracles. The Guardian yesterday at least dared to consider the matter within one of its reports.)
Curiously, Iraqi and Kurdish authorities are quite unhappy about the detention of Iranians inside Iraq. At least to me, they appear to be backing the Iranian statements about who the “detainees” are.
Bush’s present confused state was again on display in last night’s 60 Minutes interview. Regarding Iran, Bush had this bizarre response to an awful question (note Pelley accepts the allegation as fact):

PELLEY: What would you say right now in this interview to the Iranian president about the meddling in Iraq?
BUSH: I’d say, first of all, to him, “You’ve made terrible choices for your people. You’ve isolated your nation. You’ve taken a nation of proud and honorable people, and you’ve made your country the pariah of the world. You’ve threatened countries with nuclear weapons. You’ve said you want a nuclear weapon. You’ve defied international accord. And you’re slowly but surely isolating yourself.” And secondly, that “it’s in your interest to have a unified nation on your border. It’s in your interest that there be a flourishing democracy.” And thirdly, you know, “If we catch your people inside the country harming US citizens or Iraqi citizens, you know, we will deal with them.”

Is this George III’s idea of talking to Iran – by prevaricating? Is that what it means to be “the educator-in-chief?” Where exactly has the current or any Iranian President “threatened” anyone with nuclear weapons. (That would be Israel, not Iran, btw.) Where did any Iranian leader admit to “want a nuclear weapon?” This isn’t even just a gross exaggeration – and either Bush knows it is, or something’s gone wrong in his bellfry.
And Bush (e.g. George III) is a fine one to talk about making one’s country into a “pariah of the world.” Imagine, George III lecturing any other country about “slowly and surely isolating yourself” and for making “terrible choices.”
Imagine.
Alas, Ahmadinejad is probably the only person Bush can castigate that, at least to Americans, makes Bush look smart. Iranians parliamentarians, by the way, recently started impeachment procedings against Ahmadinejad.
Hey, there’s an idea….
By the way, I agree with Bush’s second point – as do most Iranians! It indeed is in Iran’s interest to have a unified nation on its border. It’s also in their interest for Iraq to become a flourishing democracy. Why would Iran not want either of these things? (A “democratic” Iraq is far more of a problem for the Saudis and Jordanians.)
Speaking of absurd images of the President’s mind, how ironic indeed it was to have the President deliver his surge speech from a White House library – a room one wonders if he has ever previously used.
As a “Jefferson Fellow” at Monticello, I picked up a souvenir Jefferson mug, inscribed with one of my favorite Jefferson quotes, “I cannot live without books.”
For Bush, a future mug might read, “At Yale, I read a book.” Or, “I cannot be bothered by books.”
Ah, but in an interview with 60 Minutes, the President surely restores our faith in him, when asked a question about the influence of Vice President Cheney. Bush ducked the question and instead replied,

Oh, yeah, sure. I mean, I rely upon my National Security Council, and I expect everybody to make contributions, and I expect to hear everybody’s opinions. And when I make up my mind, I expect them to salute and say, “Yes, sir, Mr. President.”

Comforting to know, isn’t it? It is what’s in that “mind” that frightens me.

Discussing Bush’s speech at IFF

Joost Hiltermann, Reidar Visser, Patrick Lang, Howard Zinn, and I are all discussing the Prez’s speech over at this discussion zone established by the Institute for the Future of the Book.
I’m pretty sure more people will join the discussion as we progress. Actually, what we really need are some folks prepared to go there and articulate the best kinds of defense the Prez might mount against what for now looks like a barrage of criticism. (Should I play “Devil’s Advocate”, I wonder?)
It’s an interesting format they have at IFF (and still to be further refined, I think.) My colleagues have all posted some excellent contributions. General readers may– or may not?– also be allowed to contribute. Sorry, I’m not quite clear about that, yet.

The Petraeus doctrine and extra-judicial executions.

I hope you have all now read the table I posted here yesterday, containing my notes on the text of the new US Army-and-Marines counter-insurgency manual co-authored by Gen. Petraeus.
It gives what I understand to be broad permission for those engaged in counter-insurgency operations to “eliminate” broad classes of those whom military commanders judge to be “extremists”.
That is, for the military to engage in extra-judicial executions.
(We could note that Israel’s broad pursuit of that policy has quite failed top bring a solution to its problems with its neighbors any closer.)
On a related note Bill the spouse pointed out this morning that in the penultimate slide (“Key Operational Shifts”) in the PowerPoint presentation on the “Iraq Strategy Review” that was distributed by White House staffers yesterday, the third change noted is from “restrictive ROE [Rules of Engagement]” to a new state of affairs in which “Iraqi leaders [are] committed to permissive ROE”. It’s not clear there whether these “permissive ROEs” are for the Iraqi forces or the US forces, but either way it looks like very bad news.
It strikes me that we, the US citizenry, have no excuse whatever these days for claiming that “we don’t know” what is being done by our leaders in our names. This is the case regarding this new permission for extra-judicial executions, as well as what continues to go on in Guantanamo and other prisons run by the US military around the world, and a number of other clear US infractions of the laws of war.
In South Africa today, nearly every white citizen claims he or she “never knew” what the apartheid government was doing in his/her name prior to 1994. In many cases, those claims seem non-credible. But at least the apartheid government had what one might call the basic “decency” not to go about advertising its more heinous rights abuses far and wide. Our government, by contrast, seems to have little shame regarding its current and ongoing abuses.
No to extra-judicial executions! No to torture! Bring the troops home now!

