Category Archives: War and Peace

Today’s reading, ripped from today’s headlines

‘Detainees?’ Why not just call them ‘prisoners?’

Today, reading about the latest on Gitmo and torture and prosecutions and so forth, I reached my saturation point on the word “detainees.”

Personally, I’m not too squeamish to go ahead and call them “prisoners.” Why don’t we just go ahead and do that? We’ve been holding some of these people since 2001, and many of them we don’t ever intend to let go (and if we do, we’re crazy). So why not “prisoners?”

Yes, I get it that their legal status is unsettled, and in U.S. crime-and-punishment parlance we generally save “prisoner” for someone duly convicted to spend time in a “prison,” which is an institution we distinguish from jails where people await trial or holding cells where they await bail or whatever.

But if we can’t be honest enough to say that Gitmo is a prison and they are prisoners, whatever the technicalities, could we please come up with something that sounds a little less prissy, somewhat less a-tiptoe, than “detainees?”

Whenever I hear the term, I picture a Victorian gentleman saying “Pardon me, sir, but I must detain you for a moment…”

Whose sensibilities are we overprotecting by the use of this word? Those who feel like the “detainees'” “rights” are being trampled? Those like me who are glad we have a secure place to put some of these people? (Hey, go ahead and close Gitmo if you’d like. That’s what Obama says he’ll do and it’s what McCain would have done, too. Fine. But find someplace just as secure to put the ones we need to hang onto.)

Maybe we could sort out all the rest of the mess — the legal status, the security issues, who should interrogate and how, whom to keep and whom to send home and whom to send to a third location, whether any of our own should be prosecuted, etc. — if we started by coming up with something less mealy-mouthed to call these people.

Never mind maneuvers…

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Just watched the end of a movie in which Lawrence Olivier was strutting about in Napoleonic-era admiral’s uniform with an empty right sleeve, which could only mean he was portraying Lord Nelson. And there was Vivien Leigh talking about Lord Keith and St. Vincent and the rest, so I was hooked to the end of it. Saw a highly melodramatic rendering of Nelson’s death at Trafalgar.

As you know, I’m a huge fan of the Aubrey-Maturin novels, and Lord Nelson was Jack Aubrey’s hero. In the books, Jack is the one to whom Nelson said, “Never mind maneuvers, always go straight at ’em.” In reality, he said that to Lord Cochrane, upon whom Aubrey is largely based.

Here’s the kicker: After the movie, the guy who introduces the features on TCM said the movie was so chock-full of homilies about the importance of standing up to dictators that the director was summoned to Congress — still gripped by isolationism — where our lawmakers were investigating pro-war propaganda by Hollywood. He was scheduled to appear on Dec. 12, 1941, so he lucked out there. By his appearance date, isolationism was no longer quite the thing, you know.

Imagine that — Hollywood being investigated for pro-war propaganda.

I’d better go to bed now.

une aide de 900 millions de dollars

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One of the many, many groups that send me releases via e-mail every day — which I generally delete immediately, not because I'm not interested or the subject is unimportant, but because there's only so much time in the day — is one called The Israel Project.

Today's release from that group grabbed my attention, though, because — inexplicably — it was in French. Here's the headline and subhead:

Les États-Unis annoncent une aide de 900 millions de dollars pour la reconstruction de Gaza
L'argent aidera Gaza pour consolider l'Autorité palestinienne

… which reminds me: Night before last, I was downstairs working out for the first time this year (more about that later), when a report came on CNN about Hillary Clinton promising this aid to Gaza, with the stipulation that it had to be channeled through the Palestinian Authority.

Which of course raises the question, How on Earth do you get aid to Gaza through the Palestinian Authority when the Palestinian Authority doesn't control Gaza — where, in fact, being associated with the Palestinian Authority can get you shot by Hamas, the real power?

Wolf Blitzer didn't say, and I didn't think about it until I saw this headline. So merci for that.

And now a follow-up question occurs to me: What IS going to happen to this money, in reality?

And here's a follow-up to the follow-up: If this money isn't effectively going to go to relieve actual human suffering, or to further our interests in the region, either, aren't there a whole lot of better ways to spend this money in the world? I ask that because we have notoriously underfunded our diplomatic efforts around the world for years and years. What might this money — mere chump change by stimulus standards, but a respectable amount (I would think) if added on to the State Department budget — accomplish if we actually drew up a list of our international priorities, and funded them?

Joe Biden, prophet

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Charles Krauhammer made the point most clearly, in his column for today:

The Biden prophecy has come to pass. Our wacky veep, momentarily inspired, had predicted last October that “it will not be six months before the world tests Barack Obama.'' Biden probably had in mind an eve-of-the-apocalypse drama like the Cuban Missile Crisis. Instead, Obama's challenges have come in smaller bites. Some are deliberate threats to U.S. interests, others mere probes to ascertain whether the new president has any spine.
   Preliminary X-rays are not very encouraging.
   Consider the long list of brazen Russian provocations:
   (a) Pressuring Kyrgyzstan to shut down the U.S. air base in Manas, an absolutely cru-cial NATO conduit into Afghanistan.
   (b) Announcing the formation of a “rapid reaction force'' with six former Soviet re-publics, a regional Russian-led strike force meant to reassert Russian hegemony in the Muslim belt north of Afghanistan.
   (c) Planning to establish a Black Sea naval base in Georgia's breakaway province of Abkhazia, conquered by Moscow last summer.
   (d) Declaring Russia's intention to deploy offensive Iskander missiles in Kaliningrad if Poland and the Czech Republic go ahead with plans to station an American (anti-Iranian) missile defense system.

But you know what? I didn't use the Krauthammer piece on today's page. After all, you sort of expect Charles Krauthammer to say stuff like that. Folks like bud are more likely to be persuaded by Joel Brinkley, who is the kind of guy who writes stuff like this:

Even with all the anti-American sentiment everywhere these days, most people worldwide know America to be a decent, honest state. For all the justified criticism over the invasion of Iraq, the United States is now beginning to pull its troops out. For all the international anger and hatred of George Bush, the American people elected a man who is his antithesis.

Set aside the silliness of saying Obama is Bush's "antithesis" — I point you to all the evidence of "continuity we can believe in," such as here and here — and consider my point, which is that Joel Brinkley is decidedly not Charles Krauthammer. Anyway, here's some of what Mr. Brinkley said, in the column that appears on today's page, about how Obama is being tested, although he managed to say it without being snarky about Joe Biden:

    America’s competitors and adversaries are certainly not greeting President Obama with open arms. During his first month in office, many have given him the stiff arm.
    Pakistan made a deal with the Taliban to give it a huge swath of territory in the middle of the country for a new safe haven.
    North Korea is threatening war with the South.
    Many in the Arab world who had welcomed Obama are now attacking him because he did not denounce Israel’s invasion of Gaza.
    Iran launched a satellite into space, demonstrating that it has the ability to construct an inter-continental ballistic missile to match up with the nuclear weapons it is apparently trying to build.
    There’s more, but none of it can match the sheer gall behind Russia’s open challenge to Washington.

Just to give you yet another perspective that I did NOT use on today's page, here's what Philly's Trudy Rubin had to say about that deal that Pakistan cut with the Taliban:

       The deal was cut with an older insurgent leader, Sufi Mohammed. Supposedly, he will persuade tougher Taliban, such as his estranged son-in-law Maulana Fazlullah, to lay down arms. Pakistani defense analyst Ikram Sehgal told me by phone from Karachi, "They are trying to isolate the hard-core terrorists from the moderate militants. I think it is a time of trial, to see if this works."
       Critics say the deal is a desperation move, made by a weak civilian government and an army that doesn't know how to fight the insurgents. "The Pakistani army has been remarkably ineffective," said Dan Markey, a South Asia expert at the Council on Foreign Relations. He said the army, which is trained to fight land wars against India, lacks the counterinsurgency skills to "hit bad guys and not good guys."
       As a result, many innocent civilians are killed, leading locals to accept the Taliban as the lesser of two evils. (That may account for the warm welcome Sufi Mohammed re-ceived in Swat after the deal; poor people are desperate for the violence to stop, whatever it takes.)

