Iraq and Terrorism

The outgoing flag of Iraq looks like this:

A contest-winning newly designed flag looks like this:

The idea, according to US-appointed Iraqi Governing Council (as reported in the Washington Post), was “an Islamic crescent on a field of pure white, with two blue stripes representing the Tigris and Euphrates rivers and a third yellow stripe to symbolize the country’s Kurdish minority.”

Among other feedback from Iraqi’s polled, however, is the widespread feeling that it looks too much like the Israeli flag:

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Hat tip to Constant Reader Wilfred for this item.
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Juan Cole sifts through a series of questions that supporters of the invasion of Iraq have been using to defend their position around the blogosphere (these same questions have been posted on sites I visit):

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In an article comissioned by the Association of Alternative Newsweeklies, Jason Vest, Senior Correspondent for The American Prospect reveals the partially redacted details of a rather depressing Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) memo from early March 2004. He reportedly received this memo from a “Western intelligence official” whose motivation for passing it along goes unnoted, but the intelligence officer does note that it’s a significant critique of the CPA’s performance and assessment of the situation because its author is a true believer in transforming the Middle East, right down to the choice of Iraq as the place to start.

Very matter-of-fact, the memo is a summation of field reporting for a senior CPA director. And while optimistic about our eventual success, the memo’s details make it hard to believe that Democracy is coming any time soon to Iraq and makes it much easier to believe civil war is likely to break out long before then.

“Baghdadis have an uneasy sense that they are heading towards civil war,” the memo states. “Sunnis, Shias, and Kurd professionals say that they themselves, friends, and associates are buying weapons fearing for the future.”

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The memo goes on to argue that “the trigger for a civil war” is not likely be an isolated incident of violence, but the result of “deeper conflicts that revolve around patronage and absolutism” reaching a flashpoint.

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Matthew Yglesias has an interesting post:

Indeed, I would say that the major flaw of American efforts at democracy-promotion is a failure to recognize that the bipartisan tradition of realpolitik was not some fifty-year long silly error. I think it’s true that, some time ago, this ceased to be a viable strategy and that we ought to revise it. Still, there are many things to be said in its favor. People need to really think about that before they advocate abandonning it. If you’re prepared to give up the gains of dictator-promotion (and I am) then you need to face up to what you’re doing. What Bush has been trying to do is discover a cost-free democracy-promotion scheme. Thus you get the very odd Iraq bank-shot.

This is half-way to a really good point. The problem is that all sides use rhetoric implying that there is some sort of cost-free or super-cheap democracy promotion scheme. An uncharitable view of Bush’s rhetoric would be that you invade Iraq and PRESTO you get a U.S.-friendly democracy right afterwards. Obviously he never says any such thing directly, but the fact that he never outlines the (rather significant) costs makes it an implication (perhaps a fair implication, perhaps not). Many of Bush’s opponents, especially in Europe, seem imply that if only the U.S. would quit fucking up, PRESTO democracy or at least peace would come to the Middle East. This is closely related to the fantasy that if only the U.S. would apply pressure to Israel that peace would come to the Middle East. Obviously they don’t say so directly, but the fact that they never outline steps about the significant changes that would need to come about other than the U.S. not fucking things up makes it an implication (perhaps a fair implication, perhaps not).

While each side may decide to tacitically deny the difficulty of the project, I think in their more candid moments each realizes that the Middle East has to be changed and that the changes are likely both to be very difficult to implement and very costly for the West.

But neither side wants to deal with difficult and costly, that doesn’t sell well.

So many on the right act as if a quick war will bring democracy to the Middle East and the left act as if a lack of Western military action will bring peace to the Middle East. And any useful debate fails to occur.

Let me be clear in my views:

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And while Bush may feel there’s “too few to mention,” Fareed Zakari respectfully disagrees. From his excellent article in Newsweek, “Our Last Real Chance: The way forward: The administration has to admit its mistakes and try to repair the damage. Here’s how”:

The Bush administration went into Iraq with a series of prejudices about Iraq, rogue states, nation-building, the Clinton administration, multilateralism and the U.N. It believed Iraq was going to vindicate these ideological positions. As events unfolded the administration proved stubbornly unwilling to look at facts on the ground, new evidence and the need for shifts in its basic approach. It was more important to prove that it was right than to get Iraq right.

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Now that I have my angry post out of the way I want to talk about 9/11 and policing.

The US is a country with one of the largest unsecured borders in the world. It is also one of the most open large societies in the world. This has many advantages: an economy so excellent that people are willing to immigrate to become what counts as poor here, an intellectual culture so vibrant that we make an outsized number of the world’s scientific discoveries, the freedom to move about a huge and varied land mass for almost any reason imaginable. But terrorism exploits this openness.

Let me first be clear about my understanding of 9/11:

I don’t believe it could have been stopped by acceptable levels of increased security. I don’t believe it would have been stopped by the current levels of security, and we are willing to put up with far more than we would have before the attack.

I believe it is highly unlikely that it would have been stopped by ‘increased intelligence’ in any level which we would have found acceptable before 9/11. One of the most intensive intelligence capabilities in the history of the world, employed during the Cold War, still missed Soviet moles in some of our most sensitive branches of government. Long-term undercover agents penetrating our most secretive branches ought to be somewhat easier to detect over decades than the relatively short-term (1-3 years) planning employed by the 9/11 attackers who merely need to get into the country. Yet still there were agents who went undetected for years and years.

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Twice during her public testimony before the 9/11 commission, Dr. Rice noted that “if we had known that an attack was coming… we would have moved heaven and earth to stop it.”

I thought that seemed a bit hyperbolic at the time, but, like “tired of swatting flies”, I understood it to be just a figure of speech. Then it got repeated a bit more, that phrase, in the kind of repetition that makes you think it was on a talking points memo:

White House Communications Director Dan Bartlett, …[said] on The Early Show…”Trust me, if the President of the United States thought that there were operations to hijack planes to crash into New York City and Washington, D.C., he would have moved heaven and earth to prevent it.”

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I’m still optimistic about Iraq settling down once the holidays pass and the Marines demonstrate that they’re not going anywhere (the alternative is too bleak to contemplate), but this account of where we stand, one year after the fall of Hussein, is not how I’d have predicted the story would be told at this point.

Some selected observations from L.A. Times writer John Daniszewski :

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Hat tip to reader sidereal for this link to a blog you may not know, where up-close and personal accounts (and photos) of what’s happening in Iraq are being posted by a self-proclaimed “Republican” working for an international NGO.

Among the recent posts:

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