The Battle in Iraq

It’s not a war; it’s a battle.

Similarly, we are fighting in Iraq a battle, one of many we have or will fight in the War on Terror. Play in your mind with the difference that concept battle makes in evaluating the struggle there over treating it as a war. To claim it is a war localizes it, raises questions of why we are there, and suggests we should get out and leave it to the Iraqi’s to settle. But, if we consider it a battle, then….

Pettiness In and Out of Government

For many us who must successfully get things accomplished in this world, following are the kinds of stories that makes it so difficult to remain positive and hopeful about our government these days.

Because it matters not a whit what you thought of the country entering the war in Iraq.  It matters not a whit what you think of Bush, or your own chances of becoming President.  If you are an elected official, it matters not a whit whether your vocal minority back home wants our military to turn tail and run.  The fact of the matter is that we are in a war, right now and right here.  And people from all over the world, especially Iraqis and Americans, are dying.  And we must figure out a way to end that war and resolve the conflict without millions of people dying.  We are truly and well in it now.  And if you can not make rational judgments about that, and can not even bare to hear the real facts on the ground to better make up your mind on future strategy and tactics, then you should absent yourself from all discussion.  Because you are a whining child, and your thoughts only frustrate and obfuscate the situation, and generally distract the rest of the folks who must work towards the solution.

This reported from Kansas City:

Washington — Kansas Rep. Nancy Boyda is defending her decision to step out of a hearing room last week while a retired Army general testified about U.S. progress in Iraq…

Boyda, a freshman Democrat from Topeka, said she left the House Armed Services Committee hearing on Friday for about 10 minutes during the testimony of retired Gen. Jack Keane…

“There was only so much that you could take until we in fact had to leave the room for a while,” Boyda said after she returned, according to a transcript of the hearing. “So I think I am back and maybe can articulate some things — after so much of the frustration of having to listen to what we listened to.”

Keane had testified that since the troop surge began, U.S. forces “are on the offensive and we have the momentum.” He also said that security has improved in every neighborhood and district in and around Baghdad, and that “cafés, pool halls, coffee houses that I visited are full of people.”

When Boyda returned to the hearing, she ridiculed Keane’s description of Iraq “as in some way or another that it’s a place that I might take the family for a vacation–things are going so well–those kinds of comments will in fact show up in the media and further divide this country instead of saying, ‘Here’s the reality of the problem.’ ”

By the way, if you are actually interested in exactly what Keane said, here’s an interview with him at NRO.  He seems fairly realistic and is both positive and negative.  In fact, two scholars from The Brookings Institute are also surprised with the change in Iraq, and say so in The New York Times.

The Wall Street Journal has more, commenting on the fact that a major party in Washington is actually invested in us losing the war.  They cite this story in the Washington Post in which House Majority Whip James Clyburn (D-S.C.) said Monday:

“that a strongly positive report on progress on Iraq by Army Gen. David Petraeus likely would split Democrats in the House and impede his party’s efforts to press for a timetable to end the war…

Many Democrats have anticipated that, at best, Petraeus and U.S. ambassador to Iraq Ryan Crocker would present a mixed analysis of the success of the current troop surge strategy, given continued violence in Baghdad. But of late there have been signs that the commander of U.S. forces might be preparing something more generally positive. Clyburn said that would be “a real big problem for us.”

The Claremont Institute recounts even more instances of politicians “exulting in misfortune.”  Hugh Hewitt has gone so far as to commemorate ‘The Nancy Boyda Award’ for everyone who denies good news about Iraq or twists it to their negative end.  I like this portion of his article best, when recounting his interview with Andrew Sullivan:

“ODDLY ENOUGH, ANDREW SULLIVAN provides the perfect coda to our debut of the Nancy Boyda Award. Earlier today, Andrew was slightly miffled that I suggested that “the left and other anti-war figures like Andrew Sullivan have a lot invested in this war failing and failing miserably.” Andrew took delight when someone took my logic and inverted it, writing, “The right and other pro-war figures like Dean Barnett have a lot invested in this war succeeding and succeeding well.” Andrew commented with a portentous and approving “Hmmmmm.”

