World Forums

by **mate** on 10 May 2005, 13:47

Guys

I'm out for vacation for a week or so. But I'll be back to participate in this newly invigorated debate.

:wink:

by **....** on 10 May 2005, 13:57

Well, I certainly hope you do join the debate when you return, Mate. It's absolutely a positive thing to have more people posting, (we need yet more contributors) but I will say in particular that you, like Leonid always enter a debate with facts, decency and class, which is exactly how it should be.

Enjoy your vacation

by **mate** on 10 May 2005, 14:20

Marko

I have come across numerous accounts by recent West Point graduates of what is going on in Iraq. Suffice to say for now that all of them vigorously uphold their mission and insist on needed to stay the course and prevail in Iraq. In particular I will come back and hammer Barry on the basis of their testimony.

:wink:

Marko, I don't know what you think about the war these days, as at World Crossing you seem to have become a strong opponent. However, I am more convinced than ever that we are doing the right thing in directly combatting reactionary fundamentalist Islamic foment, taking the fight into their heartland. Sure, there have been mistakes in intelligence and in operational planning and staffing. There have been costly diplomatic mistakes that have left the US and its allies open to the politically conniving manipulations of both certain European continental nations and the reactionary Islamists...the latter steadily supported by legions of malcontent leftists that characterize much of the world's pop culture.

However, at the end of the day, l maintain that the US erred on the side of caution with the best of intentions. The best proof of this is to listen to men and women who fight on the ground. Hell, I have even listened to a good number of WWII veterans who essentially back this endeavor.

As long as the soldiers on the ground are steadfast, I will keep faith with them. I know the character and caliber of our military leadership and absolutely know that this cannot be manipulated or improperly wielded by, hypothetically speaking, a malevolent Commander-In-Chief and his administration. I know very well what we are trying to bring to the people of Iraq as well as the nihilist evil of the insurgents who murder with abandon. The vast majority of military personnel remain positively committed, which speaks loudest and most decisively for me.

Oh yeah, trust me, I'll also get back to Barry on his comical, and very much distorting, orthogonal chaff on the definition of nihilism...not to mention his consistent mean spirited questioning and granular drill down on everything committed by the US in this war on terror whilst giving the enemy a free pass. Like I said, this kind of head in the sand ignorance, no matter how well intended, plays no small role in giving the enemy means and motivation to fight...whilst giving popular backing to those western nations that tactitly undermine the American led mission in Iraq.

This mission could and should have been a show of forceful western resolve and unity in the face of an enemy united by a hatred of the West. Sorry, but I just can't be PC about this, as hate is what it is and nothing less.

Anyways, see you all after my vacation.

:wink:

by **....** on 10 May 2005, 14:41

Mate

I really don't know WHAT to think of the war in Iraq these days, though I still maintain that it wasn't our number one priority at the time. The war on terrorism is first and foremost in my mind, and I didn't feel that Iraq should have been the focal point of our military endeavours, so to speak.

However, that being said, I do feel that fundamentalist Islam must be attacked and defeated, wherever it rests its ugly head. It probably makes me more of a warmonger than those proponents of the war in Iraq, but so be it. I can probably just about live with that :lol:

I absolutely agree with you about pop culture, though it does reveal itself in many guises. It's a base and decrepit culture, appealing only to the lowest common denominator (see the "chavs" that infest our towns and cities), the bane of civilised society. I wouldn't just equate that with the left, it manifests itself across the political spectrum, left to right.

I also agree about Political Correctness. One of the very things that the aforementioned degenerate culture created. You won't ever see me being politically correct when talking about any issue. If the facts of any given situation sit uncomfortably with a Politically Correct tool, then that speaks volumes about such a person and very little about myself.

Back to Iraq, I hope it works out. I really do. I just wouldn't have done things that way, but that's maybe why I'm sitting behind my computer typing to you instead of pulling the strings. Who knows?

Have a good one,

Mark

by **Eugene Berkovich** on 10 May 2005, 15:16

Marko wrote: However, that being said, I do feel that fundamentalist Islam must be attacked and defeated, wherever it rests its ugly head. It probably makes me more of a warmonger than those proponents of the war in Iraq, but so be it. I can probably just about live with that

I know - I know. Let's attack the country who's regime is actually an enemy of Islamic Fundamentalists and is no. 1 on their hit list. That should show them!

by **....** on 10 May 2005, 15:30

Eugene

I won't disagree that it was the wrong place to start. However, Madrid was attacked by Islamic Fundamentalists, and the excuse given by many leftists (sorry, won't call them Liberal as that's what I am in the old sense) was that they did it because we attacked Iraq.

So, if we accept that Islamic Fundamendalists attacked Madrid, and accept that it was due to the invasion of Iraq, then something isn't quite adding up. Why would they attack Madrid because of an invasion of their enemy?

You cannot have it both ways. If Iraq was really an enemy of extremists, then those extremists wouldn't be attacking their invaders on behalf of Iraq.

by **Eugene Berkovich** on 10 May 2005, 15:42

Marko wrote:Eugene

I won't disagree that it was the wrong place to start. However, Madrid was attacked by Islamic Fundamentalists, and the excuse given by many leftists (sorry, won't call them Liberal as that's what I am in the old sense) was that they did it because we attacked Iraq.

So, if we accept that Islamic Fundamendalists attacked Madrid, and accept that it was due to the invasion of Iraq, then something isn't quite adding up. Why would they attack Madrid because of an invasion of their enemy?

You cannot have it both ways. If Iraq was really an enemy of extremists, then those extremists wouldn't be attacking their invaders on behalf of Iraq.

Actually, I would agree with that definition. Do you think this happens if Aznar did not actively involve Spain in the Iraqi adventure? I think not?

So, I believe, Spain's participation in the anti-Saddam coalition was the reason (or the excuse) for the Islamists to strike Madrid.

You do realize, that for them, any excuse to attack European soil would work? By attacking Iraq, the coalition allowed thousands of these Islamists to enter Iraq and start armed struggle there and in the name thereof. IN any case, IRAQ WAS NOT THE ENEMY OF THE ISLAMISTS. SADDAM HUSSEIN'S SECULAR REGIME WAS. Sorry if that did not come accross that way (in my defense, I did say "who's regime is actually an enemy of Islamic Fundamentalists").

by **Eugene Berkovich** on 16 May 2005, 12:16

Losing hearts and minds
by Derrick Z. Jacksonhttp://www.boston.com/news/globe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2005/05/13/losing_hearts_and_minds/ (Boston Globe)
When the Abu Ghraib prison scandal exploded a year ago, President Bush said it was ''an insult to the Iraqi people and an affront to the most basic standards of morality and decency." He said, ''These humiliating acts do not reflect our character." He also said, ''American soldiers and civilians on the ground have come to know and respect the citizens of Iraq."

Less than a week before the scandal became worldwide news, Secretary of State Colin Powell said that all was relatively well between Iraqi civilians and American occupiers.

