In the 1990s, we became more aware of the importance not only of I.Q. to success but also of “E.Q.” — “emotional intelligence quotient.” Authors like Daniel Goleman explained E.Q. in part as an ability to assess, adjust to and influence the emotions of others.
These days, as we grope for a new policy in Iraq, we desperately need that kind of emotional intelligence, particularly toward overseas nationalism. Insensitivity to nationalism may be the biggest foreign policy mistake the U.S. and Europe alike have made in the last half-century — from Vietnam to Suez, Mexico to Algeria — and we’ve been repeating it in Iraq.
One of the essential paradoxes is that even well-meaning efforts to stabilize Iraq with our military presence inflame Iraqi nationalism and bolster nationalist extremists. Inadvertently, because we’re not sensitive enough to how our actions are perceived in the Iraqi cauldron, we end up empowering extremists who destabilize the country.
Exhibit A is the shadowy man who has won a reputation as perhaps the single most brutal mass murderer there, Abu Deraa. He is a Shiite who in the late Saddam years was apparently just a petty forger, according to Terrorism Monitor, a publication of the Jamestown Foundation.
Abu Deraa won renown as a “patriot” who attacked U.S. armored vehicles. Then he diversified into criminal kidnapping, which generated cash to make him a player and finance his band of gangsters.
The whispers about Abu Deraa and his torture of the Sunnis he captures — he specializes in using electric drills on their skulls — have won him increasingly mythic status. Some of the biggest and boldest attacks in Iraq are attributed to him, and he brings creativity and economies of scale to his murder enterprise. An Australian news account described how he once drove a fleet of ambulances into a Sunni neighborhood and used loudspeakers to call on young men to donate blood to help fellow Sunnis injured by Shiites. Dozens of young men came forward — and were executed.
Abu Deraa told Time magazine, in an interview through an intermediary, that his fight is against “occupiers, their supporters” and Sunni insurgents, and he painted himself as a pious Muslim driven by a “sense of holy duty” to attack American forces. Those arguments resonate among some Shiites, who see him as a hero and protect him, even as he helps tear his country apart.
At bottom, Abu Deraa is a psychopathic thug who terrorizes fellow Iraqis. But he has been able to use his attacks on American forces to win political cover to foment civil war.
So as we Americans plan our own strategy for Iraq, let’s show more emotional intelligence. The Iraqi Study Group is right about needing to consult with neighbors like Syria and Iran, but that doesn’t resolve another central problem in Iraq: Our open-ended military presence, perceived by Iraqis as a grab for Iraqi oil and bases, ends up legitimizing extremists like Abu Deraa and aggravating civil war.
Our military presence risks expanding the civil war in another way. As we side more openly with the Shiite government in its struggle against Sunni insurgents, Saudi Arabia — already nervous about the rise of Shiites — is hinting that it may help the Sunnis defend themselves. We could end up with a war in which Iran and Iraqi Shiites battle against Saudi Arabia, Jordan and Iraqi Sunni Arabs. (That’s when gas prices reach $5 a gallon.)
So let’s raise our E.Q. and take account of Iraqi emotions and nationalist sensitivities, particularly alarm about American bases on Iraqi soil. For starters, we can (as Don Rumsfeld noted in his leaked memo) quickly give back up to 50 of our 55 military bases in Iraq.
We should also state clearly that we will not keep any permanent military bases in Iraq. That’s not going to persuade the extremist insurgents, but polls suggest that such an announcement would reduce the support that extremists get from ordinary Iraqis. That’s a simple step that would save American and Iraqi lives.
The same logic argues for a timetable for withdrawal from Iraq, ending by November 2007. Granted, there is a real risk that the bloodbath will worsen significantly when we leave. But Iraqis themselves say overwhelmingly in polls that our presence is inflaming the violence rather than reducing it, and a timetable would be a useful signal that we really are going to pull out and that Iraqi factions need to conciliate and address their own problems.
We needn’t cut and run. But let’s post a schedule, and then cut and walk.
