Iraq and Terrorism

by von

I confess:  it was difficult for me to read Hilzoy’s piece below, "Failures of Will."

It wasn’t that the writing was complex or convoluted:  Hilzoy is a subtle thinker, but she writes with an admirable clarity.  It wasn’t that the arguments are unusual or hard to grasp:  her arguments are straightforward and, in places at least, well supported.  And it certainly wasn’t that Hilzoy’s words made me, a war supporter, feel uncomfortable or guilty as she tried to nail my (supposed) heartfelt beliefs to a metaphorical wall. 

No, it wasn’t any of that.  I had trouble finishing Hilzoy’s piece because its assumptions regarding the Bush Administration and its supporters are almost impossible to me to understand.  Hilzoy’s basic presumption seems to be that the Bush Administration is stupid and black hearted and that the Bush Administration’s supporters are testosterone-fueled nincompoops, easily misled by the latest shiny thing.  Hilzoy’s piece appears founded on a caricature, and not a flattering one at that. 

It seems to me that Hilzoy has absolutely no idea what actually motivates the folks on the "other side" of this debate.  If we’re going to have a debate over the war, both sides need to know what motivates the other.  Both sides need to understand that the other is not arguing from idiocy, malice, or foolishness, but actually has reasons why they believe what they believe.  And that some of those reasons are good ones; and that some of these questions are hard; and that smart and decent folks can actually come to opposing opinions on the war. 

I am a war supporter who agrees with Hilzoy that the Bush Administration has been negligent in its planning in Iraq.  I am a war supporter who, out of disgust with the Administration, voted for John Kerry in the last election, a man who did and still does strike me as a total boob — and a silicone boob at that.  I am a war supporter who believes that there can be No End But Victory in Iraq, and that victory cannot be achieved if we preemptively declare defeat.

I am a war supporter who disagrees passionately with Hilzoy’s piece.

Read on.

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by Charles

Why?  Because their mission in Fallujah has been mostly accomplished.  Kevin Sites, made famous for his video of an American soldier killing an Iraqi in Fallujah, interviewed U.S. Marine Colonel David Berger, and here is what Berger said about the security situation.

SITES: "Frustrating from the point that if something doesn’t get done soon there is the potential for more violence? Have you noticed anything that is manifesting that frustration?"

BERGER: "No, not at all. It isn’t at that kind of tipping point where if things don’t improve in another month it’s going to go south, no not at all. The two biggest reasons are the [Iraqi] army and the Iraqi police. We’ve spent a long time working with them — especially the army. They’re firmly entrenched here, people know, and they have a good confidence level.

"And the police are also a big factor here. … There are a thousand, maybe 1,100 police and they are on the streets every day, 24/7. The people very much trust them and look to them for security, and I think in another six months [the Iraqi police] will be in control of the whole city themselves. And the army and the rest of the military forces will continue to push out."

SITES: "You’re saying in six months the police will be able to control the whole city?"

BERGER: "If they keep on going like they’re going, yes."

SITES: "How is this police force different, which, along with the Iraqi national guard back in April 2004, turned the city over to insurgents?"

BERGER: "It’s more confident, it’s more highly trained, and that makes all the difference in the world. There’s still a lot of perception that some of the police have too much loyalty to certain parts of the city, and won’t be objective as law enforcement parties. But I think the police chief and the leadership he has selected is key to making sure that doesn’t happen. He has even established an internal affairs-type section that roots out — just like any police force does — those people that are working both sides.

"The big difference is training, absolutely. And there are a lot of little things, like in any military law enforcement: uniforms, discipline, holding people accountable. Those things didn’t exist eight or 10 months ago; now they do."

SITES: "In the year since the battle for Fallujah, have you been successful in keeping the insurgents from returning, and also keeping the weapons flow out?

BERGER: "Yes. I don’t just think so. Statistically, when you look at it, there’s no question."

SITES: "Is there an ambient level of violence that’s always there?"

BERGER: "Yes, I’m sure there is. It’s higher than I’d like. But because the control points in the city are manned so efficiently, there’s always an influx that’s going to get through, but the cordon and containment is good. There’s going to be some that get through but it’s absolutely manageable. And it’s so small that there is not going to be a buildup in the city."

Emphasis mine.  The only problem that I can see is that this type of information is reported in a blog and not by the Bush administration and not by the mainstream media.  Fallujah isn’t solved, partly because we have not released funds to help restore its economy, but what a difference a year makes.  A valid reason for troop reductions is that there are enough Iraqi forces sufficiently trained to do the job in the stead of coalition forces.  There will be troop reductions in 2006, and why not.  By August of next year, there will be 270,000 trained Iraqis to do it.  For those looking mainstream media fatcats looking for tipping points, perhaps they can cast their eyes at the critical mass of trained native troops available to do the job.