So wherever you are on the political spectrum, if you follow and understand foreign affairs, you know that Obama is indeed being tested. Big-time. And it remains to be seen whether he passes the tests. I certainly hope he does.

Syria and WMD

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Just when you think you have time to worry about what Michael Phelps is smoking, there's always somebody out there coming up with something more pressing, something you hadn't even thought about lately.

Like Syria and Weapons of Mass Destruction. So you thought the Israelis had taken care of that with the strike on the nuke facility? Well, think again, according to Jane's, which sent me a release today about the following:

Syria Appears to be Developing its Chemical Weapons Capability

IHS Jane’s examines satellite imagery

London (18th February 2009) – Jane’s Intelligence Review used satellite images from commercial sources gathered between 2005 and 2008 to examine activity at the chemical weapons facility identified as Al Safir in northwest Syria. Imagery from DigitalGlobe’s WorldView-1 satellite and GeoEye’s IKONOS satellite shows that the site contains not only a number of the defining features of a chemical weapons facility, but also that significant levels of construction have taken place at the facility’s production plant and adjacent missile base. This does not suggest that Syria is arming itself for an offensive, but it could have regional security implications given Syria’s tension with its neighbour, Israel.

One of the clearest indicators that Al Safir is a military facility as opposed to a civilian industrial complex is the level of defences protecting the site. The facility is accessed only through a military checkpoint and each element within the facility has an additional security point.

Christian Le Mière, editor of Jane’s Intelligence Review, explained: “Construction at the Al Safir facility appears to be the most significant chemical weapons production, storage and weaponisation site in Syria. Its presence indicates Syria’s desire to develop unconventional weapons either to act as a deterrent to conflict with Israel or as a force enhancer should any conflict ensue. The satellite imagery that IHS Jane’s has examined suggests that Damascus has sought to expand and develop Al Safir and its chemical weapons arsenal.”

LeMière concluded: “Further expansion of Al Safir is likely to antagonise Israel and highlight mutual mistrust, even as peace talks between the two neighbours progress intermittently. Although an Israeli air strike on the facility may not yet be likely, such developments only serve to underline and exacerbate regional tensions.”

###

Actually, I'd tell you more but you have to subscribe to Jane's to get more. And I've got enough to worry about… They even offered me a contact number in case I wanted to see the satellite image. But I just don't have time to spend half a day shaking off surveillance, doubling back on my tracks, to meet a guy in Lisbon with a magazine in his left hand who will say, "Do you like good curry?," to which I have to remember the right thing to say or he'll garrote me.

Even if I went to the trouble, bud still wouldn't believe me that the WMD exists…

WashPost: CIA helps Pakistan, India work together on Mumbai case

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Today I got a release from The Washington Post touting a good-news story that for me explained a lot:

The Washington Post today reports that in the aftermath of the Mumbai terrorist attacks, the CIA orchestrated back-channel intelligence exchanges between India and Pakistan, allowing the two former enemies to quietly share highly sensitive evidence while the Americans served as neutral arbiters.

The exchanges, which began days after the deadly assault in late November, gradually helped the two sides overcome mutual suspicions and paved the way for Islamabad's announcement last week acknowledging that some of the planning for the attack had occurred on Pakistani soil, report Joby Warrick and Karen DeYoung.

The intelligence went well beyond the public revelations about the 10 Mumbai terrorists, and included sophisticated communications intercepts and an array of physical evidence detailing how the gunmen and their supporters planned and executed their three-day killing spree in the Indian port city.

Indian and Pakistani intelligence agencies separately shared their findings with the CIA, which relayed the details while also vetting the intelligence and filling in blanks with gleanings from its networks, the sources said. The U.S. role was described in interviews with Pakistani officials and confirmed by U.S. sources with detailed knowledge of the arrangement. The arrangement is ongoing, and it is unknown whether it will continue after the Mumbai case is settled.

As I've read reports in recent weeks about Pakistan making arrests and acknowledging the involvement of its nationals, I've sort of wondered at the back of my mind why this case has proceeded without a lot more tension — and maybe actions that went beyond tension — between these too long-time adversaries. Think about it — we could have had a nuclear war in the region by now. Then I read this.

This is just the kind of thing you HOPE your government is secretly doing, but you fear that too often it is not…

Rendition we can believe in

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Earlier this week I noticed yet another promising sign of continuity we can believe in in the War on Terror. The Obama administration has backed Bush policy in a key court case testing the policy of extraordinary rendition — sending detainees to countries that have, shall we say, a more relaxed attitude toward certain methods of interrogation.

Here's a NYT story on the subject. And here's the AP version:

By PAUL ELIAS
Associated Press Writer
SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — A government lawyer urged an appeals court Monday to toss a lawsuit accusing a Boeing Co. subsidiary of illegally helping the CIA fly suspected terrorists overseas to be tortured, maintaining a Bush administration position that the case would jeopardize national security.
    The American Civil Liberties Union and others had called on the White House to change direction and drop its move to dismiss the suit. The organization filed the lawsuit on behalf of five men swept up in the "extraordinary rendition" program and who are still being held in various prisons around the world.
    The lawsuit claims that San Jose-based Jeppesen DataPlan Inc. should be punished for allegedly providing the CIA airplanes and crew to carry out the program that included torture.
    The U.S. government intervened in the case and a trial court judge last year tossed it out after CIA Director Gen. Michael Hayden invoked the government's so-called "state secrets privilege," which lets intelligence agencies bar the use of evidence in court cases that threaten national security.
    U.S. Department of Justice lawyer Douglas Letter on Monday urged a three-judge panel of the 9th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals to uphold the lower court decision. Letter said his position was "thoroughly vetted with the appropriate" administration officials.
    "These are the authorized positions of the administration," Letter said in a response to a question from Judge Mary Schroeder.
    Letter said that he was confident that Schroeder and her two colleagues on the appeals court would toss the suit after they read top secret legal documents the government filed with the court under seal.
    The case presented Obama's Justice Department with one of the first of many policy and legal decisions it faces in countless actions across the country left over from the Bush administration. Legal scholars contend that the prior administration stopped litigation involving the government by invoking state secret claims a record number of times, including in more than 40 legal challenges to the Bush administration's warrantless wiretap program.
    A Department of Justice spokesman in Washington, D.C., said government lawyers were reviewing all such state secret assertions in lawsuits across the country.
    "It's vital that we protect information that if released could jeopardize national security," said Justice spokesman Matt Miller. "But the Justice Department will ensure the privilege is not invoked to hide from the American people information about their government's actions that they have a right to know."
    Outside of court, ACLU executive director Anthony Romero criticized the new president.
    "This is not change," Romero said in a prepared statement. "Candidate Obama ran on a platform that would reform the abuse of state secrets, but President Obama's Justice Department has disappointingly reneged on that important civil liberties issue."

I had meant to post something earlier in the week on this and another example of pragmatism-over-rhetoric on the part of the Obama administration. Right now I'm forgetting what the other example was — I'll let you know if I remember.

But I was reminded of this one by an editorial in the WSJ today, which said in part:

President Obama has done a masterful job disguising his Administration's growing antiterror maturity, but this week produced further evidence that he is erring on the side of keeping the country safe rather than appeasing the political left. The Justice Department filed to dismiss a federal appeals case involving rendition, embracing an argument developed by . . . the Bush Administration.
In other words, the anti-antiterror lobby is being exposed as more radical than its putative banner carrier. As Mr. Obama is learning, the left's exertions to disarm the country's counterterrorism arsenal are as dangerous now as they were prior to his election.

