Democrats in the Senate held hearings on contracting abuses in Iraq and Afghanistan. This is a woefully under-reported topic in our media. Some of the companies operating in Iraq have a deplorable record of over-charging the government, providing sub-standard and possibly even dangerous services to our soldiers, and abusing Iraqi civilians. Some of these companies make the war profiteers form the Second World War and the Civil War look like pikers by comparison.
The video for the hearings can be found here.
April 29th, 2008
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General, Politics, Economics, Iraq, How Capitalism Will Ruin You |
no comments
That was horribly depressing testimony yesterday. Crocker and Petraeus might have tried to put a sunny spin on the matter, but at the the end of the day the only thing you conclude was that the US is fighting in the wrong place and doesn’t have the first clue how to get itself out of this mess.
When Ambassador Crocker was asked which Al Qaeda group he would consider most important to eliminate, the real Al Qaeda or the splinter group Al Qaeda in Iraq, he choose the real Al Qaeda in Pakistan:
SEN. BIDEN: Mr. Ambassador, is Al Qaeda a greater threat to US interests in Iraq, or in the Afghan-Pakistan border region?
AMB. CROCKER: Mr. Chairman, Al Qaeda is a strategic threat to the United States wherever it is, in my view–
SEN. BIDEN: Where is most of it? If you could take it out? You had a choice: Lord almighty came down and sat in the middle of the table there and said ‘Mr. Ambassador you can eliminate every Al Qaeda source in Afghanistan and Pakistan, or every Al Qaeda personnel in Iraq,’ which would you pick?
AMB. CROCKER: Well given the progress that has been made again Al Qaeda in Iraq, the significant decrease in its capabilities, the fact that it is solidly on the defensive, and not in a position of–
SEN. BIDEN: Which would you pick, Mr. Ambassador?
AMB. CROCKER: I would therefore pick Al Qaeda in the Pakistan-Afghanistan border area.
SEN BIDEN: That would be a smart choice.
Crocker tried to make it seem as if we have struck a massive blow against Al Qaeda in Iraq and so we could now turn our attention to Pakistan/Afghanistan. Some war defenders may rush to use that hedging as support for the notion that even if Crocker admits that iraq is not the central front in the war against Al Qaeda that it once was. That, of course, is nonsense. Al Qaeda in Iraq did not exist until we invaded so it could not have been an important front in the fight against Al Qaeda until our own stupidity allowed Al Qaeda the opportunity to make it so. And if Crocker is right, if we have had significant enough success against Al Qaeda in Iraq that we are free to turn our attention to Pakistan, why, precisely, is there still so much violence in Iraq? It must be because of other factions, factions that have nothing to do with Al Qaeda in Iraq. But both Crocker and Patreaus said we cannot leave Iraq, so, by Crocker’s own words, Iraq is a colossal distraction from the real fight: Al Qaeda.
Crocker admitting that Iraq is preventing us form dealign with and defeating Al Qaeda is bad enough, but Petraeus and Crocker had even worse news In essence, they have no idea what victory would look like. When Asked by Senator Clinton what victory would look like, General Petraeus gave this rambling answer:
With respect to the conditions, Senator, what we have is a number of factors that we will consider by area as we look at where we can make recommendations for further reductions beyond the reduction of the surge forces that will be complete in July. These factors are fairly clear. There’s obviously an enemy situation factor, there’s a friendly situation factor with respect to Iraqi forces, local governance, even economic and political dynamics, all of which are considered as the factors in making recommendations on further reductions.
Having said that, I have to say that again it’s not a mathematical exercise. There’s not an equation in which you have co- efficients in front of each of these factors. It’s not as mechanical as that. At the end of the day, it really involves commanders sitting down, also with their Iraqi counterparts and leaders in a particular area, and assessing where it is that you can reduce your forces so you can, again, make a recommendation to make further reductions.
And that’s the process, again.
He cannot say what conditions would trigger a draw down of troops — apparently his field commanders would just one day magically know that everything was friendship and light and flowering ponies and they could all go home. Saying now what that magical land of happy-happy would look like is, apparently, impossible. Just trust in the Mighty Power of the Patraeus and He will come down from the mountain and present us with the Ten Dates For Withdrawal.
Crocker was just as bad. When asked by Senator Obama what constituted success, Crocker replied:
CROCKER: And that’s because, Senator, is a — I mean, I don’t like to sound like a broken record, but this is hard and this is complicated.
I think that when Iraq gets to the point that it can carry forward its further development without a major commitment of U.S. forces, with still a lot of problems out there but where they and we would have a fair certitude that, again, they can drive it forward themselves without significant danger of having the whole thing slip away from them again, then, clearly, our profile, our presence diminishes markedly.
But that’s not where we are now.
Again the double talk: we will leave when things are good but we cannot tell you right now how things will look when things look good. Success in Iraq is just like pornography: it is whatever Republicans are pointing to when they say “victory”.
