Category: US politics

Bush losing control of the agenda?

Sen. Bill Nelson (Dem., of Florida) is the first of four U.S. senators who plan to visit Syria over the congressional break. (The others are Kerry of Massachusetts, Dodd of Connecticut, and Spector of Pennsylvania. The first two dems, and Spector a Republican.)
Nelson is there now, and has met with Pres. Bashar al-Asad. After the meeting he called reporters in the US

    to say Assad was willing to help control the Iraq-Syrian border…
    “Assad clearly indicated the willingness to cooperate with the Americans and or the Iraqi army to be part of a solution” in Iraq, Nelson told reporters… The U.S. says foreign fighters often enter Iraq across that boundary.
    Syrian officials have indicated a willingness before to engage the U.S. in discussions about Iraq, which the Bush administration has treated with skepticism. Nelson said he viewed Assad’s remarks as “a crack in the door for discussions to continue. I approach this with ” to say Assad was willing to help control the Iraq-Syrian border.”

Bush spokesman Tony Snow-job is not happy that Nelson has gone to Damascus:

    “We don’t think that members of Congress ought to be going there,” White House press secretary Tony Snow said, adding that the United States continues to denounce Syria’s meddling in Lebanon and its ties to terrorist groups.
    Snow noted the existing diplomatic ties between U.S. and Syria. “I think it’s a real stretch to think the Syrians don’t know where we stand or what we think,” he said.

The AP reporter there, Anne Plummer Flaherty, noted that originally the State Department had tried to dissuade Nelson from making his trip. But he said he

    ultimately received logistical support from the State Department in what he called a “fact-finding trip” across the Middle East, being transported by embassy officials from Jordan’s capital city of Amman to Damascus. Prior to heading to Damascus, Nelson met with top Israeli and Palestinian officials; in coming days, he plans to visit Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain and Iraq.
    Nelson said he was not interested visiting Iran “at this time” and did not say why.
    However, the senator did say that he raised the issue of a nuclear-armed Iran to Assad, saying “he ought to understand that that’s not only a threat to him, Syria, but to the entire world. . . . He took note,” Nelson said.
    The senator said he also expressed to the Syrian leader the problems caused by Hezbollah and Hamas and urged Assad to support the release of captured Israeli soldiers. Nelson said the Syrian president responded by saying
    Israel had 20 Syrians in captivity, one of whom died recently from leukemia.
    The senator shrugged off suggestions he was challenging Bush’s authority by sidestepping administration policy that the U.S. have no contact with Syrian officials.
    “I have a constitutional role as a member of Congress,” Nelson said.
    Meanwhile, Bush criticized Damascus anew and called on it to free all political prisoners…

Yes, I’d like the government of Syria to free all its political prisoners. But I’d also like President Bush to free– or bring before a fair tribunal– all the political prisoners held by the US. That includes the 450-plus people held at Guantanamo, some 7,000 or so reported prisoners held by the US in Iraq, and others held in secret CIA detention facilities in Bagram, Afghanistan, and elsewhere.
I note that many of the people held in Guantanamo have now been deprived of their liberty for more than five years without having any charges brought against them,. and have been subject to often terrible abuse and/or outright torture at the hands of their captors…
Be that as it may… I think a big part of the picture here is that Bush is fairly rapidly losing the capacity he has exercized since January 2001, to completely control the US national agenda and the workings of all three branches of the US government (ok, the Supreme Court only since Justice O’Connor’s resignation last year… But she and the rest of ’em gave him a mighty nice prresent back in December 2000, if you recall.)
Here, anyway, is a little of what Syria’s ambassador to Washington Imad Moustapha wrote in the op-ed he had in the WaPo on Sunday:

    if the Bush administration comes to realize that truly engaging consists of an honest dialogue in which all parties are involved, then positive results will be possible — for Iraq, the United States, Syria and the entire region.
    Contrary to what many in Washington believe, past Syrian-American collaboration has yielded many beneficial outcomes, a fact that several former U.S. officials could confirm. These include, among other things, Syrian cooperation on the Middle East peace process, on al-Qaeda and, yes, on Iraq.
    What motivates Syria to engage on Iraq? Let us be clear: Syria is not looking for a “deal” with the U.S. administration on any issue. The situation in Iraq is a matter of paramount concern to Syria, particularly the unprecedented levels of death and destruction and the possibility of Iraq’s disintegrating, which would have terrible repercussions for the entire Middle East.
    Thus Syria has the will and the capacity to assist in Iraq. This help is imperative to Syrian national interests. Syria can cooperate on security issues with the Iraqis and can give considerable support to their political process. The visit of our foreign minister to Baghdad, and the resumption of diplomatic ties between Damascus and Baghdad after a 25-year lapse, clearly illustrates our commitment to a free, peaceful and unified Iraq.
    But Syria recognizes that no magical solution exists to instantaneously achieve the desired objectives. A rigorous and comprehensive approach is required. This approach should include a reconsideration of U.S. policy in Iraq, starting with the recognition of the necessity to include all parties involved: neighboring countries and all factions of the Iraqi political and social spectrum.
    No party should feel defeated or excluded. All stakeholders in the future of Iraq should feel that it is in their own interest to help stabilize the situation.
    A solution should also include U.S. acknowledgment that the majority of Iraqis regard the occupation as only exacerbating the situation and causing further violence and instability. A U.S. plan for withdrawal should be on the table. Only such a step will prove to the various parties involved that the United States genuinely plans to return Iraq to the Iraqis.

