A Soldier's Death

Christopher Hitchens, whose writings about the efficacy of attacking Saddam Husein influenced many, including myself, writes with extreme beauty of the death of Mark Daily, a young man who signed up to fight in part because of Hitch's writings. Learning of the young man's death and his involvement in influencing him, it is fair to say, gobsmacked Hitch. He tells the story with great eloquence. Here is a key quote:

As one who used to advocate strongly for the liberation of Iraq (perhaps more strongly than I knew), I have grown coarsened and sickened by the degeneration of the struggle: by the sordid news of corruption and brutality (Mark Daily told his father how dismayed he was by the failure of leadership at Abu Ghraib) and by the paltry politicians in Washington and Baghdad who squabble for precedence while lifeblood is spent and spilled by young people whose boots they are not fit to clean. It upsets and angers me more than I can safely say, when I reread Mark's letters and poems and see that—as of course he would—he was magically able to find the noble element in all this, and take more comfort and inspiration from a few plain sentences uttered by a Kurdish man than from all the vapid speeches ever given. Orwell had the same experience when encountering a young volunteer in Barcelona, and realizing with a mixture of sadness and shock that for this kid all the tired old slogans about liberty and justice were actually real. He cursed his own cynicism and disillusionment when he wrote:

For the fly-blown words that make me spew
Still in his ears were holy,
And he was born knowing what I had learned
Out of books and slowly.

However, after a few more verses about the lying and cruelty and stupidity that accompany war, he was still able to do justice to the young man:

But the thing I saw in your face
No power can disinherit:
No bomb that ever burst
Shatters the crystal spirit.

May it be so, then, and may death be not proud to have taken Mark Daily, whom I never knew but whom you now know, and—I hope—miss.

Update: For a sense of who Mark Daily was, check out his MySpace page.

Rethinking The Middle East Mess

(Photograph of Mark Helprin by Jim Harrison for Harvard Magazine)

When last I wrote about Iraq I hopefully noted reports that the long awaited oil sharing legislation has been agreed to by the parties. Sadly, that was nothing but a chimera generated by smoke and mirrors. It fell apart quickly and will fester over the course of the coming August vacation period of the Iraqi legislature.

In America, we witness the continuing display of politics as show business. The Democrats in Congress, unable to muster enough votes for any meaningful measures to stop Bush, continue to conduct performance art. They are protected by the certain knowledge that their inability to force a withdrawal from Iraq means that they will not have to have any accountability for the aftermath of that withdrawal. Assuming they take the White House in 2008, the new President will have the power to conduct a draw down in any way she or he chooses and will have four years to manage, absorb and spin the outcome.

The President, for his part, seems to be an immovable object. He has persuaded himself that the future of the region, the safety of the United States and his legacy as President will be enhanced by his quixotic persistence in trying to wring some form of quietude in Iraq out of the current chaos. You can count on him to keep stumbling ahead on the ground until the last minute of January 20, 2009. He may, for the sake of his party, try to craft some apparent reduction in the number of troops before November 2008, but that too will only be for show.

In the midst of this hopelessness, Andrew Sullivan has pointed to two recent articles that attempt to rethink the entire equation in the Middle East and to craft a silk purse from the distinctly non-kosher pig's ear we find today.

First there was Sarah Kass in the Wall Street Journal, passed on by Thomas Barnett. This was followed by a piece in a similar vein by Mark Helprin in yesterday's NY Times. (Beware the TimesSelect wall.)

The central idea is that the current disorganization in the region and the apparent rise of Shiite fundamentalism in the spectral persona of Ahmadinejad's Iran, coupled with the breakup of the Palestinian state, may just provide an opportunity to begin to settle the central festering sore that has served to inflame the Middle East for decades. Maybe, just maybe, there is an opportunity to forge a settlement between Israel and the Fatah group in the West Bank that could be approved by the Sunni states in the region, allowing them to refocus on the growing threat from Iran.

Both pieces should be read fully, but I will quote Helprin here, both because of the difficulty of accessing his piece for some and my general affection for him as a writer, more about that later. He suggests that thirty years ago the smart money among the commentators was betting against any lasting peace between Israel and Egypt when Begin and Sadat reached their accord. The fact is that that agreement has not been breached in the intervening period.

Some quarters of government, burnt by the predictable failure of the current administration to transform the political culture of the Middle East into that of the Vermont town meeting, deny this potential, as if by analogy. But the analogy is invalid. The conditions are not the same, the task is entirely different and, unlike the United States, Israel has no timetable (implicit or otherwise) for withdrawal from the region — as its enemies well know.

As America blunts its sword in Iraq, it has relieved Iran of much anxiety in regard to its own vulnerabilities, set up a predominantly Shiite government in Baghdad, and made the Arab world more receptive to Iranian views. This Shiite ascendancy is comprised of a resurgent though weak Iran, Hezbollah’s Shiite rump state in Lebanon chastened by the war it “won” a year ago (with such a victory, defeat is unnecessary), and the alignment with Iran of Syria and Sunni radicals like Hamas.

Contrary to the received wisdom, last summer Hezbollah overplayed its hand. Israel emerged shaken but with few casualties and an economy that actually grew during the hostilities. It took 4,000 of the vaunted Katyusha rockets to kill 39 Israelis, they did little material damage, and not one has been launched in the year since the war. Israel showed that upon provocation it could and would destroy anything in its path, thus creating a Lebanese awakening that has split the country and kept Hezbollah fully occupied. Though Hezbollah is rearming, it remains shy of Israel.

