How to Cut and Run

We could lead the Mideast to peace, but only if we stop refusing to do the right thing.

by William E. Odom (October 31, 2006):

The United States upset the regional balance in the Middle East when it invaded Iraq. Restoring it requires bold initiatives, but "cutting and running" must precede them all. Only a complete withdrawal of all U.S. troops — within six months and with no preconditions — can break the paralysis that now enfeebles our diplomacy. And the greatest obstacles to cutting and running are the psychological inhibitions of our leaders and the public.

Our leaders do not act because their reputations are at stake. The public does not force them to act because it is blinded by the president's conjured set of illusions: that we are reducing terrorism by fighting in Iraq; creating democracy there; preventing the spread of nuclear weapons; making Israel more secure; not allowing our fallen soldiers to have died in vain; and others.

But reality can no longer be avoided. It is beyond U.S. power to prevent bloody sectarian violence in Iraq, the growing influence of Iran throughout the region, the probable spread of Sunni-Shiite strife to neighboring Arab states, the eventual rise to power of the anti-American cleric Muqtada Sadr or some other anti-American leader in Baghdad, and the spread of instability beyond Iraq. All of these things and more became unavoidable the day that U.S. forces invaded.

These realities get worse every day that our forces remain in Iraq. They can't be wished away by clever diplomacy or by leaving our forces in Iraq for several more years.

The administration could recognize that a rapid withdrawal is the only way to overcome our strategic paralysis, though that appears unlikely, notwithstanding election-eve changes in White House rhetoric. Congress could force a stock-taking. Failing this, the public will sooner or later see through all of the White House's double talk and compel a radical policy change. The price for delay, however, will be more lives lost in vain — the only thing worse than the lives already lost in vain.

Some lawmakers are ready to change course but are puzzled as to how to leave Iraq. The answer is four major initiatives to provide regional stability and calm in Iraq. They will leave the U.S. less influential in the region. But it will be the best deal we can get.

• First, the U.S. must concede that it has botched things, cannot stabilize the region alone and must let others have a say in what's next. As U.S. forces begin to withdraw, Washington must invite its European allies, as well as Japan, China and India, to make their own proposals for dealing with the aftermath. Russia can be ignored because it will play a spoiler role in any case.
  
  Rapid troop withdrawal and abandoning unilateralism will have a sobering effect on all interested parties. Al Qaeda will celebrate but find that its only current allies, Iraqi Baathists and Sunnis, no longer need or want it. Iran will crow but soon begin to worry that its Kurdish minority may want to join Iraqi Kurdistan and that Iraqi Baathists might make a surprising comeback.
  
  Although European leaders will probably try to take the lead in designing a new strategy for Iraq, they will not be able to implement it. This is because they will not allow any single European state to lead, the handicap they faced in trying to cope with Yugoslavia's breakup in the 1990s. Nor will Japan, China or India be acceptable as a new coalition leader. The U.S. could end up as the leader of a new strategic coalition — but only if most other states recognize this fact and invite it to do so.
• The second initiative is to create a diplomatic forum for Iraq's neighbors. Iran, of course, must be included. Washington should offer to convene the forum but be prepared to step aside if other members insist.
• Third, the U.S. must informally cooperate with Iran in areas of shared interests.Accepting Iran's nuclear weapons is a small price to pay for the likely benefits. Moreover, its nuclear program will proceed whether we like it or not. Accepting it might well soften Iran's support for Hezbollah, and it will definitely undercut Russia's pernicious influence with Tehran.
• Fourth, real progress must be made on the Palestinian issue as a foundation for Middle East peace. The invasion of Iraq and the U.S. tilt toward Israel have dangerously reduced Washington's power to broker peace or to guarantee Israel's security. We now need Europe's help. And good relations with Iran would help dramatically.

Nothing else could so improve our position in the Middle East. The price for success will include dropping U.S. resistance to Iran's nuclear weapons program. This will be as distasteful for U.S. leaders as cutting and running, but it is no less essential. That's because we do share vital common interests with Iran. We both want to defeat Al Qaeda and the Taliban (Iran hates both). We both want stability in Iraq (Iran will have influence over the Shiite Iraqi south regardless of what we do, but neither Washington nor Tehran want chaos). And we can help each other when it comes to oil: Iran needs our technology to produce more oil, and we simply need more oil.

No strategy can succeed without these components. We must cut and run tactically in order to succeed strategically. The United States needs to restore its reputation so that its capacity to lead constructively will cost us less.

Hudson Institute

Withdrawal?

From Liberation, Gérard Dupuy writing on Anglo-American Withdrawal:

. . . . The American public has not, however, converted to pacifism. It's not the use of force that it questions, but its failure. Even if American losses remain contained, they are accumulating and, above all, they highlight the complete absence of any prospects in Iraq. The stabilization of the regime, briefly glimpsed immediately after the Iraqi elections, has never taken place, and instead we are witnessing a bloody implosion - that is, a war of all against everybody in which the Iraqi populations are the first victims. Thus is the American Army caught in the gears it set in motion. If Americans hate anything more than lies - which Bush's justifying the intervention in Iraq are now recognized to be - it's losers.