Probably unwittingly, Andrew has confirmed my theory that this war’s opponents have forgotten something basic and elemental: Every American, regardless of his party affiliation or political philosophy, has “a lot invested in this war succeeding and succeeding well.” Andrew Sullivan used to know that. Best to ask him why he’s forgotten it.”

Well said Hugh.  But it goes far beyond all of this now.  To see a war through the prism of partisan politics is to be party to a perspective of the most aggregious and petty.  To walk out on briefings of your government that are meant to aid you in making some of the most important decisions of a lifetime, much less a generation, is to back childishly away from your duty and responsibility as a representative of the United States and its people.  And you should be ashamed, and are not emotionally fit to lead our country. 

AL GORE – September 23, 2002

On September 23, 2002 Al Gore gave a speech at The Commonwealth Club of California laying out his differences between Bush 43 and himself in regards to entering Iraq, which Bush was proposing at the time.  Following are major parts of that speech.  Gore was in favor of going after Hussein; he just wanted to make sure our friends didn’t mind if we did, and he felt that Bush was moving too fast.  As can be seen below, he found much more to agree on with Bush, than disagree:

I believe that we are perfectly capable of staying the course in our war against Osama Bin Laden and his terrorist network, while simultaneously taking those steps necessary to build an international coalition to join us in taking on Saddam Hussein in a timely fashion. If you’re going after Jesse James, you ought to organize the posse first. Especially if you’re in the middle of a gunfight with somebody who’s out after you.

Nevertheless, all Americans should acknowledge that Iraq does indeed pose a serious threat to the stability of the Persian Gulf region, and we should be about the business of organizing an international coalition to eliminate his access to weapons of mass destruction. Iraq’s search for weapons of mass destruction has proven impossible to completely deter, and we should assume that it will continue for as long as Saddam is in power. Now, let’s be clear, there’s no international law that can prevent the United States from taking action to protect our vital interests when it is manifestly clear that there is a choice to be made between law and our survival. Indeed, international law itself recognizes that such choices stay within the purview of all nations. I believe, however, that such a choice is not presented in the case of Iraq. Indeed, should we decide to proceed, our action can be justified within the framework of international law rather than requiring us to go outside the framework of international law. In fact, even though a new United Nations resolution might be helpful in the effort to forge an international consensus, I think it’s abundantly clear that the existing U.N. resolutions passed 11 years ago are completely sufficient from a legal standpoint so long as it is clear that Saddam Hussein is in breach of the agreements made at the conclusion of the Persian Gulf War.

I just think that if we end the war in Iraq the way we ended the war in Afghanistan, we could very well be worse off than we are today. When you ask the administration about this, what’s their intention in the aftermath of a war, Secretary Rumsfeld was asked recently about what our responsibility would be for re-stabilizing Iraq in the aftermath of an invasion, and his answer was, “That’s for the Iraqis to come together and decide.” On the surface you can understand the logic behind that, and this is not an afterthought. This is based on administration policy. I vividly remember that during one of the campaign debates in 2000, Jim Lehrer asked then-Governor Bush whether or not America, after being involved with military action, should engage in any form of nation building. The answer was, “I don’t think so. I think what we need to do is convince people who live in the lands they live in to build the nations. Maybe I’m missing something here. We’re going to have kind of a nation-building corps in America? Absolutely not.” My point is, this is a Bush doctrine. This is administration policy. Given that it is administration policy, we have to take that into account as a nation in looking at the likely consequences of an overwhelming American military victory against the government of Iraq. If we go in there and dismantle them – and they deserve to be dismantled – but then we wash our hands of it and walk away and leave it in a situation of chaos, and say, “That’s for y’all to decide how to put things back together now,” that hurts us.

As you can see, Bush ended up getting very serious about nation building, which is what Gore counciled him to do.  We’re looking forward to Gore defending the Administration in this hour of need.