But it gets even worse. When Senator Levin specifically asked Petraeus what the number of troops would be at the end of the year if everything goes according to his plan, Petraeus could not answer:
LEVIN: Now, next question, if all goes well — if all goes well, what would be the approximate number of our troops there at the end of the year?
Let’s assume conditions permitted things to move quickly. What, in your estimate, would be the approximate number of American troops there at the end of the year?
Can you give us a — just say if you can’t give us an estimate.
PETRAEUS: Sir, I can’t — I can’t give you an estimate on that.
LEVIN: All right. You’re not going to give us an estimate on that.
They don’t have a plan beyond hope. If they had areal plan, they would be trumpeting it and would take every opportunity to tell a disgusted and worried American public “here, here is what the end looks like and here is how we intend to get there.” Crocker and Petraeus bobbed and weaved like Ali in his prime every time someone tried to get them define success and victory. People who know where they are going aren’t afraid of questions about the destination. Clearly, all they have is the vague hope that if they hang around long enough, things will somehow sort themselves out.
By the end of the day Crocker and Petraeus had made it clear that the war in Iraq was not keeping the country safer, they don’t really have any idea what they are trying to accomplish in Iraq but we cannot leave no matter the cost until they have accomplished the accomplishment that they cnanot define.
April 9th, 2008
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General, Politics, Iraq, Terrorism, Iran |
10 comments
Publius:
There are absolutely intelligent pro-war and pro-surge voices out there who make cogent, compelling arguments. The problem, however, is that a much larger – and more politically influential – percentage of pro-war supporters have consistently shown astonishing levels of ignorance and downright stupidity about the facts on the ground, the region’s history, and the relative players. Over the years, it’s been difficult to argue about the real Iraq when one side’s premise is that Iraq is actually Ponyland, a dreamworld where wish projections take material form and walk the earth. I’m not saying war skeptics are all Middle East scholars, but their ranks (relatively speaking) have far fewer outright ignorant members, particularly among those with actual political power and influence.
For instance, Wolfowitz famously claimed there was no history of ethnic strife in Iraq, and Kristol added that it was “pop sociology” to claim that the Shia and Sunnis don’t get along. Well, I’ll sheepishly admit that I only got to the 1940s in Charles Tripp’s A History of Iraq. But it was pretty much all ethnic strife up until then. I’m sure most of that subsided though when Saddam al-Tikrit took power.
Remember too that these were not marginal players, so Ward Churchill quotes can’t make things even. Wolfowitz was the second most powerful man in the Defense Department. The National Review is the magazine of record of American conservatism. Say what you will about them, but these aren’t exactly the fringes of pro-war opinion.
Well said. Although I think it overstates the case to say that there are voices on the pro-war side that make compelling arguments.
April 1st, 2008
|
Iraq |
no comments
This seems fairly definitive:
A study by two nonprofit journalism organizations found that President Bush and top administration officials issued hundreds of false statements about the national security threat from Iraq in the two years following the 2001 terrorist attacks.
The study concluded that the statements “were part of an orchestrated campaign that effectively galvanized public opinion and, in the process, led the nation to war under decidedly false pretenses.”
The study was posted Tuesday on the Web site of the Center for Public Integrity, which worked with the Fund for Independence in Journalism.
Hundreds of false statements. Hundreds. They were so desperate for their war that they made hundreds of false statements. 935 in a two year period, according the study. That is 1.28 lies per day in the service of the most disastrous foreign policy blunder in American history. None of them were about a blow job, though, so I guess that makes it all right. They are the kind of people that the Villagers admire, so what’s a lie and a quarter a day for two years leading to thousands upon thousands of deaths?
And why, pray tell, should we listen to a thing this Administration says about foreign policy? If they lied almost a thousand times to get their war with Iraq, why would they not lie two thousand times to get their war with Iran? Why would they not lie three thousand times to get their unconstitutional, warrantless wiretapping and telecom immunity?
January 23rd, 2008
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Politics, Iraq |
12 comments
I am sorry I missed this (been a busy day, personally), but the ACLU is kicking off a close Gito campaign. It has been six years since we opened that black hole. We haven’t given a single person in that camp the rights of a prisoner of war or charged them criminally. The BUsh Administration fought for years to keep them locked away forever, subject only to the whims of Bush or his surrogates. And when the Supreme Court, an institution as far right as any in the country, finally pointed out that such treatment was inhumane, illegal, and un-American, the Bush Administration created a process that kept the accused from seeing the evidence against them and allowed evidence based on torture to be used against them. The prison camp at Gitmo is a symbol to the world of our leader’s cowardice and viciousness and it is the single most effective propaganda tool the terrorists have. When they want to “prove” that all our high minded rhetoric about freedom and democracy is a lie, when they want to “prove” that our wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are nothing more than a holy war against Muslim, all they have to do is say one word: Gitmo. It is long past time it be closed.
You can find out more here.
