Iraq: instead of benchmarks to get out, benchmarks to stay in Posted by Suzanne Nossel

Instead of benchmarks to get the US out of Iraq, how about benchmarks to determine whether we stay in? 

Here's the logic:  the Administration persistently maintains that we're making great progress in Iraq.  The American people have grave and growing doubts.  If, as the daily news would lead one to believe, Iraq is spiraling closer to civil war, then our presence is at best a finger in the dyke.  We hold on as long as we can to delay collapse, but meanwhile lose lives and deplete our military, when its just a matter of time before we pull away and the country disintegrates (with, if Bush is lucky, a decent interval in-between).

To decide whether we're better off leaving now, or waiting until some unknown future point when Iraq can stand on its two feet, we need to verify the credibility of the Administration's claim that it is making progress.   Condi Rice outlined the Administration's strategy for Iraq a few weeks ago as "clear, hold, build."   So how about the Congress giving the Administration 10 weeks, until the end of January, 2006 to demonstrate the following:

- Getting the number of Iraqi military battalions capable of fighting independently of the US up from 1 to 5;

- Per Rice's strategy, identify up front 5 secure areas formerly occupied by insurgents and ensure that, safeguarded by Iraqi rather than US forces (but with American advisers if needed) they stay secure (i.e. no IEDs, no suicide attacks) over the coming 10 weeks;

- Secure commitments of 5000 additional (truly new) foreign troops to be deployed to Iraq in support of the US-led operation (note that the Koreans, within a day of Bush's meeting with Roh, have just announced they're pulling out a third of their troops).

The Government Accountability Office can certify whether these benchmarks are met.

You could argue that these requirements aren't rigorous enough but I would frankly be impressed if the Administration could accomplish all 3 by late January.  Coupled with a successful election in December, it might help rebuild confidence in the mission. 

If these benchmarks are met, would that not mean that we could start withdrawing US troops, rather than deciding to leave them in?  Rest assured:  if we ever start seeing solid evidence that Iraq is capable of securing itself and holding its own politically, there won't be a politician or a wonk in America who doesn't favor starting to pull out. 

There's no disagreement between Republicans and Democrats when it comes to getting out if sufficient political and military progress can be made.   We disagree about whether to stay in given the manifest absence of progress.  So let's create some concrete benchmarks that allow us to evaluate whether "mission accomplished" is actually accomplishing anything at this point.

New Targets? Posted by Michael Signer

The insurgents in Iraq -- those irrational, crazed, evil lunatics -- have gone after police and military targets in a disconcertingly methodical manner. 

Now they've got another sickening, but instructive, target:  hospitals.  CNN reports:

A doctor and head of a Baghdad hospital was shot dead Thursday inside his clinic in the Abu Ghraib district of western Baghdad, said an Iraqi police official with Baghdad emergency police. Four gunmen stormed Dr. Kadhim Abbood Alwash's clinic and shot him to death, said Qassim Allawi, a Health Ministry official. Alwash was head of Karama General Hospital in Baghdad.

Why are they targeting people who run hospitals?  Aside from some unfathomable hatred of doctors?  My guess is they want to further weaken the civil society institutions that allow the country to function while in the face of an insurgency. 

By kneecapping these basic social building blocks, the insurgents link the occupation with chaos, in the Iraqi mind.  And by making society dysfunctional, they create a weird reverse incentive for American withdrawal -- hospitals will run again, imagine that!

I'd be curious about other thoughts on this.

The Distorted Iraq Intelligence Posted by Morton H. Halperin

As the Bush Administration presses its claim that its view of Iraq was the same as that of the Clinton Administration, and that we all got the intelligence wrong, it is important to distinguish among the conclusions and predictions which led the Administration to go to war.

Bush is correct in asserting that many Democrats supported the war and both supporters and critics of the war believed that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction (meaning chemical and biological).  I have no doubt that the Bush people believed Saddam had weapons of mass destruction.  In that sense they were just as wrong as many others.

However, there was deception about many other issues.  Bush, Cheney and Rumseld were  aware that the evidence for Iraq having WMD was soft and circumstantial.  That was never made clear; in fact, the opposite was asserted.  The Administration, in both its public statements and Powell's presentation to the UN Security Council, gave many examples of concrete evidence, which all turned out to be false.  There were many voices in the Intelligence Community warning about these allegations, but the Administration not only chose to believe the stories, it also exaggerated the certainty of the evidence. The Bush Administration also painted a threat of Iraq getting nuclear weapons, which was far more alarmist than the intelligence suggested.

While the Intelligence Community did believe that Saddam had WMD, it did not believe that he would use these weapons or consider giving them to terrorists unless we attacked Iraq.  The Bush Administration said the opposite, suggesting that we could not afford to wait. 

The Bush Administration also argued that we needed to remove Saddam because of his connection with 9/11 and his relation to Al Qaeda.  On this issue Cheney and Rumsfeld were clearly going against the considered judgment of the Intelligence Community and never made it clear that their assertions were not shared by intelligence officials.  In fact, the Intelligence Community concluded that terrorist attacks would increase if we invaded Iraq.  The Administration said the opposite.