Hamas, too, has overplayed its hand, which has provided the opening from which a Palestinian-Israeli peace may emerge. For the first time since 1948, a fundamental division among the Palestinians presents a condition in which the less absolutist view may find shelter and take hold.

He points out that the wider region may also want to take advantage of this opportunity:

The sudden and intense commonality of interest between the Palestinian Authority and Israel is the equivalent of the Israeli-Egyptian core of 1977. But today, the Arabs, in the second circle, have largely reversed position. Fearful of Iran’s sponsorship of war, chaos and revolution, they will apply their weight against the rejectionists.

Egypt, the Persian Gulf states and Jordan have so much to contend with at home and in the east that they cannot afford an active front in their midst, and are therefore forming ranks against Iran, Hezbollah and Hamas, bringing most of the rest of the Arab states with them.

This is extraordinary and it is where we are now: on the verge of a rare alignment of Israel and the Palestinian Authority, the leading Arab nations and the major powers. Though it is true that one of Moscow’s chief interests is to keep the Middle East roiled so as to preserve the high oil prices that are now Russia’s lifeblood, when the region moved from Soviet to Western arms Moscow was relegated to the periphery, where it remains. Though Europe is militarily paralyzed, it wields great economic incentives; and though the United States has of late been a graceless lummox drunkenly knocking everything awry, its powers remain pre-eminent and its will constructive.

The principals, the important Arab states and the leading powers of the West are arrayed against a radical terrorist front that, unlike the one in Iraq, is geographically fractured, relatively contained, terribly poor and very much outnumbered. Anything for the worse can happen in the Arab-Israeli conflict, and usually does; but now the chief pillars of rejectionist policy lie flat and the spectrum of positions is such that each constructively engaged party can accommodate the others.

In the heat of a failing war, historical processes have unfrozen. If Israel and the Palestinian Authority can pursue a strategy of limited aims, concentrating on bilateral agreements rather than a single work of fallible grandeur, they may accomplish something on the scale of Sadat’s extraordinary démarche of 30 years ago. The odds are perhaps the best they have been since, and responsible governments should recognize them as the spur for appropriate action and risk.

For such a desirable outcome to occur, many parts will have to align neatly and consecutively. Tony Blair and his Group of Four will play a central part. With any luck intelligence will prevail in Jerusalem and Ramallah and the other capitals of the region.

I am less sanguine about the likelihood of intelligence in Washington. Perhaps this new view of the region will take hold, if repeated often enough, like the concept of a three way division of Iraq gained currency last year. If adopted and nurtured by one or more Presidential candidates and other players, perhaps it will achieve critical mass. That assumes, of course, that further analysis does not poke some great holes in its logic.

As for my affection for Mark Helprin, it is primarily for his novels, although his writings on world affairs are also always thought provoking. His three great novels are "A Winter's Tale", which magically envisions a Manhattan divided between the very rich and the very poor in the new ice age that was then (1983) envisioned by environmentalists. This was followed by "A Soldier of the Great War", which remembers a soldiers experiences in the Italian Alps during World War I. Finally, there is "Memoir From Antproof Case" in which a devoted hater of coffee relocates to South America, from where he ponders the events of his life.

Choose any one of them. If you are looking for an intelligent, compelling novel this summer, you cannot go wrong.

Small Ray Of Hope In Iraq

The Iraqi Cabinet yesterday finalized and sent to the Parliament the long debated law that defines how Iraq's oil resources will be exploited and shared. The proposed law codifies the shared ownership of the oil by all the people of Iraq. It also establishes a board that will oversee all contracts the production of oil and oversee oil and gas policy for the nation. To the extent that the final law satisfies the Sunni groups, whose geographic territories do not include significant petroleum resources, they may be more amenable to engaging in the political process.

For The Left, Iran Can Do No Wrong

In today's NY Times, Michael Gordon reports that, "Iranian operatives helped plan a January raid in Karbala in which five American soldiers were killed, an American military spokesman in Iraq said today."

If the name Michael Gordon doesn't ring a bell, that must be because you have not been perseverating about the "traitorous" reporting by Gordon and the hated Judith Miller in the run up to the invasion of Iraq. The left side of the blogosphere has declared the pair persona non grata for reporting the widespread belief of the western intelligence services that Hussein possessed WMD.

For that sin, nothing the pair do in their lives will ever again be believed by the "progressives". Anything less than their banishment into careers as Starbuck's baristas will do.

So today, in reaction to the Gordon piece we see the spectacle of an all out assault on Gordon and an absolute denial, purely on an ad hominem basis, of the possibility that Iran has done anything against the interests of the United States in Iraq or anywhere else. Iran is just peachy keen according to their lights.

Here is Bernhard of Moon of Alabama:

You can bet with a very good chance that his statement, which Michael Gordon dutiful stenographs, has its origins in the White House. This bomb-Iran propaganda, the accusation of direct, official Iranian military intervention in Iraq, is originating from within the center of the Bush administration. It is fed through a "military spokesman" who just left the White House to Michael Gorden who's editors dependably publish it unfiltered in the New York Times.

