Nation-Building

Michael J. Totten has a powerful essay in Commentary Magazine, a film review of James Longley's documentary Iraq in Fragments:

Most recent documentaries filmed in Iraq can be fairly categorized as liberal or conservative. All are about the war, and most are cinematic equivalents of op-eds. James Longley’s lush and intimate Iraq in Fragments is different. While the director appears to be some kind of liberal or leftist, his film is refreshingly none of the above. Iraq in Fragmentsis about the war only insomuch as it was shot in Iraq during the war. This film is a collection of portraits of Iraqis, not Americans or the American military. And unlike almost any other documentary out there, Longley’s includes the Kurds.The director is invisible. We never see him or hear him, and he uses his camera as though he were shooting a fictional film. This is emphatically not the kind of documentary you’re accustomed to seeing. Longley’s camera and editing work are so stylish and deft that the end result is perhaps the most artful documentary ever made on any subject. (Watch the high-definition trailer here for a powerful preview.)

It's a review worthy of the subject matter. It seems to capture the irony of Iraq, succinctly summarized by a blindfolded shopkeeper on the floor in the face of thuggery by a Shi'a militia:

“We were saved from tyranny,” he says while he cries. “And you brought another. How can it be, brother? When Saddam fell I rejoiced, but now again I am blindfolded.”

As Totten notes, it is a balanced film though the filmmaker probably leans left. Still, I think (from what Totten describes) that in some ways it makes a moral argument against withdrawal rather than a pragmatic one for withdrawal.

Unfortunately, what the documentary doesn't address is how inextricably tied to US politics is the future of Iraq. And on that score, Phil Carter calls out the Administration on its surprise pocket veto of the National Defense Authorization Act this week. Carter fumes,

After months, no, years of browbeating Democrats for putting politics ahead of the troops, the President has now chosen to do the same thing. He is delaying an urgent piece of DoD legislation with many important provisions, including a pay raise for military personnel and an end strength bump for the Army and Marines. That's flat-out wrong. We are at war and our troops need this legislation. A piece of legislation, I might add, that the White House supported until just recently. And hell, just weeks ago, the White House was excoriating Pelosi and Reed for playing politics with the troops' resources. How exactly is this any different?

On a third level, this veto stinks because it reflects the White House's deeply flawed view of law and legal processes. I understand the legal issue created by this bill with respect to Iraqi assets that may be attached by plaintiffs seeking reparations for the sins of the Saddam govt. I get it. But let's look a the plaintiffs here — Iraqi expatriates and former U.S. prisoners of war, to name but a few. They're a hell of a lot more sympathetic than the current cast of theo-kleptocrats who make up the Maliki government in Iraq today. That doesn't sit well with me. Nor does the general argument that we should be scared of legal processes, and hold the entire Department of Defense hostage because we're scared about the possible outcome from a handful of cases. Do we really have that little faith in our federal courts, or in the Justice Department's ability to represent the U.S. Government's interests?

the fact that the veto is designed to shield the Maliki government - the same one that shows no interest in political reconciliation for the good of Iraq, and whose heavy hand gives the Shi'a militias lamented above their legitimacy - only further undermines the entire rationale and argument of the United States that we desire freedom for Iraqis.

Meanwhile, Iraq continues to suck the oxygen out of Afghanistan, where we are losing ground. Michael Yon paints a grim picture:

I have characterized Afghanistan as little more than a hunting lodge for our special operations forces. Since the Afghan campaign has been largely a special forces war from the beginning, we have been able to transition with great secrecy from near victory, to abysmal performance, to what has now become a sustainable human-hunting resort. Our special operations forces are out there hunting Taliban and al Qaeda, outside of public view—although it appears that “the public” is hardly clamoring for news from Afghanistan—while the country devolves into the consummate narco-state.

There are many indicators that the Afghan campaign is at this date a complete failure; how much has anything changed from when “The Perfect Evil” was published nearly a year ago? At the time of its publication, I intended it as a warning that action needed to be taken, and fast, before the momentum of decline reached avalanche velocity.

These are harsh words, but they need to be said, because arguably it is the Afghanistan-Pakistan axis where our true threat lies (exacerbated by the Bhutto assassination):

U.S. officials fear that a renewed campaign by Islamic militants aimed at the Pakistani government, and based along the border with Afghanistan, would complicate U.S. policy in the region by effectively merging the six-year-old war in Afghanistan with Pakistan's growing turbulence.

"The fates of Afghanistan and Pakistan are inextricably tied," said J. Alexander Thier, a former U.N. official in Afghanistan who is now at the U.S. Institute for Peace.

