The War President - New York Times
In this former imperial capital, every square seems to contain a giant statue of a Habsburg on horseback, posing as a conquering hero.
America's founders knew all too well how war appeals to the vanity of rulers and their thirst for glory. That's why they took care to deny presidents the kingly privilege of making war at their own discretion.
But after 9/11 President Bush, with obvious relish, declared himself a "war president." And he kept the nation focused on martial matters by morphing the pursuit of Al Qaeda into a war against Saddam Hussein.
In November 2002, Helen Thomas, the veteran White House correspondent, told an audience, "I have never covered a president who actually wanted to go to war" - but she made it clear that Mr. Bush was the exception. And she was right.
Leading the nation wrongfully into war strikes at the heart of democracy. It would have been an unprecedented abuse of power even if the war hadn't turned into a military and moral quagmire. And we won't be able to get out of that quagmire until we face up to the reality of how we got in.
Let me talk briefly about what we now know about the decision to invade Iraq, then focus on why it matters.
The administration has prevented any official inquiry into whether it hyped the case for war. But there's plenty of circumstantial evidence that it did.
And then there's the Downing Street Memo - actually the minutes of a prime minister's meeting in July 2002 - in which the chief of British overseas intelligence briefed his colleagues about his recent trip to Washington.
"Bush wanted to remove Saddam," says the memo, "through military action, justified by the conjunction of terrorism and W.M.D. But the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy." It doesn't get much clearer than that.
The U.S. news media largely ignored the memo for five weeks after it was released in The Times of London. Then some asserted that it was "old news" that Mr. Bush wanted war in the summer of 2002, and that W.M.D. were just an excuse. No, it isn't. Media insiders may have suspected as much, but they didn't inform their readers, viewers and listeners. And they have never held Mr. Bush accountable for his repeated declarations that he viewed war as a last resort.
Still, some of my colleagues insist that we should let bygones be bygones. The question, they say, is what we do now. But they're wrong: it's crucial that those responsible for the war be held to account.
Let me explain. The United States will soon have to start reducing force levels in Iraq, or risk seeing the volunteer Army collapse. Yet the administration and its supporters have effectively prevented any adult discussion of the need to get out.
On one side, the people who sold this war, unable to face up to the fact that their fantasies of a splendid little war have led to disaster, are still peddling illusions: the insurgency is in its "last throes," says Dick Cheney. On the other, they still have moderates and even liberals intimidated: anyone who suggests that the United States will have to settle for something that falls far short of victory is accused of being unpatriotic.
We need to deprive these people of their ability to mislead and intimidate. And the best way to do that is to make it clear that the people who led us to war on false pretenses have no credibility, and no right to lecture the rest of us about patriotism.
The good news is that the public seems ready to hear that message - readier than the media are to deliver it. Major media organizations still act as if only a small, left-wing fringe believes that we were misled into war, but that "fringe" now comprises much if not most of the population.
In a Gallup poll taken in early April - that is, before the release of the Downing Street Memo - 50 percent of those polled agreed with the proposition that the administration "deliberately misled the American public" about Iraq's W.M.D. In a new Rasmussen poll, 49 percent said that Mr. Bush was more responsible for the war than Saddam Hussein, versus 44 percent who blamed Saddam.
Once the media catch up with the public, we'll be able to start talking seriously about how to get out of Iraq.
Friday, June 24, 2005
Morning in America : How Ronald Reagan Invented the 1980s, by Gil Troy
Amazon.com: Books: Morning in America : How Ronald Reagan Invented the 1980's (Politics and Society in Twentieth Century America)
Entering the realm of the proverbial chicken-and-egg problem, historian Troy examines the relationship between Ronald Reagan's presidency and the materialistic and politically vibrant culture of the 1980s. In chapters organized by year from 1980 to 1990, Troy weaves his narrative of Reagan's presidency into an impressionistic portrait of the cultural and political phenomena that defined the decade-from network shows Dynasty and the Cosby Show, through the rise of MTV, CNN, yuppies, Madonna and Donald Trump, to the culture wars of race, gender and political correctness. The effort makes for a lively read, packed with insightful comments about the decade and its legacies.
Dubbing Reagan's era "the Great Reconciliation," "where the sixties met the eighties culturally and politically," Troy dismantles the myth of a politically passive mainstream. Treading a line between lionizing Reagan and disparaging him as "airhead," he highlights the contradictions of Reagan's conservatism, with its emphasis on wealth and glamour on the one hand and, on the other, "an ascetic streak that recoiled at such excess." Beside Reagan's vision of a "morning in America," manifested in a soaring economy, surging patriotism and faltering Soviet Communism, Reagan presided over "mourning in America" with spiking crime, drugs, family breakdowns and AIDS. Troy avers that Reagan "dominated, and defined, the times" and "remains the greatest president since Franklin Roosevelt."
But the Reagan that emerges from his analysis is less the captain steering American culture than a symbol of the 1980s whose greatest strength lay in placing his finger on the pulse of "the American id." As Troy writes, Reagan projected a vision that "was the vision of themselves most Americans wanted to see." Whether Reagan consciously sought to do so, however, remains an open question.
Entering the realm of the proverbial chicken-and-egg problem, historian Troy examines the relationship between Ronald Reagan's presidency and the materialistic and politically vibrant culture of the 1980s. In chapters organized by year from 1980 to 1990, Troy weaves his narrative of Reagan's presidency into an impressionistic portrait of the cultural and political phenomena that defined the decade-from network shows Dynasty and the Cosby Show, through the rise of MTV, CNN, yuppies, Madonna and Donald Trump, to the culture wars of race, gender and political correctness. The effort makes for a lively read, packed with insightful comments about the decade and its legacies.
Dubbing Reagan's era "the Great Reconciliation," "where the sixties met the eighties culturally and politically," Troy dismantles the myth of a politically passive mainstream. Treading a line between lionizing Reagan and disparaging him as "airhead," he highlights the contradictions of Reagan's conservatism, with its emphasis on wealth and glamour on the one hand and, on the other, "an ascetic streak that recoiled at such excess." Beside Reagan's vision of a "morning in America," manifested in a soaring economy, surging patriotism and faltering Soviet Communism, Reagan presided over "mourning in America" with spiking crime, drugs, family breakdowns and AIDS. Troy avers that Reagan "dominated, and defined, the times" and "remains the greatest president since Franklin Roosevelt."
But the Reagan that emerges from his analysis is less the captain steering American culture than a symbol of the 1980s whose greatest strength lay in placing his finger on the pulse of "the American id." As Troy writes, Reagan projected a vision that "was the vision of themselves most Americans wanted to see." Whether Reagan consciously sought to do so, however, remains an open question.
Thursday, June 23, 2005
Iraq and the Polls - David Brooks
Iraq and the Polls - New York Times:
Iraq and the Polls
By DAVID BROOKS
There's a reason George Washington didn't take a poll at Valley Forge. There are times in the course of war when the outcome is simply unknowable. Victory is clearly not imminent, yet people haven't really thought through the consequences of defeat. Everybody just wants the miserable present to go away.
We're at one of those moments in the war against the insurgency in Iraq. The polls show rising disenchantment with the war. Sixty percent of Americans say they want to withdraw some or all troops.
Yet I can't believe majorities of Americans really want to pull out and accept defeat. I can't believe they want to abandon to the Zarqawis and the Baathists those 8.5 million Iraqis who held up purple fingers on Election Day. I can't believe they are yet ready to accept a terrorist-run state in the heart of the Middle East, a civil war in Iraq, the crushing of democratic hopes in places like Egypt and Iran, and the ruinous consequences for American power and prestige.
What they want to do, more likely, is somehow escape the current moment, which is discouraging and uncertain. One of the many problems with fighting an insurgency is that it is nearly impossible to know if we are winning or losing. It's like watching a football game with no goal lines and chaotic action all over the field.
On the one hand, there are signs of progress. U.S. forces have completed a series of successful operations, among them Operation Spear in western Iraq, where at least 60 insurgents were killed and 100 captured, and Operation Lightning in Baghdad, with over 500 arrests. American forces now hold at least 14,000 suspected insurgents, and have captured about two dozen lieutenants of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. There were reports this week of insurgents fighting each other, foreign against domestic.
There is also the crawling political progress that is crucial to success. Sunni leaders now regret not taking part in the elections and Sunnis are helping to draft the constitution.
These tactical victories, however, have not added up to improvement over all. Insurgent attacks are up. Casualties are up. Few Iraqi security forces can operate independently, so far. There aren't enough U.S. troops to hold the ground they conquer. The insurgents are adaptable, organized and still learning.
Still, one thing is for sure: since we don't have the evidence upon which to pass judgment on the overall trajectory of this war, it's important we don't pass judgment prematurely.
It's too soon to accept the defeatism that seems to have gripped so many. If governments surrendered to insurgencies after just a couple of years, then insurgents would win every time. But they don't because insurgencies have weaknesses, exposed over time, especially when they oppose the will of the majority.
It's just wrong to seek withdrawal now, when the outcome of the war is unknowable and when the consequences of defeat are so vast.
Some of you will respond that this is easy for me to say, since I'm not over there. All I'd say is that we live in a democracy, where decisions are made by all. Besides, the vast majority of those serving in Iraq, and their families, said they voted to re-elect President Bush. They seem to want to finish the job.
Others will say we shouldn't be there in the first place. You may be right. Time will tell. But right now, this isn't about your personal vindication. It's about victory for the forces of decency and defeating those, like Zarqawi, who would be attacking us in any case.
