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

To: frankw1900 who wrote (107326)	7/23/2003 1:52:13 AM
From: GST	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 281500

Believe it or not, the political process matters, not just the ends -- the political process makes us stronger or it can make us weaker --- and this process we have been through made us a lot weaker and harmed our national security and leadership position in the world. It was not necessary to have this sad process. Bush Sr. was a great President. Bush Jr. has been a tremendous disappointment: <<A dwindling case for going it alone By Thomas Oliphant, 7/22/2003 WASHINGTON THE ONCE MIGHTY unilateralists around President Bush - Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld - are in the process of losing another fight against a broadly international response to the mess in Iraq. A year ago they lost a bizarre argument about whether to invade Iraq without special authorization by Congress and without a last-chance effort to forge a workable consensus through the United Nations. The current struggle, however, pales in comparison to the one a year ago. The hearts of the vice president and defense secretary are not in this one. Facts on the ground have obliterated their case that a quasi-revival of colonial administration with the United States running the show is feasible or even desirable. Facts at the Treasury - $4 billion a month for an American-run occupation at an absolute minimum indefinitely - have eroded domestic support. There is simply no case to be made for unilateralism after three months of avoidable mistakes that are costing lives, treasure, and international standing. A year ago - most likely via the gentle nudging of Bush's father - the case was made that the United States should not go to war with narrow domestic support and virtually nonexistent support from the rest of the world. It was a rare example where President Bush appears to have actually made a decision after participating in a detailed examination of the options. The more common and accurate picture of a disengaged, incurious, passive receptacle for his advisers' machinations is so widely accepted around here that even the administration officials desperately defending themselves over the crude manipulation of prewar intelligence have in the process depicted Bush himself as little more than a ventriloquist's dummy. A year ago Bush saw the merit of expanding domestic support via a congressional authorization for the use of force against Iraq, even at the price of going back to the UN and securing Security Council endorsement (ultimately unanimous) for a last-chance round of diplomacy and weapons inspections. His position won over a great many Democrats, and it solidified the position of Britain as an ally. At the same time, however, his henchmen made a colossal blunder in selling the case. They had the high ground available - the unacceptability in the post-9/11 world of a rogue state directly flouting the specific requirements of the UN. But they abandoned it for the cheap and dirty trick of building a false facade of spurious claims - not just about alleged inquiries about purchasing uranium in Africa - supposedly adding up to an imminent threat to the United States from unconventional weapons. The cheap and dirty route often works in the short term, especially when the cooking of intelligence books is involved. The administration's position was also bolstered by the stance at the UN of France, Russia, and Germany - which let their opposition become blind and unyielding. In the longer run, however, cheap and dirty tends to boomerang, which is what has now happened. As it turns out, the manipulation of intelligence was accompanied by an equally outrageous manipulation of what planning there was for the war's aftermath. In keeping with its unilateralist vision, the Cheney-Rumsfeld clique put all their chips on an American-run Iraq, joyous in its embrace of American liberators, financed by quickly restored oil revenues and built around their favorite Iraqi exile, the occasionally honest and isolated Ahmad Chalabi. That vision, always suspect but never examined critically (least of all by a passive president), is in tatters. For the last several days especially, it has gradually become clear that only the nature of its abandonment is in question. The first major clue was not so much the refusal of the French to send nation-builders and peacekeepers to Iraq without a fresh UN resolution internationalizing the occupation as it was the turndown from India (long a mainstay of peacekeeping and a magnet for other countries). The second clue was a truly pathetic overture to Turkey - until now a consistently bad actor in the Iraq mess, particularly in relation to the self-governing Kurds; only the truly desperate would even talk to the Turks. Now the preliminary diplomatic work is more in the open, and UN Secretary General Kofi Annan is proving an adept, helpful figure. He has mixed cooperation with the occupation regime and a willingness to legitimize the infant interim ruling council with targeted criticism of the occupation's mistakes and a call for a clear timetable for the withdrawal of American military forces. The poles in this mess still have their adherents - Cheney-Rumsfeld's ongoing message to the world (butt out) and the French-oriented riposte (no, you butt out). Good will is in the air, however, and there exists a way to make postwar Iraq the showcase for determined, aggressive internationalism it could have become last winter. There needs to be debate as well as investigation about how so much could have gone wrong and how so much baloney could be fed to the public. This period of reckoning for those who misled the world, however, cannot block or slow the vital task of helping a broken country heal. Thomas Oliphant's e-mail address is oliphant@globe.com. This story ran on page A13 of the Boston Globe on 7/22/2003. © Copyright 2003 Globe Newspaper Company.

