Back where we started

Frank Rich has a must-read op-ed about the degree of damage the Bush Administration has done not only to our moral standing, but to our security. The risk of a major terrorist attack today? About where it was in July 2001.

Go read it.

Hilzoy gets it

Someone should send Krauthammer this post:

Saying that he will be open to advice and new information, however, is not the same as saying that his fundamental views on Iraq are open to change, absent some genuinely unpredicted and catastrophic development. It's one thing to be open to a somewhat different pace for troop withdrawal, and another thing altogether to change your mind about the wisdom of getting out of Iraq in the first place. But I honestly don't see where Obama got near saying he was open to changing his mind on that score, even before he held the second press conference, at which he explicitly denied this.

And she goes on to point out that a main reason we expect leaders to stick to their positions regardless of changing facts is that Shrub has trained us to:

Why are we so ready to believe this sort of thing?

I put it down to eight years of George W. Bush. It's obvious that Bush would have had to be dragged kicking and screaming away from Iraq... The only thing that could possibly get him out of Iraq is a timetable with the force of law, and even that might not have worked.

But most people are not like that. And that's a very good thing: the range of policies that you can adopt when you have even the most minimal trust in the person who will execute them is much larger than the range you can use when that person is Bush.... [W]e can't afford to give Bush any flexibility at all, since experience shows that he will abuse it. That's a real sacrifice.

I suspect that after seven long years of Bush, some of us are reacting to all politicians as though we couldn't trust them any more than we can trust him...[W]hen [Obama] says that he plans to refine his plans on talking to commanders on the ground, it's not obvious that that means reconsidering the entire idea of withdrawal.

This matters. Our failure to give our candidates this much space is, I think, the only reason why the claim that you will withdraw in 16 months (or whatever), no matter what, seems to anyone like a good thing for a candidate to say. ... That would just be obvious, the way it would be obvious that your surgeon ought to be able to adjust his plans once he opens you up.

There's more, as well... The whole post is really worth reading.

[h/t: Andrew Sullivan]

I take it back

Remember when I said here I agreed with Krauthammer, at least in broad outline? I take it back. His latest dribbling tries to argue that there is, or soon will be, essentially no difference in position between Obama and McCain on the Iraq question:

Two weeks ago, I predicted that by Election Day Obama will have erased all meaningful differences with McCain on withdrawal from Iraq. I underestimated Obama's cynicism. He will make the move much sooner. He will use his upcoming Iraq trip to finally acknowledge the remarkable improvements on the ground and to formally abandon his primary season commitment to a fixed 16-month timetable for removal of all combat troops.

The shift has already begun. Yesterday, he said that his "original position" on withdrawal has always been that "we've got to make sure that our troops are safe and that Iraq is stable." And that "when I go to Iraq . . . I'll have more information and will continue to refine my policies."

He hasn't even gone to Iraq and the flip is almost complete. All that's left to say is that the 16-month time frame remains his goal but that he will, of course, take into account the situation on the ground and the recommendation of his generals in deciding whether the withdrawal is to occur later or even sooner.

Done.

Well, let's see: McCain has said staying in Iraq ten years, a hundred years, a thousand years, is fine. That when the troops come home "isn't important." That we have to stay until they're not fighting us any more, at which point we can stay as long as we want to. Obama has said the goal is be out in 16 months, but events on the ground may change that; progress so far is real but fragile, and an out-by-next-week rush could cause another paroxysm of American-produced chaos.

Someone needs to draw a picture with very simple diagrams, and use short, simple words, to help Mr Krauthammer understand that One Of These Things Is Not Like The Other.

'Believe me, it's torture'

Christopher Hitchens, vocal supporter of the Iraq war, certainly no bleeding-heart liberal, on being waterboarded.

This article and video should be required reading for everyone.

Wish I'd Said That

Or at least, Wish I'd Found That Quote....

Some optimists say that in Army Gen. David Petraeus, Bush has finally found his Gen. Grant. That may or may not be true, but it is beside the point. The problem is that Petraeus has not yet found his President Lincoln.

But, alas, Mark Kleiman beat me to it.

Greenwald on the endless war

Greenwald once again calls it like it is:

As much as our political class disgraced itself with its obsequious support for the invasion itself, and further disgraced itself with its complicity in the endless claims (including from the General Whose Credibility Must Not Be Questioned) that things were going well when the opposite was true, their behavior over the last twelve months -- when even they admit that the war is a failure and keep promising to support withdrawal only never to do so -- is the undeniable evidence of how corrupt and worthless they really are.