On Tuesday, Senator Joe Biden gave a speech in Washington on Iraq, after his most recent visit. It was, in some ways, a model of what the president needs to tell the country in the weeks ahead. It was scathing about the lack of progress in many areas. But it was also constructive. "I believe we can still succeed in Iraq," he said. Biden talked about building the coalition at home that is necessary if we are to get through the 2006 election cycle without a rush to the exits.
Biden's speech brought to mind something Franklin Roosevelt told the country on Feb. 23, 1942: "Your government has unmistakable confidence in your ability to hear the worst, without flinching or losing heart. You must, in turn, have complete confidence that your government is keeping nothing from you except information that will help the enemy in his attempt to destroy us."
That's how democracies should fight, even in the age of polling.
Iraq and the Polls
By DAVID BROOKS
There's a reason George Washington didn't take a poll at Valley Forge. There are times in the course of war when the outcome is simply unknowable. Victory is clearly not imminent, yet people haven't really thought through the consequences of defeat. Everybody just wants the miserable present to go away.
We're at one of those moments in the war against the insurgency in Iraq. The polls show rising disenchantment with the war. Sixty percent of Americans say they want to withdraw some or all troops.
Yet I can't believe majorities of Americans really want to pull out and accept defeat. I can't believe they want to abandon to the Zarqawis and the Baathists those 8.5 million Iraqis who held up purple fingers on Election Day. I can't believe they are yet ready to accept a terrorist-run state in the heart of the Middle East, a civil war in Iraq, the crushing of democratic hopes in places like Egypt and Iran, and the ruinous consequences for American power and prestige.
What they want to do, more likely, is somehow escape the current moment, which is discouraging and uncertain. One of the many problems with fighting an insurgency is that it is nearly impossible to know if we are winning or losing. It's like watching a football game with no goal lines and chaotic action all over the field.
On the one hand, there are signs of progress. U.S. forces have completed a series of successful operations, among them Operation Spear in western Iraq, where at least 60 insurgents were killed and 100 captured, and Operation Lightning in Baghdad, with over 500 arrests. American forces now hold at least 14,000 suspected insurgents, and have captured about two dozen lieutenants of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. There were reports this week of insurgents fighting each other, foreign against domestic.
There is also the crawling political progress that is crucial to success. Sunni leaders now regret not taking part in the elections and Sunnis are helping to draft the constitution.
These tactical victories, however, have not added up to improvement over all. Insurgent attacks are up. Casualties are up. Few Iraqi security forces can operate independently, so far. There aren't enough U.S. troops to hold the ground they conquer. The insurgents are adaptable, organized and still learning.
Still, one thing is for sure: since we don't have the evidence upon which to pass judgment on the overall trajectory of this war, it's important we don't pass judgment prematurely.
It's too soon to accept the defeatism that seems to have gripped so many. If governments surrendered to insurgencies after just a couple of years, then insurgents would win every time. But they don't because insurgencies have weaknesses, exposed over time, especially when they oppose the will of the majority.
It's just wrong to seek withdrawal now, when the outcome of the war is unknowable and when the consequences of defeat are so vast.
Some of you will respond that this is easy for me to say, since I'm not over there. All I'd say is that we live in a democracy, where decisions are made by all. Besides, the vast majority of those serving in Iraq, and their families, said they voted to re-elect President Bush. They seem to want to finish the job.
Others will say we shouldn't be there in the first place. You may be right. Time will tell. But right now, this isn't about your personal vindication. It's about victory for the forces of decency and defeating those, like Zarqawi, who would be attacking us in any case.
On Tuesday, Senator Joe Biden gave a speech in Washington on Iraq, after his most recent visit. It was, in some ways, a model of what the president needs to tell the country in the weeks ahead. It was scathing about the lack of progress in many areas. But it was also constructive. "I believe we can still succeed in Iraq," he said. Biden talked about building the coalition at home that is necessary if we are to get through the 2006 election cycle without a rush to the exits.
Biden's speech brought to mind something Franklin Roosevelt told the country on Feb. 23, 1942: "Your government has unmistakable confidence in your ability to hear the worst, without flinching or losing heart. You must, in turn, have complete confidence that your government is keeping nothing from you except information that will help the enemy in his attempt to destroy us."
That's how democracies should fight, even in the age of polling.
Tuesday, June 21, 2005
The Big Picture - Part II
I have a correspondent who believes the argument about this war rests on facts. The person with the best argument is the person who has his facts right. I've replied that the argument about this war rests on judgments, not facts. I reached a judgment long before the war started that it is wrong, and no facts will change the judgment. My opposition to the war is based on reasons, and nothing has occurred to change those reasons, to weaken my convictions. In a sense, even though the war has offered plenty of opportunities to say I told you so, judgments about the war are largely independent of day to day developments.
Let me give an example. In a recent article I said that no one wants to join the military anymore. My correspondent wrote back to say, you have your facts wrong! Here are the statistics to show that the military is still able to recruit soldiers. One response on my part might be to acknowledge that if I took more care to get my facts right, I'd be able to argue my case more effectively. But that's not my response at all. I don't really care how many people the army is able to recruit each month. The disturbing phenomenon we see is that the army is having trouble finding people qualified for the positions it needs to fill, at a time when the whole country should be united behind fighting the war that started on September 11, 2001. Instead of a united country, we have a divided one, one where the military itself says that recruiting numbers are down. When I say that no one wants to sign up for the military any more, the exaggeration is intentional. It's a way of stating a judgment, not a way of stating facts.
So let's take another look at the big picture. I've said that we should stay away from consequentialist reasoning when we think about this war, because a good outcome down the line won't justify what we've done. But I want to have it both ways. I do want to think about the bad consequences of this war. If good consequences come about years from now, I won't ignore them. They'll have to go in the balance against the bad consequences now. I can't imagine any good outcome that would outweigh what we've already seen. The government argues that the good outcome it's working for is victory in the war that began on September 11. That's a fantasy. No one ever won a war with a plan like the one these guys have. A lot of superpowers have lost their way with a plan like this one, though.
Here are some of the bad bits:
- Total ruination of our military: its credibility, its respect around the world, its ability to attract new soldiers, its ability to wage the type of war we're in, its whole reputation as a force for good in the world. Notice the exaggeration? Not all of these things have happened yet: not everywhere, anyway. The process is far along, though, much further along than we care to think.
- Loss of our position as the world's leading power. World leadership does not depend on our power to blow things up. It depends on our ability to persuade people to follow us. We can't do that anymore. We have lost a lot of followers during the last three years, since Bush began to prepare the world for our attack.
- An inability to fight our real enemies, now and in the future. The war in Iraq is the only game we have. When it's over, what plans will we have to fight Al Qaeda, the people who did us harm, and who continue to plan our destruction? Our plans to fight them will be no further along than they were when we launched the Iraq war in March 2003. Our motivation to fight them will be nil, until their next successful attack. In a way, though, they don't even need to launch another attack against us. They have already managed to remove us from our position of world leadership, with a lot of help from us, and I don't think they could ask for a lot more. We put Al Qaeda on the run in Afghanistan, but they've already achieved their aim of weakening our influence.
- Loss of the initiative in the fight. Al Qaeda took the initiative on September 11, and except for a short time in Afghanistan during the winter and spring of 2002, they have kept it. If I were in their place, I would like my position: time is on their side, they can hardly deal with all the people who want to blow themselves up for them, they have money and new recruits are flowing in, their opponent is struggling, on the defensive and unable to achieve any of its goals.
- No opportunity to redeem ourselves. We've missed them all. Others have given up on us. We will pay the price of arrogance and fight without friends. Did you think we would reach this point in the weeks after September 11? We all knew that a war started on that day. Did you envision this one three and a half years later? How did you think the war would look to its participants once we got mobilized to fight? Did you think it would look like this?
In the balance on the good side is the removal of Saddam Hussein from power in Iraq. No one can argue the beneficial impact of that result, accomplished in three violent weeks in the spring of 2002. Removing Kim Jong Il would have a benficial impact, too, but there are reasons we don't do it. On balance, the bad consequences of the war in Iraq far outweigh the one good one. And that's a matter of judgment.
That's all for tonight. Thanks for reading,
Steve
Let me give an example. In a recent article I said that no one wants to join the military anymore. My correspondent wrote back to say, you have your facts wrong! Here are the statistics to show that the military is still able to recruit soldiers. One response on my part might be to acknowledge that if I took more care to get my facts right, I'd be able to argue my case more effectively. But that's not my response at all. I don't really care how many people the army is able to recruit each month. The disturbing phenomenon we see is that the army is having trouble finding people qualified for the positions it needs to fill, at a time when the whole country should be united behind fighting the war that started on September 11, 2001. Instead of a united country, we have a divided one, one where the military itself says that recruiting numbers are down. When I say that no one wants to sign up for the military any more, the exaggeration is intentional. It's a way of stating a judgment, not a way of stating facts.
So let's take another look at the big picture. I've said that we should stay away from consequentialist reasoning when we think about this war, because a good outcome down the line won't justify what we've done. But I want to have it both ways. I do want to think about the bad consequences of this war. If good consequences come about years from now, I won't ignore them. They'll have to go in the balance against the bad consequences now. I can't imagine any good outcome that would outweigh what we've already seen. The government argues that the good outcome it's working for is victory in the war that began on September 11. That's a fantasy. No one ever won a war with a plan like the one these guys have. A lot of superpowers have lost their way with a plan like this one, though.