One thing further; I find it intensely interesting that as the years go on, the G8 is moving ever closer to Bush’s position, not the Left.

Iraqi News

From Mr. Michael J. Totten.  If you’re not reading Totten, you should.

“This was all purely defensive. The battalion I’m embedded with here in Baghdad hasn’t suffered a single casualty – not even one soldier wounded – since they arrived in the Red Zone in January. The surge in this part of the city could not possibly be going better than it already is. Most of Graya’at’s insurgents and terrorists who haven’t yet fled are either captured, dormant, or dead.”

Read the whole thing.

And may God bless our soldiers, each and every one.

Back to the Future in the Middle East?

What happens if we pull out of Iraq?  What we did before 9/11.  Nothing.

CNN / UTube Democratic Debate

The transcript of the CNN/YouTube Democratic ‘debates’ can be read here.  It’s relatively long but easy to get through and here’s how the tim allotments came out (courtesy of 2008Central): 

 

Why does anyone believe this is fair or acceptable by the way?  I thought Democrats were all for fair and balanced and quotas for the little guy and all.

As usual, the time wasn’t fair; however, to CNN and Anderson Cooper’s credit, this was the fairest of the debates that we have seen (in terms of time management).

Sheesh.  Following are impressions:

Color/gender 

Color (I hesitate to call it race, since I’m sure it isn’t) and gender is a hugely recurring theme, often injected sideways into a discussion that must be gerrymandered to include it.  It takes up an incredible percentage of the debate.  In the business world, I have never heard gender or race discussed in such a strange and pervasive manner.  It is often artfully but also artificially accomplished in politics, especially by those running for office.  Businesses can not afford to consider race/gender in anything remotely approaching the manner polilticians talk about it; pandering, over simplification, almost implying a reparation mentality on every topic in every instance.  Business has a huge prejudice in favor of capability; the Financial Statements tell their own rather immediate tale and obtain their own insistence.  Since ability does not favor skin color or gender, it is unproductive to give it such a huge percentage of any conversation, either in hiring, firing or promotion.  I’m sorry, but it just doesn’t come up, other than where the government has by now insisted it does.  In my humble experience it almost always is an embarassment for the minorities it encompasses; they like to think they made it because they deserved it.  And they did.

It is also interesting to note that the two obviously most ‘interested’ candidates in these topics, Obama and Clinton, refer to these themes the most, but in a very politically correct and artful way.  But they are both consistently identical in what they say and imply:

• Color/gender has been a defining and terrible problem in the past.
• It’s still a huge issue and defines almost every topic.
• It’s time to get past it.
• I’ve championed it in my life.
• I’ll champion it for all of us.
• Don’t pick me as President because of it though.  Pick me because I’m a great person.
• I’ll work hard to make it a non-issue so we can all forget about it.
• But don’t forget I’m a Black/Woman and the empathy and underdog power that position enjoys.
• What’s really important is that I’m really concerned about all the other issues in the world and I’ve been trying to solve them.  Listen to me discuss them…

 Iraq War

LET’S JUST GET OUT!  Bush lied, people died!  Maybe we can leave in an intelligent way, but it might not matter, because it’s nasty and LET’S JUST GET OUT!  People hate us now, and ohmygod Bush lied and people died! and it’s really a distraction from the war on terror or hunt for bin Laden or whatever.  Did you know that?  Because that’s a really seriously intelligent, strategic way to think of it and frame the Iraq War and another thing that makes Bush so evil.  And LET’S JUST GET OUT!  But really we have to run, because it’s really just big oil, and big corporations, and all about money (good lord it makes the world dirty) and LET’S JUST GET OUT!

And that is the official Democratic position pure and simple.  And I have heard no deeper thoughts than that for some years now.  In a saner world, much of the Democratic discussion is moot; it matters not at all (except to the historians) about why we went (e.g., AMDs), or what has occurred so far.  In a word, these are all sunk costs now.  The only concern now is what our objectives are given the data we have so far acquired, and the strategies and tactics we wish to employ to achieve them.