The Administration was also fundamentally wrong about what would happen if we invaded Iraq.  It predicted a quick victory and claimed that Iraq would pay for its reconstruction out of its own oil revenues.  More than two and a half years later -- with upwards of 160,000 U.S. troops still there battling a raging insurgency and hundreds of billions of dollars spent -- these predictions now seem fantastical. 

We should not be trying to rewrite the history of progressive support for the war, nor even suggest that the Clinton Administration had a coherent Iraq policy.

But Democrats and other critics of the war are finally putting forward concrete alternatives and even Republicans are coming to understand that the public is not comforted by the fact that much of the foreign policy establishment got it wrong.  The danger, highlighted by recent polls, is that there will be a return to isolationism and a reluctance to use American force when our security or our values demand that we act.  In challenging the current policy and the path that took us to war we must avoid strengthening the tendencies in our society to avoid foreign entanglements. 

John Murtha's Over the Hill Posted by Suzanne Nossel

I see a lot of merit in Congressman John Murtha's statement today on Iraq.  I don't agree with all that he's said, but I think its essential that we come to grips with the absence of a strategy to win, and with the toll Iraq is taking on our military and our level of preparedness back home.  I've become convinced that the Administration's approach amounts to a quest for a "decent interval" aimed to avert humiliation at all costs, even if those costs are in American lives, as they will be.

But there's one aspect of Murtha's proposal that strikes me as flat out fallacious:  one of the four principles of his plan is to "To create an over- the- horizon presence of Marines."  Tonight on the Newshour Murtha explained what he meant:

Now, when I say redeploy our troops, I'm talking about to Kuwait, if they allow us to redeploy there, to Okinawa where we can be over the horizon, go back in, in case there's more terrorist activity.

I simply don't understand this.  Go back in if there's more terrorist activity?  Murtha believes, and may well be correct, that the US military presence is one factor fueling the insurgency.  But are we the only factor?  Will the bloodshed really cease once we go?  Will not the terrorist activity - - driven by political designs on the Iraqi state - continue?  How will we judge whether its "more" or "equal" to the level when we left? 

And, to Murtha's point, what if it is "more"?  Will we "go back in"?  In what kind of numbers?  And for what purpose?  To prevent Iraq from devolving into a failed state and a totally unregulated terrorist haven?   If that's our goal, are we really better off leaving now with the distinct possibility (tacitly acknowledged by Murtha) that Iraq will lurch toward even greater chaos than its in today and that - - per Murtha! -- if that happens our men would need to go back in?

All this confusion illustrates the cruel and disastrous dilemma Bush has imposed on us.   Murtha's speaking some important truths, but I don't think we've hit on a way out of this wilderness just yet.

Pollwatcher's Corner Posted by Heather Hurlburt

With most news coverage focusing on the President's crumbling ratings, here are five recent poll results you might NOT have noticed:

1.  Dems pull even on terrorism, national security:  both draw the confidence of 42 percent of the public in the most recent Washington Post/ABC poll.  (Nb.  the last time the Dems got close on these sorts of comparisons was during the Kosovo conflict.)  On Iraq, Dems do 11 percentage points better than the Republicans, 48-37.

2.  Support for "extreme" options in Iraq -- an immediate pullout or more troops -- remains small.  Last week's USA Today/CNN Gallup poll shows 19 percent favoring an immediate pullout, 33 percent favoring a pullout in a year's time, 38 percent says pullout in "as long as it takes" and 7 percent calling for more troops.  Yes, that gives you 57 percent who say the troops should be out within a year.  Another way of looking at it is that it gives you 71 percent who think the troops should not leave in a cut-and-run way -- perhaps who hope that something can still be accomplished in Iraq.

3.  Support for the UN is way down in the last four years, say Pew's Center for People and the Press and the Council on Foreign Relations in a quadrennial poll.  Looks like the public is mirroring the expert "Stockholm Syndrome" -- we've heard so many times that the UN has failed, at tasks we wanted it to fail at, that we believe it -- I wrote about last month.

4.  Tolerance for Other Great Powers is Up.  The CFR press release about the Pew/CFR poll touts a "revival of isolationism."  Their number is high, but not unprecedented -- it was matched at the end of Vietnam and the end of the Cold War.  A more revealing number -- every category of influentials they surveyed registered a drop in the proportion who think the US should be first among equals or unrivaled in power, except... foreign affairs professionals.  Hmmm.

5.  China.  I'm fascinated -- and need to look more deeply -- at the Pew results saying that both experts and the general public are considerably less likely to see China as a key threat than they were fouor years ago.  If you consider how often the general public is being fed the idea that China's factories represent the key threat to our livelihoods, this suggests --again -- that when it gets space to think, the public's views are much more nuanced than it gets credit for.  