Here are some of the bad bits:
- Total ruination of our military: its credibility, its respect around the world, its ability to attract new soldiers, its ability to wage the type of war we're in, its whole reputation as a force for good in the world. Notice the exaggeration? Not all of these things have happened yet: not everywhere, anyway. The process is far along, though, much further along than we care to think.
- Loss of our position as the world's leading power. World leadership does not depend on our power to blow things up. It depends on our ability to persuade people to follow us. We can't do that anymore. We have lost a lot of followers during the last three years, since Bush began to prepare the world for our attack.
- An inability to fight our real enemies, now and in the future. The war in Iraq is the only game we have. When it's over, what plans will we have to fight Al Qaeda, the people who did us harm, and who continue to plan our destruction? Our plans to fight them will be no further along than they were when we launched the Iraq war in March 2003. Our motivation to fight them will be nil, until their next successful attack. In a way, though, they don't even need to launch another attack against us. They have already managed to remove us from our position of world leadership, with a lot of help from us, and I don't think they could ask for a lot more. We put Al Qaeda on the run in Afghanistan, but they've already achieved their aim of weakening our influence.
- Loss of the initiative in the fight. Al Qaeda took the initiative on September 11, and except for a short time in Afghanistan during the winter and spring of 2002, they have kept it. If I were in their place, I would like my position: time is on their side, they can hardly deal with all the people who want to blow themselves up for them, they have money and new recruits are flowing in, their opponent is struggling, on the defensive and unable to achieve any of its goals.
- No opportunity to redeem ourselves. We've missed them all. Others have given up on us. We will pay the price of arrogance and fight without friends. Did you think we would reach this point in the weeks after September 11? We all knew that a war started on that day. Did you envision this one three and a half years later? How did you think the war would look to its participants once we got mobilized to fight? Did you think it would look like this?
In the balance on the good side is the removal of Saddam Hussein from power in Iraq. No one can argue the beneficial impact of that result, accomplished in three violent weeks in the spring of 2002. Removing Kim Jong Il would have a benficial impact, too, but there are reasons we don't do it. On balance, the bad consequences of the war in Iraq far outweigh the one good one. And that's a matter of judgment.
That's all for tonight. Thanks for reading,
Steve
Monday, June 20, 2005
Two Top Guns Shoot Blanks - Frank Rich
Two Top Guns Shoot Blanks - New York Times:
President Bush quoted in Frank Rich's article:
"See, in my line of work you got to keep repeating things over and over and over again for the truth to sink in, to kind of catapult the propaganda," the president said on May 24.
When the president himself calls his own speeches propaganda, we have a new form of democracy in the making. As in his run-up to the Iraq war, he's open about his dishonesty.
President Bush quoted in Frank Rich's article:
"See, in my line of work you got to keep repeating things over and over and over again for the truth to sink in, to kind of catapult the propaganda," the president said on May 24.
When the president himself calls his own speeches propaganda, we have a new form of democracy in the making. As in his run-up to the Iraq war, he's open about his dishonesty.
Someone Else's Child - Bob Herbert
Someone Else's Child - Bob Herbert:
"I don't know how you win a war that your country doesn't want to fight."
"The president and these home-front warriors got us into this war and now they don't know how to get us out. Nor do they have a satisfactory answer to the important ethical question: how do you justify sending other people's children off to fight while keeping a cloak of protection around your own kids?"
"I don't know how you win a war that your country doesn't want to fight."
"The president and these home-front warriors got us into this war and now they don't know how to get us out. Nor do they have a satisfactory answer to the important ethical question: how do you justify sending other people's children off to fight while keeping a cloak of protection around your own kids?"
Friday, June 17, 2005
Discussion Board on Ronald Reagan
Here is a link to a Reagan site that has a good discussion board: www.RonaldReagan.com.
Iraq Is FUBAR
I had a car accident several years ago. I was driving to church on a Sunday morning with my little daughter on a quiet Sunday morning. On a street that runs between Allston and Brookline, I entered an intersection at the top of a hill. A large vehicle slammed into my wife's small Chevy Nova, at the front door hinges on the passenger side. The driver had run a red light in an intersection with poor visibility. My one-year-old, in the car seat in the back, had a small bruise on her neck. I went to the hospital to have eleven stitches in my forehead, where my head hit the rear view mirror.
Well, these accidents happen. What's interesting is that the driver of the other car, who wasn't hurt, never asked how I was. He didn't ask about my daughter, either at the accident scene or later. As far as he was concerned, the car he hit was empty. The damage he caused wasn't too important to him. More interesting, he lied about what he had done. He said I had run the red light. How do I know? When we tried to get fair compensation for our car, which was not repairable, the insurance adjuster refused to give us more than half of its value. The adjuster said the driver of the other car claimed I was at fault in the accident. Take fifty percent, because you're not going to get more.
Here was an individual who would not take responsibility for what he had done. It just wasn't possible for him to imagine that he could cause damage like that. Nope, it didn't happen that way. Blame lies elsewhere, not with me. I didn't do anything wrong. ...Does that kind of thinking sound familiar to you?
***************************
When I was in the Navy I served first as the gunnery officer, then as the electronics material officer. My men in the gunnery division took care of the forward, five-inch gun mount as well as the fire control equipment. My men in the electronics material division took care of the radar and communications equipment. They had an expression for equipment that had to be replaced: FUBAR. I believe the word dates all the way back to the men who did so much with so little in World War II. It means Fucked Up Beyond All Repair. As often as my men used the term, it actually represented an important decision making standard. If a piece of equipment, or a module or a circuit board or a wiring harness or some important mechanism couldn't be repaired, you had to order the whole thing right away. You didn't have time to tinker away with various repair strategies when the fighting readiness of the whole ship was at stake.
I'd like to say more about the title of this article at this point, but time is short as usual. Plus the condition of Iraq - fucked up beyond all repair - is pretty self-evident now. We slammed into the country with a big vehicle, and now the condition of the country is someone else's fault. Colin Powell said that if we break it, we own it. Well we sure broke it, and we sure don't know how to fix it. It's hard work, President Bush says, which means we have to have patience. Give us some time and Iraq will become an exemplary, constitutional republic. Twenty-five years from now Iraq probably will be an exemplary nation-state, and the Republicans will take credit for it.
Let's follow the example of Thomas Aquinas now. He liked to pose a question, offer an answer, make objections to the answer, then answer the objections. I'm not going follow that pattern as rigorously as he did, but it's a good model of argumentation to keep in mind.
On the Aquinas model then, our question is: What do we do now in Iraq? One answer is, we should get out of there as soon as we can. We consider the objections to that proposal, and we respond to the objections. At another point, we might want to consider other proposals in response to the original question.
***************************
Have you noticed how the war's defenders have the same answer to all criticisms? If you don't want to stay the course, they say, what would you do instead? You're not suggesting that we pull out, are you? You're not suggesting that we concede defeat, are you? We don't have any choice now but to see it through. We have to finish what we started. You may not like the war - nobody does. But we don't have much choice but to stay.
I'd like to know why the burden of explaining the future falls on the war's critics here. What plans have the war's leaders offered that are convincing and effective? Every single thing we have tried has failed. What's more, the war's leaders can't articulate any course of action that's convincing. The long-range plan in place now is to train Iraqi troops to take over security responsibilities. But everyone acknowledges that the key problem is not training but leadership. The Iraqi units don't have good leadership among the non-commissioned and junior officers. We can train new soldiers how to fire an automatic rifle, but no fighting unit is effective without good leadership. Without it the soldiers aren't motivated. We have motivated, well-trained and well-equipped soldiers in our units, and we have not been successful against the opposing forces. How do we expect the Iraqi units to do what we haven't been able to do? No plan from the administration has answered that question.
Instead of a plan we have counter-objections. The war's defenders say that if we leave, the country will tip toward civil war. But the civil war has already started. Iraqis have been killing Iraqis by the hundreds and thousands for many months now. That looks like a civil war to me. It doesn't matter what we call the people on the other side: terrorists, insurgents, foreign fighters, gangs, rebels, tribesmen, Sunnis, a restive population, Shiites, suicide bombers, gunmen, fundamentalists, militant Islamists, Al Qaeda, criminals, kidnappers, Baathists, Hussein loyalists, members of the feared intelligence services, Sadr's army, diehards or dead-enders. The country has fallen into a civil war since we invaded, and we don't know how to deal with it.
Another objection from the war's defenders is that if we leave, it will embolden our enemies. That's a good one. Half a dozen members of the opposing force blow themselves up every day as part of their war-fighting strategy, and we think our withdrawal will embolden them. We will give ourselves a new set of problems if we withdraw, but an enemy that is more willing to fight isn't one of them. Our enemies have been willing to fight for a long time, and we've given them a great opportunity to prove it in Iraq.
A third objection is that we can't concede defeat. A superpower of our stature can't do that. Why not? Why can't we concede defeat? What terrible thing would happen that's worse than what's happening now? A concession of defeat, with recognition that the war was a mistake from the beginning, would show maturity and an ability to deal with the truth. But I'm past arguing for that now. In fact, we don't actually have to concede defeat. We can, as one writer put it rather unoriginally, declare victory and go home. We invaded Iraq to change the regime, and we accomplished that. We can't do any more good there, so let's pull our forces out. We can explain why we're doing it, and put a good face on it. We know the administration is good at putting a good face on things. We can undertake the process slowly - no sudden redeployment is required here. We can undertake the process in close coordination with the new government, and with other groups throughout the country. As ambivalent as some political and religious leaders might be about our presence there, I don't think many of them would try hard to make us stay.