This position looks very compatible with the recommendations of the ISG.
The idea of dealing constructively with Syria is, of course, completely anathema to most US neocons, who still want to keep the administration pointed toward “regime change” in Damascus. (Just what the world doesn’t need: another US military-political offensive, leading to the destabilization of yet another significant Middle Eastern power.) These neocons, operating out of Cheney’s office and elsewhere, have gotten Bush so much in their grip that when, toward the end of Israekl’s 33-day war against Hizbullah in the summer some Israelis started suggesting that perhaps Israel should start to revive its peace talks with Syria as a way of stabilizing the region some, they reported that they received a big slapdown from the Bushites.
Can you believe that? That US officials would be actively discouraging the Israelis from engaging in exploratory peace feelers with Syria?
There is also the point of view heard among some conseravtives (as exeplified in this op-ed in today’s CSM by John Hughes) that urges, in a kind of faux-Machiavellian bravado, that okay, well maybe the Syrians are really bad, “but we could get some leverage by trying to split them off from the Iranians.”
To which all I can say is: Ain’t going to happen.
I don’t know if perhaps Nelson or some of the other Senators visiting Damascus may be trying to test that “split them from the Iranians” approach. Well fine, if they want to try. But more important than pushing that particular line, they would do much better to sit down and brainstorm with the Syrians what they, the Iranians, and all the other powers neighboring Iraq can do to work with Iraqis and Americans to avoid a complete catastrophe from enveloping everyone in the region.
And yes, that includes the 147,000 US troops now in Iraq. Look for my CSM column on the topic tomorrow.

Bush’s poll numbers plummet…

… especially regarding his handling of Iraq polisy.
That’s the main finding of this nationwide poll conducted yesterday for the WaPo/ABC News polling organization.
Qun 2 (a) asked “Do you approve or disapprove of the way Bush is handling the situation in Iraq?
Answers:

    Strongly disapprove– 57%
    Somewhat disapprove– 13%
    (Total disapprove)– 70%
    Strongly approve– 12%
    Somewhat approve– 16%
    (Total approve)– 28%

Regarding approval/disapproval of his general job performance, he got 49% “Strongly disapprove” and 13% “Somewhat disapprove”, for a total of 62%.
On the ABC News broadcast tonight, George Stephanopoulos commented that the high numbers for strong disapproval are quite remarkable.
I think what has probably been happening is that over the past 12-18 months a lot of US citizens have become increasingly uneasy over the stalemate and quagmire in Iraq– but as we know, there really hasn’t been a clear and compelling opposition party here crystallizing and legitimizing that disquiet. But the ISG report now seems to have had a significant effect in doing that. Total “disapproval” for Bush’s Iraq policy has never run higher than 66% before now….
I mean, Baker is perhaps easy enough to deride as just another corrupt old oilman (though personally, I think he has a lot more to him than that.) But Lee Hamilton? How could anyone ever doubt the considered judgment of this courtly, very experienced old straight-arrow guy from Indiana? He certainly has gravitas, in spades.
Further down in the same poll:

    Qu. 26: “Given what you’ve heard and read, overall do you support or oppose the Iraq Study Group report?” Support– 46%; Oppose– 22%; No opinion– 32%.
    Qu. 32 (based on half the sample so far): “Some people say (the United States should include direct talks with Syria as part of a regional dialogue about the situation in Iraq because Syria has influence in the region). Others say (the United States should not directly engage with Syria because the U.S. has identified Syria as a sponsor of terrorism.) What do you think? Do you think the United States should or should not hold direct talks with Syria about the situation in Iraq?” Should include Syria– 58%; Should not directly engage with Syria– 37%; No opinion– 5%
    Qu. 33 (half sample): “Some people say (the United States should include direct talks with Iran as part of a regional dialogue about the situation in Iraq because Iran has influence in the region). Others say (the United States should not directly engage with Iran because the US has identified Iran as a sponsor of terrorism and because of Iran’s nuclear program.) What do you think? Do you think the United States should or should not hold direct talks with Iran about the situation in Iraq?” Should include Iran– 57%; Should not directly engage with Iran– 41%; No opinion– 2%.

