December 6, 2007
The new U.S. National Intelligence Estimate on Iran's nuclear development has itself hit like an atomic bomb of sorts.
The NIE's most immediate implication is that U.S. military strikes on Iranian nuclear facilities are not in the offing. Not because the NIE claims Iran will not go nuclear, but because it claims Iran is at least two years away from enriching uranium enough to build a bomb. The military option will only ever be a last resort, and a period of at least two years is outside the "red line" for last resorts.
The 2005 NIE found that Iran could produce enough highly enriched uranium for a weapon "early-to-mid next decade," and "by the end of this decade" at the earliest; the new NIE foresees Iran crossing that weaponization threshold "during the 2010-2015 time frame," with an earliest possible date of "late 2009." So both forecasts agree on timelines, and the nearest point-of-no-return is now only two years out.
The good news is that, if the report is correct, we have a window of opportunity for non-military solutions to the Iran problem.
If the NIE is correct, we need not worry for now about air strikes harming innocents or alienating the pro-Western people of Iran. We need not worry for now about an Iranian retaliation to air strikes, whether upsetting the newfound peace in Iraq, targeting Western soldiers in the region, driving the price of oil even higher, or unleashing terror attacks against Israeli or Western civilians.
And most importantly, if the NIE is correct, we need not worry for now about Iran announcing the detonation of the world's first Islamist nuclear bomb.
The bad news is that National Intelligence Estimates are notoriously faulty. They don't call them "estimates" for nothing.
The catalogue of flawed U.S. intelligence in the past two decades includes the failure to envision the fall of the Soviet Union, the underestimation of Iraq's WMD capabilities before the 1991 Gulf War, the overestimation of those same capabilities before the 2003 Iraq War, and the failure to anticipate the 9/11 attacks and the current global war.
So there is no particular reason, without the benefit of hindsight, to believe that this NIE is some final word in accuracy and analysis. Especially as it neglects Iran's work on heavy water and longer-range ballistic missiles. But, as of now, the new NIE is the best we've got. It is the most current assessment of the U.S. intelligence agencies on the central intelligence question of the time.
The NIE finds that Iran suspended its nuclear program in 2003, and even Israeli officials skeptical of the report agree on that point. 2003 of course coincides with the war to end the Saddam Hussein regime, just across the border from Iran, and largely as a result of Iraq's WMD defiance. President Bush had recently declared Iran part of an "Axis of Evil," along with Iraq, so Iran may have feared that it was next up on the hit list. And Libya was persuaded by Saddam Hussein's example to abandon its WMD program; Iran may have drawn a similar lesson.
But that was 2003. A lot has happened since. Iraq is in hand today, but by the start of this year there was a real possibility of an American withdrawal and defeat there. If American victory in Iraq deterred WMD development, then the prospect of American defeat was presumably having the opposite effect, and by 2005, Iran had resumed its uranium enrichment.
Bizarrely, the NIE credits "international scrutiny and pressure" for Iran's nuclear freeze in fall, 2003, but there had been no such international efforts by the fall of '03. What there had been was the recent example of regime-change in Iraq.
The NIE also finds that Iran has not restarted its nuclear weapons program since 2003, and it is on this point that the Israelis, the NIE's critics, and the 2005 NIE, disagree. The Iranians themselves boast that they are enriching uranium in thousands of centrifuges -- as would be necessary for building a bomb -- and the NIE does not disagree, except to claim that the enrichment is going slowly. So the finding that Iran's "nuclear weapons program" has been halted, but that its uranium enrichment continues, may be splitting hairs. The uranium enrichment would be the biggest part of a weapons program.
The report of slow progress on Iran's nuclear development has been readily received as a defeat for the United States or the Bush Administration. But U.S. and Administration policy is that Iran must not have nuclear weapons. In any less poisonous political environment, a finding that the policy is being realized might even be treated as a small victory, if not a new vindication of the Iraq intervention.
The danger of the NIE is that it will be abused by the Iran appeasers as proof the Islamic Republic is as pure as the driven snow, and give them an excuse for dropping the diplomatic pressure on Iran, let alone even the feeblest threat of military action. The NIE confirms that Iran continues enriching uranium, which is the stuff nuclear weapons are made of, and predicts Iran could have the bomb in as little as two years. But the NIE also allows that the West has time -- not to carry on as usual, but to prevent Iran from becoming a nuclear Islamist theocracy, by non-military means. If we do not use this time to halt Iran's nuclear drive diplomatically, we will sooner or later be back to bracing for the military option.
Published in The Chronicle-Herald, Halifax, Nova Scotia
Andrew Smith / Andrew W. Smith, Tulsa, Oklahoma and Cape Sable Island, Nova Scotia
December 21, 2007
November 10, 2007
Metropolis, 80 years on
2007 makes 80 years since the premiere of Fritz Lang's epic of science fiction futurism, Metropolis.
Metropolis marks a sort of intersection: It came out of the cauldron of interwar Germany, launched an entire genre of film, and was one of the last great silent pictures, released on the cusp of the "talkie" age which began in earnest with The Jazz Singer later in the same year.
That futurism can contain so much medievalism may be a measure of the irresistible and sometimes fatal pull on the German imagination of the Dark Ages. In the same film, we see both a remarkably prescient projection of a videophone, and a Grim Reaper and skeletal chorus right out of a Black Death-era manuscript. The evocation of the Middle Ages in this brave new world is one of the features that makes Metropolis so compelling, though one wonders if it wasn’t so much a clever juxtaposition as the product of a mentality so fixated on the Gothic that even a film set in 2026 ends up playing out Medieval fantasies.
Metropolis itself is New York City circa 1924 -- when Lang first saw New York for himself -- only bigger and taller and with a few more architecturally audacious edifices here and there. That remains arguably the most striking and familiar image from the film: the Metropolis cityscape, with the skyscraping towers so fantastically high that the ground is almost forgotten, the ant-like traffic bustling in every direction and on multiple levels, and the planes buzzing not far above the higher tiers of traffic.
On the petty but pesky matter of Metropolis’ planes. The tiny biplanes and prop planes in the film were soon to be museum pieces even in 1927, and aircraft evolution had been so fast and furious in that time, it beggars belief that anyone of the time would envision planes a century hence as being exactly like whatever was current. A small point, admittedly, but these things do, as they say, take one out of the movie.
The film does avoid some of the usual pitfalls of futuristic science fiction, especially the unfortunate tendency to outfit the characters in tinfoil jumpsuits and metallic beehive wigs. The costuming, as the aircraft and automobiles, is mainly typical of the time the film was made: slacks and shirts, neckties, suit jackets, hair short and parted on the sides, etc. In fact, only two decades away from the 2026 setting for the film, it seems there was either shrewdness or at least dumb luck in those costuming and props decisions, as the difference between 1927 and 2026 is liable to be less than the difference between 2026 and a 1920s filmmaker's vision of 2026.
It is duly noted that Metropolis is a specimen of German cinematic expressionism, and perhaps that should dull one’s criticisms, but "expressionism" shouldn’t become an excuse for every flaw in the work.
The "plight of the workers" gimmicks particularly are cartoonish, as in the opening scene of the subterranean workers changing shifts, trudging unnaturally slowly and in mechanical lock step, as a signal to us benighted viewers that these are some decidedly non-unionized working conditions. Some silly stunts are tolerable in the name of expressionism. But even the miserable slaves who built Egypt’s pyramids were presumably permitted to trudge in their own gaits. And at that, if the laborers must walk unnaturally to make a point of their enslavement, why not have them walk faster rather than at a snail’s pace which no self-respecting slave-overseer would abide? It’s ridiculous and unnecessary direction and diminishes the film.
And that points to a bigger problem with the film. Why, in this advanced, mechanized future world, are human beings necessary for such menial tasks as mechanically turning dials? In a world in which so much else has been automated – even programmable androids invented -- one might imagine that the task of turning dials would have been sorted out as well. But that of course would have undermined the point of the film, which was to comment on the plight of labor and some class apartheid.
Being a silent film, Metropolis tends toward the hammier school of acting -- overwrought expressions and gestures, etc. -- but that’s a forgivable and indeed charming feature of the era, when such visual embellishments compensated for the silence.
As Maria, Brigette Helm is frankly a little boring. But as "Machine-Maria" -- the android given Maria’s characteristics by its mad scientist inventor, Rotwang -- she’s positively possessed, at times wild and at other times coldly manipulative, with a sinister smirk and an exuberant nihilism. Her Machine-Maria performance ranks with the very best in silent film. Incidentally, Helm’s look is one that seems to have appealed quite specifically to Germans of the era.
Alfred Abel plays Metropolis’ master, Joh Fredersen, and can be something of a show-stealer. More subtle for the most part than typical silent-era actors, and conveys the sort of control and cynicism that one might imagine in a master of this future city of 60 million.
Among Metropolis’ anachronisms is its quite sincere invocation of Christianity. The film is filled with Christian allusions and symbolism, and not for purposes of irony, scorn, or villanization, as would tend to be the case in any nonreligious film of the past several decades. When the hero Freder, son of Joh Fredersen, finds himself in the laboring bowels of the city and witnesses a worker die in service to one of the machines, his point of reference is the human sacrifice culture of Molechism condemned in the Old Testament, and he envisions the factory scene as a stylized Biblical one of ancient Ammonites throwing themselves to the furnace as sacrifices to Molech. It takes some considerable familiarity with the Bible, not to mention an assumption of audience acquaintance with Scripture, to instinctively allude to such a thing as Molechism.
The heroine is named Maria, and is a rapturous John the Baptist-figure/Social Gospel preacher/labor organizer who calls subversive meetings in the catacombs below the city, festooned with crosses. Maria recounts the Old Testament story of the Tower of Babel, but appropriates it as a class struggle "legend". In the passed-over Biblical account, the man-as-god thinking behind the tower was a blasphemous affront to God, whereas in Maria’s legend, the problem with the tower is the conscription of dumb labor to build it and the lack of understanding between that labor and the designers.
Maria points the people to their messiah, or to use the film’s preferred term, "mediator", who happens to be the son of Metropolis’ lord. Only son, at that. And in case we missed anything, this mediator’s head is illuminated as in a medieval icon. He is supposed to be the "heart" that allows the "head" and the "hands" to communicate, which is evidently very important and which, we are given to know from the first frames of the picture, is the moral of the story.
There’s also a cathedral, Scripture passages, the fulfillment of Revelation prophesies, even a burning at the stake, etc., with characteristically Teutonic Medieval embellishments. Christianity comes in many forms, and Metropolis’ Christianity is more along the lines of what was called "Social Gospel", quite Biblically literate, and more accommodative than radical. A Continental Social Democrat’s Christianity, which itself is becoming a bit anachronistic today even in Europe.
The unionist economics of the film is blessedly outmoded today, dated and almost other-worldly, like a debate on women’s suffrage. Speaking of the womenfolk, the workforce of 2026 Metropolis is uniformly male, which, like that ancient biplane and prop plane, was not long for this world even when the film was made. We learn that there are women in Metropolis’ laboring class, and children, but they apparently keep to their housing.
The time of the film’s making must be of some significance. 1927 precedes by a couple years our dating for the Great Depression, when this kind of Marx-inspired art would become even more typical. But Germany is another case. It’s sometimes said that Germany was the first country into the depression and the first out of it, and by 1927, while to the west of Germany were boom-times and happy days, Germany was already an economic basket case, thanks especially to the war, the post-war carving-up of valuable German territory, and Germany’s ruinous Reparations burden. So no doubt all that gave the film some currency and import, as a generation drowning in economic depression is liable to go for a movie that shows economics as some cruel machine, complete with a villain and scapegoat at the controls.
Like so much leftish advocacy art, Metropolis manages to miss the pending cataclysm that was gathering all around it in interwar Germany, and imagines instead some dystopia that would never materialize, in this case a caste system slavery. Not only did the coming slide toward fascism and war elude the filmmakers, but Lang’s then-wife and his Metropolis co-writer would later become quite an enthusiastic Nazi herself, which probably wasn’t much of a stretch. Maybe 1927 was still too early for the specter of fascism and the next global conflagration to have appeared to anyone, although Mussolini had established his Fascist government in Italy some five years earlier.
As politics and as science fiction futurism, Metropolis was no prophet. And as storytelling, it’s less compelling than some of Lang’s other work, like the Dr. Mabuse films. It is as art that Metropolis is magic. So many scenes, like the one in which the diabolical scientist Rotwang merges Maria with his android "Machine-Man" in his fantastical laboratory, with music at least as inspired as the concept itself, are as close to perfection as can be found in any silent film. So many touches, like setting Rotwang’s space-age lab in an ancient hovel in the shadows of Metropolis’ towers, are the stuff of truly great stories.
Metropolis is a tour de force, and legitimately the landmark cinematic achievement which its advocates claim it to be. Just don’t mind the quirks.
(The Murnau Foundation has done an exquisite job of making Metropolis presentable in its old age, being as faithful to the partly-lost original as possible, and adding a brilliant rendering of the original orchestral score by Gottfried Huppertz. The Murnau restoration is distributed in North America by Kino.)
Metropolis marks a sort of intersection: It came out of the cauldron of interwar Germany, launched an entire genre of film, and was one of the last great silent pictures, released on the cusp of the "talkie" age which began in earnest with The Jazz Singer later in the same year.