Capt. Smith sits this one out

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Ran into James Smith this morning at breakfast, and expressed my surprise that Vincent Sheheen was running for governor and he was not.

He said he just couldn't afford the time away from his family. As you'll recall, he was separated from the wife and four kids for about a year and a half, most of it fighting those folks President Obama calls the Tolly-bon. He said his wife was supportive, but he couldn't stand to miss the time with his kids. He said a Soapbox Derby event over the weekend (or was in Pinewood Derby? I get those mixed up) underlined that for him; if he were to run for gov, he'd miss such events.

On other matters, I mentioned I had thought of him and the other guys of Team Swamp Fox last night, because I've been watching (via Netflix) the HBO series "Generation Kill," based on the book by the same name by a Rolling Stone correspondent embedded with Force Recon Marines on the tip of the spear in the Iraq invasion in '03. The Marines, who were veterans of Afghanistan, talk about that experience a lot, and are sometimes nostalgic because the way they had fought on that front made more sense to them.

Anyway, I need to get together with Rep. Smith sometime and talk at greater length; I haven't had a chance to do that since he got back.

Obama’s news conference

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Did you watch it? What did you think?

As usual, I think the new pres handled himself well. The guy's just chock full o' poise. I also think he made some good points selling portions of his stimulus plan — particularly the green energy and medical records parts.

And as usual, when I force myself to watch one of these things, I sympathized with him and what he was trying to say, and got really irritated at some the stupid, facile, superficially provocative questions the media reps asked. For instance, I know we're supposed to think Helen Thomas is cute or something because she's so old, but what the hell did she mean by "so-called terrorists" (which the president politely called her down for, by setting out quite clearly what a terrorist is). And did she really want the president to blurt out, in response to her hectoring (see how she kept asking it, talking over him?), who in the Mideast has nukes and who doesn't? What did she expect him to say, something like "Oh, you mean, besides Israel?" Does she think a new president should gab with her, in front of the country, about whatever juicy tidbits he's picked up at those cool intel briefings?

And who was it, the CNN guy? who asked, as this guy's walking in the door and beginning to turn our resources more fully toward a deteriorating situation in Afghanistan, "Hey, when can we leave Afghanistan?" What kinds of questions are these? Are they randomly chosen from questions overheard on the street, or what? What sort of intelligent answer could anyone possibly expect from such a question?

And The Huffington Post? A blog? A representative of Arianna Huffington gets a question, as opposed to… I don't know… the Chicago Tribune? What do they do, drag these names out of a hat? Or is it, "let's give one to a serious newspaper, one to a network, throw in a blog, and if there's a little old lady in tennis shoes we'll give her a shot, too?"

I've never really liked the combination of journalism and theater that is the news conference… all that posturing and primping before one's peers and the folks at home, everybody trying to impress somebody, and mostly persuading everyone as to what idiots they are. The very few such events I attended as a reporter, I kept my mouth shut rather than be part of the show. If I couldn't find out what I needed to know before such a cattle call, I wasn't doing my job. Later, as an editor, I told reporters they'd BETTER have the whole story ahead of time, and preferably have it filed. They should then attend the show on the remote chance that something would come up they didn't know already. They were not to ask questions during the conference unless they couldn't get them answered any other way (which they should regard as a failure), for the simple fact that they'd better know a LOT more than the TV and radio types who live off such events, so why should they get to feed off your good questions?

It occurs to me as I reminisce that I was not the easiest editor for a reporter to work for… probably a good thing I defected to editorial in 1994, and left all that behind.

Oh, well. I think I'll read some Moby Dick and go to bed.

What if Khameini’s not in charge, either?

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Something that occurs to me whenever geopolitical boffins assure us, oh so wisely, that we're letting ourselves be distracted by a mere functionary when we listen to Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, since as we all know, in reality, that Ayatollah Khameini is the guy in charge, as Roger Cohen does here…

Can revolutionary Iran live without “Death to America?” Powerful hard-line Iranian factions think not, but I’m with the majority of Iranians who believe their Islamic Republic can coexist with a functioning U.S. relationship.
Obama should do five other things: Address his opening to the supreme religious leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, because he decides. State that America is not in the Iranian regime-change game. Act soon rather than wait for the June Iranian presidential elections; Khamenei will still be around after them. Start with small steps that build trust. Treat the nuclear issue within the whole range of U.S.-Iranian relations rather than as its distorting focus.

… is this: How do ya know that Khameini's in charge? What if the thing that "everybody who knows anything knows" is wrong? Maybe, to borrow a phrase from Frank Herbert, it's "a feint within a feint within a feint."

Maybe Ahmadinejad is really the power behind Khameini. Or, more likely, another lesser-known mullah is manipulating Khameini. Or maybe some guy we never heard of, maybe someone completely unlikely — say, some survivor of the Shah's secret police — is really pulling all the mullahs' strings…

In a system that is designed NOT to be transparent — unlike liberal democracies in the West — we should assume that there is much we don't know. Of course, that also means that before we go "negotiating with the Iranians" with all the best will in the world, we know who it is we should be talking to. Personally, I'm not convinced that anyone does know. Talk, by all means. But at the same time, keep asking (at the very least, asking yourself) the question that Chili Palmer asked in "Get Shorty:" "But first I want to know who I'm talking to. Am I talking to you, or am I talking to him?"

Or maybe I'm just being paranoid today. But when you're talking about a country whose nominal leader wants Israel not to exist, which is trying like crazy to get The Bomb, which is the power and the juice behind the Sadrists in Iraq, Hizbollah in Lebanon, Hamas in Gaza, and seems to have a relationship with Sunni Syria not unlike that which Barzini had with Tataglia, a reasonable man would get a little paranoid… Maybe, when Obama and/or Hillary chat with these guys, they should bring along both a Mentat and a Bene Gesserit, just to cover all the bases…

McCain, Graham support Obama on Gitmo

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FYI, I just got this release from Lindsey Graham's office:

JOINT STATEMENT FROM U.S. SENATORS LINDSEY GRAHAM AND JOHN MCCAIN ON GUANTANAMO EXECUTIVE ORDER

Washington, D.C. – U.S. Senators Lindsey Graham (R-South Carolina) and John McCain (R-Arizona) today issued the following statement regarding the executive order put forth by President Obama calling for the closure of the prison at Guantanamo:

“We support President Obama’s decision to close the prison at Guantanamo, reaffirm America’s adherence to the Geneva Conventions, and begin a process that will, we hope, lead to the resolution of all cases of Guantanamo detainees,” said Senator Lindsey Graham and Senator John McCain. “The executive orders issued today constitute an important step in the right direction but leave several major issues unaddressed.”
“Numerous difficult issues remain,” Senator Graham and Senator McCain continued. “Present at Guantanamo are a number of detainees who have been cleared for release but have found no foreign country willing to accept them. Other detainees have been deemed too dangerous for release, but the sensitive nature of the evidence makes prosecution difficult. The military’s proper role in processing detainees held on the battlefield at Bagram, Afghanistan, and other military prisons around the world must be defended, but that is left unresolved. Also unresolved is the type of judicial process that would replace the military commissions. We believe the military commissions should have been allowed to continue their work. We look forward to working with the President and his administration on these issues, keeping in mind that the first priority of the U.S. government is to guarantee the security of the American people.”

####

… which seems to me an appropriate stance for the loyal opposition. They support their commander in chief because they share his concerns that our nation live up to its highest ideals — which is completely consistent with their advocacy during the Bush administration. (And remember, McCain said that he, too, would have closed the Gitmo facility if elected.) At the same time, they make sure they get on the record the unresolved problems inherent in this move. Smart, principled and appropriate.

