Category Archives: War and Peace

Biloxi (or thereabouts) Blues

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Help me here, because I really don’t know, but is there a precedent for the military giving a brigade a free ride to wherever it goes on leave? Is that normal? Maybe there is. But if not, why would anyone expect it?

I realize that a soldier or sailor here or there might catch a ride on a transport plane on a standby basis, or back in the day, he might have been able to catch a troop train going in the right direction.

And there is a long-standing tradition that uniformed service personnel get priority treatment at airports, train stations, etc. At least, there used to be — I don’t hear much about that any more when I travel. Airlines seem more concerned about their first-class passengers.

But the military providing a free ride for a whole brigade? Where does that expectation come from? Is this a departure, or the norm?

Anyway, if it’s a widespread problem that soldiers can’t get home on leave, that would be an excellent charity for those of us in the private sector to kick in for, as the story suggests. But if the Army has the money, I’d rather see it going to bullets and body armor.

BIDEN: Administration is Right…

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Boy, that Joe Biden really wants those crossover votes, doesn’t he?

OK, so here’s the rest of the headline:

…to Reverse Itself and Engage Iran and Syria

And here’s the rest of the text of his release, which came in about 15 minutes ago:

WASHINGTON, DC – Chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee Joseph R. Biden, Jr. (D-DE) issued the following statement today in response to Sec. Rice’s announcement of a new diplomatic initiative to invite Iran and Syria to a ‘neighbors meeting’ on Bidenstabilizing Iraq:
    “The Administration is right to reverse itself and engage Iran and Syria on Iraq.  Right now, they’re a big part of the problem, but they have an interest in becoming part of the solution to prevent chaos in Iraq. I hope this means that clearer heads in the Administration are beginning to prevail.  If the conference is to have any impact on the sectarian violence in Iraq, it must enlist the support of Iraq’s neighbors for a political settlement that would decentralize Iraq and give Kurds, Shi’ites and Sunnis control over their daily lives. We don’t need a meeting for the sake of meeting – there has to be a clear plan and purpose."
    Senator Biden has long been an advocate for engaging Iraq’s neighbors, including Iran and Syria.  A cornerstone of the Biden-Gelb plan for Iraq is convening a regional conference of Iraq’s neighbors and the world’s major powers to promote and enforce a political settlement in Iraq.  Specifically, the Biden-Gelb Five-Point Plan for Iraq calls for:  1) Maintaining a unified Iraq by decentralizing it and giving Kurds, Shiites and Sunnis breathing room in their own regions. The Iraqi constitution already provides for federalism. The central government would be responsible for common interests, like border security and the distribution of oil revenues. 2) Securing support from the Sunnis – who have no oil — by guaranteeing them a proportionate share (about 20 percent) of oil revenues, allowing former Baathists to go back to work and re-integrating those with no blood on their hands. 3) Increasing economic aid, asking oil-rich Arab Gulf states to fund it, tie assistance to the protection of minority rights and create a jobs program to deny the militia new recruits. 4) Convening a regional conference to enlist the support of Iraq’s neighbors and create a Contact Group of the major powers to enforce their commitments. 5) Asking our military for a plan to responsibly withdraw most U.S. forces from Iraq by 2008 – enough time for the political settlement to take hold – while refocusing the mission of a small residual force on counter-terrorism and training Iraqis.

            ###

Discuss amongst yourselves…

Pontificating Putin piece

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Graham_032

Pontificating Putin pushes Graham

toward energy platform

“Today we are witnessing an almost uncontained hyper use of force in international relations — military force…. Primarily the United States has overstepped its national borders, and in every area…. They bring us to the abyss ….”
                    — Vladimir Putin

By Brad Warthen
Editorial Page Editor
VLADIMIR PUTIN is pushing Lindsey Graham toward the Energy Party, and I feel fine.
    Sure, that anti-American diatribe at the Munich security conference on Feb. 10 was the biggest step back toward Cold War since Nikita K. took off his shoe, but I like to look at the bright side.
Putin_munich
    “The biggest threat to everybody in the room wasn’t al-Qaida, or Chechen rebels, it was the United States,” our senior senator said in an interview last week, marveling at the neo-Stalinist’s international demagoguery. “It was a blatant pitch at trying to divide Europe and the United States, because he sees us as weak.”
    “Which takes us to energy independence,” I said.
    “Which takes us to energy independence,” he nodded.
    I like the way this guy thinks.
    As regular readers know, I recently called for the creation of a new political party, one that would get serious about our greatest strategic vulnerability, while saving the world from global warming at the same time.
    Sen. Graham’s still a Republican, but we might have to nominate him anyway.
    He had thought plenty about this stuff before Munich, but that one intemperate speech (followed immediately by an Iranian dissertation on democracy that seemed to come from some other planet) jacked up his resolve. “Whatever doubts I had about us being energy-independent were put away,” he said. “I don’t think he ever made that speech unless he sensed weakness.”
    So how do we get strong?
    He says the United States government must use economic incentives to encourage hybrid technology, biofuels, hydrogen, nuclear power — pretty much any viable alternatives that we can embrace that neither strengthen the worst bad guys in the world nor pump out more greenhouse-promoting carbon dioxide.
    He would promote the transition to hybrid cars — and eventually hydrogen — on three levels:

  1. Research. Grants for improving the technology.
  2. Wholesale. Tax incentives to encourage manufacturers to make the new vehicles.
  3. Retail. More tax incentives for individuals to buy them.

