What is the answer, folks? Yes, we have a lying, cheating, incompetent president and administration who have created one of the worst foreign policy blunders in US history, have no answers of their own, and, frankly, don't have the brainpower to do anything further. They've emboldened America-haters, destroyed US legitimacy, dismantled civil rights protections, made American democracy less democratic and less transparent and the administration itself less accountable and vastly more corrupt. And they continue to fail over and over, lie over and over, and continue spewing increasingly alarming platitudes in place of doing any kind of decent policy at all. Generations will face the negative consequences of this presidency's actions. This president ought to be impeached, and there have never been more solid legal and moral grounds for impeachment of a US president."Our army is in danger," he said. "If all-out civil war breaks out, we could lose our army. If Sunnis and Shiites take to the streets by the thousands, it could literally be impossible to get [the soldiers] out. ... I know that sounds apocalyptic, but it's not out of the question. We need an exit strategy. We have no choice. We're making things worse. Ninety percent of the insurgents are Iraqis who don't like the fact that we have occupied their country. ...
"I know we can't just pack up and leave right away, but we're still acting as if we hold all the cards over there. We don't. We're losing control of the situation. ... The British occupied Iraq for 35 years and finally had to leave because there was a constant insurgency against them. We haven't learned anything."
All that said... what to do about Iraq? It's true. The US made the mess - some 70% or so of Americans share the blame with Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, et al. Somehow, control over this mess has to be taken from their hands and placed in the hands of competent and decent people. But then what? Withdraw quickly or slowly? Stick around and rebuild while US presence in Iraq exacerbates the conflict?
We've had this problem for years now. But nobody has thought their way out of this tiny unpainted corner over the last three years. I'll go out on a limb and offer up a few considerations for discussion.
1. Impeach the president. Yes, he's incompetent and the administration corrupt, however institutionalized the corruption. There are good grounds for impeachment. But, more importantly, impeachment would be a first step towards showing the rest of the world some goodwill on the part of the American public. It would say that we're going to start cleaning up the US-created mess by booting out the architects of that mess.
2. Once this administration is gone, the US should apologize sincerely for Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo. It will have to do so some day since the administration no longer "writes reality" to its liking. Better to do it sooner rather than later so that the US does not become known as a "torture state." This will not happen while this administration is in office. If it continues with the next president, he/she should be impeached too. We are not a torturing nation. We ought to set standards and ideals of decency that other countries can look to. That has been obliterated by this administration.
3. Get down to real negotiations with all sides in the conflict in Iraq as well as with Hamas. In Iraq, the US ought to recognize the concerns of the insurgents. Choosing sides, installing puppets, and creating a government that can't exit the Green Zone are all practical policies and symbols of an oppressive occupier. Rumsfeld, I believe it was, said before the war that the US would have to side with some "unsavory characters." In practice this has meant siding with petit despots. Why not turn the tables and hammer out agreements with the insurgents against whom the US is fighting? This seems to me the only way out. I know there have been rumours of some negotiations with insurgents, but these don't seem to have been terribly successful.
"Terrorists" is a catch-all term favored by the administration to refer to an imaginary, unitary group. Terrorism is, however, a tactic, not a political platform nor a political group. It is historically a tactic of the powerless and stateless. The most radical and nutty of fundamentalists - those who believe in the eventual overthrow of the West - can be marginalized by treating the concerns of Iraqi insurgents as real concerns. That element of terrorism can be stemmed through recognition. Their concerns are not merely based in a radical Islamist fundamentalist worldview. The US is an occupying power shaping the future of a state under which Iraqis will ostensibly live. I'd be pissed too.
As for Sunnis and Shiites, both sides and internal factions have shown a willingness to work together and have shown restraint. The country could indeed collapse into civil war. But it's simply not clear whether the US occupation hurries along impending civil war or constrains it.
4. Negotiate with the Kurds for an autonomous Kurdish state. This is a price Iraq and the US will have to pay. Part of the negotiations will have to be the condition of no further encroachment upon Turkish territory. Legitimizing a limited Kurdistan at this point will cut off further civil strife in the future as the Kurds are simply biding their time now that Saddam is gone. Part of the agreement will have to be based on shares in natural resources (oil). Oil for peace and legitimacy as a state.