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by Edward

As seems to have become my habit recently, I wrote this post before reading Hilzoy’s preceding post. What a freakin’ brilliant effort that is, I must say. I could not agree with her more and only offer these paltry-by-comparison observations because eventually I let myself dare dream one step past her assessment.

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Three things I’ve read recently have led me to believe that Iraq is defnitely lost unless there’s some way to change the President. First was the manifesto at No End But Victory:

This is not a partisan issue. This is not a left- or right-wing issue. This is an American and Iraqi issue, and all men of good faith must now come together to remind our leadership that whatever our politics, and whatever we thought of the decision to go to war, there can be only one end:

Victory.

I disagree with much of the text before and after this excerpt, but I believe this part is indeed the case. Victory in Iraq will require a united effort of Americans, left and right, and although I opposed invading Iraq for too many reasons to list, once we were in, I knew failure was not an option we could allow ourselves to become resigned to. Not if we want the world to become safer. Letting Iraq descend into Civil War would make us less safe than we currently are. We must keep that fact foremost in our minds when formulating our future plans.

The second thing I read was Frank Rich’s column in today’s New York Times. It’s available to subscriber’s only, but I’ll quote the relevant bits (I’ve retyped this from the print version…please forgive any typos):

Only since his speech about "Islamo-fascism" in early October has Mr. Bush started trying to make distinctions between the "evildoers" of Saddam’s regime and the Islamic radicals who did and do directly threaten us. But even if anyone was still listening to this president, it would be too little and too late. The only hope for getting Americans to focus on the war we can’t excape is to clear the decks by telling the truth about the war of choice in Iraq: that it is making us less safe, not more, and that we have to learn from its mistakes and calculate the damange it has caused as we reboot and move on.

Mr. Bush is incapable of such candor.

I ultimately want to disagree with Mr. Rich that we’re on our way of out Iraq. I’m holding tight to the hope that something can turn this around, but I agree with his assessment that clearing the decks–that is, changing the narrative and thus the public opinion that’s increasingly against the effort–requires telling the truth about the war.

Finally, I read David Brook’s column in today’s New York Times (also only by subscription online). Mr. Brook’s offered the most sobering, yet ultimately most optimistic information on what changing public opinion will take:

As a survey by the Pew Research Center suggests, most journalists and most academics think the war is unwinnable….. When you talk to serious, nonpartisan experts with experience on the ground, you find that most think the war is at least a 50-50 proposition. Everyone I’ve spoken to, given the consequences of bugging out, believes that it is therefore worth struggling on.

That’s the sobering part…what was optimistic was the part I left out of that quote:

[B]ut 64 percent of military officers believe the U.S. can prevail.

Now, while that perception might be wishful thinking or a misguided example of the sort of can-do attitude that makes our military the superior organization is, it’s also possible that it’s the professional assessment of folks who’ve spent their lives in the business of such things. I’m hoping it’s the latter.

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by hilzoy

“I’m quite sure that one never makes fundamental mistakes about the thing one really wants to do. Fundamental mistakes arise out of lack of genuine interest. In my opinion, that is.”

“I made a very big mistake once,” said Harriet, “as I expect you know. I don’t think that arose out of a lack of interest. It seemed at the time the most important thing in the world.”

“And yet you made the mistake. Were you giving all your mind to it, do you think? Your mind? Were you really being as cautious and exacting about it as you would be about writing a passage of fine prose? (…) One always makes surface errors, of course. But a fundamental error is a sure sign of not caring.”

— Dorothy Sayers, Gaudy Night

I have always thought that this statement is both true and very important, though there are two exceptions to it. First, it is true of some things (like philosophy) that getting the fundamentals right is very difficult, and in those cases, I don’t think it’s true that if you really care about something, you won’t make fundamental errors. You just won’t make careless ones.

Second, and more interestingly, I think that there are some people who just don’t see that really caring about something requires thinking about it very, very clearly. Admittedly, it’s hard to see how someone could not see that unless there were a deep problem with his understanding of his relationship to the world; but there are people who have such problems. Imagine, for instance, someone who, as a child, got everything he wanted just by screaming, and who was either sufficiently incurious not to want things he couldn’t get this way, or sufficiently impatient not to stick with the actual thinking long enough to get what he wanted. A person like that might just not see that when you really, really want to achieve something, you really need to think clearly about how to get it. In him, “wanting something” would involve not bending all his effort and his will to achieving it, but screaming more and more loudly at the world.