Bush’s speech and first reactions

I just watched the President’s speech. The content had just about all been strategically “leaked” to various media before hand, so there wasn’t much new to hear. (I’m just waiting for the White House to put the text up on their website.)
Bush looked nervous, and as if he was trying too hard to be “sincere.” At points, he had a very high blink rate.
Afterwards, I saw Sen. Dick Durbin, Democratic of Illinois, who’s the Assistant Majority Leader of the Senate, give the Dems’ response. He looked much more self-confident, and confident that he understood what he was talking about… And what he talked about was the need for a “responsible disengagement.”
Now, I’m just listening to our new Senator from here in Virginia Jim Webb (Dem.) He started a little unconvincing but has become stronger. He just stated very forcefully “We have to recognize there will never be a true peace in Iraq so long as there are American combat troops on the streets of the country.” He also said he would not vote any more money for reconstruction in Iraq so long as the problems in New Orleans haven’t been properly addressed.
Webb is also speaking v. strongly to the need to have a regional diplomatic approach.
… Now, they’ve gone to having two very old white “security guys” talking about it: Retired assistant commandant of the Marine Corps Bernard Trainor and long-time-ago head of the National Security Agency Bill Odom. Both are strongly dismissive of the Prez’s approach. I just heard Odom talking about how it’s time for the US to go back to pursuing stability in the region… Also, he said that announcing a plan for the orderly withdrawal of the US troops would catalyze the neighbors into cooperating on a regional stabilization plan… which I tend to agree with.
Trainor and Webb both said things that looked like Iraqi PM Maliki was being set up for failure by the Prez’s plan. (Webb looked as though he in effect supported that part of the approach; Trainor as if he was worried by it.)
There was also a republican senator, John Thune of S. Dakota, and a rightwing NYT columnist called David Brooks talking. brooks expressed some quite strong criticisms of Bush’s plan, and even Thune expressed so,me reservations about parts of it– though overall, he was supportive.
Well, still no text on the White House site. I’ll post this. You can all carry on the discussion.

Update, Thurs. a.m. It’s been pointed out to me that the term “very old white ‘security guys'” is ageist and racist. After a moment’s reflection, I quite agree, and apologize for having used it. The age and skin color of these two people is not material. I guess what I was trying to convey by “very old” was rather that these are two very experienced people. Moreover, they’re people of fairly conservative mien. It is better to describe them as something like “paleo-conservatives who are experienced strategic analysts.”
It is particularly important, right now, not to demean the paleocons, who are playing an important role in undermining the political support for the military adventurism of their “neo” contenders for the conservative mantle. Also, as I’ve noted previously, many paleocons have contributed important and original insights to the national discussion over Iraq.
Finally, here is the text of the speech from the White House. And here are some Power Point slides titled “Highlights of the Iraq Strategy Review” that were apparently released to the media by White House staffers sometime before Bush made the speech.

Washington’s ‘benchmarks’ for Maliki: Threatening what?

Many voices in the US policymaking elite currently like to couch their discussion of the country’s Iraq policy in terms of establishing firm “benchmarks” for Nouri al-Maliki’s government in Baghdad, with the threat that–
What?
I find this “benchmarks” aspect of the US policy discourse by turns hilariously funny, tragically misguided, or just plain mystifying.
There are two issues here. The first has to do with the US claim that it has any right at all to establish “benchmarks” for what most of these same people (and certainly the ones inside the Bush administration) also claim is the “soveriegn government” of Iraq. Well, many JWN readers may agree with me that the latter claim is quite unfounded– Iraq is still, in fact and under international law, still a territory under foreign military occupation. But it’s kind of interesting to note the contradiction between that and the other claim, anyway? (If truth is the first casualty of war, perhaps logic is the second?)
The second issue is one in pure political realism. Like “benchmarks” in many other contexts, these ones come with an associated threat of some kind of sanctions to back them up. I used to establish “benchmarks”, for example, regarding the school performance of my son when he was still a teenager… along with threat that if he failed to meet them there would be some kind of sanction against him.
But if “PM” Maliki fails to meet the “behcnmarks” being discussed by Washington– what then?
As I see it, the strategic “thinkers” (hollow laugh permitted there) inside the Bush administration may have had two different kinds of sanction in mind. The first, that if Maliki doesn’t dance completely to their tune– by joining the campaign to isolate and suppress the Sadrists, for example– then, fairly evidently, they were planning (and indeed, almost openly threatening) to unseat him.
The original version of that plan relied on building up a credible threat that an alternative player within the Shiites’ broad UIA alliance– SCIRI’s head, Abdul-Aziz Hakim– could build a parliamentary coalition strong enough to outflank the Maliki-Sadr bloc. That plan got stymied by the firm edict that the UIA/Sistani issued on December 23rd, to the effect that the Sadrists were still a full and protected part of the UIA alliance, and that Hakim had better stop playing his dangerous games with the Americans. Hakim apparently bowed to that.
Possibly, the US overlords in Baghdad have plans for other schemes whereby they could mount a credible “unseating”-type threat against Maliki. A coup led by Iyad Allawi, perhaps? (Not very credible, imho: Allawi and which army?) Still, as I said, logic and rational assessment/reasoning are not exactly the hallmarks of this bunch of increasingly tired and desperate rulers in Washington.
But I said there were two possible kinds of sanction with which the Americans might be backing up their demand to Maliki re the “benchmarks.” The other one, which has also been heard from Washington in recent weeks, is of the order of “If you don’t dance to our tune we’ll pack up and leave you and your country to its fate.”
This threat has some credible aspects, and some non-credible aspects (but more, I think, of the latter.)
Credible: that the US citizenry and leadership may indeed be getting very near to the point of deciding to simply “pack up” and leave Iraq; and also, that the situation inside Iraq does indeed currently look quite horrible and may continue to be equally– or even more?– horrible for at least a while after the American troops leave.
Non-credible (as a threat against Maliki, at present): the fact that he actually does want the US troops to leave— and has said this on a number of occasions. So to wield this as a “threat” against him has strong tragico-farcical aspects to it.
Now it’s true that neither Maliki nor, as far as I can figure, any other Iraqi at all wants the US troops to leave in such a way that there is a bloodbath after they leave. And it’s also true that some of the presently reported US plans– such as bringing large units of Kurdish pesh merga down to Baghdad to help with the planned next “clean-up” there– may threaten to do just that.
It is also true both that there is already an extremely lethal cycle of Sunni-Shiite sectarian fighting underway throughout many areas of Greater Baghdad as well as in other areas… and, equally importantly, that this cycle of violence is being fed– from each side– by the irresponsible fear-mongering and incitement of powerful neighboring nations.
So the threat of a massively escalating fitna (that is, complete and perhaps genocidal socio-political breakdown) inside Iraq after a US withdrawal is not entirely an empty one.
But here’s the thing: Such a breakdown inside Iraq will also massively burn the US troops as they attempt to leave the country and is therefore completely against the interests of any any responsible US leader or politician.
I can’t stress that point enough.
If there is a complete fitna inside Iraq, moreover, it will not be limited to there, but will affect the (pro-US) status quo interests throughout the whole region. And though there may be an irresponsible few among the neocons or others who might not be disturbed by the prospect of a broad Sunni-Shiite sectarian war starting to rage across great portions of the Middle East (just as many Americans and other westerners did not mind much– or even were quietly happy– when Iran and Iraq slugged it out in very damaging regular warfare for eight years in the 1980s)… still, to do anything at all that allows such a broad, and always unpredictable, conflagration in the region today would be (a) the height of callousness and cruelty, as well as (b) extremely damaging to the interests of the US citizenry for many decades to come.
Therefore, I cannot imagine that anyone in the US policy discussion would be prepared even to contemplate scenarios that would involve “heating up” the sectarian tensions inside Iraq in the context of a simultaneous attempt to withdraw from it.
As I’ve written many times before, it is in the strong interests of the US citizenry that our leaders choose as quickly as possible the path of a troop withdrawal from Iraq that is speedy, total, orderly (and generous.) Any kind of orderly withdrawal will rely on there being inside Iraq some form of at least minimal intra-Iraqi consensus that will allow this withdrawal to take place. It is therefore in our interests as US citizens to urge our leaders to do all they can to help the Iraqis to build that consensus.
A chaotic withdrawal-under-fire as Iraq burns is in absolutely nobody’s interests at all.
… Which leaves the Bush administration with what as a credible threat to back up any “benchmarks” it lays down for Maliki? Well actually, nothing at all. But here’s the other little-discussed aspect of this whole “benchmarks for Maliki” discussion: Maliki himself is, at this point, just about irrelevant.