Good, so the US citizenry is far smarter than the pro-Olmert propagandists give them credit for.
One other point– which I know I should have mentioned earlier but I can’t find a link for it….
As JWN readers doubtless already know, the Prez has spent the past few days earnestly trailing around Washington DC trying to look as though he knows what he’s doing as he “searches” for the best policy on Iraq– and he has seemed very determined to find one that is as different as possible from the ones the ISG has been recommending…. His people had been promising that the will make what’s billed as a “major policy speech” on Iraq sometime before Christmas.
But now, that project may have been delayed by a couple of further weeks. On the ABC News broadcast this evening George S. reported that the Prez had been quite eager to follow the advice he’s been receiving from retired Army General Jack Keane– that he should plan to have a “surge” of some 40,000 additional forces deployed in Iraq for a while, in order to win what Keane called a “decisive victory”.
(Where does Gen. Keane get these crazy ideas, anyway? Decisive? Victory?? What is he smoking?)
But apparently– still according to ABC– the generals on the ground in Iraq and in Centcom don’t like Keane’s surge idea at all. I guess that means they really don’t see what good it could do, and meantime it would just mean that many more vulnerable US soldiers to worry about…
So Bush is now reportedly going to delay making a decision on that pending further consultations… So there might not be any significant shift in policy until January. If then.
Meanwhile, 63 people were killed in a single suicide bomb attack in Baghdad today… and yesterday, UN Special Representative in Iraq Ashraf Jehangir Qazi told the Security Council that “The violence seems out of control.” I can’t imagine how those poor people in Iraq are coping with all this.

ISG report causing fissures in GOP

Lots happening in the world and I’ve been busy doing (gasp!) non-blog things. So I’ll throw together a couple of shorts here before going to get some rest..
First up: the continuing fallout from the ISG report, inside US politics. John Broder and Robin Toner have a good round-up in Sunday’s NYT of the very divisive effect the report has been having within the GOP:

    A document that many in Washington had hoped would pave the way for a bipartisan compromise on Iraq instead drew sharp condemnation from the right, with hawks saying it was a wasted effort that advocated a shameful American retreat.
    The Wall Street Journal’s editorial page described the report as a “strategic muddle,” Richard Perle called it “absurd,” Rush Limbaugh labeled it “stupid,” and The New York Post portrayed the leaders of the group, former Secretary of State James A. Baker III and Lee H. Hamilton, a former Democratic member of Congress, as “surrender monkeys.”
    Republican moderates clung to the report, mindful of the drubbing the party received in last month’s midterm elections largely because of Iraq. They said they hoped President Bush would adopt the group’s principal recommendations and begin the process of disengagement from the long and costly war. But White House officials who conducted a preliminary review of the report said they had concluded that many of the proposals were impractical or unrealistic.
    The divisions could make it more difficult for Republicans to coalesce on national security policy and avoid a bitter intraparty fight going into the 2008 campaign.
    Senator John McCain of Arizona, a leading candidate for the Republican presidential nomination, rejected the major recommendations of the group because they did not present a formula for victory. Mr. McCain, hoping to claim the Republican mantle on national security issues, has staked out a muscular position on Iraq, calling for an immediate increase in American forces to try to bring order to Baghdad and crush the insurgency.
    …[T]he debate will go to the heart of the party’s identity — and its image as the party of strength on national security — after Mr. Bush’s aggressive post-Sept. 11 foreign policy brought electoral successes in 2002 and 2004 but was profoundly challenged by voters this year.
    … Republicans are already engaged in soul-searching over the results of the recent election, trying to figure out how the party can regain the faith of the American people on questions of war and peace.
    The ambivalence and introspection were summed up by Senator Gordon H. Smith of Oregon, who spoke at length in the Senate this week about the dangers of withdrawing from Iraq but said he could no longer support the status quo.
    “I, for one, am at the end of my rope when it comes to supporting a policy that has our soldiers patrolling the same streets in the same way, being blown up by the same bombs day after day,” Mr. Smith said. “That is absurd. It may even be criminal. I cannot support that anymore. I believe we need to figure out how to fight the war on terror and to do it right. So either we clear and hold and build, or let’s go home.”
    The frustration was widespread among Congressional Republicans, some of whom were serving their final days in office this week after an election largely influenced by the public’s unhappiness with the war.

Here’s some more about Sen. Smith, from his home-state’s leading paper, The Oregonian: An editorial there commented that in making his statement in the Senate Thursday night, Smith,

    broke ranks with such hawks as Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., and the president himself. He placed himself among such colleagues as Sen. Carl Levin, D-Mich., and Rep. John Murtha, D-Pa., who have said the United States must withdraw from Iraq as quickly as possible.
    While Smith used blunt language — “let’s cut and run, or cut and walk, or let us fight the war on terror more intelligently than we have” — his remarks didn’t signal as abrupt a break as it might have appeared.
    He acknowledged Thursday that he had voted to allow the president to invade, that he had hoped U.S. forces would find secret caches of weapons of mass destruction, that he was thrilled by the toppling of the statue of Saddam Hussein and was heartened by the way Iraqis turned out to vote three times in national elections.
    But after he visited Oregon National Guard troops near Kirkuk in March last year, he said, “We can be a counterproductive force for Iraqi democracy if we are there longer than is necessary. My own hunch is somewhere between 18 months to two years, the American presence in Iraq will be much reduced.”
    It’s been 18 months and the presence hasn’t been reduced at all. Nor is a functional central government much closer to asserting itself. Nor is the Iraqi economy any stronger. Nor are U.S. troops dying any less frequently. And more Iraqis are being killed each month than ever.
    As a partial explanation for why he chose to speak now, Smith harked back to his visit to the Kirkuk region. He said one soldier told him: “Senator, don’t tell me you support the troops and not our mission.” That, the senator said, gave him pause.
    But 18 months later, with billions of dollars flushed away, thousands more bodies under the ground and no end in sight, the senator’s pause is over.
    His comments strengthen his hand in advance of his 2008 re-election campaign. They would seem to place him closer to the position of voters who kicked his party out of power last month and certainly closer to the sentiments of most of blue-state Oregon.
    But personal political calculations aside, the timing of Smith’s remarks helped to increase the pressure on President Bush to break with his policies of the last 18 months. The election results, the ouster of Donald Rumsfeld as defense secretary in favor of a man who says America is not winning in Iraq and the arrival of the Iraq Study Group report make this a propitious moment in our political history.
    It is a moment when the president must acknowledge what is obvious even to his former supporters in the U.S. Senate. It is time to reset American policy in Iraq and throughout the Middle East.
    There is more virtue in admitting a mistake than there is in repeating it, over and over.

