Steven den Beste connects some dots, rather intelligently I think:
Iain Jackson, back from his vacation and again posting, forwards me this article by William Saletan, who I think has completely missed the point. He's trying to claim that the Bush administration has totally botched its attempts to prepare for a war in Iraq because it has totally failed to rally support for such a war domestically and internationally.
There are several issues involved here, including what I think are unwarranted assumptions. Probably the most important of those assumptions is voiced by Brent Scowcroft, who Saletan quotes:
We simply cannot win that war without enthusiastic international cooperation.
Many people, especially internationally, treasure this idea. It comforts them. It permits them to believe that they actually matter.
Influential Europeans hope that if they protest loudly enough, and condemn the US with sufficient vituperation, that America will give up this stupid idea of an attack and stay home. So do many Arab nations, and other nations.
But I've never seen any explanation of just why it was that the US actually required "enthusiastic international cooperation", or indeed any international cooperation for this war. Because; just because.
Because if we don't, then all those chattering voices have to admit to themselves that they don't actually matter at all, that their voices are just background noise.
There are certain nations whose cooperation we require, but they're not the usual suspects. There are four, but only four. We need Qatar and Kuwait, and it would be enormously useful to have Turkey on board.
We also need the UK to at least acquiesce, even if it doesn't get directly involved, because they could conceivably attempt to deny us the use of air bases at Diego Garcia from which we operate heavy bombers. (According to certain bilateral treaties, they're not permitted to do that, but you know how that goes.)
I see no military reason why we require anyone else's cooperation at all, enthusiastic or otherwise. More cooperation would definitely be nice, but it is not necessary. And I see no diplomatic reason why we need that kind of support either.
Ultimately it comes down to this: we have the military ability to fight this war alone, and if we determine to do so, then the rest of the world can't stop us. They then have to choose to either get directly involved on our side or Iraq's side, or stand on the sideline wringing their hands and uselessly demanding that combat stop.
All we require from everyone else is that they not actively aid Iraq against us militarily, and I don't expect much of that because any formal attempt to do so would be an act of war against the US and bring our crosshairs to bear on them afterwards. No matter who it is, they're going to have a lot of explaining to do to us afterwards, and I can't think of any nation who wants to stand in that spotlight.
There may be some smuggling of weapons and spare parts into Iraq from Saudi Arabia or Jordan, and there unquestionably has been and will continue to be such smuggling through Syria. Syria has been routinely violating the sanctions against Iraq for years, and has been the primary source of the spare parts Iraq needs to keep its Soviet-era equipment working. But that alone isn't enough to make it so we can't invade Iraq and win there, and there's no chance of Syrian troops getting actively involved.
By the same token, French troops won't be deploying in Iraq to defend it against an American invasion. Neither will German troops, nor troops from Iran, and the chance of Saudi troops doing that is extremely low. If their governments spend the next few months searching their collective thesaurusi for new and ever more emphatic ways of saying "We disapprove" then it will have exactly no effect, as long as all they do is talk.
The issue of support within the US is entirely different. This war can't be fought unless the voters of America support it, but they do. Polls show very strong support for an attack. There is an extremely vocal minority who are trying to make up for in volume what they lack in numbers who oppose the war, but as long as support by Americans overall remains strong, what the vocal minority thinks also doesn't matter. And there's no sign of that support dropping significantly.
Finally, there's the question of the apparent indecision and debate and confusion and dissent in Congress and within the various parts of the administration itself.
That's an interesting thing. It just seems too good for those who want to believe that the Bush administration is blowing it. All those different leaked plans, all the different timetables, all the claims that the officers in the Pentagon opposed an attack, and so on? It just seems ideal to convince people that this administration is not actually capable of launching an attack because it can't get its act together.
Can you say "disinformation"? I think most of it is a fake. You have to ignore all the razzle-dazzle, including careful leaks to the NYT which can be relied on to make the Bush administration look as bad as possible in its "unbiased" reporting. You have to look at what's actually going on, below the radar, and when you do what you see is a deliberate and careful military mobilization, with work on logistics and movement of essential supplies and men into the theater, which looks for all the world like the execution of a very carefully crafted plan to prepare for an attack which will catch nearly everyone by surprise, because it will just seem to materialize out of nowhere one day, or perhaps with 12 hours notice after a surprise speech by the President.