New Congressional leaders weigh in on Iraq

This is good news! Okay, not perfectly wonderful news, but still, something definitely worth applauding.
Today, on their second day in office Senate Majority Leader Harry M. Reid and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi urged the Prez not to proceed with his plans for a “surge” in the US troop level in Iraq:

That report there, by the WaPo’s Bill Brubaker, also noted that just a few blocks away, Sens John McCain and ‘Holy’ Joe Lieberman were telling folks at that nest of unreconstructed neoconnery the American Enterprise Institute of their continued support for the “surge.”
Bush is now supposed to announce his “new and improved” Iraq policy next Wednesday.
The announcement about the Reid-Pelosi letter comes one day after Sen. Joe Biden, the incoming (Democratic) chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, told the WaPo’s Glenn Kessler,

that he believes top officials in the Bush administration have privately concluded they have lost Iraq and are simply trying to postpone disaster so the next president will “be the guy landing helicopters inside the Green Zone, taking people off the roof,” in a chaotic withdrawal reminiscent of Vietnam.

Kessler said that Biden outlined his plans for the committee’s work,

including holding four weeks of hearings focused on every aspect of U.S. policy in Iraq. The hearings will call top political, economic and intelligence experts; foreign diplomats; and former and current senior U.S. officials to examine the situation in Iraq and possible plans for dealing with it. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice will probably testify next Thursday to defend the president’s new plan, but at least eight other plans will be examined over several sessions of the committee.

(Eight other plans? Is that serious?)
Anyway, more Kessler:

I disagree strongly with Biden’s statement there’s nothing the U.S. Senate can do “to stop a president from conducting his war.” Of course there is– if the opposition to the Prez has a strong enough base in the Senate. It can start blocking or short of that strongly conditionalizing the White House’s war-related funding requests. Or it might even revisit the war-enabling resolution that was passed with such indecent haste back in October 2002, but that was entirely premised on the fear of what the Bushists claimed at the time was “slam-dunk” evidence about Saddam Hussein’s WMD programs…
And then, look at Biden’s argument. He says he’s hoping to win over Republicans to his (currently) war-skeptical viewpoint. All well and good. I am all for that. Indeed, um, some of them were there before he was. But say he does manage, even before next Wednesday, to put together a strong coalition in the Senate that opposes the surge, which is still quite conceivable– then what does he plan to do with that coalition?? Stand up and say, “Mr. President, I’ve renounced my recourse to our constitutional power of the purse in all matters including funding the waging of war, but I’m standing here with this veto-proof coalition of folks who want to block your very costly and reckless plan for a surge, and– ”
And what?
The WaPo’s veteran African-American columnist Eugene Robinson wrote in today’s paper,

Looks like maybe Reid and Pelosi read that, and paid good heed?
Meanwhile, for more background on what the war has already cost the US public so far, we can head quickly over to David Ignatius’s column today:

Using figures provided by the Congressional Budget Office, Ignatius looked first at the tax cuts the Prez has implemented– with the help of his GOP enablers in Congress– since 2001:

The year Bush really busted the budget was 2003, when he embarked on a costly war in Iraq that wasn’t funded by a tax increase.

$221 billion in 2005 and $245 billion in 2006

So okay, the Medicare/prescription drug benefit increase has been considerably less of a financial burden than the war. Let’s keep our eyes on the war figures, right?
David again:

And so, keeping our eyes on the many costs of the war– both economic and non-economic– let’s see what happens to this “surge” proposal within the next five days.
I think all US citizens should just simply redouble our efforts to contact our representatives in Congress and the senate with the simple and strong message “No surge! Start planning the total troop withdrawal now!” Plus of course, “No new war against Iran or anyone else!”

Musical (deck-)chairs in Bush’s running of Iraq policy

The Bushists have been leaking news of a fairly large number of upcoming personnel changes, amny of which have to do with the implementation of their Iraq policy. In the BBC‘s account of these, they will be:

Adm William Fallon

Lt Gen David Petraeus

Zalmay Khalilzad

Ryan Crocker

Michael McConnell

John Negroponte

In addition, Harriet Miers has announced her decision to step down as White House counsel.
To me, the most significant of these is the naming– for the first time ever– of an admiral to head Centcom. This makes it look far more likely that the focus of operations of this gigantic, multi-service “regional command” in the coming weeks and months will be on a strategically sensitive zone in its area of operations that has a large coast-line.
Iran, anyone? Pakistan?
(Or perhaps Fallon’s main job will be to organize the flotilla of small boats needed to execute a Dunkirk-style withdrawal-under-fire from that tiny piece of Shatt-estuary where Iraq debouches into the Gulf? Nah, I don’t think so.)
For some reason Juan Cole, who has never spent much time in Washington, felt moved to pen this breathless appreciation for the “new” personnel:

These are competent professionals who know what they are doing… I wish these seasoned professionals well. They know what they are getting into, and it is an index of their courage and dedication that they are willing to risk their lives in an effort that the American public has largely written off as a costly failure…

Of course, if Zal Khalilzad is going to be so wonderful at the UN, how come he wasn’t terribly successful inside Iraq? (And another question about Zal. Should we presume he’ll be sworn into his new job on a Koran? What will our IslamophobicRep. Virgil Goode– also, like Zal, a very conservative Republican– have to say about that? Especially since Zal falls into the category to which Goode takes particularly strong exception: Muslim Americans who are also immigrants… )
Oh well, Virgil Goode is really small potatoes in this whole story, I know.
Meanwhile, back to Washington: Dan Froomkin of Washingtonpost.com, who understands the relationships within the nation’s policymaking elite a whole lot better than Juan Cole does, gives Bush’s present round of personnel changes this, rather different reading:

A purge of the unbelievers.

are jettisoned for having shown a little backbone in their opposition to Cheney and Bush’s politically-motivated insistence on throwing more troops into the Iraqi conflagration.