''I don't think that we have lost their hearts and minds," Powell said. ''I think most of the Iraqi people know what we are doing and want to be part of that. . . . What we don't have are the hearts and minds of the thugs, the former regime elements, and the terrorists who have come to make trouble. . . . The Iraqi people, whose hearts and minds we have, will see that these thugs and criminals are attacking the government of the Iraqi people."

On Wednesday, National Public Radio broadcast a piece that made it appallingly clear that we have not cleaned up our character in Iraq. Humiliation remains a primary weapon. For all the soldiers who have a heart, a lot also appear to have lost their minds.

NPR reporter Philip Reeves followed American soldiers around Mosul. At one point, the soldiers decided to take over a civilian house for two hours as a surveillance post. A lieutenant said to the surprised family of the house, ''Listen to me. Let me make this really clear for you. We need to be in your house for two hours. Everybody in this house will stay here."

When the family continue to appear to be ''baffled and unhappy," another soldier stepped in and said (with obscenities bleeped out by NPR):

''Look, check this out. You tell them this. You're not [bleep] leaving. Nobody's [bleep] leaving this house. You're not using the phone. Anybody comes, they're going to [bleep] stay here. OK? You give me a [bleep] hard time, I'll turn you [bleep] guys into the commandos, and they'll [bleep] you up."

In the background, one soldier said, ''Hey don't translate that." Another soldier added, ''Yeah, don't say that." The soldier with the foul mouth said, ''That's what I tell them all the time." Again, a soldier said, ''You shouldn't say that."

Bush has boasted how ''Iraqis have laid the foundations of a free society, with hundreds of independent newspapers." The reality was a bit more totalitarian. The featured soldiers handed out a newspaper full of favorable news about the US-installed government. When they saw that two young Iraqis had ripped up the newspaper, a soldier took one aside and asked, ''Why are you ripping up the paper? Why are you ripping up the paper?"

A staff sergeant told NPR, ''When a guy tears up a paper in my face, it looks like he's disrespecting everything we're trying to do. Maybe he knows somebody. Or maybe he is somebody. But it's just blatant for him to tear it up in my face and then lie about it. It's blatant. He blatantly disrespected everything that we're trying to accomplish."

Finally a supervising soldier, playing the benevolent occupier, told the young Iraqi, ''If you tore up the paper, that's fine. If you didn't tear up the paper, that's fine. Don't tear up the papers in the future, OK?"

This is not to tear up the soldiers. They are but pawns of President Bush, who declared major combat operations over under the banner of ''Mission Accomplished" two years ago. If all that soldiers can now accomplish is curse at baffled Iraqi families and berate people in the streets for exercising what we consider the right of free speech to tear up a newspaper, then there is no mission.

In a sign of their morass, the soldiers described themselves in lowly terms far removed from the pre-invasion build-up, when Vice President Dick Cheney said ''we will be greeted as liberators." The supervising soldier in Mosul told NPR as his armored vehicle cruised the streets, ''If you look on the walls here, you can see all this graffiti. We've really taken to the streets here kind of like a gang unit would in, say, LA. It's a giant gang war, and we've got the biggest gang, so every time we see graffiti, we mark it out, we tag it with 'US Forces,' and we say, 'Hey look, this is our block.' "

Funny, when Bush told us we were liberating the Iraqi people, he said nothing about employing the Crips and Bloods.

by **Leonid** on 17 May 2005, 22:20

Chicago Boyz

Number Gut

When I was in college, one of my professors used to complain that too many of his students had no "number gut."

A number gut is an intuitive feel for the possible magnitude of a particular number that describes a particular phenomenon. A good number gut tells you if the results of some calculation are at least in the ball park. People develop number guts through experience with particular phenomena but they also develop it just by doing a lot math by hand. When you do math by hand, you have to do more physical writing to deal with very large numbers so you develop a kind of visceral sense of scale. The coming of calculators, however, destroyed this physical relationship, leading many budding scientists to make gross errors of magnitude without realizing it.

The lack of a number gut destroys any sense of context for numbers that describe a phenomenon, leading people to casually accept as valid statements that a little double-checking would show to be just plain silly.

For example, there was news story published back in the late 80s that reported that the state of New Jersey produced 50 billion used tires every year which caused a huge environmental problem. The story got widely disseminated before somebody pointed out that since New Jersey had a population on only around 8 million, 50 billion tires a year came out to 6,250 tires per capita per year. The story got play because the editors had no intuitive feel for the significance of 4 orders of magnitude difference between the size of the population and the tire consumption.

Which brings me to the subject of the Lancet Iraqi Mortality Survey (LIMS) [free reg].

A lot of people who would know better in another context seem perfectly willing to swallow the estimate of 300,000+ dead that LIMS reports with the Falluja cluster included. Examined in detail, LIMS reports that of those 300,000, roughly 250,000 died from violence, and of those something like 220,000 died from Coalition airstrikes. The LIMS authors even suggest [p6 pg7] that this is likely an underestimate.

Anyone with a good number gut for such phenomenon would immediately recognize such numbers as implausible.

Why couldn't 250,000 be dead from violence? Well, the first clue is that the total population of Iraq is around 25 million, so 250,000 dead represents 1% of the entire population. That means if LIMS is accurate then 1 in every 100 Iraqis were killed in the war up to Sept 2004. So what? After all, it's a war and lots of people die in wars right? Well, not as many as most people think.

For example, during WWII the Japanese mainland suffered the most extensive aerial bombardment in history. Every major urban area save one (Kyoto) was burned to the ground. On march 10th, 1945 the great Tokyo fire raid burned down a third of the city and killed 100,000 people. Two major cities were nuked. Japan at the time had a population of 78 million, so 1% of the population would have been around 780,000. Now, what is your guess as to the number of Japanese killed on the Japanese mainland?

Did you guess around 500,000? Under 1%? Well, that is in fact the number (note: that's only dead, not dead-and-wounded).

So, with the Falluja cluster included, LIMS asks us to believe that Iraq has suffered a worse proportional aerial bombardment than did Japan during WWII. Common sense compels us to ask: does Iraq look like it suffered such a fate? Where are the mass graves? Where are the leveled cities? Where are the hundreds of thousands of walking wounded? Where are the millions of refugees that such intense fighting must have inevitably produced?

Worse still, given the known geographical areas where the fighting occurred, most of the deaths would have had to be concentrated in an area of 100 klicks or so from Baghdad, which would have meant an even higher percentage of the local population killed and the physical evidence even more obvious. (After the recent publication of the ILCS, it also means that the deaths would have to been compressed in time as well. The ILCS reported only 24,000 war related deaths up until May 25, 2004. For the LIMS to be true, the additional 200,000 deaths would have to have occurred between then and early Sept 2004 when LIMS was conducted. That comes out to roughly 2,000 deaths per day.)

Even the most casual student of military history or, indeed, just a curious person with access to Google, should instantly know that the 250,000 figure would be far too high based on the direct observation of facts on the ground. You can't kill that many people without leaving massive physical evidence. There is absolutely no precedent for killing that high a percentage of the population with air power (or even ground forces) but leaving so few clues that the information could only be teased out by an epidemiological study.