That futurism can contain so much medievalism may be a measure of the irresistible and sometimes fatal pull on the German imagination of the Dark Ages. In the same film, we see both a remarkably prescient projection of a videophone, and a Grim Reaper and skeletal chorus right out of a Black Death-era manuscript. The evocation of the Middle Ages in this brave new world is one of the features that makes Metropolis so compelling, though one wonders if it wasn’t so much a clever juxtaposition as the product of a mentality so fixated on the Gothic that even a film set in 2026 ends up playing out Medieval fantasies.
Metropolis itself is New York City circa 1924 -- when Lang first saw New York for himself -- only bigger and taller and with a few more architecturally audacious edifices here and there. That remains arguably the most striking and familiar image from the film: the Metropolis cityscape, with the skyscraping towers so fantastically high that the ground is almost forgotten, the ant-like traffic bustling in every direction and on multiple levels, and the planes buzzing not far above the higher tiers of traffic.
On the petty but pesky matter of Metropolis’ planes. The tiny biplanes and prop planes in the film were soon to be museum pieces even in 1927, and aircraft evolution had been so fast and furious in that time, it beggars belief that anyone of the time would envision planes a century hence as being exactly like whatever was current. A small point, admittedly, but these things do, as they say, take one out of the movie.
The film does avoid some of the usual pitfalls of futuristic science fiction, especially the unfortunate tendency to outfit the characters in tinfoil jumpsuits and metallic beehive wigs. The costuming, as the aircraft and automobiles, is mainly typical of the time the film was made: slacks and shirts, neckties, suit jackets, hair short and parted on the sides, etc. In fact, only two decades away from the 2026 setting for the film, it seems there was either shrewdness or at least dumb luck in those costuming and props decisions, as the difference between 1927 and 2026 is liable to be less than the difference between 2026 and a 1920s filmmaker's vision of 2026.
It is duly noted that Metropolis is a specimen of German cinematic expressionism, and perhaps that should dull one’s criticisms, but "expressionism" shouldn’t become an excuse for every flaw in the work.
The "plight of the workers" gimmicks particularly are cartoonish, as in the opening scene of the subterranean workers changing shifts, trudging unnaturally slowly and in mechanical lock step, as a signal to us benighted viewers that these are some decidedly non-unionized working conditions. Some silly stunts are tolerable in the name of expressionism. But even the miserable slaves who built Egypt’s pyramids were presumably permitted to trudge in their own gaits. And at that, if the laborers must walk unnaturally to make a point of their enslavement, why not have them walk faster rather than at a snail’s pace which no self-respecting slave-overseer would abide? It’s ridiculous and unnecessary direction and diminishes the film.
And that points to a bigger problem with the film. Why, in this advanced, mechanized future world, are human beings necessary for such menial tasks as mechanically turning dials? In a world in which so much else has been automated – even programmable androids invented -- one might imagine that the task of turning dials would have been sorted out as well. But that of course would have undermined the point of the film, which was to comment on the plight of labor and some class apartheid.
Being a silent film, Metropolis tends toward the hammier school of acting -- overwrought expressions and gestures, etc. -- but that’s a forgivable and indeed charming feature of the era, when such visual embellishments compensated for the silence.
As Maria, Brigette Helm is frankly a little boring. But as "Machine-Maria" -- the android given Maria’s characteristics by its mad scientist inventor, Rotwang -- she’s positively possessed, at times wild and at other times coldly manipulative, with a sinister smirk and an exuberant nihilism. Her Machine-Maria performance ranks with the very best in silent film. Incidentally, Helm’s look is one that seems to have appealed quite specifically to Germans of the era.
Alfred Abel plays Metropolis’ master, Joh Fredersen, and can be something of a show-stealer. More subtle for the most part than typical silent-era actors, and conveys the sort of control and cynicism that one might imagine in a master of this future city of 60 million.
Among Metropolis’ anachronisms is its quite sincere invocation of Christianity. The film is filled with Christian allusions and symbolism, and not for purposes of irony, scorn, or villanization, as would tend to be the case in any nonreligious film of the past several decades. When the hero Freder, son of Joh Fredersen, finds himself in the laboring bowels of the city and witnesses a worker die in service to one of the machines, his point of reference is the human sacrifice culture of Molechism condemned in the Old Testament, and he envisions the factory scene as a stylized Biblical one of ancient Ammonites throwing themselves to the furnace as sacrifices to Molech. It takes some considerable familiarity with the Bible, not to mention an assumption of audience acquaintance with Scripture, to instinctively allude to such a thing as Molechism.
The heroine is named Maria, and is a rapturous John the Baptist-figure/Social Gospel preacher/labor organizer who calls subversive meetings in the catacombs below the city, festooned with crosses. Maria recounts the Old Testament story of the Tower of Babel, but appropriates it as a class struggle "legend". In the passed-over Biblical account, the man-as-god thinking behind the tower was a blasphemous affront to God, whereas in Maria’s legend, the problem with the tower is the conscription of dumb labor to build it and the lack of understanding between that labor and the designers.
Maria points the people to their messiah, or to use the film’s preferred term, "mediator", who happens to be the son of Metropolis’ lord. Only son, at that. And in case we missed anything, this mediator’s head is illuminated as in a medieval icon. He is supposed to be the "heart" that allows the "head" and the "hands" to communicate, which is evidently very important and which, we are given to know from the first frames of the picture, is the moral of the story.
There’s also a cathedral, Scripture passages, the fulfillment of Revelation prophesies, even a burning at the stake, etc., with characteristically Teutonic Medieval embellishments. Christianity comes in many forms, and Metropolis’ Christianity is more along the lines of what was called "Social Gospel", quite Biblically literate, and more accommodative than radical. A Continental Social Democrat’s Christianity, which itself is becoming a bit anachronistic today even in Europe.
The unionist economics of the film is blessedly outmoded today, dated and almost other-worldly, like a debate on women’s suffrage. Speaking of the womenfolk, the workforce of 2026 Metropolis is uniformly male, which, like that ancient biplane and prop plane, was not long for this world even when the film was made. We learn that there are women in Metropolis’ laboring class, and children, but they apparently keep to their housing.
The time of the film’s making must be of some significance. 1927 precedes by a couple years our dating for the Great Depression, when this kind of Marx-inspired art would become even more typical. But Germany is another case. It’s sometimes said that Germany was the first country into the depression and the first out of it, and by 1927, while to the west of Germany were boom-times and happy days, Germany was already an economic basket case, thanks especially to the war, the post-war carving-up of valuable German territory, and Germany’s ruinous Reparations burden. So no doubt all that gave the film some currency and import, as a generation drowning in economic depression is liable to go for a movie that shows economics as some cruel machine, complete with a villain and scapegoat at the controls.
Like so much leftish advocacy art, Metropolis manages to miss the pending cataclysm that was gathering all around it in interwar Germany, and imagines instead some dystopia that would never materialize, in this case a caste system slavery. Not only did the coming slide toward fascism and war elude the filmmakers, but Lang’s then-wife and his Metropolis co-writer would later become quite an enthusiastic Nazi herself, which probably wasn’t much of a stretch. Maybe 1927 was still too early for the specter of fascism and the next global conflagration to have appeared to anyone, although Mussolini had established his Fascist government in Italy some five years earlier.
As politics and as science fiction futurism, Metropolis was no prophet. And as storytelling, it’s less compelling than some of Lang’s other work, like the Dr. Mabuse films. It is as art that Metropolis is magic. So many scenes, like the one in which the diabolical scientist Rotwang merges Maria with his android "Machine-Man" in his fantastical laboratory, with music at least as inspired as the concept itself, are as close to perfection as can be found in any silent film. So many touches, like setting Rotwang’s space-age lab in an ancient hovel in the shadows of Metropolis’ towers, are the stuff of truly great stories.
Metropolis is a tour de force, and legitimately the landmark cinematic achievement which its advocates claim it to be. Just don’t mind the quirks.
(The Murnau Foundation has done an exquisite job of making Metropolis presentable in its old age, being as faithful to the partly-lost original as possible, and adding a brilliant rendering of the original orchestral score by Gottfried Huppertz. The Murnau restoration is distributed in North America by Kino.)
October 12, 2007
Iran and the power of the presidency
(Published in The Chronicle-Herald, Halifax, Nova Scotia)
Although France's new leadership has been more hawkish in its Iran pronouncements than the Bush Administration, which has yet to go further than the perfunctory "all options are on the table" statements, speculation has grown that a U.S. attack on Iran may be only a matter of months away.
And not for nothing. Iraq has gone from a boil to a simmer for the first time since the explosion in civil strife after February of 2006, allowing attention to turn elsewhere. Four years of European diplomacy have done absolutely nothing to dissuade Iran from going nuclear. And Iran is increasingly, if indirectly, killing Western troops and sabotaging the new democracies of the Middle East. All potentially pointing to an armed confrontation with Iran. But with an anti-war Congress that has already signaled opposition to action against Iran, is there even a possibility of such a thing?
It was not so many years ago that another "lame duck" president, facing a hostile Congress and a United Nations Security Council veto, launched an air war. In March of 1999, President Bill Clinton had 22 months remaining in his final term. Both houses of Congress were vehemently opposed to the Administration, so much so that the House of Representatives had recently made Clinton only the second president to be impeached. Russia, on the Security Council, was certain to veto any resolution for action against Russia's "little brothers," the Serbs.
Nonetheless, invoking the support of NATO, Clinton waged a 78-day air war on Serbia over the issue of Kosovo, and by the time the bombs stopped dropping, Congress had done as it usually does and capitulated to the Commander-in-Chief, funding the operations with money to spare.
This was the trend through the 1990s. It is mistaken for a placid period, but the military missions came one after another: Somalia, Haiti, Bosnia, Kosovo, plus many strikes on Iraq, attacks against Afghanistan and Sudan, and a major show of force off Taiwan. All while the United States Armed Forces was being hacked to half its 1992 size, leaving a rump of the Cold War army that would have to improvise and take up the new war against Islamic fascism as of 2001. Congress might as well have stayed home. The Clinton Administration ordered half a dozen military actions citing UN resolutions or NATO support, but without the advance approval of Congress, and often over Congressional opposition.
The Bush Administration, for all the Iraq resolution rejections at the UN Security Council, did seek and receive prior Congressional consent for the Afghanistan and Iraq wars, in the 2001 and 2002 "Authorization for Use of Military Force" resolutions, on top of the standing Iraq Liberation Act of 1998.
Of course, the aerial campaigns of the 1990s are an order of magnitude or two down from the full-scale, "boots-on-the-ground," regime-changing wars of today, but it is mainly '90s-style air strikes that are being considered for Iran.
The most pertinent U.S. law in the Iran case may be the 1973 War Powers Act. It was passed by a radicalized post-Vietnam Congress, overriding a veto by President Richard Nixon, and was intended to restrict the role of Commander-in-Chief. But it actually codified the principle that a president can order military action without Congressional authorization, requiring only that the president seek approval within 60 days -- assuming the operation has lasted that long -- and report to Congress within 48 hours.
Presidents since Nixon have tended to take a dim view of the War Powers Act -- Clinton called it "constitutionally defective" -- but it remains the most explicit expression in law of the Congressional view on war powers.
If all this is a sullying of the U.S. Constitution, it is one with a long and respectable pedigree. The United States has used military force a couple hundred times in its couple of centuries; the majority of those deployments have lacked Congressional consent, and only five times has Congress actually declared war as per the Constitution. The subordination of Congress, in its current form, started with President Harry Truman in 1950, and subsequent administrations have entrenched the practice of committing U.S. forces first and asking for permission later, if at all.
Part of the rationale for this is legitimate enough: The necessity of immediate action or an element of surprise. Conducting public hearings, debates, and votes on a military mission for weeks or months beforehand does let the cat out of the bag. But the motivations are also less noble. Congresses are often hostile to the executive branch and likely to automatically refuse approval for "the president's war," administrations tend to view Congress as a second-rate institution on matters of war and peace, and Congresses can be divided, not to mention loath to claim responsibility for risky missions. So presidents often invoke the fullest interpretation of the Commander-in-Chief mantle, and order an operation unilaterally, Congress notwithstanding.
We would be getting ahead of ourselves to assume there will necessarily be an Iran attack. The sabres have yet to be rattled by the Bush Administration, after all. But the question is effectively the President's to decide. He will order strikes on Iran or not, and his lame duck status, the disposition of Congress, and the vetoes on the UN Security Council will have much less to do with it than his judgement of the costs of action and inaction.
Andrew W. Smith/Andrew Smith, Tulsa, Oklahoma and Cape Sable Island, Nova Scotia
Although France's new leadership has been more hawkish in its Iran pronouncements than the Bush Administration, which has yet to go further than the perfunctory "all options are on the table" statements, speculation has grown that a U.S. attack on Iran may be only a matter of months away.
And not for nothing. Iraq has gone from a boil to a simmer for the first time since the explosion in civil strife after February of 2006, allowing attention to turn elsewhere. Four years of European diplomacy have done absolutely nothing to dissuade Iran from going nuclear. And Iran is increasingly, if indirectly, killing Western troops and sabotaging the new democracies of the Middle East. All potentially pointing to an armed confrontation with Iran. But with an anti-war Congress that has already signaled opposition to action against Iran, is there even a possibility of such a thing?
It was not so many years ago that another "lame duck" president, facing a hostile Congress and a United Nations Security Council veto, launched an air war. In March of 1999, President Bill Clinton had 22 months remaining in his final term. Both houses of Congress were vehemently opposed to the Administration, so much so that the House of Representatives had recently made Clinton only the second president to be impeached. Russia, on the Security Council, was certain to veto any resolution for action against Russia's "little brothers," the Serbs.