Endless war....

I haven't had much to say about the Petraeus report because others are saying quite a bit about it, about its mind-numbing bogosity, and about how the only plan the regime has is endless war, drawing troops down to where they were before the so-called 'surge' and calling it a reduction instead of more of the same. Sullivan can feel pity for Bush; I don't. It's been a disaster, it's hurt our position in the world, and the only way out involves the Democrats suddenly finding a spine, which, alas, doesn't seem likely. And speculation that it's all a setup for going after Iran is just more sickening.

This has to end. I actually agree with Camille Paglia:

Words and more words -- what's new? Just get our troops the hell out of there -- now! A phased withdrawal, requiring the removal of massive amounts of supplies and equipment, will take months. But there isn't the sketchiest plan because Bush is dug in to the bitter end and will toss this hot potato to the incoming president -- who (no matter which party wins) won't dare to act. And of course Iraq needs to remain neutralized when American or Israeli bombs start dropping on Iran, which I have little doubt they will do by next year. Bush-Cheney, lacking a clear record of achievement, want to go out with a bang.

Al-Jazeera Reports Peace Breakthrough

Wow. This is potentially very good news:

Iraqi Sunni and Shia representatives have agreed on a peace plan during secret talks in Finland.

"Participants committed themselves to work towards a robust framework for a lasting settlement," said a statement issued on Monday by the Crisis Management Initiative, a conflict-prevention group that organised the meeting.

In an agreement released by CMI, the participants "agreed to consult further" on a list of recommendations to begin reconciliation talks, including resolving political disputes through non-violence and democracy.

The recommendations also included the disarming of factions and forming an independent commission to supervise the disarming "in a verifiable manner."

The four-day meeting which ended on Monday brought together 16 delegates from the feuding groups to study lessons learnt from successful peacemaking efforts in South Africa and Northern Ireland.

It's very early, of course. But if this holds, it's very good news indeed.

Of course, we'll be hearing from President Doofus that it's all because of the surge...

[h/t: Paddy over at Cliff Schecter's blog.]

Bush's so-called legacy

I've been busy with things for school the last couple of days and haven't had time to write much about this. But President Doofus is thinking about what life is going to be like after he leaves the White House:

First, Mr. Bush said, “I’ll give some speeches, just to replenish the ol’ coffers.” With assets that have been estimated as high as nearly $21 million, Mr. Bush added, “I don’t know what my dad gets — it’s more than 50-75” thousand dollars a speech, and “Clinton’s making a lot of money.”

Yes, that's true, Clinton is. Of course, people like Clinton. And without Rove, he doesn't even remember to put in terms of "speaking out about the issues" or "working on things he considers important" or something like that... It's about the money. Because 20 million just doesn't go as far as it used to, you know. But wait, there's more:

Then he said, “We’ll have a nice place in Dallas,” where he will be running what he called “a fantastic Freedom Institute” promoting democracy around the world. But he added, “I can just envision getting in the car, getting bored, going down to the ranch.”

I can see him getting bored, too. After all, boredom is usually a symptom of a lack of engagement. You get bored when there's nothing interesting going on. And this is not a man who engages deeply with the world. Indeed, the last seven years have been short-attention-span theater.

For now, though, Mr. Bush told the author, Robert Draper, in a later session, “I’m playing for October-November.” That is when he hopes the Iraq troop increase will finally show enough results to help him achieve the central goal of his remaining time in office: “To get us in a position where the presidential candidates will be comfortable about sustaining a presence,” and, he said later, “stay longer.”

That's the important thing, you see. Keeping troops in Iraq as long as possible. And it's not about the Iraqis. It's about the politics. It's all about the politics. Always has been.

But fully aware of his standing in opinion polls, Mr. Bush said his top commander in Iraq, Gen. David H. Petraeus, would perhaps do a better job selling progress to the American people than he could.

That's right. It's not about the people dying, the chaos, the complete ineffectiveness of the government. It's about how the war's been packaged and sold to the domestic audience.

Aides said Mr. Bush agreed to speak so freely with Mr. Draper only after years of lobbying, in which Mr. Draper said he finally convinced Mr. Bush and his aides that he was writing about him as “a consequential president” for history, not for the latest news cycle. And aides said they saw the book as the first effort to write about Mr. Bush in the context of nearly his entire presidency.

