douglass carmichael: iraq

thoughtful views on Iraq

Fri, 14 Jan 2005 16:04:59 GMT

Two points of view towards Inaq I feel a need to balance.

The first from Juan Cole

The National Intelligence Council, the think tank of the CIA, has concluded that Iraq has now succeeded Afghanistan as the training ground for professionalized terrorists.

Much of the terrorism in the Middle East in the 1990s and early zeroes has been carried out by fighters who had assembled to defeat the Soviet Union in Afghanistan in the 1980s, got training and became ideologically committed, and then returned to their home countries. The "Afghans" on the streets of Algiers actually wore Afghan clothing (sort of like an American coming back from Scotland and insisting on wearing a kilt), and they joined the vigorous stream of Islamic politics in Algeria. When the generals cancelled the election results of the 1991 parliamentary polls, which the Islamic Salvation Front had won, many Muslim fundamentalists turned radical and got training from the "Afghans." The more radical of them formed the Armed Islamic Group, which joined al-Qaeda in the late 1990s and to which belonged Ahmad Rassam, who tried to blow up Los Angeles Airport for the Millennium Plot. Similar stories could be told about the Afghanistan returnees in Yemen, Indonesia, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and so forth.

So, the likelihood is that Bush's Iraq misadventure will be responsible for terrorism that is blowing up our grandchildren down the line. www.Juancole.com

the second, a long analysis by FRPI

U.S. POLICY IN THE MIDDLE EAST:

ON THE BRINK

by Harvey Sicherman

Speaking in Canada on December 1, 2004, President Bush detailed his foreign policy objectives for his next term.

First, he would build and rebuild international coalitions; second, he would pursue vigorously the war on terrorism; third, he would enhance "our own security by promoting freedom and hope and democracy in the broader Middle East."

This, Bush argued, was the only alternative to dictators and mullahs armed with weapons of mass destruction.

Acknowledging the critics, the President insisted nonetheless that progress was being made, including "movement toward elections." Interestingly enough, three elections-the parliamentary reconstruction of the Israeli government; the Palestinian vote on January 9, 2005, to replace Yasser Arafat; and the Iraqi vote scheduled for January 30, 2005-offer acid tests of the U.S. approach.

Success will confirm partners for the American enterprise of transforming the region; failure will greatly encourage American adversaries.

(1)ISRAEL: THE "BULLDOZER" AT WORK

Israel's parliamentary democracy has always elected fractious coalitions whose sometimes dizzying mix of parties and personalities often befuddled observers and participants alike. Ariel Sharon's government has been no exception. He began in 2001 with a broad national unity coalition and then, after Labour left, used his landslide victory early in 2002 to create a Likud-centered patchwork. He represented an Israeli consensus (shared by President Bush) that little could be done while Yasser Arafat continued to lead the Palestinians.

The American-led demand for "reform" leadership, however, was skillfully defeated by Arafat and, following the failed Abu Mazen government (September 2003), both the United States and Israel reviewed their strategies. Both chose "disengagement." Bush would keep his distance from the diplomacy. Sharon would begin a revolution.

On December 18, 2003, the Israeli leader announced that Israel would withdraw its troops and settlers from Gaza (plus four others in the northern West Bank). This would be complemented by the completion of a barrier to combat Palestinian infiltration and a continuation of selected military strikes. "Disengagement" reflected a broad Israeli view that a "two-state" solution to the conflict meant separation from the Palestinians, not integration.

Sharon, patron of the Israeli settlers and opponent of Oslo, had often spoken of "painful sacrifices" that Israel would make for peace but never specified them. Disengagement detached him instantly from most of the settlers and, in its resemblance to ideas advanced by the opposition Labour Party, outraged much of his coalition government, including parts of his own Likud Party. In May, Sharon attempted to outflank them by calling a non-binding party referendum only to be rebuffed despite a letter from President Bush assuring that Israel would not be asked to return to the pre-1967 War borders or admit millions of Palestinian refugees. In August, the Likud Central Committee boxed him further by forbidding a negotiation with Labour for a new unity government. Already down to 56 seats out of the Knesset's 120 because of resignations over disengagement, Sharon's government depended upon Labour to survive.

Ordinarily, a leader who takes the opposition's ideas and fractures his own party cannot qualify for political life insurance. But Sharon, architect of the modern Likud and a highly inventive former general, rose to the challenge.

Buoyed by public opinion polls showing 70-80 per cent of Israelis in favor of disengagement, he would remake both the party and the government.

After a summer of unsuccessful negotiation within the coalition, Sharon risked a dramatic Knesset vote (October 26, 2004) on the withdrawal plan; it passed on the support of the Labour-led opposition. Finance Minister Benjamin

Netanyahu and several other critical Likud leaders approved the measure only on condition that within two weeks Sharon agree to a national referendum, delaying the withdrawal from Gaza by at least a year. (Sharon had announced May 2005 as the beginning of the process.) The Prime Minister did not recoil from this ultimatum, perhaps hoping that a deck clearing of his rivals would open posts to lure Labour into a negotiation.

Then, on November 11, 2004, Arafat died. Netanyahu, to the derision of supporters and opponents alike, decided not to leave the Cabinet on the grounds that a new situation had developed. His bluff had been called.

How then to make room for Labour? An utterly calm Sharon swiftly reduced his coalition still further when he negotiated with United Torah Judaism, a small ultra-Orthodox party whose financial demands were anathema to his sixteen- seat, anti-religious Shinui Party partner. On December 1, Shinui joined to defeat the budget by a large margin.

Sharon promptly fired them. His government was down to forty.

These reverses were only a backing up in order to plunge forward. Now the way was open to bring in Labour and at least one religious party. Sharon needed Shimon Peres to remain as Labour's leader and the Likud Central Committee to reverse its decision. On December 2, the day after the budget defeat, Shimon Peres arranged for Labour to postpone its vote on primaries for new leadership. The 81-year-old veteran sat impassively as the party plenum did his will amid vaudevillian scenes when former Prime Minister Ehud Barak, announcing his return to politics, tried to seize the microphone and reverse the verdict.

This in hand, Sharon pressed a simple argument on his party: take a Likud-Labour-Religious Coalition or risk new elections. On December 9, two-thirds of the Central Committee chose the coalition route. One January 10, 2005 (a day after the Palestinian election to replace Arafat), Sharon presented the Knesset with his new government. It passed 58-56, a Likud rebellion insuring that the Prime Minister would still depend on opposition abstention.

Still, the former general, nicknamed the "bulldozer" for his smash-and-grab tactics, had lived up to his reputation. In sixty days, he demolished then reconstructed the Israeli government to reflect public opinion highly favorable to

disengagement. Sharon still faced hard tests: a narrow position in the Knesset; settler resistance that, if mishandled, could lead to civil strife. But, the Bush Administration now had an Israeli partner, at least for the Gaza withdrawal.

(2)PALESTINE: UNDOING ARAFAT'S LEGACY

While the Israelis were transfixed by Sharon's audacity, the Palestinians faced a reconstruction of their own. Yasser Arafat left a losing war, a corrupt and chaotic government, and burnt bridges with Washington. Added to this legacy was a stricken economy subsisting on international aid.

The Palestinian Authority was no democracy, but in the absence of another charismatic figure, the Palestinians observed both Fatah Party and Oslo rules. The candidate for new Chairman would be Arafat's long-time confidante and first Prime Minister Mahmoud Abbas, known as Abu Mazen, this to be affirmed in an election scheduled for January 9, 2005.

Significantly, Abu Mazen had broken with Arafat's violent strategy in the Rais' lifetime. "We support the intifada," he often said, "but we are against the use of arms in the intifada," reminding listeners of the 1987-93 Palestinian rebellion that ended with Oslo. As the putative new leader, his election therefore would suggest a real change of direction.

Abu Mazen faced multiple challenges. First, he had to surmount the fractured political system to achieve a preponderance of influence and power; second, he needed to regain international confidence in the Palestinian leadership; third, most difficult of all, he had to achieve decisive control over the violence.

Abu Mazen acted energetically on two of the three. A senior figure among the so-called Outsiders (the exiles) of the Palestinian leadership, he suffered from Fatah's reputation for corruption, his popularity with the Americans and Israelis, and his colorless political persona. Initially, he was opposed by the highly popular Marwan Barghouti, an Insider (resident of the West Bank) entrusted by Arafat to form the last (and least disciplined) of his front groups, the al-Aksa Martyr's Brigade-competitive to Hamas in suicide attacks. But Barghouti was in an Israeli jail (multiple life sentences for terrorism) and wholly identified with Arafat's strategy. His campaign ended when the Fatah establishment and some of the prominent al-Aksa Martyr chiefs rallied to Abu Mazen.

Coincident with imposing some order on Palestinian politics, Abu Mazen offered the international donors a new sense of "transparency" (honesty) on finances. The donors reacted promptly by offering the prospect of additional sums. (The Palestinians were already the highest per-capita recipients of international assistance.) Washington gave its own emergency grant to help the Palestinian Authority, unable to pay overdue utility bills and wages.

Finally, various governments offered political support for a fresh start under Abu Mazen. Egypt's President Mubarak advised that Sharon was the Palestinian's best negotiating partner and offered additional help in assuring a turnover of Gaza to the Palestinian Authority rather than Hamas. Abu Mazen himself toured Syria and Kuwait, restoring relations long sundered because of Arafat, while he assessed the relative influence of Damascus (and Tehran) on various Palestinian factions. British Prime Minister Blair, anxious to still the clamor in his own party for an initiative on the Palestinian issue, offered a conference in London to restart the political process. His enthusiasm was soon qualified by both Bush and Sharon to focus on Palestinian reform and Gaza rather than the endgame of a final agreement.

All of this set the stage for two rounds of Palestinian ballots, part of a long-delayed electoral cycle. On December 24, a limited, competitive municipal poll (previously approved by Arafat) drew a huge turnout that confirmed Fatah's supremacy but also shook the party by awarding Hamas a good showing. Then came the crucial vote on January 9, when over 60 per cent of a respectable turnout, refuting Hamas' call for a boycott, gave Abu Mazen his mandate for change.

Thus, the elements of a revived Israeli-Palestinian negotiation, assisted by the United States and others, are falling into place. Sharon's plan for Gaza-unilateral in theory but multilateral in practice-might now serve to renew relations with a reformed Palestinian Authority. At best, this would revive the Road Map leading toward Bush's "two- state" vision.

Very large hurdles, however, remain to be surmounted. The vote notwithstanding, Abu Mazen is not master of the Palestinian house. His most daunting difficulty will be to dismantle the dangerous combination of warlords, corruption, and "the chaos of guns" that are incompatible with the building of a state.

Much of this violent activity is justified by its practitioners as part of the war against Israel. Abu Mazen has argued for several years that such terrorist tactics are not effective. Nonetheless, just like Arafat, he opposes a "civil war" among the Palestinian factions. His preferred method is a hudna or truce that can be renewed. As the

election approached, Abu Mazen extolled martyrdom in the company of gun-firing "soldiers of the resistance;" he described Israel on one occasion as "the Zionist enemy,"

provoking Israeli and American criticism. While even Sharon admitted the new Rais could not immediately control Hamas (or even al-Aksa), such forbearance will not last in the absence of a strenuous effort by the Palestinians to suppress terrorism, especially when the Israelis leave Gaza.

The passage to final-status talks with the Israelis may compound Abu Mazen's troubles. U.N. and European diplomats argue for a rapid resumption of final-status talks under the Road Map schema, which will require difficult reciprocal steps by the Palestinians (suppression of violence) and the Israelis (settlement freeze). Moreover, each side's negotiating positions do not admit much optimism that agreement can be reached on such issues as Jerusalem or refugees or settlements. After four years of warfare, the Israelis are not ready to repeat concessions based on trust.

To the contrary: separation, not collaboration, is the dominant political impulse.

These complications mean that President Bush will have to strike the right balance of encouragement and expectation from Abu Mazen. Bush-and Sharon-must "empower" the new leader but not make the mistake, made so often with Arafat, of not holding him accountable for his obligations.

Arafat's death, Sharon's reconstruction, and Abu Mazen's ascension have allowed the parties to re-imagine the road toward the two-state solution. But this second chance, so rare in so intractable a conflict, can be seized only if a rapid improvement in Palestinian conditions accompanies a wind-down of the terror campaign as the Israelis leave Gaza.