Monday, December 04, 2006
THOMAS B. EDSALL: Risk and Reward
The G.O.P. is the party of risk, aggression, military assertion and dominance — an approach that led to the implosion in Iraq and the Republicans’ defeat in November. Now the Democrats have a chance to demonstrate a core difference in how the two parties calculate and manage risk.
In “Fiasco,” Thomas Ricks describes the results of the Republican approach: “Bush’s decision to invade Iraq … ultimately may come to be seen as one of the most profligate actions in the history of American foreign policy. … The U.S.-led invasion was launched recklessly, with a flawed plan for war and a worse approach to occupation.”
While inflicting destruction on the Iraqis, Bush multiplied America’s enemies and endangered this nation’s military, economic health and international stature. Courting risk without managing it, Bush repeatedly and remorselessly failed to accurately evaluate the consequences of his actions.
The embroilment in Iraq is not an aberration. It stems from core party principles equally evident on the domestic front. For a quarter-century, the Republican temper — its reckless drive to jettison the social safety net; its support of violence in law enforcement and in national defense; its advocacy of regressive taxation, environmental hazard and pro-business deregulation; its ‘remoralizing’ of the pursuit of wealth — has been judged by many voters as essential to America’s position in the world, producing more benefit than cost.
While some Republican long shots have paid off handsomely (the Reagan administration’s accelerated arms race arguably drove the former Soviet Union into bankruptcy), now the dice are turning up snake eyes. In November, voters concluded that the Bush administration had run one risk too many. After 40 years of ascendancy, the G.O.P. has provided Democrats with an opening. Will the Democratic Party, often insufficiently authoritative and bold, manage risk better? Democrats arguably suffer from their own impaired judgment: utopian faith in the power of negotiation and compromise — naïve, perhaps, in a world where the threat of bloodshed is endemic.
In this election campaign, the Democratic leadership offered pallid, nonspecific policy initiatives — in the House, a “bipartisan solution to strengthen Social Security,” and in the Senate, a call to “work together to strengthen Social Security and Medicare.”
Nonetheless, buried in a morass of campaign-season evasion were the outlines of a potentially salable political program. Representative Rahm Emanuel, the Democratic Caucus chairman, pointed out that 16 of the seats the party won in November were suburban or exurban. He contended that the election marked the emergence of a new “metropolitan” populism, “a revolt of the center against the Rovian model of polarization politics.” In Emanuel’s view, “Prescription drugs, gas prices and economic populism are no longer associated with blue-collar downscale voters. Office park workers can be just as populist as industrial workers — they are struggling under rising college and health care costs too. They resent giveaways to H.M.O.s; they don’t want subsidies to oil companies when oil is 68 bucks a barrel. We are going to deal with the oil royalty issue, and we can cut the interest rates for student loans.”
Serious Democratic policy makers are beginning to rigorously assess and quantify risk with an eye toward generating growth, calculating “second-, third- and fourth-order effects,” while aiming to avoid, for example, the “silent trade-offs” that the economic strategist Gene Sperling writes about, which occur when “well-intentioned policies to protect certain workers or communities impose burdens on similarly situated or worse-off workers who were not included in the immediate cost-benefit calculations.”
The morass in Iraq has created a Democratic moment. As the party struggles to forge a working majority, it must strike a delicate balance, argue Jason Bordoff and colleagues at the Brookings Institution’s Hamilton Project. Allocating excessive economic risk to individuals can harm economic growth as well as family well-being, they note. Conversely, “poorly designed programs to protect against risks can distort economic incentives and impair overall economic performance.”
For the Democrats to thread this needle will take a steady hand.
Thomas B. Edsall, who holds the Pulitzer-Moore Chair at the Columbia Graduate School of Journalism, is a guest columnist.
In “Fiasco,” Thomas Ricks describes the results of the Republican approach: “Bush’s decision to invade Iraq … ultimately may come to be seen as one of the most profligate actions in the history of American foreign policy. … The U.S.-led invasion was launched recklessly, with a flawed plan for war and a worse approach to occupation.”