People are doing the same thing with LIMS that they did with New Jersey tire story. They hear a number from an authority figure and then accept it without thinking about its real-world implications. Had similar results been offered in a less political context they would have been rejected immediately. People's number gut or even just their basic BS detectors would have gone off when they heard the 300,000 number. That in turn would have led the more experienced to question the basic methodology of the study. Everyone should have wondered whether it was good practice to use the experiences of one little neighborhood of 30 houses as representative of the wider experience of everyone in Iraq or even of just one governorate. At the very least, it should have caused the complete removal of the data from the cluster that produced the nonsensical results.

That so many swallow such implausible numbers without any other supporting evidence (and indeed actively ignore opposing evidence) indicates how desperately they want the liberation of Iraq to be judged a failure. They are willing to corrupt our scientific institutions, and to provide powerful propaganda for the fascists, in their selfish pursuit of their own narrow political goals.

by **barry schwarz** on 19 May 2005, 10:41

Lancet claims 100 000, less than half a percent of the Iraqi population.

My number gut tells me that 100 Iraqis killed by foregin guns for a pack of falsehoods is 100 too many.

by **Eugene Berkovich** on 19 May 2005, 16:57

Marine-led campaign killed friends and foes, Iraqi leaders say
by Hannah Allam and Mohammed al Dulaimy
http://www.realcities.com/mld/krwashington/11662321.htm
When foreign fighters poured into villages with jihad on their minds and weapons in their hands, some Iraqi tribesmen in western desert towns fought back.

They set up checkpoints to filter out the foreigners. They burned down suspected insurgent safe houses. They called their fellow tribesmen in Baghdad and other urban areas for backup.

And when they still couldn't uproot the terrorists streaming in from Syria, tribal leaders said, they took a most unusual step: They asked the Americans for help.

The U.S. military hails last week's Operation Matador as a success that killed more than 125 insurgents. But local tribesmen said it was a disaster for their communities and has made them leery of ever again assisting American or Iraqi forces.

The battle, which pitted some Iraqi tribes against each other, underscored the complex tribal politics that compound the religious and ethnic tensions plaguing Iraq.

In interviews, influential tribal leaders and many residents of the remote border towns said the 1,000 U.S. troops who swept into their territories in the weeklong campaign that ended over the weekend didn't distinguish between the Iraqis who supported the United States and the fighters battling it.

"The Americans were bombing whole villages and saying they were only after the foreigners," said Fasal al Goud, a former governor of Anbar province who said he asked U.S. forces for help on behalf of the tribes. "An AK-47 can't distinguish between a terrorist and a tribesman, so how could a missile or tank?"

Al Goud was the only tribal leader who spoke on the record. Two others reached by phone in western villages expressed similar views, but said they didn't want their names published because the foreign insurgents were still holding some of their tribesmen hostage.

Long before the American offensive, trouble had been brewing in and around the town of Qaim. Two Iraqi tribes, the Albu Mahal and the Albu Nimr, resented the flood of foreign Islamic extremists who were crossing the border and trying to turn their lands into an insurgent fiefdom.

Like the fighters in the formerly insurgent-controlled city of Fallujah, also in troubled Anbar province, the foreigners brought a puritanical brand of Islam and began intimidating villagers who refused to follow their commands, residents said. The foreign fighters found followers among some members of another large tribe in the area, the Karabla.

Although there were small-scale clashes among the tribes for months, the killing of a popular soldier from the Albu Mahal tribe early this month escalated the violence, according to several accounts of the unrest that preceded Operation Matador.

Sunni Muslim clerics in Baghdad were asked to intervene, but the bloodshed continued: Houses were razed, men from both sides were killed, and the governor of the province was kidnapped with his son.

The Albu Mahal, with the help of the larger Albu Nimr, formed a vigilante group called the Hamza Forces to help keep the foreign fighters at bay. Those forces, which included some men suspected of attacking U.S. troops in the past, began battling the religious radicals known as Salafis, who were allied with Abu Musab al Zarqawi, the Jordanian leader of the group al-Qaida in Iraq.

"Hamza Forces are mostly from the Albu Mahal and they are said to be from the resistance," said Youssef Lahij, a tribesman and shopkeeper in Qaim. "They're the ones fighting now against the Salafis."

The Salafis replenished their ranks with a new batch of recruits who crossed over from Syria. Zarqawi's group, known locally as Tawhid and Jihad, flew its trademark black banners in local villages, antagonizing the residents.

The overwhelmed villagers were at a loss to defeat the better-armed and better-funded foreigners and their allies from the Karabla. With nowhere else to turn, tribal leaders decided to call the Iraqi Defense Ministry.

That's when al Goud, the former Anbar governor and a sheik of the Albu Nimr, said he called American officials at the Marine base Camp Fallujah to ask for help. Al Goud had met the officials during the siege of Fallujah, he said.

Bruska Nouri Shaways, Iraq's deputy defense minister, at first couldn't believe the request for help from the traditionally rebellious province. Shaways, who took several calls from tribal sheiks, said he immediately alerted the U.S military about their willingness to share information on Zarqawi followers.

"They said, `We are citizens of Qaim and we are now being attacked by non-Iraqi people coming from Syria,'" Shaways said. "Until this time, they had never asked the Iraqi or the American forces to help them. It's a good sign."

The American military already had planned a campaign to cleanse the Qaim area of foreign fighters, according to the military. With the calls from sheiks, it appeared they had the support of prominent local tribes for the offensive.

Tribesmen said they evacuated women and children to outlying camps and stuck around to set up checkpoints and prevent the foreign fighters from escaping to neighboring villages.

Operation Matador began with the Marines sweeping into the Qaim area in armored vehicles, backed up by helicopter gunships. They pummeled suspected insurgent safe houses, flattening parts of the villages and killing armed men. Nine Marines died in combat and 40 were wounded, according to the military.

When the offensive ended, however, angry residents returned to find blocks of destruction. Men who'd stayed behind to help were found dead in shot-up houses. Tribal leaders haven't counted their dead; several families hadn't yet returned to the area.

"We ran away because you didn't know who was fighting who," said Ahmed Mohammed, who works at a hospital north of Qaim. "Americans were fighting. The Albu Mahal were fighting. And Tawhid and Jihad were fighting."

Capt. Jeff Pool, a Marine spokesman in Iraq, confirmed that Iraqi informants contributed to intelligence gathering for Matador but said there was no effort by the U.S. military to incorporate local tribes in its assault plans. He said he couldn't verify that al Goud or others had contacted Marine officers at Camp Fallujah.

"We have no knowledge of any local efforts" to reach out to the military before the operation, he said in an e-mail response to questions.

Pool also said in his e-mail that American officers were aware of fighting among local forces before the Marines moved in.