5. Deal with Hamas. Israel/Palestine is one of the central issues, however symbolic, of Middle Eastern frustrations. Treat Palestinians like human beings. They've elected a government perhaps out of anger, but the anger is not unjustified. Provide the incentives that Europe, the UN, and Russia are now giving to Hamas. Let them know that the US will recognize a Palestinian state if it drops its rhetoric about Israel. Conversely, Israel is a state already, but an expansionist one. Part of these negotiations would have to demand a genuine end to Israeli expansion, as opposed to the typical smokescreens of pulling settlers out of one area while expanding into another. At some point the expansion cannot continue anyway. Now is the time to face this reality. This would be the basis of a reduction in hostilities. US facilitation would be another goodwill effort towards restoring faith in the US as a decent country with whom states can engage in honest negotiations.
6. There are many other entangled issues, such as the US reliance on petroleum. But one last thing for now: this war is lost. There was never a clear goal, and when there's no clear goal a war cannot be won. But it can be lost by creating a bigger mess than when it started. The times have changed. Now you can even be William Buckley and say the war is lost. Before it was just us "America-haters." As a lost war, what's the result? Likely a theocratic Iraq heavily influenced by Iran. This returns us to the civil war cycle, but with the support of Iran it's one the Iraqi Sunni cannot win. I don't see any way around the fact that Iran has played the war very smartly. Iran is the winner in this war. The only case in which it is not is if the US expands the war to include Iran. This would be suicide, but I wouldn't put it past this administration. All the better reason to go back to #1.
9 comments:
This is an excellent analysis, and it should be disseminated more widely across the interwebs.
And couldn't you just weep to think what might have been had we taken Saddam out surgically, left the infrastructure intact, and sent in a 21st century version of the Peace Corps to support needed services like health care, water treatment and agriculture?
It never occurred to these "drown the government in the bathtub" morons that the Baathists were the bureaucracy, and that bureaucracy (though we spit on the ground when we say it) is human infrastructure. The guy who knew how to keep the power plant running didn't get his job because he was a Baathist; he was a Baathist in order to get his job. Any kid in Chicago knows how that works. Electrons move down the wire independent of ideology. Rummy and pals seemed to think Iraqis would rather suffer than accept tainted electricity; of course, as ideologues themselves, that's a natural projection, albeit one indulged from air-conditioned offices with ice water on tap.
Instead, we had to show the world our big, swingin' shock & awe pecker.
What if we were just to send to Iraq a nice basket of fruit? Although I like that thought of an impeached president. Vice president too for the matching set.
A fruit basket! Damn, I should have just thought of that.
Thanks for the good words, roxtar. Good additions on the "Baathists" who ran the country. It was, after all, a relatively well-run country, though it's political situation left much to be desired. But... technologies have politics, as Langdon Winner thought.
The Bush Admin. is not out to solve this "insurgency". They're camped out 130,000 strong in barricaded enclaves. New cities out of whole cloth with Burger King's & Pizza Huts and all the other comforts of home. All the guns are there, all the planes and tanks. It behooves the Bushies to keep the insurgency going. Keep that, "Well, we can't leave now!" bullshit going.
A good analysis, helmut. It's amazing what we can come up with when we sit down and think.
If we want to extend considerations to Iran's nuclear ambitions, opened up by the US's obvious vulnerability in Iraq (duh!), I've written quite a bit about US nuclear posture, particularly in light of the NPT.
A conversation today reminded me of something that I still don't understand. Sources that I don't suspect of political hackery tell me that President Bush has signed memoranda consistently pressing for decreasing the US's nuclear arsenal. He signed the Moscow treaty, which gets the US and Russia down to 1700-2200 deployed warheads each (Cold War maxima probably 20,000 and 45,000 respectively). But the yadda-yadda coming from his administration keeps sounding like they want more and more nukes and they want to use them.
If we're shaking the NPT at Iran, wouldn't it make sense to brag about how we're reducing our nuclear arsenal, as Article VI directs? We could make the process of reduction more transparent, too, but that would be asking a lot of our secrecy-obsessed friends.
Seems to me that your suggestions and this one amount to taking the moral high ground, which seems obvious to me.
As I say, a mystery.