    He makes sure to point out that South Carolina can play a pivotal role in all this. We’re well positioned to help develop the technologies for a hydrogen economy. Meanwhile, we can grow and process switchgrass and other plants for biofuels.
    He sees “a whole economy in energy-efficiency,” one that South Carolina could help lead.
Beyond that home-team advantage is the bigger picture: “It is in our long-term national security interest to get people thinking about alternatives.”
    It’s not just cars. We need to make more efficient, cleaner refrigerators, computers and every other item that uses electricity.
    As for that, “Most of our power comes from coal-fired plants.” We need to “give nuclear power the same tax advantage we give solar and wind.” Like those usual green suspects, nukes don’t emit CO2, either.
    Expensive, yes, but he’s convinced that the economic cost of global warming is far greater than the 1 percent of gross domestic product that a full transition away from emitters would cost.
    So how do we pay for it?
    Well, he said, we can’t do it by “cutting waste” in the discretionary budget — what most people think of when they say “federal spending.” There’s just not enough there.
    You have to go where the  real money is: entitlements. “Change the structure of our debt,” he said. “Give people like me and Joe Lieberman and others some breathing room on Social Security,” room to do the kinds of politically unpalatable things that are necessary to save it without pulling us further into the fiscal black hole.
    Can we produce our way out? No. “Yes, there’s gas and oil, but it’s a drop in the bucket,” he said, no matter how deep you drill in the ANWR or offshore. “They’re sort of just one more drink” for the hopeless alcoholic.
    What about increasing the gas tax, to promote conservation and raise money for incentives? No. “Gas taxes will put some businesses at a competitive disadvantage with China and India.” Besides, “it’s not progressive.” It hurts the poor.
    “The next president of the United States should declare a war of energy independence,” he said, evoking the usual metaphors such as the Manhattan and Apollo projects. We had such a war once against a king. Now we should “declare a war of independence from the dictators and sheiks.”
    The next president? So he’s given up on this one? He didn’t say that, but I will. He said President Bush has addressed the issue, but only in a “piecemeal” fashion.
    As for Lindsey Graham, he says he’s doing what he can, such as working “with McCain and Lieberman to strengthen the conservation part of their global warming bill.”
    But ultimately, he’s just one of 100. “The real megaphone is for the person who’s going to be president.” Does that mean John McCain, his preferred candidate for the GOP nomination? Yes, partly: “He’s led on global warming like no other Republican.” But “I’m urging all the candidates.”
    OK, so I didn’t start this discussion. Mr. Putin did. But that doesn’t mean the Energy Party’s not going to grab the opportunity thus created to strengthen national security and save the Earth.
Neither should you. So go ahead. Jump right in.

Graham_002

Iraq resolutions: Three views

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Still catching up on notes and video from the Monday and Tuesday meetings with Sens. DeMint and Graham. Here’s what Sen. DeMint had to say about the anti-Surge nonbinding referendum:

And here’s what Sen. Graham had to say:

For an interesting, other-than-the-usual contrast, here’s what fellow Republican Bob Inglis had to say over on the House floor explaining why he voted FOR the resolution. Either follow the link to the whole thing, or be satisfied with this excerpt:

The President has ordered an increase in troop strength in Iraq.
He thinks a surge in troops will give breathing room for the development of a path to progress.
I’m concerned that a surge will have the opposite effect—that it will give breathing room to the death squads, that our service men and women will be caught in the crossfire and that the surge will end right where it began.
In fact, that’s what happened in Baghdad in August and September of 2006.
I’m concerned that a surge sends a conflicting message. On the one hand we’re telling them, “You don’t have forever; you’ve got to make progress in solving these political questions; you’ve got to stop legging up on your enemies; it’s your country.”
By surging, we may be saying, “Not to worry, we’re increasing the size of that American security umbrella; there’s no urgency; we’re here to stay; in fact, more of us are coming.”
I want all Iraqi factions and leaders of factions to worry.
I want them to see us reaching for the button that would bring that umbrella down.
I want them to imagine the click of that button and the feel of the wind from the descending umbrella.
The resolution before us isn’t written the way I would have written it, but it’s the resolution before us.
Resolutions are the way that Congress discharges its constitutional responsibility to communicate with the President.
This resolution says, “We disapprove of the surge.”

You decide which one you think is right. I’ve got a column to write for Sunday, on another subject.

Lindsey walks right into it

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Not to stir up another round of "you’re a coward;" "no, you are," but this was an interesting tidbit in
The Washington Post yesterday:

Some Loaded Comments at ‘Abu Ghraib’ ScreeningKarpinski
    When the lights go up after most documentary screenings, you usually can expect a politely snoozy lovefest at the "panel discussion to follow." So the folks who turned out for the preview of HBO’s "Ghosts of Abu Ghraib" at the Ronald Reagan Building last night were unusually lucky.
    Among the VIPs on hand to discuss the Rory Kennedy project (set to air Feb. 22) were Uncle Ted Kennedy and Sen. Lindsey Graham. The latter livened things up in a big way when he denounced Army Col. Janis Karpinski, who was demoted from brigadier general after the prison torture scandal.
    "Karpinski should have been court-martialed," said the South Carolina Republican, who sits on the Armed Services Committee. "She was not a good commander."
    Awkward! For who was in the audience but Karpinski herself. "I consider you as cowardly as [Lt. Gen. Ricardo] Sanchez or [Donald] Rumsfeld or [former Guantanamo Bay commander Geoffrey] Miller," she shot back. "You’re saying I should be court-martialed — they didn’t want me in a courtroom because I would tell" the truth. Graham sputtered clumsily until moderator Jeffrey Toobin jumped in.
    Afterward, Karpinski told our colleague Michael Cavna: "Ninety-nine percent of the story is still covered up. . . . Miller and Sanchez and Rumsfeld should be in those cells" with the Army guards who were found guilty.

Maybe Lindsey Graham has gotten a little too accustomed to speaking frankly on "Meet the Press," and neglected to consider the possibility that at a live speaking event, the person you’re talking about just might be there.

I don’t know who’s right here (although I’ve always blamed Rumsfeld), but I know I don’t want to make Col. Karpinski mad at me. I’m just going by her pictures (although she is smiling in this one, bless her heart). She looks like somebody you’d rather have on your side, or just avoid. Perhaps that’s her misfortune; her rather severe habitual expression makes her a convenient scapegoat (the "evil lady torturer" from Central Casting). Or perhaps she’s just as culpable as Miller and Sanchez and Rumsfeld and the Army guards who were convicted. There were probably no angels anywhere near the situation.

I just don’t know. But it would have been interesting, and perhaps enlightening, to have her testify.

Worst recent war movies

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Tell you what: To relieve the tension a bit (there’s a lot of angry back-and-forth in the last few days, and poor Mary keeps reposting her deleted posts, and is increasingly COMMUNICATING IN SHOUT MODE), let’s take a frivolous digression.

bud attaches great importance to Joe Lieberman having been seen cheering and pumping his fist when the Americans strike a blow against the Serbs in "Behind Enemy Lines." He sees this as reflective of a deep character defect.