Nonetheless, invoking the support of NATO, Clinton waged a 78-day air war on Serbia over the issue of Kosovo, and by the time the bombs stopped dropping, Congress had done as it usually does and capitulated to the Commander-in-Chief, funding the operations with money to spare.
This was the trend through the 1990s. It is mistaken for a placid period, but the military missions came one after another: Somalia, Haiti, Bosnia, Kosovo, plus many strikes on Iraq, attacks against Afghanistan and Sudan, and a major show of force off Taiwan. All while the United States Armed Forces was being hacked to half its 1992 size, leaving a rump of the Cold War army that would have to improvise and take up the new war against Islamic fascism as of 2001. Congress might as well have stayed home. The Clinton Administration ordered half a dozen military actions citing UN resolutions or NATO support, but without the advance approval of Congress, and often over Congressional opposition.
The Bush Administration, for all the Iraq resolution rejections at the UN Security Council, did seek and receive prior Congressional consent for the Afghanistan and Iraq wars, in the 2001 and 2002 "Authorization for Use of Military Force" resolutions, on top of the standing Iraq Liberation Act of 1998.
Of course, the aerial campaigns of the 1990s are an order of magnitude or two down from the full-scale, "boots-on-the-ground," regime-changing wars of today, but it is mainly '90s-style air strikes that are being considered for Iran.
The most pertinent U.S. law in the Iran case may be the 1973 War Powers Act. It was passed by a radicalized post-Vietnam Congress, overriding a veto by President Richard Nixon, and was intended to restrict the role of Commander-in-Chief. But it actually codified the principle that a president can order military action without Congressional authorization, requiring only that the president seek approval within 60 days -- assuming the operation has lasted that long -- and report to Congress within 48 hours.
Presidents since Nixon have tended to take a dim view of the War Powers Act -- Clinton called it "constitutionally defective" -- but it remains the most explicit expression in law of the Congressional view on war powers.
If all this is a sullying of the U.S. Constitution, it is one with a long and respectable pedigree. The United States has used military force a couple hundred times in its couple of centuries; the majority of those deployments have lacked Congressional consent, and only five times has Congress actually declared war as per the Constitution. The subordination of Congress, in its current form, started with President Harry Truman in 1950, and subsequent administrations have entrenched the practice of committing U.S. forces first and asking for permission later, if at all.
Part of the rationale for this is legitimate enough: The necessity of immediate action or an element of surprise. Conducting public hearings, debates, and votes on a military mission for weeks or months beforehand does let the cat out of the bag. But the motivations are also less noble. Congresses are often hostile to the executive branch and likely to automatically refuse approval for "the president's war," administrations tend to view Congress as a second-rate institution on matters of war and peace, and Congresses can be divided, not to mention loath to claim responsibility for risky missions. So presidents often invoke the fullest interpretation of the Commander-in-Chief mantle, and order an operation unilaterally, Congress notwithstanding.
We would be getting ahead of ourselves to assume there will necessarily be an Iran attack. The sabres have yet to be rattled by the Bush Administration, after all. But the question is effectively the President's to decide. He will order strikes on Iran or not, and his lame duck status, the disposition of Congress, and the vetoes on the UN Security Council will have much less to do with it than his judgement of the costs of action and inaction.
Andrew W. Smith/Andrew Smith, Tulsa, Oklahoma and Cape Sable Island, Nova Scotia
October 9, 2007
The John McCain longshot
Republicans have won seven of the past ten presidential elections. Two of the three lost elections came when the Republican base found the Republican nominee to be insufficiently conservative on domestic policy, and a substantial third party candidacy was mounted. In both elections the Democrat won on the strength of less than half the popular vote. The years were 1992 and 1996, and the Democrat was Bill Clinton, who won in '92 with only 43 percent of the popular vote, and in '96 with 49 percent.
That history is rehearsed here on the occasion of a new poll out of Rasmussen Reports -- which forecast the 2004 presidential vote with uncanny precision -- and of declarations from the more conservative quarters in American politics, including especially James Dobson.
The Rasmussen poll sets Hillary Clinton against Rudy Giuliani, Clinton as Democrat nominee for president and Giuliani as the Republican, then inserts a third-party challenger who satisfies the conservative base of the Republican Party on domestic policy, with the result that Clinton wins, but on the strength of 46 percent of the popular vote. I.e., the candidate who unites the outstanding 54 percent bids fair to become next president of the United States.
And so we come to the conservative base of the Republican Party. James Dobson doesn't presume to act as some official spokesman for the base, but I presume to know him particularly and the base generally to where I can say with some authority that Dobson makes a reasonable representation of the values and votes of devout Christian and traditionally-minded core conservatives. Threats of a third party conservative kamikaze in the event that Rudy Giuliani is Republican nominee are not novel, but on October 8 Dobson appeared on Hannity and Colmes and uttered the starkest pronouncement I have yet heard, that under no circumstances will he vote Giuliani.
In light of the Rasmussen poll and the Dobson declaration, the picture is clearing, that Hillary Clinton cannot command half of the popular vote, and that the Republican Party cannot seize on that with a nominee who doesn't first satisfy its base on domestic policy. Defense and foreign policy don't figure in this, incidentally, the principal Republican candidates being agreed on "beyond the water's edge" questions.
The lessons of '92 and '96 were that Republicans lose nationally when their base is unenthused, that motivating the conservative base goes most of the way to winning national election. Most Americans are not Republican, but most Americans are conservative, and to the extent the Republican Party is the conservative party, it stands to win the most votes in most elections. Those lessons were taken to heart by Karl Rove and his class of strategists particularly, and presumably the thought has occurred to Rove et al. that if the Republican nomination goes again to a less-reliably conservative candidate, the lessons will have been unlearned.
John McCain as of this writing may not qualify for the top tier of the Republican presidential field. But it was one presidential cycle ago that John Kerry ascended from sub-McCainian primary polling to Democrat presidential nominee, and McCain has compared better against Hillary Clinton than some of those Republicans who rank ahead of him in the primary polls.
The Powerline blog on October 7 posted what is to me the shrewdist observation on John McCain and the Rebublican base: McCain is disliked by many Republicans for many reasons, but he is a conservative, and to pull the lever for John McCain would be a good deal less disagreeable than a vote for Giuliani or Romney, to the conservative base. McCain has managed to be a bad Republican but a better conservative than Giuliani and Romney, who are good Republicans but spottier in their conservatism.
And there is another, probably sillier point. 43 of the 43 presidents of the United States have been male, and 42 of those 43 have been what is called in America "WASP". That is a very resilient tendency of history. Of the candidates with national appeal in both parties, there are precious few who satisfy that "historical tendency" test. One is John McCain.
John McCain is a longshot for the presidency, certainly, and the Republican nomination may be the longer part of that longshot, but it may be that McCain makes a more likely "next president of the United States" than the leaders and first runners-up of both parties as of this writing. The core conservative activists now demurring on the prospective Republican nominees are sounding an alarm that may yet be heeded. And they are allowing an opening for John McCain. It would take a comeback on the order of John Kerry's comeback following the Iowa caucuses in 2004, but that's recent demonstration that it can be done.
That history is rehearsed here on the occasion of a new poll out of Rasmussen Reports -- which forecast the 2004 presidential vote with uncanny precision -- and of declarations from the more conservative quarters in American politics, including especially James Dobson.
The Rasmussen poll sets Hillary Clinton against Rudy Giuliani, Clinton as Democrat nominee for president and Giuliani as the Republican, then inserts a third-party challenger who satisfies the conservative base of the Republican Party on domestic policy, with the result that Clinton wins, but on the strength of 46 percent of the popular vote. I.e., the candidate who unites the outstanding 54 percent bids fair to become next president of the United States.
And so we come to the conservative base of the Republican Party. James Dobson doesn't presume to act as some official spokesman for the base, but I presume to know him particularly and the base generally to where I can say with some authority that Dobson makes a reasonable representation of the values and votes of devout Christian and traditionally-minded core conservatives. Threats of a third party conservative kamikaze in the event that Rudy Giuliani is Republican nominee are not novel, but on October 8 Dobson appeared on Hannity and Colmes and uttered the starkest pronouncement I have yet heard, that under no circumstances will he vote Giuliani.
In light of the Rasmussen poll and the Dobson declaration, the picture is clearing, that Hillary Clinton cannot command half of the popular vote, and that the Republican Party cannot seize on that with a nominee who doesn't first satisfy its base on domestic policy. Defense and foreign policy don't figure in this, incidentally, the principal Republican candidates being agreed on "beyond the water's edge" questions.
The lessons of '92 and '96 were that Republicans lose nationally when their base is unenthused, that motivating the conservative base goes most of the way to winning national election. Most Americans are not Republican, but most Americans are conservative, and to the extent the Republican Party is the conservative party, it stands to win the most votes in most elections. Those lessons were taken to heart by Karl Rove and his class of strategists particularly, and presumably the thought has occurred to Rove et al. that if the Republican nomination goes again to a less-reliably conservative candidate, the lessons will have been unlearned.
John McCain as of this writing may not qualify for the top tier of the Republican presidential field. But it was one presidential cycle ago that John Kerry ascended from sub-McCainian primary polling to Democrat presidential nominee, and McCain has compared better against Hillary Clinton than some of those Republicans who rank ahead of him in the primary polls.
The Powerline blog on October 7 posted what is to me the shrewdist observation on John McCain and the Rebublican base: McCain is disliked by many Republicans for many reasons, but he is a conservative, and to pull the lever for John McCain would be a good deal less disagreeable than a vote for Giuliani or Romney, to the conservative base. McCain has managed to be a bad Republican but a better conservative than Giuliani and Romney, who are good Republicans but spottier in their conservatism.
And there is another, probably sillier point. 43 of the 43 presidents of the United States have been male, and 42 of those 43 have been what is called in America "WASP". That is a very resilient tendency of history. Of the candidates with national appeal in both parties, there are precious few who satisfy that "historical tendency" test. One is John McCain.
John McCain is a longshot for the presidency, certainly, and the Republican nomination may be the longer part of that longshot, but it may be that McCain makes a more likely "next president of the United States" than the leaders and first runners-up of both parties as of this writing. The core conservative activists now demurring on the prospective Republican nominees are sounding an alarm that may yet be heeded. And they are allowing an opening for John McCain. It would take a comeback on the order of John Kerry's comeback following the Iowa caucuses in 2004, but that's recent demonstration that it can be done.
September 23, 2007
The Iran conundrum - "Inaction could be catastrophic, and anything less than the most finely-calibrated action could be calamitous as well"
There has been a real reluctance in the West's confrontation with Iran, and the reasons go beyond the most superficial ones -- the burden of existing commitments in Afghanistan and Iraq or the usual dissent within the West on how best to proceed.
Making matters murkier is that Iran is such a formidable nation. Territorially vast, more populous than Aghanistan and Iraq combined, with the world's second-largest crude oil reserves at a time when oil is an especially good thing to have. Iran has a sophisticated and dedicated military, and sustained a brutal war with Iraq lasting eight years and costing 300,000 Iranian lives, a scant two decades ago. It has a unique language and Persian core population, and an ancient culture with imperial traditions of regional domination. Not to mention, the more permanent parts of the Iranian government are at the same time fanatically anti-Western and constitutionally unconstrained.
The hesitation in dealing with Iran more forcefully also comes from an understanding that the Iranian people are some of the most Western-oriented and savvy in the region, perfectly capable of managing their own affairs in a decent, democratic fashion. It is tragic that a nation which might as easily be a great friend and ally, has ended up one of our most challenging threats. That Iran would become the first modern Islamic theocracy is itself a sad irony: Islamic government ought to be a poor fit for Iran, with its tradition of secular government reaching back some two-and-a-half thousand years.
So there is a sober respect and indeed fear of what Iran would be capable of in retaliation for military strikes on its nuclear production, and a worry that even limited Western air strikes could stir some nationalist reaction and make enemies of the otherwise pro-Western Iranian people. Those have made good arguments against the military option.
What has changed in the past months is the addition to the old equation of a new realization, that Iran is on the attack already: increasingly, without provocation, and with near-impunity.
As of August, about half the attacks on Coalition forces in Iraq have been Iranian-supported. Iran is shelling Iraqi Kurdish territory and threatening invasion. It is arming, training, and funding Iraqi insurgents as well as arming the Taliban in Afghanistan, and its weaponry is the most advanced in the insurgents' arsenals. Iran has even flooded southern Iraq with bogus voters to boost support for its client parties. Hezbollah, Iran's terrorist arm, threatens Israel and subverts Lebanon's democracy. Iran props up Hamas in Gaza and sponsors Islamic Jihad. Even the forces of the genocidal, rogue government of Sudan are considered worthy of training and support by the Iranian theocracy. Iran could probably do worse, but it is wreaking havoc enough already.
At the behest of the Iraqi government, the United States started diplomatic discussions with Iran, reportedly limited to the subject of Iraqi stability. But since those talks began, Iran has actually increased its efforts to sabotage Iraqi peace and democracy, doing little to vindicate the faith in diplomacy for dealing with Iran.
A widely-circulated September 2 report in The Times of London claimed that U.S. plans for a possible Iran attack were to strike not only Iran's nuclear facilities but also its military. Such reports appear with some frequency and are impossible to verify, but this particular story does have the advantage of squaring with some of what can be known. The Iranian military has made itself an active enemy in Iraq especially, it would be very capable of retaliation after any attack, and it is the theocrats' defenders against a popular uprising. All arguments for targeting Iran's military as well as its nuclear capacity in any Iran hit.
