Category: Politics

In the aftermath of the Petraeus charade, Andrew Sullivan considers the ever-shifting mission:

Let us review the stated objectives of the Iraq war chronologically:
2002: to disarm Saddam Hussein of stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction and create a breathing space for democracy in the Middle East (the WMDs were not there; the breathing space became anarchy).
2003: to allow chaos in order to create a “fly-paper” for every jihadist in the world to come and get slaughtered by the US (“Bring it on!”).
2004: to create a new democratic constitution (achieved on paper, but at the price of creating sectarian voting blocs that actually intensified the ethnic and religious divisions pulling the country apart).
2005: to protect Iraq from a powerful and growing Sunni insurgency and disarm the Shi’ite militias (failed).
2006: to quell surging sectarian violence, target a new and lethal Al-Qaeda in Iraq and restrain the passions unleashed by the bombing of the Samarra mosque (failed).
2007: to prevent genocide and a wider regional war and create enough peace for a settlement in the centre (the surge has reduced violence to levels of summer 2006, and no agreement in Baghdad has been reached).
And so the question becomes: what will the objective of the Iraq war be next year?

What indeed? The benchmarks (which Bush sternly promised to “hold” the Iraqi government to) are dead; the Iraqi government itself is collapsing, and Bush’s favourite banker has admitted that the whole thing was really all about oil.
In his disturbing New Yorker essay “Planning for Defeat”, George Packer points out that US objectives and “progress reports” are largely irrelevant, except for the purpose of distracting the media:

The Petraeus-Crocker testimony is the kind of short-lived event on which the Administration has relied to shore up support for the war: the “Mission Accomplished” declaration, the deaths of Uday and Qusay Hussein, Saddam’s capture, the transfer of sovereignty, the three rounds of voting, the Plan for Victory, the death of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. Every new milestone, however illusory, allows the Administration to avoid thinking ahead, to the years when the mistakes of Iraq will continue to haunt the U.S.

In practice, the only thing that can prevent a substantial withdrawal – to the level where military effectiveness becomes questionable – is the institution of the draft. And that’s not going to happen. But Packer cautions that some kind of continued engagement is inevitable:

The dream of creating a democratic Iraq and transforming the Middle East lies in ruins. Any change in Iraq policy has to begin with the understanding that the original one failed, and that America’s remaining power can only be used to limit the damage. But Iraq still matters to the United States, whoever is in the White House, and it will for years to come.

Unsurprisingly, American politicians of all stripes are ignoring this:

In Washington, the debate over the war is dominated by questions about troop numbers and timelines—that is, by immediate American political realities. The country seems trapped in an eternal present, paralyzed by its past mistakes. There is little or no discussion, on either side, of what America’s Iraq policy should be during the next five or ten years, or of what will be possible as resources dwindle and priorities shift. If there is any contingency planning in the government, it’s being done at such a secretive, or obscure, level that a repetition of the institutional disarray with which America entered Iraq seems bound to mark our departure.

Packer’s essay is profoundly thought-provoking, offering no easy answers for anyone. It’s long, and well worth investing the time to absorb it.

I don’t have a lot to add to what I wrote last year about the anniversary of 9/11. And I still miss Phil, dammit! [Warning: 25MB MPEG4.] And I’m not alone – see this heartfelt piece by Rich.
Last year, I talked about my feelings, and concluded:

But having said that, I am deeply angry that Cheney and his gang have used and abused these emotions for their own bloodthirsty and inexcusably thoughtless warmongering. … I’m not naive – I understand how politics works – but the visceral reaction to those scumbags won’t go away. Nor should it.

And the latest example of that cynical exploitation continues today:

Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., said during a Senate hearing on the future of Iraq with Army Gen. David Petraeus and U.S. Ambassador to Iraq Ryan Crocker, that… “I think we should not have had this discussion on 9/11 or 9/10 or 9/12… It perpetuates this notion that the original attacks had something to do with going into Iraq.”

I agree with the Senator. The unmistakable odour of Rove hangs over the whole thing.

Greg Djerejian of Belgravia Dispatch has been guest blogging while Andrew Sullivan has been getting married, and he ends his stint with a thoughtful and thought-provoking piece on the desire for a change in American foreign policy. At the core, of course is a simple question: what are we trying to accomplish?