(3)IRAQ: ROLLING THE DICE

An Israeli National Unity government and a new Palestinian partner offer a fresh horizon for achievement. The Iraqi election, scheduled for January 30, 2005, however, is the most crucial for the United States. It comes in the context of deepening trouble for Washington and its local friends.

By September 2003, it was already clear that the first U.S. plan for Iraq-a surgical strike against Saddam and his henchmen, to be replaced by a group of imported Iraqi leaders-would not work. Few of the imports commanded much of a following. Worse, Saddam's government, true to its Stalinist-like design, collapsed when the real sinews of the regime, the Baathist Party leaders and their henchmen, went underground. And the regular Iraqi Army, which, under professional military leadership, was expected to assist a small U.S. force in controlling the country, proved a chimera. Most of its units had already disbanded while awaiting events, and the Coalition Provisional Authority, rather than attempt its revival, had abruptly dissolved the Army in May.

Thus, four crucial months were lost allowing Saddam and his men to survive the shock of defeat, reorganize, and develop a strategy. Beginning with their part in the massive looting and destruction of the infrastructure while U.S.

forces stood by, the insurgents had simple objectives: make the country ungovernable through violence; throw the full weight of occupation on the foreign soldiers; prevent economic recovery. There might be enough coalition troops to hunt the resistance but not enough to hunt, guard critical facilities, and rebuild Iraq's worn out infrastructure. Hence, much of the early attacks concentrated on driving out the U.N., NGOs, and private contractors, making life miserable and insecure for the average Iraqi.

Once aware of these tactics, the Bush Administration reacted on multiple fronts. Militarily, the U.S. Command sought to train new Iraqi security forces in quick time to supplement coalition troops. Politically, Washington sought international approval for a swift turnover of formal authority to Iraqis. An Iraqi interim government would replace the Occupation Authority by June 30, 2004, and then, six months later, the people would elect a new Constitutional Assembly.

In Spring-Summer 2004, this strategy yielded international success and local failure. Even as the United States secured a supportive U.N. resolution, patched up quarrels with allies and arranged for the cancellation of much Iraqi debt, the situation on the ground deteriorated drastically.

A rising Sunni-based insurgency was symbolized by the town of Fallujah, a veritable safe haven for the terrorists, and scene of a gruesome lynching of four U.S. contractors in March 2004. Simultaneously, the main U.S. opponent among the Shiites, the Iranian-supported cleric al Sadr, seized control of several important Iraqi towns including the Holy City of Najaf after the United States began to curtail his activities. American reactions through Spring were hampered by lack of armor and the political preparations for a handover, mediated by the U.N. envoy Brahimi, to an Iraqi interim administration. Meanwhile, the hastily trained Iraqi forces panicked, proving mostly useless or dangerous.

As a result, when Ayad Allawi took over as interim Prime Minister in a sudden and heavily guarded ceremony on June 28, 2004 he faced burgeoning terror attacks, insurgent safe zones spreading from Fallujah all along the crucial western road leading to Jordan and wholly inadequate Iraqi security

forces. Allawi, himself a former Baathist and leader of a party full of officials who had broken with Saddam, attempted cooption, corruption, and coercion to bring the insurgents to heel. Not surprisingly, the lack of effective coercion soon crippled the other tactics as well.

The United States and its local allies continued to lose ground through the run-up to the American election campaign while promising to dislodge the insurgents in time for the Iraqi poll in early 2005. By mid-November, the Pentagon announced a reinforcement of 14,000 troops and the extension of tours so that 150,000 ground forces would be available to secure conditions for the election. Then in a destructive 10-day campaign, Fallujah itself was captured, yielding a treasure trove of information about the insurgents, including their connections to former Baathists operating out of Syria. But too many had escaped in the slow run-up to the attack, as Allawi was drawn into a futile negotiation to surrender the city. Then, even as the Marines subdued Fallujah, the northern city of Mosul promptly erupted as the city's police force fled before brazen attacks on their stations. The local U.S. force, reduced to one brigade in the belief that the city was safe, could not secure the situation.

The United States did not have enough forces to beat the insurgency anytime soon and, although a few Iraqi units fought well, it was clear that the second round of Iraqi trainees were not yet much better than the first. They and government officials were special targets. In the week preceding January 4, 2005, for example, over seventy werekilled including the Governor of Baghdad. Meanwhile, the critical oil industry and the reconstruction effort could not progress further in the face of the violence. Half the Iraqi population lives in the four of eighteen provinces most affected by the violence. The fact that most of the south and Kurdistan were largely free of trouble thus counted for less than Washington's inability to defeat the opposition or make a political deal with Sunni leaders to isolate it.

The January 30 elections were designed to bring Iraq's communities together through nation-wide parties for the purpose of creating a new constitution. Having overthrown a Sunni-based dictatorship espousing a pan-Arab (Baathist) ideology, the United States had to avoid the alternatives of a Shiite dictatorship advocating a pan-Muslim ideology or a breakup that in Kurdistan might lead to Syrian, Turkish, and Iranian intervention. The only way out of this tangle was a constitution that reflected the "three negatives": (1) no Sunni dictatorship, intolerable to Shiites and Kurds; (2) no independent Kurdistan, intolerable to Shiites and Sunnis; and (3) no Shiite Islamic state, intolerable to Kurds and Sunnis.

A month before the election, the United States found itself in the bizarre position of battling a Sunni insurgency while taking up the Sunni case for political inclusion with the

Shiites and Kurds. Postponing the date, prescribed by the U.N. resolution that recognized the Iraqi Interim Government, would present international complications; worse, it would look like a concession to violence; and, worse yet, a betrayal of supreme Shiite Ayatollah Sistani, hitherto opposed to violence against the Americans.

Thus, the January 30 election for a constitutional assembly and local administration would be only as significant as the turnout, and the turnout only as significant as the Kurdish and Sunni participation. It was unlikely to reduce the violence or strengthen Iraqi loyalties to a political system still taking shape. Nonetheless, a large number of voters casting ballots despite violent intimidation would confer some legitimacy on the results. If combined with an aggressive and successful U.S. military campaign, it might persuade the Sunnis (and others) that slowly but surely the wheel was turning in favor of the Americans and a new regime. Under these circumstances a way could be found for

the Sunnis to have their say on the constitution. These were surely huge "ifs," growing bigger as the date approached. Yet, it was clearly an election that would make a difference, in itself, something new for Iraq and the region.

(4)U.S. POLICY ON THE BRINK

As President Bush begins his second term, his policy to transform the Greater Middle East faces crucial milestones.

America is committed to nurturing new democracies in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Palestine, an astonishing about-face since 9/11 for an Administration originally hostile to nation-building altogether. Thus, it may be said that whatever the prospects in the Middle East, U.S. foreign policy itself has surely been transformed.

Will it work? A thousand obstacles obstruct the way, yet some things have begun to move. Insofar as elections signal potentially democratic direction, 2005 begins with important auguries for the development of local partners capable of working with the United States. Sharon's new government gives proof of his readiness to withdraw from Gaza. The vote for Abu Mazen ratified a potential Palestinian partner for peace. Renewed Israeli-Palestinian cooperation, taken in tandem with local legislative and party elections scheduled for late this year, could give a big boost to a nascent Palestinian democracy.

In the Iraqi election, even a modest Sunni turnout against the odds will be an important signal although the poll itself appears more an act of keeping faith with the Shiite majority. Both the Kurds and Sunnis, however, must rely on Washington to make clear that the alternative to Saddam's dictatorship is not a Shiite theocracy. January 30 begins the hard struggle for a constitution that respects the minimum: no Sunni domination; no Shiite Islamic republic; no independent Kurdistan.

For the advocates of democracy in the Middle East, the Palestinian and Iraqi elections focus on a quintessential virtue: citizen choice. Yet this beginning, potentially the birth throes of popular government, should also remind us of the distance yet to go. These polls will matter little if in the end those who oppose democracy can abort the results through violence. U.S. policy will still bepoised on the brink of failure so long as that battle remains in doubt.

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Crooked Timber on Irag

Fri, 14 Jan 2005 02:39:55 GMT

From http://www.crookedtimber.org/archives/003104.html

We are all thinking about how the war ends and, hopefully, the Americans leave. Bush's bad record is clear enough now that, while he will claim success, the judgment looks clear. Iraq was a mistake and many people had well reasoned ideas as to why before it happened.

The Iraqis will be going to the elections at the end of the month, so it is unsurprising that the insurgents have stepped up their campaign of blowing up tanks and chopping off heads. The is an awful lot of rubbish talked about the Iraqi insurgents; a simple look at the geographical distribution of their attacks shows that they unlikely to all be Sunnis or Ba’athists, and they are not targeting civilians in much greater proportion to military targets than we are. Whatever Christopher Hitchens thinks, they are the direct moral equivalent of the Viet Cong; they represent much of what is worst about the human condition, and any future in which they gained power would most likely be outright disastrous, but for all that, to take up arms against an occupying foreign army is not an ignoble thing to do, and I can quite understand why lots of people on the left have been sympathetic to them.

But history has passed them by. Iraq is not Vietnam (or more specifically, Iran is not China) and they have no hope of victory. All they can really do is prolong the occupation and therefore the misery. The time has well past by which anyone with brains in their head could reasonably hope for anything other than swift and reasonably democratic elections, a declaration of victory and for the coalition troops to jump in the tanks, start the engines

Mon, 06 Dec 2004 01:49:25 GMT

The most important reading today has been the difficult article in The New Republic

www.tnr.com/docprint.mhtml?i=20041213&s=beinart121304

AN ARGUMENT FOR A NEW LIBERALISM.

A Fighting Faith

by Peter Beinart

Post date: 12.02.04

Issue date: 12.13.04

Basically he argues that the democrats ("The Liberals") must embrace a new cold war mentality toward "Islamic Fundamentalism." He says it is the only way to win, and it requires confronting the soft side of the democratic party, and abandoning the social issues ( he does not name them but environment, economy, health...).

He does not see that the basic humanitarian side of the democrats is concerned that the it is the US fundamentalists that mirror the Islamic fundamentalists, and support the same kind of totalitarian government - in response to each other.

He seems to reduce the whole issue to winning. An alternative reading would be that he is trying to mobilize the democrats to be a war party. Why? protecting Israel might be one answer. It is not clear what other logic leads down this path, especially if the argument that it is the way to win fails. He wants to say that people Voted against Kerry because he was weak on Iraq, which equals weak on Terror. But the polls show that people are much more concerned about terror than the war in Iraq, and their concern about Iraq is that it is such a mess.

Therefore being concerned with terror is not the same as supporting the war. Kerry made attempts to separate the issues, but because he was ambivalent in his voting about Iraq, and talked at the end about More troops to fight harder to win, I think the evidence shows that many couldn't see a difference between Kerry and Bush, and that sometimes foolish consistency is smarter than flip-flopping. It may be that the popular perception of both candidates is close to the discernible truth.

But now to the article.

During World War II, only one major liberal organization, the Union for Democratic Action (UDA), had banned communists from its ranks.
Announcing the formation of Americans for Democratic Action (ADA), the statement declared, "[B]ecause the interests of the United States are the interests of free men everywhere," America should support "democratic and freedom-loving peoples the world over." That meant unceasing opposition to communism, an ideology "hostile to the principles of freedom and democracy on which the Republic has grown great."

This is his set up. That being militant against Islamic fundamentalism is equivalent, and that he has no critique of the costs to US society of the way Bush has gong about it.

At the time, the ADA's was still a minority view among American liberals. Two of the most influential journals of liberal opinion, The New Republic and The Nation, both rejected militant anti-communism.
The American Civil Liberties Union (aclu) denounced communism, as did the naacp. By 1949, three years after Winston Churchill warned that an "iron curtain" had descended across Europe, Schlesinger could write in The Vital Center: "Mid-twentieth century liberalism, I believe, has thus been fundamentally reshaped ... by the exposure of the Soviet Union, and by the deepening of our knowledge of man. The consequence of this historical re-education has been an unconditional rejection of totalitarianism."

And he continues to equate anti totalitarian with being against Islamic fundamentalism and for the war in Iraq, not noting that Iraq was one of the most secular Arabic countries, itself opposed to fundamentalism (and conceivably holding it at bay more than the US or post Saddam government can do).

Today, three years after September 11 brought the United States face-to-face with a new totalitarian threat, liberalism has still not "been fundamentally reshaped" by the experience.