That brings me to a last point. We say we want to bring democracy to Iraq. We've transferred sovereignty to the newly elected Iraqi government. We know that by a very large majority, the people want us to leave. If the new government were to hold a referendum on the question of our presence there, we don't have any reason to doubt the outcome of the vote. So how can we say now that our staying promotes democracy, that our leaving inhibits it? How did we reach a point where we occupy the country, against the people's will, in order to establish democracy? How did we reach a point where we refuse to leave, when the people clearly want that, because it would endanger democracy? Everyone says that the security situation would worsen were we to leave, but would it? It's an article of faith now, but I haven't seen any convincing arguments on that question. No one has explained the process by which things would get worse were we to leave. People just believe that it's so.
So let's take another look at the proposition, "We got ourselves into this mess, now we have to see it through." Perhaps we've already seen it through, and we don't know it. For that matter, how will we know when we've seen it through? When everyone in Iraq is prosperous, happy and secure, right? Good luck. That's going to take a long time. If we were to take another look at that proposition, we might see new goals for ourselves that look better than the ones we say we have now. If we were to take another look at that proposition, we might see new possibilities that benefit both us and the Iraqis, new insights that come from acknowledging our mistakes, and new ways to fight the war we should be fighting. If we were to take another look at that proposition, we might win.
***************************
So far I haven't been able to think of a good subtitle for Ugly War. The possibilities seem too long, too depressing, too uninteresting, too pessimistic: not anything that would make someone want to read the book. Five years from now, who would want to read a book titled: Ugly War: Why the United States Should Get Out of Iraq? The title I just thought of sounds a little more perky: Ugly War: How to Succeed in Iraq. Altogether, it'd be good just to call it Ugly War, the way Thomas Paine titled his pamphlet Common Sense. The people who read Thomas Paine knew what he was talking about. He just had to reach his audience at the right time, when they were ready to agree and to act. I don't know when our citizens will reach that point, but I sure hope it's soon. I can't say that Ugly War will be the force that tips things the other way, but something has to do it. The longer we fight this war, the more we lose. We've lost a lot already.
Well, these accidents happen. What's interesting is that the driver of the other car, who wasn't hurt, never asked how I was. He didn't ask about my daughter, either at the accident scene or later. As far as he was concerned, the car he hit was empty. The damage he caused wasn't too important to him. More interesting, he lied about what he had done. He said I had run the red light. How do I know? When we tried to get fair compensation for our car, which was not repairable, the insurance adjuster refused to give us more than half of its value. The adjuster said the driver of the other car claimed I was at fault in the accident. Take fifty percent, because you're not going to get more.
Here was an individual who would not take responsibility for what he had done. It just wasn't possible for him to imagine that he could cause damage like that. Nope, it didn't happen that way. Blame lies elsewhere, not with me. I didn't do anything wrong. ...Does that kind of thinking sound familiar to you?
***************************
When I was in the Navy I served first as the gunnery officer, then as the electronics material officer. My men in the gunnery division took care of the forward, five-inch gun mount as well as the fire control equipment. My men in the electronics material division took care of the radar and communications equipment. They had an expression for equipment that had to be replaced: FUBAR. I believe the word dates all the way back to the men who did so much with so little in World War II. It means Fucked Up Beyond All Repair. As often as my men used the term, it actually represented an important decision making standard. If a piece of equipment, or a module or a circuit board or a wiring harness or some important mechanism couldn't be repaired, you had to order the whole thing right away. You didn't have time to tinker away with various repair strategies when the fighting readiness of the whole ship was at stake.
I'd like to say more about the title of this article at this point, but time is short as usual. Plus the condition of Iraq - fucked up beyond all repair - is pretty self-evident now. We slammed into the country with a big vehicle, and now the condition of the country is someone else's fault. Colin Powell said that if we break it, we own it. Well we sure broke it, and we sure don't know how to fix it. It's hard work, President Bush says, which means we have to have patience. Give us some time and Iraq will become an exemplary, constitutional republic. Twenty-five years from now Iraq probably will be an exemplary nation-state, and the Republicans will take credit for it.
Let's follow the example of Thomas Aquinas now. He liked to pose a question, offer an answer, make objections to the answer, then answer the objections. I'm not going follow that pattern as rigorously as he did, but it's a good model of argumentation to keep in mind.
On the Aquinas model then, our question is: What do we do now in Iraq? One answer is, we should get out of there as soon as we can. We consider the objections to that proposal, and we respond to the objections. At another point, we might want to consider other proposals in response to the original question.
***************************
Have you noticed how the war's defenders have the same answer to all criticisms? If you don't want to stay the course, they say, what would you do instead? You're not suggesting that we pull out, are you? You're not suggesting that we concede defeat, are you? We don't have any choice now but to see it through. We have to finish what we started. You may not like the war - nobody does. But we don't have much choice but to stay.
I'd like to know why the burden of explaining the future falls on the war's critics here. What plans have the war's leaders offered that are convincing and effective? Every single thing we have tried has failed. What's more, the war's leaders can't articulate any course of action that's convincing. The long-range plan in place now is to train Iraqi troops to take over security responsibilities. But everyone acknowledges that the key problem is not training but leadership. The Iraqi units don't have good leadership among the non-commissioned and junior officers. We can train new soldiers how to fire an automatic rifle, but no fighting unit is effective without good leadership. Without it the soldiers aren't motivated. We have motivated, well-trained and well-equipped soldiers in our units, and we have not been successful against the opposing forces. How do we expect the Iraqi units to do what we haven't been able to do? No plan from the administration has answered that question.
Instead of a plan we have counter-objections. The war's defenders say that if we leave, the country will tip toward civil war. But the civil war has already started. Iraqis have been killing Iraqis by the hundreds and thousands for many months now. That looks like a civil war to me. It doesn't matter what we call the people on the other side: terrorists, insurgents, foreign fighters, gangs, rebels, tribesmen, Sunnis, a restive population, Shiites, suicide bombers, gunmen, fundamentalists, militant Islamists, Al Qaeda, criminals, kidnappers, Baathists, Hussein loyalists, members of the feared intelligence services, Sadr's army, diehards or dead-enders. The country has fallen into a civil war since we invaded, and we don't know how to deal with it.
Another objection from the war's defenders is that if we leave, it will embolden our enemies. That's a good one. Half a dozen members of the opposing force blow themselves up every day as part of their war-fighting strategy, and we think our withdrawal will embolden them. We will give ourselves a new set of problems if we withdraw, but an enemy that is more willing to fight isn't one of them. Our enemies have been willing to fight for a long time, and we've given them a great opportunity to prove it in Iraq.
A third objection is that we can't concede defeat. A superpower of our stature can't do that. Why not? Why can't we concede defeat? What terrible thing would happen that's worse than what's happening now? A concession of defeat, with recognition that the war was a mistake from the beginning, would show maturity and an ability to deal with the truth. But I'm past arguing for that now. In fact, we don't actually have to concede defeat. We can, as one writer put it rather unoriginally, declare victory and go home. We invaded Iraq to change the regime, and we accomplished that. We can't do any more good there, so let's pull our forces out. We can explain why we're doing it, and put a good face on it. We know the administration is good at putting a good face on things. We can undertake the process slowly - no sudden redeployment is required here. We can undertake the process in close coordination with the new government, and with other groups throughout the country. As ambivalent as some political and religious leaders might be about our presence there, I don't think many of them would try hard to make us stay.
That brings me to a last point. We say we want to bring democracy to Iraq. We've transferred sovereignty to the newly elected Iraqi government. We know that by a very large majority, the people want us to leave. If the new government were to hold a referendum on the question of our presence there, we don't have any reason to doubt the outcome of the vote. So how can we say now that our staying promotes democracy, that our leaving inhibits it? How did we reach a point where we occupy the country, against the people's will, in order to establish democracy? How did we reach a point where we refuse to leave, when the people clearly want that, because it would endanger democracy? Everyone says that the security situation would worsen were we to leave, but would it? It's an article of faith now, but I haven't seen any convincing arguments on that question. No one has explained the process by which things would get worse were we to leave. People just believe that it's so.
So let's take another look at the proposition, "We got ourselves into this mess, now we have to see it through." Perhaps we've already seen it through, and we don't know it. For that matter, how will we know when we've seen it through? When everyone in Iraq is prosperous, happy and secure, right? Good luck. That's going to take a long time. If we were to take another look at that proposition, we might see new goals for ourselves that look better than the ones we say we have now. If we were to take another look at that proposition, we might see new possibilities that benefit both us and the Iraqis, new insights that come from acknowledging our mistakes, and new ways to fight the war we should be fighting. If we were to take another look at that proposition, we might win.
***************************
So far I haven't been able to think of a good subtitle for Ugly War. The possibilities seem too long, too depressing, too uninteresting, too pessimistic: not anything that would make someone want to read the book. Five years from now, who would want to read a book titled: Ugly War: Why the United States Should Get Out of Iraq? The title I just thought of sounds a little more perky: Ugly War: How to Succeed in Iraq. Altogether, it'd be good just to call it Ugly War, the way Thomas Paine titled his pamphlet Common Sense. The people who read Thomas Paine knew what he was talking about. He just had to reach his audience at the right time, when they were ready to agree and to act. I don't know when our citizens will reach that point, but I sure hope it's soon. I can't say that Ugly War will be the force that tips things the other way, but something has to do it. The longer we fight this war, the more we lose. We've lost a lot already.
Wednesday, June 15, 2005
Comments from Hessam Khaleeli
I do not think the United States can leave Iraq really. Its a fight the United States picked, and must see through.