Then there is U.S. Executive Order 13224. The Washington Post broke a story last month of the Bush administration’s intention to name Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps a "specially designated global terrorist entity." It would be an extraordinary move. Classifying an official force of a nation state as a terrorist organization is without precedent. But the suit certainly fits. The Revolutionary Guard and its elite, expeditionary Quds Force are the outfits responsible for aiding Iraqi insurgents, the Taliban, Hezbollah, Hamas, and Islamic Jihad.
The Executive Order would squeeze the Revolutionary Guard's substantial international financing. Section 6 of the Order could conceivably also lay a legal foundation for military action against the Guard, but at the very least, the terrorist designation would be a signal of seriousness from Washington.
Another possible indication of new seriousness was noted by the veteran commentator Arnaud de Borchgrave. When the new French President Nicolas Sarkozy made his remarkable and blunt foreign policy speech recently, warning that the consequences of diplomacy without results would be "an Iranian bomb or the bombing of Iran," it was shortly after Sarkozy had met with President Bush.
It is a reasonable guess that the Administration has been focused on Iraq, and informed that Iran is not yet at the point of no return in its nuclear project, so it has been enough for now to encourage the domestic opposition to Iran's theocracy, experiment with the diplomatic and economic measures, and hope for some development to intervene before military strikes become necessary, all the while planning and preparing for the military contingencies.
The Iran case is a conundrum. A dangerous enemy with a friendly population that defies clear prescriptions. Inaction could be catastrophic, and anything less than the most finely-calibrated action could be calamitous as well. But the Iranian assault is making things very slightly clearer as the days pass. Action against Iran can only become more likely as Iran continues in its genocidal rhetoric, doomsday-minded drive for the bomb, and now the region-wide offensive against the West it has launched despite our best efforts to decline the fight.
Andrew W. Smith, Tulsa, Oklahoma and Cape Sable Island, Nova Scotia
Published in The Chronicle-Herald, Halifax, Nova Scotia
Making matters murkier is that Iran is such a formidable nation. Territorially vast, more populous than Aghanistan and Iraq combined, with the world's second-largest crude oil reserves at a time when oil is an especially good thing to have. Iran has a sophisticated and dedicated military, and sustained a brutal war with Iraq lasting eight years and costing 300,000 Iranian lives, a scant two decades ago. It has a unique language and Persian core population, and an ancient culture with imperial traditions of regional domination. Not to mention, the more permanent parts of the Iranian government are at the same time fanatically anti-Western and constitutionally unconstrained.
The hesitation in dealing with Iran more forcefully also comes from an understanding that the Iranian people are some of the most Western-oriented and savvy in the region, perfectly capable of managing their own affairs in a decent, democratic fashion. It is tragic that a nation which might as easily be a great friend and ally, has ended up one of our most challenging threats. That Iran would become the first modern Islamic theocracy is itself a sad irony: Islamic government ought to be a poor fit for Iran, with its tradition of secular government reaching back some two-and-a-half thousand years.
So there is a sober respect and indeed fear of what Iran would be capable of in retaliation for military strikes on its nuclear production, and a worry that even limited Western air strikes could stir some nationalist reaction and make enemies of the otherwise pro-Western Iranian people. Those have made good arguments against the military option.
What has changed in the past months is the addition to the old equation of a new realization, that Iran is on the attack already: increasingly, without provocation, and with near-impunity.
As of August, about half the attacks on Coalition forces in Iraq have been Iranian-supported. Iran is shelling Iraqi Kurdish territory and threatening invasion. It is arming, training, and funding Iraqi insurgents as well as arming the Taliban in Afghanistan, and its weaponry is the most advanced in the insurgents' arsenals. Iran has even flooded southern Iraq with bogus voters to boost support for its client parties. Hezbollah, Iran's terrorist arm, threatens Israel and subverts Lebanon's democracy. Iran props up Hamas in Gaza and sponsors Islamic Jihad. Even the forces of the genocidal, rogue government of Sudan are considered worthy of training and support by the Iranian theocracy. Iran could probably do worse, but it is wreaking havoc enough already.
At the behest of the Iraqi government, the United States started diplomatic discussions with Iran, reportedly limited to the subject of Iraqi stability. But since those talks began, Iran has actually increased its efforts to sabotage Iraqi peace and democracy, doing little to vindicate the faith in diplomacy for dealing with Iran.
A widely-circulated September 2 report in The Times of London claimed that U.S. plans for a possible Iran attack were to strike not only Iran's nuclear facilities but also its military. Such reports appear with some frequency and are impossible to verify, but this particular story does have the advantage of squaring with some of what can be known. The Iranian military has made itself an active enemy in Iraq especially, it would be very capable of retaliation after any attack, and it is the theocrats' defenders against a popular uprising. All arguments for targeting Iran's military as well as its nuclear capacity in any Iran hit.
Then there is U.S. Executive Order 13224. The Washington Post broke a story last month of the Bush administration’s intention to name Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps a "specially designated global terrorist entity." It would be an extraordinary move. Classifying an official force of a nation state as a terrorist organization is without precedent. But the suit certainly fits. The Revolutionary Guard and its elite, expeditionary Quds Force are the outfits responsible for aiding Iraqi insurgents, the Taliban, Hezbollah, Hamas, and Islamic Jihad.
The Executive Order would squeeze the Revolutionary Guard's substantial international financing. Section 6 of the Order could conceivably also lay a legal foundation for military action against the Guard, but at the very least, the terrorist designation would be a signal of seriousness from Washington.
Another possible indication of new seriousness was noted by the veteran commentator Arnaud de Borchgrave. When the new French President Nicolas Sarkozy made his remarkable and blunt foreign policy speech recently, warning that the consequences of diplomacy without results would be "an Iranian bomb or the bombing of Iran," it was shortly after Sarkozy had met with President Bush.
It is a reasonable guess that the Administration has been focused on Iraq, and informed that Iran is not yet at the point of no return in its nuclear project, so it has been enough for now to encourage the domestic opposition to Iran's theocracy, experiment with the diplomatic and economic measures, and hope for some development to intervene before military strikes become necessary, all the while planning and preparing for the military contingencies.
The Iran case is a conundrum. A dangerous enemy with a friendly population that defies clear prescriptions. Inaction could be catastrophic, and anything less than the most finely-calibrated action could be calamitous as well. But the Iranian assault is making things very slightly clearer as the days pass. Action against Iran can only become more likely as Iran continues in its genocidal rhetoric, doomsday-minded drive for the bomb, and now the region-wide offensive against the West it has launched despite our best efforts to decline the fight.
Andrew W. Smith, Tulsa, Oklahoma and Cape Sable Island, Nova Scotia
Published in The Chronicle-Herald, Halifax, Nova Scotia
September 5, 2007
The uncouthness of Churchill
Citing Winston Churchill as a way of disparaging contemporary leaders is common enough, but what rankles is that it is so often done by people with the sparsest of knowledge of Churchill. People with only a vague sense of the man use their own preferences and prejudices to fill the gaps in their knowledge, and use their imaginary Churchill as a bludgeon against whatever it is they're trying to discredit.
This time the offender was a panelist on Fox News' Red Eye, which is much more cutting-edge and entertaining than one would imagine a news channel comedy show to be. President Bush has given a series of interviews for a new book, excerpts of which were published recently. Apparently Bush was interviewed with his feet on his desk, eating low-fat hot dogs (which I happen to enjoy myself, incidentally), and chomping an unlit cigar. A panelist offered that this was quite unstatesmanlike, remarking that he couldn't picture Winston Churchill giving an interview in such an unbecoming state. The only humor in the line was the unintended irony: Churchill would have been as uncouth as Bush and worse.
Churchill regularly dictated even great speeches while soaking naked in his tub, smoking cigars, and drinking. He once famously met President Roosevelt in a state of undress. So criticize a president all you want for putting his feet up or eating hot dogs during an interview, but don't say it's un-Churchill-like.
This time the offender was a panelist on Fox News' Red Eye, which is much more cutting-edge and entertaining than one would imagine a news channel comedy show to be. President Bush has given a series of interviews for a new book, excerpts of which were published recently. Apparently Bush was interviewed with his feet on his desk, eating low-fat hot dogs (which I happen to enjoy myself, incidentally), and chomping an unlit cigar. A panelist offered that this was quite unstatesmanlike, remarking that he couldn't picture Winston Churchill giving an interview in such an unbecoming state. The only humor in the line was the unintended irony: Churchill would have been as uncouth as Bush and worse.
Churchill regularly dictated even great speeches while soaking naked in his tub, smoking cigars, and drinking. He once famously met President Roosevelt in a state of undress. So criticize a president all you want for putting his feet up or eating hot dogs during an interview, but don't say it's un-Churchill-like.
August 5, 2007
One almighty push in Iraq
Two days after the last of 28,000 American reinforcements had arrived in Iraq, the independent war correspondent Michael Yon e-mailed a brief dispatch, observing, "This is a very serious offensive kicking off in Iraq. ... Nobody that I am seeing realizes just how big this is." Five days later, Lt. Gen. Raymond Odierno explained, "We are beyond a surge of forces, and we are now into a surge of operations."
No-one would guess it from the war coverage or the pronouncements of U.S. congressmen, but what is underway is the largest Coalition offensive since the end of major combat operations in 2003. The 11th-hour operational surge, officially named Phantom Thunder, was launched without notice or fanfare, on the same day as the U.S. Armed Forces announced the troop surge complete: June 15.
Iraq being the dominant issue in American public life, the biggest offensive in four years might at least be known to the American people, not just to obsessive followers of military matters. But Phantom Thunder has had less coverage and discussion than the "DC Madam" case. War coverage reliably recounts Coalition and civilian casualties, but not enemy body counts; and whatever explosion the insurgents intended for the evening news that day, but not Coalition operations, much less Coalition successes.
Phantom Thunder is a sort of re-invasion of nearly all Iraq's trouble areas, the insurgent strongholds in Baghdad and the "Baghdad belts" stretching into four surrounding provinces. The objective is to kill, capture, or scare off the insurgents -- mainly al Qaeda in Iraq and the Shiite "Mahdi Army" militia -- and occupy their territory long after, denying them the opportunity to return. This supported by new efforts to strangle insurgent supply lines, as by closing traffic on the Tigris River and policing a double-cordon around Baghdad itself.
In past, when the Coalition has moved in, many insurgents have simply moved on. So these attacks are simultaneous, to help end the unwinnable game of insurgent "whack-a-mole," and the Iraqi Army has occupied some of the more likely destinations for insurgents on the lam.
The cutting edge in Congressional critiques of the war is the "withdraw and fight" school, which declares the policy begun in earnest only weeks ago a failure, and advances an alternative which ironically is precisely the pre-surge policy associated with former Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld. The critics recall that policy as "gross mismanagement of the war," but proceed to endorse its principles: a "small footprint," or minimal American presence, an emphasis on training Iraqi troops, and shepherding American soldiers on bases isolated in safe areas, with limited excursions into trouble spots.
That happens to be the story of the first four years in Iraq. It made good sense as a way of limiting Western involvement and promptly passing power to the new government and Iraqi people, and it may even be a fine idea again if Iraq is successfully pacified. But four years of that very policy did not pacify Iraq, and the surge policy is a recognition of that.
Calling for training the locals at this point is a bit like saying Microsoft ought to try making operating systems. The president made training for Iraqi forces a staple of his re-election campaign three years ago, and the Coalition has done quite a lot of it, to the point that the Iraqi Army is today as large as Britain's.
And as for holding down troop levels and holing up on safe bases, that left territory effectively unoccupied, so that blocks and quarters and cities fell to the insurgents. The new policy puts American soldiers on the streets, and in greater force, to take back and hold territory, and to make the GIs a fixture in the communities.
This is Gen. David Petraeus' counterinsurgency philosophy, drawn from French Algerian Lt. Col. David Galula, that the civilian population can never be an ally -- giving life-saving information or war-winning intelligence -- if they live in fear of the enemy. Once the people are convinced that the Coalition is serious about driving out, and keeping out, the insurgents, then the good information pours in.
There will be a draw down, both in numbers and in mission. There will have to be. The idea was never to run a protracted policing operation on sweltering foreign city streets, but to hand off to a democratic Iraqi government. All sides want a draw down, including the Administration that ordered the increased deployments and expanded operations. It was in part the Administration's desire for a homecoming once the initial mission was complete that wound up enabling the insurgency, as street-level occupation was forgone, allowing insurgents an opening.
The issue now is what is to be done before that inevitable draw down: Complete the first concerted effort to pacify Iraq in four years, or call the whole thing off before the results are even in, and let the chips fall where they may.
It just might be that the soldiers win on the ground, in one almighty push, while the press and politcal class oppose not only their deployment but their cause, and deny any prospect of victory.
Andrew W. Smith, Tulsa, Oklahoma and Cape Sable Island, Nova Scotia
Published in The Chronicle-Herald, Halifax, Nova Scotia
No-one would guess it from the war coverage or the pronouncements of U.S. congressmen, but what is underway is the largest Coalition offensive since the end of major combat operations in 2003. The 11th-hour operational surge, officially named Phantom Thunder, was launched without notice or fanfare, on the same day as the U.S. Armed Forces announced the troop surge complete: June 15.
Iraq being the dominant issue in American public life, the biggest offensive in four years might at least be known to the American people, not just to obsessive followers of military matters. But Phantom Thunder has had less coverage and discussion than the "DC Madam" case. War coverage reliably recounts Coalition and civilian casualties, but not enemy body counts; and whatever explosion the insurgents intended for the evening news that day, but not Coalition operations, much less Coalition successes.
