Category Archives: Iraq

Commenter Karen McL points us to this excellent, justly vitriolic, post by Glenn Greenwald, The Tom Friedman disease consumes Establishment Washington.

It skewers not just the internal illogic and moral cowardice of the Iraq war’s current (and past) cheerleaders, but reminds us that the same curious phenomenon that occurred after the Vietnam War is already playing itself out among the governing and chattering classes: the people who were wrong about the war try to claim that the people who were right about the war “too early” (i.e. from the start) should be treated by all right-thinking folk as political lepers.

Banquo’s ghost will not be banished so easily.

It does all remind me of the classic six stages of policy development (also sometimes called the stages of the product cycle):

1. Enthusiasm
2. Disillusion
3. Panic
4. Search for the Guilty
5. Punishment of the Innocent
6. Praise and Honors for the Non-Participants

According to the Washington Post’s Iraq Panel to Urge Pullout Of Combat Troops by ’08, the Iraq Study Group did not just hint around the Bush, but put an actual target date for withdrawal into its report: shortly before the ’08 Presidential election.

Even so, in this version — which makes it sound a bit better than the NYT version I blogged about a couple of days ago — the target date would “be more a conditional goal than a firm timetable, predicated on the assumption that circumstances on the ground would permit it.”

In other words, given Bush’s oft-expressed attitudes, fuggedaboutit.

It's too little, too late.

The so-called “The bipartisan Iraq Study Group” (actually heavily weighted to the right wing, and including zero progressive Democrats) has produced its recommendation. And while they deliberated, Iraq slid into chaos.

The NYT has the leak at Iraq Panel to Recommend Pullback of Combat Troops.

The report recommends that troops move away from the heart of combat (“a gradual pullback of the 15 American combat brigades now in Iraq”). Some day.

But here's the thing: there's no timetable (Chairman James Baker didn't want one),

The report recommends that Mr. Bush make it clear that he intends to start the withdrawal relatively soon, and people familiar with the debate over the final language said the implicit message was that the process should begin sometime next year.

That “implicit message” would of course be aimed at that master detector of nuance, George W. Bush.

Uh-huh.

And that would be the same George W. Bush who said just two days ago that, “there's one thing I’m not going to do: I’m not going to pull the troops off the battlefield before the mission is complete.”

(Remind me again what “the mission” is please?)

The inside-the-beltway politics are clear:

“I think everyone felt good about where we ended up,” one person involved in the commission’s debates said after the group ended its meeting. “It is neither 'cut and run' nor ‘stay the course.'”

No, it's “stay the course” for a while then “cut and run.” With “run to where” left open — maybe to laagers in the Iraqi desert — just don't call them “permanent bases”. (“The report leaves unstated whether the 15 combat brigades that are the bulk of American fighting forces in Iraq would be brought home, or simply pulled back to bases in Iraq or in neighboring countries.”)

It's amazing that anyone involved could feel “good” about this report: if followed, it will have hundreds of our soldiers killed and wounded before the now inevitable departure. And for what exactly? Or even approximately?

OK, so the headline is a bit like, “Dog Bites Man”.

But I really think this idea of Larry Lessig’s deserves take-up: CARE packages for Iraq as means to reduce post-war Iraqi anger at the US.

The only problem I can see offhand is that from what I read, the real problems in Iraq are infrastructural, e.g. the electricity keeps going off and people are trying to blow up the pipelines. That stuff won’t fit in a CARE package. But perhaps there are real shortages of things we could fit in a box. And, even if there are not shortages, perhaps it is the thought that counts.

And, of course, we need to get to the post-war…

The not utterly reliable Times of London says there is a secret plan to end the war — by leaving Iraq before 2008.

American and Iraqi officials have set a date for giving Iraq’s forces responsibility for security across the country.

Under a plan to be presented to the UN Security Council next month, the Iraqi Government would assume authority from coalition troops by the end of next year.

Only hours after Donald Rumsfeld was replaced as US Defence Secretary, American, British and Iraqi officials spoke openly about accelerating the handover process.

If, as increasingly seems to be the case, our troops are not actually doing any good and are being pounded for it, then ignominious retreat is the right thing to do. And I’d just as soon it be done sooner rather than later. On the other hand, I accept that having wrongly invaded and created a mess brings with it some moral duty to try to sort it out if there seems a way that can be achieved. At present, however, I don’t know anyone who knows how to do that.

On the radio yesterday, someone said that a majority of the American people no longer support the Iraq war. However, a majority also don’t support pulling out. That will change as casualties mount. I hope, without much hope, that the reason for staying another 12 months or more, is something more substantive than saving face, or the PR war, but is tied to achievable objectives on the ground.