We could debate whether or not to say that such a person is capable of caring about anything; and that debate would be, in certain respects, like one I used to have with my co-workers when I used to work at the battered women’s shelter, about whether or not many abusive husbands loved their wives. On the one hand, they certainly felt something towards them, and that feeling had something in common with love. They could be wildly romantic; they needed their wives desperately; they were terrified of losing them. On the other hand, however, there was the plain fact that no feeling that regularly results in a man’s slamming his wife’s head into the wall could possibly be love. We usually ended up concluding that they felt something that was the closest thing to love that they were capable of feeling; but that it wasn’t close enough. I feel similarly about people whose version of “caring about things” does not involve at least trying to think clearly about them.

Otherwise, however, I think that it is absolutely true that if you really want something, you will not make fundamental or careless mistakes about it. And this is a test of how much people do want something: are they careless about the task of getting it, or do they work for it as carefully, as thoughtfully, and as hard as they possibly can?

With that as preface, I want to turn to Charles’ claim that “success [in Iraq] ultimately depends on our will to prevail”. I have always thought that transforming Iraq from a dictatorship into a functioning democracy would be incredibly difficult under the best of circumstances, and therefore that however much will and resources we brought to the table, we would also need an awful lot of luck. But I also think that we have had several tremendous failures of will. If we fail, these will be a very large part of the reason. If we succeed, it will be despite the fecklessness of those who “fear not defeat, nor dishonor, nor an Iraq under the terrorist heel” (to quote Josh Trevino.)

So herewith, a catalog of some of the failures of will that got us to this point.

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by Charles

First off, Congressman John Murtha is a veteran who served his country honorably.  I assume he loves the United States of America every bit as much as I do.  So in this criticism–and it’s a rigorous criticism–I am not questioning his patriotism.  What I am questioning is his judgment.  More specifically, his political judgment.  Not just what he said, but when he said it.  Murtha is wrong.  Dead wrong.  Horrendously wrong.  Calamitously wrong.

Murtha raised the white flag over eighteen months ago when he said this war was unwinnable.  Instead of employing the sustained will necessary for victory, Murtha embodies the sustained wilt that leads to failure.  The stakes could not be higher.  A defeat in Iraq would be monumentally worse than our bust in Vietnam.  We as a country cannot allow defeat to happen and I cannot allow Murtha’s words go without challenge.  Why is he wrong?  There are many reasons.

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by Edward

Take out all the rhetoric…take out the insinuation…take out implied connections and hyperbole, and what do you have left? What exactly was the case for invading Iraq? If the administration had made the case for war without any exaggeration, what would they have had at their disposal to convince the nation to back an invasion?

To compare what we heard with what we now know was known at the time, here’s an honest effort to provide the facts as understood by the administration about the time Bush made his speech outlining the threat and laid the groundwork for his case for war at the Cincinnati Museum Center (October 7, 2002), a point at which it’s clear he thinks we should invade. There are possibly some anachronistic "facts" in here, but I don’t think so.

What would we have heard had Bush made the case for war using the cold-hard truth? Perhaps something like this…

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by hilzoy

A few days ago, David Brooks wrote what must be one of his most offensive columns ever. It’s about Harry Reid and his crazy paranoid fantasy that the Bush administration manipulated intelligence to make people think that Saddam was an imminent threat who needed to be toppled by force. It begins:

“Harry Reid sits alone at his kitchen table at 4 a.m., writing important notes in crayon on the outside of envelopes. It’s been four weeks since he launched his personal investigation into the Republican plot to manipulate intelligence to trick the American people into believing Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction.

Reid had heard of the secret G.O.P. cabal bent on global empire, but he had no idea that he would find a conspiracy so immense.

Reid now knows that as far back as 1998, Karl Rove was beaming microwaves into Bill Clinton’s fillings to get him to exaggerate the intelligence on Iraq. In that year, Clinton argued, “Iraq still has stockpiles of chemical and biological munitions … and the capacity to restart quickly its production program and build many, many more weapons.”

These comments were part of the Republican plot to manipulate intelligence on Iraq. (…)

Harry Reid sits alone at his kitchen table at 4 a.m., writing important notes in crayon on the outside of envelopes. It has been four weeks since he began investigating this conspiracy and three weeks since he sealed his windows with aluminum foil to ward off the Illuminati. Odd patterns now leap into his brain. Scooter Libby was born near a book depository but was indicted while at a theater. Karl Rove reads books from book depositories but rarely has time for the theater. What is the ratio of Bush tax cuts to the number of squares on a frozen waffle? It is none other than the Divine Proportion. This proves that Leonardo da Vinci manipulated intelligence on Iraq and that the Holy Grail is a woman! (…)

Harry Reid sits alone at his kitchen table at 4 a.m. Odd thoughts rush through his brain. He cannot trust the letter “r,” so he must change his name to Hawwy Weed. Brian Lamb secretly rules the world by manipulating the serial numbers on milk cartons.