U.S. military officers and other defense experts are concerned that continued instability eventually will spill over and intensify the fighting in Afghanistan, which has spiked in recent months as the Taliban have strengthened and expanded its operations.

While we are seeing some progress in Iraq, we aren't anywhere close to Iraq being a healthy and stable democracy of the sort that would be required for the Iraq campaign to have any substantial relevance to the war on terror.

Labels: Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan, withdrawal

Continue reading/discuss Iraq in fragments ...

Eteraz provides a nice summary of the muslim problem afflicting the GOP:

One of Giuliani’s people complains about “the difficult problem” that is “the rise of the Muslims” and wants “to chase them back to their caves.” [Link]. He further refuses to distinguish between good and bad Muslims. After all, “they are all Muslims.” Here is the video of him at the Guardian. Here is Talking Points Memo’s review of it all. The staffer has been fired, but there’s a bigger problem.

The GOP’s severe lack of awareness — I was going to use the word “ignorance” but I’m being nice — vis a vis Islam and Muslims is really hurting it. Just the other day Romney said he could not accept a Muslim in the cabinet. This comes on the heels of the 2004 survey by Cornell which I discussed in my piece at Jewcy Magazine where 40% of Republicans wanted American-Muslims to register their whereabouts (why not just implant gps devices in all Muslims?). There was, of course, Tancredo’s asinine bomb Mecca suggestion. There was Huckabee’s staff member arguing that the War on Terror is a theological war (youtube). Plus Huckster’s comparison of Muslims to dogs. Then there was McCain’s comment to the NyTimes implying that Muslims were not qualified to run for President (leading him to have to explain later).

It should be noted that all of this postdates the Bush Administration's ascent - ironically so, given that the Bush margin of victory in Michigan in 2000 was on the strength of his appeal to the socially conservative muslim vote. What was a natural GOP constituency has become an almost unified pro-Democrat bloc.

This doesn't mean that the Democrats deserve the muslim bloc vote, however. In fact the Democrats are as guilty of xenophobic rhetoric for political gain as any Republican. More importantly, the Democrats have no policy that directly addresses muslim-American political concerns, in part because Muslim-Americans have not yet organized themselves sufficiently to be able to articulate those concerns within a purely Muslim-American context. The political immaturity of the Muslim American community means that "muslim issues" are nothing more than recycled foreign policy ones, usually tainted with the Israel obsession.

Once such a view is articulated (a task I am also trying to pursue at City of Brass), then we will see which side of the aisle best rises to it. I am not convinced that the Democrats will maintain their lock, nor am I convinced that the GOP's muslim problem will outlive the Bush Administration or the Iraq War.

Labels: Purple, Republicans

Continue reading/discuss the GOP war on muslims ...

One of the themes I have sounded regularly is that the mainstream progressive left has a dangerously reflexive anti-Bush filter when it comes to foreign policy. There are many avenues of legitimate critique of the Bush Administration when it comes to foreign policy, and it is impossible to deny that the Iraq War has been a strategic misstep in the context of the broader war on Terror (especially since a pro-Israel, anti-Iranian, secular republic governed by pro-Western democratic technocrats is unlikely to ever emerge in Iraq). But beyond the immediate theater of Iraq, carrying over the Bush baggage only serves to obscure and obstruct any honest attempt at devising a rational policy.

Case in point: the assassination yesterday of Benazir Bhutto. The Democratic candidates were quick to integrate the event into their "closing arguments" as the Iowa caucuses loom large (and earning them pointed critiques from Josh Marshall, Paul Krugman, and Atrios). However, at myDD, Todd Beeton took issue with Obama's comments in particular:

So why was it that Obama's statement appeared to be the most fear-mongery of them all, invoking the word "terrorist" twice, accepting the Musharraf party line on the assassination (i.e that it was terrorists, while many blame Musharraf himself,) seeming to jump to conclusions that not even Fox News would make.

Obama's statement was "fear-mongery" ? This is what Obama said to CBS:

"It’s a tragic situation. My heart goes out to the families. But it’s an indication that we are in a dangerous world right now that we have to apply good judgment in our foreign policy," said Obama.

"We’ve been distracted by Iraq. We have not been paying attention to Pakistan for several years and as a consequence we have had a subversion of democracy at the same time we have ignored or at least not dealt with the growing threat of Islamic militants in Pakistan. If anything, Iraq has helped to spur some of the militancy in Pakistan. Now moving forward we have to send a message that we stand strong with the Pakistani people in moving the democratic process forward but we have to continue to press, to deal with this on going chaotic situation with the militants in Pakistan."