"Three days before Operation Matador kicked off, Marines in Qaim observed 57 mortar rounds exchanged between two groups," he wrote. "None of the mortars were directed at the Marines or any other coalition force. We don't know who was firing at who or why."

Pool and other military spokesmen didn't respond to questions about whether U.S. troops had tried to contact any of the feuding forces in the area.

Deputy Defense Minister Shaways said it was extremely difficult to distinguish friend from foe in the midst of battle. He called Operation Matador a success, but acknowledged that some tribal leaders were upset by it. He said tribal leaders were expected to travel to Baghdad this week to discuss the aftermath of the campaign.

Still, he said, vigilante justice doesn't fit into the new Iraq, even when the cause appears just. He said the Defense Ministry would reach out to the embattled tribesmen and attempt to recruit them for Iraq's nascent security forces.

"We cannot allow anyone who feels he's not secure to just set up checkpoints and kidnap people," Shaways said. "This is not the Wild West."

by **Eugene Berkovich** on 20 May 2005, 14:36

Iraq war cost keeps rising, and then some
By Peter Grier
http://www.csmonitor.com/2005/0519/p01s03-usmi.html
WASHINGTON — Fighting in Iraq has been prolonged and remains intense enough that it has pushed the total cost of U.S. military operations since Sept. 11, 2001, close to that of the Korean War.

Despite the yawning federal deficit, Congress hasn't blinked at this price. And while annual defense spending is now as high as it ever was during the Reagan buildup, the U.S. economy as a whole is much larger, making it easier, in economic terms, for the nation to shoulder the bill.

Yet the costs for Pentagon operations are likely to pile up in years ahead. By 2010, war expenses might total $600 billion, according to the Congressional Budget Office. Much depends on when — and how many — U.S. military personnel can be withdrawn from the Iraqi theater of operations.

"We can't be any more certain about the trend of the defense budget than we can be about the number of troops that will be deployed overseas," says Steven Kosiak, director of budget studies for the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments.

The demands and unpredictability of war have, in essence, turned the defense budget into a two-part allocation. First is the regular budget request, which contains acquisition and research and development funds as well as personnel and operations costs, and which Congress considers in its normal appropriations process. Second is the supplemental appropriations — the add-on emergency spending requested by the administration later in the year.

Congress gave final passage to a 2005 supplemental defense bill just last week. Of the $82 billion contained in the bill, all but $76 billion will pay for Defense Department operations costs. The cost of the U.S. military in Iraq is running about $5 billion a month, estimated the former Pentagon comptroller earlier this year.

Fighting in Iraq "is lasting longer, and is more intense, and the cost to keep troops in the theater of operations is proving to be much greater than anyone anticipated," wrote Rep. John Spratt (D) of South Carolina, ranking minority member of the House Budget Committee, in a recent Democratic report on war costs.

Overall, Congress has approved about $192 billion for the Iraq war itself, according to an analysis by the Congressional Research Service. Another $58 billion has been allocated for Afghanistan, and some $20 billion has gone for enhanced air security and other Pentagon preparedness measures in the U.S..

That totals $270 billion for all military operations since 2001, according to the CRS analysis. The cost of war in Iraq by itself has already far exceeded the $85 billion inflation-adjusted price tag of the 1991 Gulf War, notes Mr. Kosiak. Plus, that war was largely paid for by contributions from U.S. allies.

As for all military operations combined, add in the $50 billion in war spending the Senate Armed Services Committee last week added to the fiscal 2006 defense budget bill, and the total will surpass $320 billion in U.S. funds. "That's close to the Korean war level of $350 billion [in today's dollars]," says Kosiak.

Unsurprisingly, operations and maintenance constitute the single largest extra expense of the Iraq war. Almost half of the just-passed emergency spending bill's defense funds went for ground operations, flying hours, fuel, and travel.

Iraq fighting has been particularly grinding, noted Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld at a Senate budget hearing in February. On average, combat vehicles are experiencing four and a half years of peacetime wear in one year.

"A bradley fighting vehicle that usually runs about 800 miles a year — that's in peacetime training — now sometimes is being driven in the range of 4,000 miles in Iraq," said Secretary Rumsfeld.

About half of the remaining emergency defense funds was devoted to personnel. This means not basic pay but incremental costs: the extra money paid reserve troops when they are called to active duty, for instance, as well as hazard pay and other special compensation.

The rest went largely to weapons procurement, such as replacement of six National Guard UH-60 helicopters lost in Iraqi and Afghan operations.

More spending on the war is sure to come — even if the U.S. begins to draw down troops levels. While it is difficult to estimate precisely, it is sure to be in the hundreds of billions, experts say. The Congressional Research Service pegs the cost of U.S. operations in Iraq and Afghanistan at an additional $458 billion through 2014.

This is hardly cheap, but given the overall size of the U.S. economy, and the levels of defense spending maintained during the cold war, it is well within the bounds of recent experience, according to Center for Strategic and International Studies military expert Anthony Cordesman.

Total defense spending in 2006 will probably be around 4% of gross national product, notes Mr. Cordesman. The average since 1992 for this measure has been 3.6%.

"When it does come to economic and federal 'overstretch,' defense is unlikely to be the cause," Cordesman argues in a recent report.

by **Eugene Berkovich** on 20 May 2005, 14:45

by **barry schwarz** on 24 May 2005, 02:55

Mate,

Taking the fight to the enemy.

Some boast they were Taliban fighters. Others -- an invalid, a chicken farmer, a nomad, a nervous name-dropper -- say they were in the wrong place at the wrong time when they were plucked from Afghanistan, Pakistan or other countries and flown to Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. Their stories are tucked inside nearly 2,000 pages of documents the U.S. government released to The Associated Press under a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit.

Representing a fraction of some 558 tribunals held since July, the testimonies capture frustration on both sides -- judges wrestling with mistaken identity and scattered information from remote corners of the world, prisoners complaining there's no evidence against them.

[...]

Most of the prisoners' testimonies at the prison -- which now holds about 540 from 40 countries -- haven't been made public, though the tribunals were open to press coverage.

Testimonies from at least 60 prisoners have been filed as part of the habeas corpus cases challenging their detention in courts in Washington, D.C.

The AP-obtained documents account for nearly 100 testimonies.

http://www.truthout.org/docs_2005/052305X.shtml

That's 60% of detainees filing habeus corpus suits from a pool of 100 released testimonies.

Of course, the checks and balaces in the US judidial system will see proper justice served to prisoners who have been detained, uncharged, for a number of years at Gitmo. The innocent will be rescued from the Bush administration by US jurisprudence. One day. Hopefully.

by **barry schwarz** on 25 May 2005, 01:00

Asia Times Online has learned that the US, instead of training up a regular professional Iraqi army, will create what in effect will be armed militias, acting under US central command, to take the militias of the resistance on at their own game.

[...]