Seismic Shift in Congress on Iraq Posted by Lorelei Kelly

Murtha is the grandfather of security issues for the Democrats. He is a former Marine, a Vietnam Vet and generally conservative on defense issues.

"I believe before the Iraqi elections, scheduled for mid December, the Iraqi people and the emerging government must be put on notice that the United States will immediately redeploy.  All of Iraq must know that Iraq is free.  Free from United States occupation."

November 17, 2005

The Honorable John P. Murtha: War in Iraq

(Washington D.C.)- The war in Iraq is not going as advertised.  It is a flawed policy wrapped in illusion.  The American public is way ahead of us.   The United States and coalition troops have done all they can in Iraq, but it is time for a change in direction.  Our military is suffering.  The future of our country is at risk.  We can not continue on the present course.   It is evident that continued military action in Iraq is not in the best interest of the United States of America, the Iraqi people or the Persian Gulf Region. 

General Casey said in a September 2005 Hearing, “the perception of occupation in Iraq is a major driving force behind the insurgency.”  General Abizaid said on the same date, “Reducing the size and visibility of the coalition forces in Iraq is a part of our counterinsurgency strategy.” 
For 2 ½ years I have been concerned about the U.S. policy and the plan in Iraq.  I have addressed my concerns with the Administration and the Pentagon and have spoken out in public about my concerns.  The main reason for going to war has been discredited.  A few days before the start of the war I was in Kuwait – the military drew a red line around Baghdad and said when U.S. forces cross that line they will be attacked by the Iraqis with Weapons of Mass Destruction – but the US forces said they were prepared.  They had well trained forces with the appropriate protective gear. 

Phew! Posted by Michael Signer

From Iraq's interior minister, CNN reports:

"Nobody was beheaded or killed," a defiant Bayan Jabr told a news conference Thursday, saying that only seven of 170 detainees showed marks of torture.

Now that's a relief!  The only thing is... maybe he didn't go far enough.  Actually, the President's new high-school speechwriters could have helped out.   Just imagine the story then:

"Nobody was disemboweled with a garden trowel," a defiant Bayan Jabr said.  "Nobody's thumbnails were removed.  Look, I've seen Hannibal.  Nobody was even forced to eat their own brains."

As we've learned from this President, it's all about setting expectations.  It all reminds me of that great quote from the Albert Brooks character in Broadcast News:

What do you think the Devil  is going to look like if he's around? Nobody is going to be taken in if he has a long, red, pointy tail. No. I'm semi-serious here. He will look attractive and he will be nice and helpful and he will get a job where he influences a great God-fearing nation and he will never do an evil thing... he will just bit by little bit lower standards where they are important. Just coax along flash over substance... Just a tiny bit. And he will talk about all of us really being salesmen.

Pinch me -- but is it really true nobody's even been fired yet for the Iraq intelligence? 

And that Andy Card really said about the Iraq War (before staging the vote three weeks before the mid-term Congressional elections in 2002), "From a marketing point of view, you don't introduce new products in August"?

And that the Vice-President is essentially endorsing torture today?

Yes, it is.

Low standards, indeed.

Lip Service, Public Service and the General Posted by Lorelei Kelly

Latest gossip in DC wonkdom is that Major General (USA ret.)  William Nash is going to be the next head of the State Department's Office of the Coordinator for Stabilization and Reconstruction (S-CRS) .  This is the vital-but budget-starved creation of Senate legislation proposed by Sens.  Lugar and Biden two years ago.  General Nash will supposedly replace Carlos Pascual, who is leaving government for the Brookings Institution after valiantly representing the new office during its start up phase.  He doubtless shares our collective disappointment over Congress' stunning unwillingness to fund the office, made even more gob-stopping by all the lip-service on Capitol Hill about the need to relieve our armed forces and/or develop an exit strategy for Iraq.

The mission of S-CRS  is to lead, coordinate, and institutionalize U.S. Government civilian capacity to prevent or prepare for post-conflict situations, and to help stabilize and reconstruct societies in transition from conflict or civil strife so they can reach a sustainable path toward peace, democracy and a market economy.     This office is small in government terms --but is symbolically huge.  It represents the nexus between Cold War security priorities (military dominance) and post 9/11 security imperatives (prevention and persuasion).  Indeed, its task is to make prevention operational.  This will require a compelling story and the intellectual jujitsu to be able to take the post-conflict experiences of Iraq and translate them into a far thinking strategy of prevention--our only real chance to win the terrorism fight in the long run.

Enter General Nash.

Torture Begets Torture Posted by Suzanne Nossel

We're all horrified, but is anyone really all that surprised that the Iraqi government has been found torturing some 175 Sunni detainees in a heretofore secret Baghdad bunker:

• After witnessing the absence of any serious consequences for the senior military personnel in charge of Abu Ghraib, why should top Iraqi intelligence and military officials responsible for the facility have worried that they would get into trouble?   After all, the stress and challenges they face in battling terror are at least as great as those we confront.

With revelations less than a week ago about secret CIA prisons where god knows what goes on, how can the American military leaders in charge in Iraq possibly take a forceful stand in response to what they've found?   