Later, Obama's official statement included this:

"I am shocked and saddened by the death of Benazir Bhutto in this terrorist atrocity. She was a respected and resilient advocate for the democratic aspirations of the Pakistani people. We join with them in mourning her loss and stand with them in their quest for democracy and against the terrorists who threaten the common security of the world."

to which Todd at myDD replied,

for someone who claims to want to bring about change from the "Bush/Clinton status quo" the statement certainly appeared to embrace the Bush "war on terror" frame, that there is a central conflict between terrorists and forces of democracy, reinforcing rather than subverting conventional status quo thinking.

Here, Todd equates the concept of terrorists attacking the democratic process in Pakistan via assassination to the Bush/Clinton status quo. But that's exactly what happened! In fact Al Qaeda claims credit for the assassination, and any marginally rigorous assessment of Pakistani politics suggests that the attack could not have happened without at least some involvement from the infamous ISI, whose Islamist infestation is well known.

In fact there IS a central conflict between terrorists in general - and Al Qaeda in specific - and the forces of democracy. The Bush framing of a "War on Terror" may be bogus but there is a very real War Against Terrorists going on, to which Obama's comments have direct relevance. The status quo thinking that Todd sneers at above is in this case highly relevant - and the proper critique of the Bush policy is that is has deviated from that thinking by pursuing the adventure in Iraq rather than focusing its energy on Afghanistan. Dismissing the very real fact that there is a violent threat to democracy - and that democracy promotion is still a valid foreign policy goal for our own national security, despite the failures of Iraq - only undermines the argument that the Democrats are making for their own foreign policy credentials.

UPDATE: Commentors at Dean's World take issue with my assertion that "is impossible to deny that the Iraq War has been a strategic misstep in the context of the broader war on Terror". Apparently it is indeed possible :) Their argument and my response are below the fold.

 

Bill from INDC (www):

I could make a decent, subjective case specifically based on strategic timelines, centered around the regional discreditation of al Qaeda (who can't even get decent press on Al Jazeera these days) and its impact in accelerating disapproval of terrorism. Plus the eventual character of the Iraqi government is yet to be seen, and it may yet represent a "third way" between Islamic radicalism and autocracy, commonly seen as the twin, competing power centers that breed terrorism. [link]

Scott Kirwin (www):
Aziz
I'm with Bill on this. That line grated on me too.

Once we took sides against Saddam, we were locked into the history we live today. However before that point things could have been very, very different.

Would they have been worse - from a purely American perspective? Was he a man we could deal with?

I dunno. [link]

Aziz (www):

Bill, Scott,

I will happily agree if you want to assert that the Iraq War could have been a positive strategic step in the war against terrorists (the war on terror, on the other hand, is a farcical construct). However, for that to be so would have required a lot of things to go our way that didnt, and for us to have done a lot of things that we didnt (for example, not disbanding the Army, or implementing something like Vietnam-CAPS from the start). In other words, the Iraq War was a longshot Hail Mary even if it was executed with perfect precision by the Second Coming of Bush Senior and Al Gore.

Since the war against terrorists is kind of important, and those guys are still a worldwide threat with significant body count to their name, I personally think a more conservative yet focused approach was a wiser avenue. Something like, dropping even half of the resources we have squandered in blood and money on Iraq into Afghanistan instead. Ah well. Woulda, coulda, shoulda. Stuck now. [link]

Labels: 2008, Obama, Pakistan

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Scott MacLeod at TIME's middle-east blog reports on how former Iranian President Mohammed Khatami is upping the ante in critique of current president Ahmadinejad, on both fiscal policy as well as democratic freedom:

Speaking to students at Tehran University on Student Day in Iran, where protesters recently called Ahmadinejad a "dictator," Khatami delivered backhanded criticism on various international and domestic issues, like presidential provocations that have increased international pressure on Iran and the jailing of Iranian students.

Interestingly, Khatami also issued a frontal attack on Ahmadinejad's Robin Hood economic policies, suggesting they were designed to win popularity but in fact were ill-conceived, could wreck the economy and therefore are harmful to the poorer classes Ahmadinejad claims to champion. "It is this kind of 'justice' that which makes the concept null and void of all essence," he said. "It is this 'justice' which squanders the resources of the nation and spreads poverty, the same resources which ought to be used create wealth.

Khatami said political freedom was more important than slogans about economic justice. In that vein, he sharply criticized the Guardian Council, the body that has routinely disqualified Iranian reformists from participating in elections and thereby tilted the outcome in favor of conservatives and hard-liners. "What right do some have to make decisions on behalf of the people and disqualify those trusted by the people on the grounds that their eligibility was not approved by six or 12 individuals?" Khatami asked.