Here is the bravely anonymous "Mcjoan" of Daily Kos:

Of course the objective of the U.S. military has been to pin the blame on the Iranian government. Not only does it further their case for war against Iran but it provides a momentary distraction from just how catastrophic this whole venture has been. And, yet again, Michael Gordon is the willing media stooge for their efforts. The NYT really should do something about him.

And we have the leader of the pack, Glenn Greenwald, quoted by all the others, saying:

Every paragraph in this article -- literally -- does one of two things: (1) uncritically recites the U.S. military's accusations against the Iranian government, and/or (2) offers assertions from Gordon himself designed to bolster those accusations (e.g., "There is also extensive intelligence that Iran has supplied Shiite militants with the most lethal type of roadside bomb in Iraq" and "In Washington, Bush Administration officials have generally held open the possibility that the Quds Force activities might have been carried out without the knowledge of Iran's senior leaders").

None of these people have or present one shred of evidence that the sainted Iranian government and its Quds troops are as pure as the driven snow. They don't need to to satisfy themselves and their sycophants. They operate solely on the basis that, "The enemy of my enemy is my friend." Anything, anything at all, said by anyone they can tie to the Bush Administration in any way is de facto wrong. No ifs, ands or buts.

If you don't believe me, wait until a Democratic President in the next Administration, as is the current most likely scenario, charges the Iranians with similar or new acts of belligerence. The folks cited above will then promptly acknowledge the likelihood of truth in those accusations. They will have not one shred of independent evidence of the facts, as they do not now. They will simply believe the messenger. Nor will they, I predict, even note the sudden change in their perspective. Hell, by then some of them will have received their hoped for appointment in the new White House.

For my part, I too have no independent evidence about the involvement of Iran, but I am willing to accept a wide array of evidence from all sources before I discount any for cause. I also have no sense of an orchestrated drum beat against Iraq as all of our friends on the left do. It makes a wonderful issue for them. They can scream ad infinitum about it without having to prove anything and then when Bush leaves office without attacking Iraq, they can claim it was their vigilance at the barricades that dissuaded him from acting. It's a win/win.

Did The Administration Cherry Pick The Intelligence?

Reports are emerging today from the Senate Intelligence Committee that in the weeks and months prior to the invasion of the Iraq the CIA was providing opinions that pointed to the great difficulty to be faced in Iraq and the region after the overthrow of Hussein's government.

It is not yet clear how these, now isolated reports, fit into the full array of materials available to the White House when it finalized plans for the invasion. How they fit may be the key historical puzzle of these times, nothing less.

If, as charged by George Tenet and others, the administration determined to invade come hell or high water and ignored as "nervous nellies" (in Lyndon Johnson's terms) those who raised reasonable cautions, then America was clearly mislead by this President. One can argue that the screw up regarding WMD's was a genuine mistake. But if all the advise provided pointed toward great difficulty in a civil chaos that would follow, then Bush and Co. clearly chose to lie and dissemble. We need to find out if there were contemporaneous findings that pointed to the likelihood of a facile and positive outcome. If they don't exist, then it would seem we were guided solely by the rich fantasy life of Dick Cheney.

But in the end, does it really matter so much if the President knew the likely post-war difficulties? The fact is he should have known before committing our young people to be killed and maimed. The general incompetence of the Bush Administration, both at home and abroad is already certified as being of historic proportions.

Our apparent fascination, at this very early date, with the 2008 Presidential campaign is nothing so much as a way of denying the existence of this President. Dreaming of a future great President helps us believe that America can and will work again.

Paul Bremer Argues He Did Not Create The Mess In Iraq

Paul Bremer, the former head of the Coalition Provisional Authority in Iraq has been silent for the three years since he left his post. In that time he has been the target of the current received wisdom that his decisions to eliminate Baath Party members from government and Hussein's former military leaders from the army led directly to the current chaos.

His argument to the contrary in today's Washington Post is worth reading. Here's a key quote:

Our critics (usually people who have never visited Iraq) often allege that the de-Baathification decision left Iraqi ministries without effective leadership. Not so. Virtually all the old Baathist ministers had fled before the decree was issued. But we were generally impressed with the senior civil servants left running the ministries, who in turn were delighted to be free of the party hacks who had long overseen them. The net result: We stripped away the tyrant's ardent backers but gave responsible Sunnis a chance to join in building a new Iraq.

The decree was not only judicious but also popular. Four days after I issued it, Hamid Bayati, a leading Shiite politician, told us that the Shiites were "jubilant" because they had feared that the United States planned to leave unrepentant Baathists in senior government and security positions -- what he called "Saddamism without Saddam." Opinion polls during the occupation period repeatedly showed that an overwhelming majority of Iraqis, including many Sunnis, supported de-Baathification.

And this:

So, after full coordination within the U.S. government, including the military, I issued an order to build a new, all-volunteer army. Any member of the former army up to the rank of colonel was welcome to apply. By the time I left Iraq, more than 80 percent of the enlisted men and virtually all of the noncommissioned officers and officers in the new army were from the old army, as are most of the top officers today. We also started paying pensions to officers from the old army who could not join the new one -- stipends that the Iraqi government is still paying.

I'll admit that I've grown weary of being a punching bag over these decisions -- particularly from critics who've never spent time in Iraq, don't understand its complexities and can't explain what we should have done differently. These two sensible and moral calls did not create today's insurgency. Intelligence material we discovered after the war began showed that Hussein's security forces had long planned to wage such a revolt.