You get hints, things which don't otherwise make sense. There's been a shortage of cargo containers recently; suddenly a whole bunch of empty ones went somewhere and got used for something and are no longer in the civilian economy. You have certain selected National Guard units being mobilized for something and the most important ones of those are concerned with logistics. (Things like Air National Guard units which operate aerial tankers which have been moved into the Gulf region, for some strange reason.) You've got the work on setting up a new major airbase and command compound in Qatar to replace the one in Saudi Arabia. There's a quiet buildup of American men and equipment in Kuwait. Beneath an apparent veil of disagreement and confusion, someone is deliberately preparing for war and seems to be doing a pretty good job of it.
Some think the war has actually already started. I don't know that I credit this, though, but it's hard to tell for sure. It depends enormously on the psychology and diplomatic strategy of Saddam's government. Once Iraq becomes convinced that we're truly operating militarily and that we clearly will not turn back, it is to their advantage to publicize it to the world so that they can play the "innocent victim of unprovoked American attack" card, and they haven't done that yet. I can't believe that if the kinds of things described by the Asian Times were actually going on that Saddam's government wouldn't know it, and it's hard to understand why in that case they don't speak up. (One possibility is that if they admit that we're building airbases inside Iraq in Kurdish zones, it is implicitly an admission that Saddam's government doesn't have the ability to stop us. Announcement of American ops inside Iraq would be helpful internationally, but unopposed American ops inside Iraq would be politically deadly for Saddam internally because it would make him look weak and might stimulate a coup.)
Overall, either they think that the operations so far are not irreversible and that a sufficiently adroit Iraqi foreign policy initiative can still dissuade the US and cause us to pull back out before it's too late (for Saddam), or else it means that these reports of operations inside Iraq are wrong.
Suppose that this report of operations in Iraq is substantially true (and it may be). One way to convince Saddam that he might still be able to turn back the clock is indeed to give him the impression of political and military confusion and dissent in Washington, even if it isn't so.
Logistics is everything, and some military operations take a very long time to prepare. The buildup of equipment and supplies and men in the UK needed for the Normandy invasion took two years. If a coherent plan for operations in Iraq ended up requiring a long time spent setting up logistics and support infrastructure, then the last thing you want is for the opponent to know this because it means he knows that he's got a grace period.
What you want is for him to be confused, edgy, uncertain. The attack may come tomorrow. No, it will be next year. No, they're going to do it on September 11, or September 3 or July 4. There won't be any October surprise. Maybe that's because it will already have started by October. No, maybe there won't be an attack at all because Bush will chicken out, or because of Congressional dissent, or insubordination in the Pentagon, or international pressure. It's coming but Bush is patient and not in a hurry; maybe next year or the year after; he hasn't actually made up his mind yet and may not even order it.
The attack will be big. It will be small. It will be medium sized. It will begin with an attack from Kuwait. No, it will begin with an airdrop directly on Baghdad. No, it's actually going to start with infiltration of special forces groups to stir up local trouble. It's going to involve a big coalition. No, it will be a small coalition. No, it's going to be exclusively American. No, it's actually mostly going to be local proxy troops supported by American air power, just as in Afghanistan.
Every one of those rumors has spread in the last few months, and once you see the pattern you see that the primary effect of all this is to give Saddam sleepless nights, and to distract everyone else. Like with a good stage magician, what you think you see has nothing to do with what's really going on.
Maybe it truly is the case that the halfwit inbred cowboy from Texas has lost his grip and the administration's foreign policy is collapsing into confusion and discord. Maybe there's a revolt in Congress. Maybe the folks with stars in the Pentagon truly are trying to avoid having to fight this war because they're gutless and prefer to be peacetime soldiers. Maybe all the leaked plans which contradict each other so heavily demonstrate that in fact no-one has the slightest idea how to fight this war, and they're making and shooting down all kinds of proposals.
Or maybe, just maybe, they're covering up a long and well planned preparation phase for a war which actually got planned last December, which Congress gave informal consent to in February, and which is right on track.
And some of those international condemnations? They may actually be part of it, favors given to us by friends. It is especially the case that Arab nations bordering Iraq cannot afford to admit that they approve of the attack and are cooperating with us in setting it up until after it begins. If they announce now that they're on our side for an attack that won't be ready for months, that would leave a long period during which Iraq could retaliate, or try to stir up local trouble with activist minorities and cause political instability in our secret friendly Arab nations. Better to publicly condemn the attack while privately helping with the preparation. That kind of lie has a long and distinguished history in Arab culture. In 1967 and 1973, the Arab nations which were allied to each other in the attack on Israel routinely lied to one another, and not just about small things. That kind of lie isn't considered dishonorable by the Arabs, it's just considered clever.
I think the condemnations from Europe and from Saudi Arabia are genuine. I think some of the others are disinformation. And I think that Saletan needs to turn his gullibility setting down a few notches, not to mention recalibrating his "we're helpless without the world's support" meter.
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