CKR
I boiled your post down at the water cooler the other day to its essentials: impeach, apologize and negotiate. The concensus was that we'd probably be able to re-stake a legitimate claim to moral authority if we did so, but not until.
Thanks, Kira. Your first paragraph is right on, but the thing that worries me there is that we don't seem to have anyone but McCain who has those characteristics. And he's too conservative for my liking. Many in DC think he's a demagogue to boot.
Yeah, Cheney is one frightening dude and he seems to operate on his own in determining policy anyway. but one nice by-product of an impeachment would be that the political emasculation should ripple through the entire administration. I don't want to give Bush a break and say he's the fool in all this. He's the prez, after all, and he signs the bills, gives the orders, etc. It worries me when we just call him stupid and write him off. I think he actually is a stupid man, but you've got to pay when you're stupid decisions get tens of thousands of people killed now and in the future.
I don't know if Cheney would have much power after an impeachment. It would be a momentous decision - either you continue the policies that got the prez impeached and become a dictator or you surrender. I think the political climate and context would measn surrender. Even Republicans would revolt against a Cheney dictatorship.
Further, he's not the Christian rightwing guy. He's just an asshole libertarian rightwinger out for a tidy retirement package.
Yeah, also, Hamas/Israel is obviously difficult. But some president is going to have to have the guts to draw the line. AIPAC and other pro-Israel entities put lots of pressure on all national-level politicians. But I think that after the Iraq debacle, you'd have a public on the side of resolving the dispute in more benign ways. Israel has taken to snubbing Bush. But it shouldn't have that power over American foreign policy. A stronger leader could say, "look, we're at a historical impasse. This has to be resolved now." The incentive structure is there, and it's money - Israel is the largest recipient of US foreign aid by far. They couldn't replace American fund-cuts with European support since Europe is dealing with its own Muslim populations. That would be politically unseemly.
So, there's a way here. But, you're right, it comes down to the money that drives the American political system. A Democratic congress after 2006 might - though I'm skeptical, given the dearth of strong ideas from the party - be able to make enough of a dent in the m oney-politics game. They have the incentive too - they're completely outplayed by the Republicans on K Street.
We'll see. I guess my biggest point though is not to let B ush slide as a puppet of other hidden agendas. The press does this and gives him a free ride. The administration maintains secrecy so that no one can figure out how policy is really being made. And thus the cycle of blame-deferment continues. The rhetoric to use is the one Americans understand and what got Bush elected: "personal responsibility."
A good article and the comments are very good. Not sure what 'Mr Bush' really thinks as we all know it is really down to the 'Oil Fields' regardless of the religion, politicial situation and rebels.
I have booked marked this blog for further reading.
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I was against the original incursion in 1990 not because Saddam didn't need to be contained but because I knew eventually the US would have to go house-to-house in Baghdad to put their hand on the bad guys. I knew the public would never have the patience to see such a strategy through and that we would eventually permit the replacement of one thug for another presumably one aligned to the Islamic Republic of Iran.
That being said I was astounded by the strategic brilliance of hosting a counter-terror struggle in a place that was born of a British Imperial Mandate.
Although I see nothing wrong with trading blood for oil once we accept that Grandma May in Battle Creek absolutely MUST freeze to death to save the Caribou, perhaps we would all be be better served by prioritizing our environmental goals in such a way as to not have to go to foreign lands and shoot people and break their stuff.
But hey as long as we don't have to see oil rigs offshore her by all means put another round of amunition into Hamid or Achmed.
Why don't we let the Chinese carry the ball on the Middle East? No body hates them yet, and they have an interest in the region's oil resources as well.
In any case, the Islamo-Fascists are coming for us anyway. Maybe when they bring the battle back to our shores folks will finally see the danger. Though more costly in lives, it would be more likely to result in a legitimate use of force on our part.
Unforunately, the tactics used will most likely what have worked for them in the past: infiltration, subversion, insurgency, and the use of home-gown subversives to carry their water for them until such time as it is safe to field organized military occupation forces to "assist" with extension of sharia law to their lost brethren here in the States.
So, all things considered, things are going as well as can be expected. After all you really don't want folks to take wide-spread advantage of the Second Amendment do ya?
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