Today’s Gaza editorial, with other views

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Keeping with my rule about making the most of anything I write, here's a blog version of the Gaza editorial I wrote for today's paper:

Ending the killing
is natural goal for
both U.S., Israel

THE DEATH OF INNOCENT women and children among the 40 Palestinians who were killed by Israeli mortar fire outside a United Nations school on Tuesday is a tragedy that should appall decent people everywhere, as it has done.

Apart from the personal devastation that spreads from the loss of any human life, each death of a Palestinian noncombatant strengthens the terrorists of Hamas and their sponsors in Iran, and damages Israeli security by undermining what few vestiges of concern remain in foreign capitals for Israel and its legitimate interests. It’s a lose-lose-lose proposition for anyone who hopes for a day when Israelis and Palestinians coexist in peace.

But what were the Israeli Defense Forces shooting at? Well, they were shooting back at the Hamas fighters who were firing mortars at IDF troops from the school compound. Why were the Hamas fighters shooting at the Israelis? Because the Israelis had entered the Gaza strip to attack Hamas. Why? Because Hamas was firing as many as 60 rockets a day into Israel with the intent of killing as many innocent Israeli civilians as possible. Why? Because Hamas and its Iranian sponsors are dedicated to the idea that Israel should cease to exist. Anything that furthers that goal, from killing Israelis to baiting Israel into killing innocent Palestinians whom Hamas fighters use as shields, is what Hamas will do.

The best thing for Hamas, with its nihilist aims, is for the killing to continue. The best thing for Israel, and for its chief ally the United States, is for it to end as quickly as possible. At the same time, the deaths that have occurred on either side in recent days truly would have happened for naught if Israel does not achieve the realistic military goal of reducing Hamas’ ability to fire rockets from northern Gaza into Israel.

Does this mean that foreign governments are wrong to press Israel for a cease-fire — that is, for a cease-fire that lasts longer than the three-hour one on Thursday? No, for the simple fact that Israel is the only combatant in this conflict that is susceptible to international pressure. It’s the only party that can be expected to respond rationally — “rationally” in a conventional modern, civilized sense — to diplomatic pressure.

That’s why the United States must and will work not only for an end to this battle, but for an end to the overall Arab-Israeli conflict, which has morphed into a conflict between Israel and Iranian surrogates. But not even a short-term resolution to the battle for Gaza seems likely to come on the Bush administration’s watch.

Speaking of that, the simple explanation for Israel’s incursion into Gaza is that it is doing so while it still has a staunch friend in the White House. As with most simple explanations, there is truth in that. At the same time, anyone who thinks the United States will no longer align itself with Israel’s long-term interests just because the president’s name is Barack Hussein Obama is as deluded as someone who assumes that this country will be vehemently anti-Palestinian because Rahm Emanuel’s father belonged to a Zionist insurgent group that fought (sometimes using terrorist tactics, for those of you with an inexhaustible appetite for moral ambiguity) to establish the modern state of Israel.

Peace and security for Israel will continue to be a top priority for the United States under President Obama. And nothing will further that cause better — or frustrate Hamas and Iran more — than working through every diplomatic means to end quickly the killing of innocents on both sides.

Beyond that, as you know, we have no op-ed pages on Fridays these days. I've tried to compensate for that somewhat by choosing a syndicated op-ed piece to run in what would normally be the staff-written-column slot at the bottom of the page (unless we have a staff column that just has to run that day).

The two best such columns available to me yesterday were both about Gaza — this one from Nicholas Kristof, and this one from Charles Krauthammer. The argument in favor of the Kristof column is that it was leaned a little less pro-Israel than our editorial thereby providing some sort of "balance" to the editorial (not the sort of "balance" that frankly pro-Palestinian folks such as our own Michael Berg might offer, but more the kind you get from the mainstream of liberal thought).

The argument in favor of the Krauthammer piece (which was pro-Israel and then some), was that it was fresh and new. The Kristof piece had run in The New York Times that morning. The Krauthammer one was embargoed until Friday, and therefore would appear in The Washington Post at the same time it appeared in The State, and would appear nowhere else before that.

I have a prejudice toward fresh, especially when it's for a special spot such as this one, even more than for a run-of-the-mill op-ed appearance. (Add to that the fact that I'm still figuring out this business of putting syndicated pieces in a place normally reserved for staff opinion. The op-ed page is clearly a place for alternative opinion, especially that which differs with the editorial board's view — as is the Letters to the Editor portion of the editorial page, by long tradition, as is the cartoon space; Robert Ariail is NOT a board member. But when the column is running in a space normally reserved for board member's personal views, is it more logical and consistent to have a differing, "balancing" view — especially since there's no op-ed that day — or one that is closer to the board position? As I say, I haven't decided that. But in this case, the freshness argument was enough for me.)

But rather than deprive you of the Kristof piece, I put it online, and put a box in the paper letting you know it was there. My little way of having it both ways. Yours, too.

Who throws a shoe?

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Actually, that Austin Powers quote has little to do with the point of this post — although it was a weird thing to do, a la Random Task….

What I do mean to point out is the fact that across the Mideast, the "Arab Street" was out en masse demonstrating in favor of the guy who did his utmost (by Middle Eastern standards) to insult President W. in Iraq — less than 24 hours after the incident. From The New York Times:

Barely 24 hours after the journalist, Muntader al-Zaidi, was tackled
and arrested for his actions at a Baghdad news conference, the
shoe-throwing incident was generating front-page headlines and
continuing television news coverage. A thinly veiled glee could be
discerned in much of the reporting, especially in the places where
anti-American sentiment runs deepest.

In Sadr City, the
sprawling Baghdad suburb that has seen some of the most intense
fighting between insurgents and American soldiers since the 2003
invasion, thousands of people marched in his defense. In Syria, he was
hailed as a hero. In Libya, he was given an award for courage….

What occurs to me is that this is an impressive display — or many impressive displays, I suppose — of organizational ability. Just think — if the energy and effort that goes into these spontaneous (and sometimes not so spontaneous) expressions of indignation were channeled into building viable industries or — dare we hope — self-government or respect for the rule of law — we’d never have another bit of trouble from that part of the world. Trouble is, a lot of these cultures and systems don’t do "constructive." But they certainly do resentment. You betcha.

Iraq_bush_shoe_wart

‘Hyperbole’ and Iraq

10 Replies

The last couple of days I’ve broken my rule about not responding substantially to e-mails. In the interests of making the best use of my time for the readers’ benefit, I try to steer people to the blog so that everybody can join in on the conversation. Anyway, when I break my rule I try to do this, which is publish the exchange on the blog. This exchange started, of course, with my Sunday column:

From: Pat Mohr
Sent: Sunday, November 30, 2008 4:34 PM
To: Warthen, Brad – External Email
Subject: hyperbole

Well, Mr. Warthen, isn’t your respect for the language, as the SNL church lady would say, "special?" I guess I’m just another bleeding-heart liberal because I did watch in horror as my country approved torture and suspended habeus corpus for prisoners. And I did watch in horror as people died after Katrina because we had incompetent ideologues in the White House who sat and watched that devastation because they wanted to "reduce the size of government to the point that they could drown it in the bathtub." And I’ve watched in horror as we waged a "war" (otherwise known as an occupation) in which thousands and Americans and even more thousands of Iraqis died because we made a mistake about Saddam’s intentions.

Now if those things don’t fill you with horror, you’re not the man I hoped you were.

Sincerely,
Pat Mohr

On Dec 2, 2008, at 1:54 PM, Warthen, Brad – Internal Email wrote:

The NYT editorial in question wasn’t about the issues you mentioned. That was one of the bizarre things about it. It was about things like unauthorized wiretaps, and the operation of Gitmo. Hardly "horror" stuff.