While inflicting destruction on the Iraqis, Bush multiplied America’s enemies and endangered this nation’s military, economic health and international stature. Courting risk without managing it, Bush repeatedly and remorselessly failed to accurately evaluate the consequences of his actions.
The embroilment in Iraq is not an aberration. It stems from core party principles equally evident on the domestic front. For a quarter-century, the Republican temper — its reckless drive to jettison the social safety net; its support of violence in law enforcement and in national defense; its advocacy of regressive taxation, environmental hazard and pro-business deregulation; its ‘remoralizing’ of the pursuit of wealth — has been judged by many voters as essential to America’s position in the world, producing more benefit than cost.
While some Republican long shots have paid off handsomely (the Reagan administration’s accelerated arms race arguably drove the former Soviet Union into bankruptcy), now the dice are turning up snake eyes. In November, voters concluded that the Bush administration had run one risk too many. After 40 years of ascendancy, the G.O.P. has provided Democrats with an opening. Will the Democratic Party, often insufficiently authoritative and bold, manage risk better? Democrats arguably suffer from their own impaired judgment: utopian faith in the power of negotiation and compromise — naïve, perhaps, in a world where the threat of bloodshed is endemic.
In this election campaign, the Democratic leadership offered pallid, nonspecific policy initiatives — in the House, a “bipartisan solution to strengthen Social Security,” and in the Senate, a call to “work together to strengthen Social Security and Medicare.”
Nonetheless, buried in a morass of campaign-season evasion were the outlines of a potentially salable political program. Representative Rahm Emanuel, the Democratic Caucus chairman, pointed out that 16 of the seats the party won in November were suburban or exurban. He contended that the election marked the emergence of a new “metropolitan” populism, “a revolt of the center against the Rovian model of polarization politics.” In Emanuel’s view, “Prescription drugs, gas prices and economic populism are no longer associated with blue-collar downscale voters. Office park workers can be just as populist as industrial workers — they are struggling under rising college and health care costs too. They resent giveaways to H.M.O.s; they don’t want subsidies to oil companies when oil is 68 bucks a barrel. We are going to deal with the oil royalty issue, and we can cut the interest rates for student loans.”
Serious Democratic policy makers are beginning to rigorously assess and quantify risk with an eye toward generating growth, calculating “second-, third- and fourth-order effects,” while aiming to avoid, for example, the “silent trade-offs” that the economic strategist Gene Sperling writes about, which occur when “well-intentioned policies to protect certain workers or communities impose burdens on similarly situated or worse-off workers who were not included in the immediate cost-benefit calculations.”
The morass in Iraq has created a Democratic moment. As the party struggles to forge a working majority, it must strike a delicate balance, argue Jason Bordoff and colleagues at the Brookings Institution’s Hamilton Project. Allocating excessive economic risk to individuals can harm economic growth as well as family well-being, they note. Conversely, “poorly designed programs to protect against risks can distort economic incentives and impair overall economic performance.”
For the Democrats to thread this needle will take a steady hand.
Thomas B. Edsall, who holds the Pulitzer-Moore Chair at the Columbia Graduate School of Journalism, is a guest columnist.
Losing the Good War
NYT Editorial
Afghanistan was supposed to be the good war — and the war America was winning. But because of the Bush administration’s inattention and mismanagement, even the good war is going wrong.
The latest grim news is that after years of effort — and more than $1 billion spent — Afghanistan’s American-trained police force is unable to perform even routine law enforcement work. According to an article in yesterday’s Times, investigators for the Pentagon and the State Department found that the training program’s managers did not even know how many police officers were serving, while thousands of trucks and other American-purchased police equipment have simply disappeared.
The failure to provide local security — or even a semblance of impartial justice — helps explain why so many Afghans have lost confidence in the pro-Western government of President Hamid Karzai, and why a growing number are again turning to the Taliban for protection. The failure to stand up an effective police force also helps explain why opium cultivation rose by nearly 60 percent this year.