Rather than our getting into a really angry back-and-forth about whether one should cheer for Americans or not (I come down on the "yes" side of that), I’m looking for common ground. bud says I don’t see flaws in my heroes. I say that cheering at any part of a movie as bad as "Behind Enemy Lines" is at least indicative of lousy cinematic taste.

Unlike the characters in Nick Hornby’s High Fidelity; I don’t consider tastes unlike my own to reflect a deep character defect.
But I do unconsciously give extra points to people who appreciate the "good" stuff — "good" as define by my own proclivities.

So let’s make like Rob, Dick and Barry and construct a Top Five Worst War Movies (post-Vietnam era only, just to limit the field):

  1. "Behind Enemy Lines" — This was done so very much better in "BAT*21," so you know we can’t blame Gene Hackman, since he was in both of them. I was about to blame John Woo, but he didn’t direct this one. It just looks cheesy enough to be one of his.
  2. "The Thin Red Line" — Such a horrible disappointment, by comparison with James Jones’ novel, that I wrote a whole column
    about it.
  3. "The Great Raid" — Another disappointment from a perfectly good book. Hollywood tried to turn a remarkable, true story about rescuing hundreds of Allied POWs from the murderous abuses of the Japanese into a sappy romance. Why, I don’t know, but it failed on all levels.
  4. "Pearl Harbor" — More sappy romance, but that wasn’t the worst thing (you want romance done right, see "From Here to Eternity"). The worst thing was the use of special effects for special effects’ sake. In fact, it seemed the entire excuse for the film. Worst moment: When two fighter aircraft, locked in a dog fight, fly between two one-story buildings, turning onto their wingtips to negotiate the narrow alleyway.
  5. "Enemy at the Gates" — This one almost didn’t make the list, but it did for a reason it has in common with Nos. 2, 3 and 4: Sheer disappointment. Finally, I thought, Hollywood was going to pay proper, respectful acknowledgement to the horrors of the Great Patriotic War. Up until then, you’d have thought the Americans and British won the war by themselves; talk about ethnocentric. But the titanic, genocidal struggle between Teutons and Slavs that was the Siege of Stalingrad was reduced to the level of a personal feud between Ed Harris and Jude Law (Jude Law! As the emblematic New Soviet Man!) Really, really disappointing.

Doing what we CAN do…

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Note that today’s op-ed page
deals entirely with issues of central concern to the Energy Party. (MikeOped_page
was out yesterday, so I picked the content and put that page together myself. Therefore it reflects my obsessions.) It also provides an opportunity to say again what our platform is, and what is isn’t.

Someone who doesn’t think long enough about it might say the two pieces are at odds. Jim Ritchie sets forth his excellent set of initiatives for our state to do its part in promoting energy-efficient buildings, hybrid cars, and such, and Robert Samuelson says beware of politicians announcing grand plans to save the Earth from global warming.

But they actually support each other, and together sort of explain why I take the approach I do in proposing this party.

True, proposals such as "cap and trade" that politicians are likely to get behind (because they see the parade marching that way) will not stop or reverse global warming. Even if you do all the "politically unrealistic" things I propose, the trend will likely merely slow down, and surely not reverse in our lifetimes. Of course, that’s all the reason to do everything we can (and NOT just what we want to do, or think we can afford) to put the brakes on the trend. Otherwise, things get worse, and at a faster rate.

But as Sen. Ritchie makes clear, what we CAN do is grab hold of our energy destiny. What he proposes won’t completely solve the problem, but it’s a damned good start from the perspective of what state government can do. And the broad coalition he’s got behind it is extremely encouraging — not only in terms of Energy issues, but others where we’ve been stymied by partisanship and ideology.

Pragmatism is on the march. Let’s all join. Except, let’s get at the head of the parade and start a new, double-time pace. Otherwise, the battle will be over before this rapidly coalescing army gets to the field — and we all will have lost.

Peggy gets it wrong

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Watch closely, now — you especially, Mary: Here’s how we disagree with someone respectfully.

You’ll recall that I had nice things to say about Peggy Noonan. My attitude on that point is unchanged.

But she was 180 degrees wrong when she wrote "He’s Got Guts," in defense of Chuck Hagel. (In this, my attitude is ALSO unchanged.) She quotes at some length his speech in favor of the spineless resolution griping about the Surge, but doing nothing about it — except, of course, signal to the enemies those 21,500 Americans will be fighting that if they just kill a few more of our boys (and yes, for those of you who are sticklers, sometimes girls, but in this case we’re talking combat infantry), then we’ll probably cave, because we are SO divided about this already.

She includes in her excerpt this quote, which I had read elsewhere in forming my previous judgment:

"Sure it’s tough. Absolutely. And I think all 100 senators ought to be on the line on this. What do you believe? What are you willing to support? What do you think? Why are you elected? If you wanted a safe job, go sell shoes."

Precisely. So if you don’t want the troops going, stop them. Don’t holler, as they climb on the plane, that you really don’t think this is a good idea, but you’re not going to do anything about it.

If that’s your idea of being a stand-up guy, maybe you should be selling shoes.

Yeah, I get Peggy’s point about all the falseness and cowardice in Washington. But how that resolution is a departure from that rule is beyond me.

And no, I don’t want him to stop the troops from going. That would be disastrous. But passing a resolution saying they shouldn’t go, but taking no concrete action, is contemptible.

Out with the UnParty, in with ENERGY!

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Nobody’s proposing a comprehensive energy plan, so I guess we’ll have to do it ourselves.

I’ve had this idea percolating lately that I wanted to develop fully before tossing it out. Maybe do a column on it first, roll it out on a Sunday with lots of fanfare. But hey, the situation calls for action, not hoopla.