I know lots of people look upon our involvement in Iraq with "horror." I don’t, but I know other people do. The NYT editorial wasn’t about anything like that.

You want to see what I look upon, with horror, read my blog. http://blogs.thestate.com/bradwarthensblog/2008/12/some-things-tha.html

From: Pat Mohr
Sent: Tuesday, December 02, 2008 2:24 PM
To: Warthen, Brad – Internal Email
Subject: Re: hyperbole
Importance: High

Thank you for responding. I understand what you’re saying about the other issues in the NYT editorial, but I do believe that Gitmo is a horror because of the torture that has been sanctioned there (and in other places because of rendition). If this torture was indeed not just the work of some bad apples, and we have some evidence to say that it wasn’t, then it does qualify as a horror. Like many other Americans, i never thought I’d live to see the day that my country sanctioned torture—not for ANY reason!

And I will go look at your blog. One reason is that I’d like to know why you don’t look upon Iraq as a horror. I don’t attribute intent, but I do believe that our government mistakenly believed the boasts of Saddam and ignored/demeaned reports that did not support their preconceptions. Then we refused to wait for the inspectors to go back & look further for WMDs or to go through the UN for assistance, coming up instead with our "coalition of the willing". Meanwhile, Bush and Cheney deliberately conflated 9/11 with Iraq to justify our preemptive invasion. I still see polls that report that something like 40% of evangelicals believe that Iraqis attacked us on 9/11. So I’ll look to see why you don’t believe that the ensuing deaths of thousands was not indeed horrible….

I always read your column because even though I frequently disagree with you, you’re rational and provide reasons for your opinions. This is no small thing in an area of the country infested with ideologues! I’ll always appreciate the work you do!

On Dec 2, 2008, at 3:14 PM, Warthen, Brad – Internal Email wrote:

Thanks for the kind words.

I doubt that I can explain my support for our invasion of Iraq in 2003 to your satisfaction. I can’t explain it to my wife’s satisfaction. I certainly can’t explain it to the satisfaction of people who disagree on my blog.

It has nothing to do with WMD. I realize it did for an awful lot of people, but not for me. So while I saw not finding the WMD (which we all know had been there, because Saddam had used it) as a big setback, it didn’t change anything about why I saw us needing to go in there.

It did have a great deal to do with 9/11, but not in some simplistic way such as you describe, the "hitting back at the people who attacked us" formula. I don’t think in those terms.

Either you look at the situation we had in the world at that time and agree with me, or you don’t. It’s very hard to bridge the gap. I looked at a lot of things, and that’s what it added up to for me. Other people look at the same things and don’t arrive there at all. Part of it is that I am by nature inclined to intervention. I think we were right to intervene in the Balkans, and wrong not to in Rwanda and Darfur. I think we were wrong to leave Somalia in 2003. I believe when you’re the most powerful nation in the world — economically, militarily, just about any other way — you have an obligation to act when people are suffering and being oppressed. Anti-war people think that’s arrogant. I think it’s cold NOT to want to do what we can. And the fact is, if we want to, we can do a great deal.

Here are two of those reasons, which make all the sense in the world to me, but not to antiwar people:
— Until 9/11, the U.S. policy toward the region had been maintaining the status quo. What that had meant was backing current regimes, however horrible — or at least leaving them alone — so as to keep the oil flowing. Don’t rock the boat. The 1991 Gulf War was a perfect example of this old strategy: Saddam had attacked Kuwait and was threatening the much bigger target of Saudi Arabia. We sent an overwhelming force to preserve the status quo ante — pushing Saddam back "where he belonged," and restoring the previous government in Kuwait, and protecting the Saudi regime. We didn’t want to take Baghdad then because that might have created a vacuum into which Iran, and to a lesser extent Syria and Turkey, might flow. That would upset the apple cart, and we didn’t want to do that. (We should have, because at that time we had something we didn’t have 12 years later — overwhelming force, enough to occupy and stabilize Iraq. I understand why we didn’t — but that calculation was based on the old, pre-9/11, policy of preserving the status quo.)
9/11 changed this equation, because it showed us that preserving the status quo — one in which oppressive regimes produced political frustration and encouraged Islamic militantism — was extraordinarily dangerous to us. The 9/11 hijackers were the result of the old policy of supporting the status quo. We needed to begin the process of changing the region, and Iraq was a good place to start. Succeed there (and the problem in Iraq is that so many things were done wrong in the first years that it took far too long to succeed), and you encourage liberalizing, democratizing forces in all middle eastern countries. We saw the beginnings of that in Saudi Arabia, Lebanon, and Libya — although much of it was set back by the increasing violence that was only quelled after the Surge began at the start of 2007. Much of that good effect has yet to be seen, but that doesn’t mean it can’t still happen.

— Iraq was the place to start because we had every reason to go in and take out the regime there. Saddam had violated terms of the 1991 cease fire for 12 years. He was shooting at our planes enforcing the no-fly zone. In 2002, the UN passed the resolution authorizing force unless Saddam met certain conditions — which he failed to meet. Some significant UN members balked at acting upon the resolution — France, Germany, Russia — but plenty of others, including most European powers, actually joined that "coalition of the willing." And why not? Saddam had spent the last decade and more cementing his reputation as an outlaw regime.

Anyway, that’s PART of my thinking on the subject. It doesn’t make sense to people who agree. It DOES make sense to some who do, such as the New York Times’ Tom Friedman.

Hope that helps, but I won’t be surprised if it doesn’t.

From: Pat Mohr
Sent: Tuesday, December 02, 2008 8:27 PM
To: Warthen, Brad – Internal Email
Subject: Re: hyperbole
Importance: High

Hmm, I’ve gone back and read and re-read your rationales for going into Iraq. I’m still thinking—because you’ve made some good points. I do have to tell you, though, that I’m not anti-war; I just think it should be restricted to defense. However, many of your reasons seem to indicate that you truly believe that you are your brothers’ keeper, and that’s morality I share. I too think we should have gone into Darfur and Rwanda. We do have an obligation to help the oppressed—but not only the oppressed with oil under their land. I just don’t think that Iraq should have been singled out, even in the mideast. What about the outrageous treatment of women in Saudi Arabia for example? And how can we be the world’s policemen? How can we ever fix it all?

Moreover, I think our presumptuous invasion has brought us so much international ill will that it will be years before our reputation is restored. And then there’s the billions and billions of dollars that have been squandered in this war. I wonder if Iraqis think it was worth it because I don’t think most Americans do. And now we’re in greater jeopardy in Afghanistan—and we still haven’t found Osama.

All that said, in the light of your comments, I intend to start reading your blog as I continue to think about my position. I like to think that I’m open-minded enough to change my mind given additional evidence. I wish I could come back in fifty years and see what verdict history renders on this war….

Thank you again for engaging in this dialogue with me.

On Dec 3, 2008, at 10:54 AM, Warthen, Brad – Internal Email wrote:

All I can ask for is to get people to think about the points I make, so I thank you for that.

In answer to one point you made, let me point out that we did not have an acceptable rationale for invading Saudi Arabia. Remember the 12 years of defiance of the ceasefire agreement, and all those UN resolutions that gave us authorization to go into Iraq. We had nothing like that in the case of Saudi Arabia, or Iran or anyone else. Just Iraq.

Also, the reference to oil is a non-sequitur. We kicked Saddam out of Kuwait for oil. The policy of supporting the status quo was about oil. Invading Iraq actually endangered the flow of oil by upsetting the status quo.

You might be interested in a column I wrote before the Iraq invasion, about why we needed to go in:

THE STATE
THE UNCOMFORTABLE TRUTH ABOUT WHY WE MAY HAVE TO INVADE IRAQ
Published on: 02/02/2003
Section: EDITORIAL
Edition: FINAL
Page: D2
By BRAD WARTHEN
Editorial Page Editor

AMERICA SEES ITSELF, quite admirably, as a nation that doesn’t go around starting fights, but is perfectly willing and able to end them once they start.