In my view, having yet another such large round of personnel changes also falls into the meta-narrative of a tired, confused, hacked-out administration desperately shuffling the deck-chairs on the Titanic one more “last” time before– well, before who knows what?
I have recently been working my way through reading Thomas Ricks’s recent book Fiasco: The American Military Adventure in Iraq. Ricks, who’s the WaPo’s chief Pentagon correspondent, goes into searing detail on the incompetence and internal disarray in the Bushists’ handling of every single stage of the Iraq imbroglio. Of course, I’ve read his waPo pieces on many of these incidents before. (He discloses a lot more of his material along the way, in the form of good, straightforward reporting, than Bob Woodward has done for a long time.) But Ricks has also done a good, basic job of pulling all these vignettes together in the book and starting to apply some higher-level analysis to them.
One big theme that comes through the book is how the instability in terms of personnel and entire groups of personnel that marked all aspects of the US administration of Iraq served– and to this day still serves– to compound the mistakes and incompetence displayed by the US national command authorities at the highest level.
On a parallel note, one of the main things that came through my reading of Bob Woodward’s State of Denial was the continuing administrative chaos in just the Washington end of things… To the extent that the various “players” in DC, distrusting each other and everything they were hearing from the field inside Iraq, would have to very frequently either undertake “fact-finding” trips of their own to Iraq, or find a trusted sidekick to do that for them. At times, it seems they were all criss-crossing with each other as they darted in and out of Baghdad airport. And distrusting each other quite a lot, it seemed. Ricks also makes a big point about the debilitating effect of the fragmentation of command at the military level.
… And so it goes on. I have no reason to believe that this latest round of personnel changes will have any great effect on either (a) the content of a policy that still seems to to be in a strong “state of denial” about the depth of the strategic setback the Bushists have already walked into inside Iraq, or (b) the incompetent administration of that policy, relying as it has to a quite unprecedented and extremely counter-productive degree on “market-based approaches”, pure ideology, and recklessness, rather than any model of sound, conservative strategic planning.
Watch for icebergs ahead.

Discussing the ‘surge’ with Reidar Visser

Reidar Visser recently sent me a copy of an article he has written,
titled A Timetabled, Conditional Surge, which he would like to see
more widely read and discussed. Because of the great esteem in which
I hold Reidar’s careful, well-informed work on modern Iraq, I am very
pleased to be able to make the whole text available through JWN, with his
permission.

However, as Reidar and I have discussed a little already via email, I do
disagree with some of his argument there (though I don’t, for a moment
question the good intentions with which he thought through and articulated
it.) So in addition to making the full text available via a download,
above, I do also want to engage with it, which I shall do here:

	A Timetabled, Conditional Surge By Reidar Visser, December 27, 2006	Response by HC
A.	As President George W. Bush contemplates policy alternatives for Iraq, input from experts in Washington is polarized. Opponents of the Iraq War consider any increase in troop numbers a non-starter and prefer to focus on the modalities for withdrawal.⁽¹⁾ Supporters of the Bush administration seem incapable of framing their latest idea – that of a temporary surge of US troops – as anything other than a repeat of the same old policy, if perhaps with some added manpower and resources .⁽²⁾	(1) Correct. That is exactly my own preference. But I should add that I see the discussion of a possible “surge” in troop strength as not only a distraction from thinking about modalities for the sorely needed withdrawal but also as having the potential– if there is any surge– of further complicating the task of withdrawal to a considerable degree. (More troops and materiel to extract, and more logistical complexity to doing first one thing and then very soon after that its reverse .) (2) This is generally a true observation. However, they do add some little twists and innovations like articulating the goal (yet again!) of “securing Baghdad.”
B.	Either approach has its problems. A withdrawal of US military forces from Iraq within one or two years seems a natural goal, but right now may be the worst time since 2003 for this kind of operation. The simple reason is that Iraqi politics has deteriorated dramatically: Today, sectarian militia activity has been maximized to levels never seen before in Iraqi history. At the moment, Iraq does need help from the outside, because its elected politicians are incapable of transcending their own narrow party interests in a bid for national unity.⁽¹⁾ And whereas the Iraq Study Group may have offered some sound advice about enhanced regional diplomacy, on the whole their report seems more like a containment strategy than a plan that pro-actively can induce rapid political realignment inside Iraq.⁽²⁾	(1) I agree that most of Iraq’s elected politicians look incapable of transcending narrow party/sectarian interests, though I am not convinced that this is true of all of them. “Iraq needs help from outside”, though? H’mmm. Possibly. If it does, however, I am deeply unconvinced that this US administration is a body that has either (a) the capability, (b) the desire, or (c) the requisite political legitimacy and credibility within Iraq, to be able to do anything helpful for the development of Iraqi politics except to state quite clearly and categorically its intention to withdraw the troops and its short timetable for doing so. Doing that might well do a lot to concentrate the minds of that vast majority of Iraqis who are Iraqi nationalists, and impel them to find a way to deal constructively with each other… (2) This is an interesting characterization of the main thrust of the ISG report. I, too, see the report as urging something of a containment strategy– but with this difference: I read its recommendations as seeking to “contain” the desire and ability of Iraq’s neighbors to maintain or escalate their interventions inside Iraq, as much as seeking to “contain” the ripples of political destuctivity that might spread outward from Iraq if the present deterioration there continues. Anyway, that is perhaps a minor point. More to the point in the present context is that, as I noted in B (1) above, I don’t see the US as having the credibility or the capacity of being able to “induce rapid political alignment inside Iraq.” Or, indeed, the requisite political standing to do so, since it is itself, as occupying power, a major and intrinsic part of the country’s political-security problem.
C.	A troop increase could be equally problematic.⁽¹⁾ Even if more US firepower should succeed in temporarily stemming the violence, there is nothing in the prevalent neo-conservative expositions of the “surge plan” to address the fundamental problem of national reconciliation in Iraq. There simply is no new substance compared with what was being said back in 2003 and 2004; neo-conservatives still seem convinced that as soon as there is calm on the streets of Baghdad, a Mesopotamian zest for democracy will miraculously rise from the ashes. Inside the Bush administration, the only vision about a parallel process at the political level is that of a “new coalition government” – involving a few cosmetic changes to the line-up of Iraqi elite politicians currently engaged in a game of musical chairs inside the Green Zone, and carrying considerable risk of marginalizing those few parliamentary factions that do enjoy a certain degree of popular support, like the Sadrists.(2)	(1)Much, much more problematic, Reidar, not “equally” so! (See A (1) above.) (2) Actually, I don’t see the Bushists as aiming to “marginalize” the Sadrists, but rather to crush and/or otherwise suppress their movement completely. This makes the Bushists’ plans much more potentially destabilizing for Iraq than they would be if they sought only to “marginalize” them. I think it’s also important to note that the Sadrist movement has been one of the Iraqi movements the most intent on building cross-sect coalitions– though as we have seen, the movement’s record of maintaining this political line in its practice has been extremely spotty (to say the least.)
D.	What is required in Iraq today is not cosmetic change, but heavy lifting. The colossal irony of the current situation is that a large majority of Iraqis actually agree with the declared aims of the Bush administration – national reconciliation followed by a withdrawal of US troops – but their “representatives” in the Iraqi parliament (many of them newly returned exiles with limited insights into the situation of the ordinary people) are locked in petty shouting matches instead of working for national unity.(1) It is the open-ended US military commitment that enables them to go on with this:⁽²⁾ Certain Shiite politicians infuriate Sunni politicians with newly concocted demands for federalism; Sunni leaders, in turn, hesitate in condemning even the most grotesque atrocities committed by al-Qaida-linked terrorists. Forgotten in all of this are the ordinary Iraqis. The Shiite masses have so far expressed only limited interest in “Shiite federalism”, and the average Sunni is quite prepared to denounce al-Qaida as long as a minimum of security can be guaranteed.	(1) I think I disagree with you here. Firstly, the Bushists have never committed themselves to the goal of a complete withdrawal– a fact that, in itself, maintains the fears of Iraqis re Washington’s “real” goals inside their country at a very high pitch. Secondly, while it may (just possibly) be true that what the Bushists aim at is something close to a total withdrawal, still, they want to delay this until after a version of “national reconciliation” has been established in Iraq while it still under their suzerainty, and thus the resulting political order would be to their liking. According to everything I know and understand about Iraq, however, nearly all Arab Iraqis simply want the US troops to leave as quickly as possible And they certainly don’t want that withdrawal to be held captive to the completion of some form of US-controlled “national reconciliation” process. So while it might be true at some very general, hypothetical level to say that “both the Iraqis and the Bushists seek the same two goals of a US troop withdrawal and intra-Iraqi reconciliation,” the actual ways these desires play out in the field of everyday politics are very different, indeed. (2) I agree with you about the extremely petty and indeed destructively counter-productive nature of the political “work” being done by most of the elected Iraqi politicians. I disagree over the reason for this. I think it is far more the fact that the elected Iraqi politicians have almost zero actual, functioning levers of national administration through which to govern that has reduced them to shouting ineptitude (and also, to their reportedly high level of personal venality) than the open-endedness of the US military commitment. Don’t get me wrong. I do think the open-endedness of the US military presence brings enormous problems in its wake. But if there were, parallel to the US military presence, a functioning national-level government system, then at least the politicians would have something useful to do and be more hopeful about achieving something good for their country. As it is, given that that must look impossible for them– from inside the Green Zone or outside it– then I imagine a lot of even of the best-intentioned of them throw up their hands and say, “To hell with it! At least I can sock away some money for the family and myself, in Europe.” Of course, one can also certainly argue that both the presence of the US military in Iraq and the content of the policies pursued by the US administrators there has contributed hugely to the breakdown of the country’s national administrative system. That is without a doubt true. But the chain of causality in all this is a little longer and more complex than the way you portray it.
E.	A troop surge offers a unique opportunity for resolving this paradoxical situation. If executed innovatively, it could enable the United States to circumvent the bellicose Iraqi elite politicians and appeal directly to Iraqi nationalism.⁽¹⁾ But success would require that the troop surge be offered as a package, with obligations for both sides. The United States should commit forces and economic aid to create the necessary momentum for a dramatic security improvement, but at the same time should realign itself with Iraqi nationalism by presenting a timetable for a withdrawal after the surge. Iraqi politicians, for their part, should undertake to make immediate constitutional revisions that could bring the Sunnis back in and achieve national reconciliation.⁽²⁾ Washington should not seek to micro-manage this, but ought to make it perfectly clear that the forces that have so far dominated the constitutional process in Iraq (the two biggest Kurdish parties as well as SCIRI, one of the Shiite groups) will need to make general concessions in the areas of federalism and de-Baathification before any troop surge is offered.	(1) This, it seems to me, is the central axis of your argument. Namely, that the troop surge could enable the US to appeal to Iraqis “over the heads of” their deeply problematic politicians… I see a large number of problems in this argument! Particularly, these two: (a) As described a little further down, the US would use this troop surge to effect a “dramatic security improvement.” But it would require a truly enormous troop surge to be able to do this: perhaps doubling the number of troops deployed in Iraq?. Out of the question. The US simply doesn’t have enough troops to do this. And secondly, if the existing troop commitment has, as you argue, allowed Iraqi pols to avoid making hard choices, wouldn’t any kind of a troop surge allow them to think they could do so even more? (b) The US as such has absolutely zero credibility in any political overture that might involve “appeal[ing] directly to Iraqi nationalism.” After everything the Iraqis have seen the US do in their country in the past 3.5 years, what on earth could persuade them to give any credence to arguments that Washington might make along these lines? (2) Once again, you’re arguing here that the Iraqis need to achieve national reconciliation prior to the US troop withdrawal. See my points in D (1) above.
F.	By making the surge conditional, Washington would for the first time create pressure on Iraqi politicians, via their own electorates. If presented with a credible plan for national reconciliation and the eventual withdrawal of US troops, Iraqi politicians would find it hard to persist in their current squabbling. This would enable the United States to tap into a most remarkable factor in Iraqi politics: the seemingly unshakeable belief in the concept of “national unity” among ordinary Iraqis, even in today’s violent climate.	I agree with you that there is still– among Arab Iraqis, at least, a strong desire for national unity in Iraq. I just still cannot see how this US administration can possibly, after everything that has happened in Iraq since 2003, position itself to “tap into” this desire in any constructive way. I am certainly not convinced that the Bushists yet have any desire whatsoever to do this. However, I do believe that the day will not be too long coming when they realize they will need to find a “graceful, fast exit” from Iraq… At that point, but no sooner, we might find ourselves nearing the position described in point D (1) above, where they share with the vast majority of Iraqis the desires for (a) a rapid and complete US troop withdrawal, and (b) Iraqi national reconciliation, which can help facilitate the withdrawal. That will be the point at which real diplomacy can start. The issues then will be those of phasing these two operations, of finetuning all the modalities for the withdrawal, “holding the ring” against internal intervention, etc… But still, I don’t think that this US administration– which will still itself be a major part of the problem in Iraq, rather than of the solution– can negotiate these matters directly with any combination of Iraqis. Rather, Washington will require the good offices of a trusted and neutral outsider to help these negotiations. The UN will also be in a position to provide much of the political “cover” required for particularly delicate parts of the negotiation… Hence the focus I’ve been putting on seeking to replicate the kind of role the UN played in Namibia. The UN, as a body, is potentially in a position to be able to help to mobilize an Iraqi consensus around a call to Iraqi nationalism. But the US? I just don’t see that as a possibility.

