How Reassuring....

Al Qaeda has denied that it intended a chemical weapons attack on Jordan, asserting that if it had such weapons it would already have attempted to use them in Israel.

The chemical and poisonous bomb is a fabrication by the evil Jordanian mechanism," [Al Qaeda spokesperson Abu Musab al-Zarqawi] said in a full text of his statement carried on Islamist Web sites.

"God knows, that if we possessed such a bomb that we would not have hesitated for a second to avidly seek to strike Israeli cities such as Eilat, Tel Aviv and others."

(And some people think we can negotiate a truce with these terrorist groups?)

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"We Can Kick *Anybody's* Ass...."

Isn't it time for the Second Amendment absolutists to finally surrender their pretense that a society of people armed with handguns and rifles can defend a nation against a modern army? After all, aren't many of those same people relishing in the fact that not even the mightiest of the world's competing armies can stand up to our war machine?

And why isn't the NRA complaining that the Bush Administration is confiscating arms from law-abiding Iraqis, leaving them at the mercy of bandits and street gangs? I thought, after all, that an armed society was a polite society.

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Getting It Wrong on Powell

Many in the American political "left" do not understand the U.S. military, and it seems that many in the military do not understand the American political left. While there are suggestions that many traditionally Republican veterans and members of the military are so disillusioned with Bush that they will not be voting for him in the fall, that does not mean that they will be voting for Kerry - they simply won't vote. I think a good case study for the difference in mindset which leads to the schism between the military and the political left is Colin Powell.

Leave aside for a moment the thought that his resignation would be embarrassing to Bush, or would hurt Bush's reelection hopes. If you are on the political left and cannot understand why Powell would choose to remain and serve a President with whom he has significant personal disagreement, work to advance and effect policies with which he has significant personal disagreement, and even make public statements in support of those policies and proposed actions, the superficial response to your incredulity might be "you just don't get it". From what I have seen, people in the military have no problem understanding why, after committing to the job of Secretary of State, Powell's strong sense of duty and self-discipline would keep him from quitting or undermining the President. To the military mind, the recent spate of leftist editorials criticizing Powell for doing his job probably sound like nails down a chalkboard. If you can't understand that, at least try to ponder it for a while before you next criticize Powell for not quitting his post.

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I think there's a one-word explanation....

Cowardice.

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Why Isn't It Working?

While I was never one to believe the "candy and flowers" scenario, to praise Ahmed Chalabi, or to purport that because Saddam Hussein was so bad anything that followed his removal would inevitably be better, there is some evidence in the region that suggests the possibility of successful nation-building in Iraq - specifically, the Kurdish region in the north, which has moved toward democracy and capitalism during the decade-long "no fly zone" when they were shielded from Hussein's regime and allowed to develop autonamous rule. So it seems fair to ask, why aren't other Iraqis inspired by that example? Why don't they trust our motives after seeing how much freedom and independence the Kurds now possess?

The answers to that are likely far more complex than I can fathom, with my limited knowledge of the region and its culture - if you want to review culturally attuned and timely analysis of developments in Iraq I recommend Juan Cole's weblog. However, some of the differences seem self-evident.

First, the Kurds were not offered autonomy as a result of an invasion and occupation of their lands, "secured" by large numbers of foreign troops on the ground, but received it as a result of their being protected by the "no fly zone", and further by local militias that developed during that period. They knew that there were limits on the sovereignty they could assert - they knew that they were not free to declare their own state - but beyond that were given great latitude in building their own national institutions, infrastructure and economy. They knew and obviously considered the preferences of their protectors, but chose their own path toward democratization.

Second, as I just suggested, the Kurds were given the right to rebuild their institutions and infrastructure in the manner of their choosing. Foreign contractors were not dropped into their midst to do the work for them, while they were kept at a distance by razor wire and armed guards.

Third, their economic position was significantly improved. Whereas previously they had been all but shut out of Iraq's economy, they received a share of the revenues raised through the sale of Iraqi oil under the UN sanctions. While far from rich, between that revenue and an improved climate for trade, they saw an overall improvement in their standard of living.