But what the US does not understand is it is not the fight with guns that counts. The real fight is in rebuilding the nation. Free and fair elections and new constitutions, however glorious, do not solve the problems of the man on the street. The United States needs a Marshall Plan for Iraq. It needs to show the Iraqi population it is, despite what people in the Middle East think, not an occupation force, but a force of freedom. This means freeing people from the miseries of daily life, not from the miseries of some political entity.
The real troubling fact in Iraq is that two years on, life in Iraq was still better under Saddam Hussein. Despite the sanctions and the bombings in the 90s, life was better then. And then the US comes in and destroys everything while saying "we bring freedom." Who the fuck cares would be my reply. I have no water, I have no electricity, and I have no security of life or property. Saddam lost the battle, but with the US bogged down in the military conflict, and forgetting about the "hearts and minds" of Iraqis, Saddam is winning the war!
America is the bad guy because all they have done is destroy. An Iraqi face on American controlled politics in Iraq will not help. The people know who is in charge and will place the blame as such. Food, water, schools, hospitals... this is the real battle field. If the US shows it is going to help the people of Iraq with these things, not just a constitution - that let's be honest, does nothing for the man on the street - it can and will still win this war.
But what the US does not understand is it is not the fight with guns that counts. The real fight is in rebuilding the nation. Free and fair elections and new constitutions, however glorious, do not solve the problems of the man on the street. The United States needs a Marshall Plan for Iraq. It needs to show the Iraqi population it is, despite what people in the Middle East think, not an occupation force, but a force of freedom. This means freeing people from the miseries of daily life, not from the miseries of some political entity.
The real troubling fact in Iraq is that two years on, life in Iraq was still better under Saddam Hussein. Despite the sanctions and the bombings in the 90s, life was better then. And then the US comes in and destroys everything while saying "we bring freedom." Who the fuck cares would be my reply. I have no water, I have no electricity, and I have no security of life or property. Saddam lost the battle, but with the US bogged down in the military conflict, and forgetting about the "hearts and minds" of Iraqis, Saddam is winning the war!
America is the bad guy because all they have done is destroy. An Iraqi face on American controlled politics in Iraq will not help. The people know who is in charge and will place the blame as such. Food, water, schools, hospitals... this is the real battle field. If the US shows it is going to help the people of Iraq with these things, not just a constitution - that let's be honest, does nothing for the man on the street - it can and will still win this war.
Let's Talk About Iraq - Thomas Friedman
Let's Talk About Iraq - New York Times:
"Maybe it is too late, but before we give up on Iraq, why not actually try to do it right? Double the American boots on the ground and redouble the diplomatic effort to bring in those Sunnis who want to be part of the process and fight to the death those who don't. As Stanford's Larry Diamond, author of an important new book on the Iraq war, 'Squandered Victory,' puts it, we need 'a bold mobilizing strategy' right now. That means the new Iraqi government, the U.S. and the U.N. teaming up to widen the political arena in Iraq, energizing the constitution-writing process and developing a communications-diplomatic strategy that puts our bloodthirsty enemies on the defensive rather than us. The Bush team has been weak in all these areas. For weeks now, we haven't even had ambassadors in Iraq, Afghanistan or Jordan.
"We've already paid a huge price for the Rumsfeld Doctrine - 'Just enough troops to lose.' Calling for more troops now, I know, is the last thing anyone wants to hear. But we are fooling ourselves to think that a decent, normal, forward-looking Iraqi politics or army is going to emerge from a totally insecure environment, where you can feel safe only with your own tribe."
Comment: Yes, but who thinks we could put 270,000 troops on the ground in Iraq now? We have two ways to do that: get help from the United Nations, and start a draft. We've rejected the first option, and at this point the UN wouldn't do it anyway. If we draft people to go to Iraq, then you'll truly see opposition to the war rise. One terrible consequence of the war has been to show our enemies how weak we are. Yes, we have the strongest army, navy and air force by far, but we can't put much more than 150,000 volunteers in Iraq indefinitely, and our enemies know it. And they know that domestic support even for the current commitment is waning. So they sense that time is on their side. That means we've lost the initiative, which has been obvious since, as Friedman puts it, "the looting started."
"Maybe it is too late, but before we give up on Iraq, why not actually try to do it right? Double the American boots on the ground and redouble the diplomatic effort to bring in those Sunnis who want to be part of the process and fight to the death those who don't. As Stanford's Larry Diamond, author of an important new book on the Iraq war, 'Squandered Victory,' puts it, we need 'a bold mobilizing strategy' right now. That means the new Iraqi government, the U.S. and the U.N. teaming up to widen the political arena in Iraq, energizing the constitution-writing process and developing a communications-diplomatic strategy that puts our bloodthirsty enemies on the defensive rather than us. The Bush team has been weak in all these areas. For weeks now, we haven't even had ambassadors in Iraq, Afghanistan or Jordan.
"We've already paid a huge price for the Rumsfeld Doctrine - 'Just enough troops to lose.' Calling for more troops now, I know, is the last thing anyone wants to hear. But we are fooling ourselves to think that a decent, normal, forward-looking Iraqi politics or army is going to emerge from a totally insecure environment, where you can feel safe only with your own tribe."
Comment: Yes, but who thinks we could put 270,000 troops on the ground in Iraq now? We have two ways to do that: get help from the United Nations, and start a draft. We've rejected the first option, and at this point the UN wouldn't do it anyway. If we draft people to go to Iraq, then you'll truly see opposition to the war rise. One terrible consequence of the war has been to show our enemies how weak we are. Yes, we have the strongest army, navy and air force by far, but we can't put much more than 150,000 volunteers in Iraq indefinitely, and our enemies know it. And they know that domestic support even for the current commitment is waning. So they sense that time is on their side. That means we've lost the initiative, which has been obvious since, as Friedman puts it, "the looting started."
Wednesday, June 08, 2005
Monday, June 06, 2005
Hillary Clinton Assails the G.O.P.: Follow-Up Remarks
Lately General Bush has made us remember V. I. Lenin’s saying, “If you are not with me, you are against me.” There’s another saying, from the Middle East, I believe: “My enemy’s enemy is my friend.” Well, I didn’t think I’d ever root for Hillary Clinton, but a Democrat or anyone else who has courage to denounce our current leaders has to get support. So go, Hillary, go!
Howard Dean recently made another snide remark about the Republicans, and some Democrats are saying – again – that he’s gone too far. Let’s see what Hillary does when they try to move Dean out of the party chairmanship as the 2008 elections approach.
Hillary’s remarks in her second paragraph may be true enough, but it’s not the whole truth. The Democrats can’t do more to stop the Republicans because they’re acting like a bunch of wimpy nincompoops who don’t have any guts. What Hillary says about the media in her last two paragraphs applies to the Democrats as well.
Howard Dean recently made another snide remark about the Republicans, and some Democrats are saying – again – that he’s gone too far. Let’s see what Hillary does when they try to move Dean out of the party chairmanship as the 2008 elections approach.
Hillary’s remarks in her second paragraph may be true enough, but it’s not the whole truth. The Democrats can’t do more to stop the Republicans because they’re acting like a bunch of wimpy nincompoops who don’t have any guts. What Hillary says about the media in her last two paragraphs applies to the Democrats as well.
Senator Clinton Assails G.O.P.
Senator Clinton Assails G.O.P. at Fund-Raiser:
Some remarks by Hillary Clinton at a fund raiser in New York:
"There has never been an administration, I don't believe in our history, more intent upon consolidating and abusing power to further their own agenda," Mrs. Clinton told the gathering.
"I know it's frustrating for many of you, it's frustrating for me. Why can't the Democrats do more to stop them?" she continued to growing applause. "I can tell you this: It's very hard to stop people who have no shame about what they're doing. It is very hard to tell people that they are making decisions that will undermine our checks and balances and constitutional system of government who don't care. It is very hard to stop people who have never been acquainted with the truth."
In some of her sharpest language, Mrs. Clinton said that abetting Republicans was a Washington press corps that has become a pale imitation of the Watergate-era reporters who are being celebrated amid the identification of the Washington Post source, Deep Throat.
"It's shocking when you see how easily they fold in the media today," Mrs. Clinton said, again to strong applause. "They don't stand their ground. If they're criticized by the White House, they just fall apart."
"I mean, c'mon, toughen up, guys, it's only our Constitution and country at stake."
Some remarks by Hillary Clinton at a fund raiser in New York:
"There has never been an administration, I don't believe in our history, more intent upon consolidating and abusing power to further their own agenda," Mrs. Clinton told the gathering.
"I know it's frustrating for many of you, it's frustrating for me. Why can't the Democrats do more to stop them?" she continued to growing applause. "I can tell you this: It's very hard to stop people who have no shame about what they're doing. It is very hard to tell people that they are making decisions that will undermine our checks and balances and constitutional system of government who don't care. It is very hard to stop people who have never been acquainted with the truth."
In some of her sharpest language, Mrs. Clinton said that abetting Republicans was a Washington press corps that has become a pale imitation of the Watergate-era reporters who are being celebrated amid the identification of the Washington Post source, Deep Throat.
"It's shocking when you see how easily they fold in the media today," Mrs. Clinton said, again to strong applause. "They don't stand their ground. If they're criticized by the White House, they just fall apart."
"I mean, c'mon, toughen up, guys, it's only our Constitution and country at stake."
Laziness in the Media
“The problem of …liberal/conservative bias (in the news media) is a red herring. The real bias is toward laziness, toward entertainment, toward confrontation, toward that which will drive the ratings. The real story is this incredible laziness. It seems like the whole institution has lost its way.”