No doubt some members of the Baath Party and the old army have joined the insurgency. But they are not fighting because they weren't given a chance to earn a living. They're fighting because they want to topple a democratically elected government and reestablish a Baathist dictatorship. The true responsibility for today's bloodshed rests with these people and their al-Qaeda collaborators.

Historians will have to be the final arbiters of what is true in this matter. For me, I plan to stop trying to find simple villains to blame for the mess in Iraq. The great historic failure was to not understand that complex internecine warfare was bound to happen in the post-Saddam power vacuum.

Photo source: NNDB.com

Moktada al-Sadr Joins Calls For Specific Date For US Withdrawal

Pool photo by Ali Abbas from the NY Times

The six Ministers of the Iraqi government of Nuri al-Malaki who are loyal to the radical Shiite cleric, Moktada al-Sadr, today resigned from the government. According to Edward Wong in the NY Times:

Legislators working for Mr. Sadr said that Mr. Sadr was withdrawing his ministers from the 38-member cabinet because the Iraqi government had refused to set a timetable for pulling American troops out of the country.

The move is the first time Mr. Sadr has followed through with a threat to cut some of his ties with the government and with Mr. Maliki, a conservative Shiite whose grip on authority largely rests on Mr. Sadr’s political support.

In this respect, it seems that al-Sadr and his people share with most Democrats and many others in America the view that the withdrawal of US troops by a date certain is a consummation devoutly to be wished.

That alone doesn't make the concept wrong. But it surely should lead to some assessment of the reasons that the goals of the Shiite radicals in Iraq and those in America oppose to Bush's policy are congruent. Clearly both parties cannot have the best interests of the United States in mind. Let us not forget that al-Sadr recently ordered his followers to attack and resist American forces.

al-Sadr claims that he has withdrawn his ministers, note the absolute control he exercises over these civilly elected officials, so that al-Malaki can appoint others, more compatible with the makeup of the balance of the cabinet. How magnanimous.

Sadr Unleases His Forces In Baghdad

According to a report from AP, via Captain's Quarters, the Shiite religious leader and commander of the Mahdi Army, Muqtada al-Sadr, has directed his followers to stop cooperating with the US forces, to stop attacking other Iraqis and to focus their attacks on the Americans.

In the short term this will probably mean increasing encounters in Baghdad, at the same time that Gen. Petraeus is continuing to build up his forces to their full complement. The MSM will likely not report al Sadr's directive and simply report on an expectable increase in military confrontations and bombings directed at the Americans and Iraqi troops. The implication will be that the Bush surge is failing. The fact will be that the confrontation the surge was designed to both create and manage will have just begun in earnest.

If Petraeus is right, the end product will be a lessening of the power of the Shiite armies in the capital city. If he is wrong, the outcome could well be the establishment of al Sadr and his Iranian allies as the de facto rulers of Iraq. I hope that no American, no matter how much they oppose the entire Iraq expedition, will hope for the latter outcome, even subconsciously. But, I fear there are too many ready, willing and able to take great glee in any Bush failure.

Measuring The Effect Of The Surge

Here's an interesting array of statistics on the number of deaths in Iraq, and Baghdad in particular. The essence is that there seems to be an abatement in the steady rise in civilian deaths that began with the bombing of the Golden Mosque in Samarra.

Clearly it is too early to know the final outcome and some of this early improvement may come from the standing down of the Shiite militias. They may only be laying low until the Democrats in America are able to effect the removal of US forces. Only time will tell. But in the end it is certain that the responsibility for a long term slow evolution of Iraq into a civil society will be on the backs of the Iraqi politicians and their armed forces.

In any event, nice job of analysis by a blogger known only as Engram at his Back Talk blog.

Micromanaging The War

The Democrats in Congress, driven inexorably by the polls, are slowly but unsurely, wending their way toward passage of a horrid bill. This legislation, which will surely be vetoed by Bush, calls for the meeting of specific benchmarks by the Iraqi government, specific training and equipment requirements meant solely to slow the rotation of new troops. The bill also demands the withdrawal of American troops by 2008, presumably so the next, possibly Democratic, President will not have to actually make any decisions about Iraq that might come back to haunt the Dems if terrorists conclude that our withdrawal is an open invitation to attack us again.

In an editorial today, the LA Times decries their tinkering:

This is not to say that Congress has no constitutional leverage — only that it should exercise it responsibly. In a sense, both Bush and the more ardent opponents of the war are right. If a majority in Congress truly believes that the war is not in the national interest, then lawmakers should have the courage of their convictions and vote to stop funding U.S. involvement. They could cut the final checks in six months or so to give Bush time to manage the withdrawal. Or lawmakers could, as some Senate Democrats are proposing, revoke the authority that Congress gave Bush in 2002 to use force against Iraq.

But if Congress accepts Bush's argument that there is still hope, however faint, that the U.S. military can be effective in quelling the sectarian violence, that U.S. economic aid can yet bring about an improvement in Iraqi lives that won't be bombed away and that American diplomatic power can be harnessed to pressure Shiites and Sunnis to make peace — if Congress accepts this, then lawmakers have a duty to let the president try this "surge and leverage" strategy.

By interfering with the discretion of the commander in chief and military leaders in order to fulfill domestic political needs, Congress undermines whatever prospects remain of a successful outcome. It's absurd for House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-San Francisco) to try to micromanage the conflict, and the evolution of Iraqi society, with arbitrary timetables and benchmarks.