With the Vice President of the United States insisting that intelligence agents be exempted from regulations barring torture, why would Iraq's government think twice about giving their intel officers a similar free pass?

We should never have Americans in a position where we have to hold back in condemning torture around the world for fear of what might be revealed about the actions of our own government.   Some progressives think torture of detainees is a tough issue for us.  It's not, and this story is just one of the reasons why.

Decent Intervals: Iraq and Vietnam, Then and Now Posted by Suzanne Nossel

I wrote last night about the disturbing parallels between the effort now underway by President Bush to get the Iraqi government and army to "stand up" for long enough to allow US troops to make it to the door, and the Nixon Administration's push to secure a "decent interval" during which the South Vietnamese government would hold, avoiding a situation where the departure of US troops was the proximate cause of that state's collapse.

In a move that has got to have White House staffers spinning Nixonian conspiracy theories, the National Archive chose today to release a set of papers that underscore the point.  The New York Times offers the following glimpses into language that's become very familiar of late.

May, 1969:  The Nixon White House said in May 1969 that it wanted to establish in Vietnam "procedures for political choice that give each significant group a real opportunity to participate in the political life of the nation."

January, 2005:  "There will be many opportunities along the way for the Sunni community to express itself, either through voting or through other participation in the political process," said State Department spokesman Richard A. Boucher. "And our goal is to try to make sure that all those opportunities are available to all the citizens of Iraq."

Vietnam era: "What the United States wants for South Vietnam is not the important thing," according to an internal White House planning initiative memo. "What North Vietnam wants for South Vietnam is not the important thing. What is important is what the people of South Vietnam want for themselves."

April, 2003:  "If we want, as I believe we must, democratic rule in Iraq, then we will have to accept the consequences of freely chosen leaders by the Iraqis," he said. "That's where legitimacy lies, not in some bureaucracy either from New York or elsewhere, but in what the people of Iraq want for themselves." (Bush Adviser, Richard Perle)

There's nothing wrong about ensuring broad participation from Iraq's political factions and seeing to it that the Iraqi people determine their own future.   These principles likely made equal sense in Vietnam. 

But the parallels suggest that Americans should take little comfort from the Administration's rhetoric on this score.   While Bush may talk a good game about the progress being made and Iraq's bright future, the facts on the ground more often than not contradict him.   As they did in Vietnam, the American people are steadily realizing this.  Decent interval redux is Bush's answer to their skepticism, but the skeptics ought to answer him right back and say they're not prepared to risk more lives for a strategy we've seen fail before.

Are Interns Running the Place? Posted by Michael Signer

More on the President's incredibly ineffective Veteran's Day campaign speech against Democrats.  From today's TNR, Ryan Lizza does some easy Lexis reporting and unearths some just plain laughable elisions in the President's follow-on remarks to a crowd in Alaska on Monday:

The problem is that some of the quotes Bush now uses are highly misleading. "Another senior Democrat leader said, 'The war against terrorism will not be finished as long as Saddam Hussein is in power,'" Bush told his Alaskan crowd. The quote is from Senator Carl Levin during a CNN appearance on December 16, 2001. Here's the full context:

The war against terrorism will not be finished as long as he is in power. But that does not mean he is the next target.

And the commitment to do that, it seems to me, could be disruptive of our alliance that still has work to do in Afghanistan. And a lot will depend on what the facts are in various places as to what terrorist groups are doing, and as to whether or not we have facts as to whether or not the Iraqis have been involved in the terrorist attack of September 11, or whether or not Saddam is getting a weapon of mass destruction and is close to it. So facts will determine what our next targets are.

What's going on in the White House?  I mean, really?  The Bush White House was supposed to be the most professional in modern history.  A fawning Industry Week reporter "observed" in 2001:

There is the impression, indeed it's more than an impression, that Bush & Co. wants to run the U.S. government like a business. Its cabinet secretaries, for example, appear to be the empowered presidents of major results-oriented divisions. And there's a business-like emphasis on measurable results.

Did Somebody Say Vietnam? Posted by Heather Hurlburt

USA Today's Susan Page has an Iraq public opinon piece built around the observation that the level of public support for Iraq today is about where it was for Vietnam in 1970.

In a USA TODAY/CNN/Gallup Poll taken Friday through Sunday, more than half of those surveyed wanted to withdraw U.S. troops from Iraq within the next 12 months. In 1970, roughly half of those surveyed wanted to withdraw U.S. troops from Vietnam within 12 months.  (Related:  poll results.)

In both surveys, about one-third supported withdrawing troops over as many years as needed, and about one in 10 wanted to send more troops.

OK, try not to get all excited about who this means will be elected President in 2008/1972; instead, draw back and focus on the larger point:  this is going to shape American attitudes about the use of force and trust in government for a generation.  And not in a positive way.

So the question is not, how do we not run George McGovern?  The question is more, how can we take the idea of Jimmy Carter -- restoring faith and clean government -- and actually govern successfully with it?  Do we even know what restoring faith looks like?