So here’s the idea (we’ll refine is as we go along):

Reinvent the Unparty as the Energy Party. Not the Green Party — it’s not just about the environment — but a serious energy party. Go all the way, get real, make like we actually know there’s a war going on. Do the stuff that neither the GOP nor the Dems would ever do:

  • Jack up CAFE standards.
  • Put about a $2 per gallon tax on gasoline.
  • Spend the tax proceeds on a Manhattan project on clean, alternative energy (hydrogen, bio, wind, whatever), and on public transportation (especially light rail).
  • Reduce speed limits everywhere to no more than 55 mph. (This must be credited to Samuel Tenenbaum, who bent my ear about it yet again this morning, and apparently does the same to every presidential wannabe who calls his house looking for him or Inez).
  • ENFORCE the damn’ speed limits. If states say they can’t, give them the resources out of the gas tax money.
  • Build nuclear power plants as fast as we can (safely, of course).
  • Either ban SUVs for everyone who can’t demonstrate a life-or-death need to drive one, or tax them at 100 percent of the sales price and throw THAT into the win-the-war kitty.
  • If we go the tax route on SUVs (rather than banning), launch a huge propaganda campaign along the lines of "Loose Lips Sink Ships" (for instance, "Hummers are Osama’s Panzer Corps"). Make wasting fuel the next smoking or DUI — absolutely socially unacceptable.
  • Because it will be a few years before we can be completely free of petrol, drill the ever-lovin’ slush out of the ANWR, explore for oil off Myrtle Beach, and build refinery capacity — all for a limited time of 20 years. Put the limit in the Constitution.

You get the idea. Respect no one’s sacred cows, left or right; go all-out to win the war and, in the long run, save the Earth. Pretty soon, tyrants from Tehran to Moscow to Caracas will be tumbling down without our saying so much as "boo" to them, and global warming will slow within our lifetimes.

THEN, once we’ve done all that, we can start insisting upon some common sense on entitlements, and health care. Change the name to the Pragmatic Party then. Whatever works, whatever is practical, whatever solves our problems — no matter whose ox gets gored. Leave the ideologues in the dust, while we solve the problems.

How’s that sound? Can any of y’all get behind that?

Shame, cowardice and betrayal

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Finally, the Congress is heard from on Iraq, and what does its vanguard decide to do?

It passes a resolution that accomplishes absolutely nothing legislatively. It won’t stop a single soldier or Marine from going into harm’s way in Iraq.

Oh, but it does accomplish this: It tells the force of chaos, those who wish to kill as many of those brave Americans as possible, that they only have to hold out a little longer: See how divided we are? See how we tell our troops we don’t support their mission, even as they kiss their wives and babies goodbye, possibly for the last time?

This is utterly disgusting — worse than that, because Americans will pay for it in blood.

If those who don’t think it necessary to do all we can to succeed in Iraq had the slightest trace of courage, they would take tangible ACTION — they ARE the majority are they not (and I’m including the nihilists of both parties here, so give me none of your partisan umbrage)?

Get this paragraph, describing the depth of senatorial resolve:

But they said that whatever language is sent to the floor will have to
include the policy prescriptions that are in both resolutions: a
statement against further deployments; a call for U.S. troops to be
re-deployed to guard Iraq’s borders, focus on counterterrorism and
speeding up the training of Iraqi troops; and a call for diplomatic
efforts to engage Iraq’s neighbors in the pursuit of a political
settlement to the war.

A statement. A call. Another call. No action, of course. Oh, what inexcusable, bloodyminded fecklessness!

They make the laws. They control the pursestrings, completely. All they need do is cut off all funding for offensive operations, and appropriate money that, BY LAW, can only be used to fund the retreat that they desire. As Newt Gingrich and company learned to their great pain and chagrin after 1994, governing carries far weightier responsibility than merely sitting on the back benches and criticizing.

As my readers know, I don’t WANT them to do those things; such actions would be disastrous. But at least I could respect them more.

But they don’t have the guts to do that, do they, Hagel and the rest? All they have the gumption to do is make gestures of the sort that undermine, that corrode, that fester in the national soul as they watch more Americans die, and say, "See? We told you so." Self-fulfilled defeat.

What of that, though? The senators have now expressed themselves, however nonbinding their expression, and that has enabled them to go home tonight feeling much better about themselves. Surely we can all take solace from that.

I can write no more about it tonight. My contempt is complete, and so is my grief for my country, and its finest and bravest — who, despite this deadly insult, will go and do their duty, however much more difficult the Senate Foreign Relations Committee has resolved to make it.

Give the general a chance

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Petraeus_testify

Gen. David H. Petraeus had not even had the chance to present his case to Congress before some otherwise thoughtful folks were moving to undermine his ability to implement his plan for stabilizing Iraq — a thing he’s shown in the past he know how to do.

Nevertheless, he went on to present it, to the Senate Armed Services Committee, today.

I truly believe it would have been worth waiting to hear him before judging his chances.

On past occasions, the trio of John McCain, Lindsey Graham and John Warner has been a bulwark of sanity, courage, and principle in the U.S. Senate. They stood together to move the Bush administration on the treatment of enemy prisoners, for instance.

But now they’re parting ways on Iraq, and I see it the way Sen. Graham does:

    FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:
    Contact: Wes Hickman or Kevin Bishop
    January 22, 2007
    (202) 224-5972 / (864) 250-1417

    Graham Statement on the
    Warner-Collins-Nelson
    Iraq Resolution
    WASHINGTON – U.S. Senator Lindsey Graham (R-South Carolina) today made the following statement on the Warner-Collins-Nelson Iraq resolution.
    “Unfortunately this new Iraq resolution, no matter how well-intentioned, has the same effect as the Biden resolution. It declares General Petraeus’s new strategy a failure before it has a chance to be implemented.
    “Any resolution that could be construed by American forces that Congress has lost faith in their ability to be successful in Iraq should be rejected because it rings of defeatism at a time when we should be focused on Victory.
    “Success or failure in Iraq will spread throughout the region creating momentum for moderation or extremism. Petraeus’s new strategy is our best hope for success, acknowledges past mistakes, sets benchmarks for Iraqi leaders, and provides needed reinforcements in all areas: militarily, politically, and economically.
    “I urge my colleagues not to try to micromanage the war, but instead listen to General Petraeus and fully resource his proposal.  We must stand behind him and the brave men and women who will execute this new strategy, as the successful outcome in Iraq is essential to winning the War on Terror."
                                ####

Of course, one of the virtues of independent, thinking, honest people is that they are free to disagree, rather than being mindlessly bound to ideology or party.