The irony of the current Democratic stance is that it fails to acknowledge the significant changes and corrections taken by the administration. Rumsfeld is thankfully gone. Gen. Petraeus is now in charge in Iraq and has planned this surge with a different set of tactics than were used by his predecessors. Although there are some hopeful signs, it is still too early to know if his approach will work. If Congress didn't believe his plan could work, why the hell did they confirm him almost unanimously? It is now as if Democrats are hoping for the worst possible news out of Iraq. If success seems to be growing they will look increasingly foolish. Are they now rooting for chaos?

As the Times notes, it is as if the Congress in early 1863 suddenly demanded an end to the Civil War soon after President Lincoln finally bit the bullet and fired the ineffective Gen. McClellan and replaced him with U.S. Grant. If Petraeus is good, then let him do his job, for at least long enough for a fair judgment about the probable outcome of his approach to controlling the sectarian violence in Baghdad.

The Non-Binding Resolution: But What Do The Democrats Want To Do?

Accompanying its story about the passage of the non-binding resolution, which simply states,

‘’Congress and the American people will continue to support and protect the members of the United States Armed Forces who are serving or who have served bravely and honorably in Iraq'’ and that ‘’Congress disapproves of the decision of President George W. Bush announced on January 10, 2007, to deploy more than 20,000 additional United States combat troops to Iraq.'’,

the Times provides a selection of quotes from the debate over the resolution.

What is striking about the statements of those supporting the resolution is their clear opposition to the Petraeus plan for using the additional troops to police and hold secure the dangerous neighborhoods of Baghdad. They clearly mean to draw a line in the sand. What is less clear is what they would have the US troops do if and when they are able to stop the "surge" ("escalation" in the symbol language of the Vietnam era set.)

Here is a sampling taken from these quotes alone:

Rep. Tom Lantos: "Let us make this resolution the first step on their journey home. We must begin a reduction in force at the fastest responsible rate possible, consistent with the safety of our troops." In other words, pull out ASAP.

Rep. Joe Bocca: "The President had failed to convince me in 2002, and I am still not convinced to this day. I say let’s support this resolution. Let’s bring back our men.” A quick pullout as well.

Rep. Dale Kidee: "Before the end of this year, U.S. troops should be redeployed and their efforts focused on support and training the Iraqi Security Forces. It is their country, it is their fight, and it is their future.” Presumably a redeployment safe areas and a focus on training Iraqis.

Rep. Lois Capps: "Madam Speaker, it is time to stop the war in Iraq. Support the troops. Indeed, bring them home.” Another vote for a quick pullout.

Rep. Wayne Gilchrest: "If our young men and women are brave enough to go into Iraq and Afghanistan, then we as Members of Congress must be brave enough and informed to start a dialogue in Damascus, in Tehran, in the entire region, to hasten peace." Supporting a new emphasis on talks with Syria and Iran, with no guidance on the disposition of troops already in Iraq.

Nothing is said about the likely outcome should Bush follow their advice or if they are ultimately able to force him to abandon this plan. Clearly, absent any other new and innovative ideas from the Dems, the status quo would continue to drag along until the death tolls from bombings and death squads again embolden the Congress to further micromanage the war. The problem for them at that juncture is that they will be forced to choose a direction for the next American move and then live with the after effects. I doubt seriously that any potential Democratic candidates for President want to be saddled with that burden. My prediction is that no meaningful Congressional action will attract enough votes for passage.

Democrats, May Be Shut Out Of Power In The Long Term By Their Opposition To The War

Lawrence Haas, a former communications director for VP Al Gore, draws a parallel between the current scramble among Democrats to be the most anti-war partisans and the post-Vietnam collapse of their power after Carter's single term.

Key quote:

Will history repeat itself? To be sure, the White House seems an achievable target for Democrats in 2008, just as it was in 1976. Public disenchantment with President Bush in general, and with the war in Iraq in particular, should give Democrats a good head start.

Leading Democrats, none more so than their presidential candidates, are disavowing their previous votes or statements for the war and competing for anti-Bush purity. They are demanding that Bush end the war in Iraq before the next (presumably Democratic) president takes office in 2009. Momentum is building to block funding later this year.

But, in playing to their anti-war political base, congressional Democrats are pushing party orthodoxy on foreign policy further to the left. After a two-year campaign, any successful Democratic candidate for president may wind up with little leeway to project U.S. power abroad.

Unfortunately, the world will not likely cooperate with a hemmed-in president. Just as Soviet expansionism in the late 1970s reminded America that the Cold War was still on, so may the aftermath of Iraq remind Americans of the larger struggle at hand. Just as our withdrawal from Vietnam emboldened the Soviets, a withdrawal from Iraq may do likewise for today’s enemies.

Clearly, a failure in Iraq will create a haven for terrorists, including those from al-Qaida whom we are fighting there today. It will create a regional power vacuum to be filled by an increasingly emboldened Iran, which is stoking the fires in Iraq while ignoring international efforts to stop its nuclear program.

The world will grow more dangerous, not less. Failure in Iraq, leading to an exodus of U.S. forces, will provide merely the illusion of peace. The terrorists will challenge the United States in more places around the world while plotting to bring more turmoil to our homeland.