Phantom Thunder is a sort of re-invasion of nearly all Iraq's trouble areas, the insurgent strongholds in Baghdad and the "Baghdad belts" stretching into four surrounding provinces. The objective is to kill, capture, or scare off the insurgents -- mainly al Qaeda in Iraq and the Shiite "Mahdi Army" militia -- and occupy their territory long after, denying them the opportunity to return. This supported by new efforts to strangle insurgent supply lines, as by closing traffic on the Tigris River and policing a double-cordon around Baghdad itself.
In past, when the Coalition has moved in, many insurgents have simply moved on. So these attacks are simultaneous, to help end the unwinnable game of insurgent "whack-a-mole," and the Iraqi Army has occupied some of the more likely destinations for insurgents on the lam.
The cutting edge in Congressional critiques of the war is the "withdraw and fight" school, which declares the policy begun in earnest only weeks ago a failure, and advances an alternative which ironically is precisely the pre-surge policy associated with former Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld. The critics recall that policy as "gross mismanagement of the war," but proceed to endorse its principles: a "small footprint," or minimal American presence, an emphasis on training Iraqi troops, and shepherding American soldiers on bases isolated in safe areas, with limited excursions into trouble spots.
That happens to be the story of the first four years in Iraq. It made good sense as a way of limiting Western involvement and promptly passing power to the new government and Iraqi people, and it may even be a fine idea again if Iraq is successfully pacified. But four years of that very policy did not pacify Iraq, and the surge policy is a recognition of that.
Calling for training the locals at this point is a bit like saying Microsoft ought to try making operating systems. The president made training for Iraqi forces a staple of his re-election campaign three years ago, and the Coalition has done quite a lot of it, to the point that the Iraqi Army is today as large as Britain's.
And as for holding down troop levels and holing up on safe bases, that left territory effectively unoccupied, so that blocks and quarters and cities fell to the insurgents. The new policy puts American soldiers on the streets, and in greater force, to take back and hold territory, and to make the GIs a fixture in the communities.
This is Gen. David Petraeus' counterinsurgency philosophy, drawn from French Algerian Lt. Col. David Galula, that the civilian population can never be an ally -- giving life-saving information or war-winning intelligence -- if they live in fear of the enemy. Once the people are convinced that the Coalition is serious about driving out, and keeping out, the insurgents, then the good information pours in.
There will be a draw down, both in numbers and in mission. There will have to be. The idea was never to run a protracted policing operation on sweltering foreign city streets, but to hand off to a democratic Iraqi government. All sides want a draw down, including the Administration that ordered the increased deployments and expanded operations. It was in part the Administration's desire for a homecoming once the initial mission was complete that wound up enabling the insurgency, as street-level occupation was forgone, allowing insurgents an opening.
The issue now is what is to be done before that inevitable draw down: Complete the first concerted effort to pacify Iraq in four years, or call the whole thing off before the results are even in, and let the chips fall where they may.
It just might be that the soldiers win on the ground, in one almighty push, while the press and politcal class oppose not only their deployment but their cause, and deny any prospect of victory.
Andrew W. Smith, Tulsa, Oklahoma and Cape Sable Island, Nova Scotia
Published in The Chronicle-Herald, Halifax, Nova Scotia
June 27, 2007
Before this history is set in stone...
"I am heartsick when I think of the mismanagement of our army.... There never was such a shambling, half-and-half set of incapables collected in one government before or since the world began."
That was the hard judgement of a United States Senator on the conduct of the war by the U.S. Administration; only, the senator was Maine's William Pitt Fessenden, the war was the American Civil War, and the Administration was President Abraham Lincoln's. History has been much kinder than the distinguished senator from Maine to Lincoln and his men.
George H.W. Bush was booted from the White House after a single term, derided as a loser: "Stick a fork in him, he's done," etc. In the 1990s he was recalled as a failure for not "rolling on to Baghdad" and "finishing the job" in Iraq, and soulless for abandoning Iraq's Shiites to Saddam Hussein's bloody enforcers. Yet today he is venerated as the wise statesman, prudently averting the hornet's nest of Iraq, and his former detractors are liable to say, "I always liked him." Evidently not enough Americans truly did "always" like him, or he would have had that second term.
Harry Truman is today as uncontroversial a past president as any, and recently ranked seventh-greatest. In his last year in the Oval Office, however, Truman scored the lowest presidential approval rating yet registered by the Gallup Poll: 22 percent. The Korean War, which was truly Truman's war, launched without even consulting Congress, cost 2.8 million lives all 'round, only to end in stalemate. International Communism made its greatest advances under Truman's watch. And the man now beloved and admired by partisans on both sides was unwanted as a candidate in 1952 by his own party.
Even Winston Churchill was famously tossed out on his ear by British voters while the Second World War was still unfinished, informed that he was no longer Prime Minister while representing his country at the war's last summit meeting. He was largely responsible for such catastrophes and debacles as the Gallipoli campaign in the First World War and the Norway expedition in the second. Detested in the 1930s as a blinkered imperialist and warmonger, his career to 1939 earned the biography title, A Study in Failure. And today Churchill is universally understood to be certainly the greatest statesman of the 20th Century, and one of the great figures in all history.
The initial conventional wisdom in these cases proved to be passing. Some distance and subsequent developments changed the perspective entirely. On Iraq, the conventional wisdom has been written and re-written several times already; there is no reason to believe it must necessarily be fixed where it stands today.
At the time of the 1991 Gulf War, the conventional wisdom was that the war was won, Saddam Hussein defeated. That wisdom shifted as the 1990s progressed, and the troubles and military skirmishes with Saddam Hussein continued, to the thinking that the war had been aborted half-finished. By 2005, the conventional wisdom had undergone a third revolution, to the current certainty that removing Saddam Hussein's regime and replacing it with a democracy was wrong, and Iraq ought to be left to its own devices.
So if the past 16 years are anything to go by, and if the conventional wisdom in its present iteration is heeded and Iraq is abandoned to the jihadists and Iranian proxies, we can expect a new conventional wisdom to form sooner or later, that leaving Iraq was disastrous, and why, oh, why did we not stay on and finish the job when we had the chance?
Iraq and conceivably also Afghanistan may indeed take a dishonourable place in history even after the dust has settled and partisan passions have dimmed, and the leadership may remain villains and scoundrels even in their obituaries. Vietnam and the Johnson and Nixon Administrations are the obvious cases in point, although even there, Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon have benefitted somewhat from more recent reappraisals. But the Vietnam War cost 54,000 more American lives than Iraq has, lasted eight years longer, was fought by a draft army instead of volunteer professionals, lacked the context of the 9/11 attacks, and of course ended in defeat. And no, Iraq and Afghanistan are not lost just yet.
"The government has conceived the war wrongly from the start, and no-one has more misconceived it than the Prime Minister himself." The sentiment has been repeated countless times in the past few years on the prosecution of the present wars, but those were the words of British MP Aneurin Bevan in 1942, three years into the Second World War. Even "the good war," the valiant, brilliant, unstoppable crusade, seemed in the darker hours much more like a disaster and a lost cause. The view from the middle of a war is not the clearest.
Andrew W. Smith / Andrew Smith, Tulsa, Oklahoma and Cape Sable Island, Nova Scotia
Published in The Chronicle-Herald, Halifax, Nova Scotia
That was the hard judgement of a United States Senator on the conduct of the war by the U.S. Administration; only, the senator was Maine's William Pitt Fessenden, the war was the American Civil War, and the Administration was President Abraham Lincoln's. History has been much kinder than the distinguished senator from Maine to Lincoln and his men.
George H.W. Bush was booted from the White House after a single term, derided as a loser: "Stick a fork in him, he's done," etc. In the 1990s he was recalled as a failure for not "rolling on to Baghdad" and "finishing the job" in Iraq, and soulless for abandoning Iraq's Shiites to Saddam Hussein's bloody enforcers. Yet today he is venerated as the wise statesman, prudently averting the hornet's nest of Iraq, and his former detractors are liable to say, "I always liked him." Evidently not enough Americans truly did "always" like him, or he would have had that second term.
Harry Truman is today as uncontroversial a past president as any, and recently ranked seventh-greatest. In his last year in the Oval Office, however, Truman scored the lowest presidential approval rating yet registered by the Gallup Poll: 22 percent. The Korean War, which was truly Truman's war, launched without even consulting Congress, cost 2.8 million lives all 'round, only to end in stalemate. International Communism made its greatest advances under Truman's watch. And the man now beloved and admired by partisans on both sides was unwanted as a candidate in 1952 by his own party.
Even Winston Churchill was famously tossed out on his ear by British voters while the Second World War was still unfinished, informed that he was no longer Prime Minister while representing his country at the war's last summit meeting. He was largely responsible for such catastrophes and debacles as the Gallipoli campaign in the First World War and the Norway expedition in the second. Detested in the 1930s as a blinkered imperialist and warmonger, his career to 1939 earned the biography title, A Study in Failure. And today Churchill is universally understood to be certainly the greatest statesman of the 20th Century, and one of the great figures in all history.
The initial conventional wisdom in these cases proved to be passing. Some distance and subsequent developments changed the perspective entirely. On Iraq, the conventional wisdom has been written and re-written several times already; there is no reason to believe it must necessarily be fixed where it stands today.
At the time of the 1991 Gulf War, the conventional wisdom was that the war was won, Saddam Hussein defeated. That wisdom shifted as the 1990s progressed, and the troubles and military skirmishes with Saddam Hussein continued, to the thinking that the war had been aborted half-finished. By 2005, the conventional wisdom had undergone a third revolution, to the current certainty that removing Saddam Hussein's regime and replacing it with a democracy was wrong, and Iraq ought to be left to its own devices.
So if the past 16 years are anything to go by, and if the conventional wisdom in its present iteration is heeded and Iraq is abandoned to the jihadists and Iranian proxies, we can expect a new conventional wisdom to form sooner or later, that leaving Iraq was disastrous, and why, oh, why did we not stay on and finish the job when we had the chance?
Iraq and conceivably also Afghanistan may indeed take a dishonourable place in history even after the dust has settled and partisan passions have dimmed, and the leadership may remain villains and scoundrels even in their obituaries. Vietnam and the Johnson and Nixon Administrations are the obvious cases in point, although even there, Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon have benefitted somewhat from more recent reappraisals. But the Vietnam War cost 54,000 more American lives than Iraq has, lasted eight years longer, was fought by a draft army instead of volunteer professionals, lacked the context of the 9/11 attacks, and of course ended in defeat. And no, Iraq and Afghanistan are not lost just yet.
"The government has conceived the war wrongly from the start, and no-one has more misconceived it than the Prime Minister himself." The sentiment has been repeated countless times in the past few years on the prosecution of the present wars, but those were the words of British MP Aneurin Bevan in 1942, three years into the Second World War. Even "the good war," the valiant, brilliant, unstoppable crusade, seemed in the darker hours much more like a disaster and a lost cause. The view from the middle of a war is not the clearest.
Andrew W. Smith / Andrew Smith, Tulsa, Oklahoma and Cape Sable Island, Nova Scotia
Published in The Chronicle-Herald, Halifax, Nova Scotia
May 29, 2007
America in the Mideast, two centuries ago
The famous first line of the United States Marines’ Hymn -- "From the Halls of Montezuma, to the shores of Tripoli" -- for all its familiarity, invokes some obscure history. "Halls of Montezuma" is a poetic rendering of Chapultepec Castle, iconic battle site of the Mexican-American War, and "shores of Tripoli" alludes to an even more estranged past. "Tripoli" is a bygone name for Libya, and was the scene of the first foreign war of the United States, over two centuries ago.
The First Barbary War must have seemed a quaint episode for most of the intervening 202 years. But today, five-and-a-half years deep in a major Mideastern intervention, the story has new relevance.
No longer under the protective Union Jack, American ships were not covered by British tribute to the Barbary states.
Those were Morocco and the Ottoman provinces of the North African coast: Algiers, Tunis, and Tripoli, or approximately current-day Algeria, Tunisia, and Libya. A large part of the Barbary economies consisted of threatening and attacking shipping, taking hostages and slaves, and collecting ransom and tribute for peaceful passage through the Mediterranean. The racket was enforced by Barbary pirates or "corsairs", who operated officially on behalf of their governments.
This was seen by many Americans -- particularly the new president in 1801, Thomas Jefferson -- as an intolerable injustice, but the Congress dutifully allocated millions for Barbary tribute and ransom: 20 percent of the federal budget in 1800 alone. Then, in 1801, Pasha Yusuf Karamanli of Tripoli demanded an outrageous increase in America's Tripolitan tribute. That tore it. The United States refused to pay Tripoli at all, and Tripoli declared war.
It was for just such a state of affairs that President Jefferson had dispatched a naval contingent to the Mediterranean, which proceeded to blockade the city of Tripoli and escort American shipping through Tripolitan waters.
The other Barbary states had seconded Tripoli's declaration of war, but Algiers and Tunis thought better of that following the show of strength and resolve, and some "gunboat diplomacy" in Tangier harbour persuaded Morocco to sit out the war.
The Americans defeated a Tripolitan corsair; the Tripolitans captured an American frigate with its 300 crewmen; the Americans launched five bombardments plus a failed fireship attack against Tripoli; and the war settled into a stalemate.
After nearly four years without resolution, American tactics were radically revamped. William Eaton had a plan.