And here the equation is complete, and the idea that American liberalism needs to act cold war toward Islamic fundamentalism as if it were Soviet communism. The shift in scale makes Beinart Quixotic, spending all on very weak opponents, while strengthening them

On health care, gay rights, and the environment, there is a positive vision, articulated with passion. But there is little liberal passion to win the struggle against Al Qaeda--even though totalitarian Islam has killed thousands of Americans and aims to kill millions;

He reduces the humanitarian justice side of the democratic party as completely as do the Bush folks.

When liberals talk about America's new era, the discussion is largely negative--against the Iraq war, against restrictions on civil liberties, against America's worsening reputation in the world. In sharp contrast to the first years of the cold war, post-September 11 liberalism has produced leaders and institutions--most notably Michael Moore and MoveOn--that do not put the struggle against America's new totalitarian foe at the center of their hopes for a better world. As a result, the Democratic Party boasts a fairly hawkish foreign policy establishment and a cadre of politicians and strategists eager to look tough. But, below this small elite sits a Wallacite grassroots that views America's new struggle as a distraction, if not a mirage. Two elections, and two defeats, into the September 11 era, American liberalism still has not had its meeting at the Willard Hotel. And the hour is getting late.

Get rid of the softies is the message, make the democratic party the center of a new cold war.

The real change this year was on foreign policy. In 2000, only 12 percent of voters cited "world affairs" as their paramount issue; this year, 34 percent mentioned either Iraq or terrorism. (Combined, the two foreign policy categories dwarf moral values.) Voters who cited terrorism backed Bush even more strongly than those who cited moral values. And it was largely this new cohort--the same one that handed the GOP its Senate majority in 2002--that accounts for Bush's improvement over 2000. As Paul Freedman recently calculated in Slate, if you control for Bush's share of the vote four years ago, "a 10-point increase in the percentage of voters [in a given state] citing terrorism as the most important problem translates into a 3-point Bush gain. A 10-point increase in morality voters, on the other hand, has no effect."

This does not do a good job of sorting out the difference between the Iraq voting and the Terrorism voting, nor does it include the possibility of a much more strategic "win the hearts and minds" strategy and what it could accomplish, which was crippled by the negatives f the war (its stupidity, lying, meanness, ill-planning and Prisons scandals, to name a few). Nor does he in the article deal with the loss of esteem in all the countries of the world (according to poling such as done by Pew on worldwide country by country attitudes toward the US.

You get the idea. Here are further excerpts and a closing comment.

On national security, Kerry's nomination was a compromise between a party elite desperate to neutralize the terrorism issue and a liberal base unwilling to redefine itself for the post-September 11 world.
Like the other leading candidates in the race, he voted to authorize the use of force in Iraq. This not only pleased Kerry's consultants, who hoped to inoculate him against charges that he was soft on terrorism, but it satisfied his foreign policy advisers as well.
For top Kerry foreign policy advisers, such as Richard Holbrooke and Joseph Biden, Bosnia and Kosovo seemed like models for a new post-Vietnam liberalism that embraced U.S. power. And September 11 validated the transformation. Democratic foreign policy wonks not only supported the war in Afghanistan, they generally felt it didn't go far enough--urging a larger nato force capable of securing the entire country.
At the Democratic convention, Biden said that the "overwhelming obligation of the next president is clear"--to exercise "the full measure of our power" to defeat Islamist totalitarianism.
Three months before the Iowa caucuses, facing mass liberal defections to Dean, Kerry voted against Bush's $87 billion supplemental request for Iraq. With that vote, the Kerry compromise was born. To Kerry's foreign policy advisers, some of whom supported the supplemental funding, he remained a vehicle for an aggressive war on terrorism. And that may well have been Kerry's own intention. But, to the liberal voters who would choose the party's nominee, he became a more electable Dean.
That wasn't an accident. Had Kerry aggressively championed a national mobilization to win the war on terrorism, he wouldn't have been the Democratic nominee.
Kerry was a flawed candidate, but he was not the fundamental problem. The fundamental problem was the party's liberal base, which would have refused to nominate anyone who proposed redefining the Democratic Party in the way the ADA did in 1947.
In 1950, the journal The New Leader divided American liberals into "hards" and "softs." The hards, epitomized by the ADA, believed anti-communism was the fundamental litmus test for a decent left. Non-communism was not enough; opposition to the totalitarian threat was the prerequisite for membership in American liberalism because communism was the defining moral challenge of the age.

Moore is a non-totalitarian, but, like Wallace, he is not an anti-totalitarian. And, when Democratic National Committee Chairman Terry McAuliffe and Tom Daschle flocked to the Washington premiere of Fahrenheit 9/11, and when Moore sat in Jimmy Carter's box at the Democratic convention, many Americans wondered whether the Democratic Party was anti-totalitarian either. [badly wrong minded]

By January 2002, MoveOn was collaborating with 9-11peace.org, a website founded by Eli Pariser, who would later become MoveOn's most visible spokesman. One early 9-11peace.org bulletin urged supporters to "[c]all world leaders and ask them to call off the bombing," and to "[f]ly the UN Flag as a symbol of global unity and support for international law." Others questioned the wisdom of increased funding for the CIA and the deployment of American troops to assist in anti-terrorist efforts in the Philippines. In October 2002, after 9-11peace.org was incorporated into MoveOn, an organization bulletin suggested that the United States should have "utilize[d] international law and judicial procedures, including due process" against bin Laden and that "it's possible that a tribunal could even have garnered cooperation from the Taliban."

Bush has not increased the size of the U.S. military since September 11--despite repeated calls from hawks in his own party--in part because, given his massive tax cuts, he simply cannot afford to. An anti-totalitarian liberalism would attack those tax cuts not merely as unfair and fiscally reckless, but, above all, as long-term threats to America's ability to wage war against fanatical Islam. Today, however, there is no liberal constituency for such an argument in a Democratic Party in which only 2 percent of delegates called "terrorism" their paramount issue and another 1 percent mentioned "defense."
or liberals to make such arguments effectively, they must first take back their movement from the softs.
As Mary Sperling McAuliffe notes in her book Crisis on the Left: Cold War Politics and American Liberals, 1947-1954, while some of the expelled affiliates were openly communist, others were expelled merely for refusing to declare themselves anti-communist, a sharp contrast from the Popular Front mentality that governed MoveOn's opposition to the Iraq war.
In 1969, Ronald Radosh could remark in his book, American Labor and United States Foreign Policy, on the "total absorption of American labor leaders in the ideology of Cold War liberalism."
That absorption mattered. It created a constituency, deep in the grassroots of the Democratic Party, for the marriage between social justice at home and aggressive anti-communism abroad. Today, however, the U.S. labor movement is largely disconnected from the war against totalitarian Islam, even though independent, liberal-minded unions are an important part of the battle against dictatorship and fanaticism in the Muslim world.

But, if elements within American labor threw themselves into the movement for reform in the Muslim world, they would create a base of support for Democrats who put winning the war on terrorism at the center of their campaigns.
Challenging the "doughface" feminists who opposed the Afghan war and those labor unionists with a knee-jerk suspicion of U.S. power might produce bitter internal conflict. And doing so is harder today because liberals don't have a sympathetic White House to enact liberal anti-totalitarianism policies. But, unless liberals stop glossing over fundamental differences in the name of unity, they never will.
But, despite these differences, Islamist totalitarianism--like Soviet totalitarianism before it--threatens the United States and the aspirations of millions across the world. And, as long as that threat remains, defeating it must be liberalism's north star. Methods for defeating totalitarian Islam are a legitimate topic of internal liberal debate. But the centrality of the effort is not. The recognition that liberals face an external enemy more grave, and more illiberal, than George W. Bush should be the litmus test of a decent left.

Today, the war on terrorism is partially obscured by the war in Iraq, which has made liberals cynical about the purposes of U.S. power. But, even if Iraq is Vietnam, it no more obviates the war on terrorism than Vietnam obviated the battle against communism.

Of all the things contemporary liberals can learn from their forbearers half a century ago, perhaps the most important is that national security can be a calling.
If the struggles for gay marriage and universal health care lay rightful claim to liberal idealism, so does the struggle to protect the United States by spreading freedom in the Muslim world. It, too, can provide the moral purpose for which a new generation of liberals yearn. As it did for the men and women who convened at the Willard Hotel.

We don't need a calling for the ambitious, we need a calling for truth and justice that appeals to the majority of mankind. The choice is not between being against totalitaruanism or leaving it alone, it is between getting it here in a worst kind of war there, vs working for justice and a liveable world.

Beinart's forced logic seems to argue that to win the next election (or to have won the last several) the Democrats ("Liberals") need to act like its a new cold war. I think most of us find that logic flawed. Multilateral justice and targeted police action would be much better, and leave us some room to deal with larger issues like environment, energy, spread of nuclear weapons.If so, what is his motive for going down this new cold war path? Why do we need to force terrorism (world wide a still small number of people and casualties compared to Bhopal, auto accidents...) to be the single issue to define the party?

How much of it is to keep the US on a path that protects Israel. Is there any other explanation?

Friedman in the NYT

<http://www.nytimes.com/2004/12/05/opinion/05friedman.html?oref=login&;hp>

Of all the irresponsible aspects of the 2005 budget bill that

the Republican-led Congress just passed, nothing could be more

irresponsible than the fact that funding for the National

Science Foundation was cut by nearly 2 percent, or $105

million.

On CBS news , there are other ways..

Millions of folded paper cranes fluttered down from warplanes in the skies over southern Thailand Sunday as the air force completed a mission of peace aimed at expressing the nation's hope for an end to separatist violence in the Muslim-dominated ...

Sat, 20 Nov 2004 18:59:10 GMT

The middle road on Iraq

The whole report is at

http://www.tcf.org/Publications/HomelandSecurity/clarke/clarkesummary.pdf

As a sin of omission, the Iraq war diverted massive and much-needed resources from the fight against jihadists. The continued unrest in Iraq will further delay any U.S. effort to create a new international coalition to confront Syria’s and Iran’s support for terrorist activities, a point not lost on Damascus and Tehran. As a result, they may do everything in their power to further bog down U.S. efforts in Iraq. Ironically, the war in Iraq has contributed to creating the breathing room Syria and Iran so desperately needed to avoid a robust international action response to their terrorist activities. Despite these many challenges, the battle against the jihadists can and must be won. The forthcoming Century Foundation Report, Defeating the Jihadists: A Blueprint for Action, endorses and builds on the recommendations of the 9/11 Commission, providing ten concrete actions that the next presidential administration should pursue. The full report offers substantial detail on specific strategies for implementing the following list of key recommendations: RECOMMENDATIONS:

1. Focus on Winning the Struggle of Ideas: The U.S. should work with its allies to erode support for jihadists in the Islamic world by engaging in what the 9/11 Commission called the “struggle of ideas.”

2. Invest in Education and Development in Islamic Nations: The U.S., the European Union, and the international financial institutions must greatly expand financial and programmatic support for development, including support for human rights, education systems, and economic opportunities, especially for women.

3. Implement Tailored Strategies for Key Countries: Five countries—Iran, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and Iraq—are particularly critical. They require the tailored, detailed, proactive, and integrated policies outlined in the full report.

4. Defuse Sources of Islamic Hatred for the United States: Many supporters of the jihadists oppose the U.S. because of specific actions and policies, chief among them our support for Israel and the occupation of Iraq. The U.S. can, without compromising its core interests, values, or support for allies take steps that would reduce our exposure.

5. Improve U.S. Intelligence and Law Enforcement Organization: In addition to implementing the 9/11 Commission recommendations, the U.S. should facilitate non-career tracks in the FBI and CIA and separate the domestic intelligence activities of the FBI into a distinct organization. The external oversight board should be independent, as recommended by the 9/11 Commission, rather than the internal advisory group created by recent Executive Order.

6. Reinvigorate Efforts to Combat Terrorist Financing: The president should designate a Special Assistant to the President for Combating Terrorist Financing at the NSC to lead U.S. efforts on fighting terrorist financing. In addition, the U.S. should build a new framework for U.S.-Saudi relations and create a certification regime for terrorist financing.

7. Bolster Special Forces and Improve Their Coordination with Intelligence Community: Special operations forces for counter-terrorism should be greatly expanded and enhanced to facilitate small unit operations. These units should be supported by a military organization with a covert presence. Congress must make clear that it will accept necessary casualties in counterterrorism operations.