Reid realizes there is only one solution: “Must call a secret session of the Senate. Must expose global conspiracy to sap vital juices! Must expose Republican plot to manipulate intelligence!”

Harry Reid sits alone at his kitchen table at 4 a.m.”

Republicans have been quoting Clinton officials on the subject of Saddam’s WMD recently, even though, as Matt Yglesias points out, “”If a Clinton administration subcabinet official said it, it must be true” is not an epistemological principle one normally associates with conservatives.” What Clinton officials said is all beside the point, for several reasons which I’ll put below the fold:

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by Charles

With the Harriet Miers controversy and CIA leak indictments getting the media full-court press, it was easy to miss the fact that the president gave an historic foreign policy speech on Wednesday.  Bringing us back to the days of the Reagan era, he stepped up and proclaimed that one of the country’s most nettlesome nations should no longer exist.  World leaders reacted harshly to this bit of war-mongering.

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by von

First the blog double-posted my bit on Iraq; now it won’t let me delete the second post — leading to this replacement.  Consider this your "well, crap" open thread.

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by von

LESS THAN TWO WEEKS AGO, I wrote that a successful Constitutional Referendum — whatever its outcome — would start to turn around Iraq, because it would invest the Sunnis in the political process.  Today, we begin to see evidence of exactly that:

NORTH OF BAGHDAD — For weeks before Iraq’s constitutional referendum this month, Iraqi guerrilla Abu Theeb traveled the countryside just north of Baghdad, stopping at as many Sunni Arab houses and villages as he could. Each time, his message to the farmers and tradesmen he met was the same: Members of the disgruntled Sunni minority should register to vote — and vote against the constitution.

"It is a new jihad," said Abu Theeb, a nom de guerre that means "Father of the Wolf," addressing a young nephew one night before the vote. "There is a time for fighting, and a time for politics."

For Abu Theeb and many other Iraqi insurgents, this canvassing marked a fundamental shift in strategy, and one that would separate them from foreign-born fighters such as Abu Musab Zarqawi, the Jordanian who leads the group al Qaeda in Iraq.

Two years of boycotting the process had only marginalized Sunnis while Iraqi’s Shiite majority gained power. And Abu Theeb’s entry into politics was born partly of necessity; attacks by Shiite militias, operating inside and outside the government security apparatus, were taking an increasing toll on Sunni lives.

So at 6:30 a.m. on the day of the referendum, Oct. 15, Theeb was already at the polling center in his village, which he had scouted out days in advance. Two of his fighters took up positions. Abu Theeb and the rest of the fighters, more relaxed, propped their Kalashnikov rifles against walls or placed them on tables.

"No one will attack," Abu Theeb assured a reporter. "I made sure some wrongdoers are protecting the school," he said, jokingly referring to al Qaeda loyalists. To head off any violence, he had co-opted the group by enlisting two of its supporters as his polling site guards.

The War in Iraq has been longer, harder, and tougher than it should have been.  There are legitimate grounds to say that it never should have been fought in the first place.  But don’t close your eyes to the fact that — slowly, painfully — we are winning in Iraq.  The Iraqis are winning.  Don’t give up the cause.

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by hilzoy

Last week, Tom Friedman wrote something so breathtakingly immoral that even though I wanted to write about it, I couldn’t imagine what to say. But now that a week has gone by, and Matt Yglesias has written an article about it, I figured I’d try again. Here it is, in all its ugliness:

“Maybe the cynical Europeans were right. Maybe this neighborhood is just beyond transformation. That will become clear in the next few months as we see just what kind of minority the Sunnis in Iraq intend to be. If they come around, a decent outcome in Iraq is still possible, and we should stay to help build it. If they won’t, then we are wasting our time. We should arm the Shiites and Kurds and leave the Sunnis of Iraq to reap the wind. We must not throw more good American lives after good American lives for people who hate others more than they love their own children.”

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Via a diary on Kos

Undersecretary of State, Karen Hughes, is empowering Islamic women. Just not in the direction she’s paid to.