Contrast that with what happened in the rest of Iraq. We came in by force, and after dissolving the Iraqi military and attempting to disarm the militias, we left an enormous security void which still exists, and which still leaves many Iraqis afraid to leave their homes and parts of the country at the mercy of bandits. We have refused to let the Iraqi people have any say in the structure of the government which will replace Hussein's regime, and we selected a "council" to represent them from people whom we believed would accede to our wishes for the country. We did not permit them to rebuild their own country, instead bringing in outside contractors at extraordinary cost, and excluding many Iraqis from participating in reconstruction (while permitting some others to participate, but at best as subcontractors to the outside companies). Meanwhile, the Shia majority is told that it will have to accede to a form of government which "protects" the rest of the country from what it might do following truly popular elections, and the Sunni minority is marginalized with many people who could otherwise be active in reconstruction or the new government completely excluded from the process as a result of de-Baathification. While the Kurds gained both politically and economically from their democratization, both the Sunnis and Kurds are being asked to permanently surrender economic and political power.

In The New York Review of Books, Peter Gailbraith suggests that the best path toward a stable Iraq, from which we could safely withdraw our troops, would likely be the "loose federation" - essentially, three relatively autonomous regions with a limited federal government. He recognizes that this would create an Iraq that was more a nation in name than in reality, which in turn implicates the concerns raised by Juan Cole about a possible "three state solution".

It still bothers me that, beyond endorsing the band-aid of the day (presently, the hope that a UN negotiator can somehow achieve a consensus which moves Iraq toward a stable government) nobody in the Bush Administration seems to be doing any long-term planning or analysis about Iraq. We hear tired cliches about "getting the job done" and how bad it would be to "cut and run", but the pro-war factions have done an atrocious job of telling us how we will achieve the desired goals - well, really, they have been pretty much silent on the issue. The most sensible analysis seems to come from the people who were anti-war, not out of any desire that Hussein remain in power but out of fear of a difficult and perhaps catastrophic post-war occupation - people who, unfortunately, were intentionally marginalized by pro-war factions prior to the war, and whose opinions remain at the margins in no small part because the leaders of the U.S. and U.K. are too vain to admit their mistakes.

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A Continuing Shame....

Stories like this remind me of my long-standing feeling that this country would have been much better served over the past four years, had John McCain won the Presidential nomination for the 2000 election.

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Kristof's (Latest) False Dichotomy

A couple of days ago, Nicholas Kristof presented a rather peculiar false dichotomy:

I've argued often that gay marriage should be legal and that conservative Christians should show a tad more divine love for homosexuals.

But there's a corollary. If liberals demand that the Christian right show more tolerance for gays and lesbians, then liberals need to be more respectful of conservative Christians.

I'm not sure why the issues are interconnected - can anybody fill me in on the elusive parts of Kristof's reasoning?

It is also interesting to note that the points of "disrespect" shown by the left toward "conservative Christians" is not based upon religion per se - many people on the left are devoutly religious Christians - but is about a particular interpretation of religion. And much of the "disrespect" is not even over conservative religiosity, but instead is a reaction to those sects which advance hatred toward homosexuals, hatred toward Islam, and the notion that anybody who hasn't been "saved" in accord with a particular interpretation of the Bible is destined for Hell, in the name of Christian religion. Isn't Kristof actually arguing that the political left needs to be more tolerant of intolerance?

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A False Sense of Balance

When addressing contentious issues, it seems common for the press and for laypersons to attempt to achieve "balance" by criticizing both sides. The worst examples of this seem to be in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, where (outside of the Israei press) it is difficult to find an article that simply hones in on a troublesome issue without providng some sort of allusion to dubious conduct by the "other side". This perhaps is understandable, in the sense that the western media is accused of bias pretty much any time it touches that particular conflict (whatever the merit of the charge), but it's ultimately a cop-out.

Given the superficial understanding of the conflict possessed by most Americans, and presumably by most of the reporters who author the news coverage, perhaps it shouldn't be surprising that we get facile, superficial analysis of the so-called "cycle of violence", without any hard look at whether either side (or both sides) is acting unwisely. "The Palestinians" are treated as a monolithic whole, such that the individual act of the most extremist nutjob is attributed to "The Palestinians" without thought or explanation. The Israelis don't fare much better, being associated with the often dubious judgment of the Sharon Administration - an elected administration, but under a system of government which results in often fragile coalition governments with government decision-making sometimes more influenced by the need to appease a tiny extremist political party (with just enough MK's to make or break a coalition majority) as opposed to the will of the people. We rarely hear that the majority of Isralies have long been willing to abandon most of the settlements in the occupied territories as part of the peace process, nor how that contrasts and conflicts with Sharon's long-standing plan to annex huge portions of the occupied West Bank.