Because of that, President Bush has a tall hill to climb when it comes to persuading the American people that, after 10 years of keeping Saddam Hussein in his box, we should now go in after him, guns blazing.

In his State of the Union address, the president gave some pretty good reasons why we need to act in Iraq, but were they good enough? I don’t know. Probably not. It’s likely that no one outside of the choir loft was converted by his preaching on the subject. And that’s a problem. Overall, while there have been moments over the last 16 months when he has set out the situation with remarkable clarity, those times have been too few and far between.

He has my sympathy on this count, though: His efforts have been hampered by the fact that the main reason we may need to invade Iraq is one that the president can’t state too clearly without creating more problems internationally than it would solve. At the same time, it’s a reason that seems so obvious that he shouldn’t have to state it. We should all be able to figure it out.

And yet, it seems, we don’t.

I hear people asking why, after all this time, we want to go after Saddam now. He was always a tyrant, so what’s changed? North Korea is probably closer to a nuclear bomb than he is, they say, so why not go after Kim Jong Il first?

We left him in power a decade ago, they ask, so why the change?

The answer to all of the above is: Sept. 11.

Before that, U.S. policy-makers didn’t want to destabilize the status quo in the Mideast. What we learned on Sept. 11 is that the status quo in the region is unacceptable. It must change.

Change has to start somewhere, and Iraq is the best place to insert the lever, for several reasons – geography, culture, demographics, but most of all because Saddam Hussein has given us all the justification we need to go in and take him out: We stopped shooting in 1991 because he agreed to certain terms, and he has repeatedly thumbed his nose at those agreements.

Iraq may not be the best place in the world to try to nurture a liberal democracy, but it’s the best shot we have in the Mideast.

I’m far from the only one saying this. The New York Times’ Tom Friedman, who has more knowledge of the region in his mustache than I’ll ever have, has said it a number of times, most recently just last week:

"What threatens Western societies today are not the deterrables, like Saddam, but the undeterrables – the boys who did 9/11, who hate us more than they love life. It’s these human missiles of mass destruction that could really destroy our open society. . . . If we don’t help transform these Arab states – which are also experiencing population explosions – to create better governance, to build more open and productive economies, to empower their women and to develop responsible news media that won’t blame all their ills on others, we will never begin to see the political, educational and religious reformations they need to shrink their output of undeterrables."

Journalists can say these things, and some do. But if the president does, the Saudis, the Egyptians, the Syrians and just about everybody else in the region will go nuts. In European capitals, and even in certain circles here at home, he will be denounced as the worst sort of imperialist. Osama bin Laden’s followers will seize upon such words as proof that the West has embarked upon another Crusade – not for Christ this time, but for secular Western culture.

None of which changes the fact that the current state of affairs in Arab countries and Iran is a deadly threat to the United States. So we have to do something about it. We’ve seen what doing nothing gets us – Sept. 11. Action is very risky. But we’ve reached the point at which inaction is at least as dangerous.

Should we go in as conquerors, lord it over the people of Iraq and force them to be like us? Absolutely not. It wouldn’t work, anyway. We have to create conditions under which Iraqis – all Iraqis, including women – can choose their own course. We did that in Germany and Japan, and it worked wonderfully (not that Iraq is Germany or Japan, but those are the examples at hand). And no one can say the Germans are under the American thumb.

But that brings us to a problem. The recalcitrance of the Germans, the French and others undermines the international coalition that would be necessary to nation-building in Iraq. It causes another problem as well:

Maybe we could accomplish our goal without invading Iraq – which of course would be preferable. By merely threatening to do so, we could embolden elements within the country to overthrow him, which might provide us with certain opportunities.

But the irony is that people aren’t going to rise up against Saddam as long as Europeans and so many people in this country fail to support the president’s goal of going after him. As long as they see all this dissension, they’ll likely believe (rightly) that Saddam might just hang on yet again.

If the United Nations, or at least the West, presented a united front, the possibility of Saddam collapsing without our firing a shot would be much greater. But for some reason, too many folks in Europe and in this country don’t see that. Or just don’t want to.

Maybe somebody should point it out to them.

Write to Mr. Warthen at P.O. Box 1333, Columbia, S.C. 29202, or bwarthen@thestate.com.

By the way, do you mind if I post our exchange on my blog? Whenever I spend this much time writing about a subject, I try to share it with as wide an audience as possible…

From: Pat Mohr
Sent: Wednesday, December 03, 2008 11:06 AM
To: Warthen, Brad – Internal Email
Subject: Re: hyperbole
Importance: High

Certainly, you may share it.

That’s it. Join in, if you got this far…

Obama and national security: Pragmatism, continuity

36 Replies

Sorry I haven’t posted today — actually, I DID post something, but it blew up when I hit SAVE, and I’m not about to type it again, so there.

Anyway, I thought I’d put up something that would provide a chance for y’all to discuss Obama’s National Security team. I’ve already expressed my concern about Hillary Clinton, and I don’t have a lot to say about the rest. I like that Robert Gates is staying. I’ve always liked Gates. (See my Nov. 10, 2006, column, "The return of the professional")I thought he was a great pick to rescue our military from the screw-ups of Rumsfeld, and he’s generally lived up to that.

But the Gates choice speaks to a larger issue, which is continuity of policy. Obama spoke of his "pragmatism about the use of power and my sense of purpose about America’s role as a leader in the world." Which speaks to something I like about him, and appreciate. I hoped it would have been like this, and he’s not disappointing me.

Some of y’all who know about my support for our national endeavor in Iraq may have wondered how I could have been so wholehearted about endorsing Obama in the primary last year, given that he stressed so much how he was the one guy who would NOT have gone in there. Well, there’s the issue of whether we should have gone in, and the issue of what to do next. And the next president is about what to do next. And I believe Obama will be sensible and pragmatic about what to do next.

Some of his most ardent supporters are likely to be disappointed by the very things that reassure me about Obama and foreign policy. But personally, I don’t think Obama’s going to blow Iraq just to please them. He’s fortunate that the Surge (which he was wrong to oppose) has produced a situation in which an ordered withdrawal of American troops is actually advisable, and no longer reckless. I think he’ll be careful to do it in a rational manner, according to conditions on the ground. I think he’ll see the things that Tom Friedman sees, and wrote about in his Sunday column:

In the last year, though, the U.S. troop surge and the backlash from
moderate Iraqi Sunnis against al-Qaida and Iraqi Shiites against
pro-Iranian extremists have brought a new measure of stability to Iraq.
There is now, for the first time, a chance — still only a chance — that
a reasonably stable democratizing government, though no doubt corrupt
in places, can take root in the Iraqi political space.

That is
the Iraq that Obama is inheriting. It is an Iraq where we have to begin
drawing down our troops — because the occupation has gone on too long
and because we have now committed to do so by treaty — but it is also
an Iraq that has the potential to eventually tilt the Arab-Muslim world
in a different direction.

I’m sure that Obama, whatever he said
during the campaign, will play this smart. He has to avoid giving Iraqi
leaders the feeling that Bush did — that he’ll wait forever for them to
sort out their politics — while also not suggesting that he is leaving
tomorrow, so they all start stockpiling weapons.

If he can pull
this off, and help that decent Iraq take root, Obama and the Democrats
could not only end the Iraq war but salvage something positive from it.
Nothing would do more to enhance the Democratic Party’s national
security credentials than that.

The really miraculous thing that Friedman notes is a sign that an independent judiciary is emerging in Iraq: The high court came down on a member of parliament for trying to persecute a government official for visiting Israel. This is a startling development, almost miraculous, really. I remember several years back listening to Lindsey Graham talk about how very far Iraq was from developing the institutions that support the rule of law. Graham believed we needed to stay there; I believed we needed to stay there, but contemplating how long it would take for such institutional changes to take hold was extremely discouraging.