8. Accelerate Security Investments for Ports, Trains, and Chemical Plants: Funds should be significantly increased, with priority given to vulnerabilities in our rail systems, chemical plants, and ports. Assistance to states and cities should be based upon a multi-year plan that is driven by risk assessments and provides essential minimum capabilities to each.

9. Strengthen and Improve Oversight of Nuclear Terrorism Prevention Efforts: The president should appoint a senior official to direct all U.S. nuclear non-proliferation and nuclear counterterrorism efforts. A new initiative should provide countries with international guarantees of nuclear energy supplies in return for agreements to terminate enrichment.

10. Improve U.S. Energy Security by Reducing Reliance on Middle East Oil: The United States should appropriate significant funds to subsidize a rapid shift to energy sources that do not rely upon oil and gas.

Mon, 25 Oct 2004 14:37:37 GMT

As the situation in Iraq worsens, the way of talking about it gets better, slowly. This should have been written on the eve of the war, or earlier.

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/10/25/opinion/25brzezinski.html?oref=login&;pagewanted=print&position

excerpt

How to Make New Enemies

By ZBIGNIEW BRZEZINSKI

t is striking that in spite of all the electoral fireworks over policy in Iraq, both presidential candidates offer basically similar solutions. Their programs stress intensified Iraqi self-help and more outside help in the quest for domestic stability. Unfortunately, these prescriptions by themselves are not likely to work.

Both candidates have become prisoners of a worldview that fundamentally misdiagnoses the central challenge of our time. President Bush's "global war on terror" is a politically expedient slogan without real substance, serving to distort rather than define. It obscures the central fact that a civil war within Islam is pitting zealous fanatics against increasingly intimidated moderates. The undiscriminating American rhetoric and actions increase the likelihood that the moderates will eventually unite with the jihadists in outraged anger and unite the world of Islam in a head-on collision with America.

After all, look what's happening in Iraq. For a growing number of Iraqis, their "liberation" from Saddam Hussein is turning into a despised foreign occupation. Nationalism is blending with religious fanaticism into a potent brew of hatred. The rates of desertion from the American-trained new Iraqi security forces are dangerously high, while the likely escalation of United States military operations against insurgent towns will generate a new rash of civilian casualties and new recruits for the rebels.

The situation is not going to get any easier. If President Bush is re-elected, our allies will not be providing more money or troops for the American occupation. Mr. Bush has lost credibility among other nations, which distrust his overall approach. Moreover, the British have been drawing down their troop strength in Iraq, the Poles will do the same, and the Pakistanis recently made it quite plain that they will not support a policy in the Middle East that they view as self-defeating.

Mon, 11 Oct 2004 16:53:08 GMT

The polls and editorials and talk shows are looking good for Kerry, but by a percentage point or two. Given the chaos of events and a potential "october surprise" this keeps us oon edge. If Kerry looses, it might be because he was not seen as different from Bush in implementation of policy. Basically, that he did not say what he would do differently in Iraq, except hint at escallation, and that with the economyb he does not talk about the real issues: the increasing power of alternative economies, such as China and India. The following has to be taken seriously.

From today's http://www.counterpunch.org/

To Escape from Blunder, First Admit Reality

The Debates and the Big Lie

By PAUL CRAIG ROBERTS

The presidential debates are going nowhere. Why? Because both President George Bush and Senator John Kerry are encapsulated in a big lie.

The lie is too big to be acknowledged. Both candidates repeat the mantra that Saddam Hussein was dangerous to America and had to be removed. Both reaffirm that Saddam's removal remains a good thing despite a plethora of official reports concluding that false reasons were given for his removal.

Kerry gets nowhere because he says he would do the same thing Bush did, only differently.

Bush reminds Kerry over and over that "you saw the same intelligence that I did" and voted for the war. Kerry's criticism after the event, Bush says, just shows what a flip-flopper Kerry is.

For many Americans Bush's answer is easier to follow than Kerry's nuanced argument. For the second time in his life Kerry is in the position of turning against a war after he had joined up.

Kerry has missed opportunity after opportunity to be candid with the American people. By speaking frankly, Kerry can deliver a knockout blow that would tear the debate wide open.

When Bush chides Kerry that "you saw the same intelligence that I did," why doesn't Kerry reply:

"Yes, Mr. President, the same people who misled you, misled me, the House and the Senate and sent Colin Powell to New York to mislead the UN. So, Mr. President, why haven't you fired them? Is there no accountability in your administration? How can you lead when you don't hold people responsible for grievous errors that have led to the death and maiming of thousands of our troops and tens of thousands of Iraqis, shattered our alliances, and recruited thousands to the banners of terrorism?"

Bush would have no answer.

Saddam Hussein was no danger to the US. However, he was a potential check, with Syria, on Israel's right-wing Likud Party's desire to expel the Palestinians to Jordan and to seize Lebanon. The expulsion and the Lebanon grab may yet come to fruition, because it is supported by the neoconservatives who control the Bush administration.

Installing a puppet regime in Iraq and constructing a dozen or more permanent US military bases in Iraq, as the US is doing, opens a field of conquest to Israel.

The neoconservative goal of conquest is no secret. Neoconservative godfather Norman Podhoretz, and others of his persuasion, have called in print on more than one occasion for the US to launch World War IV against the Muslim Middle East.

The cause of Muslim terrorism is not opposition to US democracy. The cause is opposition to US policy in the Middle East, especially US support for Israel's ghettoization of Palestine. Lacking military forces with which to oppose American might, Muslims resort to terror attacks. How can Americans be so naive as to think that Muslims will just sit there and take it?

The US cannot put down terrorism with force alone--unless it intends genocide for Muslims. Saddam Hussein was not a popular ruler, but occupying Iraq has tied down 80% of our troops and is not succeeding.

Expanding this war, as neocons intend, requires resources that the US does not have and would likely result in countries uniting against us.

It is a self-defeating policy that Bush is pursuing in the Middle East. Bush is not building democracy, but he is creating legions of insurgents and terrorists.

The US can defeat insurgents in battles, but cannot successfully occupy the conquered territory. In his essays on Fourth Generation Warfare, William Lind has clarified the advantages insurgents have over conventional forces.

At this point, "staying the course" in Iraq is not an option. America's only choices are to escalate or to withdraw.

According to the October 9 International Herald Tribune, the US has plans to escalate by attacking twenty to thirty Iraqi towns and cities in hopes of regaining control:

"Pentagon planners and military commanders have identified roughly 20 to 30 towns and cities in Iraq that must be brought under control before elections can be held there in January."

Think about that. Twenty to thirty more Najafs and Fallujahs?! The US doesn't even control Baghdad 400 yards beyond the heavily fortified "Green Zone" where the "Iraqi government" and its US overlords are forced to take refuge.

Imagine the numbers of women and children who will be blown to bits by US "precision attacks" on 20 to 30 Iraqi towns and cities.

It is a war crime to attack civilians. The already low ratio of killed insurgents to killed Iraqi civilians means that it is the insurgents, not the civilians, who are the "collateral damage."

If Bush goes through with this madness, the US military will become known as the reincarnation of the SS.

No American politician can talk sense when ensnared by the big lie that the war with Iraq was necessary. It was not necessary. It was a strategic blunder. It has started something that may already be out of anyone's control.

In military matters, pretense and delusion lead to disaster. A deluded superpower is most dangerous to itself.

Please candidate Kerry, in the final debate do come to the point, speak the truth, and show the leadership required if America is to recover from the strategic blunder of invading Iraq.

Paul Craig Roberts is John M. Olin Fellow at the Institute for Political Economy and Research Fellow at the Independent Institute. He is a former associate editor of the Wall Street Journal and a former assistant secretary of the U.S. Treasury. He is the co-author of The Tyranny of Good Intentions.

Mon, 11 Oct 2004 04:56:01 GMT

Here is a nice combination of articles on the Iraq dilemma

from

PUBLIC DIPLOMACY PRESS REVIEW, OCTOBER 9

http://www.opinionjournal.com/editorial/feature.html?id=110005735

5. PAGING BILL CLINTON – EDITORIAL (LOS ANGELES TIMES, OCTOBER 9):

It’s hard to come up with a stirring campaign slogan for the idea that going to Iraq was a mistake but that we now have to succeed there.

http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/editorials/la-ed-debate9oct09,1,3470261.story?coll=la-news-comment-editorials

6. SIZING UP IRAQ: THINGS ARE COMING TO A HEAD IN THE MIDDLE EAST – VICTOR DAVIS HANSON (NATIONAL REVIEW): The administration’s gaffes all share a common theme of restraining our military power in fear of either Middle Eastern or European censure. But once one climbs into a cesspool like Iraq, one must either clean it up or go home, and that means suffering the 48-hour hysteria of the global media about collateral damage in exchange for killing the terrorists and freeing the country. Only that way can we impress the fencesitting Iraqis that we employ an iron fist in service to their own security and prosperity, and thus we -- not the beheaders and kidnappers -- are their only partners for peace.

http://www.nationalreview.com/hanson/hanson200410080826.asp

7. DISSIMULATION REIGNS: WHAT ON EARTH WAS GOING ON IN THE MIND OF SADDAM HUSSEIN? – WILLIAM F. BUCKLEY, JR. (NATIONAL REVIEW): So we have an odd coincidence. The coalition powers, led by the U.S., believe that Saddam has weapons sufficient to repel the U.S. and to threaten other nations. Saddam thinks the very same thing. The U.S.

acts on its assumption (it invades), and Saddam acts on the same assumption (he does nothing to abort war).

http://www.nationalreview.com/buckley/wfb200410081355.asp

8. EXITING IRAQ IS THE ONLY SOLUTION - ANDREW GREELEY (CHICAGO SUN TIMES, OCTOBER 8/COMMON DREAMS): There are arguments against withdrawal from Iraq. We will lose prestige and credibility around the world? The thunderous silence after Bush’s United Nations speech shows just how much credibility the United States currently possesses. The Iraqis will fight a civil war? They already are. Turkey and Iran will be drawn in? They’re welcome to it. The radical Islamists (mostly

Saudis) will claim a great victory? They sure will, and we gave it to them when we decided to invade Iraq. We will lose the Iraqi oil? Ah, so that’s why there’s a war?

Fri, 08 Oct 2004 00:52:02 GMT

Scenes of the roman gladiator, getting preped for tomorrow's candidates response to questions..

Meanwhile,

SADDAM TO DECLARE CANDIDACY FOR IRAQI ELECTIONS By Hasan Cucuk Zaman Online September 21, 2004

http://www.zaman.org/?bl=international&;alt=&trh=20040921&hn=12424

Overthrown Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein, who was arrested by US forces last December, reportedly plans to run as a candidate in the Iraqi elections scheduled for January 2005.

Saddam's lawyer Giovanni di Stefano told Denmark's B.T. newspaper that Saddam decided during one of their discussions that he would declare his candidacy for the elections.

Stefano said that there was no law that prevented Saddam from appearing on the ballot. He added that Saddam hopes to regain his presidency and palaces via the democratic process.

Contrary to the statements of Iraqi Interim Prime Minister Iyad Allawi, Stefano claims, "Saddam has no chance to be tried before the elections.

Moreover, no international law prevents him from coming forward."

Saddam's lawyer defends that the ambiguity in Iraq will favor Saddam at the polls. Stefano remarked that a recent Gallup poll indicates that 42 percent of the Iraqi people want their former leader back.

Meanwhile, evaluating the conditions of Saddam in jail, Allawi said that Saddam had asked him for mercy.

Wed, 06 Oct 2004 16:08:00 GMT

I am posting this long article because there is no easy linkback. Best overview of options in Iraq, the logic that got us there, and why it was wrong but maybe must be won. From www.juancole.com

Kerry on Iraq: Guest Editorial by Joseph White

Professor Joseph White, Director of the Center for Policy Studies at Case Western Reserve University, has kindly agreed to share the following guest editorial here.

Iraq Then and Now
or:
Why invading Iraq was the wrong war in the wrong place at the wrong time, but, once the U.S. is there, trying to win may be the best among bad choices.

In the current presidential campaign, Senator Kerry has been criticized for being inconsistent or flip-flopping because he supposedly supported the war and now criticizes it. This little essay is an attempt by a non-specialist, writing from very much an American perspective, to summarize the merits of the case.