The ignorance of the western media is frequently exploited in the conflict, as was the case with propaganda about Palestinians using children as "human shields" early in the Intifada. An investigation by the Israeli human rights organization B'Tselem established this claim as anti-Palestinian propaganda:

In response to Israeli "misrepresentation," leading Israeli publicist Dan Margalit advocates a strategy "to reduce the gap between the cold logic on Israel's side and the bloody photograph giving Palestinians the edge.… A planned and creative PR campaign would attack Arafat from an unexpected direction—that he sacrifices children.… If all officials repeated this contention, some of those graphic photos would work against Arafat."

Over the past few weeks, the Israeli media—and Israel's supporters worldwide—have adopted this strategy. Newspapers tell of mothers who raise their children to be martyrs. Mass emails assert that Palestinian gunmen are using children as human shields. So, precisely as Margalit intended, the discourse has shifted from the soldiers who kill children to a critique of Palestinian society, a pagan society (according to one controversial article) that practices child sacrifice.

Hanan Ashrawi rightly has labeled these accusations a classic case of racist demonization, achieved by blaming the victim and dehumanizing Palestinians and their culture. Seventy-four percent of Palestinians in a recent Birzeit University survey opposed the participation of children under age eighteen in the confrontations. The Israeli human rights organization B'Tselem has found no evidence of organized exploitation of children.

That's certainly not to say that more could not be done on the Palestinian side to keep young kids out of harm's way, and to discourage them from participating in demonstrations or stone-throwing which might culminate in Israel's use of deadly force, but that's a much lesser charge. Early in the Intifada the Israeli military issued cameras to its troops hoping to catch some footage of gunmen hiding behind children. Not one frame of footage has been released to support the anti-Palestinian propaganda, and ultimately the cameras were recalled.

The sort of faux "balance" I describe is also not alien to the blogging world. In this example, a dogmatically pro-Israeli blogger is actually criticizing Israel, but you can only learn that if you follow the link:

Inexcusable

Palestinian fighters routinely use children as human shields, but that doesn't excuse this. Those responsible deserve to be punished.

Posted by Gene at April 24, 2004 03:31 AM

The linked Ha'aretz article is a pretty good overview of allegations and actual use of "human shields" during the conflict, and it does present a similar claim to Gene's - but with two important differences: "Security forces insist they do their utmost to avoid civilian casualties and accuse Palestinian militants of routinely using non-combatants for cover." - first, the accusation of "routine use" is properly depicted as an undocumented allegation. While there are likely isolated incidents which could be documented, there does not seem to be any evidence of anything approaching the security forces' claim. Second, the claim is general, not about children. Arguably, even this line was included to minimize accusations of imbalance, which are frequently directed at Ha'aretz, but apparently Ha'aretz has a thick enough skin that it is willing to adhere to the known facts. Given the pressures they face, that's pretty commendable.

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Sharing Secrets II

I guess the Washington Post felt left out, given yesterday's editorial in the Times. In a very long piece, the Post tells us:

An examination of [Kerry's military] record, supplemented by interviews with the candidate, his crewmates and some skeptics, found little to undermine Kerry's portrayal of his service.

But I guess "there's no story here" doesn't provide enough column inches?

Meanwhile, there's no similar story about Bush's war record, perhaps because they can't find many people who remember his later service?

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Sharing Secrets

Today, following John Kerry's release of his military records, the New York Times complains that the Kerry's should be more forthcoming with other information, such as additional medical records or details of Teresa's finances.

With all due respect for the importance of knowing a presidential candidate's medical history, and certain details of his finances, this seems to be an unbalanced demand. On the more personal front, there is no call for Bush to disclose his personal financial background, including the details of the questionable business dealings which have inspired some to accuse him of insider trading. There is no call for him to disclose why he skipped his annual physical in his last year of reserve duty. On matters which affect all of us, there is no call for disclosure of the identity of participants in Dick Cheney's energy task force. There is no call for disclosure of additional documents and records pertaining to 9/11, when the Bush Administration started to plan for war in Iraq, or even for an explanation of its diversion of $700 million from Afghan reconstruction to pay for Iraq warplanning. There's no call for Cheney to disclose the present status of his heart condition, or for an update on President Bush's peculiar fainting spell.