By that measure, he's been a success. They'll be writing about him for years. And I suppose he can't be blamed for finding a suitably sycophantic hack to fire the first volley in the book wars. After all, there are those speaking fees to consider!

Mr. Draper, a Texan like Mr. Bush and a former writer for Texas Monthly, spent hours interviewing Mr. Bush and his close circle of aides in 1998, when he wrote an early, defining article on Mr. Bush’s budding presidential candidacy for GQ magazine.

Mr. Draper’s family also has a history with Mr. Bush’s. Mr. Bush’s father in 1982 was an honorary pallbearer at the funeral of Mr. Draper’s grandfather, Leon Jaworski, a special prosecutor in the Watergate scandal.

Find a loyal family retainer to do your sales job. Classic.

Telling Mr. Draper he likes to keep things “relatively light-hearted” around the White House, he added in May, “I can’t let my own worries — I try not to wear my worries on my sleeve; I don’t want to burden them with that.”

Psssst.... some of us would appreciate some indication that you are worried, just a teensy. We certainly are. In fact, some of us are downright unnerved. And your blithe confidence that everything will be all right if we just let you keep doing what's worked so terribly so far...well, you're not helping. A few signs of worry would be encouraging. As it is, it looks like you're unaware of what's going on.

Oh, and by the way... He's in charge:

And in apparent reference to the invasion of Iraq, he continued, “This group-think of ‘we all sat around and decided’ — there’s only one person that can decide, and that’s the president.”

Except when he isn't:

Mr. Bush acknowledged one major failing of the early occupation of Iraq when he said of disbanding the Saddam Hussein-era military, “The policy was to keep the army intact; didn’t happen.”

But when Mr. Draper pointed out that Mr. Bush’s former Iraq administrator, L. Paul Bremer III, had gone ahead and forced the army’s dissolution and then asked Mr. Bush how he reacted to that, Mr. Bush said, “Yeah, I can’t remember, I’m sure I said, ‘This is the policy, what happened?’ ” But, he added, “Again, Hadley’s got notes on all of this stuff,” referring to Stephen J. Hadley, his national security adviser.

Yep, there was a policy. It didn't happen. He apparently shrugged and said "oh well."

And ultimately, the Iraq situation boils down to a problem of politics and PR:

He otherwise addressed his unpopularity as a tactical issue. For instance, in May he said that this fall it would be up to General Petraeus to convince the public that the Iraq strategy is working.

“I’ve been here too long,” Mr. Bush said, according to Mr. Draper. “Every time I start painting a rosy picture, it gets criticized and then it doesn’t make it on the news.”

That's right. Because, of course, the awful biased media only reports the bad things like people dying and troops without body armor and civilian casualties and death squads and ethnic cleansing, but they don't report all the good things that are happening, like, um....well....

“One interesting question historians are going to have to answer is: Would Saddam have behaved differently if he hadn’t gotten mixed signals between the first resolution and the failure of the second resolution?” Mr. Bush said. “I can’t answer that question. I was hopeful that diplomacy would work.”

Given his continual push for war on any old justification at all, this rings pretty hollow.

Absolutely incredible. Completely untroubled by the awful burden of self-awareness. And we put him there.

Twice.

Tell me another one.

So the US military can't guarantee operational security on a mission to get some civilian (U.S.) lawmakers out of Baghdad without their plane being fired on.

Tell me again how well the surge is working. I keep forgetting.

Will no one rid me of this meddlesome inspector?

Once again, the U.N. team fails to stick to the script, and reports that Iran is taking some steps to cut back on the nuclear program, and at any rate aren't close to coming up with weapons. Naturally, the "we should nuke Iran before they nuke us" crowd is up in arms, because this doesn't fit the narrative.

Given the accuracy of the UN weapons inspectors in Iraq, compared to the accuracy of the claims that led us into the war, I know who I'm likely to give the benefit of the doubt to.

"Disconnected from the overall strategy"

Hundreds of Iraqis who have put their lives on the line working for America are unable to get visas to leave... In part because they can't apply in Iraq, but have to go to Syria or Lebanon first, then wait several months for processing.