Creating even the most basic government institutions was always going to be difficult in a country as poor as Afghanistan. According to one expert, 70 percent or more of the recruits in the police training program are illiterate — not surprising in a country with a male literacy rate of only 43 percent. But the State Department and Pentagon compounded these problems, handing off the bulk of the police training work to an expensive private contractor and then failing to vigilantly monitor the program. We have seen that time and again in Iraq, where experts say the police training is at least as flawed.
There are many culprits for Afghanistan’s many problems. Mr. Karzai needs to do a lot more to curb the corruption that is rife among his political appointees. President Pervez Musharraf of Pakistan needs to do a lot more to stanch the torrent of Taliban fighters crossing his border into Afghanistan. NATO members need to send more troops to Afghanistan — with far fewer restrictions on how they fight.
As for fixing the police training program, there is little hope of that without also reforming the Afghan Ministry of Interior, which oversees the police, and is mired in both incompetence and corruption. Washington has sent some advisers to help clean up the ministry, but the effort is moving far too slowly. And the United States and its allies need to send a lot more police advisers to walk the beat with the newly graduated recruits, who get just a few months of classroom training. That is standard practice for training effective police forces, but it has not been tried in Afghanistan.
Mr. Bush’s decision to rush off to invade Iraq meant that Afghanistan would be shortchanged when it came to resources and to policy makers’ priority lists. The cost of that inattention can be seen in the failing Afghan police force. It can also be seen in the Taliban’s growing strength, the mounting death toll of Afghan civilians and NATO troops, and the unraveling of the Karzai government. So much for winning the good war.
Afghanistan was supposed to be the good war — and the war America was winning. But because of the Bush administration’s inattention and mismanagement, even the good war is going wrong.
The latest grim news is that after years of effort — and more than $1 billion spent — Afghanistan’s American-trained police force is unable to perform even routine law enforcement work. According to an article in yesterday’s Times, investigators for the Pentagon and the State Department found that the training program’s managers did not even know how many police officers were serving, while thousands of trucks and other American-purchased police equipment have simply disappeared.
The failure to provide local security — or even a semblance of impartial justice — helps explain why so many Afghans have lost confidence in the pro-Western government of President Hamid Karzai, and why a growing number are again turning to the Taliban for protection. The failure to stand up an effective police force also helps explain why opium cultivation rose by nearly 60 percent this year.
Creating even the most basic government institutions was always going to be difficult in a country as poor as Afghanistan. According to one expert, 70 percent or more of the recruits in the police training program are illiterate — not surprising in a country with a male literacy rate of only 43 percent. But the State Department and Pentagon compounded these problems, handing off the bulk of the police training work to an expensive private contractor and then failing to vigilantly monitor the program. We have seen that time and again in Iraq, where experts say the police training is at least as flawed.
There are many culprits for Afghanistan’s many problems. Mr. Karzai needs to do a lot more to curb the corruption that is rife among his political appointees. President Pervez Musharraf of Pakistan needs to do a lot more to stanch the torrent of Taliban fighters crossing his border into Afghanistan. NATO members need to send more troops to Afghanistan — with far fewer restrictions on how they fight.
As for fixing the police training program, there is little hope of that without also reforming the Afghan Ministry of Interior, which oversees the police, and is mired in both incompetence and corruption. Washington has sent some advisers to help clean up the ministry, but the effort is moving far too slowly. And the United States and its allies need to send a lot more police advisers to walk the beat with the newly graduated recruits, who get just a few months of classroom training. That is standard practice for training effective police forces, but it has not been tried in Afghanistan.
Mr. Bush’s decision to rush off to invade Iraq meant that Afghanistan would be shortchanged when it came to resources and to policy makers’ priority lists. The cost of that inattention can be seen in the failing Afghan police force. It can also be seen in the Taliban’s growing strength, the mounting death toll of Afghan civilians and NATO troops, and the unraveling of the Karzai government. So much for winning the good war.
Journalists Acquitted in Iraq WMD Case
COPENHAGEN, Denmark - Three Danish journalists who published classified intelligence reports on Iraq's former weapons program were acquitted Monday on charges of endangering national security.