At some point, the nation will recapture its spirit. Taunted by our enemies or attacked directly, Americans will look to the party that is ready to respond in kind. Will Democrats once more be on the losing end?

Just the kind of sentiment that will drive the boys and girls over at Daily Kos right up the wall. Heh.

Why Are The Democrats Reluctant To Force An End In Iraq? It's The Politics, Stupid

In case, like me, you have been mystified by the statements by Democratic leaders in Congress that the non-binding resolutions now being considered are just a necessary first step, John Bresnahan in The Politico provides the explanation.

Pelosi, Murtha and company, along with the key anti-war groups, are concerned that they will lose support in the polls if they go for an immediate cut off of funds. They believe they will be vulnerable to the charge that they are abandoning US troops in the field. Thus, the plan is to slowly choke the ability of the Defense Dept. to field the necessary number of troops by limiting the number of tours any individual or unit can serve and requiring absolute adherence to the highest standards of training and equipment readiness before any unit can be deployed into Iraq.

Pelosi and other top Democrats are not yet prepared for an open battle with the White House over ending funding for the war, and they are wary of Republican claims that Democratic leaders would endanger the welfare of U.S. troops. The new approach of first reducing the number of troops available for the conflict, while maintaining funding levels for units already in the field, gives political cover to conservative House Democrats who are nervous about appearing "anti-military" while also mollifying the anti-war left, which has long been agitating for Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., to be more aggressive.

"What we have staked out is a campaign to stop the war without cutting off funding" for the troops, said Tom Mazzie of Americans Against Escalation of the War in Iraq. "We call it the 'readiness strategy.'"

Murtha's proposal, which has been kept under tight wraps, is likely to pass the House next month or in early April as part of the supplemental spending bill, Democratic insiders said, if the language remains tightly focused and does not threaten funding levels for combat forces already in the field. The battle will then shift to the Senate. Anti-war groups like Mazzie's are prepared to spend at least $6.5 million on a TV ad campaign and at least $2 million more on a grass-roots lobbying effort. Vulnerable GOP incumbents like Sens. Norm Coleman of Minnestoa, Susan Collins of Maine, Gordon Smith of Oregon and John Sununu of New Hampshire will be targeted by the anti-war organizations, according to Mazzie and former Rep. Tom Andrews, D-Maine, head of the Win Without War Coalition.

The fly in the ointment for the Dems, of course, would be any significant signs of success of the Petraeus strategy. If poll numbers start to reflect that Americans are beginning to believe that the new approach is in fact working, the Dems will be seen as choking off that rarest of things in our sorry involvement in Iraq, success. If Sadr has in fact fled the country and actions against Shiite neighborhoods are the initial signs of such success, the very gradualism of the Democratic approach will be its undoing. They will be hoisted on their own lack of political courage.

Hillary's Problem With Renouncing Her Support For Attacking Saddam

Christopher Hitchens in Slate lays out chapter and verse of Hillary's problem and her refusal to declare her vote authorizing our attack on Iraq. The core of the problem for her is that in 1998, hubby Bill advocated and signed the "Iraq Liberation Act". She also spoke forcefully of the danger she believed Saddam posed for the West in October 2002:

In the four years since the inspectors left, intelligence reports show that Saddam Hussein has worked to rebuild his chemical and biological weapons stock, his missile delivery capability, and his nuclear program. He has also given aid, comfort, and sanctuary to terrorists, including al-Qaida members, though there is apparently no evidence of his involvement in the terrible events of September 11, 2001.

This also raises the question that will not be asked of Barack Obama in the run up to the Democratic nomination, why did he believe invading Iraq was wrong in 2002 - 2003? Is there a record of his opposition and rationale? Did he alone among our political leaders see through the faulty intelligence and into the impossibility of the post war internecine warfare? If so, he should be bragging about it. He may indeed possess the stuff of greatness.

The Real Lesson Of Iraq

The always intelligent and stimulating Shelby Steele has a piece in the Wall Street Journal on our failure in Iraq. Steele continues to advocate a full victory in Iraq by the application of many more troops. In the end, I fear that although that was the outcome we should have sought, it is now beyond our grasp. The truth is that we now cannot produce several hundred thousand additional troops there, or anywhere else.

Nonetheless, Steele provides an excellent analysis of America's post-Cold War status as a conflicted superpower, the world's only one.

Why don't we know the meaning of this war and our reasons for fighting it? I think the answer begins in the awkward fact that America is now the world's uncontested superpower. If this fate has its advantages, it also brings an unasked-for degree of dominion in the world. This is essentially a passive dominion that has settled on a rather isolationist nation, yet it makes America into something of a sheriff. Whether the problem is Somalia, Bosnia, Iraq, Iran, North Korea or Darfur, America gets the call. Thus our youth are often asked to go to war more out of international responsibility than national necessity. This is a hard fate for a free and prosperous citizenry to accept--the loss of sons and daughters to a kind of magnanimity. Today our antiwar movement is essentially an argument with this fate, a rejection of superpower responsibility.

And this fear of responsibility is what makes us ambivalent toward the idea of victory. Because victory is hegemonic, it mimics colonialism. A complete American victory in Iraq would put that nation--at least for a time--entirely under American power and sovereignty. We would in fact "own" the society as a colony. In today's international moral climate this would both undermine the legitimacy of our war effort and make an ongoing demand on our blood and treasure. If we are already a good ways down this road, complete victory would only take us further.