The issue with the ‘LET’S JUST GET OUT’ tactic is that it becomes difficult under any scenario to understand how it would help achieve any worthy objective other than saving American lives.  It might even increase deaths in the short run.  But I am one of those folks who happen to still believe there are more important objectives in the Iraq war than just not dying.  So far, the media has explored this issue almost not at all; in fact helped Democrats make their ‘Iraq plan’ sound more reasonable and plausible.  In any adult planning session part way through any huge project, botched or not, the folks crying about the mistakes made, or trying to quit because either the going got tough or something unexpected happened, would be quickly asked to shut up and contribute, or summarily fired.  They aren’t adding anything to the discussion. 

It is unbelievable to me that no one, especially The White House, is not belaboring this last point and driving it into the American consciousness like a spear, given the inability of the MSM to make any kind of cogent point anymore.

Minimum Wage

Public discussions on the minimum wage (like it matters) are obviously of the worst and unhelpful sort.  How can we learn something if our leaders willingly pander to the uneducated and encourage improper, incorrect views of the world?  The simple fact is that if you raise the minimum wage, businesses will not hire as many people; they’ll further automate or they’ll break up simple tasks and assign them to higher paid salary folks to avoid another person.

In nearly every case, we are not talking about someone who is living on a minimum wage. There are other government support programs for them.  Folks willing to work for minimum wage are overwhelmingly trying to get their first job (living at home) or they are part timers who don’t (for whatever reason) want a full time position.  If you want to make it more difficult for your son or daughter to get their first job and begin climbing the career ladder, then support the minimum wage hikes.  Hell, raise it to $10.00.  You’ll have jobs moving out of the country at that wage, but at least you’ll be able to see yourself as a good person.  Or perhaps you’ll make outsourcing jobs illegal too.  Good luck with that.  Because now you’re living in an alternate reality from me and I refuse to speak to you anymore.

Incidently, with marginal labor costs rising so quickly, the issue is quickly becoming moot.  Demand for labor is outstripping supply and businesses will increasingly need to be creative in how to outsource production to countries that have willing and able minds or bodies.  Either that or fix the Immigration laws, but we shan’t hold our breath on that one.  By the way, being a first mover on comprehensive immigration reform will be a huge advantage in the next twenty years, for any country that is studying demographics and understands its effect on GDP and per capita income.

Energy

It’s all about supply and demand.  Talking about moving to wind and solar is fine, if you’re ready to pay half again as much for your fuel.  There’s really a much easier way to get energy efficiency and independence; open up ANWAR and off shore drilling, and wait for innovation to move us away from oil.

Governments’ largest contribution in the energy debate is to take away their byzantine tax system of both rewarding and punishing not only oil exploration and production, but all types of energy, including nuclear.  Unfortunately for the Greens, the simplest, most efficient, cost effective, non-intrusive energy substitution for oil and coal is nuclear, but their high priests have declared it a banishable sin.  There is evidence we can build nuclear power right now that would be incapable of melt down.   By the way, much of that Chinese technology is American, not German.  Imagine where we’d be if we had continued to innovate in nuclear power all these years, rather than declaring it a sin.

There again though, if the politicians can’t have an honest discussion about energy, then illogic rules and it takes much longer and it is much more expensive to get to the solution.  Do we have time for such non-sensical discussions?  Where is the media?  Answer: they’ve turned into the driving force of the Democratic party.

Health Care

I honestly did not hear a discussion or a debate here.  I heard a lot of denial about it’s impending bankruptcy and I heard that if that’s not true, we could always either make it a government thing (??) or raise someone’s taxes.  These are not intelligent discussions, but what is frightening me is that they might try one.  We can only imagine the cost to the country, the economy, and to individual citizens’ health and happiness if they do.

——————–

Copious Dissent has more.