The Copenhagen City Court ruled that Niels Lunde, chief editor of the Berlingske Tidende newspaper, and reporters Michael Bjerre and Jesper Larsen acted in the public interest when they published a series of articles in 2004 citing leaked Danish intelligence reports.
The articles said there was no evidence Iraq had weapons of mass destruction at the time of the U.S.-led invasion in 2003, one of the key reasons cited by the U.S. and Britain for going to war.
A former intelligence officer previously has been sentenced to four months in prison for leaking the documents in the case, which was viewed in Denmark as a landmark test of media freedom.
Lunde called the verdict "a great victory for the open society." Prosecutor Michael Joergensen said he had not yet decided whether to appeal.
Joergensen had recommended that each of the defendants be given a four-month prison term - the same sentence that former intelligence officer Frank Grevil received after he was convicted last year of leaking the documents to the reporters.
Judge Peter Lind Larsen said the "considerable public interest" in the information outweighed the government's concerns that its intelligence-gathering operations were jeopardized.
Press freedom advocates welcomed the decision, which was met with applause in the packed court room.
The Copenhagen City Court ruled that Niels Lunde, chief editor of the Berlingske Tidende newspaper, and reporters Michael Bjerre and Jesper Larsen acted in the public interest when they published a series of articles in 2004 citing leaked Danish intelligence reports.
The articles said there was no evidence Iraq had weapons of mass destruction at the time of the U.S.-led invasion in 2003, one of the key reasons cited by the U.S. and Britain for going to war.
A former intelligence officer previously has been sentenced to four months in prison for leaking the documents in the case, which was viewed in Denmark as a landmark test of media freedom.
Lunde called the verdict "a great victory for the open society." Prosecutor Michael Joergensen said he had not yet decided whether to appeal.
Joergensen had recommended that each of the defendants be given a four-month prison term - the same sentence that former intelligence officer Frank Grevil received after he was convicted last year of leaking the documents to the reporters.
Judge Peter Lind Larsen said the "considerable public interest" in the information outweighed the government's concerns that its intelligence-gathering operations were jeopardized.
Press freedom advocates welcomed the decision, which was met with applause in the packed court room.
US marine given 40 years for rape
BBC
A US marine has been sentenced to 40 years in prison for raping a local woman in the Philippines last year.
The sentence was handed down to Lance Corporal Daniel Smith in a Manila courtroom for the rape of the woman in a van at a former US navy base.
Three other defendants, Lance Corporals Keith Silkwood and Dominic Duplantis and Staff Sergeant Chad Carpentier, were all cleared of rape.
The case had sparked strong protests from women's and left-wing groups.
About 100 protesters were outside the courthouse for the verdict.
They sang the nationalist song My Country and called for the end of the Visiting Forces Agreement that covers the use of overseas troops in training exercises. ....
A US marine has been sentenced to 40 years in prison for raping a local woman in the Philippines last year.
The sentence was handed down to Lance Corporal Daniel Smith in a Manila courtroom for the rape of the woman in a van at a former US navy base.
Three other defendants, Lance Corporals Keith Silkwood and Dominic Duplantis and Staff Sergeant Chad Carpentier, were all cleared of rape.
The case had sparked strong protests from women's and left-wing groups.
About 100 protesters were outside the courthouse for the verdict.
They sang the nationalist song My Country and called for the end of the Visiting Forces Agreement that covers the use of overseas troops in training exercises. ....
Sunday, December 03, 2006
Rep Moran: "Not Only Did Bush Know Webb's Son Almost Killed-He Was Warned To Be Sensitive About It"
Could Bush possibly have known about the incident that Jim Webb's son's vehicle was next to another military vehicle that was attacked which resulted in the death of 3 marines a few weeks ago in Iraq?
Congressman Jim Moran (D-Va 8th district) without hesitation:"Not only did Bush know about it, he was specifically briefed on the incident before meeting with Webb, and was cautioned to be extra sensitive in speaking with Webb about his son.