January 11th, 2008
|
General, Legal Issues, Iraq, Terrorism, Torture |
one comment
Hilzoy nails it:
People sometimes talk about “doing what it takes in Iraq”, or “giving the surge a chance”, as though such choices had no actual downside; as though letting George W. Bush have his way on Iraq policy was like letting your child pursue some wildly improbable but ultimately harmless dream. “Why not let him try?”, they say, as though he were a teenager hoping to become a movie star, or me trying to make the NBA. This is obviously crazy: nothing about Iraq is harmless. Our soldiers are dying in Iraq; our money is being spent there; our resources are being diverted away from places like Afghanistan, where they might have done a lot more good. And, to top it all off, we are doing damage to our Army that will take decades to undo, and that might prevent us from responding adequately the next time we face a real threat, rather than one that exists only in Bush and Cheney’s imaginations.
As they say, read the whole thing. Also be sure to read the Washington Monthly article she links.
December 20th, 2007
|
Iraq |
22 comments
In response to this crap, we find this:
Charles:
Thanks for your effort in this post.
I won’t repeat objections in previous comments, much of which I agree with, but I’ll add the following:
“Nationally, the impasse in the Iraqi government is not much more gridlocked than our national goverment.”
Cripes. I’m going to ask that you consider removing that sentence from the post, along with the usual “invested in defeat” boilerplate.
(Baby, all of us are invested in whatever happens in Iraq for the next 50 years. It’s unfortunate that our one-time business partner, Saddam Hussein, couldn’t be around to help us pay off the balloon payments on that subprime loan the Administration saddled us with before the house is foreclosed.)
Back to the offending sentence. Are you telling us that if the current gridlock between the Democrats in Congress and the Republican minority and the President over the Alternative Minimum Tax is not resolved soon that a bloody civil war will ensue?
Will Kurdish South Dakotans declare secession and together with their Kurdish brothers in North Dakota cause Canada to invade our northern border? Will tax-hating southern Republican religious conservatives begin planting roadside bombs and going door-to-door with machetes and hack liberal, government-supporting atheists into little pieces, starting with Warren Buffet?
Is partition coming soon in Texas? Will NATO garrison troops across the country in case things get out of control?
See, it’s sentences like the one I quoted that don’t let me put aside the notion that you are invested in something other than reality.
December 7th, 2007
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Bloggin, Iraq |
no comments
This is inexcusable:
Thousands of Iraqis whose support for the U.S. war effort in Iraq has put them and their families in grave danger at home are being excluded from a new fast-track system aimed at speeding up refugee resettlement in the United States for American allies, officials said Thursday.
The Bush administration within the next month will begin accepting refugee applications directly from the about 100 Iraqi employees of the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad and their relatives, letting them bypass an often-lengthy U.N. referral process in third countries where they must travel at great expense, they said.
But possibly tens of thousands more at-risk Iraqis — those who worked for private contractors, aid agencies or media outlets and their relatives — won’t be eligible due to objections from the Homeland Security Department, which fears that terrorists might use it to slip into the country, the officials said.
Homeland Security is effectively blocking contract employees, like drivers, translators, technicians, from benefiting from the initiative by insisting they provide official U.S. references and sponsors before applying for resettlement, a more stringent standard than for direct hires and even those in the U.N. system, according to the officials.
We invaded their country, destroyed its infrastructure, failed to provide either security or the political rebirth we [promised, and now we are going to turn our backs on thousands of people who helped us try to reach our goals. Why? becasue the Bush Administration and its backers are too God damn afraid of the Scary Brown Terrorists to do the right thing by these people. We owe these people, but the Bush Administration is perfectly willing to let them and their families be raped tortured and killed becasue, apparently, no one in the damn place is smart enough to figure out a way to minimize the already slight risk that a terrorist might slip into the country. The notion that terrorists could slip into the country under the cover of this program is silly. Could it happen? maybe - -but there are screening processes that could be done and, frankly, its easier for a terrorists to come into the country in a way that does not invite such stringent scrutiny. You’d have to be a pretty stupid terrorist to try this. Denying help to these people base don that is inhumane and disgusting.
It is a loathsome decision made by loathsome people . And may God have no mercy on their souls if they are just doing this to keep the number of official refugees down in order to allow Bush to keep pretending that things are just going swimmingly. And full credit, here, to the people at the State Department (and I have to assume this includes Rice and her deputies) who are backing legislation to let these people in and who are fighting the DHS to get them to do the right thing. This is, in a literal sense, the very least we can do for those Iraqis who tried to help us. We cannot turn our back on these people becasue of mis-placed and overblown fears over terrorism.
November 30th, 2007
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Iraq, Terrorism |
7 comments
The surge, apparently, was a miserable failure:
With American military successes outpacing political gains in Iraq, the Bush administration has lowered its expectation of quickly achieving major steps toward unifying the country, including passage of a long-stymied plan to share oil revenues and holding regional elections.