Iraq's future now seems to be in the hands of militias, under the command of the US on the one side and militias under the command of the resistance on the other; reminiscent of wartime Lebanon and Vietnam.

http://atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/GE25Ak01.html

If true, it is difficult to see how this will not greatly exacerbate already strained sectarian tensions, bringing Iraq towards civil war. Sunni politicos have recently blamed the Shia Badr Brigade for the death of Sunni clerics.

by **Eugene Berkovich** on 31 May 2005, 23:46

Reuters AlertNet (http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/N31661115.htm)
U.S. death toll in Iraq surges amid rebel violence
31 May 2005 20:45:59 GMT
Source: Reuters
By Will Dunham
WASHINGTON, May 31 (Reuters) - The death toll for American troops in Iraq rose in May to the highest level since January, with the U.S. military saying on Tuesday insurgents have doubled their number of daily attacks since April.

This latest spree of violence by insurgents, who rose up after the American-led invasion in 2003 toppled President Saddam Hussein, put a dramatic end to a period when attacks on U.S. forces had waned after the historic Jan. 30 elections.

At least 77 U.S. troops were killed in May, according to a count of deaths announced by the military. That is the highest toll since 107 Americans were killed in January. It marked the second straight monthly increase since 36 U.S. troops died in March, among the lowest tolls of the war.

Lt. Col. Steve Boylan, a U.S. military spokesman in Baghdad, said insurgents are staging about 70 attacks nationwide per day.

"There was a lull in attacks after the elections," Boylan said.

"There was a period of time right after the election until the beginning of April or middle of April that we actually saw them (daily rebel attacks) dip into the low 30s."

The latest Pentagon figures listed 1,658 U.S. military deaths since the war began, with another 12,630 wounded in combat. The United States has 139,000 troops in Iraq, with another 23,000 British and other foreign soldiers.

In the recent spike in violence, insurgents also have aggressively targeted Iraqi security forces and civilians. Boylan said more than 600 Iraqis were killed or wounded in May.

Boylan attributed the rise in U.S. deaths in May to several factors.

May was a record month for car bombs used by insurgents in suicide attacks and with remote-controlled detonations, he said. Boylan added U.S. forces suffered losses in offensives against the rebels such as Operation New Market in the western town of Haditha and Operation Matador around the western town of Qaim, close to the Syrian border.

'DON'T KNOW'

Asked if the insurgents, a mix of indigenous Sunni Muslim Arabs and foreign radical Islamic fighters, could sustain the current level of violence, Boylan said, "Don't know yet."

Defense analysts said the recent violence was the latest evidence Iraq remains an uncertain project for America.

"Those who believed that the elections would be a decisive turning point undermining the insurgency are disappointed yet again," Cato Institute defense analyst Ted Carpenter said. "The insurgency seems as capable as ever."

U.S. generals in the weeks after the election had talked about a possible serious reduction in U.S. troop levels next year.

Gen. George Casey, top U.S. commander in Iraq, has not completed his assessment of future troop levels, Boylan said, adding that the level of violence and the capabilities of U.S.-trained Iraqi security forces would be crucial factors.

"The reality is we have discovered, despite all our propaganda, that we are facing a very tough, resilient and smart adversary," defense analyst Daniel Goure of the Lexington Institute said.

Goure said rebels have continuously changed, updated and modified tactics, dumping those that no longer worked. Goure also faulted U.S. forces for being slow to cut off the supply of bullets, bombs, money and recruits coming over the border from Syria.

"I think we are in there at least for the next five years in significant numbers," Goure said.

Boylan preached patience.

"This is the hardest type of fight to be in," Boylan said. "If we get too impatient and decide to throw in the towel too soon, then we give up everything we've gained up to this point."

by **Falc** on 30 Jun 2005, 23:24

Baghdad Burning

... I'll meet you 'round the bend my friend, where hearts can heal and souls can mend...

http://riverbendblog.blogspot.com/

Friday, July 01, 2005

Unbelievable...

“Not only can they not find WMD in Iraq,” I commented to E. as we listened to the Bush speech, “But they have disappeared from his speeches too!” I was listening to the voiceover on Arabiya, translating his speech to Arabic. He was recycling bits and pieces of various speeches he used over two years.

E., a younger cousin, and I were sitting around in the living room, sprawled on the relatively cool tiled floor. The electricity had been out for 3 hours and we couldn’t turn on the air conditioner with the generator electricity we were getting. E. and I had made a bet earlier about what the theme of tonight’s speech would be. E. guessed Bush would dig up the tired, old WMD theme from somewhere under the debris of idiocy and lies coming out of the White House. I told him he’d dredge up 9/11 yet again… tens of thousands of lives later, we would have to bear the burden of 9/11… again.

I won the bet. The theme was, naturally, terrorism- the only mention of ‘weapon’ or ‘weapons’ was in reference to Libya. He actually used the word ‘terrorist’ in the speech 23 times.

He was trying, throughout the speech, to paint a rosy picture of the situation. According to him, Iraq was flourishing under the occupation. In Bush’s Iraq, there is reconstruction, there is freedom (in spite of an occupation) and there is democracy.

“He’s describing a different country…” I commented to E. and the cousin.

“Yes,” E. replied. “He’s talking about the *other* Iraq… the one with the WMD.”

“So what’s the occasion? Why’s the idiot giving a speech anyway?” The cousin asked, staring at the ceiling fan clicking away above. I reminded him it was the year anniversary marking the mythical handover of power to Allawi’s Vichy government.

“Oh- Allawi… Is he still alive?” Came the indolent reply from the cousin. “I’ve lost track… was he before Al Yawir or after Al Yawir? Was he Prime Minister or did they make him president at some point?”

9/11 and the dubious connection with Iraq came up within less than a minute of the beginning of the speech. The cousin wondered whether anyone in America still believed Iraq had anything to do with September 11.

Bush said:
“The troops here and across the world are fighting a global war on terror. The war reached our shores on September 11, 2001.”

Do people really still believe this? In spite of that fact that no WMD were found in Iraq, in spite of the fact that prior to the war, no American was ever killed in Iraq and now almost 2000 are dead on Iraqi soil? It’s difficult to comprehend that rational people, after all of this, still actually accept the claims of a link between 9/11 and Iraq. Or that they could actually believe Iraq is less of a threat today than it was in 2003.

We did not have Al-Qaeda in Iraq prior to the war. We didn’t know that sort of extremism. We didn’t have beheadings or the abduction of foreigners or religious intolerance. We actually pitied America and Americans when the Twin Towers went down and when news began leaking out about it being Muslim fundamentalists- possibly Arabs- we were outraged.

Now 9/11 is getting old. Now, 100,000+ Iraqi lives and 1700+ American lives later, it’s becoming difficult to summon up the same sort of sympathy as before. How does the death of 3,000 Americans and the fall of two towers somehow justify the horrors in Iraq when not one of the people involved with the attack was Iraqi?

Bush said:
“Iraq is the latest battlefield in this war. … The commander in charge of coalition operations in Iraq, who is also senior commander at this base, General John Vines, put it well the other day. He said, "We either deal with terrorism and this extremism abroad, or we deal with it when it comes to us."