I'm all for disclosure, but I'm not sure that Kerry's the one with the bigger secrets. When can I expect The Times to present a similarly unambiguous demand for disclosure by the other side?

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Palestine

In Today's times, David Margolick tells us about "the nicest terrorist I ever met", detailing the extreme beliefs of the recently assassinated leader of Hamas, Abdel Aziz Rantisi. If you've had the luxury of growing up in peace, Rantisi's endorsement of endless conflict seems almost alien.

Also, Walter Russell Mead editorializes that, based upon his experience with the people of the Arab world, the greatest source of antipathy toward the United States is not the U.S.-Israeli relationship, but the "widespread belief that the United States simply does not care about the rights or needs of the Palestinian people. He suggests what some, such as Israeli peace activist Uri Avnery and the U.S. group Tikkun, have suggested for years:

America's Middle East policy is unnecessarily zero-sum. We can be more pro-Palestinian without being less pro-Israeli. Indeed, to the degree that American policies help create support for compromise among Palestinians, pro-Palestinian initiatives can help Israel too.

(As if on cue, even the King of Jordan is responding to Arab anger over Bush's endorsement of Sharon's plan to annex portions of the occupied West Bank.) In The London Guardian George Monbiot presents a different perspective on zero sum games. He argues that the Bush Administration's policies toward the conflict are driven by the views of a certain subset of Christian fundamentalists:

For 15% of the electorate, the Middle East is not just a domestic matter, it's a personal one: if the president fails to start a conflagration there, his core voters don't get to sit at the right hand of God. Bush, in other words, stands to lose fewer votes by encouraging Israeli aggression than he stands to lose by restraining it. He would be mad to listen to these people. He would also be mad not to.

According to that hypothesis, as with his reported short-changing the troops in Iraq on funds and equipment, Bush is willing to put sensible policy far behind his goal of being reelected.

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Causes of Columbine

Slate presents an analysis of the Columbine shootings which departs significantly from the popular myths and conceptions.

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And I thought Brooks Was Bad....

I issued some criticism of David Brooks a couple of days ago for his thinly reasoned, self-serving editorial about the present situation in Iraq. But Brooks ain't got nothin' on Christopher Hitchens.

Hitchens first criticises those who were opposed to the war, but supposedly now argue that they would have supported it had the invasion force been larger. His examples prove that an overstatement - he references E.J. Dionne who does not argue that he would have changed his mind on the invasion, but instead suggests that had we not had an enormous post-war security void subsequent events might have gone more smoothly. It might be possible to find somebody who disagrees with Dionne's larger point, but it would take some work. Hitchens' argument is an absurd straw man.

Further, there would be nothing wrong with opposing a war on the basis that the proposed invasion and occupation force was too small, while supporting a war which would utilize a larger invasion and occupation force. A great many hawkish voices were airing concerns about whether the number of troops proposed by the Bush Administration would be sufficient to hold the peace after the war and - although Hitchens can't bring himself to admit it - they were right. The present troop deployment is significantly larger than the White House proposed, and it is presently being increased because even that larger number of troops is inadequate.

Worse, Hitchens misrepresents what Dionne argues, claiming "E.J. Dionne in the Washington Post has just instructed his readers that Fallujah and the Sunni triangle would more likely have been under control the first time around, except that we refused the offer of help from the Turks." Dionne in fact argues the opposite: "And when Turkey denied our troops the chance to invade from Iraq's north -- those troops might have pacified the now violently unstable regions of the country -- Bush did not pause or delay." How can Hitchens possibly justify his misinterpretation of a plain English sentence describing how Turkey declined us aid we requested, and pretend that the author wrote that we declined aid Turkey offered?

Hitchens then presents a reductio ad absurdem about de-Baathification:

Now we hear on all sides, including Lakhdar Brahimi of the United Nations, that de-Baathification was also a mistake. Can you imagine what the antiwar critics, and many Iraqis, would now be saying if the Baathists had been kept on?

I have yet to hear anybody argue that de-Baathification should not have occurred. The argument is that de-Baathification was handled in an clumsy (perhaps incompetent) manner, resulting in the exclusion from employment of large numbers of qualified individuals who had no real ties to the Baath party beyond obtaining membership so that they would qualify for particular jobs or careers. There is a huge difference between what is now widely accepted - that a more judicious de-Baathification would have better served our post-invasion needs and the needs of the Iraqi people - and the claim that no de-Baathification should have occurred.