Well said.

Why I welcome the ISG report

The
ISG report,
released yesterday, did not urge two of the key steps that
I consider essential
if the US is to be able to undertake a troop withdrawal from Iraq that
is orderly, speedy, total, and generous.  It did not urge that President
Bush publicly specify a deadline or timetable for the completion of the US
withdrawal. And it did not urge giving the key role in sponsoring the diplomacy
required to allow this withdrawal to the U.N….  However what it did recommend
was a quantum-leap improvement over the policies still being publicly stated
by the President (and also, over what many of the congressional democrats
have been advocating.)

I consider it extremely important that this document, endorsed unanimously by
this high-level, bipartisan group, came out openly and made statements as
forthright (and true) as the following:

“The situation in Iraq is grave and deteriorating. There is no
path that can guarantee success… Violence [in Iraq] is increasing in scope
and lethality.”(xiii)

“If current trends continue, the potential consequences are severe” (ix)

 “If the situation continues to deteriorate, the consequences could
be severe. A slide toward chaos could trigger the collapse of Iraq’s government
and a humanitarian catastrophe. Neighboring countries could intervene. Sunni-Shia
clashes could spread. Al Qaeda could win a propaganda victory and expand its
base of operations.” (xiv)

“Given the ability of Iran and Syria to influence events within Iraq and
their interest in avoiding chaos in Iraq, the United States should try to
engage them constructively.”(xv)

“The United States cannot achieve its goals in the Middle East unless it
deals directly with the Arab-Israeli conflict and regional instability. There
must be a renewed and sustained commitment by the United States to a comprehensive
Arab- Israeli peace on all fronts.”(xv)

“Current U.S. policy is not working, as the level of violence in Iraq is
rising and the government is not advancing national reconciliation. Making
no changes in policy would simply delay the day of reckoning at a high cost.”(p.38)

The ISG report is not perfect.  But in understanding its imperfections
(as well as its achievements) it’s important to understand what it is, and
what it is not.  What it is, is primarily a very high-level and serious
intervention inside US politics.  From that point of view, it
is barely “about” Iraq at all.  It is much more “about” this group of
senior statespeople trying to grab hold of the wheel of the ship of (the American)
state and slowly drag this lumbering great vessel away from a course that
has been– and still is, to this day– most evidently headed towards a disaster.
 A disaster for all the parties concerned: Americans, Iraqis,
the neighbors of Iraq…  And though I completely understand that it
has always been the Iraqis who have suffered the most from the terrible consequences
of the actions undertaken inside their country by the US military, still, at
this point it is the US government that has the greatest capability to affect
the course of events inside Iraq; so if we want to stop the terrible bloodletting
there the first thing we (US citizens and others) need to do is do
everything in our capacity to change the policies that have until been blindly
pursued by the Bush administration.

Of course, if we had anything like a robust parliamentary system here in
the US, or at the very least a functioning multi-party system, then we could
have expected the kinds of recommendation now being made by the ISG to have
been advocated very forcefully throughout the past 18 months or more by
the opposition party.  But we don’t.  We have had– and still,
until the inauguration of the new Congress will continue to have– a completely
sclerotic and dysfunctional one-party system.  And what’s more,
even once the Democrats come in as the majority party in both Houses of Congress
on January 1, we can know that they won’t be much better than the Republicans
on such key aspects of the policy towards Iraq as the need for diplomacy with powers like Iran and Syria; the need for urgent,  even-handed
engagement in Israeli-Arab peacemaking; or even on troop levels, etc…  So
this is what we have had instead: a high-level, “senior statespeoples’ group” convened
back in March at the initiative of a generally quiet Republican Conghressman
from Northern Virginia called Frank Wolf, who had been shocked by what he
saw in Iraq when he made his third post-invasion visit to the country in September
2005.

For my part, of course I’m disappointed that the ISG didn’t go that important
bit further and endorse both a much stronger role for the UN, and the announcement
of a fixed timetable for the US troop withdrawal from Iraq.

Interestingly,
this
report in today’s WaPo tells us that the most serious threat to the unanimity
that marked the group’s final position came precisely over the deadline issue.
 The WaPo reporters cite unnamed “insiders” as saying that ISG member
Bill Perry– a Clinton-era Defense Secretary– had threatened not to sign off on the final
document unless it specified such a deadline.  But–

Former secretary of state James A. Baker III resisted a firm
date, wanting to leave that to the president.