**But wait, there's more:  Bill Clinton must be fed up with the White House efforts to tie him and every Democrat officeholder to the Iraq war launch.  When has an ex-president ever said this about the policy of a sitting President:

It [invading Iraq] was a big mistake.

Iraq: A Decent Interval By Any Other Name Posted by Suzanne Nossel

Let's face it, the President and the Republicans in Congress have reached back to the Kissingerian formulation of a "decent interval" as their preferred exit strategy for Iraq.  Here's what Bush said Friday: 

"As Iraqis stand up, Americans will stand down. And with our help, the Iraqi military is gaining new capabilities and new confidence with each passing month.  At the time of our Fallujah operations a year ago, there were only a few Iraqi army battalions in combat. Today, there are nearly 90 Iraqi army battalions fighting the terrorists alongside our forces."

He neglects to mention that only one of those battalions is capable of "standing up" without US support.  In passing today's amendment and Iraq, Senator John Warner and others used similar language. 

Bottom line:  the Administration knows there's no chance the Iraqi government can "stand up" to a point where they'll no longer depend on US troops anytime soon.  Ten years after Dayton Bosnia is still not capable of independent self-governance.   By calling for Iraq to "stand up," the Administration and its backers are asking for the Iraqis to mount a temporary semblance of self-sufficiency so that we can get out, knowing full well that short of years of nation-building, the chances of subsequent civil war and state failure will remain very high, and no one will be willing to rescue Iraq if that happens.   

This parallels closely Nixon and Kissinger's thinking on Vietnam:  namely that if they could only win a "decent interval" between American withdrawal and the fall of Saigon, they could avert blame for the collapse and the perception of a humiliating defeat.

As a result of the Administration's disastrous policies, we're faced with a set of terrible choices on Iraq.  But before tacitly backing what amounts to a "decent interval" approach, we need recall the results of such a policy 33 years ago:  namely the prolongation of the Vietnam War long after the Administration had come to grips with the fact that maintaining South Vietnamese independence long-term would be impossible.  The intervening years saw thousands of US and Vietnamese casualties.  As this AEI review put it:  "the decent interval was covered in blood."  The same would be true in Iraq.

Those talking about getting Iraq to "stand up" need to think long and hard about whether what they really mean is to "prop up" in Iraqi state just long enough for us to hightail out and, if so, what the consequences of such a policy will be for both Iraq and for our the American servicemembers whose lives are at risk there.

Iraq in Washington: Through the Looking Glass Posted by Heather Hurlburt

The combination of plotting, forethought and willful blindness that passes for Iraq policy discussion in Washington right now is so odd that, after all day trying to think up a clever interpretation for you, I am reduced to stealing a device from The Note to list what I think the dilemmas are:

Five Things "Everyone Knows" About Iraq Policy -- and the corollaries no one knows

1.  "Everyone knows" the Administration will pull out troops next year -- the cognoscenti are debating how many pullouts and whether it's trumpeted in the State of the Union.

1a.  No one knows what progressives can/should do in response to this.  Kevin Drum found a conservative blogger who thinks that if Bush "wins" the war, it would fall off the front pages and Dems would win in '08 on domestic issues.  Unfortunately for Iraqis, it looks unlikely that we will be able to test that one out neatly.

2.  "Everyone knows" that the big-name potential '08 candidates for the Dems are being advised to stay out of the Iraq fray.

2b.  But no one knows how that will play out, either.  Note that Bayh, Biden and Clinton joined Feingold and Kerry in voting for the Democratic amendment requesting an Administration withdrawal timetable.  All but Kerry also voted for the Warner amendment that omitted the timetable and no permanent bases language but was otherwise just about identical in telling/asking the Iraqis to get ready to carry their own water.   

3.  "Everyone knows" that public support for the war is collapsing.

3b.  But public support for an alternative is not congealing.  The latest Gallup numbers still have support for immediate withdrawal under 20 percent, support for adding troops under ten percent, and large blocks of support for "out in a year" and "out in 1-2 years."  I heard a Democratic pollster make a strong argument that what the public is saying is that they want to see troops coming home but not feel that we have "cut and run" -- ie, what it looks like the Administration is going to try to give them next year.

CAP Conference on Homeland Security Posted by Suzanne Nossel

The Center for American Progress, one of Democracy Arsenal's sponsoring organizations is hosting an important conference this Thursday on critical infrastructure, preparedness and homeland security.   Recognizing that Katrina exposed glaring flaws in our readiness to contend with the economic, public safety, and public health consequences of a terrorist strike or similar catastrophe at home, the conference will examine lessons from the aftermath of the hurricane for preparedness efforts.    The keynote is Bennie Thompson (D-MS) from the House Homeland Security Committee.  See extended post for the excellent line-up of experts who will speak and for details on registration.