… Instead, administration officials say they are focusing their immediate efforts on several more limited but achievable goals in the hope of convincing Iraqis, foreign governments and Americans that progress is being made toward the political breakthroughs that the military campaign of the past 10 months was supposed to promote.
The short-term American targets include passage of a $48 billion Iraqi budget, something the Iraqis say they are on their way to doing anyway; renewing the United Nations mandate that authorizes an American presence in the country, which the Iraqis have done repeatedly before; and passing legislation to allow thousands of Baath Party members from Saddam Hussein’s era to rejoin the government. A senior Bush administration official described that goal as largely symbolic since rehirings have been quietly taking place already.
Remember, please, that the surge was intended to provide the security necessary to allow for political players to come to agreements regarding the future of the the country. No such progress has taken place and no such progress appears likely to take place in a time frame measured in anything less than years. Things are so bad that the Bush Administration is openly telling the New York Times that it is going to claim that things that are already done or just about to be done and whose completion apparently has nothing to do with the real, if slight, reduction in violence are signs of progress. They are like defense lineman bragging about how they stuffed the run after the opposing quarterback took a knee because there were ten seconds left in a game in which his team was up by twenty.
The Surge was supposed to be the be all ebd, the magic bullet that would make all of our Iraqi dreams come true. Instead, we can just add it to the long line of failures in Iraq that the Bush Administration has run up. So what next/ What new pipe dream will they trot out in 2008 to convince the press and the party faithful that is we just stay long enough, if we just get enough American soldiers and Iraqi civilians killed, the pony-filled utopia that they promised us in 2003 will finally appear.
But it wont. It probably never would have; its hard to graft a democracy onto people by force. But the Bush Administration practically guaranteed that it would not almost right from the start. Almost ever decision they have made — going it alone, going in without proper amounts of troops, refusing to plan for the occupation, an over-reliance on firepower and air-power, the poor security around arms depots, the disbanding of the Iraqi Army, the arming of Sunni and Shia militias at the expense of the central government, entrusting the management of the occupation to free-market ideologues and inexperienced GOP hacks and so many more, big and small — has made the situation in Iraq worse or had no appreciable affect. And so here we are, with another grand plan in the dust and no idea what to do next. Heck of a job, George.
November 26th, 2007
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General, Iraq |
9 comments
For the most unhinged pants-wetting alarmism in the face of imaginary terrorism, this year’s award goes to Bruce Kesler of the “Democracy Project“:
Stop arguing with your liberal friends about what a dangerous place the world is, and just send them this website. A friend just sent it to me. It’s called Global Incident Map: A Global Display of Terrorism and Other Suspicious Events.
You have to see it to believe it, and I really mean to believe it: The world is a very dangerous place.
It actually is a pretty interesting resource, though also somewhat alarmist. It features a world map with brightly-colored hazard symbols (Biohazard! Explosion! Fire! Electric Tram!) blinking and flashing at “hot spots” around the globe. Better is a dated list of “incidents” broken down by category, with links to further details, ranging back one week. If you’re interested in political violence, this looks like a good monitoring tool. It’s rather overwrought (what exactly I am supposed to feel in response to a blinking tram car symbol I just don’t know, and the Google satellite images of every location are cool but not particularly informative), but you can get good information out of it.
But, typically of the right-wing incitement-to-riot brigade, the message Kesler takes from it is just the opposite of what any rational analysis could possibly come up with.
Looking at the current page (it updates every 7 minutes), there are 77 incidents listed from around the entire world in the past week. That works out to about one incident per every 2 1/2 countries, per week. But in fact, only 26 unique countries are mentioned, most of them more than once. So according to this resource, there was no terrorism at all in over 80% of the nations of the world in the past week. And of the countries that are listed, the US and Israel acount for almost a third of all the incidents. So you’re down to about one incident per month per country, if you’re not a citizen of “greater USRael”.
But what of those incidents? Frankly, they’re pretty lame. Among the 77 “Terrorism Events and Other Suspicious Activity” that Bruce Kesler is panicking over are such heart-stoppers as: “Contents of suspicous envelope handed over to [Irish police]”, “White powder at NAACP was harmless”, “Protester chained to railway line” and “Transpo[rtation] station back to normal after bomb scare”. Oh, my god! A transportation station was back to normal!? Somebody found a white powder that was harmless!? What a dangerous world we live in, with all this “Terrorism and Suspicious Activity” going on!
To be sure, many of the incidents listed are actual terrorism, some of them fatal. And the list is clearly woefully incomplete: it includes 10 incidents in Israel, Gaza, and the West Bank, but every one has Palestinians as the suspected terrorists; there is not a single incident of Israeli violence against Palestinians listed. There are only 2 terrorist incidents listed in all of Iraq for the past week, but 14 throughout the continental US. So we can’t take this list as exhaustive, and, of course, no such violent incidents should be minimized no matter how distant or infrequent. But for all its flaws, this is the list that has Bruce Kesler in a tizzy - the one he says proves that “the world is a dangerous place”, the one you should monitor constantly to keep yourself in a keen pitch for the Wah on Terra:
There’s nothing I’ve ever experienced – short of actually experiencing war or terrorist incidents –that so brings the message home, literally, right to your computer, and so comprehensively, about the need to be vigilant. . . .