Dick Cheney and George Bush say we had to invade Iraq to protect ourselves against terrorism. That shows they totally misunderstood the enemy.

The Wrong Enemy

The U.S. was attacked by Al Qaeda, not Saddam Hussein. That’s a truism, though apparently unrecognized by the Vice President. The larger context is that Al Qaeda is part of a Sunni fundamentalist movement that, for lack of an agreed term, I’ll call the jihadis. This movement believes the Arab world would be restored to greatness if it was governed by a medieval vision of Islam. It has tried to seize power in many countries across the Arab and Muslim worlds. But it had been defeated everywhere except Afghanistan – partly because of repression by regimes allied with the U.S., and partly because, though many people in those countries hate their governments, they also did not want such an extreme Islamic government.

So Osama bin Laden decided to change the subject. By attacking the U.S., he wanted to turn widespread resentment of the U.S., a feeling of humiliation by the westerners, into a reason to support the broader jihadist agenda. His message was that fundamentalists were standing up to the western infidels, so all good Muslims should support them.

Saddam Hussein had nothing to do with that. Saddam Hussein is a Baathist, an Arab Nationalist. Osama bin Laden called Saddam an “infidel” and Saddam brutally repressed the Sunni fundamentalists, along with everyone else. Saddam was one of a bunch of people in the Middle East who didn’t like us but didn’t like Al Qaeda either. The Iranian Mullahs, for example, are Shiite fundamentalists. Sunni extremists like Osama view the Shia as heretics or schismatics. It’s much like how Catholics viewed Protestants during the Reformation – which led to over a century of religious wars in Europe. Even in Iraq some of the bombings have been Sunnis blowing up Shia.

So attacking Saddam Hussein had nothing to do with attacking Osama. In fact, it was exactly what Osama would want. First, it got rid of one of his enemies in the Arab world. More important, the American invasion of Iraq gave him an opportunity to get allies in the Arab and Muslim worlds.

Before we invaded Iraq, we were fighting Sunni jihadis. Lots of other people didn’t like us, for all sorts of reasons, but were not trying to kill Americans. Now, in Iraq, the Al Qaeda types are joined by Baathist Arab nationalists; by the radical Shia led by Muqtada al-Sadr; by Iraqi nationalists who don’t like having the U.S. occupying their country; and by tribal groups that just don’t like having any foreigners around, and who feel they have to take revenge if any of their members are killed. The rest of the Arab world sees the conflict on Al-Jazeera, where brutality based on a medieval distortion of Islam is presented as the way to overcome humiliation, be strong, and drive out the infidels. So by invading Iraq, Bush and Cheney took our conflict with jihadis into the worst possible conditions. Definitely the wrong war in the wrong place at the wrong time. It would have been much better, for example, to put more effort into catching Bin Laden and turning Afghanistan into a decent place to live.

How Could They Get It So Wrong?

There’s a lot of theories, but one thing is clear: Bush and Cheney were not focused on Al Qaeda and the larger jihadist movement at all.

Look at what Cheney said on August 26, 2002, when he made the case for invading Iraq to the Veterans of Foreign Wars convention in Nashville:

“We now know Saddam has resumed his efforts to acquire nuclear weapons… Armed with an arsenal of these weapons of terror, and seated atop 10 percent of the world’s oil reserves, Saddam Hussein could then be expected to seek domination of the entire Middle East, take control of a great portion of the world’s energy supplies, directly threaten America’s friends throughout the region, and subject the United States or any other nation to nuclear blackmail.”
(New York Times October 3, 2004, p17)

Ignore the fact that Cheney and the rest of the administration vastly exaggerated Saddam’s nuclear threat, badly distorting the facts. Cheney’s rationale has nothing to do with Al Qaeda. As Bob Woodward’s book, Plan of Attack, makes clear, Cheney and others in the administration wanted to eliminate Saddam Hussein before 9-11 happened. The very first National Security Council meeting of Bush’s Presidency, on January 30, focused on Iraq. As Treasury Secretary Paul O’Neill recalled, Condi Rice said the main agenda item was “How Iraq is destabilizing” (her words) the Middle East, and argued that, in O’Neill’s summary, “Iraq might be the key to reshaping the entire region.” (Ron Suskind, The Price of Loyalty, 72). As many other sources, such as Richard Clarke’s book and reporting in The New Yorker show, this administration paid little attention to Al Qaeda before 9-11, and President Bush immediately focused on Iraq after 9-11.

If you were worried about Muslim radicals getting The Bomb, you would worry more about the prospect of radicals taking over Pakistan. After all, those radicals are a lot stronger in Pakistan than they were in Iraq, and Pakistan already has The Bomb. So people who seriously worried about Osama’s brand of radical Islam would at least ask whether invading Iraq might destabilize Pakistan. But there is no evidence in Plan of Attack that Bush and Cheney considered those kinds of issues at all.

Some people in the administration, known as the “neocons” (neoconservatives), believed that we could create a democracy in Iraq, and that the example of that democracy would transform the Muslim (especially Arab) world, and so defuse the threat from Muslim fundamentalist movements. President Bush makes that his main argument now. Even George F. Will calls the idea that we can build democracy in other countries a “lethal idea” (Newsweek, Sept 27 2004) based on fantasy. At a minimum, we should expect our leaders to think about what could go wrong if we tried. But Bush and Cheney appear to have paid no attention at all to the risks. Instead, they sold the idea of the war on false data about “weapons of mass destruction,” especially nuclear weapons. In Thursday’s debate President Bush said:

“My opponent says we didn’t have any allies in this war. What’s he say to Tony Blair? What’s he say to Alexander Kwasniewski of Poland?”

But even Kwasniewski, asked about weapons of mass destruction in March, said:

“They deceived us about the weapons of mass destruction, that’s true. We were taken for a ride.” (taken from the Newsweek website Sunday, October 03, 2004)

The facts are obvious. This administration came into office determined to overthrow Saddam Hussein. That was a goal long before 9/11. Attacking Iraq had nothing to do with Al Qaeda and nothing to do with radical Sunni fundamentalism. Cheney wanted to attack Iraq because he thought Saddam would dominate the Middle East with nuclear weapons that Saddam did not have. The administration grossly distorted intelligence to make that case. What attacking Iraq did do was play directly into Osama bin Laden’s hands. Bush and Cheney show no signs of even understanding the issue.

Now What?

But now the U.S. is occupying Iraq. Actually, “occupying Iraq” may be a bit too positive a term; part of the problem in terms of security is that the U.S. is not doing much of a job of occupying significant portions of the country. What should be done now?

Senator Kerry’s position is that, once there, the U.S. can’t afford to lose. Ignore for the moment what “lose” and “win” might mean. An outcome that would be viewed as defeat for the U.S. would be seen by the Arab world and much of the Muslim world as a victory for jihadi’sts. Bush and Cheney turned Iraq into a giant recruiting poster for Al Qaeda. But it will be much worse if the fundamentalists can say they won, so that Iraq is proof that their approach can restore the pride and power of Arab and Muslim peoples.

The question then is whether Senator Kerry has a better chance of avoiding such a loss than President Bush does. That gets translated politically into whether Kerry has a better “plan” than Bush, but demanding a “plan” is plain dumb. Iraq is past the opportunity for planning. Kerry can’t possibly know what the situation on the ground will be on January 20, so what he will do then, should he be elected. Instead, Kerry can legitimately argue that he offers a more promising approach.

His first argument would be that Bush has already shown that he doesn’t deserve trust on the issue. Bush has had lots of “plans” for Iraq, all of which have failed. At a minimum, Kerry can and has said that you can’t solve a problem if you aren’t willing to figure out what it is, or even to acknowledge it. So one advantage of Kerry’s approach would be realism.

But what then? Kerry can’t legitimately promise that he will get a lot of help from allies and international organizations. They must calculate their own national interests and domestic politics (or, for international organizations, where they’ll get staff willing to risk going to Iraq), and the costs may exceed the benefits. What Kerry can argue is that he has a better chance of getting help from allies and international organizations than Bush does. Consider the situation of the French:

The French government opposed invading Iraq for very good reasons: that invading Iraq was a diversion from the real task, fighting jihadis, and that Saddam could be kept in a box by inspections. They were right. But, as noted above, now Iraq IS a front in a conflict with jihadis. There is a French interest in avoiding jihadist victory in Iraq, because, expanded beyond Iraq, the movement is highly likely to have nasty effects on French interests. But it has to be very hard for the French to turn around and support the U.S. with Bush as president: partly because of personal feelings among leaders and partly because Bush has proven that his judgment in operational decisions cannot be trusted. There is a further problem, to which Kerry had referred. The Bush administration has been so focused on keeping contracts for American corporations, using contract decisions to punish the French and others, that it would be very hard for any French government to cooperate unless it could show that the French were no longer being discriminated against in economic terms. I suspect that the material value of contracts in the short run is not the major issue. After all, the average French contractor, like all others, must have serious doubts about sending their staff to Iraq at the moment. But the French must care about both the principle and the long run, whether there would be any business prospects if Iraq is ever stabilized. So Kerry makes a good substantive point when he talks about contracts.

Hence Kerry can offer realism, some practical measures to enlist others, and simply the advantage of not being Bush, so making a fresh start. Beyond that, however, he and Bush would face much the same constraints. Everybody is for training more Iraqi soldiers and policemen; the challenge is to ensure they’re competent and don’t go over to the other side(s). Kerry is more likely than Bush to admit a need for more force, and has called for a larger Army. But it’s not clear where the extra volunteers could be found under current conditions, and the political constraints against deploying more troops in Iraq are strong. Neither Kerry nor Bush has evident ways to make the Shia trust the Sunnis, or the Turks accept Kurdish autonomy. Kerry may be seen in most of the world as very different from Bush, so have a better chance of winning cooperation from forces outside Iraq. Unfortunately, it is not at all clear that the contending forces inside Iraq will make the distinction between Kerry and Bush. If Kerry wins he has a better chance of some sort of “success” than Bush does, but it’s still going to be very difficult.

A Note on the Politics

Readers will note that everything I’ve said here is compatible with the substance of Senator Kerry’s campaign positions, but somewhat different from what he has said.

The Bush campaign charges it is inconsistent to say Iraq was the wrong war in the wrong place at the wrong time, yet still say we need to win. Their position ignores the fact that the conflict in Iraq is now far wider than a conflict with Saddam Hussein.

The Bush campaign also says Kerry “backed” the war when he voted for the resolution giving Bush authority. As an observer, I find it fair to say that many Democrats made a political calculation to back that resolution. They knew they could be blamed for opposing it, and surely assumed that, if there were a war, and it turned out badly, Bush would get more of the blame than they would. But Kerry does have a substantive point. Bush and Cheney and their advisers greatly exaggerated the evidence about the potential threat from Saddam. Yet most outsiders thought Saddam had some sort of WMD, and thought he harbored aggressive intent. Under these conditions it made sense to resume inspections, and it is highly unlikely that Saddam would have allowed the inspections without the threat of an invasion. It is reasonable for a Senator to expect a normal President to threaten force, when that is useful, yet use force only when necessary. We now know better – that Bush meant to invade Iraq all along. But Kerry could not, and even if he did, he could not have proved it at the time.

Bush also says Kerry does not “support our troops.” That charge has two components. One is Kerry’s series of votes on the famed $87 billion supplemental appropriation. Anyone who knows Congress knows that votes are framed as packages, amendments are offered, and sometimes a legislator wants one version but not another, so votes against the final version of legislation. Kerry may have made a mistaken political calculation (in this case, to object to how the reconstruction of Iraq would be financed), but to say he did not “support our troops” is a distortion (though one Kerry made possible). A more fundamental part is Bush’s argument that, in order to support the troops, you have to support the war.

Many liberals or peace advocates find Bush’s position incomprehensible. The best thing that could happen to the troops would be to come home, unharmed. If opposing the war means ending the war, then it would get the troops out of Iraq, giving them the help they need most. Bush’s argument has a lot of political resonance because “support” in this case means emotional support. If you were stuck in Iraq, you would want to believe you were there for a good reason. It’s hard enough to be in a hellhole, having to kill or be killed, continually wondering who just wants to be your friend and who wants to blow you up, without suspecting that you shouldn’t be there in the first place.