Political levees strengthening against the “surge”

The levees seem to be holding– and indeed, to be becoming stronger by the day– in the face of the threatened “surge”. No, I’m not talking about New Orleans, but about politics in Washington DC. And the surge in question is at this point entirely political: the recent “surge” in interest for a plan to send an additional “surge” of US troops to Iraq to accomplish the mission of–
Well, what? People have had different ideas about that…
Today, two articles in the WaPo show that political support for the surge is weak even among Republican lawmakers. This, just three days before the inauguration of the new Congress, in which the Dems will be controlling both houses. (Yay!) … And also, coming in the wake of the strong opposition that Joe Biden, the incoming chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, voiced to the surge idea on December 26.
Here’s what he said:

“I totally oppose the surging of additional troops into Baghdad, and I think it is contrary to the overwhelming body of informed opinion, both people inside the administration and outside the administration,” Biden told reporters yesterday. He said he plans to hold hearings for his panel next month in a bid to influence the president’s decision.

Today, in this piece on the WaPo’s news pages, Michael Abramowitz notes that the earliest and strongest “surgent” on Capitol Hill has always been Sen. John McCain, and “the idea has been gaining traction at the White House as a way to improve security in Baghdad.” (Improving security in Baghdad was the main mission defined for a surge in Iraq in this influential article, published last week by Jack Keane and Fred Kagan.)
Abramowitz writes,

He quotes GOP Sen. Arlen Spector asalso voicing strong opposition to the surge plan, and describes Sens. Sam Brownback, Saxby Chambliss, and– most importantly of all– Richard Lugar, as expressing significant reservations about it.
He notes this:

“Republicans are scared to death of it politically,” said Ed Rogers, a top GOP lobbyist with ties to the White House and Republican leaders on the Hill. “The fear is that it won’t make any difference. There won’t be a perception of turning the corner.”

… And then, over on the WaPo’s opinion page, the very well-connected paleo-conservative commentator Bob Novak writes,

“It’s Alice in Wonderland,” Sen. Chuck Hagel, second-ranking Republican on the Foreign Relations Committee, told me in describing the proposal. “I’m absolutely opposed to sending any more troops to Iraq. It is folly.”

Disenchantment with George W. Bush within the GOP runs deep. Republican leaders around the country, anticipating that the 2006 election disaster would prompt an orderly disengagement from Iraq, are shocked that the president now appears ready to add troops

Novak somberly assesses the new political line-up that Bush will face in DC when he finally gets back to work there after an unconscionably long and lazy holiday break:

not only to oppose a surge but to block it

Yay! An opposition movement in Washington, DC, at last! And one that is noticeably wider than being just one opposition party… (JWN readers may recall that a number of times I, like co-poster Scott Harrop, have expressed admiration for the clear-minded positions adopted on Iraq-related issues by GOP Senator Chuck Hagel, and also for some other GOP senators. Some of them have proven to be disappointments; but most, not.)
So okay, the lawmakers from both parties in the current block-the-surge movement may not all yet be ready to push for the speedy and total withdrawal of US troops from Iraq that I have long argued is necessary. But at least it now looks as though they’re building a solid political barricade in front of any tendency the Prez might have to take the extremely foolish step of increasing the numbers of ~~useless sitting ducks marked with huge targets~~ US troops being sent to deployment points throughout Iraq.
This is great news. And if we can continue to build up the ability of Americans to contain the the most damaging urges of the president and restore both our country’s policy in Iraq and its position in the world to one of greater sanity– including, importantly, one of far greater realism, and far less arrogance and militarism than we’ve seen from Bush so far– then it looks as though 2007 might indeed turn out to be far better year than many of us had feared.
Happy New Year, one and all!