To: frankw1900 who wrote (107326)	7/23/2003 5:26:12 AM
From: LindyBill	Respond to of 281500

Good article on our efforts in Iraq. Have I been the only one that notices who posts the news when the bad guys get killed, and who posts the news when the good guys get killed? Iraqis Into the Fight The anti-Saddam majority joins the battle, and Uday and Qusay die. WSJ.com Word yesterday that American troops have killed the bloody sons of Saddam Hussein is the second piece of good news to come out of Iraq in the past week. The first is that U.S. officials are finally inviting the anti-Saddam Iraqi majority into the fight. The deaths of Uday and Qusay--Caligulas to their father's Nero--are the most important coalition victory since the fall of Saddam on April 9. The insurgency against U.S. forces has since been led by Baath Party survivors, including the sons, who want to restore their dictatorship. And after 35 years of murder and torture, many Iraqis simply won't believe that Saddam's day is done until they know that he and his sons are killed or captured. Lieutenant General Ricardo Sanchez, head of U.S. forces in Iraq, will have to show the bodies far and wide to prove they really are dead. It's also notable that their capture resulted from a tip by an Iraqi to the 101st Airborne in the northern city of Mosul. The two previous claims of their or Saddam's demise came from CIA sources who have proven to be unreliable. The 101st has led the way in changing U.S. military strategy from standoff assault to classic counterinsurgency that seeks to win the support of the Iraqi public. This Iraqi tip also underscores the wisdom of the U.S. decision this week to recruit and train a new Iraqi militia to fight alongside U.S. troops. Many recent U.S. casualties have come because GIs are doing jobs that could be done by Iraqis themselves, such as guarding banks and key buildings. U.S. forces, the best in the world, are better reserved for more vital military missions. All the more so because, contrary to the impression given by the U.S. press, tens of thousands of Iraqis are eager to fight for their own freedom. Young men have waited in long lines to join the new Iraqi Army and police forces. The U.S. trained 700 before the war for the Free Iraqi Forces but then shortsightedly disbanded them after April 9. Leaders of the former Iraqi opposition to Saddam, such as Ahmed Chalabi, have been offering to recruit thousands more. The decision by the new Centcom commander, General John Abizaid, to train an additional 7,000-man Iraqi militia in 45 days (and another 7,000 after that) is thus long overdue. The new Iraqi army won't be ready for major duty for years and the police have to worry about routine law and order. The current insurgency of Baathists and foreign jihadis is a more urgent and dangerous threat, and this is where the new Iraqi militia can help. One question still being debated by U.S. officials is just how much fighting these Iraqis will be allowed to do. Coalition Administrator L. Paul Bremer, his State Department advisers and some in the military want to limit their duties essentially to local reservist duty. That is, guarding buildings in their home cities and working the kind of shift one would in any regular job. This would be another big mistake. Guard duties are important, but the Iraqis can also be invaluable fighting alongside Americans, and sometimes even on their own, in offensive operations. When U.S. patrols are attacked, say by sniper fire from an apartment building, GIs now have to pursue the hit-and-run artists on their own. They don't know the language or the terrain, and many of the killers have escaped. Iraqis can help on both counts. They can also fill the most urgent U.S. military need--what the professionals call "actionable intelligence." Again contrary to most media reports, the coalition has more than enough firepower in Iraq. What it needs to defeat the insurgency is good information about where to find the Udays and the Qusays. This can only come from Iraqis. While more Iraqis have been offering information in recent weeks as they gain confidence that the tyranny isn't coming back, even more are likely to come forward if they see Iraqi faces they can talk to along with the Americans. The Iraqi militia should also be used throughout the country, even outside their own regions. An entirely local militia is much more vulnerable to corruption and clan favoritism. Soldiers who travel and work with Americans are more likely to adopt similar standards of professionalism. One objection is that Sunnis won't be able to operate in (say) Shiite areas, but fears of such ethnic and religious clashes have proven to be far overblown since the liberation. Certainly a Kurdish militia would have their hearts in their work searching for Baathists in the Sunni heartland. An active Iraqi militia is also far superior to the alternative of bringing in the U.N. We'd love to see 10,000 Turks working as allies in the tough Saddamite city of Fallujah. But a U.N. force, especially if it includes the French, is likely to come at the cost of too many limitations on how the U.S. fights. Nations that opposed the war will resist further de-Baathification, for example, when the early American failure to purge senior Baath figures is the main reason some Iraqis have been so afraid to cooperate with the coalition. Many of the coalition's post-April 9 troubles have come because U.S. officials took a victory lap and underestimated the desperate ruthlessness of Baath loyalists. The new Iraqi security force is a welcome change in tactics to meet this threat, assuming Mr. Bremer really lets it fight. If we mean what we say about Iraqis running a free Iraq, there's no better way to prove it than letting Iraqis fight and die for it. opinionjournal.com