He speaks of ‘abroad’ as if it is a vague desert-land filled with heavily-bearded men and possibly camels. ‘Abroad’ in his speech seems to indicate a land of inferior people- less deserving of peace, prosperity and even life.

Don’t Americans know that this vast wasteland of terror and terrorists otherwise known as ‘Abroad’ was home to the first civilizations and is home now to some of the most sophisticated, educated people in the region?

Don’t Americans realize that ‘abroad’ is a country full of people- men, women and children who are dying hourly? ‘Abroad’ is home for millions of us. It’s the place we were raised and the place we hope to raise our children- your field of war and terror.

The war was brought to us here, and now we have to watch the country disintegrate before our very eyes. We watch as towns are bombed and gunned down and evacuated of their people. We watch as friends and loved ones are detained, or killed or pressured out of the country with fear and intimidation.

Bush said:
“We see the nature of the enemy in terrorists who exploded car bombs along a busy shopping street in Baghdad, including one outside a mosque. We see the nature of the enemy in terrorists who sent a suicide bomber to a teaching hospital in Mosul…”

Yes. And Bush is extremely concerned with the mosques. He might ask the occupation forces in Iraq to quit attacking mosques and detaining the worshipers inside- to stop raiding them and bombing them and using them as shelters for American snipers in places like Falluja and Samarra. And the terrorists who sent a suicide bomber to a teaching hospital in Mosul? Maybe they got their cue from the American troops who attacked the only functioning hospital in Falluja.

“We continued our efforts to help them rebuild their country. Rebuilding a country after three decades of tyranny is hard and rebuilding while a country is at war is even harder."

Three decades of tyranny isn’t what bombed and burned buildings to the ground. It isn’t three decades of tyranny that destroyed the infrastructure with such things as “Shock and Awe” and various other tactics. Though he fails to mention it, prior to the war, we didn’t have sewage overflowing in the streets like we do now, and water cut off for days and days at a time. We certainly had more than the 8 hours of electricity daily. In several areas they aren’t even getting that much.

“They are doing that by building the institutions of a free society, a society based on freedom of speech, freedom of assembly, freedom of religion and equal justice under law.”

We’re so free, we often find ourselves prisoners of our homes, with roads cut off indefinitely and complete areas made inaccessible. We are so free to assemble that people now fear having gatherings because a large number of friends or family members may attract too much attention and provoke a raid by American or Iraqi forces.

As to Iraqi forces…There was too much to quote on the new Iraqi forces. He failed to mention that many of their members were formerly part of militias, and that many of them contributed to the looting and burning that swept over Iraq after the war and continued for weeks.

“The new Iraqi security forces are proving their courage every day.”

Indeed they are. The forte of the new Iraqi National Guard? Raids and mass detentions. They have been learning well from the coalition. They sweep into areas, kick down doors, steal money, valuables, harass the females in the household and detain the men. The Iraqi security forces are so effective that a few weeks ago, they managed to kill a high-ranking police major in Falluja when he ran a red light, shooting him in the head as his car drove away.

He kept babbling about a “free Iraq” but he mentioned nothing about when the American forces might actually depart and the occupation would end, leaving a “free Iraq”.

Why aren’t the Americans setting a timetable for withdrawal? Iraqis are constantly wondering why nothing is being done to accelerate the end of the occupation.

Do the Americans continue to believe such speeches? I couldn’t help but wonder.

“They’ll believe anything.” E. sighed. “No matter what sort of absurdity they are fed, they’ll believe it. Think up the most outrageous lie… They have people who’ll believe it.”

The cousin sat up at this, his interest piqued. “The most outrageous lie? How about that Iraq was amassing aliens from Mareekh [Mars] and training them in the battle art of kung-fu to attack America in 2010!”

“They’d believe it.” E. nodded in the affirmative. “Or that Iraq was developing a mutant breed of rabid, man-eating bunnies to unleash upon the Western world. They’d believe that too.”

by **Eugene Berkovich** on 27 Jul 2005, 14:21

Civil War Specter Spurs New Iraq Exit Plans
by Jim Lobe
http://www.commondreams.org/headlines05/0726-05.htm
Growing pessimism about averting civil war in Iraq, as well as mounting concerns that the U.S. military presence there may itself be fueling the insurgency and Islamist extremism worldwide, has spurred a spate of new calls for the United States to withdraw its 140,000 troops sooner rather than later.

Although resolutions to establish at least a timeline for withdrawal have so far gained the support of only about a quarter of the members of Congress, the absence of tangible progress in turning back the insurgency is adding to fears on Capitol Hill that the administration's hopes of stabilizing the situation, let alone giving birth to a pro-western democracy in the heart of the Arab world, are delusory.

”In January, we had Congressional staff hanging up on us when we called to say that we want to discuss shifting U.S. policy from more guns and more troops towards withdrawal,” said Jim Cason, communications director of the Friends Committee on National Legislation, a lobby group. ”Now they want to talk about it.”

While the George W. Bush administration still insists that civil war will be avoided and current negotiations to produce a new constitution by the middle of next month remain on track, the continuing high level of violence and the strength and sophistication of predominantly Sunni insurgents and foreign fighters are clearly having an effect here.

That was made clearest in two New York Times articles published Sunday, including one entitled ”Defying U.S. Efforts, Guerrillas in Iraq Refocus and Strengthen,” and another, by John Burns, a veteran star Times reporter who has spent considerable time in Iraq, entitled ”If It's Civil War, Do We Know It?”

The latter story recounted the recent intensification of Sunni violence against the Shia community that provoked even the ever-patient Shia religious leader, Ayatollah Ali Sistani, to whom Washington has increasingly deferred in guiding the political transition, to call on the Shiite-led government to ”defend the country against mass annihilation.”

”From the moment American troops crossed the border 28 months ago,” Burns wrote, ”the specter hanging over the American enterprise here has been that Iraq, freedom (Saddam) Hussein's tyranny, might prove to be so fractured...that would spiral inexorably into civil war.”

”Now, events are pointing more than ever to the possibility that the nightmare could come true,” according to Burns, who noted that Shiite militias and Shiite and Kurdish-led army and police units were themselves taking increasingly aggressive counter-measures, including abducting, torturing, and executing suspected insurgents and their perceived sympathizers and defenders.

The second story, by two other Baghdad-based Times correspondents, quoted unnamed senior military officers reiterating two big frustrations that have been heard since July, 2003: that the insurgency appears to be ”growing more violent, more resilient and more sophisticated than ever,” and that prosecuting the war is like sowing dragons' teeth.

”We are capturing or killing a lot of insurgents,” one ”senior (U.S.) Army intelligence officer,” told the Times. ”But they're being replaced quicker than we can interdict their operations. There is always another insurgent ready to step up and take charge.”

Such assessments are spurring what rapidly has become a cottage industry -- particularly from the Democratic side of the political spectrum -- one fueled in part by the leak in early July of a British contingency plan that called for halving the number of U.S. and British troops in Iraq by the latter part of 2006.