Simply amazing. Belongs on everyone’s computer screen.
So Bruce is going to spend his life being vigilant about what he sees on this map. OK . . . . Assuming every one of these often-laughable “Events” is actually a terrorist incident, and they each kill 10 people (most of them actually killed no one), and assuming for the sake of simplicity that they occur randomly throughout the world, and accepting the US Census Bureau’s estimated world population of 6.63 billion, that would give each person in the world a weekly chance of death by terrorism of . . . 0.0000011%, or about 0.0006% (1:166,667) annually. Assuming you live in the US (14 incidents), Israel (10 incidents, and a 100% victimization rate - not a single incident of violence that involves Israelis is their fault), India (7 incidents), or Afghanistan or Pakistan (5 incidents each), and taking the populations of those countries together (1.602 billion), that gives a likelihood of involvement in a “Terrorism Event” of 0.0000026% per week, or 0.00013% (1:769,230)annually, for citizens of these horribly dangerous countries. Those numbers constitute a “very dangerous” world for Bruce.
I hope nobody tells him, because he might die from simple fear, but here are some other things for Bruce to be vigilant about:
| Hideous Danger |
Yearly Death Rate |
| Terrorism |
1/769,230 |
| Liposuction |
1/5,000 |
| Pedestrian Accidents |
1/58,000 |
| Firearms |
1/366,000 |
| Recreational Boating |
1/399,000 |
| Bicycling |
1/410,000 |
Yes . . . the fear that gnaws at Bruce Kesler’s heart . . . at any moment he could be attacked by a terrorist, or 154 liposuction doctors. Tell your liberal friends.
UPDATE: Fixed minor errors and typos.
November 21st, 2007
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General, Politics, Culture, Iraq, Terrorism, Media, News & Current Events, Math, Fiasco |
one comment
Via Glenn Greenwald, we see that Powerline has surrendered to Bin Laden:
Who is Keith Ellison? (22)
I believe we ran 21 posts in our “Who is Keith Ellison?” series last year before Ellison was elected Minnesota’s Fifth District representative last November. I summarized the Ellison research in the Weekly Standard article “Louis Farrakhan’s first congressman” and the companion post “Keith Ellison for dummies.”
This week’s Star Tribune report on Ellison’s new cause [due process for al-Haj] prompts me to resurrect the series for part 22 . . . Reader Norm Carpenter asks us to connect the dots, from Guantanamo, to Al Jazeera, to Ellison. Who is Keith Ellison, and whom does he represent?
And what terrible crime did Ellison commit? he demanded that people — particularly an accredited journalist — be given hearings and trials at which they would either be convicted or released. And that brings out the smear machine.
Well, let me give the boys at Powerline another example of an American hating traitor:
The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world.
… For depriving us in many cases, of the benefit of Trial by Jury:
That is from the Declaration of Independence, perhaps, to steal a line, the most masterful expression of the American mind. Or, it least it used to be the most masterful expression of the American mind. But now, apparently, those words mean nothing to the people at places like Powerline and the White House. They have abandoned a principle so important hat it helped lead to the founding of the country, despite their strident demands that we all respect their patriotism. it is a strange patriotism that turns its back upon the founding ideals of a nation at the first sign of danger. The country could use quite a bit less of the White House’s patriotism if that is how they wish to define it.
No, some combination of fear, bigotry, and a deep seated authoritarianism (which, in the end, is just another kind of fear. Authoritarians want some Big Strong Leader to protect them, to make everything all right, to keep the bad thoughts out of their precious little heads. To be an authoritarian follower is to be afraid of the world all of the time) have lead them to throw away everything good and decent about the country because Bin Laden conducted one successful attack on the country. Bin Laden has already beaten these people. He has, with one blow, caused them to abandon the ideals that Bin Laden was fighting against and, by so doing so, take the kids of actions that cannot but help Bin Laden “prove” that his propaganda about the country is correct.
Bin Laden has beaten them.
November 5th, 2007
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Politics, Iraq, Terrorism |
3 comments
Roger Cohen thinks that Europe is too pacifist, too unwilling to fight and die in Afghanistan:
The former group, battling the Taliban in Helmand Province and elsewhere, includes the United States, Britain, Canada and the Netherlands. The latter is dominated by Germany, Spain and Italy. The split gives a rough guide to parts of the world that still see military force as inextricable from international security and others that are now functionally pacifist.
“In Afghanistan, NATO solidarity collapses at the point of danger,” said Julian Lindley-French, a military expert at the Netherlands Defense Academy. “There’s no point planning robust operations worldwide if the burden is not shared. A lot of the German troops are little more than heavily armed traffic cops.”