David Javerbaum
Head writer for “The Daily Show”
Quoted in The Holmes Report
Monday, May 30, 2005
David Javerbaum
Head writer for “The Daily Show”
Quoted in The Holmes Report
Monday, May 30, 2005
Sunday, June 05, 2005
The Big Picture
I just wish the journalists would think for themselves for once. Okay, I know I shouldn't paint all the journalists with one brush, but you know what I mean. Once they get on a line of thought, you can't get them off of it. One line of thought, or premise, has been that we need to counter the insurgents' attacks with attacks of our own. So we level Fallujah and defeat Sadr's forces in Najaf. We mount an offensive against the insurgents near the Syrian border, and go after them in Samarra, Baghdad, and any number of other cities. We find their weapons caches and their hideouts, we capture their leaders, and we round up suspects to bring them in for what we used to call questioning, a euphemism for torture. None of it worked. The more we tried to limit the insurgents' ability to fight, the worse the insurgency became.
Another broad effort has been the transfer of sovereignty. The reasoning is that if the Iraqis see that they're running the show, they won't have any reason to resist the occupation any more. We want to bring democracy to the country, after all, and democracy means self-rule. So we have a formal transfer of sovereignty to the Iraqis at the end of June a year ago. We have elections at the end of January this year. The Iraqis will form a government and write a constitution. Most of all, we've been training Iraqi infantry and police forces to achieve the military and security objectives we haven't been able to achieve. Instead of more order, we see the beginnings of a civil war as the insurgents attack the poorly trained Iraqi forces. We have tried to reconstitute Iraq's armed forces for almost two years now, and it hasn't worked.
Civil reconstruction has been a third broad area of effort. No one even pretends that progress in this area is a goal anymore. Courts, schools, health facilities, pipelines, water purification plants, sewage treatment plants, oil refineries, electirical power plants, roads, civil service functions, garbage pickup, distribution of electrical power, all the things that make civil society run well: all these things are on hold until order is restored. Ask any Iraqi or American official when that will be, and their truthful answer is, "We're working on it." Press for another answer, and they'll say, "It could take years."
But here's something the journalists who write about Iraq have missed. No matter what the insurgents do, they've succeeded as long as they tie American troops down in Iraq. Yes, the Iraqi insurgents want to push the Americans out as soon as they can. That's their aim: get rid of the occupiers. The foreign fighters in Iraq must recognize that having American troops in Iraq is a bonanza for them. They can kill Americans there much more readily than they can kill them anywhere else. They know that while Americans fight in Iraq, they can't fight elsewhere. Al Qaeda knows that while we are in Iraq, they are winning, no matter how the battle goes from day to day.
So that's the problem with the goals we've laid out. That's the problem with our strategy. The car bombs could stop tomorrow. All the other attacks: sniping, roadside bombs, hit and run ambushes, mortar attacks, every sort of skirmish and sabotage, all the assassinations and kidnappings, all these could stop suddenly, and we would still be losing as long as we remain there. We have enormous resources committed there, and while they're tied up in Iraq they're unavailable for fighting anywhere else. We've had to pull forces from other parts of the world just to maintain a force of 135,000 in Iraq. When we do finally leave Iraq, will anyone here at home want to send our young men and women out again to fight Al Qaeda elsewhere? Will we have any motivation at all to fight the war we should be fighting? No, we'll be so happy that the war in Iraq is over, we'll have forgotten about the war we should have been fighting, the war we would have fought had we not gone into Iraq.
That's getting ahead of things, though, because the prospects for getting out of Iraq soon are nil. Supporters of the war there say that we don't bear any opportunity cost for committing our resources there. That is, they say, we are fighting the right war, for the right reasons, for the right goals. They maintain that when we leave Iraq, we won't need to fight elsewhere. Iraqi democracy will be established, and as it spreads throughout the region, to Saudi Arabia and Syria and even to Iran, Al Qaeda will have nowhere to hide. In the open air of free societies Al Qaeda will wither and dry up. No one will want to fight for Al Qaeda when the benefits of Western democracy and free enterprise are all around. That's the Wolfowitz cure. That's the democracy cures all ills strategy.
But who, in or out of our government, has made a convincing case that creating a democracy in Iraq will bring about the defeat of Al Qaeda? Why couldn't Al Qaeda operate just as effectively in an open, democratic society as it does in a closed one? The planning and execution of the 9/11 attacks showed that Al Qaeda could operate equally effectively in Afghanistan, Germany, and the United States. We say that we have Al Qaeda on the run in Afghanistan and Pakistan, that we are pressing them hard in Iraq, but where's the evidence that we have reduced its ability to fight? Who believes that a quiet Iraq will mean defeat of the organization that attacked the World Trade Center? The scary thing now, two years into the Iraqi war, is that people don't even care any more how we're doing in the fight against Al Qaeda. They just want to be done with fighting, period.
So how can we counter the prevailing premise? How can we keep the big picture in front of us? The big picture is so different from the main line of thought we see in coverage of the war. Take for example the prevailing line of thought that existed while Reagan was president. Then most people thought that we had to reach an accommodation with the Soviets. The United States and the Soviet Union had to live on the same globe, and the only way to avoid a nuclear holocaust was to work things out with them. We didn't say nasty things about them, and we tried to find ways to cooperate. Least of all, we didn't want to provoke them. We had managed to survive the Cold War for more than a quarter century, and we should keep on keeping on.
Well, Reagan comes along and says about the Soviet Union, "These are bad guys and they're going to lose." Look what they've done, he would say. He even said, "How's this for a strategy: we win and they lose." You can't get much more blunt than that. Then he achieved his aim, using military force and diplomacy adroitly to force the Soviet Union into conceding Eastern Europe shortly after Reagan left office. No one thought he could do it until it happened. When it did happen, people said that he must have been right after all.
We're in a similar conceptual situation with Iraq. Everyone thinks that the only way we can succeed there is to bring democracy to the people while we train a new armed force capable of containing the insurgents. How often have you heard this one: "Whatever you think of the war, we're committed now, and we have to see the job through." How often have you heard: "We can't leave now. There'd be chaos and a civil war." Well let me tell you that the civil war has already started. Everyone all over the world has concluded correctly that we can't do anything to stop it. Everyone knows the limits of our strength, the extent of our weakness.
So the conceptual box we're in won't allow anyone to say that we have to get out of there as soon as we can. Even the most vocal opponents of the war concede that we have to stay there long enough to hand security responsibilities over to the Iraqis, and that, people say, will take at least until the end of 2006. Well, when we come to the end of 2006, come back to read this essay, and ask yourself if we've achieved any of the goals that the conventional wisdom has set out for us. Ask if we've reduced the level of violence, turned over responsibility to the Iraqis, or made advances in the area of civil reconstruction. Even if we have made progress in any of these areas, we'll have failed if we're still tied down in Iraq, still fighting people who weren't even our enemies until we made them so.
The conceptual box we're in won't allow anyone to say what Reagan said in 1980: "We win and they lose." People think that if we pull out, we lose. We'll have failed, they say, and that outcome is not acceptable. Everyone will see that we lost, that we can't stick it out. But it's not true. The only way to win this war is to leave this battlefield and correct our mistake. The sure way to lose the war is to stick it out in Iraq. The sure way to grant our enemies just what they want is to stay in Iraq and bleed ourselves there. We've gone down the wrong path there. We have to turn back if we want to win, because at the end of this path lies futility, defeat, humiliation, and a total loss of confidence in ourselves. These things will happen not because we couldn't win, but because we couldn't lose. We couldn't lose our self-certainty and conviction that we've done the right thing, that we've set out on the right course. Remember, if we win the war in Iraq by sticking it out, we'll lose the war against Al Qaeda that we should have been fighting.
One of my favorite passages from the New Testament is a quotation from Jesus: "For to everyone who has, more will be given, and he will have abundance; but from him who has not, even that which he has will be taken away." The first part of the passage applies to the United States during its period of world leadership. The United States and its leaders had vision, optimism, practicality, judgment, good intentions, wisdom, faith, and hope. As promised, the country had everything a human society could want, in abundance. Now all the signs indicate that since 9/11, the United States and its leaders do not have any of these things. It has not vision but blindness, not optimism but discouragement, not practicality but utopianism, not judgment but thick-headed self-righteousness, not good intentions but selfishness, not wisdom but stupidity, not faith but gullibility, not hope but fear. As a result, everything that it has will be taken away. It has already begun to happen.
I said before November 2004 that if we didn't replace our leadership, we would not recover from the mistake our president made when he went to war in Iraq. We didn't replace him, but I don't want to believe that it's too late. I still think that some solution has to present itself, some way out has to appear. "Way will open," the Quakers say. But where? And how? I don't know if faith will answer those questions.
Making reference to the box we're in, Leslie recalled a moment during the debates last fall when Bush asked Kerry, "So are you saying that our troops in Iraq have died in vain?" At a time when no one can say anything against our troops, Kerry was stymied. "He had him," Leslie observed. I replied right away that Howard Dean would have responded differently. He would have come back at Bush directly:
"Yes, Mr. President, you're right. Those troops died in vain. They died in vain in a war you started. They died in vain in a war they should not be fighting, and you put them there. You're responsible for these useless deaths, and their futile sacrifice is on your head. These young men and women, so willing to give everything for their country, trusted you. Their parents and brothers and sisters trusted you. Their wives and children trusted you. The whole country looked to you after the September 11 attacks to lead us back from that dreadful loss. And what did you do? You sent our armed forces into a useless war, justified it with obvious, self-serving dishonesty, and refused to admit your mistake after everyone else could see the truth about what you had done.