Newsbusters makes the excellent point that virtually all the video questions were left wing softballs.  But then, what did you expect from this surreal political landscape we live in now?  I should have named my blog Irrational Debate.

Iraq and the Neoconservatives

I enjoy ‘The Claremont Institute’ and its review of books.  It’s hard to say enough regarding the quality and style of the writers, their website, and the depth of experience afforded by this well oiled organization.  I encourage you to become a member.

Charles Kesler, the editor of Claremont, has written an article named “Iraq and the Neoconservatives” which is well worth reading.  In it Mr. Kesler makes a well considered argument that the Bush Doctrine (the aggressive support for global advancement of democracy) is failing. 

First, he notices that the doctrine attempts to walk a fine line between the misdemeanor of tying our domestic security with other countries’ political structures, and the felony of imperialism or even colonization.  This point is an incredibly important one, and we’ll return to it in a moment. 

Much of the far Left’s hate for American foreign policy arises from the ‘realist’ stance which dominated American foreign strategy for decades, despite the four year revolving doors of American politics; Democrat or Republican.  That view in essence preferred stability above all else (especially where we had interests) and led to our alignment with dictators like the Shah of Iran and the Marcos family in the Philippines, amongst others.  The obvious issue with supporting totalitarian regimes is that they also tend to harbor massive government corruption, despotism, nepotism, and political repression and human rights violations.  We appear to be saying to people that we want to live well over here, but we’ll fund a butcher over there if it helps us mine your treasure.  We still remember the news articles chronicling Imelda Marcos fortunes when she fled to the US with untold billions of dollars and her thousand pairs of shoes.

The ‘realist’ view also extends to the view that ‘my enemy’s enemy is my friend’ and led us to fund Saddam Hussein during the Iran-Iraq war, and Osama bin Laden during his resistance to Soviet aggression in Afghanistan.  It is that view that Bush rejected.  It is that view that Jim Baker and his Iraq Study Group represent, and their suggestions on Iraq are their best attempts, given the circumstances, to return to such a policy.  There are many Congressmen and Senators on both sides of the aisle who long for a return of those halcyon days of realist foreign policy.  Arguably one of the principal reasons for the attraction to such a policy, favored by a defined, leftist State Department, is that in the heady grayish, never an entirely black or white moment at the negotiating tables of inter-governmental departments, it can be seen as a non-interventionist, and therefore morally defensible stratagem. 

Others would say respecting statist governments that do not respect the rule of law and property rights isn’t defensible by argument of non-intervention after all; it’s cowardly and indefensible, hypocritical and spineless at the least.  More directly it’s a lawyer’s view of the world, where silently supporting reality is different than actively changing it.  In both situations one is an active participant.  Worse, the silent statist positioni allows a backdoor approach to public and foreign policy, quiet acquiescence, bribery if you will, both in public relations and in monetary buttress.  For those of us who wondered why Bush 41 and his realist friends found no reasonable argument to specifically find and put Hussein and his sons down during the First Gulf War, it has been hugely disappointing to watch these same tired players trotted out to offer some half-baked, tired, ‘realist’ solution to the quandary of Iraq.

But back to Kesler’s article.  Bush’s only other choice seems to be full blown imperialism.  In the interest of brevity, we shall leave our response to that statement for another day (there is a lane a mile wide here that Kesler does not address), except for one remark in exactly the opposite direction.  The utility of a more controlled, ‘hands-on’, imperialistic approach, if you will, to Iraq has not been discussed nearly enough.  Intelligent discourse here would highlight tactics that we almost bone headedly neglected since our invasion of Iraq almost four years ago, and which we thought entirely appropriate after WWII in Germany and Japan.