Eaton had been U.S. Consul to Tunis, and was uncannily like Lawrence of Arabia over a century later: fluent in Arabic, a maverick, and wont to "go native", adopting the Arab dress.
Eaton advocated "regime change", in contemporary parlance, though of the pre-1945 sort, replacing a hostile strongman with a more agreeable one. A pretender to the throne was found -- the pasha's brother, Hamet -- and an assortment of Marines and mostly-Muslim mercenaries totaling about 500 started the 500 mile march from Egypt to Derna in Tripoli.
There, Eaton's men were outnumbered 10 to 1, but the U.S. Navy controlled the harbor, and after a coordinated naval bombardment and overland charge, Eaton captured the city, albeit with a musket-shot to the wrist.
The campaign halted awaiting supplies and reinforcements for the push to the capitol. But the support never arrived. Instead, Eaton received orders to withdraw. Eaton's expedition had given the United States new diplomatic leverage, and the pasha had negotiated. The American prisoners would be released, the U.S. government would pay $60,000 but no further tribute, American shipping would be free from Tripolitan piracy, and the pasha would remain securely on his throne.
The other Barbary states followed suit. But regardless of any pesky diplomatic commitments, Algerian corsairs resumed their attacks on American shipping only two years later, and Barbary piracy resumed generally once America became preoccupied with war much closer to home by 1812. In 1815, the United States was back at war along the Barbary coast, and this time, the fix would be permanent.
202 years of dizzying change notwithstanding, there are some striking parallels with today.
As early as 1785, then-diplomat Thomas Jefferson had tried to cobble an international coalition to confront Barbary piracy, and if America is hard-put for allies today, it found exactly none two centuries ago.
Contrary to the isolationist argument against today’s Mideastern intervention – that the United States was founded to be an isolationist republic, free of "foreign entanglements", in George Washington’s phrase – America has been here before. Thomas Jefferson himself was an interventionist, and on the Mideast, no less.
The war followed a newly-familiar pattern: early success, stalemate, tactical revolution, then aborting the mission in favor of a partial solution.
Tripoli does demonstrate that, faced with several years of stalemate, the United States can overhaul its tactics and break through; but the next step of abandoning the project absent a final resolution, if also repeated in Iraq, may also mean returning to fight another day.
Andrew W. Smith / Andrew Smith, Tulsa, Oklahoma and Cape Sable Island, Nova Scotia
Published in The Chronicle -Herald, Halifax, Nova Scotia
The First Barbary War must have seemed a quaint episode for most of the intervening 202 years. But today, five-and-a-half years deep in a major Mideastern intervention, the story has new relevance.
No longer under the protective Union Jack, American ships were not covered by British tribute to the Barbary states.
Those were Morocco and the Ottoman provinces of the North African coast: Algiers, Tunis, and Tripoli, or approximately current-day Algeria, Tunisia, and Libya. A large part of the Barbary economies consisted of threatening and attacking shipping, taking hostages and slaves, and collecting ransom and tribute for peaceful passage through the Mediterranean. The racket was enforced by Barbary pirates or "corsairs", who operated officially on behalf of their governments.
This was seen by many Americans -- particularly the new president in 1801, Thomas Jefferson -- as an intolerable injustice, but the Congress dutifully allocated millions for Barbary tribute and ransom: 20 percent of the federal budget in 1800 alone. Then, in 1801, Pasha Yusuf Karamanli of Tripoli demanded an outrageous increase in America's Tripolitan tribute. That tore it. The United States refused to pay Tripoli at all, and Tripoli declared war.
It was for just such a state of affairs that President Jefferson had dispatched a naval contingent to the Mediterranean, which proceeded to blockade the city of Tripoli and escort American shipping through Tripolitan waters.
The other Barbary states had seconded Tripoli's declaration of war, but Algiers and Tunis thought better of that following the show of strength and resolve, and some "gunboat diplomacy" in Tangier harbour persuaded Morocco to sit out the war.
The Americans defeated a Tripolitan corsair; the Tripolitans captured an American frigate with its 300 crewmen; the Americans launched five bombardments plus a failed fireship attack against Tripoli; and the war settled into a stalemate.
After nearly four years without resolution, American tactics were radically revamped. William Eaton had a plan.
Eaton had been U.S. Consul to Tunis, and was uncannily like Lawrence of Arabia over a century later: fluent in Arabic, a maverick, and wont to "go native", adopting the Arab dress.
Eaton advocated "regime change", in contemporary parlance, though of the pre-1945 sort, replacing a hostile strongman with a more agreeable one. A pretender to the throne was found -- the pasha's brother, Hamet -- and an assortment of Marines and mostly-Muslim mercenaries totaling about 500 started the 500 mile march from Egypt to Derna in Tripoli.
There, Eaton's men were outnumbered 10 to 1, but the U.S. Navy controlled the harbor, and after a coordinated naval bombardment and overland charge, Eaton captured the city, albeit with a musket-shot to the wrist.
The campaign halted awaiting supplies and reinforcements for the push to the capitol. But the support never arrived. Instead, Eaton received orders to withdraw. Eaton's expedition had given the United States new diplomatic leverage, and the pasha had negotiated. The American prisoners would be released, the U.S. government would pay $60,000 but no further tribute, American shipping would be free from Tripolitan piracy, and the pasha would remain securely on his throne.
The other Barbary states followed suit. But regardless of any pesky diplomatic commitments, Algerian corsairs resumed their attacks on American shipping only two years later, and Barbary piracy resumed generally once America became preoccupied with war much closer to home by 1812. In 1815, the United States was back at war along the Barbary coast, and this time, the fix would be permanent.
202 years of dizzying change notwithstanding, there are some striking parallels with today.
As early as 1785, then-diplomat Thomas Jefferson had tried to cobble an international coalition to confront Barbary piracy, and if America is hard-put for allies today, it found exactly none two centuries ago.
Contrary to the isolationist argument against today’s Mideastern intervention – that the United States was founded to be an isolationist republic, free of "foreign entanglements", in George Washington’s phrase – America has been here before. Thomas Jefferson himself was an interventionist, and on the Mideast, no less.
The war followed a newly-familiar pattern: early success, stalemate, tactical revolution, then aborting the mission in favor of a partial solution.
Tripoli does demonstrate that, faced with several years of stalemate, the United States can overhaul its tactics and break through; but the next step of abandoning the project absent a final resolution, if also repeated in Iraq, may also mean returning to fight another day.
Andrew W. Smith / Andrew Smith, Tulsa, Oklahoma and Cape Sable Island, Nova Scotia
Published in The Chronicle -Herald, Halifax, Nova Scotia
April 28, 2007
War by Committee, or Commander
“War by committee” is not just a figure of speech. The Continental Congress managed the Revolutionary War literally by committee, and by all accounts made a sufficient hash of it that when the Constitution was crafted in the Revolution’s wake, the new presidency was invested with the power of waging war.
But Congress was also constitutionally empowered in matters of national defense, to authorize and fund war. So, Congressional anti-warriors looking to withdraw from Iraq could move to either repeal their authorization of the war or de-fund the mission. Congressional attempts to determine troop levels or areas of operation, and even to specify which of their enemies the troops are allowed fighting, would seem to be pushing things constitutionally, and, in any event, would draw a presidential veto.
If Congress were to rescind its Iraq Resolution of 2002, the motion would assuredly be vetoed upon arrival at the White House. Congress could override a presidential veto with a vote of at least two-thirds in both the House and Senate, but the Congressional anti-war bloc is still far from that two-thirds threshold in either chamber.
And the de-funding option presents Congress with a Catch-22. Failing to undo its authorization of the war but halting payment for the on-going operations would place Congress in the position of leaving troops in the field but denying them the wherewithal to fight or even defend themselves. The number of Congressmen prepared to cast such a vote at present does not amount to 51 percent.
Plus which, for all the popular discontent over the war, support for simply de-funding it is in the single digits, according to an April 13 CBS News poll: 9 percent.
Congressional antagonism toward war efforts and war-time presidents is practically as old as the institutions themselves. As the president is commander-in-chief, and as the presidency and Congress are so often held by different parties, Congress can easily wind up as the anti-war branch of the U.S. government.
Only eight years ago, President Clinton launched the Kosovo War with NATO, but without Congress. Twice, a declaration of war resolution was rejected by Congress, as was even an authorization for the on-going air campaign. 26 Congressmen challenged the president’s war in court as unconstitutional for lacking Congressional authority. Nonetheless, Congress actually over-funded the war appropriation and authorized the use of U.S. troops for the post-war occupation.
The Vietnam War was a constitutional chess match between the legislative and executive branches. President Kennedy began the American intervention without Congressional authorization. The operation became full-scale war under President Johnson when he orchestrated Congressional approval for the escalation, which Congress revoked seven years later.
During the Nixon Presidency, Congress invoked its power of the purse to de-fund “combat operations” in the region, although by that stage the American military effort had effectively ended. Of more practical consequence was Congress’ de-funding of the native resistance in South Vietnam and Cambodia, which assured Communist victories and the exodus, abuse, and slaughter of literally millions who had opposed the Communists, or were deemed anti-Communist, in those countries.
The president exploited his power of shifting Congressional defense allocations, to fund operations in Cambodia and Laos which Congress had not provided for, and Congress exploited its power of ratifying treaties, to void agreements the President had negotiated with North Vietnam.
Two decades earlier, President Truman went to war in Korea citing a United Nations resolution and bypassing the Congress. In the 1950 midterm elections only months later, the president’s party lost 52 seats in the House and eight in the Senate. Divisions in the new Congress precluded a concerted legislative challenge to the war, though there was rancorous rhetoric enough. And when the great Gen. Douglass MacArthur gave his immortal Farewell Address after rebelling against Truman so flagrantly that the president was compelled to dismiss him, it was to a rapturous U.S. Congress.
President Wilson had campaigned in 1916 on keeping America out of the First World War, only to lead the nation into the war and institute a draft the following year, and a scant six days before the Great War ended in November 1918, the President’s party went from majority to minority in both the House and Senate, the latter having the Constitutional responsibility for ratifying treaties. So when the post-war Versailles Treaty -- which was very largely the doing of President Wilson and which included American membership in the League of Nations -- came before the hostile U.S. Senate, it was rejected. Twice.
And that is to say nothing of the constitutional confrontations over war before the 20th Century.
With the return to a Congress and presidency divided by party after last year’s midterms, Capitol Hill and the White House have assumed their accustomed adversarial roles, though there are some more novel twists this time around, like the House Speaker arrogating an executive diplomatic role in the Mideast. The balance can always tilt, and politics never stands still, but realistically, Congress today has little chance of reversing the Iraq policy in this latest showdown between the legislative and executive.
Andrew W. Smith / Andrew Smith, Tulsa, Oklahoma and Cape Sable Island, Nova Scotia
Published in The Chronicle-Herald, Halifax, Nova Scotia
But Congress was also constitutionally empowered in matters of national defense, to authorize and fund war. So, Congressional anti-warriors looking to withdraw from Iraq could move to either repeal their authorization of the war or de-fund the mission. Congressional attempts to determine troop levels or areas of operation, and even to specify which of their enemies the troops are allowed fighting, would seem to be pushing things constitutionally, and, in any event, would draw a presidential veto.
If Congress were to rescind its Iraq Resolution of 2002, the motion would assuredly be vetoed upon arrival at the White House. Congress could override a presidential veto with a vote of at least two-thirds in both the House and Senate, but the Congressional anti-war bloc is still far from that two-thirds threshold in either chamber.
And the de-funding option presents Congress with a Catch-22. Failing to undo its authorization of the war but halting payment for the on-going operations would place Congress in the position of leaving troops in the field but denying them the wherewithal to fight or even defend themselves. The number of Congressmen prepared to cast such a vote at present does not amount to 51 percent.
Plus which, for all the popular discontent over the war, support for simply de-funding it is in the single digits, according to an April 13 CBS News poll: 9 percent.
Congressional antagonism toward war efforts and war-time presidents is practically as old as the institutions themselves. As the president is commander-in-chief, and as the presidency and Congress are so often held by different parties, Congress can easily wind up as the anti-war branch of the U.S. government.
Only eight years ago, President Clinton launched the Kosovo War with NATO, but without Congress. Twice, a declaration of war resolution was rejected by Congress, as was even an authorization for the on-going air campaign. 26 Congressmen challenged the president’s war in court as unconstitutional for lacking Congressional authority. Nonetheless, Congress actually over-funded the war appropriation and authorized the use of U.S. troops for the post-war occupation.
The Vietnam War was a constitutional chess match between the legislative and executive branches. President Kennedy began the American intervention without Congressional authorization. The operation became full-scale war under President Johnson when he orchestrated Congressional approval for the escalation, which Congress revoked seven years later.
During the Nixon Presidency, Congress invoked its power of the purse to de-fund “combat operations” in the region, although by that stage the American military effort had effectively ended. Of more practical consequence was Congress’ de-funding of the native resistance in South Vietnam and Cambodia, which assured Communist victories and the exodus, abuse, and slaughter of literally millions who had opposed the Communists, or were deemed anti-Communist, in those countries.
The president exploited his power of shifting Congressional defense allocations, to fund operations in Cambodia and Laos which Congress had not provided for, and Congress exploited its power of ratifying treaties, to void agreements the President had negotiated with North Vietnam.
Two decades earlier, President Truman went to war in Korea citing a United Nations resolution and bypassing the Congress. In the 1950 midterm elections only months later, the president’s party lost 52 seats in the House and eight in the Senate. Divisions in the new Congress precluded a concerted legislative challenge to the war, though there was rancorous rhetoric enough. And when the great Gen. Douglass MacArthur gave his immortal Farewell Address after rebelling against Truman so flagrantly that the president was compelled to dismiss him, it was to a rapturous U.S. Congress.