But I’m sorry to see Sen. Warner go the way of the crowd on this one. Men such as Sen. Graham and especially Gen. Petraeus need support on this. The stakes are too high to play resolution games that will weaken the general’s position before he and his new troops even get their boots on the ground.

Warner

Iraq “Surge” Column

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It’s a sound plan,
but Bush can’t sell it

By Brad Warthen
Editorial Page Editor
WE HAVE in place much of what we need to succeed in Iraq. We have a new, comprehensive plan that corrects many of the mistakes of the past three years. We have new leadership on the ground, in the form of a general who has shown that he knows what it takes to win this war.
    We just need a better salesman.
    If you saw and heard President Bush’s address to the nation live Wednesday night, and listened with an open mind, you probably still went away saying, “Huh? How is this going to improve the situation?”
    I’m glad that wasn’t my first impression. I missed the live broadcast. And before watching a replay of the Bush speech, I called U.S. Sen. Lindsey Graham.
    George W. Bush has two, and only two, virtues as our commander in chief: He understands, on some fundamental, gut level, how important it is that we succeed. And he won’t give up. Those are fine, but they’re not enough.
    We need someone in charge who is able to communicate to the nation why we need to be in Iraq, how we need to proceed, and why that course of action can work. He needs to persuade fair-minded people to believe him, and to follow.
    Of course, he has to have a good plan to start with. If I had heard him tell about it first, I would doubt that he does.
    In fairness, it helps if you start by asking the right question. The president was trying to talk to a nation that polls tell him is asking, “Why on Earth are you sending more troops?” I asked Sen. Graham, “Why on Earth do you think 20,000 will be enough?”
    Sen. Graham and his friend and ally Sen. John McCain have maintained that we need more troops in Iraq. The senator from Arizona has insisted that it needed to be a lot more. But Sen. Graham had indicated he was pleased with this smaller “surge.” Why? Because it’s a part, and not the largest part, of a comprehensive new approach that stresses diplomatic, economic and political initiatives.
    The military mission is specific: Put in enough troops to provide security in Baghdad and increase our muscle over on the Syrian border, in Anbar province.
    Here are some critical points related by Sen. Graham that the president failed to get across:

  • Tremendous pressure is being placed on the Shia-dominated Iraqi government to ensure Sunni leaders that their people will get their cut of the country’s oil wealth. Assure them that their tribe will not starve out in the cold, and you remove ordinary Sunni Arab insurgents’ motivation to kill Shiites. That removes the cloak of legitimacy from the Shiite militias, which their communities will no longer see as essential to their protection. Extremists — Shia and Sunni — become isolated. Neighbors start dropping a dime on IED factories. We destroy those, and we largely eliminate the cause of 80 percent of current U.S. casualties.
  • None of the above can happen without the capital being secure. How would such a small surge make that happen? It would double the U.S. combat capability in the capital, a force that would be multiplied by embedding the U.S. troops in the Iraqi units that will have the job of actually kicking down doors and cleaning up militant neighborhoods (one idea taken from the Iraq Study Group). As the president did mention, those neighborhoods will no longer be “off limits”; the Maliki government can no longer protect the Sadr militia.
  • The brigade sent to Anbar would have interdiction as a large part of its mission. Amazingly, we have never shut down the terrorist superhighway flowing out of Syria; this would address that.
  • The pivotal role of the new U.S. commander, Gen. David H. Petraeus. Sen. Graham describes the plan not as what President Bush wants to do, but what Gen. Petraeus wants to do. He doesn’t say Congress needs to listen to the president. He says “Listen to this new general; give him a chance to make the case.”

    Who is David Petraeus? He’s a West Point graduate with a Ph.D. from Princeton. He’s the former commander of the 101st Airborne Division. Under his command, the 101st was described by the author of Fiasco: The American Military Adventure in Iraq as the one Army outfit that was doing it right — providing security in its area, and winning hearts and minds. The general himself is the author of the Army’s new manual on counterinsurgency, which applies practical tactics that work.
    The president didn’t do an awful job in his speech. He explained how things went wrong, emphasizing the critical bombing of the Golden Mosque. He mentioned increased diplomatic efforts, the fact that we need to hold as well as clear dangerous areas, and that troops will now go wherever they need to go to get the job done. He let us know that even if things go perfectly, there will be more casualties.
    But a wartime president who has lost the people’s trust to the degree that he has needed to go a lot farther, and the president did not. He failed to draw a clear, bright line between his past failure and a future in which we have a realistic expectation of success.
    Why the president didn’t even mention the name “Petraeus,” explaining what a departure he was from the discredited Rumsfeld approach, is beyond me.
    After talking to Sen. Graham, I feel a lot better about our future in Iraq. I’m still not positive that six brigades is enough, but I now have sound reasons to believe we’re finally on a better track.
    I’ve put a recording of that interview on my blog. I urge you to go listen to it — and don’t miss the senator’s column on the facing page.

For that, and observations on last week’s inaugural activities, go to http://blogs.thestate.com/bradwarthensblog/.

Graham phone interview

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This is a test. We’re going to see just how big a wonk you are.

I have, to the best of my ability, given you full access to the audio of a phone interview I conducted with Lindsey Graham on Thursday morning. I was restricted by certain challenges. The interview is 28 minutes long, and I have no sound file compression software. I DO have video software that compresses things as a matter of course in saving them. So I put the audio in a video file, and added some recent still photographs from the wire, just to see if I could.

The only way I knew how to give you access to the audio without you having to download the whole gargantuan file was to stream it from YouTube. Trouble is, YouTube won’t take files longer than 5 minutes, no matter how they’re compressed.

So here you go — it’s in seven parts, and the audio and photos aren’t nearly as nice as they were before I compressed them. But you can still hear it. I recommend that you give it a try, because it’s pretty interesting.

The background for the interview: I was seeking input before we decided what we would say in Friday’s editorial. As it happens, the interview only had an indirect — although significant — impact on the editorial, since the person who wrote it was not involved in the interview. All he had was what I had briefly told him about it. In other words, my impressions of Graham’s views had an influence on the forming of consensus that led to our conclusions, but you won’t find much trace of it in the paper. That’s the way it is with most of the things that go into editorials — the factors are too many for all to be mentioned.