Kerry can give three answers to this criticism. One would be that at least some of who the troops are fighting are the right enemy, even if they should not have been fighting on this ground. A second would be that having a leader who recognizes reality makes it more likely that their efforts will make us more secure. Finally, he can argue that we just should not lie to soldiers; that they can recognize the truth for themselves, and being lied to just makes them feel their government is selling them out.

Kerry can make the final argument from experience. That is how he felt in Vietnam. Yet a whole lot of other soldiers – the kind whose views are represented in the “Swift Boat Veterans for Truth” – felt very differently. Their need to feel their sacrifices were justified is so great that even 30 years later they can’t let go.

The average voter understands the feelings of soldiers who need to believe what they’re doing is worthwhile. Perhaps that explains why Kerry can’t make some other points as strongly as an analyst would wish.

Joseph White, Ph.D.
Luxenberg Family Professor and Chair
Department of Political Science
Director, Center for Policy Studies
Case Western Reserve University
Mather House 111
11201 Euclid Avenue
Cleveland OH 44106-7109
joseph.white _a_t_ case d o t edu

Wed, 22 Sep 2004 22:45:38 GMT

The numbers are a shock

http://www.csmonitor.com/2004/0921/p06s01-woiq.html

Iraq losing its best and brightest

Targeted attacks and a sluggish economy are pushing academics, Christians, and businessmen to move abroad.

By Howard LaFranchi | Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor

BAGHDAD – When Saadoon Isa's son was released by kidnappers earlier this year after a ransom was paid, the criminals sent the boy's father a message: "Tell him to leave the country because Iraq is not his, it is ours."

"I still don't know who they were," says Mr. Isa, the vice president of Baghdad's Al-Nahrain University. "But I took that message to be directed to Iraq's educated people, its professors, business leaders, even the people working hard in our ministries. They want us to leave."

With stories like Isa's multiplying, more of the very Iraqis needed to rebuild the country are heeding the pressures to flee. Iraqis speak worriedly of a brain drain that is denying Iraq a part of the educated, moderate, and entrepreneurial population required to move forward.

It's a reversal, in the 18 months since the war, of the euphoria that brought thousands of exiles back for the opportunity to build a new Iraq.

Many of those Iraqis are still here, building political and business careers. The new interim government is dominated by returnees, and former exiles are expected to fare well in planned January elections.

But now signs are multiplying of Iraqis bowing to pressures to leave:

• Every day long lines of Iraqis form outside passport offices. Officials say they have issued more than 500,000 passports since sovereignty was restored in June. Many applicants say the passport is a kind of insurance policy against deepening chaos.

• More than 40,000 Assyrian and other Iraqi Christians are estimated to have fled since war's end, hastened by a series of church bombings this summer. The outflow weakens a prominent minority that has been a modernizing and tempering force in Iraq for centuries.

• More than 200 university professors have been either killed or kidnapped, according to academic organizations, prompting as many as 2,000 of Iraq's best educators to leave - and many more to consider posts abroad.

Tue, 21 Sep 2004 00:11:27 GMT

A ver full discussion of the options in raq over at

http://scoop.agonist.org/story/2004/9/19/211433/693

It starts

First, the United States can effect what I would call a strategic and orderly retreat. This is the option that General Odom has called for in a recent National Interest essay. The benefits of this plan are limited to a pause in the tempo of our war fighting capability, offering us some much needed time to recoup our losses, refit and retrain. We would then have more freedom of action in Afghanistan, as more resources would be freed up for a more focused and judicious application in that sad land. The downside to this option would be the global and regional perception that we had been beaten, driven out by a rag-tag army of "dead-enders" and terrorist thugs. The perception would be akin to the loss of prestige suffered by the Israeli's upon their unilateral withdrawal from Lebanon, magnified ten times. This option would also reduce the amount of capital we are currently sinking into Iraq. This is no small sum as our current burn rate is roughly $4 billion a month. The success of this option would largely be in our hands, not that of the enemy. Success therefore, would be highly probable.
The second option is that which I believe the United States is currently considering. This option entails a large offensive into regions that are currently labeled by the media as "no-go" zones. These areas include, but are not limited to, Fallujah, Ramadi, Baquba and Samarra. The benefits of the successful conclusion of this option are significant. One would assume that the insurgency would be crippled, perhaps permanently. Furthermore, the United States and her allies would attain virtual freedom of action in the region to effect political accommodation by other, adversarial, regimes. However, this scenario is not without grave risks itself. First, one must take into consideration the plain fact that the enemy has a choice in this option too. Frankly, our performance has not been successful to date. If it were, there would be no insurgency. His vote, therefore, counts. However, I would not count out the bravery and determination of the American fighting force. Our will is formidable when the politicians do not meddle. This option would also grant us a small window of opportunity to effect some necessary political accommodations in Iraq, accommodations necessary to our future success.
There are other significant risks that I would call political. One, the fallout from the massive civilian deaths that would arise from such an offensive and the regional and global outcry would be significant and should not be underestimated. Second the amount of capital required to rebuild Iraq after the intense urban fighting this scenario calls for would be immense. A rough guess: double our current burn rate for a short time, perhaps six months, and then a return to the current rate. Finally, the amount of US casualties will also be extremely high. This option would probably not pass the "Dover Test" but in the current media environment would probably be feasible. Success in this option would be possible but not certain.
Finally, we come to the last option, which I would term the "More of the Same" option. We can continue down the fruitless path were are currently trudging. We would see the same amount of casualties, the same burn rate and a fighting force stretched to the very limits of effectiveness. This solution offers no political resolution in the region, maintains the strain on our fighting force and expenditures with few visible benefits other than delaying the inevitable choices mentioned above. One can hope that things will get better but hope is not a policy. The possibility of success arising from this option is virtually zero.
These are the options as I see them. This risk versus reward discussion is in no way complete. I simply lay it before you to consider. However, I believe these are the only realistic options we have. We can consider them with the full force of our reasoning faculties or we can bury our heads in the sand. But in the end, I believe we will be faced with two choices: one rich in blood and the possibility of victory; the other, simply an admission of our inability to effect our will. Either way, our choices are not good.

Sat, 18 Sep 2004 19:00:37 GMT

It is Important to realize how deep it and widespread was the discussion about the difficulties of the war in Iraq before it started . The normal Bush position that everyone was for it is very wrong .

Secret papers show Blair was warned of Iraq chaos By Michael Smith, Defence Correspondent The Telegraph, September 18, 2004.

Tony Blair was warned a year before invading Iraq that a stable post-war government would be impossible without keeping large numbers of troops there for "many years", secret government papers reveal.

The documents, seen by The Telegraph, show more clearly than ever the grave reservations expressed by Jack Straw, the Foreign Secretary, over the consequences of a second Gulf war and how prescient his Foreign Office officials were in predicting the ensuing chaos.

They told the Prime Minister that there was a risk of the Iraqi system "reverting to type" after a war, with a future government acquiring the very weapons of mass destruction that an attack would be designed to remove.

The documents further show that the Prime Minister was advised that he would have to "wrong foot" Saddam Hussein into giving the allies an excuse for war, and that British officials believed that President George W Bush merely wanted to complete his father's "unfinished business" in a "grudge match"

against Saddam.

But it is the warning of the likely aftermath - more than a year in advance, as Mr Blair was deciding to commit Britain to joining a US-led invasion - that is likely to cause most controversy and embarrassment in both London and Washington.

More than 900 allied troops have been killed in Iraq since the end of the war, 33 of them British. More than 10,000 civilians are believed to have been killed.

At least 13 civilians died yesterday in a suicide bomb attack on a police checkpoint in Baghdad. The Iraqi health ministry said a further 45 civilians had died in US air attacks on Fallujah overnight.

Mr Straw predicted in March 2002 that post-war Iraq would cause major problems, telling Mr Blair in a letter marked "Secret and personal" that no one had a clear idea of what would happen afterwards. "There seems to be a larger hole in this than anything."

Most of the US assessments argued for regime change as a means of eliminating Iraq's weapons of mass destruction, Mr Straw said.

"But no one has satisfactorily answered how there can be any certainty that the replacement regime will be any better. Iraq has no history of democracy so no one has this habit or experience."

Senior ministerial advisers warned bluntly in a "Secret UK Eyes Only"

options paper that "the greater investment of Western forces, the greater our control over Iraq's future, but the greater the cost and the longer we would need to stay".

The paper, compiled by the Cabinet Office Overseas and Defence Secretariat,

added: "The only certain means to remove Saddam and his elite is to invade and impose a new government, but this would involve nation-building over many years."

Replacing Saddam with another "Sunni strongman" would allow the allies to withdraw their troops quickly. This leader could be persuaded not to seek WMD in exchange for large-scale assistance with reconstruction.

"However, there would then be a strong risk of the Iraqi system reverting to type. Military coup could succeed coup until an autocratic Sunni dictator emerged who protected Sunni interests. With time he could acquire WMD," the paper said.

Even a representative government would be likely to create its own WMD so long as Israel and Iran retained their own arsenals and Palestinian grievances remained unresolved.

But there would be other major problems with a democratic government.

If it were to survive, "it would require the US and others to commit to nation-building for many years. This would entail a substantial international security force."

The documents also show the degree of concern within Whitehall that America was ready to invade Iraq with or without backing from any of its allies.

Sir David Manning, Mr Blair's foreign policy adviser, returned from talks in Washington in mid-March 2002 warning that Mr Bush "still has to find answers to the big questions", which included "what happens on the morning after?".

In a letter to the Prime Minister marked "Secret - strictly personal", he

said: "I think there is a real risk that the administration underestimates the difficulties.

"They may agree that failure isn't an option, but this does not mean they will necessarily avoid it."

The Cabinet Office said that the US believed that the legal basis for war already existed and had lost patience with the policy of containment.

It did not see the war on terrorism as being a major element in American decision-making.

"The swift success of the war in Afghanistan, distrust of UN sanctions and inspections regimes and unfinished business from 1991 are all factors," it added. That view appeared to be shared by Peter Ricketts, the Foreign Office policy director.

There were "real problems" over the alleged threat and what the US was looking to achieve by toppling Saddam, he said. Nothing had changed to make Iraqi WMD more of a threat.

"Even the best survey of Iraq's WMD programmes will not show much advance in recent years. Military operations need clear and compelling military objectives. For Iraq, 'regime change' does not stack up. It sounds like a grudge match between Bush and Saddam."

From:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml;sessionid=YNCEP4C2AGEHNQFIQMGCM5WAVCBQUJVC?xml=/news/2004/09/18/nwar18.xml&sSheet=/portal/2004/09/18/ixportaltop.html

Sat, 18 Sep 2004 00:13:36 GMT

article

From: http://www.commondreams.org/headlines04/0917-01.htm

From Bad to Worse in Iraq

by Jim Lobe

Inter Press Service, September 17, 2004

WASHINGTON - After weeks of hurricanes and controversies over swift boats in Vietnam and Texas and Alabama National Guard records, Iraq is beginning to creep back onto the front pages, and the news is uniformly bad.

Consider some of the headlines in major newspapers that appeared on their front pages on Wednesday alone:

Wall Street Journal: "Rebel Attacks Reveal New Cooperation: Officials Fear Recent Rise in Baghdad Violence Stems from Growing Coordination".

Baltimore Sun: "In Iraq, Chance for Credible Vote is Slipping Away".

Philadelphia Inquirer: "Outlook: The Growing Insurgency Could Doom U.S. Plans for Iraq, Analysts Say".

Washington Post: "U.S. Plans to Divert Iraq Money: Attacks Prompt Request to Move Reconstruction Funds to Security Forces".

And then Thursday:

USA Today: "Insurgents in Iraq Appear More Powerful Than Ever".

New York Times: "U.S. Intelligence Shows Pessimism on Iraq's Future:

Civil War Called Possible -- Tone Differs from Public Statements".

All of which tended to confirm the conclusion of the latest 'Newsweek'

magazine's Iraq feature: "It's Worse Than You Think".

Against these stories -- putting aside the other headlines detailing deadly suicide and other attacks that have killed scores of Iraqis in the past week -- Bush's insistence in a campaign address to a convention of the National Guard Tuesday that "our strategy is succeeding" appears awfully hollow, a point made repeatedly not only by Democratic, but by some Republican lawmakers at a hearing of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee Wednesday.

"It's beyond pitiful, it's beyond embarrassing," noted Nebraska Republican Sen. Chuck Hagel, who has long been sceptical of administration claims that the Iraq occupation was going well. "It is now in the zone of dangerous."