Canada, with about 2,500 soldiers in Afghanistan, has seen 71 killed. That is about three times the German losses and seven times the Italian. Britain has more than 80 dead, and the United States almost 450. These are eloquent numbers.
There are several problems here, only one of which he addresses at all: Pakistan
One German retort I’ve heard is that it’s no good having the United States demand that its allies fight and die in southern Afghanistan when Washington refuses debate over the role of its pampered friend, Pakistan, in the violence.
That’s a fair point. Still, it’s time to bring on the Bundesmacht and past time for continental Europe to overcome its pacifist mirage and accept that these are dangerous times demanding serious defense budgets and sacrifice.
Cohen says its a fair point, but then, without even attempting to address it, says that Europe should just do as he wants anyway. But why should the EU send more troops to fight and die in a war that the actions of its primary ally make un-winnable? If southern Afghanistan cannot be pacified without dealing with the border region of Pakistan — not an unreasonable conclusion - -and the United States refuses to take any steps to force Pakistan to allow that region to be pacified - -which is a fair description of US policy at this point — then why should EU soldiers die in a fight they cannot win? How is it pacifisim to avoid wasting the lives of your soldiers?
But Cohen’s biggest oversight is the failure to address the affect that Bush Iraq disaster has had on the international playing field. Cohen writes that the mission in Iraq has changed and that the Taliban is resurgent. He ails to mention that those sad events have come about because the United States went off on a hair-brained scheme in Iraq instead of finishing the job in Afghanistan. What purpose does it serve for the Eu to become even more tightly ensnared in Afghanistan not knowing whether or not the US is serious about its commitment in Afghanistan. The EU already knows that Bush has no intention of ever leaving Iraq, much less shifting the focus of American military to Afghanistan.
More importantly, Bush’s Iraq war has been a monumental disaster. It has destabilized the region, lent credence to the propaganda of the terrorist, provided them with a marvelous recruiting tool, and made it easier for them to learn how to attack Western forces. Perhpas the Eu is worried about following the US lead, even in Afghanistan, becasue it is convinced that the US doesn;t have the first clue as to how to fight an insurgency or deal with the Muslim world. We have already seen reports of British commanders begging their US counterparts to not use so many air-strikes, as they kill indiscriminately and drive people into the arms of the Taliban as a result. Perhaps the EU is making the rational decision that they need to try tactics other than that of the US but that effort would be torpedoed by closer military co-operation with bumbling US commanders in the south of Afghanistan.
Perhaps I am wrong; perhaps the concerns I lay out here are overblown or of such little cost compared ot the potential gain that they should be put aside. But Cohen doesn’t even consider those issues. No, to him, Germans are pacifists and weak because they refuse to rush headlong into supporting, without question or control, what the Bush Administration does in the south of Afghanistan. IN Cohen’s world, there could never be a rational, well though out, compelling reason not to blow sh*t up. No, refusal to fall in line is the result of a moral failing or the result of wishful thinking, of believing in a “mirage”.
Cohen, a columnist for the New York Times, has just written an opinion piece whose “argument” is little more than name calling and chest thumping, barely fir for the playground much less a serious columnist. And yet he is a serious columnist, writing from one of the loftiest perches in the free world. That he and his editors thinks this an op-ed suitable for publication is both stunning and terrifying. Welcome to the our nation’s very serious foreign policy discussion; fell free to check your brain at the door. It appears that most of our commentariat has.
October 25th, 2007
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Culture, Iraq, Terrorism, Media |
2 comments
David Horowitz, the right-wing provocateur, along with Michelle Malkin and similar bottom-feeders, is promoting “Islamofascism Awareness Week” this month on college campuses, in conjunction with college conservative groups. It’s another exercise in putting a smugly self-righteous face on their own bigotry.
October 17th, 2007
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General, Politics, Church & State, Religion, Culture, Iraq, Terrorism, News & Current Events, Iran |
25 comments
the Iraqis are not interested in a national government:
Iraqi leaders argue that sectarian animosity is entrenched in the structure of their government. Instead of reconciliation, they now stress alternative and perhaps more attainable goals: streamlining the government bureaucracy, placing experienced technocrats in positions of authority and improving the dismal record of providing basic services.
“I don’t think there is something called reconciliation, and there will be no reconciliation as such,” said Deputy Prime Minister Barham Salih, a Kurd. “To me, it is a very inaccurate term. This is a struggle about power.”
American troops have been bleeding and dying in order to provide a secure space for Iraqi leaders to reconcile their various factions to a national government. Those Iraqi leaders are not interested in such reconciliation, only in the relative position of their faction in the new Iraq. This means that American troops are dying and bleeding in order for Iraqi politicians to attempt to increase their power, sometimes through politics, sometimes through bullets, relative to their neighbors. To be blunt, we are providing cover for a vicious civil war.
Explain to me, please, how we are supposed to get to a stable, secure, democratic Iraq from here.