Hitchens adds another layer of absurdity - the false dichotomy that the Iraqi military had to be dissolved in its entirety or not at all - suggesting that it was only through dissolution of the entire military that it became "impossible for any big-mouth brigadier or general to declare himself the savior of Iraq in a military coup" - yet I have never heard anybody argue that (above a relatively low rank) the officers of Hussein's military would have been retained, let alone that retaining them would be a good idea. As expected, Hitchens doesn't identify any.

Hitchens then rambles about the threat Hussein was believed to pose, and the fact that he once had some nasty weaponry. I can't tell quite what he intends to argue - perhaps that it was okay to use 9/11 as a subterfuge for attacking Iraq because Hussein was so nasty. If that is his point, I am not sure how it relates to criticism directed at the disingenuousness of the government in pressing for the war. If the case for war against Iraq could have been made on its own merit, why did the Bush Administration find it necessary to mislead the public, and why would any journalist complain that it is somehow unfair for people to demand honesty from their elected leaders - particularly on matters as important as going to war?

Hitchens confesses only one small mistake himself, which he self-servingly describes as "the thing that least undermines the case" - the extent of Iraq's religiosity. Hitchens doesn't explain himself on this point, perhaps with good cause. After all, it appears that Iraq is likely to elect a theocratic government in about a year, assuming elections are held, at which time the invasion will have successfully removed a secular regime and replaced it with an Islamic theocratic regime (ideally, one which nonetheless accepts religious and political plurality). To the extent that Hitchens endorses the Iraq war as a crusade which delivered the Iraqi people from the evil clutches of Islam, it is not yet clear that the war didn't do the opposite. [nb: I am not describing Islam as evil, but am merely describing an inferred mindset.]

Hitchens then reverts to bashing the "anti-war Left", pretending that everybody on the anti-war left had previously wished to gratify Hussein by unconditioinally removing sanctions from Iraq. I don't recall any such unity on the anti-war left, and as is usual none is documented by Hitchens. I do recall criticism of the sanctions as being harmful to the Iraqi people, as helping to consolidate Hussein's grip on power, and thus that different alternatives should be considered - but that's something apart from what Hitchens pretends.

Hitchens next criticizes France and Russia for "acting as knowing profiteers in a disgusting oil-for-bribes program that has now been widely exposed." Okay - let's accept that the oil for food program was corrupt (seemingly another argument in favor of the reform Hitchens just told us were a bad idea), and that France and Russia were leading profiteers. Why then, Mr. Hitchens, did Russia and France advocate for reform or elimination of the sanctions and the associated oil for food program, from which they were supposedly profiteering? No explanation? That's okay.... I didn't expect one from you.

Reverting to his bashing of the "anti-war Left", Hitchens pretends that those who favored any change in the sanctions were arguing that removal of the sanctions would automatically result in regime change. Again, no examples provided. (Ironically, he argues that during the decade between Gulf Wars "a whole paranoid and wretched fundamentalist underclass was created and exploited by the increasingly Islamist propaganda of the Baath Party" - while overlooking the role of the sanctions in empowering Hussein to create that underclass.)

Hitchens' conclusion isn't any better.

When fools say that the occupation has "united" Sunni and Shiite, they flatter the alliance between the proxies of the Iranian mullahs and the Saudi princes. And they ignore the many pleas from disputed and distraught towns, from Iraqis who beg not to be abandoned to these sadistic and corrupt riffraff. One might have seen this coming with greater prescience. But it would have made it even more important not to leave Iraq to the post-Saddam plans of such factions. There was no way around our adoption of Iraq, as there still is not. It's only a pity that the decision to intervene was left until so many years had been consumed by the locust.

His flawed reasoning is obvious at the outset: He posits that if you recognize the fact that Shiite and Sunni militias have been cooperating in taking up arms against "coalition" forces, you are a fool who ignores the fact that most Iraqis want peace. Surprise: It is possible to recognize both facts.

While I'll grant Hitchens the point that it is unfortunate that it took so long for Hussein's regime to be toppled, and extend it to argue that if we did have to occupy all of Iraq the better time to have done so would have been at the end of Gulf War I, that small point doesn't save him from himself. Hitchens apparently lives in a world of false dichotomies, where things either had to be exactly the way they presently are, or we would have had to do absolutely nothing at all. Even Brooks was able to recognize how mistakes and mismanagement have complicated the occupation and transformation of Iraq. Hitchens, obsessed with proving his critics wrong, seems to have lost any ability to reason.