Kesler then goes on to describe neoconservative history and evolution, including their break from earlier realist thinkers (many of them an earlier generation of neocons), and their views on society, culture and non-intervention and more recently, the interest in spreading democracy.  Incidentally, it is unfair for Kesler to neglect Natan Sharansky and others on this topic; it implies neoconservatives have birthed some of this thinking in a vacuum.  The reality is that for many people in this world who are sitting and suffering behind the cultures and laws and guns of police states in which they find themselves, the US represents not only their one remote hope for rescue and salvation, but as a guiding light of comfort.  They like to think that at least somewhere in the world, there is honesty, and freedom and what is yours can never be taken away.  I know; I’ve met them.  In a way more poignant than any coddled Leftist could understand, it is them we must answer to when we support that realist poppycock.  For the guns we help buy will kill them.

Lastly, Kesler outlines the major Neoconservative mistakes:

1.       “As an abstract matter, Americans would like to see every nation in the world enjoy the blessings of liberty and democracy, because we know how fine these are. But the matter at hand is a question not of good will but of good policy. Is Iraq worth it?”  Sure, Iraq had done all these nasty things, and played the UN for spineless fools.  But at the end of the day, “Iraq was not that important to us.  It could seem that important to us, as important as Germany and Japan had been, only by imagining that an utterly transformed Iraq would become an outpost of liberal democracy in the Middle East, a bulwark against terrorism and Islamic fanaticism; and that Iraq in turn would utterly transform the whole Middle East into a land of milk and honey, not to mention democracy and peace.  It is never a good idea to multiply improbabilities as the basis of one’s foreign policy.”

2.       They minimized how tough democracy is to achieve; “what a high and difficult calling republicanism is.”

These points are well taken.  Ultimately though, they fail.  First, Iraq doesn’t need to be as safe as Toronto before we leave.  Heck, it doesn’t even have to be as safe as Washington.  We are further along than his first point implies.  Iraq in many ways has already won. 

But most importantly, Kesler is arguing the failure of a strategy (Bush Doctrine / Invasion of Iraq) because of the failure of our tactics.  It is a rational folly to do so.  No good planner denounces his strategy because his tactics did not work.  Let’s not throw the baby out with the bath water here.  Had we treated Iraq from its inception as an occupation (which the Surge is now trying to do), and began immediately rebuilding and concentrated on funding local governments rather than taking a state department, big government, corrupt, top down approach (which is what the Surge is now trying to do) who knows where we would be now?  If we had jailed and tried abettors like Iranian soldiers from the beginning, rather than some spineless catch and release program, who knows the affect on public discourse?  If the White House had run even a fair to middling PR campaign on the War and its progress, rather than leaving its enemies (including by now the western press) to define every moment (including many they made up), how would that be affecting this essay?

The hard fact remains: if one believes there is a serious problem in the world regarding seventh century type theocratic, violent thinking, then the non-responses we made to the Iranian embassy kidnapping, the Cole bombing, the bombing of our embassies, the bombing of the World Trade Center, the Achille Lauro, etc. only embolden the enemy.  As the largest shop keeper in the world, we can not continue to cower in the corner while the ‘Mafia’ throws stones through the window and we pay bribes under the diplomatic table for them to stop. 

Lastly, what are our alternatives? To think we can leave them alone and they will leave us alone is akin to the conspiracist thinking regarding 9/11; it is naïve and stupid.  To think we can retreat into some realist policy or fortress America version of same is short sighted and cowardly and hypocritical and self-defeating.  In that regard the neoconservatives had it right; it was well past time we called the butchers in the world on their bluff.  So we had two choices; go in and kill Hussein and leave, or stay and help. 

Were we silly and stupid to think we could pacify hundreds of years of grudges from a Green Zone?  Shall we call ourselves a failure when the going is now terribly tough?  Shall we run back home because our first foray into standing tall was not conducted smartly and with ADD time-lines?  Shall we trundle on with ‘acceptable losses’ and treat the perpetrators as criminals?  How many permanent refugee camps spawned from unresolved conflicts can the world afford to have?

Look, the Middle East is crying out for a ‘beacon on the hill.’  The world’s well-being is at stake.  Let’s face it now: if Iraq nominates a murdering mullah we shall be forced to re-engage.  We must get it right.  And it’s worth it.