Forcing the Vote Posted by Michael Signer

As Josh Marshall and Ryan Chiachere note, a spectacular WaPo column today by E.J. Dionne, which reinforces my point from yesterday -- that the President is reaping what he sowed by forcing the Congressional vote in 2002 just three weeks before the mid-term elections.  Dionne writes:

The big difference between our current president and his father is that the first President Bush put off the debate over the Persian Gulf War until after the 1990 midterm elections. The result was one of most substantive and honest foreign policy debates Congress has ever seen, and a unified nation. The first President Bush was scrupulous about keeping petty partisanship out of the discussion.

And the coup de grace:

 

The bad faith of Bush's current argument is staggering. He wants to say that the "more than a hundred Democrats in the House and Senate" who "voted to support removing Saddam Hussein from power" thereby gave up their right to question his use of intelligence forever after. But he does not want to acknowledge that he forced the war vote to take place under circumstances that guaranteed the minimum amount of reflection and debate, and that opened anyone who dared question his policies to charges, right before an election, that they were soft on Hussein.

 

The real question is whether Democrats in Congress will grow some cojones, and admit their complicity in the President's maneuvers.  This may be just too much to expect right now (with the exception of John Edwards' surprising mea culpa).

Military Peace and Stability Sites Posted by Lorelei Kelly

Here is  a list of websites on the Conference CD of the Peace and Stability Education Workshop, Army War College, September 05.  If you cruise through them, you'll find many, many more great links.  There is also a list of referenced research institution sites on the CD that I will put up later.

Center for Army Lessons Learned Thesaurus

NGO Global Network (groups that work with the United Nations)

Humanitarian Information Unit at the State Department

Joint Doctrine and Concepts Center (United Kingdom)

US Army Peacekeeping and Stability Operations Institute

Marine Corps Center for Lessons Learned

Marine Corps Security Cooperation Education and Training Center

Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, UN

Correspondence Instructions in Peacekeeping Operations

Being John McCain and Reading George W. Bush Posted by Heather Hurlburt

The Iraq dam is broken.  John McCain has a proposal.  President Bush has (another) new rationale.  Senate Democrats have a proposal, and... hmm, Senate Republicans have almost exactly the same proposal, except that it doesn't require the Administration to submit a "campaign plan" with non-binding dates for phased redeployment.

Later this week I'll write a bit about what is going on in Washington, but today I play catch-up on reading some of these plans... so you don't have to.  (For previous installments in my series of close readings of Iraq proposals, look here and here.)

We begin with the President's Veteran's Day speech, which my fellow speechwriter David Kusnet says "may be the worst speech of his presidency."  My view is that it started out decently drafted and then the wonks got hold of it -- David is right that it is full of bizarre, wonky little excursions which you'd need an advanced degree in Beltway blameology to follow.  Quick, what's the name of the UN investigation into the political murder in Lebanon?  That kind of thing.

However, it is way up there in contention for being the most dishonest speech the President has given.

Plenty has been written about the dishonesty of saying that "a bipartisan Senate investigation found no pressure to change..." intelligence, and that Congress saw the "same" intelligence the White House did.  I don't have anything to add there.

But what I object to has been passed over -- the continued, anti-factual, conflation of Iraq, Al-Qaeda and the fight against jihadism more broadly.

Like this:

Some have also argued that extremism has been strengthened by the actions in Iraq -- claiming that our presence in that country has somehow caused or triggered the rage of radicals. I would remind them that we were not in Iraq on September the 11th, 2001. (Applause.) The hatred of the radicals existed before Iraq was an issue, and it will exist after Iraq is no longer an excuse. The government of Russia did not support Operation Iraqi Freedom -- and, yet, the militants killed more than 150 Russian schoolchildren in Beslan.

This paragraph gets multiple Fs for logic:  if we had invaded Iraq a few days after Bush's inauguration, would September 11 not have happened?  (No, of course not.)  Is there, in fact, evidence that extremism has been "strengthened by the actions in Iraq?"  Yes, from the statements of radical recruiters to the ever-rising flows of extremist fighters into Iraq, as documented by Brookings' Iraq Index.  And if you don't happen to know that the horrific Beslan attack was conducted by fighters from the long-running civil war in Russia's restive province of Chechnya, you might conclude from this paragraph that Al Qaeda had attacked Russian kids because it hates their freedom.  But you'd be utterly wrong.

Then we have a similarly dishonest paragraph conflating the motives of all Islamists who kill photogenic white people.

Like the ideology of communism, our new enemy teaches that innocent individuals can be sacrificed to serve a political vision. And this explains their cold-blooded contempt for human life. We have seen it in the murders of Daniel Pearl and Nicholas Berg and Margaret Hassan and many others. In a courtroom in the Netherlands, the killer of Theo Van Gogh turned to the victim's grieving mother and said, "I don't feel your pain ... because I believe you're an infidel." And in spite of this veneer of religious rhetoric, most of the victims claimed by the militants are fellow Muslims.

Yes, the quote from Theo van Gogh's killer is evocative and horrendous.  Only trouble?  No one has ever alleged that the guy had links with organized extremists of any kind.  So when Bush says "our enemy," he means every violent, disaffected Muslim everywhere? 

