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Politics : Foreign Affairs Discussion Group -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Dayuhan who wrote (97191)	5/2/2003 5:09:48 AM
From: LindyBill	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 281500

Krauthammer's take on Iraq. washingtonpost.com The Shiite 'Menace' By Charles Krauthammer Friday, May 2, 2003; Page A31 Before the war even began, the critics were predicting that Iraq was going to be the Bay of Pigs (plus "Desert One, Beirut and Somalia," said the ever-hyperbolic Chris Matthews). A week into the war, we were told Iraq was Vietnam. Now, after the war, they're telling us that Iraq is Iran -- that Iraq's Shiite majority will turn it into another intolerant Islamic republic. The critics were wrong every time. They are wrong again. Of course there are telegenic elements among the Shiites who would like fundamentalist rule by the clerics. But even the majority of Iranians oppose the rule of the mullahs and consider the Islamic revolution a disaster. The Shiite demonstrators in Iraqi streets represent a highly organized minority, many of whom are affiliated with, infiltrated by and financed by Tehran, the headquarters for 20 years of the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq. These Iranian-oriented Shiite extremists are analogous to the Soviet-oriented communists in immediate post-World War II Italy and France. They too had a foreign patron. They too had foreign sources of money, agents and influence. They too had a coherent ideology. And they too were highly organized even before the end of the war. They too made a bid for power. And failed. There is no reason to believe that Iranian-inspired Shiite fundamentalists will be any more successful in Iraq. Iraqi society is highly fractured along lines of ethnicity, religion, tribe, region and class. It is in the interest of all of them, most particularly the Kurdish and Sunni minorities, who together make up about 40 percent of the country, to ensure that no one group wields absolute, dictatorial power over the rest. And as Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld correctly pointed out, America is there to make sure that doesn't happen. One man, one vote, one time is not democracy. Moreover, Shiism is not a hierarchical religion like Roman Catholicism. It is extremely decentralized. Among the Shiite majority itself are myriad ideological and political factions. Islamic scholar Hillel Fradkin points out that Khomeiniism -- the seizure of political power by clerics -- is contrary to centuries of Shiite tradition and thus alien and anathema to many Iraqi Shiites. Does this mean that Jeffersonian democracy is guaranteed in Baghdad? Of course not. But the United States is in a position to bring about a unique and potentially revolutionary development in the Arab world: a genuinely pluralistic, open and free society. The administration erred, however, by going initially for an occupation "light." It did so understandably at first, victory having come so swiftly and crushingly that there were no existing institutions such as police or army to fill the vacuum, and simply not enough American soldiers for adequate seizure of full power. But there also appeared to be a conscious decision to play down the occupation, lest we stoke Iraqi nationalism and resistance. This was a mistake, rooted, as are most Middle East mistakes, in the inextinguishable myth of the "Arab street." The critics always predict that the "street" will rise at any show of American power. It invariably rises at any show of American weakness or indecision; it becomes quiescent at the showing of American power. Our problem in postwar Iraq has been a paucity of force, rather than an excess. The way to succeed is with an occupation "heavy." The administration is hurriedly sending in about 4,000 more soldiers, heavy with MPs, and not a moment too soon. Occupation light has permitted the ad hoc seizure of power in pockets of the country by various ambitious nasties. America needs to fill the vacuum, so it can then devolve power on those committed to a truly democratic outcome. What the administration has done right, on the other hand, has been to exclude all the foreign latecomers and meddlers who want to get in on the reconstruction. The administration gave the perfect response to the United Nations' claim that it alone can confer legitimacy on the running of Iraq: It ignored it. It does not even merit a rejoinder. The idea that legitimacy flows from the blessings of France and Russia, Saddam Hussein's lawyers and suppliers, is on its face risible. Legitimacy does not come out of U.N. headquarters in New York; it will come out of the ground in Iraq, as more and more factions join in the construction of a provisional government. Tellingly, even the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq sent a delegation to the last meeting with Jay Garner, our proconsul in Baghdad. Even the Islamic radicals know the Pentagon is prepared to move with or without them. They know who's in charge. We need to keep it that way. washingtonpost.com

To: Dayuhan who wrote (97191)	5/2/2003 5:13:54 AM
From: LindyBill	Respond to of 281500