Now we’re seeing such encouraging signs as this, which is actually as important as the reduction of violence. As Friedman says, "It’s a reminder of the most important reason for the Iraq war: to try
to collaborate with Iraqis to build progressive politics and rule of
law in the heart of the Arab-Muslim world, a region that stands out for
its lack of consensual politics and independent judiciaries." That’s why Friedman was for the Iraq War, and it’s why I was, too. But I didn’t think something like this would happen so fast. As you’ll recall from what I wrote the week we invaded, I really didn’t expect us to be talking realistically about withdrawal this early in the process. But now we can — as long as we don’t screw it up. And keeping Gates at Defense is an important way of maintaining the continuity needed to avoid screwing it up.

I realize that doesn’t fit the hopes of those who thought an Obama administration’s policies would be as different from the Bush administration’s as night and day, and Obama’s going to have to do and say some things to keep those people happy, but I suspect he can do that and still chart a wise course. To them, "continuity" is probably a cuss word. But it’s the wise course, and it will be respected abroad. More than that, it’s what will work.

As David Brooks wrote today, in a column headlined "Continuity We Can Believe In:"

Over the past year, Defense Secretary Robert Gates has delivered a
series of remarkable speeches echoing and advancing Rice’s themes. “In
recent years, the lines separating war, peace, diplomacy and
development have become more blurred and no longer fit the neat
organizational charts of the 20th century,” he said in Washington in July.

Gates does not talk about spreading democracy, at least in the short
run. He talks about using integrated federal agencies to help locals
improve the quality and responsiveness of governments in trouble spots
around the world.

He has developed a way of talking about
security and foreign policy that is now the lingua franca in government
and think-tank circles. It owes a lot to the lessons of
counterinsurgency and uses phrases like “full spectrum operations” to
describe multidisciplinary security and development campaigns….

During the campaign, Barack Obama embraced Gates’s language. During his press conference on Monday, he used all the right code words, speaking of integrating and rebalancing the nation’s foreign policy capacities. He nominated Hillary Clinton and James Jones, who have been champions of this approach, and retained Gates. Their cooperation on an integrated strategy might prevent some of the perennial feuding between the Pentagon, Foggy Bottom and the National Security Council.

Some of you might not be seeing the change you believe in. But I’m already seeing continuity I can believe in.

And here’s the change that we WILL see, and that will matter: I think Obama can sell this policies, and make them work, better than Bush did. He was a lousy salesman. As I wrote about the Surge when I first heard about it, it was the right strategy, but Bush was the wrong guy to have selling it.

Obama’s the right guy. This is going to be interesting, and I hope gratifying, to watch.

Thomas Smith and the pirates

19 Replies

Among my e-mails today was one calling my attention to an interview (by someone I’m not familiar with, if you’ll forgive the dangling preposition) with Columbia’s Thomas Smith about the pirates. A sample:

TUSR: Admiral Michael Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said he was stunned
by the pirates’ reach. I was taken aback by Mullen’s surprise—the reach
has been well-documented in all manner of media, even a lengthy feature
in National Geographic this year that somewhat romanticized the
pirates. So why is an admiral stunned?
SMITH: Admiral
Mullen was ‘stunned’ by the pirate attack taking place so far from the
coast, about 450 miles offshore. The attack in fact was a bit
surprising. It was bold, very risky for the attackers, and much farther
out into the so-called ‘blue water’ than previous attacks we’ve seen by
similar bands in recent history.

Now, I’ve since seen a few
bloggers and others criticizing the admiral for his remarks –
suggesting that no true fighting admiral would say such – and perhaps
‘stunned’ was a less-than-stellar word choice. But the admiral is a
professional Naval officer, not a politician. And so I say, it’s easy
for those who have never been to war or to sea—and have no frame of
reference for an appreciation of just how vast and unforgiving the sea
can be—to criticize.

And as long as I’m on the subject, there was a nice piece in the WSJ Saturday drawing some parallels to the Barbary Pirates. I sort of knew the outline of all of that, being a history major who sorta kinda concentrated on that period, but I learned at least one interesting fact from the piece I don’t remember having known before:

By the 1790s, the U.S. was depositing an astonishing 20% of its federal income into North African coffers…

We finally decided maybe it would be better to build a Navy, and deal with the problem. Trying to buy off the pirates just encouraged piracy — which sort of stands to reason, if you think about it.

Anyway, the piece further encouraged a notion I’ve been kicking around, which might turn into a column: The idea that the Somali pirates actually pose an opportunity to President Obama once he’s in office. It’s a chance to show the willingness to use force in the defense of international peace and security, with a ready-made multinational coalition to dramatically demonstrate his unBushness:

Of course, the world is a vastly more complicated place than it was two
centuries ago and America’s role in it, once peripheral, is now
preeminent. Still, in the post-9/11 period, America would be
ill-advised to act unilaterally against the pirates. The good news is:
It does not have to. In contrast to the refusal to unite with America
during the Barbary Wars, or more recently the Iraq War, the European
states today share America’s interest in restoring peace to the seas.
Moreover, they have expressed a willingness to cooperate with American
military measures against the Somali bandits. Unlike Washington and
Jefferson, George W. Bush and Barack Obama need not stand alone.

What to do about the pirates?

22 Replies

Back on this post, bud said:

NEW DELHI (AP) — An Indian naval vessel sank a suspected pirate
"mother ship" in the Gulf of Aden and chased two attack boats into the
night, officials said Wednesday, as separate bands of brigands seized
Thai and Iranian ships in the lawless seas.
-USA Today

Where’s the U.S. Navy? We spend 3/4 of $trillion a year on the
military and it’s the Indian Navy that sinks these thugs. I know we
have the capability to defend the shipping lanes. So what gives?

And to think, I was going to post something a couple of days ago about the pirates, but thought y’all wouldn’t be interested. Silly me.

As I said to bud (who, if I recall correctly, thought we couldn’t succeed in Iraq, which is neither wet nor moving), you think it’s a snap for even the world’s largest blue-water Navy
to prevent small craft from taking UNarmed merchant ships in a section
of ocean three times the size of Texas? The supertanker was 450 miles
off Mombasa. Look at a map. Think about it.

Folks, the U.S. Navy IS working hard on the piracy problem, along
with the Brits, the French, Italy, Canada, Greece and Denmark. And,
obviously, the Indians.

You know what would have been the best thing we could do to stop
this piracy? Not abandon Somalia to chaos back in 1993 (a retreat on
our part that incidentally persuaded Osama bin Laden that it would be
easy to take down the U.S.; just inflict a few casualties). Piracy works
in the Gulf of Aden because the pirates have a safe place to hide the
prizes, since the "government" of Somalia is useless.

And that will continue to be the case as long as we have failed
states in East Africa. That’s why (ahem) the United States has to
employ a full-range policy of forward engagement in the world. (Remember, we stopped the Barbary pirates NOT by playing defense on the
high seas, but by sending the Marines ashore to take their haven. Diplomacy also played a significant role, but then the Barbary States were states; there was someone in charge to dicker with.)

I’ve been watching the latest piracy problem for awhile (I’m into that stuff, being both a Navy brat and a fan of Patrick O’Brian), and the overall story has been one of the U.S. Navy going after the privateers with increasing aggressiveness. This from the NYT on Oct. 30:

As Somalia’s rulers have struggled with an insurgency and political
instability that culminated in the resignation of the prime minister on Monday,
piracy has flourished off its shores. Experts say that there have been
“many more” than the 26 attacks formally reported to the International Piracy Center this year, and new hijackings are reported with unfortunate frequency.