Last I checked, we weren't at war in the Netherlands... although there was that Congressional Act to let us invade the Hague should any of our military ever come under the jurisdiction of the International Criminal Court.

Something else about this speech.  It sets out five priorities for fighting terror.  The Iraq war is only introduced as a subset of point number 4:  deny the militants control of any nation.

The militants would be in no danger of taking over Iraq had we either not invaded it or done the job properly, with enough troops and planning to keep Iraqi institutions functional from the get-go.  But that's looking backward.

More important is to look forward and wonder whether this rhetorical effort to submerge the Iraq mission is laying the groundwork for rhetoric that covers troops withdrawals next year, declares victory -- the militants aren't in control -- and moves on to something else.

If you doubt that the Administration can be this flexible, consider that relegated to priority number 5 is the notion that was the centerpiece of speech-making earlier this year -- bringing democracy to the wider Middle East.

It's instructive to compare this to John McCain's speech at AEI last week.

Honesty in Virginia Posted by Michael Signer

We had an exciting development last week in my home commonwealth of Virginia.  Tim Kaine, the Democratic candidate for Governor, was elected by a stunning margin of 6 points. 

That a progressive candidate won so decisively in a state that's ostensibly as red as Scooter Libby's butt right now was no small matter.  I think the case can be made that a new progressive model has been developed in Virginia, and that every progressive should sit up and pay attention, especially in light of the President's astonishing Veteran's Day speech -- followed up, in true form, by a jaw-dropping Ken Mehlman performance on Meet the Press.   (This nugget was particularly priceless:  Russent: "16 of the 19 issues we presented to the people, they chose the Democrats.  Your party's in trouble?"  Mehlman:  "Tim, usually, when I get a poll like that, I will fire the pollster.  That's my response that I usually do to that.")

The gravamen of the President's speech was that (1) Congressional Democrats should share the blame for anything that's gone wrong in Iraq -- but that, wait, (2) nothing's gone wrong in Iraq. 

If you have trouble connecting the dots logically between the two points, don't worry -- that is, in fact, the point.  The lack of a rational or policy-based connection between the purposes lays bare the larger aim of the speech -- a political victory. 

As far away as Richmond is from the Beltway (actually only about an hour and a half), we've come up with an entirely different model of politics in Virginia, one that national-level Democrats would do well to learn from -- to borrow Bruce Jentleson's memorable phrase, we should be about results, not just resolve.

How About Real Engagement with North Korea? Posted by jwolfsthal

Almost unnoticed in the American press, the latest round of denuclearization talks between the United States, North Korea and four other regional players (China, South Korea, Japan and Russia) were held last week in Beijing.  No real progress was made, with North Korea rehashing old arguments about compensation and sanction.  The breakthrough of September, when North Korea agreed to end its current nuclear activities and give up nuclear weapons remains only a long term goal and no one is sure if the parties will ever get from here to there.  This setback, in turn, has put the tactic of engagement with North Korea on trial, with some experts suggesting that any such efforts are doomed.  Yet it is not clear that what is being pursued is true engagement or that the US is being as forthcoming as Washington’s allies would like it to be.  While the prospects for conflict seem low, especially given the current administration’s domestic woes and its growing desire to demonstrate some control over foreign events, North Korea continues to churn out bomb making materials, producing enough plutonium for a bomb a year.  There are also recent signs that North Korea is racing to complete another reactor that can produce enough material for 10 weapons annually.

The idea that we can prevent North Korea from becoming a nuclear weapon state, or roll them back if they have already acquired nuclear arms is becoming less realistic every day.  The option of confrontation, backed by the use of military force has never been an attractive or particularly realistic option given the realities on the ground in Korea.  The more important question is whether a policy of engagement can succeed given the ground the international community has lost in the past five years?  No one knows for sure.

If the current engagement process fails, the administration will claim that diplomacy was impossible, but that at least they tried.  Yet, it is not clear to anyone watching that the United States has done all it can to convince North Korea that a new relationship is possible if Pyongyang abandons its nuclear ambitions.  The internal battles within the administration between those favoring and opposing true engagement with North Korea rage on, and those skirmishes have placed real limits on what the negotiators can offer North Korea as incentives to make real progress.  The inability of lead negotiator Ambassador Chris Hill to obtain unfettered permission from the White House to visit Pyongyang on October is just one sign of these constraints.

So if the current engagement process fails, the case will be made that engagement itself failed.  But in reality it will be a strategy of limited engagement that has failed and it remains to be seen what a truly focused, open-ended and honest set of proposals to North Korea – including negotiating a peace agreement, exchanging ambassadors, signing a non-aggression pact and providing economic and energy assistance – might produce.  In the end, even these might not be enough to talk North Korea off the nuclear ledge, but unless tried, we’ll never know.  For now, U.S. policy seems to be to do just enough to prevent Washington from bearing the burden of failure.