“I’m not going to sign anything that is going to paper over the problem,”
Perry said.

“Well, if that’s the case, that’s the case,” Baker replied.

In the end, though, Baker and Perry walked off together to settle their
differences rather than let them split the commission. With suggestions from
other members, they crafted careful language that they both could support,
a recommendation to pull out nearly all U.S. combat units by early 2008 —
a goal, not a timetable, but a date nonetheless.

So yes, I’m a bit disappointed.  But the much larger point here is
that the ISG has spelled out clearly that there is no possibility of a military
“victory” in Iraq, and that the US’s continued engagement there is inflicting
serious, continuing damage on our citizenry’s interests. (This is, of course,
the classic definition of a “quagmire”.)  Therefore, they rightly conclude
that the administration has to find a way to get the US troops out of the
quagmire that Iraq has become.  And as cool realists capable of
reading and understanding maps (which perhaps our president is not), they all
understand quite fully that no such withdrawal can be contemplated without also having a plan to win the approval of major Iraqi neighbors as Iran, Turkey, Syria,
and Saudi Arabia to the withdrawal plan.

Hence the need for negotiations…

Continue reading “Why I welcome the ISG report”

Zelikow resigning, Charlottesville-bound

In a surprise move, our old neighbor Philip Zelikow announced yesterday that he’ll be resigning from his job as “counsellor” to Condi Rice, and returning to teach at the University of Virginia.
With all due respect to Phil, a historian and a very smart and ambitious person of the “realist” school of political thought, the reason he gave for this sudden resignation– that he needed to think about making enough to pay college tuition for his children– is inherently non-credible. (Actually, I think his kids are still far below college age.)
So what’s the story?
The NYT account linked to above indicates there is likely a connection between the resignation and a speech Phil made to a strongly pro-Israeli group in Washington two months ago, in which he,

    said progress on the Arab-Israeli dispute was a ‘sine qua non’ in order to get moderate Arabs “to cooperate actively with the United States on a lot of other things that we care about.”

That speech, as the NYT’s Helene Cooper noted, “ruffled the feathers of American Jewish groups and Israeli officials.” But then again, as she also notes, “the administration may soon be doing what Mr. Zelikow advised, starting a renewed push for a Middle East peace initiative, in part to shore up support in the Arab world for providing help in Iraq…”
Cooper fleshes out the latter topic in this larger piece in the paper. And there, she makes clear that though the Bushites are indeed making an intensive push to win the support of their “traditional” Arab friends– primarily Jordan, Egypt, and Saudi Arabia– for their policy in Iraq, they still seem adamantly opposed to trying to involve either Syria or Iran in this campaign. (More on this in another post.)
So, I surmise that the president’s decision at this time not to do the “realist” thing of trying to work with Syria and Iran may have been one of the precipitating causes for Zelikow’s departure.
I note, too, that there were some rumors swirling around recently to the effect that, in his push for a better, more realistic Middle East policy, the President might be asking Zelikow to replace that ideological old ultra-Zionist and troublemaker Elliot Abrams as the principal Middle East staff person on the National Security Council staff. That evidently has not happened.
Maybe Phil had really wanted that job– or at least, had really wanted to get Abrams out of it– and had failed in that attempt, and that led him to resign? That is another possibility.
How much of a “realist” is Phil Zelikow? Well, if you read Bob Woodward’s latest tome, you’ll see references to Phil having been sent by Condi to Iraq on a number of different fact-finding missions since he went to DC to work for her in I think February 2005. And each time he would nose around and find out a lot of the murky underside, chaos, and outright failures that were occurring in Iraq, and would report them back to her. (I can’t lay my hand on our copy right now. I imagine the spouse has it somewhere… Anyway, you get my general gist.) He certainly never drank the ideological Kool-Aid.
Helene Cooper reports on this short exchange she had with him Monday:

    Mr. Zelikow disputed suggestions that he was more of a political realist than an ideologue, calling it a “false dichotomy.”
    “I think the issue of ideals is important, but ideals that are not practically attainable” end up hurting more than helping, he said. “You don’t end up strengthening your ideals when you fail to attain them.”

That’s an excellent point.
It is bad news, in my book, if this very sensible person sees something in the present direction of US policy that has forced him to resign. (Though nice, of course, that he’s coming back to C-ville. Welcome back, the Zelikows.)

Exit Rumsfeld

The second great piece of news of the day: Rumsfeld’s resignation.
Jeff Severns Guntzel of Electronic Iraq writes, quite correctly:

    Rumsfeld is a symbol of failure in Iraq just as he is a symbol of a history of convenient relationships between the United States and the kinds of tyrants it often claims to deplore.
    And Rumsfeld, the symbol, it must be remembered, is not the thing symbolized. The thing symbolized is arrogant imperial ambition and self-serving international actions. Those things are very much present in Washington whether Rumsfeld is there or not.