President Wilson had campaigned in 1916 on keeping America out of the First World War, only to lead the nation into the war and institute a draft the following year, and a scant six days before the Great War ended in November 1918, the President’s party went from majority to minority in both the House and Senate, the latter having the Constitutional responsibility for ratifying treaties. So when the post-war Versailles Treaty -- which was very largely the doing of President Wilson and which included American membership in the League of Nations -- came before the hostile U.S. Senate, it was rejected. Twice.
And that is to say nothing of the constitutional confrontations over war before the 20th Century.
With the return to a Congress and presidency divided by party after last year’s midterms, Capitol Hill and the White House have assumed their accustomed adversarial roles, though there are some more novel twists this time around, like the House Speaker arrogating an executive diplomatic role in the Mideast. The balance can always tilt, and politics never stands still, but realistically, Congress today has little chance of reversing the Iraq policy in this latest showdown between the legislative and executive.
Andrew W. Smith / Andrew Smith, Tulsa, Oklahoma and Cape Sable Island, Nova Scotia
Published in The Chronicle-Herald, Halifax, Nova Scotia
March 22, 2007
New Sheriff in Baghdad
The war coverage remains dominated by the most superficial “exploding car of the day” stories, and half of Washington uninterestedly insists that nothing has changed, but the new Iraq plan is being implemented.
The plan is reductively referred to as the “troop surge”, but simply adding soldiers would not amount to a plan.
At least 24,000 new U.S. combat troops have been committed to Iraq, at last count, plus about 5,000 support troops. The surge stands to strengthen the Iraq deployment by nearly a quarter, to about 160,000. Only two-fifths of the extra soldiers are in-country as yet, and the full complement is not expected to arrive until June.
The plan those troops are to enforce is drawn from four years’ hard experience and historic counterinsurgencies.
Gen. George Patton famously took a dim view of “paying for the same real estate twice,” and the plan takes that to heart. American forces have in past fought very hard to clear insurgent strongholds and then withdrawn, on the understandable thinking that the American and Iraqi people both want American troops drawn down, and that the Iraqi forces and government should assume their country’s administration as soon as possible. But the effect has been to allow jihadists and militiamen to return unopposed once the Americans have left. Hence the new “clear, control, and retain” policy, sweeping insurgents and weapons out of an area, then patrolling it vigorously to deny it to the enemy.
A century ago, as part of the British plan that finally won the guerilla Boer War, a grid-and-blockhouse system was devised. That “quadrillage” principle was later adopted by the French in Algeria, and now the Americans in Iraq. Baghdad has been divided into 11 sectors, with 70 “Joint Security Stations” now planned for housing American and Iraqi forces. The stations are being built in as little as three days. The sectors divide responsibilities for the entire city into manageable blocks, and the stations give the troops a permanent local presence and handy safe havens.
The French campaign in Algeria in the 1950s and ’60s was lost politically, in France, but French forces had by the end turned the tide militarily, and one of the policies credited for that was the mixing of French troops with the locals. Likewise, American troops are now moving off insular Forward Operating Bases and into the Joint Security Stations in civilian communities, with Iraqi forces, to foster cooperation and develop a working knowledge of the country on the most local level.
Four-star Gen. David Petraeus has assumed command of Multinational Forces Iraq, and, as the biographical line goes, has literally written the book on counterinsurgency: “Field Manual 3-24”.
Economic stimulation is to be increased, as in infrastructure programs, to employ the locals in hopes of occupying the more opportunistic trouble-makers.
And the issue of the foreign underwriters of Iraq’s insurgency is no longer being neglected. The borders with Syria and Iran have been closed as need be. The United States is engaging Iran diplomatically for the first time since the founding of the Islamic Republic -- at the urging of the Iraqi government -- and at the same time, squeezing Iran financially, confronting Iranian elements in Iraq, and adding a second aircraft carrier strike group to the Persian Gulf fleet.
The plan focuses on Baghdad for the obvious reasons that it is the capital, largest city, most mixed city, and the scene of by far the most bloodshed, but – so to speak -- as the new sheriff has come to town, the bad guys have gotten out of Dodge. The Baghdad elements of al-Qaeda in Iraq particularly have shifted to neighbouring Diyala province. Baghdad must be the priority, but the trick will be seeing that gains there are not offset by setbacks elsewhere.
Iraq’s largest militia, the Shiite “Mahdi Army” of Muqtada al-Sadr, has largely disappeared without a fight, and Sadr himself has fled to Iran. The worry is that, by simply dissolving, the militia will survive the push and return to fight another day. But if American and Iraqi forces hold the territory surrendered by the militia, there may be no opening for a return. And if the Sunni threats to the Shiite community are similarly dealt with, that would eliminate one of the rationales for Shiite militias in the first place.
One wonders why all this was not done much earlier, but the situation was not always so bad, and the idea was to “stand down”, certainly not to expand the U.S. presence and mission.
The plan is smart, the stakes are immense, and all that is asked of those of us who “sleep peaceably in our beds” is time for the plan to either sink or swim.
Andrew W. Smith / Andrew Smith, Tulsa, OK and Cape Sable Island, NS
Published in The Chronicle-Herald, Halifax, Nova Scotia
The plan is reductively referred to as the “troop surge”, but simply adding soldiers would not amount to a plan.
At least 24,000 new U.S. combat troops have been committed to Iraq, at last count, plus about 5,000 support troops. The surge stands to strengthen the Iraq deployment by nearly a quarter, to about 160,000. Only two-fifths of the extra soldiers are in-country as yet, and the full complement is not expected to arrive until June.
The plan those troops are to enforce is drawn from four years’ hard experience and historic counterinsurgencies.
Gen. George Patton famously took a dim view of “paying for the same real estate twice,” and the plan takes that to heart. American forces have in past fought very hard to clear insurgent strongholds and then withdrawn, on the understandable thinking that the American and Iraqi people both want American troops drawn down, and that the Iraqi forces and government should assume their country’s administration as soon as possible. But the effect has been to allow jihadists and militiamen to return unopposed once the Americans have left. Hence the new “clear, control, and retain” policy, sweeping insurgents and weapons out of an area, then patrolling it vigorously to deny it to the enemy.
A century ago, as part of the British plan that finally won the guerilla Boer War, a grid-and-blockhouse system was devised. That “quadrillage” principle was later adopted by the French in Algeria, and now the Americans in Iraq. Baghdad has been divided into 11 sectors, with 70 “Joint Security Stations” now planned for housing American and Iraqi forces. The stations are being built in as little as three days. The sectors divide responsibilities for the entire city into manageable blocks, and the stations give the troops a permanent local presence and handy safe havens.
The French campaign in Algeria in the 1950s and ’60s was lost politically, in France, but French forces had by the end turned the tide militarily, and one of the policies credited for that was the mixing of French troops with the locals. Likewise, American troops are now moving off insular Forward Operating Bases and into the Joint Security Stations in civilian communities, with Iraqi forces, to foster cooperation and develop a working knowledge of the country on the most local level.
Four-star Gen. David Petraeus has assumed command of Multinational Forces Iraq, and, as the biographical line goes, has literally written the book on counterinsurgency: “Field Manual 3-24”.
Economic stimulation is to be increased, as in infrastructure programs, to employ the locals in hopes of occupying the more opportunistic trouble-makers.
And the issue of the foreign underwriters of Iraq’s insurgency is no longer being neglected. The borders with Syria and Iran have been closed as need be. The United States is engaging Iran diplomatically for the first time since the founding of the Islamic Republic -- at the urging of the Iraqi government -- and at the same time, squeezing Iran financially, confronting Iranian elements in Iraq, and adding a second aircraft carrier strike group to the Persian Gulf fleet.
The plan focuses on Baghdad for the obvious reasons that it is the capital, largest city, most mixed city, and the scene of by far the most bloodshed, but – so to speak -- as the new sheriff has come to town, the bad guys have gotten out of Dodge. The Baghdad elements of al-Qaeda in Iraq particularly have shifted to neighbouring Diyala province. Baghdad must be the priority, but the trick will be seeing that gains there are not offset by setbacks elsewhere.
Iraq’s largest militia, the Shiite “Mahdi Army” of Muqtada al-Sadr, has largely disappeared without a fight, and Sadr himself has fled to Iran. The worry is that, by simply dissolving, the militia will survive the push and return to fight another day. But if American and Iraqi forces hold the territory surrendered by the militia, there may be no opening for a return. And if the Sunni threats to the Shiite community are similarly dealt with, that would eliminate one of the rationales for Shiite militias in the first place.
One wonders why all this was not done much earlier, but the situation was not always so bad, and the idea was to “stand down”, certainly not to expand the U.S. presence and mission.
The plan is smart, the stakes are immense, and all that is asked of those of us who “sleep peaceably in our beds” is time for the plan to either sink or swim.
Andrew W. Smith / Andrew Smith, Tulsa, OK and Cape Sable Island, NS
Published in The Chronicle-Herald, Halifax, Nova Scotia
February 24, 2007
Taking the Short Way to the Grammys
The timing and location were important: the eve of war, and overseas.
There is an American tradition that “politics stops at the water’s edge”, that an American speaks only as an American, not as a partisan of one side or the other, once he or she leaves America’s shores and makes a representation to the outside world, especially at war time. I’ve never appreciated the importance of that, since the outside world has full access to the partisan and dissenting opinions within America, and besides, Americans can say whatever the spirit moves them to, and opinions of the likes of the Dixie Chicks should be of no more significance than the two cents’ worth of any three people you’d land behind in a checkout line.
Also important was the sort of folks who tend to populate country music fandom: patriotic and traditionally-minded Americans. Some obscure punk group with an America-hating fan base wouldn’t have warranted mention if they had prattled on onstage about their disdain for the President, regardless of timing and location, or even four-lettered verbiage.
But, overseas and on the eve of war, the Dixie Chicks front-woman Natalie Maines remarked of her troupe’s “embarrassment” at hailing from the same state as the President -- which seems to me to be a quite superficial way of expressing opposition to a war policy -- and the country crowd didn’t exactly cotton to it. Now the Dixie Chicks have made practically a second career of their pity party/self-adulation, in song and film and interminable television appearances.
And then came the 2007 Grammy Awards.
The Dixie Chicks’ “Not Ready to Make Nice” is neither good music nor particularly popular, and it doesn’t qualify for recognition on some other grounds like “pioneering a new sound”, “influencing other artists”, or some such thing. It is musically plain and drab, and otherwise indulgent, narcissistic, bitter, humorless, petty, and preachy. But it somehow won the Grammy for “Best Song”, erasing any doubt about how these awards shows work.
The best song of the past year was certainly “Crazy”, by the new British pop outfit Gnarls Barkley. It stamped itself on the year in a way no other pop song came close to doing. It was hypnotic, a tour de force vocally, completely original and a stand-out from the typical fare, and wildly popular. The video was so influential that the Grammy Awards broadcast itself aped its Rorschach Test-style motif. And yet “Crazy” was not included among the nominees for Best Song. “Not Ready to Make Nice” made its dubious way onto the list, and took the easy, “Crazy”-free path to victory.
Despite its musical or creative deficiencies, “Not Ready to Make Nice” is laden with the sort of politics and partisanship which the good people of the entertainment business go for, and that evidently counts for quite a lot.
The best country album was clearly Carrie Underwood’s debut, Some Hearts. It was far and away the best-selling country album of the year and for half a decade (since the Dixie Chicks’ last pre-kerfuffle album, as it happens) , it has churned out no fewer than four Number 1 hits, and yet it was not included even as a nominee in the Best Country Album category. That the best-selling country album in years, with four tracks hitting Number 1, was excluded from the choices for Best Country Album of the year, must necessarily have been a conscious decision, not some oversight or plain tough luck. That conspicuous omission left the Dixie Chicks’ Taking the Long Way with an open field, unmolested by any pesky competition, and it wasn’t such a long way after all to a second Grammy.
Grammy Awards winners are chosen by the music “industry” itself, from the musicians to the producers, who typically incline toward Dixie Chicks-politics, and their choice of the Dixie Chicks for Best Country Album and Best Song can only be taken as a political statement. Mouth the right politics and you might even pick up a Grammy or two, provided the Grammy masters prevent your stiffest competition from consideration alongside you.
The Grammys are a standard-bearer among the ridiculous, pompous, fraudulent awards shows; self-congratulatory, mutually-reinforcing, rarely meritocratic, and rarely able to recognize true greatness that makes the mistake of only doing well, not doing well by the sensitivities of the entertainment elite.
Oh, yes, and the Dixie Chicks’ acceptance speeches were the most indulgent and self-absorbed of the night. True to form.
There is an American tradition that “politics stops at the water’s edge”, that an American speaks only as an American, not as a partisan of one side or the other, once he or she leaves America’s shores and makes a representation to the outside world, especially at war time. I’ve never appreciated the importance of that, since the outside world has full access to the partisan and dissenting opinions within America, and besides, Americans can say whatever the spirit moves them to, and opinions of the likes of the Dixie Chicks should be of no more significance than the two cents’ worth of any three people you’d land behind in a checkout line.
Also important was the sort of folks who tend to populate country music fandom: patriotic and traditionally-minded Americans. Some obscure punk group with an America-hating fan base wouldn’t have warranted mention if they had prattled on onstage about their disdain for the President, regardless of timing and location, or even four-lettered verbiage.