Khatami, it seems, is out to change his reputation in Iran for being a well-meaning politician who lacks political courage. His remarks suggest he will take a leading role in mobilizing reformists against Ahmadinejad and his fellow hard-liners in parliamentary elections scheduled for March.

It's also worth noting that Ahmadinejad is also facing pressure from the right, on his rhetoric against Israel and the West.

The former head of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps, Mohsen Rezai, and Mayor Mohammad Baqer Qalibaf of Tehran, both influential hard-line figures, also expressed concerns over foreign threats this month.

And Hassan Rowhani, a former nuclear negotiator and a close aide to Mr. Rafsanjani, urged the government to distance itself from tension with the West. “We must not give excuse to the enemy and provoke it with unwise statements,” he said, according to newspapers.

All of this serves to underline just how rational the Iranian regime is - in other words, a regime that can be negotiated with, deterred, and given incentives for cooperation.

Labels: Iran

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How typical of Code Pink. To be honest, I'm pretty disgusted it. For one thing, Code Pink is a typical activist organization that is very big on public displays but offers very little in terms of actual policy (other than "capitulate immediately to our extreme agenda"). For another, Secretary Rice is probably the sole reason that we haven't invaded Iran (at least until the NIE was released). And Rice is maintaining a diplomatic relation with Syria despite recalcitrance from the Boss.

I'm not a big fan of Ms. Rice's performance overall - she arguably lied to the 9/11 commission - but at State she is a voice of relative moderation in the Bush Administration and that should be recognized. Granted, Rice has not been very effective - she's the inspiration for the term, lecondel, after all - but she has had her moments, notably recently in Egypt. Imagine how much energy that the Secretary of State normally would expend on diplomacy, that is wasted merely to swim against the Cheney current in the Bush Administration. Then scale expectation for Condoleeza's performance accordingly. Soft bigotry of low expectations? Yes, in this case, since that's the best we can hope for. It's far better to have Ms Rice around than the alternative - which is basically anyone else Bush might appoint.

Meanwhile, cheering on Code Pink is simply counterproductive. All Code Pink achieves wit their antics is furthering the politics-as-spectacle atmosphere that undermines our national debate, rather than politics-as-process, which is what this nation sorely needs to solve our numerous issues with principled pragmatism. Genuine criticism of the Bush Admininstration's various policy failures is not blunted in any way by refusing to stoop to Code Pink's level.

Labels: Condoleeza Rice

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This is a good thing:

KANDAHAR, Afghanistan, Dec. 10 — Afghan and NATO troops retook the town of Musa Qala in southern Afghanistan today, forcing the Taliban to withdraw from the only sizable town they hold in the country, Afghan and NATO officials said. There was no clear picture of casualties, but the Taliban and civilians said there had been heavy bombardment overnight.

The news came as Prime Minister Gordon Brown of Britain made a surprise visit to Afghanistan and met with President Hamid Karzai. About 7,000 British troops are deployed in Helmand Province, in southern Afghanistan. Retaking the town of Musa Qala, which they abandoned over a year ago, has been one of their main objectives in the province, which has the highest level of Taliban activity as well as illicit opium production.

Of course, this doesn't mean that Afghanistan is stable or that Al Qaeda is defeated, but is unabashedly good news. The locus of terrorism remains Afghanistan and the Pakstiani frontier, whereas in Iraq Al- Qaeda is essentially irrelevant. The real war on terror is being fought - and painstakingly, slowly, but steadily - won in Afghanistan alone.

Labels: Afghanistan

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Back during the Dean campaign, we at the unofficial dean blog launched an effort we called the Dean Defense Forces, in which we tried to respond to smears against Dean as they came out in real time. Even if we had done the same for Kerry, it wouldn't have prevented the Swiftboat attacks on him, which were truly devastating. This season, all the Democratic nominees are getting the same treatment and I want to try and address the prevailing swiftboating against each of the major candidates in turn.

Let's start with Edwards. As regular readers of DailyKos know, the infamous $400 haircut included travel airfare for his trusted barber to meet Edwards on the trail. Given that candidates are also television personalities, it's a necessary expense, and there's also the security issue to consider (the barber does, after all, at some point have a blade at your throat.)

However, the reason that the haircut meme survives - even among liberal-leaning voters - is because its subtext is that Edwards is a hypocrite, for talking about the poor but living a life of profligate waste. That's the underlying issue that needs to be addressed in a sucinct way for the meme to die.