Is it any wonder, then, that we have failed to completely win this war? Since World War II, American leaders--left and right--have worked out of an impossible double bind: They cannot afford to win the wars they fight. Thus the postmodern American war in which the world's greatest power deconstructs its own motives for fighting until losing becomes a better option than winning.

This may be the central truth about ourselves that will emerge from the Iraq fiasco. We as a nation are unwilling to go to all out war aimed at winning and imposing peace and democracy on third world countries.

Take, for example the mess in Darfur. Imagine us completely out of Iraq and the drumbeat about the awful genocide in Darfur still going on. Let us further assume that the best diplomatic efforts, realpolitik meister Jim Baker for example, proves unable to obtain a unified world view that firm military intervention is appropriate. Would and should the United States unilaterally intervene to stop the genocide? Could we do it in the face of the inevitable comparisons with previous colonial regimes in Africa? Could we successfully stop the slaughter in the long term if we are unable or unwilling to take total control of Sudan for the time it would take (a decade or more?) to transform that state into a peaceful democracy in which ethnic and religious differences are expressed in the political process, not via armed conflict? I seriously doubt it.

Like it or not, this is who we are in America in the 21st Century. Americans were fine with the effort in Afghanistan. We had been struck and were justified in striking back. But interventions that are not the result of direct provocation or attack will be another matter. Beyond all the arguments against the war in Iraq, Americans disliked most the notion of the United States as the bully with the big stick, poking our noses into matters that had not yet directly affected us. We want to be left alone and to intervene abroad only via our intelligence services and economic agents. Not via means that appear on the nightly news.

Future Presidents had better recognize this before decrying any foreign injustices. For most Americans, they will, sadly, be none of our business. It will take genuine leadership, of a kind we have not seen in decades, to make us a nation capable of reaching for the role for good we could be capable of assuming.

Bugging Out, Good For The Middle East?

Tom Friedman has now come around to the view, stated in today's column, hidden behind the Timesselect firewall, that pulling out of Iraq within ten months will not only be what the people of America apparently want, but will in fact have a salutary effect on Iraq and the entire Middle East.

Key quote:

The only hope of moving the factions inside Iraq, not to mention Syria and Iran, toward reconciliation is if we have leverage over them, which we now lack. The currency of Middle East politics is pain. And right now, all the pain is being inflicted on us and on Iraqi civilians. Only if we tell all the players that we are leaving might we create a different balance of pain and therefore some hope for a diplomatic deal. Trying to do diplomacy without the threat of pain is like trying to play baseball without a bat.

Yes, yes, I know, the conventional wisdom is that if the U.S. sets a date to leave Iraq the whole Middle East will explode in a Shiite-Sunni war. Maybe, but maybe not.

Let’s play this out. What happens if we set a date to leave? The war in Iraq will get worse, but for how long? Right now our troops are providing a floor under the civil war that allows some parties to behave outrageously or make impossible demands — because they know that we won’t let things spin totally out of control. Would they behave more cautiously if they knew they had to pay retail for their madness? I’d like to find out.

Well, that's a hell of a gamble with the lives of Iraqis, who we promised a very different outcome three and a half years ago. Lest we forget, the vast majority in Iraq voted their hopes for a unified democratic nation. The majority do not live lives tied inexorably to their religious or tribal faction. In the large cities they have lived for years often intermarried in mixed neighborhoods. All we can see from this distance is the small percentage who live and die by their tribal connections and who have found, through the application of terror, the means to provoke these ancient hatreds. If we leave, they have no reason to stop the madness. Those criminals do not see it as madness. To them it is a tactic, and one that has produced positive results. These factional madmen have small armies, funding streams, burgeoning bureaucracies and growing institutions they direct. Why give that up once the Americans are gone?

Iraq Is Broken Beyond Civil War - It Is A Leaderless Jungle

The recent preposterous and pompous announcement by NBC News, via its apparent key world affairs maven, Matt Lauer, that they now view the situation in Iraq as a civil war is so wrong it hurts.

Civil wars involve two or three distinct, identifiable, and unified groups struggling for power. In Iraq the number of distinct factions is beyond counting. As Tom Friedman says in today's Times (Timesselect firewall warning):

There are so many people killing so many other people for so many different reasons — religion, crime, politics — that all the proposals for how to settle this problem seem laughable. It was possible to settle Bosnia’s civil war by turning the country into a loose federation, because the main parties to that conflict were reasonably coherent, with leaders who could cut a deal and deliver their faction.

But Iraq is in so many little pieces now, divided among warlords, foreign terrorists, gangs, militias, parties, the police and the army, that nobody seems able to deliver anybody. Iraq has entered a stage beyond civil war — it’s gone from breaking apart to breaking down. This is not the Arab Yugoslavia anymore. It’s Hobbes’s jungle.

The situation is now much closer to anarchy than to civil war.

Why? Because for the last one and a half to two years the only debate in America has been over how quickly to pull out. Let us remember that our political debates are carried out over the satellite airways and are closely observed throughout the world and especially in places like Iraq that have a special interest in our future behavior. The rational result of this observation is the current maneuvering for positions of power in a post-American Iraq. No one there, or here for that matter, expects the US to remain strongly in country for the ten or more years with double our current troop levels that Friedman suggests is the only viable alternative. Everyone is angling for their best bargaining position in that expected future.