Thus, on July 15, former Central Intelligence Agency director John Deutch published a column in the Times calling for a ”prompt withdrawal plan,” with the initial drawdown set to coincide with the Iraqi elections scheduled for Dec. 15, that would include a timetable for reducing the scope of military operations, while maintaining a ”regional quick-reaction force” in reserve, as well as ongoing intelligence and training programs.

At the same time, the U.S. would urge the Iraqi government and its neighbors to recognize their common interest in Baghdad's peaceful evolution without external intervention and commit itself to an economic assistance program to Iraq ”so long as it stays on a peaceful path” and to the wider region that will encourage cooperation.

A more detailed plan emerged several days later from the Boston-based Project on Defense Alternatives (PDA) calling for complete withdrawal, except for the retention of a multi-national civilian and military monitoring and training contingent of less than 10,000 (of which the U.S. military presence would be limited to 2,000 troops), by September 2006.

The plan, to take effect Aug. 1, would begin with the adoption of a withdrawal time line, a sharp de-escalation of the war in Sunni areas, a shift of U.S. resources to its training mission, and the transfer of foreign military control of localities to elected officials ”without the interference of federal or coalition authorities.”

”The key to enabling total U.S. troop withdrawal from Iraq within 400 days is achieving a political accord with Sunni leaders at all levels and with Iraq's neighbors -- especially Syria and Iran,” according to the report by defense analyst Carl Conetta. ”The proximal aim would be to immediately lower the level of conflict inside Iraq by constricting both active and passive support for the insurgency, inside and outside the country.”

Like the two other authors, veteran Middle East analyst Helena Cobban also believes that the continued U.S. military presence in Iraq is counter-productive to longer-term U.S. interests and is effectively fueling the insurgency. But she goes further than the other two authors, calling for a withdrawal strategy that is ”total, speedy, and generous to the Iraqi people.”

Her model is Israel's 2000 exit from southern Lebanon, noting that, despite deep fears that that withdrawal would touch off ”mayhem and revenge (in Lebanon), none came to pass.”

A prior announcement of ”imminent total withdrawal” would serve to ”focus the minds of Iraqis considerably,” particularly on reconstruction if the U.S. and other countries are sufficiently generous, and ”make them far less hospitable to insurgents, especially those who get their impetus from the prospect of a prolonged foreign occupation.”

All the authors take issue with the conventional assumption that the U.S. military presence is a stabilizing factor without which Iraq's descent into civil war would be more certain or bloody.

They also argue that the administration's argument that Washington's global ”credibility” is outweighed by other considerations, including the damage that the continued U.S. presence does to U.S. interests in the Arab and Islamic world more generally and the reduced ability of the U.S. to deal with other important security challenges while it remains bogged down in Iraq.

As noted by Deutch, continued investment in a losing proposition could result in ”an even worse loss of credibility down the road.”

by **Eugene Berkovich** on 30 Aug 2005, 13:43

Bush vs. History
by John Nichols
http://www.commondreams.org/views05/0829-27.htm
The Iraqis are having a hard time pulling together a constitution quickly enough to meet President Bush's public-relations timeline.

As I am not an Iraqi, I have no interest in meddling in the affairs of that troubled land. Of course, I would prefer that the Iraqis establish a system of self-governance that, like ours in the United States, seeks to erect a wall of separation between church and state, preserve the rights of small states and political minorities, protect against military and police abuses, and guarantee freedom of speech, freedom of the press and all the other basics of a functioning democracy.

If I was really writing a wish list, I might also recommend that the Iraqis do a better job than we do of limiting the power of corporate monopolies, keep special-interest money out of their politics, treating healthcare and education as basic rights and establishing reliable electoral systems.

But as an American, I should not be worrying about perfecting the Iraqi constitution before I go about the work of getting things right here at home.

This seems like basic logic to me. But that logic escapes our President.

It is true that George W. Bush was not born and raised in my home region of the Upper Midwest, where the legacy of Wisconsin Progressive, Minnesota Farmer-Labor and North Dakota Non-Partisan League activism has imparted a rich faith in the perfectability of the American experiment and a keen awareness of the folly of telling the peoples of other lands how to organize their governments. As such, the President has little familiarity with what I happen to think is the healthiest of American political traditions.

But it would be reassuring if the President at least had a passing acquaintance with American history.

As efforts to reach agreement on an Iraqi constitution have stumbled again and again, Bush has sought to comfort in a bizarre analogy.

"We had a little trouble with our own conventions writing a constitution," the President told reporters in Idaho the other day, continuing a pattern of comparing the US and Iraqi experiences of writing a constitution that began several months ago when Bush explained, "[We] must remember the history of our own country. The American Revolution was followed by years of chaos.... Our first effort at a governing charter, the Articles of Confederation, failed miserably--it took several years before we finally adopted our Constitution and inaugurated our first President.... No nation in history has made the transition from tyranny to a free society without setbacks and false starts. What separates those nations that succeed from those that falter is their progress in establishing free institutions. So to help young democracies succeed, we must help them build free institutions to fill the vacuum created by change."

To hear members of the Bush Administration and their amen corner in the media tell it, suicide bombs must have been going off like clockwork in Boston, Baltimore, Philadelphia and Charleston back in the 1780s. But, of course, that was never the case.

While there were rowdy demonstrations and loud dissents during the years following the end of the British occupation of the Empire's former colonies along the Eastern Seaboard of North America, the period was characterized by relative calm as factions within the new nation debated the extent to which states should cooperate with one another.

Try as Bush and his followers may, they will find no historical record of Ayatollah Alexander Hamilton's militia hunting down followers of radical secularist Thomas Jefferson, nor of rival Christian gangs blowing up one another's houses of worship. Nor will they find a record of renegade Green Mountain Boys gunning down foreign troops who were supposedly present to "help young democracies succeed."

In fact, there were no foreign troops prodding the process along. The French, who played a critical role in helping the American revolutionaries throw off British colonial oppression, exited quickly. The Marquis de Lafayette, as good a friend as the American rebels had, did not return to the new republic until 1824.

To be sure, Lafayette had ideas about how the Continentals ought to organize the American experiment. But he was smart enough to recognize that constitutions are organic documents that cannot be written under timelines imposed by foreign powers, just as he recognized that democracies cannot form or flourish under occupation.

by **Eugene Berkovich** on 30 Sep 2005, 15:53

Retired general: Iraq invasion was ‘strategic disaster'By EVAN LEHMANN, Sun Washington Bureau
http://www.lowellsun.com/ci_3075570
WASHINGTON -- The invasion of Iraq was the “greatest strategic disaster in United States history,” a retired Army general said yesterday, strengthening an effort in Congress to force an American withdrawal beginning next year.

Retired Army Lt. Gen. William Odom, a Vietnam veteran, said the invasion of Iraq alienated America's Middle East allies, making it harder to prosecute a war against terrorists.