Masha Lipman, a Russian journalist, writes a monthly column for The Post. washingtonpost.com A Military Lesson for Russia? By Masha Lipman Friday, May 2, 2003; Page A31 MOSCOW -- The successful American military operation in Iraq has subjected Russia's defense leaders to an extremely unfavorable comparison. Three weeks after the beginning of the war in Iraq, Saddam Hussein, his army and his Fedayeen had all but evaporated. More than three years into the operation in Chechnya, guerrilla war is still going on, and barely a week passes without a report of a new attack on Russian troops or the pro-Moscow Chechen government. Moreover, Russian military experts either failed or refused to see the potential of the U.S. armed forces. There are good grounds to believe that the expert forecasts submitted to the Kremlin predicted that the U.S. Army would get stuck in Iraq and that the venture would prove to be Vietnam -- or even Stalingrad -- revisited. President Vladimir Putin has every reason to be disappointed with those in charge of the Russian armed forces. Though military reform is among his first priorities, and the transition from conscription to a contract (volunteer) army is a proclaimed national goal, progress has been minimal -- constantly impeded by political squabbling. Putin may announce worldwide that Russia is an active member of the world anti-terrorist coalition, but his army remains the same behemoth it has long been -- if a sick and feeble one now -- designed to wage a world war against NATO. The strong and organized resistance of those in the generally conservative military elite comes from a well-justified fear that reform aimed at raising efficiency and competence would leave them jobless, stripped of their high status. In recent years the Russian military has honed its lobbying skills in an effort to increase its budget. At the same time it has learned to create the appearance of being ready for reform, even while avoiding real change. The new plan of transition to a contract army presented last week was bitterly criticized by proponents of genuine military reform as yet another example of these tactics of evasion. The situation in the Russian armed forces is appalling. Aside from being stuck in Chechnya, where, by the most conservative estimates, it has lost nearly 5,000 men, the conscript army has a terrible record of desertion and hazing of young soldiers. The level of peacetime casualties, which include murders and suicides as well as lethal accidents, is abominable, and draft-dodging is widespread. Recently, a badly beaten young soldier was found in the Kremlin men's room with his wrists cut. He turned out to be a member of the so-called Kremlin regiment, a carefully selected guard unit of tall and handsome men. A Russian daily reported that he couldn't bear the hazing anymore and tried to kill himself. Hazing victims commonly react by killing themselves or their tormenters. Putin is hardly unaware of the deplorable situation in his armed forces. Yet, whether because Putin is wary of antagonizing powerful groups or because he believes the Russian military is, in fact, not reformable, instances of incompetence and coverups are rarely punished. Take the Kursk submarine disaster, in which 118 sailors died in August 2000. Naval officials provided conflicting and sometimes false reports about rescue operations. In all likelihood, the Russian president was misled by his naval commanders, who, at a critical time, apparently hid from him the fact that the navy did not have appropriate rescue equipment. Had it not been for their lies, some members of the crew might have been saved. "The country has damn nothing, zilch," an aggrieved and frustrated Putin said at a meeting with the sailors' relatives shortly after the catastrophe. Even so, it took him more than a year to dismiss the lying admirals, and even then it was never said outright that their dismissal was connected with the sinking of the Kursk. Some of them even proceeded with political careers. Will the defense leadership once again get away with avoiding genuine reform, or is there a chance that the graphic demonstration of U.S. military supremacy in modern warfare will have a stimulating effect on Russia's commander in chief? In his trademark manner, Putin is in no rush to react, but there are signs that the war in Iraq may have made an impression. Putin's annual address to the parliament has been moved to a later date. The likely reason is that the war calls for a change of policy. This week the Russian daily Izvestia, which is rumored to have close ties to the Kremlin administration, had two full pages of material that was mostly critical of Russia's defense establishment. Criticism comes from a variety of sources: an active-duty officer fighting in Chechnya says, "Americans would have been much better at taking Grozny than we were." An American expert is quoted as saying he does not think "the Russian generals today understand the meaning of modern warfare." A Russian expert emphasizes that "a mere increase in military budget is not enough. This process should be accompanied by a genuine reform of armed forces." Finally, an unsigned sidebar states that "the Russian army does not have anything similar to what the U.S. army uses in Iraq." Right after the Kursk disaster, Putin said of the military: "We must have a smaller army. Better equipped and technologically perfect." So far he has been unable to persuade those in the defense ministry to do much toward this end. Maybe now he can. washingtonpost.com