Tony Karon of Rootless Cosmopolitan makes this excellent point:

    instead of admitting and reckoning with the fact that the war they advocated was a catastrophically bad idea, everyone from neocon hacks to flip-flopping Democrats, Bob Woodward (arch channeler of White House sources) and the self-styled “liberal hawks” of the chattering classes, like Peter Beinart and George Packer, have signed on to the notion that it was a good war, the right war, executed badly, because Rumsfeld adhered to some bizarre capital-intensive theory of warfare. In other words, if Rumsfeld had simply sent more troops, the outcome would have been different.
    And that narrative, which the White House itself appears to have adopted in the wake of its midterm electoral drubbing, is a self-serving evasion. Indeed, the “blame Rumsfeld for Iraq” chorus reminds me of nothing as much as listening to Trotskyists trying to rescue Bolshevism by blaming its grotesque consequences on Stalin’s “implementation” rather than on its inner logic…

I agree with (what I think is) Tony’s point, that it was not the implementation of the war (by Rumsfeld) that was faulty but the decision to launch the war at all, in the first place.
However, I note that Rumsfeld did play a key role in making the invasion of Iraq seem logistically and politically do-able to the neophyte President back in late 2001. That was through his ardent advocacy of the “small swift force” approach– an approach that promised to “deliver” the overthrow of Saddam Hussein almost by stealth, in comparison with what an advocate of Colin Powell’s doctrine of amassing absolutely overwhelming military force before invading would have required.
The two men to whom Bush looked for complete guidance in these matters in late 2001 were the Secretary of Defense and the Vice-Prez. If they had told him that assembling a Powell-type heavy force was the only way to even try an invasion of Iraq it is much, much more likely that the Prez would have been deterred from trying, for these reasons:

    Firstly, assembling such a force would have required much more and more explicit notification of, consultation with, and indeed the explicit permission of Congress. That would have involved having exactly the same kind of potentially bruising public debate over the war that Bush Sr. had in December 1990. That time, Bush Sr. just managed to win the war-enabling resolution But if Bush Jr. had tried to get the same kind of resolution authorizing the assembling and possible use of a large invasion force in 2002, he would have been far, far less likely to win that debate.
    Secondly, assembling a Powell-type force in 2002 would clearly have been seen back then as constituting a massive diversion from the ongoing task in Afghanistan. As it was, Rumsfeld and Cheney were able to persuade Bush that the US military could do both… with the outcome we now see in both countries, these four years later….
    Thirdly, assembling a Powell-type force would have required much more explicit permission from other governments. The Saudis, Kuwaitis, Qataris, etc sort of turned a blind eye as Rumsfeld’s stealth force build-up gradually eased its way across their territories. But assembling a Powell-type force would have required winning the explicit approval of these governments, and therefore, most likely, also a UN resolution…

Therefore, while I agree with Tony Karon that the war was not totally “Rumsfeld’s fault”, still I think that by actively hawking and pursuing his long-held concept of the “light, fast forces” he played a crucial role making the invasion of Iraq possible at all…
Anyway, Rumsfeld is now gone. I’m assuming Gates is positioned to act as a “good manager” at the Pentagon. (Something Runsfeld notably was not.) Let’s hope Gates is also much more of a strategic realist than Rumsfeld was.
However, before anyone celebrates Rumsfeld’s departure too much we need to remember that Unca Dick is still sitting there in the Vice-Presidency– and quite unmovably so, absent some kind of dire medical emergency…

Prolonged electoral cliffhanger here in Virginia

So it looks as if we’re headed for a lengthy process of recounting the votes here in Virginia.
At 9:04 this morning, AP was reporting that our Democratic Senate candidate Jim Webb had 49.6 percentof the 2.33 million votes counted here, while GOP incumbent George Allen had 49.3 percent. That was with 99% of the votes counted.
Allen has not conceded yet, and is likely to demand a recount. If he does this, as this ABC News web-page makes clear, he can’t even start the process till November 28– and “we will likely not know the results until mid-December.”
The Dems need to win the Senate races in both Virginia and Montana (another close call, as of now) if they are to win control of the whole Senate…
But– we’ve already won control of the House!!!.
This is due, obviously, to a number of factors… Including the mounting surge of disgust with Bush’s war in Iraq. (Which knocked out of office even that very decent man Sen. Lincoln Chafee of Rhode Island, I see. That, purely because of his formal GOP party affiliation– though Chafee has been an important voice of conscience against the war and even against the president on many issues… )
Another factor is, I think, the great discipline and political smarts of Nancy Pelosi, the person now destined to be the first woman Speaker of the House of Representatives!
Well done, Ms. Pelosi!
What can we expect from this political upheaval? The main thing, I would say, would be some serious efforts by at least one house of Congress to start to hold the Bush administration accountable for some of its many, many misdeeds in Iraq and elsewhere.
That will include– finally– authoritative hearings to look into many past policies and misdemeanours including contracting scandals in Iraq, the CIA’s use of secret prisons and torture, etc etc…
Hallelujah!
What we can’t expect, obviously, is much radical change in this administration’s policy going forward– though with a Democratic House of Representatives now looking over their shoulders the Bushites are going to have to be a lot more collegial and a lot less secretive and manipulative in what they do.
Will the Dems bring forward their own Iraq policy? This could be a trap for them, getting too closely engaged in a national policy there that is already, clearly, failing. But they will need to get engaged to some degree, and should figure out their own terms for doing so.
Back here, in mid-September (when I first started allowing myself to hope that the Dems might win control of at least one house of Congress) I started thinking about the substance of what the Democrats might and should push for, if they won one or both Houses. At that point, I was already impressed with some of what Jim Webb had been saying about the war. I still am, and strongly, strongly hope he makes it through the upcoming recount.
I also wrote:

    I welcome a lot of what Webb says. But I still think we need better, more forthright, and more visionary leaders in this country: people who are prepared to stand up openly and recognize that the US needs to have good relations with a strong and respected UN, and needs, too, to find a way to negotiate the differences it still has outstanding with Iran.
    Whatever happened to the old idea in diplomacy that if you have a concern about the policies of another power, then you find a way to discuss them? Since when did this idea take root that, if you disagree strongly with any other party, then you should totally quarantine and seek to exclude them from the discourse?
    So I guess for me, these are two key touchstones of the way the US political discourse on international issues needs to change: (1) we need to reinstate the UN as a vital political player, and a body with which the US seeks to work closely on the international scene, and (2) we need to reinstate the idea that if you have concerns with another government (or nongovernmental party) then it is nearly always better to try to discuss those concerns directly, rather than to stigmatize and quarantine that other.

I still think that.
I also warn everyone that a Democratic-controlled house or houses of Congress is likely to have almost exactly the same, completely Israelo-centric policy on Israel-Palestine issues as the Bush administration has pursued up until now. On this issue and on many others– including Iraq– we in the peace movement are going to have to keep up the pressure on our friends in the Democratic Party.

Mutiny at the Military Times?

What would Hawkeye think of this!? Independent thinking at the Army Times?
The Military Times Media – the publisher of the papers avidly read by millions of American military service men and women and their families – has summoned up its collective courage and editorialized upon the man at the top of the Pentagon. First reported by NBC, the Army Times and its partner military weeklies have released the full text of their Monday editorials calling for….

the removal of Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld.

No kidding.
Here’s the direct Army Times link

… all along, Rumsfeld has assured us that things are well in hand.
Now, the president says he’ll stick with Rumsfeld for the balance of his term in the White House.
This is a mistake. It is one thing for the majority of Americans to think Rumsfeld has failed. But when the nation’s current military leaders start to break publicly with their defense secretary, then it is clear that he is losing control of the institution he ostensibly leads.
These officers have been loyal public promoters of a war policy many privately feared would fail. (e.g., They drank the Kool-aid too. — w.s.h.) They have kept their counsel private, adhering to more than two centuries of American tradition of subordination of the military to civilian authority.
And although that tradition, and the officers’ deep sense of honor, prevent them from saying this publicly, more and more of them believe it.
Rumsfeld has lost credibility with the uniformed leadership, with the troops, with Congress and with the public at large. His strategy has failed, and his ability to lead is compromised. And although the blame for our failures in Iraq rests with the secretary, it will be the troops who bear its brunt.
This is not about the midterm elections. Regardless of which party wins Nov. 7, the time has come, Mr. President, to face the hard bruising truth:
Donald Rumsfeld must go.

Amazing…. So far, no comment from the Pentagon or the man himself.
No doubt Limbaugh, Hannity, O’Reilly, Coulter, et.al. will be demanding the government cut off ties to the Military Times Media (owned since 1997 by Gannett) – or “embed” it back directly under the Pentagon. (say, under the “Office of Special Propaganda”) Or they will interview indignant gung-ho spouses saying the papers have “betrayed” their loved ones – that they’re “not supporting the troops.”
To the contrary, I am rather impressed that the editorial begins with a half century old quote from correspondent Marguerite Higgins:

“So long as our government requires the backing of an aroused and informed public opinion … it is necessary to tell the hard bruising truth.”

Scary Politics: “What happens if we lose?”

We survived Halloween. No October Surprises; No Gulf of Tonkin incidents manufactured to start another war in the Persian Gulf – yet.
Meanwhile, the political air here in America has been especially “thick.” I presently anticipate a significant defeat for Republicans in Congress. Like so many others who once thought themselves conservative, my political loyalties have been increasingly “independent.” Taken over by neoconservative transplants from the Democrats, today’s Republican leadership is as recognizable to me now as Dick Cheney is to Brent Scowcroft.
My favorite US Presidential pick for 2008 might still be Sen. Chuck Hagel (R-Neb) – though he disappointed me with his recent vote on on the detainee “treatment” bill – the one that tossed away Habeas Corpus. But this year here in Virginia, I’m more impressed with the major Democratic candidates.
One of my Jefferson Fellow colleagues, a sharp young English chap with a Ph.D. from Oxford, thinks quite the opposite – anticipating a November surprise wherein the Republicans will retain control of both Houses. He thinks the President’s “simple strategy” of painting the Democrats as “soft on terror” will remain the “brilliant” winning ticket.
Maybe I’m guilty of letting my hopes – for a return to a government of checks and balances, one that gives a hoot about the Constitution – get in the way of my analysis. Perhaps. We’ll see who gets humbled more next Tuesday; which one of us gets to feel like Charlie Brown trusting Lucy with the (political) football.
In my corner, I take some support from a Sunday essay written by a top former Republican Congressional Leader, Dick Army – of the “Contract with/on America” fame – which I think could be a first cut for his party’s obituary. Notice though that Army focuses on his party having strayed from first principles of smaller government. Little mention is made of it losing its way abroad – my most severe gripe with the party.
I chatted Tuesday with Mitch Van Yahres, a local Democrat icon in Charlottesville, the “conscience of the House” who recently retired from long service as a Virginia Delegate. Van Yahres shared my sense that a political ‘tsunami is in the works, even as he counted ways something might go awry.
Yet he stopped me in my tracks with a cheerfully presented, yet chilling Halloween thought:
“What happens if we lose? — What if the Republicans retain control of everything?”