But I thought it was particularly interesting and helpful, so I’m working on a followup column based on the interview. Yeah, doing it this way is pretty weird and awkward, but bear with me. I’m just exploring new ways to make this blog useful and worth the time, both yours and mine.

Please do your bit for the blog by doing two things:

  1. Listen to the interview, or as much of it as you have time for.
  2. Then comment to let me know whether it worked, and whether you found it helpful. Or to say whatever else you want.

Thanks.

Anyway, that’s Part I up at the top of the post. Here’s Parts II-VII:






Hail Petraeus

7 Replies

Petraeus_mugA colleague brought my attention to this WashPost piece on our new commander in Iraq, Gen. David H.
Petraeus. What was particularly interesting about it was the way he recommended it to me: This colleague soured on the Iraq War long ago, but he said this guy actually offers him some hope for the first time in a while.

My eyebrows went up at that, so I read the piece as soon as I could. Even those of us who fully believe in the importance of our Iraq mission could use a little hope now and then.

Saddam shocker — or not?

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Saddamhang

Well, I’m back and I just wrote an editorial for tomorrow’s paper about Saddam’s execution.

Which leaves me wondering — did you find that as shocking as I did? I mean, I knew they had said 30 days and all, but I’m used to what that means over here, which is, "You’ve got 30 days to file your motions" before an automatic stay. He was in the middle of another trial, after all, with more to come.

But to state the obvious, things are different over there. Over there, "30 days" means, "You see how the moon looks tonight? He ain’t gonna see it like that again."

Still, since everything about Iraq has been so complicated and so hard to pull off, it was sort of disorienting so see how easy it was to hang a guy.

Beyond my first question, I suppose I should also ask what you think of it — as if you wouldn’t tell me anyway. For me, it’s like this: I don’t believe in capital punishment. At the same time, I won’t mourn the loss of this particular subject. Note the ambivalent, bureaucratic word "subject." I want to make myself feel better by calling him a "monster," but I know he was a man. I also believe he was a man the world is better off without, but I’m not God, which is why I’m against capital punishment.

Of course, one makes allowances, and by Iraqi standards this is progress. For a man to be hanged by the numbers after due process with the world looking on — that’s Iraqi justice, and that’s a new thing. Now all we need is for there to be justice for the millions of folks outside the Green Zone, who deserve far better than their former leader.

This was a pretty small step in that direction. But it was a step. Ironically, after all the years of conflict over Saddam, it seemed like a footnote as we struggle with the issue of whether to keep trying to bring about a just and peaceful Iraq. Here we are moving into this enormous national conversation about what to do about Iraq, and out of nowhere comes this development.

We look briefly over our shoulders and say, "They hanged who? Saddam? Well, that was quick," and turn back to the larger debate. That’s fitting. In a more just world, Saddam would have amounted to no more than that.

Draft column

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Why doesn’t Uncle Sam want me?
Or you, for that matter

   

It was the first American army and an army of everyone, men of every size and shape and makeup, different colors, different nationalities, different ways of talking, and all degrees of physical condition. Many were missing teeth or fingers, pitted by smallpox or scarred by past wars or the all-too-common hazards of life and toil in the eighteenth century.

— 1776, by David McCullough

My first ambition in life was to be a United States Marine. I was 3 or 4 years old and we lived in Columbia, where my Dad — a career naval officer — was doing a brief tour at the local recruiting depot. I guess the posters made an impression.
    The aspiration never went away, even as I moved on to more achievable goals. I learned that neither the Corps nor the Army nor any other service would take me. They had this thing about people with asthma.
    I accepted it, but couldn’t help thinking, “There’s got to be some way they could use me.”
But no. As long as there was a Selective Service, there was a huge supply of young guys with no black marks on their medical histories. And in the initial decades after the draft ended, the nation’s military needs were met by volunteers.
    But not any more.
    Today, the Army and the Marine Corps need recruits. The Army has increased the maximum age to 42. Not high enough for me, but it’s a start.
    The Washington Post reported just last week that the services plan to ask new Defense Secretary Robert Gates for 30,000 more soldiers and three more Marine battalions. Unlike his predecessor, he might actually say “yes.”
    But where’s he going to get them? Here’s one place:
    The Post reported that in addition to seeking those regulars, “the Army will press hard for ‘full access’ to the 346,000-strong Army National Guard and the 196,000-strong Army Reserves by asking Gates to take the politically sensitive step of easing the Pentagon restrictions on the frequency and duration of involuntary call-ups for reservists, according to two senior Army officials.”
    The post-Vietnam military has been highly resistant to the idea of a draft. Draftees are harder to motivate, train and rely on than volunteers. A positive attitude counts for a lot under combat conditions. But what do you call “involuntary call-ups” if not a draft? Some of those people are older than I am, and some are in worse physical condition.
    Sure, they’re much less likely to complain about being called up, since they volunteered originally. I realize that they are already trained, and generally more experienced than the regulars. I understand that veterans tend to be more valuable in combat than green troops. Experience counts in everything.
    But it’s wrong to keep asking the same brave people to give and give and give until they’ve got nothing left. It’s even more wrong that the rest of us haven’t been asked to do anything.
    Sen. Joe Biden has this speech that I’ve heard three or four times now about how George W. Bush’s greatest failing as president is the opportunity he threw away in 2001. On Sept. 12, he could have asked us to change our lives so that we could be independent of the oil-producing thugs that finance terrorism. We would have done it gladly.
    But we weren’t asked to do that. We were given a free pass while our very best bled and died in our behalf. We weren’t even asked to buy war bonds. To our everlasting shame, we opted for the opposite — we got tax cuts, even as our troops went without the equipment and the reinforcements needed to do the job.
    Personally, I think we should have a draft, and not for Rep. Charles Rangel’s reasons. He seems to think that if more people were subject to a draft, we’d have no wars. I think we ought to have a draft for the simple reason that citizenship ought to cost something. We scorn illegal aliens who risk their lives crossing the desert to come here and do our menial labor, but the rest of us are citizens why — because we were born here? How is that fair?
    We ought to have a draft, but not like the one we had when I was a kid. We need a universal draft, one that will find a use for every man (I wouldn’t draft women, but we can argue about that later).
    Set aside for a moment (but not for long) our immediate, urgent need for a lot more boots on the ground. Even in peacetime, veterans make better citizens, and better leaders. The last generation of leaders had the experience of World War II in common, and we were better off for it. They understood that they were Americans first, and that it was possible to work with people who didn’t think the way they did. They knew citizenship was a precious thing, and they appreciated it as a result. How many people in the top echelons of politics — or the media, for that matter — have that kind of understanding to that degree? Far too few.
    If we’re not going to have a draft, why not let more people who actually want to serve do so, at least in some capacity? Sure, I’m 53 and I take five different drugs to keep me breathing, but fitness is relative — my pulse, blood pressure and cholesterol are all great, and I can do 30 push-ups. Try me.
    A postscript: It reads like I’m setting myself up as far braver than Bill Clinton and his ilk. I don’t mean to. If I had been healthier when I was younger, I might have been the biggest coward in Ontario. If the Army were taking 53-year-olds today, I might shut up. I have no idea. All I can do is write what I actually think, as I actually am.
    And what I think is that more of us have to get off the sidelines and do something to help fight this war, which is going to go on for a long, long time, no matter what happens in Iraq.