"And you try to charge me with defeatism and with not supporting our troops? Mr. President, those troops took an oath to protect our Constitution. That means they promised to serve their commander in chief, and they trusted you to lead them well. Do you know what you did, Mr. President? You betrayed them. You asked them to do something that you wouldn't do yourself when it was your turn to serve, and you asked them to do it for dishonest reasons. So I need to ask you, Mr. President: When are you going to support our troops? When are you going to send them to fight our real enemies, rather than false enemies that you cooked up because you had a grudge against Saddam Hussein? You've misled the citizens of this great country much too long now. If you can't admit that you've done something wrong, shut your mouth and go home."
But the Democratic party thought that Howard Dean couldn't win against George Bush. They thought that John Kerry was a more effective fighter, more electable. Well, hindsight got 'em on that one. Kerry hardly talked about the war in his campaign until the fall, and even then he only raised his criticisms in a few speeches. He spent so much time, overall, trying to answer Bush's question: Why did you vote for the war? After Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, it seemed that his campaign was worried: criticism of the war might come across as unpatriotic. On the contrary, Kerry's criticism of the war in Iraq was patriotic, just as his stand against the war in Vietnam was an example of courageous patriotism. Unlike his anti-war activities in the 1970s, though, Kerry in 2004 acted too hesitantly. As a result his opposition to the Iraq war appeared unfounded and equivocal. Dean would not have been such a reluctant critic.
That's enough for this one. I've built up these thoughts for so long. Then when the dam opens, too much water goes down the spillway. Consequently I have an essay that's longer than anyone wants to read. But, it all counts toward the book I want to write. Ugly War is already nearly book length. If I add these other essays to the existing long essay, we'll be ready to publish. But it's hard to see who would want to read it. Mostly now I think these writings are of historical interest. Students of this time can see that some people could see what was happening, as it happened. We didn't have to wait for it to be over before we could see what a big mistake we had made. We could see that this war was a mistake before it was launched, and what a bad course of action it was as it unfolded. But seeing the truth about the war hasn't made people willing to do the necessary and right thing: redeploy our forces to fight the people who attacked us.
Goodnight, now.
Another broad effort has been the transfer of sovereignty. The reasoning is that if the Iraqis see that they're running the show, they won't have any reason to resist the occupation any more. We want to bring democracy to the country, after all, and democracy means self-rule. So we have a formal transfer of sovereignty to the Iraqis at the end of June a year ago. We have elections at the end of January this year. The Iraqis will form a government and write a constitution. Most of all, we've been training Iraqi infantry and police forces to achieve the military and security objectives we haven't been able to achieve. Instead of more order, we see the beginnings of a civil war as the insurgents attack the poorly trained Iraqi forces. We have tried to reconstitute Iraq's armed forces for almost two years now, and it hasn't worked.
Civil reconstruction has been a third broad area of effort. No one even pretends that progress in this area is a goal anymore. Courts, schools, health facilities, pipelines, water purification plants, sewage treatment plants, oil refineries, electirical power plants, roads, civil service functions, garbage pickup, distribution of electrical power, all the things that make civil society run well: all these things are on hold until order is restored. Ask any Iraqi or American official when that will be, and their truthful answer is, "We're working on it." Press for another answer, and they'll say, "It could take years."
But here's something the journalists who write about Iraq have missed. No matter what the insurgents do, they've succeeded as long as they tie American troops down in Iraq. Yes, the Iraqi insurgents want to push the Americans out as soon as they can. That's their aim: get rid of the occupiers. The foreign fighters in Iraq must recognize that having American troops in Iraq is a bonanza for them. They can kill Americans there much more readily than they can kill them anywhere else. They know that while Americans fight in Iraq, they can't fight elsewhere. Al Qaeda knows that while we are in Iraq, they are winning, no matter how the battle goes from day to day.
So that's the problem with the goals we've laid out. That's the problem with our strategy. The car bombs could stop tomorrow. All the other attacks: sniping, roadside bombs, hit and run ambushes, mortar attacks, every sort of skirmish and sabotage, all the assassinations and kidnappings, all these could stop suddenly, and we would still be losing as long as we remain there. We have enormous resources committed there, and while they're tied up in Iraq they're unavailable for fighting anywhere else. We've had to pull forces from other parts of the world just to maintain a force of 135,000 in Iraq. When we do finally leave Iraq, will anyone here at home want to send our young men and women out again to fight Al Qaeda elsewhere? Will we have any motivation at all to fight the war we should be fighting? No, we'll be so happy that the war in Iraq is over, we'll have forgotten about the war we should have been fighting, the war we would have fought had we not gone into Iraq.
That's getting ahead of things, though, because the prospects for getting out of Iraq soon are nil. Supporters of the war there say that we don't bear any opportunity cost for committing our resources there. That is, they say, we are fighting the right war, for the right reasons, for the right goals. They maintain that when we leave Iraq, we won't need to fight elsewhere. Iraqi democracy will be established, and as it spreads throughout the region, to Saudi Arabia and Syria and even to Iran, Al Qaeda will have nowhere to hide. In the open air of free societies Al Qaeda will wither and dry up. No one will want to fight for Al Qaeda when the benefits of Western democracy and free enterprise are all around. That's the Wolfowitz cure. That's the democracy cures all ills strategy.
But who, in or out of our government, has made a convincing case that creating a democracy in Iraq will bring about the defeat of Al Qaeda? Why couldn't Al Qaeda operate just as effectively in an open, democratic society as it does in a closed one? The planning and execution of the 9/11 attacks showed that Al Qaeda could operate equally effectively in Afghanistan, Germany, and the United States. We say that we have Al Qaeda on the run in Afghanistan and Pakistan, that we are pressing them hard in Iraq, but where's the evidence that we have reduced its ability to fight? Who believes that a quiet Iraq will mean defeat of the organization that attacked the World Trade Center? The scary thing now, two years into the Iraqi war, is that people don't even care any more how we're doing in the fight against Al Qaeda. They just want to be done with fighting, period.
So how can we counter the prevailing premise? How can we keep the big picture in front of us? The big picture is so different from the main line of thought we see in coverage of the war. Take for example the prevailing line of thought that existed while Reagan was president. Then most people thought that we had to reach an accommodation with the Soviets. The United States and the Soviet Union had to live on the same globe, and the only way to avoid a nuclear holocaust was to work things out with them. We didn't say nasty things about them, and we tried to find ways to cooperate. Least of all, we didn't want to provoke them. We had managed to survive the Cold War for more than a quarter century, and we should keep on keeping on.
Well, Reagan comes along and says about the Soviet Union, "These are bad guys and they're going to lose." Look what they've done, he would say. He even said, "How's this for a strategy: we win and they lose." You can't get much more blunt than that. Then he achieved his aim, using military force and diplomacy adroitly to force the Soviet Union into conceding Eastern Europe shortly after Reagan left office. No one thought he could do it until it happened. When it did happen, people said that he must have been right after all.
We're in a similar conceptual situation with Iraq. Everyone thinks that the only way we can succeed there is to bring democracy to the people while we train a new armed force capable of containing the insurgents. How often have you heard this one: "Whatever you think of the war, we're committed now, and we have to see the job through." How often have you heard: "We can't leave now. There'd be chaos and a civil war." Well let me tell you that the civil war has already started. Everyone all over the world has concluded correctly that we can't do anything to stop it. Everyone knows the limits of our strength, the extent of our weakness.
So the conceptual box we're in won't allow anyone to say that we have to get out of there as soon as we can. Even the most vocal opponents of the war concede that we have to stay there long enough to hand security responsibilities over to the Iraqis, and that, people say, will take at least until the end of 2006. Well, when we come to the end of 2006, come back to read this essay, and ask yourself if we've achieved any of the goals that the conventional wisdom has set out for us. Ask if we've reduced the level of violence, turned over responsibility to the Iraqis, or made advances in the area of civil reconstruction. Even if we have made progress in any of these areas, we'll have failed if we're still tied down in Iraq, still fighting people who weren't even our enemies until we made them so.
The conceptual box we're in won't allow anyone to say what Reagan said in 1980: "We win and they lose." People think that if we pull out, we lose. We'll have failed, they say, and that outcome is not acceptable. Everyone will see that we lost, that we can't stick it out. But it's not true. The only way to win this war is to leave this battlefield and correct our mistake. The sure way to lose the war is to stick it out in Iraq. The sure way to grant our enemies just what they want is to stay in Iraq and bleed ourselves there. We've gone down the wrong path there. We have to turn back if we want to win, because at the end of this path lies futility, defeat, humiliation, and a total loss of confidence in ourselves. These things will happen not because we couldn't win, but because we couldn't lose. We couldn't lose our self-certainty and conviction that we've done the right thing, that we've set out on the right course. Remember, if we win the war in Iraq by sticking it out, we'll lose the war against Al Qaeda that we should have been fighting.
One of my favorite passages from the New Testament is a quotation from Jesus: "For to everyone who has, more will be given, and he will have abundance; but from him who has not, even that which he has will be taken away." The first part of the passage applies to the United States during its period of world leadership. The United States and its leaders had vision, optimism, practicality, judgment, good intentions, wisdom, faith, and hope. As promised, the country had everything a human society could want, in abundance. Now all the signs indicate that since 9/11, the United States and its leaders do not have any of these things. It has not vision but blindness, not optimism but discouragement, not practicality but utopianism, not judgment but thick-headed self-righteousness, not good intentions but selfishness, not wisdom but stupidity, not faith but gullibility, not hope but fear. As a result, everything that it has will be taken away. It has already begun to happen.