Continue reading “Scary Politics: “What happens if we lose?””

Anti-GOP disgust surging high enough?

In a column in yesterday’s NYT, Paul Krugman argued– in my view, convincingly– that the relationship between opinion poll results and the results of the upcoming congressional elections is not really a linear one. And while many commentators have said that the Democrats might have “just enough” votes to get a narrow win in one of the houses of Congress, Krugman thinks it more likely that either the Dems will “just fail” to do that– or, their support might be sufficient to surge over all the levees the GOP has secured itself with until now, bringing about a much stronger democratic showing than anyone else has yet forecast.
He gave some good reasons, based on electoral districting issues, for this prediction. I should add that we also need much stronger reassurance than we now have that the electronic voting machines most jurisdictions will be using will record the actual votes cast, and are not subject to tampering. One of the main producers of these machines, Diebold, is a big supporter of the GOP.
… Anyway, the poll numbers continue to portend good news for the Democrats. Even Fox News is reporting the Dems’ numbers have gone up– from 41% to 50%– over the past month. The GOP numbers reportedly rose from 38% to 41% in that same period. As you might surmise, the number of “undecideds” has dropped steeply.
And today, reading the WaPo was an amazing experience. (I only got home yesterday, after five days in NYC. While I was there I didn’t read the WaPo closely– just a few key articles online.) Nearly the whole front half of today’s paper was a catalogue of now-being-exposed Republican misdeeds.
Like this piece, which gave us a timely update about the fate of Ohio GOP congressman Robert Ney who “pleaded guilty yesterday to corruption charges arising from the influence-peddling investigation of lobbyist Jack Abramoff,” as part of a plea bargain with federal prosecutors. The story said that Ney, appearing before a federal judge in DC,

    admitted performing official acts for lobbyists in exchange for campaign contributions, expensive meals, luxury travel and skybox sports tickets. Ney also admitted taking thousands of dollars in gambling chips from an international businessman who sought his help with the State Department.

Sentencing will be January 19. The government is recommending he get 27 months in prison.
But here’s another wrinkle. Ney– who for the past month has been hiding from reporters and the public with an “I’m in rehab for alcohol addiction” claim– has said he he won’t resign from the House before November 7. The party system in the US is so weak that there’s no way, it seems, for the GOP leadership to “force” him to resign. Party leaders, claiming embarrassment, told the WaPo reporters that if Ney does not resign, then in the “rump” session of Congress held after the election they will move to get a congressional vote to expel him from the House.
… And then, there is more news about the Mark Foley congressional-“page” harrassment scandal. Foley, a discredited GOP Congressman from Florida, has also pulled the “I’m a recovering alcohol who needs privacy for my rehab” trick since his harrassment of pages was revealed a couple of weeks ago.
… And here is another one: Pennsylvania Republican Curt Weldon is the subject of an FBI investigation into what are described as “lucrative lobbying and consulting contracts for his daughter”. That report is from McClatchy newspapers, whose people write:

    At issue are Weldon’s efforts between 2002 and 2004 to aid two Russian companies and two Serbian brothers with ties to former Yugoslavian president Slobodan Milosevic, a federal law enforcement official said.
    The Russian companies and a Serbian foundation run by the brothers’ family each hired a firm co-owned by Weldon’s daughter, Karen, for fees totaling nearly $1 million a year, public records show…
    Two years ago, the Los Angeles Times examined Curt Weldon’s parallel efforts in Congress on behalf of the Russian and Serbian clients of his daughter, prompting the House ethics committee to briefly explore the issue.

It’s unclear what the (GOP-controlled) “ethics committee” decided to do about that back then.
Weldon has not yet checked into rehab… Might happen soon?
The WaPo piece on Weldon has a small photo of the guy, standing there with fleshy white jowls drooping over the top of a too-tight collar. Many other GOP congressional leaders– among them House Speaker Dennis Hastert, who has been put strongly on the defensive over accusations that he helped cover up Mark Foley’s predatory sexual proclivities for a number of years– also seem to favor this look, which smacks of privilege, excess, and a strong sense of entitlement.
These sad old guys may well, of course, been merely taking their lead from the White House, where Bush has led an administration whose addiction to privatization and the distribution of lucrative favors to friends has marked its practice in both foreign and domestic affairs. (Think Iraq. Think FEMA.)
Will the Democrats be any better? Only if we, the citizenry, keep on their case to hold them accountable over the issues we care about. But oh, it is great to think that there now seems to be a chance that on November 7 the storm of disgust with the Republicans’ wrongdoings will be strong enough to surge right over the levees of the GOP leaders’ privilege, corruption, and militarism.