...Iraq was already pretty broken before we got there — broken, it seems, by 1,000 years of Arab-Muslim authoritarianism, three brutal decades of Sunni Baathist rule, and a crippling decade of U.N. sanctions. It was held together only by Saddam’s iron fist. Had we properly occupied the country, and begun political therapy, it is possible an American iron fist could have held Iraq together long enough to put it on a new course. But instead we created a vacuum by not deploying enough troops. That vacuum was filled by murderous Sunni Baathists and Al Qaeda types, who butchered Iraqi Shiites until they finally wouldn’t take it any longer and started butchering back, which brought us to where we are today.

There is currently no potential presidential candidate who argues for increased troop strength and long term commitment except John McCain. Are we then to wait two years to see if McCain can survive the Republican primary process and be elected? Does anyone believe the American people are willing to reconsider their dislike of the current state of affairs in Iraq and recommit to a more costly battle, the longest in our history? How many kids, therefore, do we consign to the cemetery in the name of some unknown time when the Iraqi government and people will wake up and see the need for them to take control of their streets?

I no longer see any possibility of a healthy outcome. Our national interest will be best served by a process which gets us out to nearby states with the understanding that we will strike from there any emerging terrorist training or operational sites. It is not in our control whether Shia or Sunni prevail. It now seems clear that the winner will be a strongman and that repression of the other side and the al Qaeda types will ensue. Such is the spawn of incompetence.

Chaos About To Be Unleashed In Iraq?

The Sunni/Shiite mutual slaughter seems to be on the very edge of slipping full bore into open warfare. If the US and Iraqi officials cannot get a handle on this quickly we could be witnessing the end of any practical hope for a peaceful society of laws in that sad nation. The Administration must be willing to do whatever it takes, be that more or dramatically fewer US troops. The problem will be in discovering the proper combination of American and Iraqi wise men who can discern the correct answer.

As in all such matters, the madmen will be storming the streets with their weapons and the mass of ordinary citizens, hoping only for a safe environment for their families, will suffer the consequences of this indiscriminate violence.

Whoa, Let's Not Bug Out Quite So Fast

Yesterday I noted the apparent consensus that the election of a Democratic Congress meant a quick pullout of Iraq. Today, Gen. Abazaid appeared to appropriately apply the break of reality to the downhill rush out of Mesopotamia. He even suggested that an increase in U.S. troop strength might be necessary over the short term.

The Times itself, in a summary of the views of military experts, principally retired generals Anthony Zinni and John Baptiste, who garnered consiserable street cred with the anti-war folks by demanding Rumsfeld's resignation.

Here is Gen. Zinni on the speculation, widely floated by Sen. Levin, that a time certain departure will put pressure on the Iraqi government:

“The logic of this is you put pressure on Maliki and force him to stand up to this,” General Zinni said in an interview, referring to Nuri Kamal al-Maliki, the Iraqi prime minister. “Well, you can’t put pressure on a wounded guy. There is a premise that the Iraqis are not doing enough now, that there is a capability that they have not employed or used. I am not so sure they are capable of stopping sectarian violence.”

Instead of taking troops out, General Zinni said, it would make more sense to consider deploying additional American forces over the next six months to “regain momentum” as part of a broader effort to stabilize Iraq that would create more jobs, foster political reconciliation and develop more effective Iraqi security forces.

The Drumbeat For Pulling Out Of Iraq

It seems inescapable to anyone watching the coverage of the major networks and 24 hour news channels that a group decision was made on November 8. This decision was not made in any conspiratorial way. Rather the individual editors and reporters seem to have come to a common decision that the war in Iraq is lost and should be over as quickly as possible.

There will be no waiting for the Baker/Hamilton Study Group. The steady drumbeat has begun. The American people need to be inculcated with the hopelessness of the situation on the ground in Iraq and the brilliant promise of a Democratic Congress forcing an intransigent and stupid Presidents hand before more American soldiers die.

Look at their reports. Nothing, absolutely nothing positive is happening in Iraq. I defy anyone to site one positive report in the last week. No one is reporting anything of the machinations and efforts of the Iraqi government. No one reports of the fears of any Iraqi citizens at the prospect of a rapid American withdrawal. There is no downside to our departure. Surely only goodness and mercy will flow from our departure. Just as surely, the American press will bug out of Baghdad hard on the heels of our troops. There will be no further reports of car bombings of shoppers in downtown Sunni and Shiite neighborhoods troubling our evening newscasts. The tale of an abandoned Iraq will be told only by a handful of intrepid reporters. No doubt the invaluable John Burns of the NY Times will see it through, until it becomes far too dangerous to continue.

Have you ever wondered how World War II would have been prosecuted with a post-Vietnam press ethos? James Q. Wilson speculates on that likelihood and lays out the process that has, apparently permanently, evolved the press into an institutional opponent to any and all military actions of the United States.

This change in the media is not a transitory one that will give way to a return to the support of our military when it fights. Journalism, like so much scholarship, now dwells in a postmodern age in which truth is hard to find and statements merely serve someone’s interests.

The mainstream media’s adversarial stance, both here and abroad, means that whenever a foreign enemy challenges us, he will know that his objective will be to win the battle not on some faraway bit of land but among the people who determine what we read and watch. We won the Second World War in Europe and Japan, but we lost in Vietnam and are in danger of losing in Iraq and Lebanon in the newspapers, magazines, and television programs we enjoy.