But some American officers have made a point of trying to help Iraqis who worked for them. Lt. Col. Steven Miska, an infantry officer in Western Baghdad with the Dagger Brigade Combat Team, knows exactly how many interpreters his unit employs, and offers housing on his base to every Iraqi who works there. On Memorial Day, he paid tribute to two Iraqis — an interpreter and a shop owner on the base — along with fallen Americans.

“Right now, the immigration policy is disconnected from the overall strategy to win,” said Colonel Miska, adding, “It’s not just U.S. soldiers who are sacrificing.”

Policy disconnects... lack of planning... is anyone surprised? Hilzoy has a good essay up on why these sorts of mistakes are the sort made by people who fundamentally just don't care.

But he'll be OUR sonofabitch...

Allawi is pushing hard to get himself installed as American puppet. I suppose he sees it as a reasonable career move--after all, he's running out of options that don't involve getting honest work--and the "install a compliant strongman" model will no doubt be tempting as the hollowness of the "surge" becomes inescapable. And the "Yes he's a sonofabitch, but he's our sonofabitch" model worked oh so well during the cold war...

More harm than good

The surge is continuing. And is driving the partition of Iraq:

Despite some evidence that the troop buildup has improved security in certain areas, sectarian violence continues and American-led operations have brought new fighting, driving fearful Iraqis from their homes at much higher rates than before the tens of thousands of additional troops arrived...

But the problems are being caused by people who oppose the war. Just like in Vietnam.

So long, and thanks. Too bad about the death squads.

Nine thousand Iraqis have put their lives, and their families' lives, on the line by working with the US military as interpreters. Now, of course, most of them are marked for death.

Our government's response. A thousand visas. Enough for about a tenth of them, but not their families. This is how we repay those who risk their lives for us.

Shameful.

It takes more than just elections

The mainstream media finally notices what's been obvious for years: American support is the kiss of death to any political party or movement in the middle east.

We push for elections, elections, elections at any cost, in the naive hope that elections will turn societies overnight into peaceful, pro-American liberal democracies, willing to sell us oil at low prices. But without a stable society, the rule of law, an educated polity, and a commitment from that polity to the system itself, which requires a certain tradition of self-government--it's just a different way of grabbing and keeping power, the extension of civil war by other means.

It's not that Arab societies "can't handle democracy," a rather racist thesis; it's that their societies don't have the pre-requisites. The existence of a computer implies a certain level of technology; stable elections and orderly transitions of power imply certain levels of societal development. And societies don't go from tribal strongmen to liberal democracies overnight. Not even if Karl Rove says they have to.

Getting Shot With Our Own Weapons

This is ridiculous.

And conveniently enough, look what was left out of domestic news reports but included by the BBC:

The GAO said weapons distribution was haphazard and rushed and failed to follow established procedures, particularly from 2004 to 2005.

During this period, security training was led by Gen David Petraeus, who now commands all US forces in Iraq.

Funny how no one thought that was worth mentioning.

Worse By The Day

Several analysts, including Gen. Petraeus, have already made the point that Iraq isn't going to stabilize without a political solution. There is no purely military solution, because it's not a military problem.

The political situation is falling apart.

While our soldiers are still patrolling in the 130-degree heat, the politicians are failing to use their 'vacation' to get things done; indeed, it looks as if the coalition government is falling apart.

This is only going to get worse.

Quote of the Day

"Moreover, the congressional indecision reveals that behind all of the arias being sung, there is a basic consensus on Iraq: the United States should not have gone into Iraq and now that it is there, it should leave. There is more to it than that, though. The real consensus is that the United States should not simply leave, but rather do it in such a way that it retains the benefits of staying without actually having to be there. "

--George Friedman, Stratfor

Quote of the Day

To date in the war on terrorism, including the victims of the Sept. 11 attacks and all U.S. military personnel killed in action in Afghanistan and Iraq, America's losses total about 2 percent of the forces we lost in World War II and less than 7 percent of those killed in Vietnam. Yet we did not find it necessary to compromise our honor or abandon our commitment to the rule of law to defeat Nazi Germany or imperial Japan, or to resist communist aggression in Indochina. On the contrary, in Vietnam -- where we both proudly served twice -- America voluntarily extended the protections of the full Geneva Convention on prisoners of war to Viet Cong guerrillas who, like al-Qaeda, did not even arguably qualify for such protections.

-- Gen P.X. Kelley (Retired) and Robert F. Turner, today's Washington Post.

[Hat tip: Andrew Sullivan]