If we think of the GWOT… as mostly geared towards de-radicalizing Muslims to better ensure [that they] pursue a moderate, non-violent politics, how exactly does occupying Islamic nations or regions help in this goal? We’ve seen the hate engendered among Chechens of the Russians, or Pakistanis at India over the Kashmir dispute. We’ve seen how Israel has been bogged down in multiple wars since its founding in 1948. We see how Hezbollah significantly gained in popularity in Lebanon because of fall-out from Israel’s disastrous 1982 invasion. We are all familiar with the French experience in Algeria. Is it not the images of ‘collateral damage’ in Gaza, or a razed Grozny, or increasingly now Shi’a civilians being killed by U.S. air-strikes in places like Sadr City, is this not what poses a greater threat? These are the images that future Mohamed Atta’s might pass around the Internet cafes of the Parisian banlieu, or neglected corners of East London, helping precipitate further 9/11s.

Exactly. And yet there are still people who point with pride to the defeat of Saddam’s army and seem perplexed that the Iraqi’s didn’t welcome us with flowers and a firm commitment to laissez-faire economics. And those of us that could see the historical naivety of Bush et al still get lambasted as…

“wise heads” [whose counsel] has led to mass murders, the subjugation of millions, and, at best a suggestion that we could achieve some kind of “stability” that gives us some illusory peace, but at the cost of the Holocaust, the Ukrainian Famine, the “killing fields”, the Gulag and the mass graves and gassed Kurds. ((From an email I received today.))

To these “true believers”, those who oppose GWB and his bungled GWOT are Chamberlain-like appeasers, collaborators with Saddam ((Oh, wait: that was Rumsfeld.)), and Communist fellow-travellers. Or we’re “politicizing” things ((How do you “de-politicize” a war, for heaven’s sales?)) – we’re betraying the troops because we hate Bush (over Florida or something like that). How sad. And of course Bush’s incompetence means that we’ll never know whether there could have been a better way to deal with the situation.
What are we trying to accomplish? For Bush, the first duty was to protect the United States. For Blair, it was to protect Great Britain. For the two of them to respond to 9/11 by rushing into an irrelevant, stupid, unplanned, and incompetently executed war and occupation was bad enough. To do so in a way which has played into Bin Laden’s hands and turned this into a “Clash of Civilizations” and so made Great Britain (demonstrably) and the USA (probably) less safe is nothing short of treason.
So yes, I can understand why the American voters are looking for a fresh approach to foreign policy. Let’s start with competence….

Good piece from The Barefoot Bum on Political dimensions. Take, for example, Iraq:

The trouble is that if you criticize the war along one axis, you risk by your silence on the other axes to be held in agreement. If you criticize the war as irrational, it sounds like you would approve of its aims if only they were being pursued competently. If you criticize the U.S. conduct of the war on moral grounds, you sound like you therefore approve of the morality of the opponents. If you criticize Islam, you sound like you’re in favor of the war. (I myself was accused of being pro-torture because I virulently criticize Islam.) If you try to criticize the war on all three axes, 90% of your audience will simply mutter TLDNR ((Too Long, Did Not Read)) and move on to something simpler.

Here’s Dick Cheney in 1994, explaining very reasonably why invading Iraq was a bad idea which would lead to a “quagmire”.

—
(Hat tip to BoingBoing.)

From ABC News:

Vice President Dick Cheney has asserted his office is not a part of the executive branch of the U.S. government, and therefore not bound by a presidential order governing the protection of classified information by government agencies

Excuse my while I mop up the sake that I sputtered all over my keyboard…
UPDATE: There was an excellent question raised in the comment thread:

If Cheney is not under the Executive Branch, can he still claim “executive priviledge” when he doesn’t want to testify before Congress?

Arianna Huffington previews the Bush administration’s assessment of the “surge”. She quotes Ryan Crocker, U.S. ambassador to Iraq:

“It’s definitely not by any means a universally negative picture.” Translation: Don’t believe the facts, believe us!
You know the soft bigotry of the Bush administration’s low expectations for Iraq has finally hit bottom when “Hey, we’re doing slightly better than universally negative!” has become the rallying cry.

Greg Djerejian lays out the big picture:

From the Subcontinent to the Levant, large swaths of the Middle East and South Asia are in turmoil. What follows are (somewhat random) dispatches meant to give a sense of the depth of the multiple crises that are contributing to a destabilization of the wider region.

Brilliant, in a scathing, world-weary kind of way. The Syrian connections are simply WTF head-shaking moments.
(Charlie will probably try to nit-pick, but he’ll be wasting his time.)

This commencement address ((Hat tip Scott via Marty.)) was given to graduates of the Department of Rhetoric at Zellerbach Hall, University of California, Berkeley, on May 10, 2007. It is simply brilliant.

From TPM:

As if the dynamic of the conflict wasn’t complex enough, U.S. troops are now interceding in a gunfight between Iraqi Interior Ministry forces and employees of U.S. private security firm.
Great.

Words like “incompetence” and “quagmire” seem pathetically inadequate.