"Just to make sure, I said: "Wow, I guess not too many people know about this," and he said: "That's right they don't, but I know it's true, and there are lots of things people don't know about that would surprise them"More
Congressman Jim Moran (D-Va 8th district) without hesitation:"Not only did Bush know about it, he was specifically briefed on the incident before meeting with Webb, and was cautioned to be extra sensitive in speaking with Webb about his son.
"Just to make sure, I said: "Wow, I guess not too many people know about this," and he said: "That's right they don't, but I know it's true, and there are lots of things people don't know about that would surprise them"More
The Top 10 Conservative Idiots, No. 270
December 4, 2006 - War On Christmas Edition
There are just a few weeks to go until Jesus's birthday, and that can only mean one thing - this year's War on Christmas has begun! (I hope everyone has their marching orders - I think mine must have gotten lost in the mail.) The Young Conservatives of Texas (1) are fighting here so they don't have to fight over there, Michael Medved (3) discovers that CGI is the new WMD, Bill O'Reilly (4) insults his paying customers, and Dennis Prager (5) is pure integrity.
PAUL KRUGMAN: Two More Years
At a reception following the midterm election, President Bush approached Senator-elect James Webb.
“How’s your boy?” asked Mr. Bush.
“I’d like to get them out of Iraq, Mr. President,” replied Mr. Webb, whose son, a Marine lance corporal, is risking his life in Mr. Bush’s war of choice.
“That’s not what I asked you,” the president snapped. “How’s your boy?”
“That’s between me and my boy, Mr. President,” said Mr. Webb.
Good for him. We need people in Washington who are willing to stand up to the bully in chief. Unfortunately, and somewhat mysteriously, they’re still in short supply.
You can understand, if not condone, the way the political and media establishment let itself be browbeaten by Mr. Bush in his post-9/11 political prime. What’s amazing is the extent to which insiders still cringe before a lame duck with a 60 percent disapproval rating.
Look at what seems to have happened to the Iraq Study Group, whose mission statement says that it would provide an “independent assessment.” If press reports are correct, the group did nothing of the sort. Instead, it watered down its conclusions and recommendations, trying to come up with something Mr. Bush wouldn’t reject out of hand.
In particular, says Newsweek, the report “will set no timetables or call for any troop reductions.” All it will do is “suggest that the president could, not should, begin to withdraw forces in the vaguely defined future.”
And all this self-abasement is for naught. Senior Bush aides, Newsweek tells us, are “dismissive, even condescending” toward James Baker, the Bush family consigliere who is the dominant force in the study group, and the report. Of course they are. That’s how bullies always treat their hangers-on.
Even now, it seems, the wise men of Washington can’t bring themselves to face up to two glaringly obvious truths.
The first is that Americans are fighting and dying in Iraq for no reason.
It’s true that terrible things will happen when U.S. forces withdraw. Mr. Bush was attacking a straw man when he mocked those who think we can make a “graceful exit” from Iraq. Everyone I know realizes that the civil war will get even worse after we’re gone, and that there will probably be a bloody bout of ethnic cleansing that effectively partitions the country into hostile segments.
But nobody — not even Donald Rumsfeld, it turns out — thinks we’re making progress in Iraq. So the same terrible things that would happen if we withdrew soon will still happen if we delay that withdrawal for two, three or more years. The only difference is that we’ll sacrifice many more American lives along the way.
The second truth is that the war will go on all the same, unless something or someone forces Mr. Bush to change course.
During his recent trip to Vietnam, Mr. Bush was asked whether there were any lessons from that conflict for Iraq. His response: “We’ll succeed unless we quit.”
It was a bizarre answer given both the history of the Vietnam War and the facts on the ground in Iraq, but it makes perfect sense given what we know about Mr. Bush’s character. He has never been willing to own up to mistakes, however trivial. If he were to accept the failure of his adventure in Iraq, he would be admitting, at least implicitly, to having made the mother of all mistakes.
So Mr. Bush will keep sending other men’s children off to fight his war. And he’ll always insist that Iraq would have been a great victory if only his successors had shared his steely determination.