In spite of Bush's disclaimers, the only strategic option that now remains is withdrawal of American forces. The conditions for such a withdrawal are difficult to imagine in an Iraq dismembered between its different factions. But Bush can only propose a future that is still worse from an American point of view: a superpower bogged down and stuck after having been led astray. Never since the Vietnam War have American elections had as obvious and direct international stakes.

Lt. Gen. William Odom, (Ret) is a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute and a Professor at Yale University. Today, in the Los Angeles Times, he writes How to Cut and Run (in part):

. . . . reality can no longer be avoided. It is beyond U.S. power to prevent bloody sectarian violence in Iraq, the growing influence of Iran throughout the region, the probable spread of Sunni-Shiite strife to neighboring Arab states, the eventual rise to power of the anti-American cleric Muqtada Sadr or some other anti-American leader in Baghdad, and the spread of instability beyond Iraq. All of these things and more became unavoidable the day that U.S. forces invaded.

These realities get worse every day that our forces remain in Iraq. They can't be wished away by clever diplomacy or by leaving our forces in Iraq for several more years.

The administration could recognize that a rapid withdrawal is the only way to overcome our strategic paralysis, though that appears unlikely, notwithstanding election-eve changes in White House rhetoric. Congress could force a stock-taking. Failing this, the public will sooner or later see through all of the White House's double talk and compel a radical policy change. The price for delay, however, will be more lives lost in vain — the only thing worse than the lives already lost in vain.

Some lawmakers are ready to change course but are puzzled as to how to leave Iraq. The answer is four major initiatives to provide regional stability and calm in Iraq. They will leave the U.S. less influential in the region. But it will be the best deal we can get.

• First, the U.S. must concede that it has botched things, cannot stabilize the region alone and must let others have a say in what's next. As U.S. forces begin to withdraw, Washington must invite its European allies, as well as Japan, China and India, to make their own proposals for dealing with the aftermath. Russia can be ignored because it will play a spoiler role in any case.
  
  Rapid troop withdrawal and abandoning unilateralism will have a sobering effect on all interested parties. Al Qaeda will celebrate but find that its only current allies, Iraqi Baathists and Sunnis, no longer need or want it. Iran will crow but soon begin to worry that its Kurdish minority may want to join Iraqi Kurdistan and that Iraqi Baathists might make a surprising comeback.
  
  Although European leaders will probably try to take the lead in designing a new strategy for Iraq, they will not be able to implement it. This is because they will not allow any single European state to lead, the handicap they faced in trying to cope with Yugoslavia's breakup in the 1990s. Nor will Japan, China or India be acceptable as a new coalition leader. The U.S. could end up as the leader of a new strategic coalition — but only if most other states recognize this fact and invite it to do so.


• The second initiative is to create a diplomatic forum for Iraq's neighbors. Iran, of course, must be included. Washington should offer to convene the forum but be prepared to step aside if other members insist.


• Third, the U.S. must informally cooperate with Iran in areas of shared interests. Nothing else could so improve our position in the Middle East. The price for success will include dropping U.S. resistance to Iran's nuclear weapons program. This will be as distasteful for U.S. leaders as cutting and running, but it is no less essential. That's because we do share vital common interests with Iran. We both want to defeat Al Qaeda and the Taliban (Iran hates both). We both want stability in Iraq (Iran will have influence over the Shiite Iraqi south regardless of what we do, but neither Washington nor Tehran want chaos). And we can help each other when it comes to oil: Iran needs our technology to produce more oil, and we simply need more oil.
  
  Accepting Iran's nuclear weapons is a small price to pay for the likely benefits. Moreover, its nuclear program will proceed whether we like it or not. Accepting it might well soften Iran's support for Hezbollah, and it will definitely undercut Russia's pernicious influence with Tehran.


• Fourth, real progress must be made on the Palestinian issue as a foundation for Middle East peace. The invasion of Iraq and the U.S. tilt toward Israel have dangerously reduced Washington's power to broker peace or to guarantee Israel's security. We now need Europe's help. And good relations with Iran would help dramatically.

No strategy can succeed without these components. We must cut and run tactically in order to succeed strategically. The United States needs to restore its reputation so that its capacity to lead constructively will cost us less.

Realpolitik -vs- Neoconservatism

Jettison the Dogma of Democracy

Zbigniew Brzezinski made a distinction on the News Hour last night, discussing the difference of the President's prepared statement and his utterances during the following Q & A when he went off script.