Indeed, it is now very difficult to find any analysts outside of the administration or the Bush campaign who share the official optimism.

Consider the case of Michael O'Hanlon, a defence specialist at the Brookings Institution and former National Security Council aide who has been among the most confident of independent analysts of the basic soundness of Washington's strategy in Iraq.

"In my judgment the administration is basically correct that the overall effort in Iraq is succeeding," he testified to a Congressional panel just 10 months ago. "By the standards of counterinsurgency warfare, most factors, though admittedly not all, appear to be working to our advantage."

This week, however, O'Hanlon, who has developed a detailed index periodically published in the New York Times that measures U.S. progress in post-war Iraq, was singing an entirely different song at a forum sponsored by Brookings and the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS).

"We're in much worse shape than I thought we'd ever be," he said. "I don't know how you get it back," he conceded, adding that his last remaining hope was that somehow the U.S. could train enough indigenous Iraqi security forces within two to three years to keep the country "cohesive" and permit an eventual U.S. withdrawal. "A Lebanonization of Iraq" was also quite possible, he said.

His conclusion was echoed by his CSIS co-panelists, Frederick Barton and Bathsheba Crocker, who direct their own index that relies heavily on interviews with Iraqis themselves in measuring progress in reconstruction .

According to the five general criteria used by them, movement over the past 13 months has for the most part been "backward", particularly with respect to security which they now consider to be squarely in the "danger"

zone.

"Security and economic problems continue to overshadow and undermine efforts across the board", including health care, education and governance, according to a report their project released last week. Among other things, it noted that despite a massive school-building and rehabilitation programme, children are increasingly dropping out to help their families survive an economy where almost half the working population remains unemployed.

The growing media chorus of despair actually began just one week ago, a few days after the brilliantly staged Republican convention in New York City had ended, when the U.S. military death toll in Iraq since last year's invasion topped the 1,000 mark, and the New York Times published a front-page article entitled "U.S. Conceding Rebels Control Regions of Iraq".

Since then, a number of articles have featured the increasing violence of the insurgency, which is now mounting an average of more than 80 attacks on U.S. targets -- four times the number of one year ago and 25 percent higher than last spring, when the U.S. faced serious uprisings in both the Sunni Triangle and in the south.

Washington officials had predicted that attacks would increase sharply just before the transfer of sovereignty from the U.S.-dominated Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) to the interim government headed by Prime Minister Ayad Allawi in late June and would tail off.

But, as noted by a front-page article in the Washington Post late last week, more U.S. troops were killed in July and August than during the initial invasion in March and April 2003. Injuries suffered by U.S. troops in August alone were twice what they were during the invasion.

The escalation in violence over the summer is now being attributed by administration officials to the insurgents' efforts to derail the elections, currently scheduled for January.

The increased violence -- particularly in Baghdad and the so-called "Sunni Triangle" where Falluja, Ramadi, Baquba and Samarra, among other towns, are controlled by insurgents -- has created a serious dilemma for administration strategists who, on the one hand, reject the notion that there are "no-go"

areas for U.S. troops, and, on the other, want to keep U.S. casualties down and off the front pages and U.S. television sets, particularly before the November elections here.

As a result, they appear to have settled on a strategy -- bombing suspected insurgent hideouts from the air -- that further alienates the civilian population.

"I don't believe that you can flatten cities and expect to win popular support," noted CSIS' Barton.

"This is the classic contradiction of counterinsurgency," Steven Metz, a strategy specialist at the U.S. Army War College, told the Inquirer. "In the long term, winning the people matters more. But it may be that in the short term, you have to forgo that in order to crush the insurgents. Right now, we are trying to decide whether we have reached that point. In Vietnam, we waited too long."

Meanwhile, both independent and U.S. military analysts believe that the insurgency, which the administration still insists is made up only of Baathist "dead-enders", foreign "jihadis", and criminals, has grown from an estimated 5,000 people one year ago to at least 20,000 and possibly significantly more.

"The bottom line is, at this moment we are losing the war", Col Andrew Bacevich (ret.) of Boston University told USA Today Thursday. "That doesn't mean it is lost, but we are losing, and as an observer it is difficult for me to see that either the civilian leaderhsip or the military leadership has any plausible idea on how to turn this around".

© Copyright 2004 IPS - Inter Press Service

Thu, 16 Sep 2004 17:37:51 GMT

From www.juancole.com this morning

Sistani's quite resonable demand for elections is nevertheless among the greatest dangers facing the Allawi government and the Americans. It will be extremely difficult actually to hold the elections on time. But Sistani believes only such elections can produce a legitimate government, and he already accepted a six-month delay. If the elections are not held, and if Sistani begins to fear they won't be held soon, he may well call the masses into the streets. That could lead to an overthrow of Allawi and an expulsion of the Americans. Keep your eye on February and March of 2005.

Incidentally, UN Secretary General Kofi Annan predicted that it would be impossible to hold the elections on time. He also went on record that the Bush administration's war against Iraq had been illegal, contravening the US charter that forbids the launching of wars without UN Security Council authorization. Annan insists that there should have been a second UNSC vote.

I find myself thinking, who is in Washington minding the government? Who is in control? Who is having conversations?

Thu, 16 Sep 2004 17:09:18 GMT

And

U.S. Intelligence Shows Pessimism on Iraq's Future

By DOUGLAS JEHL

ASHINGTON, Sept. 15 - A classified National Intelligence Estimate prepared for President Bush in late July spells out a dark assessment of prospects for Iraq, government officials said Wednesday.

The estimate outlines three possibilities for Iraq through the end of 2005, with the worst case being developments that could lead to civil war, the officials said. The most favorable outcome described is an Iraq whose stability would remain tenuous in political, economic and security terms.

So, now what? Is the pressure to pull out going to increase? Does it make sense? There could be a third way, between pulling out and fighting the increasing number of insurgents. Lots of talk, among all parties, and make that effort larger than the war itself. Make it interesting, make it relevant, make it have operational authority.

Thu, 16 Sep 2004 02:17:56 GMT

Some interesting developments.

Bush's Lost Year

at http://www.cpe-sf.com/ruthgroup/downloads/FallowsAtlantic.htm

By deciding to invade Iraq, the Bush Administration decided not to do many other things: not to reconstruct Afghanistan, not to deal with the threats posed by North Korea and Iran, and not to wage an effective war on terror. An inventory of opportunities lost

by James Fallows

.....

remember distinctly the way 2002 began in Washington. New Year's Day was below freezing and blustery. The next day was worse. That day, January 2, I trudged several hundred yards across the vast parking lots of the Pentagon. I was being pulled apart by the wind and was ready to feel sorry for myself, until I was shamed by the sight of miserable, frozen Army sentries at the numerous outdoor security posts that had been manned non-stop since the September 11 attacks.

I was going for an interview with Paul Wolfowitz, the deputy secretary of defense. At the time, Wolfowitz's name and face were not yet familiar worldwide. He was known in Washington for offering big-picture explanations of the Administration's foreign-policy goals—a task for which the President was unsuited, the Vice President was unavailable, and most other senior Administration officials were, for various reasons, inappropriate. The National Security Adviser, Condoleezza Rice, was still playing a background role; the Secretary of Defense, Donald Rumsfeld, was mainly dealing with immediate operational questions in his daily briefings about the war in Afghanistan; the Secretary of State, Colin Powell, was already known to be on the losing side of most internal policy struggles.

After the interview I wrote a short article about Wolfowitz and his views for the March 2002 issue of this magazine. In some ways the outlook and choices he described then still fit the world situation two and a half years later. Even at the time, the possibility that the Administration's next move in the war on terror would be against Iraq, whether or not Iraq proved to be involved in the 9/11 hijackings, was under active discussion. When talking with me Wolfowitz touched briefly on the case for removing Saddam Hussein, in the context of the general need to reduce tyranny in the Arab-Islamic world.

Wednesday, September 01, 2004

Spy Scandal's Roots are Deep

Jim Lobe argues that the FBI investigation that caught up Pentagon Iran expert Lawrence Franklin is much wider than initially thought, and focuses on the unauthorized transfer to Israel of highly sophisticated military software and designs. Since many Israeli arms merchants connected to the government in Tel Aviv sell to the black market, some of this military technology has ended up in the hands of countries that have poor relations with the US, and some may have ultimately been resold to al-Qaeda.

Sun, 29 Aug 2004 20:01:45 GMT

The new spy episode is very complex, but thre is an emerging picture. Juancole and www.Juancole.com has a very extensive summary article.

Franklin's movements reveal the contours of a rightwing conspiracy of warmongering and aggression, an orgy of destruction, for the benefit of the Likud Party, of Silvio Berlusconi's business in the Middle East, and of the Neoconservative Right in the United States. It isn't about spying. It is about conspiring to conscript the US government on behalf of a foreign power or powers.

posted by Juan @ 8/29/2004 06:38:11 AM

Sun, 29 Aug 2004 19:53:34 GMT

As see it, Bush inherited the probelms did not cause them, but he did make them worse by style. Much of the current world problem: environment, inrequality, globalization as a force of arbitrage, and terror, are deep in the cold war aftermath and Reagan, Bush, Carter and Clinto all made their contributions to the un-solving of this emerging world deterioration. Will a Kerry style make a difference as he tries to handle social security, shrinking econmy, and the global inequalities of power or money that create terrorism? I certainly hope so.

We can expect the next weeks to be a white water of charges and counter charges in the slide towards the election. Take a large view and don't get caught up in self righteousness. Its a trap.

In Iraq , good to read it all..

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/08/29/international/middleeast/29province.html?hp=&;pagewanted=print&position=

American efforts to build a government structure around former Baath Party stalwarts - officials of Saddam Hussein's army, police force and bureaucracy who were willing to work with the United States - have collapsed. Instead, the former Hussein loyalists, under threat of beheadings, kidnappings and humiliation, have mostly resigned or defected to the fundamentalists, or been killed. Enforcers for the old government, including former Republican Guard officers, have put themselves in the service of fundamentalist clerics they once tortured at Abu Ghraib.

In the past three weeks, three former Hussein loyalists appointed to important posts in Falluja and Ramadi have been eliminated by the militants and their Baathist allies. The chief of a battalion of the American-trained Iraqi National Guard in Falluja was beheaded by the militants, prompting the disintegration of guard forces in the city. The Anbar governor was forced to resign after his three sons were kidnapped. The third official, the provincial police chief in Ramadi, was lured to his arrest by American marines after three assassination attempts led him to secretly defect to the rebel cause.

Sat, 28 Aug 2004 20:20:32 GMT

Events today are bringing the lid off. Juan Cole today at www.juancole.com has a very long analysis of which the following is a small part

All this can happen because there is a vacuum in US political discourse. A handful of special interests in the United States virtually dictate congressional policy on some issues. With regard to the Arab-Israeli conflict, the American Israel Political Action Committee and a few allies have succeeded in imposing complete censorship on both houses of Congress. No senator or congress member dares make a speech on the floor of his or her institution critical of Israeli policy, even though the Israeli government often violates international law and UN Security Council resolutions (it would violate more such resolutions, except that the resolutions never got passed because only one NSC member, the US, routinely vetoes them on behalf of Tel Aviv.) As the Labor Party in Israel has been eclipsed by the Likud coalition, which includes many proto-fascist groups, this subservience has yoked Washington to foreign politicians who privately favor ethnic cleansing and/or agressive warfare for the purpose of annexing the territory of neighbors.

Wed, 25 Aug 2004 00:41:20 GMT

The fighting in Najef...

history of the shrine

http://www.e-resaneh.com/English/Introducing%20centers/History%20of%20the%20Shrine%20of%20Imam%20Ali%20(AS).htm

and on a recent poll in Iraq Oxford university

http://raedinthemiddle.blogspot.com/2004_08_24_raedinthemiddle_archive.html#109336441648846522

Question nineteen (Q19 in the media tables) was an important one, it has three sub questions about which national leader in Iraq do people trust more, and will vote for in the coming presidential elections. AsSadr took the third place in both questions, after Sistani and Jafari (from the Shia fundamentalist Dawa party and the current Iraqi vice president).

The other interesting thing in the survey was that more than half of Iraqis refuse to answer the questions, which gives an indication of how secure people feel about having freedom of speech.