Does this mean that we’re doomed to at least two more years of bloody futility? Not necessarily. Last month the public delivered a huge vote of no confidence in Mr. Bush and his war. He’s still the commander in chief, but the new majority in Congress can put a lot of pressure on him to at least begin a withdrawal.
I’m worried, however, that Democrats may have counted on the Iraq Study Group to provide them with political cover. Now that the study group has apparently wimped out, will the Democrats do the same?
Well, here’s a question for those who might be tempted, yet again, to shy away from a confrontation with Mr. Bush over Iraq: How do you ask a man to be the last to die for a bully’s ego?
“How’s your boy?” asked Mr. Bush.
“I’d like to get them out of Iraq, Mr. President,” replied Mr. Webb, whose son, a Marine lance corporal, is risking his life in Mr. Bush’s war of choice.
“That’s not what I asked you,” the president snapped. “How’s your boy?”
“That’s between me and my boy, Mr. President,” said Mr. Webb.
Good for him. We need people in Washington who are willing to stand up to the bully in chief. Unfortunately, and somewhat mysteriously, they’re still in short supply.
You can understand, if not condone, the way the political and media establishment let itself be browbeaten by Mr. Bush in his post-9/11 political prime. What’s amazing is the extent to which insiders still cringe before a lame duck with a 60 percent disapproval rating.
Look at what seems to have happened to the Iraq Study Group, whose mission statement says that it would provide an “independent assessment.” If press reports are correct, the group did nothing of the sort. Instead, it watered down its conclusions and recommendations, trying to come up with something Mr. Bush wouldn’t reject out of hand.
In particular, says Newsweek, the report “will set no timetables or call for any troop reductions.” All it will do is “suggest that the president could, not should, begin to withdraw forces in the vaguely defined future.”
And all this self-abasement is for naught. Senior Bush aides, Newsweek tells us, are “dismissive, even condescending” toward James Baker, the Bush family consigliere who is the dominant force in the study group, and the report. Of course they are. That’s how bullies always treat their hangers-on.
Even now, it seems, the wise men of Washington can’t bring themselves to face up to two glaringly obvious truths.
The first is that Americans are fighting and dying in Iraq for no reason.
It’s true that terrible things will happen when U.S. forces withdraw. Mr. Bush was attacking a straw man when he mocked those who think we can make a “graceful exit” from Iraq. Everyone I know realizes that the civil war will get even worse after we’re gone, and that there will probably be a bloody bout of ethnic cleansing that effectively partitions the country into hostile segments.
But nobody — not even Donald Rumsfeld, it turns out — thinks we’re making progress in Iraq. So the same terrible things that would happen if we withdrew soon will still happen if we delay that withdrawal for two, three or more years. The only difference is that we’ll sacrifice many more American lives along the way.
The second truth is that the war will go on all the same, unless something or someone forces Mr. Bush to change course.
During his recent trip to Vietnam, Mr. Bush was asked whether there were any lessons from that conflict for Iraq. His response: “We’ll succeed unless we quit.”
It was a bizarre answer given both the history of the Vietnam War and the facts on the ground in Iraq, but it makes perfect sense given what we know about Mr. Bush’s character. He has never been willing to own up to mistakes, however trivial. If he were to accept the failure of his adventure in Iraq, he would be admitting, at least implicitly, to having made the mother of all mistakes.
So Mr. Bush will keep sending other men’s children off to fight his war. And he’ll always insist that Iraq would have been a great victory if only his successors had shared his steely determination.
Does this mean that we’re doomed to at least two more years of bloody futility? Not necessarily. Last month the public delivered a huge vote of no confidence in Mr. Bush and his war. He’s still the commander in chief, but the new majority in Congress can put a lot of pressure on him to at least begin a withdrawal.
I’m worried, however, that Democrats may have counted on the Iraq Study Group to provide them with political cover. Now that the study group has apparently wimped out, will the Democrats do the same?
Well, here’s a question for those who might be tempted, yet again, to shy away from a confrontation with Mr. Bush over Iraq: How do you ask a man to be the last to die for a bully’s ego?
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