Annotated Lieberman

Why We Need More Troops in Iraq

By Joseph Lieberman
WaPo, Friday, December 29, 2006

	Text	HC notes
A.	I’ve just spent 10 days traveling in the Middle East and speaking to leaders there, all of which has made one thing clearer to me than ever: While we are naturally focused on Iraq, a larger war is emerging. On one side are extremists and terrorists led and sponsored by Iran, on the other moderates and democrats supported by the United States. Iraq is the most deadly battlefield on which that conflict is being fought. How we end the struggle there will affect not only the region but the worldwide war against the extremists who attacked us on Sept. 11, 2001.	Holy Joe is now playing a big role in helping to propagate the terms of the new, quite content-free, “moderates versus extremists” discourse being used by the Bush administration with reference to the Middle East and other areas like the Horn of Africa. Where administration people used to speak about the main battle-lines being drawn between (good) “democrats”and (bad) “terrorists”, it’s become evident– even to them– that those lines and categories have become blurred and are no longer as useful as they were. Um, some of the people most invested in the “democratic” process turned out to be Hamas and Hizbullah? And many of the US’s staunchest allies in the Middle East are strongly anti-democratic; and they’ve even on occasion engaged in acts of violence that looked strangely, um, terroristic? Finally, the administration people started to notice facts like these! Hence, the segue to the more content-free terms of “moderates” and “extremists.” You can see Holy Joe easing the transition between these two discourses here by conjoining the terms used on each side of this fence. Suggestion from very good friend who’s also a M.E. specialist: “Couldn’t we just stick to ‘white hats’ and ‘black hats’?”
B.	Because of the bravery of many Iraqi and coalition military personnel and the recent coming together of moderate political forces in Baghdad,⁽¹⁾ the war is winnable.⁽²⁾ We and our Iraqi allies must do what is necessary to win it.	(1) What on earth is he talking about here? Did he draft this article before he understood that the political maneuver of forming a new, anti-Moqtada political coalition had failed? (2) Nonsense. Nonsense on stilts. Extremely dangerous nonsense.
C.	The American people are justifiably frustrated by the lack of progress, and the price paid by our heroic troops and their families has been heavy. But what is needed now, especially in Washington and Baghdad, is not despair but decisive action — and soon. The most pressing problem we face in Iraq is not an absence of Iraqi political will or American diplomatic initiative, both of which are increasing and improving; it is a lack of basic security. As long as insurgents and death squads terrorize Baghdad, Iraq’s nascent democratic institutions cannot be expected to function, much less win the trust of the people. The fear created by gang murders and mass abductions ensures that power will continue to flow to the very thugs and extremists who have the least interest in peace and reconciliation.
D.	This bloodshed, moreover, is not the inevitable product of ancient hatreds. It is the predictable consequence of a failure to ensure basic security and, equally important, of a conscious strategy by al-Qaeda and Iran, which have systematically aimed to undermine Iraq’s fragile political center. By ruthlessly attacking the Shiites in particular over the past three years, al-Qaeda has sought to provoke precisely the dynamic of reciprocal violence that threatens to consume the country.⁽²⁾	(1) Here, what he intentionally conjoins are al-Qaeda and Iran, both of which are subsumed into his general category of “Islamic extremism”. Doing this, (a) intentionally excludes the importance of the indigenous Iraqis who make up the vast bulk of the Sunni resistance forces; (b) paints all Sunni resisters as simply part of the worldwide network of “al-Qaeda”; and (c) implies that there is some fiendish confluence of interest between Iran and al-Qaeda. All of these are serious analytical mistakes that obstruct Joe’s ability to understand what’s going on in Iraq and help lead to his very misleading policy prescriptions. (2) True. But note point 1a above.
E.	On this point, let there be no doubt: If Iraq descends into full-scale civil war, it will be a tremendous battlefield victory for al-Qaeda and Iran. Iraq is the central front in the global and regional war against Islamic extremism.	Iraq is a vital locus for a much broader regional contest, certainly. But this contest is not simply– as Joe implies– a two-sided power struggle between “our” side (a.k.a., the “moderates”) and “Islamic extremism”. It’s a much more complex and nuanced struggle for regional influence involving a larger and ever-shifting caste of characters. Inside Iraq right now the main actors are, on the one hand, the US and its allies, and on the other, Iran and its allies (who are not all Shiites, and do not include all the Shiites.) Other significant actors in this power contest include: a range of Sunni groups spanning a broad and probably still fairly fluid spectrum from secular nationalists of a more Arabist or more Iraqist orientation, through indigenous-Iraqi Islamists, through a small number of foreign Islamists; the well-armed Kurdish parties; tribal networks, some of which cross national boundaries and even sectarian fault-lines; Israel (which should not be thought of as acting always with the same motivations as Washington); Turkey; various Saudi interests; and several other smaller powers and interests. Joe misses all this nuance and simply lumps all the “Islamic” actors together. And he argues on the basis of the assumption that there is no possibility for “the west” to reach any form of accomodation with Iran over Iraq. But the US has been able to maintain a sustained accomodation with Iran in Afghanistan, so why not in Iraq? Why the strong desire to sustain this– actually, deeply unsustainable– posture of “global and regional war” against Iran there?
F.	To turn around the crisis we need to send more American troops while we also train more Iraqi troops and strengthen the moderate political forces in the national government. After speaking with our military commanders and soldiers there, I strongly believe that additional U.S. troops must be deployed to Baghdad and Anbar province — an increase that will at last allow us to establish security throughout the Iraqi capital, hold critical central neighborhoods in the city, clamp down on the insurgency and defeat al-Qaeda in that province.	At the present stage of the breakdown of the pro-US order in Iraq, I judge that even doubling the number of US troops there could not achieve the tasks he delineates, and I don’t know of anyone whose opinion on strategic matters I admire who reaches any different conclusion. I know Holy Joe is a man of strong “beliefs”, but let’s have a facts-based not a beliefs-based approach to this question?
G.	In Baghdad and Ramadi, I found that it was the American colonels, even more than the generals, who were asking for more troops. In both places these soldiers showed a strong commitment to the cause of stopping the extremists. One colonel followed me out of the meeting with our military leaders in Ramadi and said with great emotion, “Sir, I regret that I did not have the chance to speak in the meeting, but I want you to know on behalf of the soldiers in my unit and myself that we believe in why we are fighting here and we want to finish this fight. We know we can win it.”	This is an interesting vignette, actually, since it strongly implies that this colonel had been sitting in a meeting in which his military superiors had been painting a far less than rosy picture of the military situation to their senatorial visitor. And then, this question of the pro-surge lower ranks who stand in contrast to the largely surge-reluctant top brass? Well, it depends who you talk to, doesn’t it? AP’s Will Weissert wrote from Baghdad yesterday that “Many of the American soldiers trying to quell sectarian killings in Baghdad … say the temporary surge in troop levels some people are calling for is a bad idea.” Basing his report on “dozens of interviews” with infantry soldiers as they patrolled the streets of eastern Baghdad, he found that, many said the Iraqi capital is embroiled in civil warfare between majority Shiite Muslims and Sunni Arabs that no number of American troops can stop. Others insisted current troop levels are sufficient and said any increase in U.S. presence should focus on training Iraqi forces, not combat. But their more troubling worry was that dispatching a new wave of soldiers would result in more U.S. casualties, and some questioned whether an increasingly muddled American mission in Baghdad is worth putting more lives on the line. These guys seem very realistic to me. I wonder how much recent patrolling experience Joe’s colonel there had had?