Why do you think YOU’RE here?

64 Replies

Iraqstudygroup2

At first, one is inclined to read this paragraph of the letter from the Iraq Study Group co-chairs and nod enthusiastically with a few "amens" thrown in, for contained within it is a sermon that our nation badly needs to heed:

What we recommend in this report demands a tremendous amount of political will and cooperation by the executive and legislative branches of the U.S. government. It demands skillful implementation. It demands unity of effort by government agencies. And its success depends on the unity of the American people in a time of political polarization. Americans can and must enjoy the right of robust debate within a democracy. Yet U.S. foreign policy is doomed to failure — as is any course of action in Iraq — if it is not supported by a broad, sustained consensus. The aim of our report is to move our country toward such a consensus.

But then my less-impressionable, more-critical side kicks in, and I have to say:

Hey, if we had:

  • a tremendous amount of political will and cooperation by the executive
    and legislative branches of the U.S. government;
  • skillful
    implementation;
  • unity of effort by government agencies;
  • unity among the American people instead of
    political polarization; and
  • a broad, sustained consensus.

We wouldn’t need y’all to be making suggestions.

The reason everybody has overhyped the ISG report for the last couple of weeks, acting like its suggestions were going to be brought down from the mountain on stone tablets, is that we don’t HAVE any of those things.

If our country weren’t so polarized, and if our elected officials were working together — challenging each other at every step, but with the ultimate goal of the good of the nation ahead of all other considerations — the Iraq Study Group would never have been formed in the first place.

Iraq Study Group column

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Consensus on an Iraq plan
that works will come a lot harder

By Brad Warthen
Editorial Page Editor
THAT OLD GUARD sure can get things done — so long as you don’t expect too much.
    On the very day that the Iraq Study Group released its much-anticipated report, it produced results. Politicians from across the spectrum aligned themselves with a bipartisan unanimity that would do credit to the worthies on the study panel itself.
    “I appreciate the hard work and thought that the distinguished members of the Iraq Study Group put into their final report,” said Sen. John McCain, Republican presidential hopeful.
    “The Baker-Hamilton report is a first step toward a bipartisan way forward in Iraq,” wrote Sen. Joe Biden, a Democrat who would also like to occupy the White House.
    “I commend the Iraq Study Group for offering a serious contribution to the discussion of how we should move forward in Iraq,” concurred independent Sen. Joe Lieberman, who used to want to be president.
    The man who actually is the president couldn’t have agreed more. After noting that the report was “prepared by a distinguished panel of our fellow citizens,” George W. Bush promised it “will be taken very seriously by this administration.”
    No one could deny that the panel was distinguished. And bipartisan. And serious.
    But before we line up for the victory parade down Pennsylvania Avenue, note that few elected representatives were promising more with regard to the report than what Rep. Jim Clyburn promised: “We will use it for what it is intended to be — recommendations… .”
    Many expected the group’s report would provide cover for both the president and the newly Democratic Congress to… well, to do something, and the most popular “something” was to get us the heck out of there.
    But the release of the group’s report helped clarify again what we learned in the days after the election that many of our antsier citizens had hoped would settle this business: There is no way to conclude our involvement in Iraq that is both quick and satisfactory.
    The 10 elders on that panel brought some sorely needed qualities to the debate — collegiality, maturity, pragmatism and a sincere desire for what is best for our country. The nation will be well-served if everyone involved adopts those same virtues as the debate continues.
    And the job will be a lot tougher than the panel made it look. They labored in obscurity, left in relative peace for most of the panel’s existence — without the frantic, insistent pull of unavoidable constituent groups. Our elected officials won’t enjoy such luxury. But it is, after all, their job to do. It can’t be delegated.
    And approaches that will work will be harder to agree upon than the ones the panel adopted.
Take the widely reported proposal to draw down U.S. combat troops by early 2008 to the point that none are left except those “embedded with Iraqi forces.”
    According to The New York Times, the panel achieved the miracle of agreement on that point via a simple expedient: “The group’s final military recommendations were not discussed with the retired officers who serve on the group’s Military Senior Adviser Panel before publication, several of those officers said.”
    Advisers that the Times spoke to said the prediction is not based in reality. One noted that the panel’s assumption says more about “the absence of political will in Washington than the harsh realities in Iraq.”
    Not that the panel didn’t leave wiggle-room. Few have noted that the 142-page report actually says that “all combat brigades not necessary for force protection could be out of Iraq” by the stated deadline. That’s a loophole big enough to drive several divisions through, if you can find the divisions.
    As for working with Iran and Syria, Sen. McCain exhibited his mastery of understatement when he said, “Our interests in Iraq diverge significantly from those of Damascus and Tehran.” Sen. Lieberman and others have rightly echoed that assessment.
    The panel leaders’ defense of the idea has been lame. James Baker said if Iran is uncooperative, “we will hold them up to public scrutiny as (a) rejectionist state.” Ooh. I can just see the mullahs trembling over that one.
    Lee Hamilton said, “We do not think it’s in the Iranian interest for the American policy to fail completely, and to lead to chaos in that country.” Really? It’s hard to imagine an outcome more likely to generate welcome opportunities for Tehran. A weakened, discredited United States and a power vacuum in the Shi’a-majority nation next door? They would see it as final proof that Allah is on their side.
    The fundamental truths about our involvement in Iraq have not changed. The security situation has worsened greatly, and with it the political environment back in the United States — the “absence of political will” described above by retired Army Chief of Staff Jack Keane.
    Well, we’re going to have to muster some to come up with something more realistic than the Baker-Hamilton approach, because here’s what hasn’t changed: As Sen. Lieberman put it, “There is no alternative to success in Iraq.” Sen. Graham said, “we have no alternative but to win.”
    And how are we going to accomplish that? I’m inclined to think Sen. McCain has it right when he says we need a lot more troops over there. You say it’s impossible to make that happen with our current defeatist attitude? You may be right.
    But note that on Wednesday, it was the conventional wisdom that the president and Congress had little choice but to embrace whatever the study group came up with. By Friday, many of its core proposals had been declared toast by the president, Prime Minister Tony Blair, and most of the folks quoted above.
    As unlikely as it sometimes seems, attitudes change. In this case, they’re going to have to.