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Lessons from History

I find it interesting that people in various pro-war factions, right up to the President, take such umbrage at even the slightest comparision between the war in Iraq and Vietnam. It doesn't much matter whether the comparison is on a broad scale, or in relation to the finest of points - pro-war factions declare such comparisons to be false, unfair, and even that the comparison (in the President's words) "sends the wrong message to our troops and sends the wrong message to the enemy".

It is also interesting that similar objections typically are not raised when comparisons are made between Iraq and other conflicts, such as Lebanon or Algeria. (In fact, the Pentagon military saw enough parallels between Iraq and the French experience in Algeria, that it was reportedly screening the film "The Battle of Algiers" as a cautionary tale.) And anybody who recalls Lebanon, including the short-lived U.S. intervention and barracks bombing, and Israel's ultimate withdrawal after eighteen years of occupation, should be concerned by the thought that the Iraqi occupation may turn out the same way.

So why the consternation about Vietnam, and not other wars - particularly where the comparison to a different war may ultimately be more damning? In my opinion, it is because the popular conception of Vietnam is "The U.S. lost", whereas there is little popular understanding of the other conflicts which are mentioned. There is no instant message to a comparison between Iraq and Lebanon, or Iraq and Algeria, but a comparison to Vietnam sends the message, "We might lose" - or perhaps even, "We are losing". If understood, comparisons to Algeria and Lebanon might seem more damning than a comparison to Vietnam, but absent a popular understanding the pro-war factions apparently see no reason to try to shout down those comparisons.

Ultimately, the "we might lose" subtext, and not the validity or invalidity of any particular point of comparison, is why the pro-war factions are so pained by mention of Vietnam.

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Bush #1 was right?

As everybody knows, at the conclusion of the first Gulf War the first Bush Administration chose not to depose Saddam Hussein. In his book, A World Transformed, George H.W. Bush explained,

We should not march into Baghdad. To occupy Iraq would instantly shatter our coalition, turning the whole Arab world against us and make a broken tyrant into a latter-day Arab hero. Assigning young soldiers to a fruitless hunt for a securely entrenched dictator and condemning them to fight in what would be an unwinnable urban guerilla war, it could only plunge that part of the world into ever greater instability.

In his 1993 autobiography, General "Stormin' Norman" Schwarzkopf took a more practical view:

From the brief time that we did spend occupying Iraqi territory after the war, I am certain that had we taken all of Iraq, we would have been like the dinosaur in the tar pit - we would still be there, and we, not the United Nations, would be bearing the costs of the occupation. This is a burden I am sure the beleaguered American taxpayer would not have been happy to take on.

Responding to a typically self-serving editorial by David Brooks, Matthew Yglesias provides an interesting commentary on the pro-war factions:

Neither the policies being advocated by Bush nor the policies being advocated by the anti-war movement (even at its most mainstream) were the correct ones. What I wanted to see happen wasn't going to happen. I had to throw in with one side or another. I threw in with the wrong side. The bad consequences of the bad policy I got behind are significantly worse than the consequences of the bad policy advocated by the other side would have been. I blame, frankly, vanity. "Bush is right to say we should invade Iraq, but he's going about it the wrong way, here is my nuanced wonderfullness" sounds much more intelligent than some kind of chant at an anti-war rally. In fact, however, it was less intelligent. I got off the bandwagon right before the shooting started, but by then it was far too late -- this was more a case of CYA than a case of efficacious political dissent.

I don't know if Yglesias is correct, or that "useful idiots" like Brooks could ever have come to realize that Bush I had a point. I still think that the war was going to happen - Bush II wanted it that badly - and if anything his reaction to an 11th hour shift in popular opinion would have been to start the war sooner, before public resistance became too powerful for Congress to ignore.

I have argued since the war started that, while historical lessons should be learned from the manner in which we were drawn into the war, we need to recognize the reality: We're in Iraq, and we have to figure out how to best resolve our occupation. It seems that, despite our having been the occupying power for more than a year, the Bush Administration has given this almost no serious thought. They still seem to think that everything is going to get better, perhaps by magic. If a magical solution does not somehow materialize, and commentators like Brooks continue to cheerlead instead of pressing for material improvements in the Bush Administration's strategies, in twenty years it seems far more likely that history will support the position now taken by Yglesias, not Brooks. And that would be tragic.