H.	In nearly four years of war, there have never been sufficient troops dispatched to accomplish our vital mission. The troop surge should be militarily meaningful in size, with a clearly defined mission. More U.S. forces might not be a guarantee of success in this fight, but they are certainly its prerequisite. Just as the continuing carnage in Baghdad empowers extremists on all sides, establishing security there will open possibilities for compromise and cooperation on the Iraqi political front — possibilities that simply do not exist today because of the fear gripping all sides. I saw firsthand evidence in Iraq of the development of a multiethnic, moderate coalition against the extremists of al-Qaeda and against the Mahdi Army, which is sponsored and armed by Iran and has inflamed the sectarian violence.⁽¹⁾ We cannot abandon these brave Iraqi patriots⁽²⁾ who have stood up and fought the extremists and terrorists.	(1) See B (1) above. Yes, I guess he did draft it before Sistani and Hakim threw a monkey-wrench into the isolate-Moqtada plot. Also, note the highly inaccurate use of the “moderates vs. extremists” discourse in this sentence. Is there any evidence at all that the coalition the US was trying to assemble ten days ago against Moqtada was more “moderate” or “multi-ethnic” than the anti-occupation alliance he has been trying to assemble? No. But the pro-US forces have to be called “the moderates” and the anti-US forces “the extremists”. That is the only real content of these terms in the official US parlance. (2) This concern expressed for the wellbeing of the puppet forces is exactly analogous to that expressed in pre-2000 Israel for the wellbeing of the puppet SLA people.
I.	The addition of more troops must be linked to a comprehensive new military, political and economic strategy that provides security for the population so that training of Iraqi troops and the development of a democratic government can move forward. In particular we must provide the vital breathing space for moderate Shiites and Sunnis to turn back the radicals in their communities. There are Iraqi political leaders who understand their responsibility to do this.⁽¹⁾ In Anbar province we have made encouraging progress in winning over local Sunni tribal leaders in the fight against al-Qaeda and other terrorists. With more troops to support them, our forces in Anbar and their Sunni allies can achieve a major victory over al-Qaeda.⁽²⁾	(1) See B (1) above. (2) Again, the Sunni insurgents in Anbar are described as mainly “al-Qaeda terrorists”, though with the one small, vague reference to “other” terrorists, as well. By ignoring the deeply Iraqi roots of the anti-occupation forces in Anbar (and elsewhere), Joe seriously mis-states the situation. Also, where is that “enocouraging progress” in Anbar? Show us, Joe!
J.	As the hostile regimes in Iran and Syria⁽¹⁾ appreciate — at times, it seems, more keenly than we do — failure in Iraq would be a strategic and moral catastrophe for the United States and its allies.⁽²⁾ Radical Islamist terrorist groups, both Sunni and Shiite, would reap victories simultaneously symbolic and tangible, as Iraq became a safe haven in which to train and strengthen their foot soldiers and Iran’s terrorist agents. Hezbollah and Hamas would be greatly strengthened against their moderate opponents. One moderate Palestinian leader told me⁽³⁾ that a premature U.S. exit from Iraq would be a victory for Iran and the groups it is supporting in the region. Meanwhile, the tens of thousands of Iraqis who have bravely stood with us in the hope of a democratic future would face the killing fields.⁽⁴⁾	(1) On what basis does he describe the regime in Syria as “hostile”? The U.S. is not in a state of war with Syria. Syria maintains a full embassy in DC, and the Syrian president repeatedly requests the US to resume the role it played in the 1990s in brokering a peace agreement with Israel. The Syrian regime has given non-trivial support to the US military campaign in Iraq and has cooperated in the broad campaign against jihadist terror groups– including by torturing suspects rendered to it by the US. Describing Syria as “hostile” is technically quite untrue– but it helps to fan the flames of US hatred and belligerency against it. Not coincidentally, a sizeable group of US neocons is still agitating for a US campaign of “regime change” in Syria. (2) The US has already failed in Iraq, though Holy Joe is unwilling to acknowledge this. This failure can still, however, be handled in a number of different ways: through serious, good-faith international negotiations that can minimize the damage suffered by the US and all other parties; or by delaying such negotiations, and thus making some kind of “catastrophe” all the more likely. The course he advocates is of the latteer type. (3) Unsubstantiated hearsay. I wonder which “moderate Palestinian leader” this was and why such a character is dragged into the argument at this point? Could it possibly be that Joe hopes that attributing this warning to a “moderate Palestinian” gives it more credibility than attributing it to one of the many friends and relatives Joe Lieberman has in Israel? Come to think of it, it’s altogether very weird that this particular senator, writing about the Middle East, doesn’t even mention Israel and its interests even once. This seems like a rather clear case of “the dog that didn’t bark.” Are you trying to hide something here, Joe? (4) See H (2) above.
K.	In Iraq today we have a responsibility to do what is strategically and morally right for our nation(1) over the long term — not what appears easier in the short term. The daily scenes of death and destruction are heartbreaking and infuriating. But there is no better strategic and moral alternative for America than standing with the moderate Iraqis(2) until the country is stable and they can take over their security. Rather than engaging in hand-wringing, carping or calls for withdrawal, we must summon the vision, will and courage to take the difficult and decisive steps needed for success and, yes, victory in Iraq.(3) That will greatly advance the cause of moderation and freedom throughout the Middle East(4) and protect our security at home.	(1) In general, I agree. However, the content of “what is right… for our nation” should certainly be open to discussion. I am strongly convinced that ending the occupation and entering into a new, more productive, respectful, and egalitarian relationship with all the rest of the nations of the world is to do “what is right for our nation”– as well as for the rest of the world. I judge, too, that if we follow the escalatory course Joe advocates it will be disastrous for us and for everyone else involved. So let’s have a little less of the certitude-based sermonizing here, and a bit more real analysis and reflection on, actually, what kind of a place do we want the US to occupy in the world. (2) Ah, those “moderates” again…. (3) Okay, so the senator is asking Americans to make a large-scale commitment to this escalation in Iraq. What is he, personally, prepared to contribute to this? Does he encrouage all his younger family members to enlist in the armed forces? Does he forthrightly tell his constituents that we will have to seriously raise taxes and cut government funding for social programs in order to sustain the military escalation he seeks? If I see him do these things, then I will have more respect for the sincerity of his views. Haven’t seen it yet. (4) “Moderation” (again)… and this time allied to the kind of “freedom” that’s exported on the tip of a cruise missile.