October 8th, 2007
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Iraq |
one comment
You take seriously things like this:
A Pentagon group has encouraged some U.S. military snipers in Iraq to target suspected insurgents by scattering pieces of “bait,” such as detonation cords, plastic explosives and ammunition, and then killing Iraqis who pick up the items, according to military court documents.
The classified program was described in investigative documents related to recently filed murder charges against three snipers who are accused of planting evidence on Iraqis they killed.
“Baiting is putting an object out there that we know they will use, with the intention of destroying the enemy,” Capt. Matthew P. Didier, the leader of an elite sniper scout platoon attached to the 1st Battalion of the 501st Infantry Regiment, said in a sworn statement. “Basically, we would put an item out there and watch it. If someone found the item, picked it up and attempted to leave with the item, we would engage the individual as I saw this as a sign they would use the item against U.S. Forces.”
So they are going to put down material and shoot anyone who walks away with it. Never mind that the material could be used for something other than military operations; never mind that many, if not most, of the people who come across this stuff will not know what it is; never mind that people are pack racks and just pick things up because; never mind that the Iraqi economy is a mess and people will be on the lookout for things to use or sell; never mind that people in a war zone tend to try and remove armaments from locations where people could get hurt. Never mind, in other words, that this program is absolutely guaranteed to kill innocents.
I shouldn’t have to say this, but apparently I do: you do not win against an insurgency by random, indiscriminate violence. All that does is make it easier for the insurgents to get help and to recruit. The fact that such an idiotic and obviously counterproductive program has been put in place means that the US Army is losing in Iraq. This is the kind of stupidity that only happens when an occupying power has become frustrated past the point of reason. It is mindless lashing out, driven by the desire to do something to hurt the bastards that are hurting you. But counter-insurgency cannot succeed without the support of the population. When you stop making plans with that in mind, you start losing the war.
September 24th, 2007
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Iraq, Terrorism |
5 comments
Widely seen, but worth linking: Dick Cheney on why occupying Iraq was an obviously bad idea.
[I]f we’d gone to Baghdad [in the first Gulf War] we would have been all alone. There wouldn’t have been anybody else with us. There would have been a U.S. occupation of Iraq. None of the Arab forces that were willing to fight with us in Kuwait were willing to invade Iraq.
Once you got to Iraq and took it over, took down Saddam Hussein’s government, then what are you going to put in its place? That’s a very volatile part of the world, and if you take down the central government of Iraq, you could very easily end up seeing pieces of Iraq fly off: part of it, the Syrians would like to have to the west, part of it — eastern Iraq — the Iranians would like to claim, they fought over it for eight years. In the north you’ve got the Kurds, and if the Kurds spin loose and join with the Kurds in Turkey, then you threaten the territorial integrity of Turkey.
It’s a quagmire if you go that far and try to take over Iraq.
The other thing was casualties. Everyone was impressed with the fact we were able to do our job with as few casualties as we had. But for the 146 Americans killed in action, and for their families — it wasn’t a cheap war. And the question for the president, in terms of whether or not we went on to Baghdad, took additional casualties in an effort to get Saddam Hussein, was how many additional dead Americans is Saddam worth?
Our judgment was, not very many, and I think we got it right.
Total US fatalities during Cheney’s second war in Iraq, to date: 3,689
Ratio with fatalities in first Gulf War: 12.6 : 1
US combat fatalities: 3,270
Ratio with first Gulf War: 22.6 : 1
“Coalition” fatalities: 297
Ratio with first Gulf War: 4.6 : 1
Other US casualties: 27,186
Ratio with first Gulf War: 183.7 : 1
US suicides: 118
Ratio with first Gulf War: unk.
Minimum reported Iraqi security force casualties: >7,350
Ratio with first Gulf War: N/A
(all sources as above)
Minimum reported Iraqi civilian fatalities beginning 2005: 65,000 - 76,000
Ratio with first Gulf War: approx. 20 : 1
You’re doing a heck of a job!
Hat Tip: Editor and Publisher
August 13th, 2007
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General, Politics, Iraq, Media, News & Current Events, Fiasco |
2 comments
Yesterday, a suicide bomber killed 28 people in the Northern Iraqi city of Tal Afar. It puts a gruesome exclamation point on the demise of the lone bright spot in the Iraq war, and serves as a microcosm of what might have been in Iraq, versus what actually was.
A little history is in order here. After the fall of Saddam Hussein, the city of Tal Afar was a particularly nasty place. It was a hotbed of insurgent activity, and its position near the Syrian border made it possible for such insurgents to get outside support. The city was one of the worst places in Iraq, and its outlook was bleak.
Enter Col. H.R. McMaster. He was tasked with stabilizing Tal Afar and suppressing insurgent efforts there. Beginning in May-June of 2005, McMaster’s forces engaged in a three-phase plan to secure Tal Afar and the surrounding Ninawa province. It started with a methodical sweep of the city to kill or capture insurgents and their leaders. Then the entire city was actively patrolled by armed troops to keep the peace and discourage new insurgent attacks. Finally, they put their good intentions into practice by rebuilding the infrastructure of the city. The strategy became known as clear-hold-build. And it worked.