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Selective Amnesia

Poor President Bush. His memory seems to be failing:

President George W. Bush has denied that his administration began drafting plans for the invasion of Iraq shortly after the September 11 attacks, insisting he did not begin to focus on Iraq until nearly a year later.
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The comments came in response to the publication of excerpts from Plan of Attack, a new book by Washington Post reporter Bob Woodward, which says Mr Bush ordered Donald Rumsfeld, his defence secretary, to draw up a fresh war plan for Iraq in November 2001.

* * *

But Mr Bush told reporters he could not recall what plans were being developed in November 2001, and said he had focused on defeating al-Qaeda and the Taliban in Afghanistan in the immediate aftermath of the attacks.

(So we're not saying that the story, which is consistent with accounts dating back to 9/12, is false - we're just denying that the President remembers something so minor as whether he ordered a key cabinet member to draft war plans.)

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Going Off the Roadmap

Incredible.
Unbelievable.
Irresponsible.

But perhaps not surprising for a President, who has no grasp of or interest in history or diplomacy, and whose largest exposure to the region at issue was a propaganda helicopter tour personally led by Ariel Sharon.

Funny, how those rational voices who point out that you cannot make significant progress to peace without providing the Palestinians with some sense of the borders of the state they will obtain were ignored by Bush, yet he is more than happy to assure Sharon that he can annex huge amounts of illegally settled Palestinian land well in advance of any peace deal.

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Another Term for "Cut and Run"?

Today, Thomas Friedman suggests that if we let the Iraqis know that we will be handing sovereignty over to some form of interim government at the end of June, that we expect democratic elections to be held a year later, and that we will then leave, that by some miracle all of the disparate factions will suddenly cooperate to form a viable national government. As the basis for this assertion, he points to a tentative agreement between Hamas and what's left of the Palestinian Authority in Gaza, in relation to how Gaza might be governed in the event that Israel actually does withdraw its soldiers and illegal settlements from that tiny territory.

Whatever the merit of the observation that the remnants of the P.A. are willing to negotiate with Hamas to prevent a civil war, and to ensure the flow of international aid, in the event of an Israeli withdrawal, the situation in Iraq is a bit more complicated. Ignoring the fact that the Bush Administration apparently doesn't want to leave, and is building massive infrastructure to support tens of thousands of American troops for the indefinite future, the calculus is very different for the various factions in Iraq. The Kurds have expressed a willingness to join a national government as long as they get self-rule - something close to a state of their own, but not so close as to make Turkey uncomfortable. And they have suggested that they will try to form an independent state if that's not possible. But there's little to inspire those who benefited from a Sunni-led dictatorship, or those who desire a Shiite theocracy, to stick with a plan which will lead to a relatively secular and pluralistic democracy.

I am sure that Friedman believes that this approach - throwing the baby into the deep end and letting it learn how to swim on its own - would work. It's not the nuttiest idea he has espoused in his column over the last few years. But it is reminiscent of the suggestion that we "cut and run" - or follow the Vietnam model of declaring "victory with honor" and leaving a puppet government to fend for itself. While some puppet governments have managed to last for quite a few years after the departure of their sponsors, most don't seem so lucky. It takes somebody like Friedman to point to the possibiliity that a peace agreement might theoretically hold between two factions in a tiny territory where a long-standing occupation might theoretically be ended, and to argue that it proves, well, anything.

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Giving Credit Where Credit Is Due

I doubt that Senator Roberts expects anything in return for his setting the record straight on Clarke's testimony, which apparently was in fact consistent with his prior testimony, but it does take a certain amount of gumption to stand up to the Senate Majority Leader of one's own party, and the desire of certain partisans to undercut Clarke's testimony.

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Staying The Course in Iraq

Newsweek reminds us of the course we have taken to date. Is this the course we intend to pursue, or is there some other course we plan to "stay"? Apparently, not even the President can explain what it means to "stay the course". Just that we're going to "stay" it.

Meanwhile, if as rumored the Bush Administration green lights Sharon's annexation of huge swaths of occupied Palestinian territory, I don't think that the "course" we are staying will become any easier....

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