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by hilzoy

Human Rights Watch has a new report of detainee abuse in Iraq. (It has been covered by various newspapers, including the NYTimes and the Washington Post.) If anyone still believes the ‘few bad apples‘ theory, these reports should test their faith. These are not untrained reservists. They are regular soldiers from the 82nd Airborne. According to HRW and their testimony:

“The soldiers came forward because of what they described as deep frustration with the military chain of command’s failure to view the abuses as symptomatic of broader failures of leadership and respond accordingly. All three are active duty soldiers who wish to continue their military careers. A fax letter, e-mail, and repeated phone calls to the 82nd Airborne Division regarding the major allegations in the report received no response.”

One of the soldiers, a captain, spent seventeen months trying to clarify what sort of treatment was permissible, and to report this abuse through the chain of command, without success.

Some excerpts from the account of ‘Sergeant A‘, who gives the clearest picture of the abuse itself (note: PUCs are Persons Under Control, i.e. prisoners):

“We got to the camp in August [2003] and set up. We started to go out on missions right away. We didn’t start taking PUCs until September. Sh*t started to go bad right away. On my very first guard shift for my first interrogation that I observed was the first time I saw a PUC pushed to the brink of a stroke or heart attack. At first I was surprised, like, this is what we are allowed to do? This is what we are allowed to get away with? I think the officers knew about it but didn’t want to hear about it. They didn’t want to know it even existed. But they had to. (…)

The “Murderous Maniacs” was what they called us at our camp because they knew if they got caught by us and got detained by us before they went to Abu Ghraib then it would be hell to pay. They would be just, you know, you couldn’t even imagine. It was sort of like I told you when they came in it was like a game. You know, how far could you make this guy goes before he passes out or just collapses on you. From stress positions to keeping them up f*cking two days straight, whatever. Deprive them of food water, whatever.

To “F*ck a PUC” means to beat him up. We would give them blows to the head, chest, legs, and stomach, pull them down, kick dirt on them. This happened every day. (…)

Guard shifts were four hours. We would stress them at least in excess of twelve hours. When I go off shift and the next guy comes we are already stressing the PUC and we let the new guy know what he did and to keep f*cking him. We put five-gallon water cans and made them hold them out to where they got muscle fatigue then made them do pushups and jumping jacks until they passed out. We would withhold water for whole guard shifts. And the next guy would too. Then you gotta take them to the john if you give them water and that was a pain. And we withheld food, giving them the bare minimum like crackers from MREs [Meals Ready to Eat, the military’s prepackaged food]. And sleep deprivation was a really big thing.

Someone from [Military Intelligence] told us these guys don’t get no sleep. They were directed to get intel [intelligence] from them so we had to set the conditions by banging on their cages, crashing them into the cages, kicking them, kicking dirt, yelling. All that sh*t. We never stripped them down because this is an all-guy base and that is f*cked up sh*t. We poured cold water on them all the time to where they were soaking wet and we would cover them in dirt and sand. We did the jugs of water where they held them out to collapse all the time. The water and other sh*t… start[ed] [m]aybe late September, early October, 2003. This was all at Camp Mercury, close to the MEK base like 10 minutes from Fallujah. We would transport the PUCs from Mercury to Abu Ghraib. (…)

On their day off people would show up all the time. Everyone in camp knew if you wanted to work out your frustration you show up at the PUC tent. In a way it was sport. The cooks were all US soldiers. One day a sergeant shows up and tells a PUC to grab a pole. He told him to bend over and broke the guy’s leg with a mini Louisville Slugger that was a metal bat. He was the f*cking cook. He shouldn’t be in with no PUCs. The PA came and said to keep him off the leg. Three days later they transported the PUC to Abu Ghraib. The Louisville Slugger [incident] happened around November 2003, certainly before Christmas.

People would just volunteer just to get their frustrations out. We had guys from all over the base just come to guard PUCs so they could f*ck them up. Broken bones didn’t happen too often, maybe every other week. The PA would overlook it. I am sure they knew.

The interrogator [a sergeant] worked in the [intelligence] office. He was former Special Forces. He would come into the PUC tent and request a guy by number. Everyone was tagged. He would say, “Give me #22.” And we would bring him out. He would smoke the guy and f*ck him. He would always say to us, “You didn’t see anything, right?” And we would always say, “No, Sergeant.”

One day a soldier came to the PUC tent to get his aggravation out and filled his hands with dirt and hit a PUC in the face. He f*cked him. That was the communications guy.

One night a guy came and broke chem lights open and beat the PUCs with it. That made them glow in the dark which was real funny but it burned their eyes and their skin was irritated real bad.”

(Parenthetically, how did we get to the point where people think that beating up prisoners is an acceptable way to deal with stress, but that stripping them, in an all-male camp, would be a bit too close for comfort to the edge of a real taboo?)

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