I said before November 2004 that if we didn't replace our leadership, we would not recover from the mistake our president made when he went to war in Iraq. We didn't replace him, but I don't want to believe that it's too late. I still think that some solution has to present itself, some way out has to appear. "Way will open," the Quakers say. But where? And how? I don't know if faith will answer those questions.
Making reference to the box we're in, Leslie recalled a moment during the debates last fall when Bush asked Kerry, "So are you saying that our troops in Iraq have died in vain?" At a time when no one can say anything against our troops, Kerry was stymied. "He had him," Leslie observed. I replied right away that Howard Dean would have responded differently. He would have come back at Bush directly:
"Yes, Mr. President, you're right. Those troops died in vain. They died in vain in a war you started. They died in vain in a war they should not be fighting, and you put them there. You're responsible for these useless deaths, and their futile sacrifice is on your head. These young men and women, so willing to give everything for their country, trusted you. Their parents and brothers and sisters trusted you. Their wives and children trusted you. The whole country looked to you after the September 11 attacks to lead us back from that dreadful loss. And what did you do? You sent our armed forces into a useless war, justified it with obvious, self-serving dishonesty, and refused to admit your mistake after everyone else could see the truth about what you had done.
"And you try to charge me with defeatism and with not supporting our troops? Mr. President, those troops took an oath to protect our Constitution. That means they promised to serve their commander in chief, and they trusted you to lead them well. Do you know what you did, Mr. President? You betrayed them. You asked them to do something that you wouldn't do yourself when it was your turn to serve, and you asked them to do it for dishonest reasons. So I need to ask you, Mr. President: When are you going to support our troops? When are you going to send them to fight our real enemies, rather than false enemies that you cooked up because you had a grudge against Saddam Hussein? You've misled the citizens of this great country much too long now. If you can't admit that you've done something wrong, shut your mouth and go home."
But the Democratic party thought that Howard Dean couldn't win against George Bush. They thought that John Kerry was a more effective fighter, more electable. Well, hindsight got 'em on that one. Kerry hardly talked about the war in his campaign until the fall, and even then he only raised his criticisms in a few speeches. He spent so much time, overall, trying to answer Bush's question: Why did you vote for the war? After Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, it seemed that his campaign was worried: criticism of the war might come across as unpatriotic. On the contrary, Kerry's criticism of the war in Iraq was patriotic, just as his stand against the war in Vietnam was an example of courageous patriotism. Unlike his anti-war activities in the 1970s, though, Kerry in 2004 acted too hesitantly. As a result his opposition to the Iraq war appeared unfounded and equivocal. Dean would not have been such a reluctant critic.
That's enough for this one. I've built up these thoughts for so long. Then when the dam opens, too much water goes down the spillway. Consequently I have an essay that's longer than anyone wants to read. But, it all counts toward the book I want to write. Ugly War is already nearly book length. If I add these other essays to the existing long essay, we'll be ready to publish. But it's hard to see who would want to read it. Mostly now I think these writings are of historical interest. Students of this time can see that some people could see what was happening, as it happened. We didn't have to wait for it to be over before we could see what a big mistake we had made. We could see that this war was a mistake before it was launched, and what a bad course of action it was as it unfolded. But seeing the truth about the war hasn't made people willing to do the necessary and right thing: redeploy our forces to fight the people who attacked us.
Goodnight, now.
Saturday, June 04, 2005
Is Persuasion Dead? - Matt Miller
Is Persuasion Dead? - New York Times:
"But beyond this, the gap between the cartoon of public life that the press and political establishment often serve up and the pragmatic open-mindedness of most Americans explains why so many people tune out - and how we might get them to tune back in. Alienation is the only intelligent response to a political culture that insults our intelligence.
The resurrection of persuasion will not be easy. Politicians who've learned to survive in an unforgiving environment may not feel safe with a less scripted style. Mass media outlets where heat has always sold more than light may not believe that creatively engaging on substance can expand their audience. But if you believe that meeting our collective challenges requires greater collective understanding, we've got to persuade these folks to try.
I'm guessing Ann Coulter isn't sweating this stuff. God willing, there's something else keeping her up nights. In the meantime, like Sisyphus, those who seek a better public life have to keep rolling the rock uphill. If you've read this far, maybe you're up for the climb, too. "
"But beyond this, the gap between the cartoon of public life that the press and political establishment often serve up and the pragmatic open-mindedness of most Americans explains why so many people tune out - and how we might get them to tune back in. Alienation is the only intelligent response to a political culture that insults our intelligence.
The resurrection of persuasion will not be easy. Politicians who've learned to survive in an unforgiving environment may not feel safe with a less scripted style. Mass media outlets where heat has always sold more than light may not believe that creatively engaging on substance can expand their audience. But if you believe that meeting our collective challenges requires greater collective understanding, we've got to persuade these folks to try.
I'm guessing Ann Coulter isn't sweating this stuff. God willing, there's something else keeping her up nights. In the meantime, like Sisyphus, those who seek a better public life have to keep rolling the rock uphill. If you've read this far, maybe you're up for the climb, too. "
Tuesday, May 31, 2005
Bush Says Abuse Charges by Rights Group Are "Absurd"
Bush Says Abuse Charges by Rights Group Are "Absurd"
Here is the latest report from the White House:
President Bush called a human rights report "absurd" for criticizing the United States' detention of terrorist suspects at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and said Tuesday the allegations were made by "people who hate America."
"It's absurd. It's an absurd allegation. The United States is a country that promotes freedom around the world," Bush said of the Amnesty International report that compared Guantanamo to a Soviet-era gulag.
After all of Bush's distortions and dishonesty, what source is more credible at this point: Amnesty International or the president? Has anyone ever said before that Amnesty International hates America? How often have we used Amnesty International's reports to criticize and pressure other countries?
Does the president now say, speaking for our country, that Amnesty International hates us and all those other countries, too? Is Amnesty International just another propaganda tool? Well, Bush says, it used to be for us and now it's against us, so it must be an enemy.
Japan recently said, after the demonstrations in Beijing and elsewhere, that China is a scary country. When is someone going to say that this is a scary president? Well, I've said it. When is someone important going to say it? When is someone going to believe it?
Here is the latest report from the White House:
President Bush called a human rights report "absurd" for criticizing the United States' detention of terrorist suspects at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and said Tuesday the allegations were made by "people who hate America."
"It's absurd. It's an absurd allegation. The United States is a country that promotes freedom around the world," Bush said of the Amnesty International report that compared Guantanamo to a Soviet-era gulag.
After all of Bush's distortions and dishonesty, what source is more credible at this point: Amnesty International or the president? Has anyone ever said before that Amnesty International hates America? How often have we used Amnesty International's reports to criticize and pressure other countries?
Does the president now say, speaking for our country, that Amnesty International hates us and all those other countries, too? Is Amnesty International just another propaganda tool? Well, Bush says, it used to be for us and now it's against us, so it must be an enemy.
Japan recently said, after the demonstrations in Beijing and elsewhere, that China is a scary country. When is someone going to say that this is a scary president? Well, I've said it. When is someone important going to say it? When is someone going to believe it?
Blog for America: Memorial Day Note from Jim Dean
Blog for America:
"I hate war, as only a soldier who has lived it can, only as one who has seen its brutality, its futility, its stupidity." - Dwight David Eisenhower, 34th President of the United States
"I hate war, as only a soldier who has lived it can, only as one who has seen its brutality, its futility, its stupidity." - Dwight David Eisenhower, 34th President of the United States
Monday, May 30, 2005
America, a Symbol of . . . - Bob Herbert
America, a Symbol of . . . - New York Times:
From Herbert's article:
William Schulz, executive director of Amnesty International USA, said in an interview last week that it's important to keep in mind how policies formulated at the highest levels of government led inexorably to the abusive treatment of prisoners. "The critical point is the deliberateness of this policy," he said. "The president gave the green light. The secretary of defense issued the rules. The Justice Department provided the rationale. And the C.I.A. tried to cover it up."
In the immediate aftermath of the Sept. 11 attacks, most of the world was ready to stand with the U.S. in a legitimate fight against terrorists. But the Bush administration, in its lust for war with Iraq and its willingness to jettison every semblance of due process while employing scandalously inhumane practices against detainees, blew that opportunity.
In much of the world, the image of the U.S. under Mr. Bush has morphed from an idealized champion of liberty to a heavily armed thug in camouflage fatigues. America is increasingly being seen as a dangerously arrogant military power that is due for a comeuppance. It will take a lot more than Karen Hughes to turn that around.
From Herbert's article:
William Schulz, executive director of Amnesty International USA, said in an interview last week that it's important to keep in mind how policies formulated at the highest levels of government led inexorably to the abusive treatment of prisoners. "The critical point is the deliberateness of this policy," he said. "The president gave the green light. The secretary of defense issued the rules. The Justice Department provided the rationale. And the C.I.A. tried to cover it up."
In the immediate aftermath of the Sept. 11 attacks, most of the world was ready to stand with the U.S. in a legitimate fight against terrorists. But the Bush administration, in its lust for war with Iraq and its willingness to jettison every semblance of due process while employing scandalously inhumane practices against detainees, blew that opportunity.
In much of the world, the image of the U.S. under Mr. Bush has morphed from an idealized champion of liberty to a heavily armed thug in camouflage fatigues. America is increasingly being seen as a dangerously arrogant military power that is due for a comeuppance. It will take a lot more than Karen Hughes to turn that around.