But the latest hijacking came with news that the United States Navy
has now entered the fray. A distress call from a Japanese-owned
chemical tanker, Golden Mori, found its way to the U.S.S. Porter, an American destroyer, which intercepted and then sank the two skiffs that the pirates used to reach the ship, according to CNN.

Now, the pirates have no obvious exit route, and another American destroyer, the Arleigh Burke
is on their tail in Somali waters, which are usually something of a
pirate refuge. This time, the American navy received permission to
enter from the embattled transitional government….

As you can see, the U.S. and international allies have just started stepping up their response to this growing problem. But to think we’ll just snap our fingers and the problem will go away is unrealistic.

Once you have a failed state as a haven for pirates, the only way to prevent the incidents from happening (unless you think ALL international shipping should be escorted by our Navy at taxpayer expense) is for the merchant ships to be prepared to repel boarders. And yeah, they’ll probably need to hire private contractors for that, much to Capital A’s horror (unless of course you DO think third-nation-flag private ships should be guarded at taxpayer expense). Fighting close battles with small arms at the drop of a hat was a skill the average sailor had 200 years ago, but not today. They’ll likely have to hire some guns.

Once the vessel is taken, and the U.S. or other navies respond, what do you propose we do? We’re fully equipped to sink them (as you saw above we had no trouble sinking the pirate boats, once they were under our guns), but the sailors who specialize in the skills it would take to RETAKE the vessel intact (which I’m guessing that most of us — especially the owners of the ships or their cargos — would prefer), the U.S. Navy Seals, are really, really busy elsewhere these days. (Set Iraq aside; we need all we can train and more in Afghanistan.)

The piracy problem is, of course, closely tied to the terrorism problem. The same sorts of conditions can foster it, and it presents the same challenges to international law (what do we do, for instance, if we catch the pirates — send them to Guantanamo?).

It’s an interesting problem, or rather SET of problems, and one the new president will have on a front-burner, given the escalation in recent days. The supertanker finally grabbed the attention of all of y’all who had NOT been paying attention.

So when do we invade Pakistan?

47 Replies

OK, so now Iraq was a bad idea, because Obama was against our going into Iraq, and the people (except for 46 percent of them) voted for Obama, so that’s the new truth. Right?

And we’ve always been at war with Eastasia.

See? I’ve always said I love Big Brother.

But here’s my question: When do we invade Pakistan? You know, that’s where al Qaida is and all, as certain people keep telling us. As one of my interlocutors said back here, "Al-Qaida was not in Iraq until we got there." Which prompted me to say:

If al-Qaeda is in Pakistan, and we can’t get AT them in Pakistan, on
account of the fact that Pakistan gets really, REALLY upset when we go
in there after them, and they’re a sovereign country and all (which
doesn’t bother ME; I still think it was a good idea to follow the enemy
into Cambodia in 1970, but presumably a lot of folks who voted for
Obama Tuesday disagree, although not necessarily Obama himself, which
is another topic), then isn’t it kind of a good thing to draw them into
Iraq, where we happen to have troops to fight them?

Sorry about the long sentence, there.

Re-education is never an easy process, and as you see, I’m a particularly hard case.

You see, I forgot for a moment that Obama is all for doing a Cambodia and chasing al Qaeda into Pakistan, so in that sense we really didn’t need to go into Iraq (I still think we should have, for other reasons, but let’s stick with this point for now).

At least, I think Obama’s OK with that. That was the impression I had back in August 2007, when I wrote:

BARACK OBAMA was right to threaten to invade Pakistan
in order to hit al-Qaida, quite literally, where it lives. And as long
as we’re on this tack, remind me again why it is that we’re not at war
with Iran.
OK, OK, I know the reasons: Our military is
overextended; the American people lack the appetite; the nutball factor
is only an inch deep in Iran, and once you get past Ahmadinejad and the
more radical mullahs the Iranian people aren’t so bad, but they’d get
crazy quick if we attacked, and so forth.
I can also come up with reasons not to invade Pakistan, or even to talk about invading Pakistan. We’ve heard them often enough. Pakistan is (and say this in reverent tones) a sovereign country; Pervez Musharraf
is our “friend”; we need him helping us in the War on Terror; he is
already politically weak and this could do him in; he could be replaced
by Islamists sufficiently radical that they would actively support
Osama bin Laden and friends, rather than merely fail to look
aggressively enough to find them; fighting our way into, and seeking a
needle in, the towering, rocky haystacks of that region is easier said
than done, and on and on.
But when you get down to it, it all
boils down to the reason I mentioned in passing in the first instance —
Americans lack the appetite. So with a long line of people vying to be
our new commander in chief, it’s helpful when one of them breaks out of
the mold of what we might want to hear, and spells out a real challenge
before us…

Anyway, this seems particularly relevant at the moment, because Obama just won the election — perhaps you heard about that — and on Election Day itself, I read this in the WSJ:

ISLAMABAD — Pakistani officials warned U.S. Gen. David Petraeus
that frequent missile strikes on militant targets in Pakistan fan
anti-American sentiment in the country, an ally in the fight against
terrorism.

The new U.S. commander of America’s wars in Afghanistan and Iraq met
Pakistani officials, including Defense Minister Chaudhry Ahmed Mukhtar
and army chief Gen. Ashfaq Kayani, as part of his first international
trip since taking over U.S. Central Command three days earlier….

So what’s the new Commander in Chief going to tell Petraeus to do about all that? Keep up the pressure on al Qaida and the Taliban in their Tribal Area hidey-holes? Or back off in deference to our ally?

I’m sorry to interrupt everybody’s warm and fuzzy feelings about how we’ll be at peace with all the world now that Obama is going to be our president, but I’m ornery that way. I’ve got this habit of noticing that the real world has this way of intruding upon us…

Kagan’s right: Security trumps all

38 Replies

Frederick Kagan has it exactly right in today’s Wall Street Journal: "Security Should Be the Deciding Issue." An excerpt:

As the scale of the economic crisis becomes clear and comparisons to the Great Depression of the 1930s are tossed around, there is a very real danger that America could succumb to the feeling that we no longer have the luxury of worrying about distant lands, now that we are confronted with a "real" problem that actually affects the lives of all Americans. As we consider whether various bailout plans help Main Street as well as Wall Street, the subtext is that both are much more important to Americans than Haifa Street.

One problem with this emotion is that it ignores the sequel to the Great Depression — the rise of militaristic Japan marked by the 1931 invasion of Manchuria, and Hitler’s rise to power in Germany in 1933, both of which resulted in part from economic dislocations spreading outward from the U.S. The inward-focus of the U.S. and the leading Western powers (Great Britain and France) throughout the 1930s allowed these problems to metastasize, ultimately leading to World War II.

Is it possible that American inattention to the world in the coming years could lead to a similarly devastating result? You betcha.

A couple of things to note: Mr. Kagan doesn’t express a preference for either Obama or McCain. Of course, folks likely to vote for McCain are more likely to agree with him that security overrides such considerations as the economy. Democrats love it when the economy is the one thing on the table; just ask James Carville. And of course, I’ve had arguments with bud here about the relative importance of foreign affairs vs. the domestic economy. He thinks the economy is everything, and to me it’s less important (not to mention simply being something I hate to spend time talking or thinking about, because it has to do with money).

And, yeah — I trust McCain more on national security. At the same time, I don’t think Obama would be all that bad. Yes, he continues to insist upon being wrong about Iraq. But I think he has calculated that he has to be consistent there; his views on the rest of the world aren’t nearly as MoveOn.orgish.

But set all that aside, and the main thing I’m saying here is that I agree with Mr. Kagan: For us we turn inward fretting over our pocketbooks at the expense of ignoring our proper role in the world would be extraordinarily dangerous. Yeah, we can do both. But not the economy at the expense of international security.

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