Washington’s Iraq situation

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Hadley

Is a stable, functioning democracy
still an option — in America?

By Brad Warthen
Editorial Page Editor
THE IRAQ SITUATION has become so chaotic, such a tangled knot of irreconcilable competing factions and contradictory indications that it’s almost impossible even to know what’s really going on, much less determine what ought to happen next.
    The great moment of optimism following historic elections has faded. It’s bad enough to tempt even the most stalwart advocate of democracy to want to declare the capital city a lost cause and withdraw immediately.
    But we can’t, because we’re not talking about Baghdad, but about Washington.
    In that strife-torn city by the Potomac, it’s gotten hard to tell who wants to do what, much less what will or should happen next, or when. Confused? Well, that means you’re starting to get it.
    Look at just one development of the past week.
    On Wednesday — the eve of President Bush’s meeting with Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki — the lead story in The New York Times was headlined, “Bush Adviser’s Memo Cites Doubts about Iraqi Leader.”
    “His intentions seem good when he talks with Americans,” National Security Adviser Stephen J. Hadley wrote of Mr. Maliki, “But the reality on the streets of Baghdad suggests Maliki is either ignorant of what is going on, misrepresenting his intentions, or that his capabilities are not yet sufficient to turn his good intentions into action.”
    In other words, our boy either can’t deliver or won’t. Bad either way. But, insisted the “administration official” who gave the five-page memo to a Times reporter despite its being “classified secret,” the administration “retains confidence in the Iraqi leader.”
    The very fact that the memo was released the way it was and when it was (weeks after it was drafted) suggests just how difficult it will be to chart a new course for Iraq, even while everybody from newly elected Democrats to administration officials to friends of the president’s daddy are trying like crazy to find one.
    Read about the memo, and the following thoughts are likely to occur in quick succession:
    Oh, there goes The New York Times again, undermining the nation’s ability to act effectively in a time of war by revealing critical secrets at critical moments. No, wait — this looks like an authorized, carefully spun leak. So the administration deliberately put it out there just as the president is about to meet with this guy to tell him he’s doing a heckuva job.
    Little wonder Mr. Maliki canceled the first of his scheduled sessions with the president. He has no more confidence in our friendship than we do in his.
    Obviously, the administration doesn’t know what to do next. But it’s hardly alone. Nobody else seems to know either (except the folks in the “pull-out-now” wing, whom you can watch get increasingly furious over the coming weeks as they realize that the Democrats who won the election aren’t that irresponsible).
    The incoming chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee doesn’t know, although he insisted to the Columbia Rotary Club last week that he’s the one guy who does know.
Joe Biden told of confidently laying down the law to Mr. Bush:
    “Mr. President… if the Lord Almighty came down in the middle of the table here in the RooseveltPhoto_112706_001
Room, and looked you in the eye and said, ‘Mr. President, every single jihadi, every single member of al Qaida has been wiped off the face of the earth,’ Mr. President, you’d still have a full-blown war. A full-blown war. In Iraq. And it’s a civil war, Mr. President. And all the king’s horses and all the king’s men will not be able to…” etc.
    But most of what he had to say about Iraq was stuff we already knew: The factions must find a way to work together and trust each other (or at least check each other, via a loose federal system), we won’t solve it through military force alone, and so forth.
    He wants to start drawing down U.S. troops sometime soon, but he sets no deadlines. Why? He understands the stakes too well.
    Back to the Times: A news analysis on Friday concluded that “the idea of a rapid American troop withdrawal is fast receding as a viable option” — certainly within the administration, but also among some key Democrats.
    More importantly, the bipartisan Iraq Study Group that so many who want out have pinned their hopes on apparently will avoid timetables as well. I say “apparently” because the group hasn’t released its report yet — all that authoritative prattling you’ve been hearing has been based on leaks.
    So what do we do from here? As Sen. Biden told the Rotarians, when it comes to Iraq, “We’re gonna have to choose to hang together, or we’re all going to hang separately.”
    The factions in Washington seem to find it as hard to work together as do those in Iraq — even without all that literal bad blood. To be sure, there is a common drift — among Democrats and on the study group — toward a vague plan that talks about redeployment, but sets no timetable.
    That’s hardly a firm consensus on a clear course. One thing is clear, though: As various factors — the study group’s report, the administration’s reassessment, the convening of a Democratic Congress — converge in the coming weeks, we have to come up with something that we can agree upon, and that works.
    President Bush will have to listen to people he doesn’t want to listen to, and then those people are going to have to unite behind him — as distasteful as that will be for them — as everyone works to implement a course that won’t entirely please anybody.
    Sound impossible? Perhaps so. But either those things happen, or we might as well kiss this whole risky nation-building enterprise goodbye.
    And once again, I’m not talking about Iraq. I mean this shaky republican experiment called the United States of America.