On a private forum, a good friend of mine did exactly that, and it was such an excellent refutation of the Edwards Hypocrisy meme that I am blockquoting it in its entirety here:

I'm not a candidate for anything, but I do consider poverty to be second after women's issues (tightly-related of course) on my list of political priorities. I don't, however, think that in order to care about poor people, that one needs to either be or behave like a poor person. Edwards is a very wealthy individual, who truly did rise from a background substantially lower. Wealthy people wear expensive suits, get manicures and pedicures, golf, and have other expensive hobbies, etc. Candidates for that office have zero time flexibility and the expectation that they will be constantly in the presence of the people financing their campaigns. If he needs to fly his hairdresser in because he can't get to where they are, and he can manage to find a hotel and airfare, plus an hourly rate adding up to ONLY $400, then hell, that alone is evidence of his frugality. Just TRY to get a flight and hotel almost anywhere for that!

I really don't think that Edwards showed anything like hypocrisy. He thinks we should work harder on the issue of poverty, and has ideas about how to do that. I doubt that any of those ideas includes "stop getting expensive haircuts and give the money to the panhandler you pass on the way to work." What would any of us really think about a candidate who got suits from the thrift store, cut his own hair, gave away all of his disposable income, etc? I'd think "Wow, I admire that person. They really live their values. He's obviously vastly impractical and I do NOT want him anywhere near the White House." Solving problems of poverty isn't about charity and it isn't about the overprivileged beating their breasts and making token sacrifices. It's about economic restructuring, education, nutrition, business incentives, healthcare, CHILDCARE, population management, and a host of other interrelated social functions. Edwards understands many of those factors and believes he can address them. I believe that. It's not just lip service, and the fact that a multi-millionaire lives like a very busy multi-millionaire doesn't affect my belief that he does.

Enough said. Unfortunately, sensible people like her are too sensible to be political pundits.

Labels: 2008, Edwards

Continue reading/discuss Is Edwards a hypocrite? ...

Robert Kagan is no tranzi progressive moonbat leftist. Unlike the Podhoretz/Kristol/etc pundit tribe, he's always been an intellectually honest and genuinely thouhgtful policy wonk first and foremost. That he largely stands on the opposite side of the foreign policy debate from my opinions is in my opinion a very good thing. He's been wrong before, but always in a way I can respect.

So it's hardly a surprise that Kagan steps up to the plate with respect to Iran and pronounces diplomacy as the only available option remaining to the Bush Administration:

Regardless of what one thinks about the National Intelligence Estimate's conclusion that Iran stopped its nuclear weapons program in 2003 -- and there is much to question in the report -- its practical effects are indisputable. The Bush administration cannot take military action against Iran during its remaining time in office, or credibly threaten to do so, unless it is in response to an extremely provocative Iranian action. A military strike against suspected Iranian nuclear facilities was always fraught with risk. For the Bush administration, that option is gone.

Neither, however, will the administration make further progress in winning international support for tighter sanctions on Iran. Fear of American military action was always the primary reason Europeans pressured Tehran. Fear of an imminent Iranian bomb was secondary. Bringing Europeans together in support of serious sanctions was difficult before the NIE. Now it is impossible.

Kagan doesn't stop there, however. He goes into exacting detail about what we should talk with Iran about, why, and with what objectives in mind. He points out that far from seeming to be an act of weakness, we (the US) are actually in a position of strength:

The United States is not in a position of weakness. The embarrassment of the NIE will be fleeting. Strategic realities are more durable. America remains powerful in the world and in the Middle East. The success of the surge policy in Iraq means that the United States may be establishing a sustainable position in the region -- a far cry from a year ago, when it seemed about to be driven out. If Iraq is on the road to recovery, this shifts the balance against Iran, which was already isolated.

(note that this concurs with the policy analysis by Anthony Cordesman of teh CSIS that there is a "tenuous case for strategic patience in Iraq" PDF link).

There's a lot more in the original article and I highly encourage giving it a full read.

Labels: Iran

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I suppose it is somewhat old news by now, but the consensus of all our intelligence agencies is that Iran is not actively pursuing a nuclear weapons program. I'm not interested in the domestic political dimension as to what this means for the Bush Administrations rhetoric on Iran. What interests me more is the geopolitical issue of what this means for actual policy regarding Iran.

Some of the better analysis on the issue from the VSP follows:

Michael Rubin raises some questions about the implications of the NIE.

A USA Today editorial points out three good implications of the NIE.

Michael Cohen of Democracy Arsenal puts the NIE in perspective.

Abu Aardvark points out that Iran is pursuing economic and diplmatic ties with its Sunni Arab neighbors.

all in all, though, the position that Iran is a rational actor, and not an imminent existential nuclear threat to Israel let alone the United States, has been thoroughly vindicated by the NIE.

Labels: Iran

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