The U.S. should withdraw from Iraq, he said, and reposition its military forces along the Afghan-Pakistani border to capture Osama bin Laden and crush al Qaeda cells.

“The invasion of Iraq I believe will turn out to be the greatest strategic disaster in U.S. history,” said Odom, now a scholar with the Hudson Institute.

Homeward Bound, a bipartisan resolution with 60 House co-sponsors, including Lowell Rep. Marty Meehan, requests President Bush to announce plans for a draw-down by December, and begin withdrawing troops by October 2006.

The measure has not been voted on, nor has the House Republican leadership scheduled hearings. But supporters were encouraged yesterday, pointing to growing support among moderate conservatives and the public's rising dissatisfaction with the war.

Meehan, one of the first to propose a tiered exit strategy in January, when few of his Democratic colleagues dared wade into the controversial debate, pointed to “enormous progress.”

“Talking about this issue, having hearings on this issue, getting more Americans to focus on it will result in a change of policy,” Meehan told The Sun. “The generals and commanders on the field in Iraq overwhelmingly are saying we need less in terms of occupation and more Iraqis up front, and that's the only strategy I think that will result in getting American troops back home.”

by **Leonid** on 20 Dec 2005, 20:46

Jay Nordlinger

Frederick Kempe of the Wall Street Journal conducted an amazing interview — an amazingly wonderful interview — with the great Middle East historian Bernard Lewis (a speaker on a recent National Review cruise, incidentally). An article about the interview is on the web for free, but the Q&A itself is not, I regret to say. Try to obtain it, is my recommendation.

Anyway, I'd like to quote just one question-and-answer. No, two. Kempe asked, "What is your general view of the situation in Iraq and the Mideast? Are you growing more or less confident of positive change?"

Answered Lewis, "I would describe my position as one of cautious optimism. My optimism derives from events in the Mideast and my caution derives from observing the United States. [Lewis is British, I might note.] The situation in Iraq is vastly better than what you would know from reading the media, which really do often present a misleading picture of what's happening. In many, many ways, Iraqi life has improved enormously ..."

Earlier, Kempe had asked, "If victory [against the terrorists] is so clear, why aren't Americans feeling that way?" Lewis answered, "My specialization is the Middle East and not the Middle West."

Isn't that marvelous?

The Wall Street Journal
Frederick Kempe

Lewis's 'Liberation' Doctrine For Mideast Faces New Tests
December 13, 2005

NEW YORK—Bernard Lewis, the British-born Princeton University historian who was one of the intellectual fathers of the Bush administration policy of Mideast transformation, worries about Iraq's future ahead of this week's parliamentary elections.

But not for the reasons one might think.

Lewis's concern is less about insurgent and terrorist violence and more about growing U.S. domestic opposition to President Bush's Iraq engagement. "I would describe my position as one of cautious optimism," he says in an interview. "My optimism derives from events in the Mideast and my caution derives from observing the United States."

At age 88, Prof. Lewis's voice has never been more influential. After Sept. 11, 2001, when the Bush administration was trying to understand the roots of the al Qaeda attack and how to respond, Prof. Lewis was available with a fully formed philosophy that the problems were emerging from failing Islamic states that had to transform themselves. His ideas helped shape the policy thinking behind U.S. wars in Afghanistan and Iraq and the shift from tolerating and supporting dictators to promoting democratic change.

"I may have had some influence but I think this is greatly exaggerated," says Mr. Lewis, who previously declined to be interviewed by The Wall Street Journal regarding his policy role. (See "Historian's Take on Islam Steers U.S. Policy," from Feb. 3, 2004.)

Although Mr. Lewis insists he was never a "formal" consultant, people familiar with the matter say he recently met with President Bush and is particularly close to Vice President Cheney. Several other U.S. officials have called upon his counsel. His impact on the administration's thinking on the Mideast has been compared to that of George Kennan's "containment," doctrine during the Cold War.

He has scoffed at notions of a "Lewis Doctrine," but when asked to characterize his equivalent thinking to "containment," he uses a single word: "Liberation."

When prompted to elaborate, Mr. Lewis adds, "Enable them to achieve or recover their freedom, to which they are entitled no less than anyone in the world. … Our job is not to create democracy. Our job is to remove obstacles and let them create their own."

Mr. Lewis has differed most with the Bush administration over its failure to hand over control of Iraq quickly enough to capture the momentum of its surprisingly easy military victory. He had favored the preparation and rapid installation of an interim Iraqi government instead of "setting up a kind of viceroy arrangement in the style of the 19th century British empire."

For all the problems the Bush administration has faced in Iraq, however, Mr. Lewis believes the region and the world are better off now than before the war. "Despite internal difficulties and external sabotage, the process of democratization has succeeded beyond anyone's wildest dreams," he says. He points to last January's elections where millions of Iraqis voted despite risks, to the constitutional referendum that followed, to increasing Sunni involvement in the process and most of all to the evolving democratic habit of political give-and-take slowly taking hold.

Mr. Lewis believes change in Iraq has also been in no small part responsible for Syria's withdrawal from Lebanon and democratic progress there, and "glimmerings" of change in Egypt and Saudi Arabia. That said, he does share concerns about the success of the Egyptian Islamist organization the Muslim Brotherhood in recent elections. He has less concern about the rise of Iranian-backed Shia parties in Iraq.

"In Iraq, I am not so worried," he says. "Democracy doesn't come all at once. It has to be developed in stages, and it seems to be doing very well. The Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt represents a real danger. Yet if they come into power they will have to cope with the monstrous problems Egypt faces. If, like the theocracy in Iran, they fail to deal with these problems, they will have to face the anger of their own people. The danger: they wouldn't leave office by the same way they came, through free elections."

For all his belief in the need for transformation, Mr. Lewis is just as convinced that future change is unlikely to come at the end of an American gun-barrel. He instead favors outside assistance for opposition forces and developing civil society. "Iranians and Syrians with a little help from the outside can do the job themselves," he says.

He's a little more concerned about the American role in Iraq. One of the great ironies of our times is that the country that has done the most to shape our current world often underappreciates the historic importance of its actions. "In American English, if you say 'That's history,' it means 'It's over and done with and of no current interest or relevance.' Yet there is a sort of basic instinct for what is good and right in a society and that seems to work surprisingly well."

While Mr. Bush continues his U.S. campaign to rally support for his Iraq engagement, Mr. Lewis provides some dramatic context for why Americans ought to pay attention. U.S. officials, many of whom served during the Cold War, have likened the Mideast challenge to the democratic transformation of the former Soviet bloc. Mr. Lewis instead compares the threat to Europe at the beginning of World War II.

He believes the threat in some respects is greater than even that of the Nazis, as radical Islam is fanatical, violent, global in its reach and enjoys significant support. Beyond that, the terrorists have suicidal tendencies and nuclear potential. Another difference: The world's will to stand together is much more lacking now than it became then. "If Churchill and his team had to face the same sort of opposition as does President Bush, Hitler might well have won the war," he says.

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