If you ever saw footage of American troops fraternizing with Iraqi civilians — smiling, chatting, taking pictures, etc. — there’s a good chance that this footage came from Tal Afar. Clear-hold-build was a blueprint for how to establish peace in Iraqi cities. If it could work in Tal Afar, one of the worst places in all of Iraq, why couldn’t it work elsewhere?
Many people in the government took notice, including Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice. She and others actively went to bat for clear-hold-build as a strategy moving forward. There was one big problem, however: Clear-hold-build is very manpower-intensive, and it therefore ran directly counter to the administration’s preference to try to execute the war with a thin force. With the 2006 midterms looming, and the American public already weary of American efforts there, clear-hold-build was rejected, with the administration foolishly accepting Iraqi government promises that they would do the holding and building.
We all know how this turned out. To be honest, by the time all this happened (roughly September of 2006), it was almost certainly already too late for anything like success in Iraq. But the limited success of clear-hold-build in Tal Afar, while it lasted, shows that whatever you might think about the justification for going into Iraq, proper planning and adequate deployment from the beginning could have limited or prevented the disaster we currently have on our hands.
Tal Afar, once the lone beacon of hope, has once again fallen into the despair that plagues the entire country. What could have been a model for American success in Iraq is instead yet another example of the completeness of our failure there.
(Primary sources here and here. I highly recommend both.)
August 7th, 2007
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Politics, Iraq, Terrorism |
26 comments
You start by involving the Air Force:
Away from the headlines and debate over the “surge” in U.S. ground troops, the Air Force has quietly built up its hardware inside Iraq, sharply stepped up bombing and laid a foundation for a sustained air campaign in support of American and Iraqi forces.
… “Night before last we had 14 strikes from B-1 bombers. Last night we had 18 strikes by B-1 bombers,” Maj. Gen. Rick Lynch said approvingly of air support his 3rd Infantry Division received in a recent offensive south of Baghdad.
Statistics tell the story: Air Force and Navy aircraft dropped 437 bombs and missiles in Iraq in the first six months of 2007, a fivefold increase over the 86 used in the first half of 2006, and three times more than in the second half of 2006, according to Air Force data. In June, bombs dropped at a rate of more than five a day.
Bombs are not precision weapons, or, at least, not precise enough to avoid injuring or killing innocents. And injuring or killing innocents is the surest way to increase support for an insurgancy. If you are an Iraqi and one house in your block is a strong point for insurgents and the Americans drop bombs n that house, inevitably casuing damage and death to innocents, why aren’t you going to believe the insurgents when they tell you that the Americans don;t care about your life and have no intention of ever leaving you to rule yourself?
It is almost as if our government is working for the insurgents. We have an armed forces culture that is allergic to counter-insurgency, a weak, unintelligent President unable to understand why this is a bad thing or force a better way on the military and a Vice-President who thinks that there is no problem that cannot be solved by firepower. It is, in short, exactly the kind of enemy Bin Laden and the insurgents thought existed only in their wildest dreams.
July 31st, 2007
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General, Iraq, Terrorism |
no comments
The Iraqi soccer teams has won the Asian Cup. I will leave it to readers more familiar with football to tell me whether or not this is a prestigious trophy, but the press is certianly covering it as a monumental victory:
raq delivered an inspirational victory Sunday by winning the Asian Cup with a 1-0 victory over Saudi Arabia, a beacon of hope for a nation divided by war.
It was an extraordinary triumph for a team drawn together from all parts of the Gulf and with its players straddling bitter and violent ethnic divides.
I wish this would matter. I wish that this could be a catalyst to good feeling and well wishing and a recognition that the religious and ethnic differences don;t matter as much as common history, shared culture, and basic human decency. But that’s the problem, isn’t it? They don;t have a common history. Kurds and Shiites were the oppressed; Sunnis were the oppressors. They don’t have a shared culture. Kurds do not think of themselves as Arabs or Iraqis. People in the large urban centers tend toward modern secularism and plurality — at least, they did before the civil war we unleashed forced people to take sides — and people in the rural areas were still tied to tribal allegiances from before the Europeans first imposed their will on the region. IN those regions, Sunni and Shiite are separated by their sectionalism instead of drawn together by their larger beliefs. And as for common humanity, well, the headlines should prove that common decency has been slaughtered by four years of occupation and small scale civil war.
We will probably see pictures of celebrating Iraqis and hear stories of Sunni and Shiite celebrating together. And those are nice stories. Maybe, when everyone is finally sick of the death and destruction, this moment will be looked upon fondly, perhaps even used a rhetorical justification for the final reconciliations. But right now the violence is in full swing, spured on by legitimate differences in visions for the future and fears of the present. A fairytale isn;t going to solve any of that.
July 30th, 2007
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General, Sports, Iraq, Terrorism |
no comments
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