My point is that AsSadr, against whom the U.S. forces are now preparing a final attack, is a national Shia leader! Whether we like him or not, whether I like him or not, he is a national leader who is trying to strengthen his position before the time of the elections (and the flaws of the bush administration gave him and other religious leaders the space to reach to the current level of influence and power). In other words, he is already a national leader who should be either contained or given the space to rule the country. It is too late to marginalize him now.

I’m trying to spot out the huge contradictions in the idea of imposing imported democracy on Iraq. Iraq will never reach a government based on public participation unless it was built on a national basis, then developed and modified by internal forces.

The current U.S. plan for solving the Sadr situation is the usual plan:
Kill him.

If they killed him, it will be a disaster. We’ll just witness more chaos and bloodshed.
If they tried to kill him and didn’t succeed, it will be a disaster too. AsSadr will be THE hero.

For the sublime,

http://news.ninemsn.com.au/article.aspx?id=3471

Blair refusing to receive US honour
10:00 AEST Tue Aug 24 2004

AFP - British Prime Minister Tony Blair is refusing to fly to the US to receive a medal bestowed on him by the nation for his support over last year's Iraq war, a London newspaper has reported.

US President George W. Bush has put huge pressure on his closest ally to pick up the medal in person, which was awarded over a year ago, the Sunday Mirror said, quoting a senior British government source.

Blair has been awarded the Congressional Gold Medal. The Sunday Mirror had reported in error that the prime minister had been given the Congressional Medal of Honour - an award handed to US servicemen for valour in combat.

Blair is immensely popular with large sections of the American public for his staunch support of the Iraq war and the White House believes a visit by the prime minister now would provide a much-needed boost to Bush's re-election campaign, the weekly said.

"There has been a lot of telephone traffic between the White House and Downing Street over the medal in recent weeks," the Sunday Mirror quoted a senior government source as saying.

"George Bush wants the prime minister to come to Washington and pick up the medal, which is the highest honour America can bestow on a foreigner.

"But he has refused for more than a year now and for good reason. He cannot possibly accept an award for the Iraq war when British and American troops continue to risk their lives there."

Blair is concerned also that a trip to the US now would effectively be giving a boost to Bush ahead of November's presidential elections.

and back to reality, this from an iraq teenager.

http://me-vs-myself.blogspot.com/

Sunday, May 02, 2004

I can’t speak out what’s in my mind anymore.

As the war broke out, I intended to head to the extreme day by day; under such pressure, I couldn’t express myself in a peaceful way, neither any other civilian could, everybody seemed to be deaf…and no one would listen to what I said. I started to understand the ideology of suicide bombers; no one would listen to their despair, either.
My ideology was to raise my voice, and that’s why I was into the idea of founding Al-Muajaha… but soon after, people started to be deaf again, I had to make it louder, I started to post blogs at the family site… then I started to blog here…

I had to prove in any possible way that the US administration, is not the angel we were waiting for. I assure everybody that Saddam may be the most evil dictator ever, but at least he was honest enough to be proud of it; he thought with his primitive mind that it’s the only way to treat people like Iraqis. Sadly, most of Iraqis still believe in same thing.

Ammar, a person who I met after the war, said “those Americans will not succeed unless they ruled like Saddam, we Iraqis are easily inflamed and nothing can rule us except fire”. Now actually there is no Ammar, but there are hundreds of “Ammars” I meet all the time; taxi drivers, grocers, neighborhood guards, unemployed people… whether they liked or not, and whether you liked or not, they know that one fact is life under Saddam was much easier, period.

Anyhow, it is obvious that Bush has learnt those people’s advices now.

Now, it’s year 2004, and we live in a country that has been “liberated”, but surprisingly, it’s still missing its freedom of expression, freedom of publish, freedom of criticism… we live in a country that has a ministry for human right, but no rights for humans. We barely are able to live.
We are barely able to be.

So when Bush shows up and blabs about how he was sent from the God to free Iraq, then blabs about Iraq’s WMD, then kills more than 2000 civilians with no word of sorry. Then he goes handing over the west bank to Sharon with pleasure, and then you see a comparing between how wonderful and deep and touching stories of US brave soldiers who sacrificed their lives for the happiness of Iraqis were, and how margined and unimportant and shallow stories of Iraqi civilians deaths were. you SHOULD expect mad Iraqis after that; because they are just a weak society, that was trained for decades to start wars, to live in wars, while all what they wanted was just like what any other peaceful society has asked for; peace.
They got sick of life now, they had high hopes in life after Saddam, but US invasion has made things worse, made the life under Saddam like precious memories, and made Iraqis lose their hopes to live until they see a peaceful Iraq.

So… *ding*, Iraqis stopped giving a shit about it.
Why would we care? What do we have to lose now? Or let me put that again…
What do we have now?
Dead relatives, burnt city, destroyed monuments, blocked roads, useless government, injustice invader, expensive markets… and now tortured prisons.

What pushes me now? What is the motive to go on with my life? Why don’t I just join my other schoolmates who dropped out the school and joined the armed resistance?

Wasn’t it me who always dreamt of studying at MIT? Weren’t it us [students] who were told that we are the future and that this country is depending on us?

Why did I lose my dreams? Why did my friends dropped out their schools? Who made me turn my ideology from “I’m a 17-year-old guy and I can do much” to “I’m a 17-year-old guy and when am I going to die?”

They did.
They destroyed my life, my girlfriend’s, and my people’s… whether they wanted it or not, whether they were mean enough or stupid enough.
No one cares no more.

I started to feel happy reading the headlines now, more of US Soldiers are dead, let them all burn in hell. Let’s all jump on those burnt hum-vees. YIIIIHAAAAA.
Barbarism can be also subjective.

They destroyed lives of everyone I loved… and mine as well.
Didn’t these soldiers say that this is kinda pay back to what happened in 9/11?
Did those civilians who died were involved with what happened in 9/11? Actually, many of them haven’t even heard of that tragedy.

Anyway, being a Muslim, I should always treat the bad with good, its better for both of the parties.

But now, heh… I don’t care, when Bush spits on my face next time, I won’t clean my face and say I’ll forgive you… no, I will fuck him. And fuck anyone who won’t like it.

Well, I received lots of messages lately warning me and telling me to warn my people not to get angry, because that is a trap made by the US administration. And we would lose much if we attacked and became violent.

But wait a second; what do we have to lose again?

You’d better be aware, stupid US army, US moronic politicians; I am a 17-year-old VERY... VERY mad teenager, periods.

Fri, 20 Aug 2004 01:33:13 GMT

And there are counter pressures, always worth remembering that when a problem emerges into visibility, those closest to it are already working on solutions.

http://www.csmonitor.com/2004/0819/dailyUpdate.html?s=ent2

Other nations are also looking at ways to promote more moderate views. The International Herald Tribune reported recently that Spain has begun discussions on a proposal that would see the government funding mosques in order to free them from financial dependence on "outside" sources. Spanish investigators say the terrorists who blew up trains in Madrid on March 11, killing 191 people, "attended mosques that had ties to Wahhabism."

Publicly, the proposal is being presented mainly as an egalitarian measure intended to offer all of Spain's major religions the same treatment given the Catholic Church, which has received state funding under a supposedly temporary agreement reached with the Vatican in 1979. But officials in the interior and justice ministries say the proposal is also motivated by a desire to seal off Spanish mosques from the influence of extremists in other countries.

The Christian Science Monitor reported last month on efforts by the Morrocan government to "rein in" radical preachers of Wahhabism and to promote the "modernization of religious education." But critics of this plan say it's unlikely to work.

"It's not enough to control mosques to control [Wahhabism]," argues Mr. Darif. "The problem of the mosques is a fake problem. If we could put an end to this Islamist rise through the control of mosques, we would have done it [way before]." The key issue today is how to control clerics without discrediting their state-sanctioned speech and frustrating the population. If you exercise too much control, "you loose the commitment, the charisma. It is a problem posed to all religions. There's an equilibrium that has to be found," says Mohamed Tozy, a university professor and an expert on political Islam.

Stanley A. Weiss, chairman of Business Executives for National Security (a non-partisan group that promites US national security), wrote Tuesday in The International Herald Tribune about Indonesia, which he believes is a key location in the battle of "ideas" between moderate and extremist Islam. Indonesia, the largest Muslim democracy in the world, is another country where Saudi Arabia has spent millions of dollars to promote Wahhabism.

Weiss argues that education which helps create employment in poor Muslim countries is one of the best ways the US can fight the spread of extremist ideas, a suggestion also made in the report of the 9/11 commission. But Weiss says the US is not spending near enough to help countries in this situation.
Muslim nations must make education a priority, and the United States must help. The final report of the Sept. 11 commission called on Washington to "offer an agenda of opportunity that includes support for public education and economic openness." But American resources currently don't match the rhetoric. William Frej, director in Indonesia for the US International Agency for Development, said, "Americans think they spend something like 10 percent of their budget on foreign aid, when the real figure is less than 1 percent."

Finally, the Independent recently profiled Saudi Arabia itself and finds a country "racked by fundamentalism and political unrest." But, the Times writes, there is also hope for the future, as the pressures exerted on the Saudi government by foreign sources, and the need to "save the economy and meet the challenges of the modern world" have finally given reformers a stronger voice. Those reformers are arguing that the best way to "marginalize the militants" is to give Saudis a greater say in the running of their own country.

Thu, 19 Aug 2004 17:41:47 GMT

To get a view of what Sadr is really up to read today's

http://www.juancole.com/

Muqtada has given many sermons and interviews in the past 16 months outlining his goals exactly.

1) He wants the US troops out of the country immediately, which is to say, an end to Occuption. If there have to be foreign troops in Iraq, he wants them under a United Nations command.

2) He refuses to cooperate (he would say "collaborate") with the caretaker government of Iyad Allawi, which he sees as a puppet regime installed by the United States. He insists that no legitimate Iraqi governmental process can begin until the US is out.

3) He wants the reestablishment of a strong central Iraqi government with a strong military, but which has cut all ties with the Baathist past.

4) He wants Iraq to stay together rather than being partitioned, and has denounced Kurdish demands for loose federalism.

5) He wants Iraqi Shiism to emerge from Iran's shadow and to establish its independence from Iran. His movement is rooted in the Shiite ghettos of Iraq and is very indigenous. He is not Iran's catspaw in Iraq, quite the opposite. He is strong Iraqi nationalist.

6) He sometimes talks about "democracy" in post-American Iraq, but probably just means populism. Like Peron and Franco, his populism implies his ability to maintain and direct his own militia, who provide "order" (read puritanical morality imposed by force) to Shiite neighborhoods.

7) In the long term, he would like to see a system in Iraq similar to the regime in Iran. He wants Islamic law to be the law of the land, and he wants clerics to rule. His father studied with Ayatollah Khomeini and accepted the notion of clerical rule. So does Muqtada. That is, there may be a place for elections (as in Iran), but true power would rest in the hands of the clerics. He has admitted all this in Arabic press interviews.

So, I don't understand the widespread puzzlement reported by AP. It may not be a simple set of positions, but they aren't hidden from view or hard to understand.

Wed, 11 Aug 2004 18:38:40 GMT

The core problem for - or is it with - Kerry. Many hope for better. This seems like the dick morris kind of strategy - hold you support and reach for more. But it is a very risky posture because the lack of weakening of support, and more critically, muddling the issues.

http://www.thestar.com/NASApp/cs/ContentServer?pagename=thestar/Layout/Article_Type1&;c=Article&cid=1092175810357&call_pageid=968256290204&col=968350116795

Rising to Bush's bait, Kerry said he would have cast the same Yes vote in Congress that he did on Oct. 11, 2002, to authorize the president to launch a pre-emptive war that began March 19, 2003, even if Kerry had known that Saddam Hussein had no ties with Al Qaeda terrorists, no weapons of mass destruction and posed no real threat to the world.

Tue, 10 Aug 2004 17:41:37 GMT

Worth a look. Events in Iraq charted. You need to click on the chart link on the upper right.

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/08/10/opinion/10ohanlon.html?hp

douglass carmichael: iraq

thoughtful views on Iraq

Crooked Timber on Irag

How to Make New Enemies

To Escape from Blunder, First Admit Reality

The Debates and the Big Lie

U.S. Intelligence Shows Pessimism on Iraq's Future

Time to Leave Iraq

September 13, 2004

Wednesday, September 01, 2004