But, overseas and on the eve of war, the Dixie Chicks front-woman Natalie Maines remarked of her troupe’s “embarrassment” at hailing from the same state as the President -- which seems to me to be a quite superficial way of expressing opposition to a war policy -- and the country crowd didn’t exactly cotton to it. Now the Dixie Chicks have made practically a second career of their pity party/self-adulation, in song and film and interminable television appearances.
And then came the 2007 Grammy Awards.
The Dixie Chicks’ “Not Ready to Make Nice” is neither good music nor particularly popular, and it doesn’t qualify for recognition on some other grounds like “pioneering a new sound”, “influencing other artists”, or some such thing. It is musically plain and drab, and otherwise indulgent, narcissistic, bitter, humorless, petty, and preachy. But it somehow won the Grammy for “Best Song”, erasing any doubt about how these awards shows work.
The best song of the past year was certainly “Crazy”, by the new British pop outfit Gnarls Barkley. It stamped itself on the year in a way no other pop song came close to doing. It was hypnotic, a tour de force vocally, completely original and a stand-out from the typical fare, and wildly popular. The video was so influential that the Grammy Awards broadcast itself aped its Rorschach Test-style motif. And yet “Crazy” was not included among the nominees for Best Song. “Not Ready to Make Nice” made its dubious way onto the list, and took the easy, “Crazy”-free path to victory.
Despite its musical or creative deficiencies, “Not Ready to Make Nice” is laden with the sort of politics and partisanship which the good people of the entertainment business go for, and that evidently counts for quite a lot.
The best country album was clearly Carrie Underwood’s debut, Some Hearts. It was far and away the best-selling country album of the year and for half a decade (since the Dixie Chicks’ last pre-kerfuffle album, as it happens) , it has churned out no fewer than four Number 1 hits, and yet it was not included even as a nominee in the Best Country Album category. That the best-selling country album in years, with four tracks hitting Number 1, was excluded from the choices for Best Country Album of the year, must necessarily have been a conscious decision, not some oversight or plain tough luck. That conspicuous omission left the Dixie Chicks’ Taking the Long Way with an open field, unmolested by any pesky competition, and it wasn’t such a long way after all to a second Grammy.
Grammy Awards winners are chosen by the music “industry” itself, from the musicians to the producers, who typically incline toward Dixie Chicks-politics, and their choice of the Dixie Chicks for Best Country Album and Best Song can only be taken as a political statement. Mouth the right politics and you might even pick up a Grammy or two, provided the Grammy masters prevent your stiffest competition from consideration alongside you.
The Grammys are a standard-bearer among the ridiculous, pompous, fraudulent awards shows; self-congratulatory, mutually-reinforcing, rarely meritocratic, and rarely able to recognize true greatness that makes the mistake of only doing well, not doing well by the sensitivities of the entertainment elite.
Oh, yes, and the Dixie Chicks’ acceptance speeches were the most indulgent and self-absorbed of the night. True to form.
February 16, 2007
All fun and games at The Daily Show
The Daily Show with Jon Stewart is of course partisan potshotting -- not so much funny as validating -- with occasional actual comedy material, and not serious military analysis. But one wishes the writers and host would either show some humility in the area of military matters or else take the few minutes required to study the issue before taking their smarmy, obnoxious, ignorant, and unfunny two cents' worth to the air.
On the February 15 show, scorn was heaped on the Administration for its long-overdue statements that Iran has been supplying arms and more to Iraqi insurgents, especially the Shiite militias. The story of Iranian sponsorship of the troubles in Iraq, and particularly Iran's supplying of advanced military-grade roadside bombs, is a year and a half old; I wrote about it five months ago and thought it was a little behind the curve then. (Paragraphs 10, 11, and 12. See also this MSNBC story from 2005.)
This is a very serious business. The bombs in question, called shaped charges, can penetrate American tank armor. They have killed 170+ American soldiers who would have been safe against lesser weaponry. They are not the sort of thing rag-tag, ne'er-do-well, part-time militiamen can throw together with some hardware supplies. And they bear the demarcations of official Iranian armament factories and have actually been intercepted en route to Iraq from Iran.
The leader of the dominant Shiite militia, Muqtada al-Sadr, has in the past few days fled the current American offensive, to Iran's capitol, and yet the oh-so-clever Daily Show folks evidently believe the Iranian government would have had nothing to do with arming his militia.
This is not some political game, or frivolous late-night comedy fodder. The Daily Show is in far over its head here. Iran is fighting a declared albeit low-intensity war against America, and working towards worse. Surely the jokes can be found elsewhere.
On the February 15 show, scorn was heaped on the Administration for its long-overdue statements that Iran has been supplying arms and more to Iraqi insurgents, especially the Shiite militias. The story of Iranian sponsorship of the troubles in Iraq, and particularly Iran's supplying of advanced military-grade roadside bombs, is a year and a half old; I wrote about it five months ago and thought it was a little behind the curve then. (Paragraphs 10, 11, and 12. See also this MSNBC story from 2005.)
This is a very serious business. The bombs in question, called shaped charges, can penetrate American tank armor. They have killed 170+ American soldiers who would have been safe against lesser weaponry. They are not the sort of thing rag-tag, ne'er-do-well, part-time militiamen can throw together with some hardware supplies. And they bear the demarcations of official Iranian armament factories and have actually been intercepted en route to Iraq from Iran.
The leader of the dominant Shiite militia, Muqtada al-Sadr, has in the past few days fled the current American offensive, to Iran's capitol, and yet the oh-so-clever Daily Show folks evidently believe the Iranian government would have had nothing to do with arming his militia.
This is not some political game, or frivolous late-night comedy fodder. The Daily Show is in far over its head here. Iran is fighting a declared albeit low-intensity war against America, and working towards worse. Surely the jokes can be found elsewhere.
January 4, 2007
The Iraq Push - "Retreat by any name would do nothing to end this war"
This war should have been wrapped up and the soldiers shipped home in one piece long ago, but here we are.
No matter how necessary and overdue the cause, no matter how swift and clean the invasion, and no matter how sizable a downpayment on future security a sustainable democracy in Iraq would be, the post-invasion phases have been too long, too costly, and the patience of the American people is at bottom.
Americans cannot remain unmoved after watching fellow Americans die, a handful at a time, on their news every day for nearly four years, when the cause seems so beyond hope, and when the arguments against the war are pop culture, while the arguments for it are to be found in occasional, ignored speeches, unread opinion journals, and obscure think tanks.
After Americans’ discontent with the status quo was registered in the recent Congressional elections and the timid Iraq Study Group recommendations managed to disappoint everyone, the message was taken that no marginal tweaking of the Iraq policy would suffice anymore.
The problem in Iraq, as in Afghanistan, is security. Without that modicum of security, the nation cannot function and progress. There are political problems, especially governmental collusion with Shiite militias. There is also corruption, especially among the Iraqi police, not disbanded and rebuilt after the war like the Iraqi Army. But the fundamentals are strong: The people have converted to democracy, and the change could even be irreversible. What is needed most is security, and that takes soldiering.
More soldiering is unlikely to be easy or popular, but it is possible. The Washington Times reports that 50,000 extra combat troops are available for deployment to Iraq, and the Commander-in-Chief still has two years and an authorization of force.
It deserves mentioning that Iraq has not followed a straight line from initial success to current despair. The fascists at the heart of so much Mideastern conflict have been captured or killed. Western forces have gone undefeated militarily. The Kurdish north and much of the Shiite south have become functioning free societies. Iraq's economy has somehow managed to thrive. And the Iraqi people have voted massively and enthusiastically in three national elections, even at risk of death, demonstrating that they do in fact want this democracy and need only the security and good-faith leadership to make it work.
The temptation is to imagine that picking up and leaving Iraq, and Afghanistan and the Mideast generally, would be the end of it: No more strife, no more military funerals, no more smouldering rubble and body counts on the news. But retreat by any name would do nothing to end this war. The war will continue with Western troops in the field or back home on their bases.
Jihadists bent on killing Westerners would be free to pursue us elsewhere, including in our own countries. Taliban slave-masters would be free to bludgeon the Afghan people back into their old nightmare. Sunni militants who have known little else but killing Shiites and Kurds would be free to see how far they get against a vengeful 80 percent of the country unrestrained by Western forces and influence. And Shiite Iranian agents would be free to butcher their way toward remaking Iraq as the Greater Islamic Republic of Iran.
Quitting wars prematurely, leaving the enemy to fight another day and neglecting to fix the countries at the source of the trouble, has become something of a new Western tradition, and solves nothing.
Once the Russians had been dispatched in the Soviet-Afghan War, the West abandoned Afghanistan to the Mujahideen who later formed the Taliban and al Qaeda which we fight today. The 1991 Gulf War was halted without excising its source, which left the job to the 2003 war that bleeds on today. The Somalia intervention of the early '90s was aborted at the first upset, and today the country is a battlefield falling into and out of the hands of the al Qaeda-allied Islamic Courts Union, Somalia's own Taliban. Even the troubles with North Korea, not to mention the grinding misery of its people, are the result of the West settling the Korean War with a stalemate leaving the North under the Communist government that today detonates third-rate nukes and fires erratic ballistic missiles.
We are free to continue our new tradition of committing to wars and then abandoning them unfinished, negating the sacrifices of our volunteer soldiers, but by now we ought have no illusions that quitting will bring peace to anyone but the enemy.
If we cannot muster the will for this, when all that is required of us is to maintain moral support for historically small military commitments of our professional fighting forces, then we really are the craven, decadent paper tigers the jihadists think we are.
Andrew W. Smith / Andrew Smith, Tulsa, Oklahoma and Cape Sable Island, Nova Scotia
Published in The Chronicle-Herald, Halifax, Nova Scotia
No matter how necessary and overdue the cause, no matter how swift and clean the invasion, and no matter how sizable a downpayment on future security a sustainable democracy in Iraq would be, the post-invasion phases have been too long, too costly, and the patience of the American people is at bottom.
Americans cannot remain unmoved after watching fellow Americans die, a handful at a time, on their news every day for nearly four years, when the cause seems so beyond hope, and when the arguments against the war are pop culture, while the arguments for it are to be found in occasional, ignored speeches, unread opinion journals, and obscure think tanks.
After Americans’ discontent with the status quo was registered in the recent Congressional elections and the timid Iraq Study Group recommendations managed to disappoint everyone, the message was taken that no marginal tweaking of the Iraq policy would suffice anymore.
The problem in Iraq, as in Afghanistan, is security. Without that modicum of security, the nation cannot function and progress. There are political problems, especially governmental collusion with Shiite militias. There is also corruption, especially among the Iraqi police, not disbanded and rebuilt after the war like the Iraqi Army. But the fundamentals are strong: The people have converted to democracy, and the change could even be irreversible. What is needed most is security, and that takes soldiering.
More soldiering is unlikely to be easy or popular, but it is possible. The Washington Times reports that 50,000 extra combat troops are available for deployment to Iraq, and the Commander-in-Chief still has two years and an authorization of force.
It deserves mentioning that Iraq has not followed a straight line from initial success to current despair. The fascists at the heart of so much Mideastern conflict have been captured or killed. Western forces have gone undefeated militarily. The Kurdish north and much of the Shiite south have become functioning free societies. Iraq's economy has somehow managed to thrive. And the Iraqi people have voted massively and enthusiastically in three national elections, even at risk of death, demonstrating that they do in fact want this democracy and need only the security and good-faith leadership to make it work.
The temptation is to imagine that picking up and leaving Iraq, and Afghanistan and the Mideast generally, would be the end of it: No more strife, no more military funerals, no more smouldering rubble and body counts on the news. But retreat by any name would do nothing to end this war. The war will continue with Western troops in the field or back home on their bases.
Jihadists bent on killing Westerners would be free to pursue us elsewhere, including in our own countries. Taliban slave-masters would be free to bludgeon the Afghan people back into their old nightmare. Sunni militants who have known little else but killing Shiites and Kurds would be free to see how far they get against a vengeful 80 percent of the country unrestrained by Western forces and influence. And Shiite Iranian agents would be free to butcher their way toward remaking Iraq as the Greater Islamic Republic of Iran.
Quitting wars prematurely, leaving the enemy to fight another day and neglecting to fix the countries at the source of the trouble, has become something of a new Western tradition, and solves nothing.
Once the Russians had been dispatched in the Soviet-Afghan War, the West abandoned Afghanistan to the Mujahideen who later formed the Taliban and al Qaeda which we fight today. The 1991 Gulf War was halted without excising its source, which left the job to the 2003 war that bleeds on today. The Somalia intervention of the early '90s was aborted at the first upset, and today the country is a battlefield falling into and out of the hands of the al Qaeda-allied Islamic Courts Union, Somalia's own Taliban. Even the troubles with North Korea, not to mention the grinding misery of its people, are the result of the West settling the Korean War with a stalemate leaving the North under the Communist government that today detonates third-rate nukes and fires erratic ballistic missiles.
We are free to continue our new tradition of committing to wars and then abandoning them unfinished, negating the sacrifices of our volunteer soldiers, but by now we ought have no illusions that quitting will bring peace to anyone but the enemy.
If we cannot muster the will for this, when all that is required of us is to maintain moral support for historically small military commitments of our professional fighting forces, then we really are the craven, decadent paper tigers the jihadists think we are.
Andrew W. Smith / Andrew Smith, Tulsa, Oklahoma and Cape Sable Island, Nova Scotia
Published in The Chronicle-Herald, Halifax, Nova Scotia
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