But no one should think that what has been tried to date meets the President’s test of “doing all we can” to prevent the most dangerous weapons from falling into the most dangerous hands.  There is much more than can and should be tried, if nothing else than to demonstrate to our allies in the region that the United States is willing to take real political risks in the name of peace and nonproliferation.

Jon Wolfsthal

Nonproliferation Fellow - CSIS

Iraq and the Crisis of American Diplomacy Posted by Suzanne Nossel

During her confirmation hearings, Secretary of State Condi Rice said "the time for diplomacy is now."   The sad thing is, it isn't working.  A dizzying schedule of trips abroad and a new tone coming from Foggy Bottom have not pulled American diplomacy out of crisis. 

The strains in our relationships, our diminished influence and our inability to bear down and get things done is affecting issues small and big, immediate and long-term.  Its setting back the future of global trade, undercutting our ability to quarantine dangerous weapons and rogue nations, and further narrowing our our options in Iraq.  What began as ham-handedness on the part of the Bush Administration has morphed into a kind of poisonous touch, where everything they finger seems to leave others recoiling. 

The latest evidence is hard to ignore since - in each case - the Bush Administration likely did all it possibly could to pull off a success which might divert attention from Iraq or, at the very least, avert an outcome that the press and critics could call failure:

• This past week's Inter-American Summit in Argentina was rancorous and fruitless.  Bush's efforts to advance an Americas free trade zone went nowhere and the Summit didn't even manage to produce a routine communique.  Perhaps distressed by mass street protests, Bush left early. 
• Also this week, a US-led Summit on Mideast democracy and development essentially fell apart.  While two pre-arranged funding initiatives were announced, efforts to achieve a joint statement failed, and Egypt walked out over an impasse concerning the role of NGOs.
• The Doha world trade round, launched in 2001 to dismantle trade barriers globally, is precariously close to collapse. 
• A much heralded breakthrough on North Korea now looks just as iffy as it did weeks ago when cracks in the seams emerged just as soon as the deal was announced.
• An October trip by Rice to Moscow failed to dent Russian opposition to referring Iran's nuclear program to the UN Security Council.
• The Israel-Palestinian peace process has stalled, the window created by Israel's withdrawal from Gaza closing without any major US diplomatic push to implement the road map (maybe this is about to change, which would be great, but I doubt it).

(one recent exception I've acknowledged is US diplomacy at the UN on Hariri).

Now the Bush Administration is not to blame for all these outcomes.  These are tough issues involving stubborn interlocutors.   But when Rice spoke of the importance of diplomacy, this is what she set out to tackle, and her efforts just don't seem to be working.

The major culprit behind this unfortunate track record is not the Administration's arrogance, nor its disdain of traditional diplomatic tools like treaties and the UN.  With limited exceptions like Chavez’ role at the Inter-American Summit, anti-Americanism isn’t the problem either.  The real issue is Iraq.   The disastrous Iraq mission is making it impossible for Rice and others to rehabilitate US diplomacy, and the crisis is unlikely to be resolved before the war is.  How does Iraq undercut US diplomacy?

- Others are rightly convinced that the US is so preoccupied with Iraq that we can't or won't exert heavy leverage on other issues – this dynamic is at work when the Russians resist us on Iraq, when the Egyptians resist the US's push on democratization, and when the EU judges that push won’t come to shove on Doha;

- On the flip side, given its difficulties in Iraq, the Bush Administration is now perceived as more ready to compromise in other areas.  Examples include Iran's nuclear program, the shaky bargain on N. Korea, and even the deferral of possible Syrian sanctions over Hariri.  Some name this Bush's "half a loaf" diplomacy.

- Our single-minded focus on Iraq and the war on terror has meant perceived inattention to the priorities of others.  Our Latin American neighbors gave up long ago on hopes that Bush would address concerns on trade and migration.  His neglect during the first term ceded ground to Chavez, who has built stronger relationships with allies that we have alienated. 

The disturbing thing is, its hard to see how we regain our diplomatic leverage and efficacy as long as the war goes on.  Leaving Iraq may not help much either.  It will signal the demise of the Bush Administration’s foreign policy aspirations, and his successor will face the challenge of trying to restore trust and credibility the world over.

Why does this matter?  For one thing, it’s a tangible, hefty and remarkably far-reaching cost of the Iraq war effort, one that ought to be taken into account as the public evaluates where the President has led us.   The Iraq fiasco is systematically undercutting most other aspects of US foreign policy.

Second, while people like John Edwards, Mort and others are right to continue calling for the internationalization of Iraq, the chances of that happening are at this point nil.  I don’t think anyone in the Administration has the foggiest notion of how to even ask for help at this stage.  They wouldn’t know how to bring up the topic, much less close the deal.

Third is that the damage will be hard to undo.  These missed opportunities and failed Summits do not happen in a vacuum.  They both mark and precipitate shifting alignments, new initiatives, and changed priorities all of which are moving in the direction of less US influence and control globally.  It will take years to reverse the damage and, even once we do, the world we confront will be far different than the one that rallied around us right after September 11.