During Bush's scripted statement, Brzezinski observed, there was less mention of 'elected government' and 'democracy' and more mention of a government which can stand up and control its territory. Jim Lehrer's moderated discussion went like this:

Zbigniew Brzezinski:

I don't view this yet as the beginning of a significant change of policy, but rather as the beginning of a condition that I characterize as a state of denial.

That is to say, it's black and white, and we are winning, and we're going to have a victory, and the victory is defined in traditional terms: a secular, stable, democratic Iraq. Notice his definition of victory today, much more, much more limited, more or less a self-sustaining government in Iraq that can govern the country. That's a very different definition of success.

Walter Russell Mead:

Yes. And, in fact, last week we talked about the same point, that the word "democratic" has dropped out of his victory conditions, and there's much more talk of "stability."

If there's any validity in this, there might be intramural battle going on where the Scowcroft-Baker conservatives are trying to wrench Bush-Cheney back out of the control of the Neoconservatives and say:

Regime change means any thug other than Saddam Hussein (and his sons) installed in Baghdad.

Which is what it shoulda-coulda-woulda have been all along. But oh, no. The Neocons have had this dogma of democracy. Natan Sharansky told them it's the silver bullet solution to "islamofascism" and just look how many bullets have been expended.

Iraq-Nam

Who's spinning whom on Vietnam analogy?

by Tim Rutten Los Angeles Times

To play American politics, you've got to be able to spin a story. What separates the major league pitching from the minor league stuff in this game is backspin — that unseen twist that sends the story in an unexpected but advantageous direction as it whirls through the news cycle.

Confronted with another week of appalling casualties in Iraq, plummeting public support for the war and with the midterm elections just weeks away, President Bush put on a fairly nifty exhibition of professional quality backspin this week, all the more so because almost nobody got it at the time.

During a televised interview Wednesday, ABC's George Stephanopoulos asked Bush what he thought of a newspaper column comparing the upsurge in insurgent attacks during the ongoing Ramadan holidays with the communist forces' 1968 Tet offensive in Vietnam. The president mused that the analogy

could be right. . . . there's certainly a stepped-up level of violence, and we're heading into an election…. My gut tells me that they have all along been trying to inflict enough damage that we would leave.

Half a world away and 48 hours later, the key sentence in the president's response received a strong second, when reporters received an unusually candid briefing on the failure of current U.S. efforts to secure something like a reasonably stable situation in Baghdad. Speaking for the American military commanders in Iraq, Maj. Gen. William B. Caldwell IV — who formerly led the 82nd Airborne — told reporters that

it's no coincidence that the surge in attacks against coalition forces and the subsequent increase in U.S. casualties coincide with our increased presence in the streets of Baghdad and the run-up to the American midterm elections. The enemy knows that killing innocent people and Americans will garner headlines and create a sense of frustration.

Many commentators critical of the war rushed in after Bush's initial remarks to describe them as a rare admission of error. In fact, they were nothing of the kind. In classic reverse spin, the president was sending two messages — one designed to rally a key component of the Republicans' electoral base, the other a warning shot across the bow of the American news media as they weigh their reports on the bloody events in the shadow of what is shaping up as a critical congressional election.

To understand just how Bush spun this particular pitch, you have to recall that Tet occupies a particular prominence among the revisionist lessons drawn from the Vietnam debacle by the GOP's neoconservative wing. In recent months, many neocons have become increasingly dispirited and, more important, critical of the Defense Department's conduct of the war in Iraq. They're the troops the president hoped to rally by subtly reminding them of their long-held belief that the war in Southeast Asia was lost because, in their view, the American press corps became a functional fifth column after the Tet offensive.

Even a casual look around the conservative press and the right-wing recesses of the blogosphere this week demonstrated that Bush had the measure of this part of his intended audience.

The New York Sun's Daniel Freedman, for example, wrote that Iraq is not

like Vietnam as the antiwar movement likes to say — i.e. a failure…. The reality is America only lost [in Southeast Asia] because the political leadership lost the resolve to back the troops…. The crucial part now is to ensure American troops aren't abandoned as in Vietnam.

One influential pro-war blogger wrote that

when President Bush 'accepts' the analogy of the surge in violence in Iraq to the Tet offensive in Vietnam, he is not 'accepting' that Iraq is an unwinnable struggle against a noble enemy. He is saying that victory or defeat in Iraq will not be a function of the amount of violence that the enemy is able to do during any given period but our will to keep fighting notwithstanding that violence. In that one regard, Iraq is dangerously similar to Vietnam, which fact the mainstream media would know if the typical editor read military history instead of the journalism pretending to be history that fills the bestseller lists.

To this commentator, the real history goes like this:

At the time the media perceived and promoted the Tet offensive as a great victory for the enemy. In an age when the network anchors deployed truly awesome power, Walter Cronkite destroyed Lyndon Johnson's chances for reelection when he editorialized that we were 'mired in stalemate.'

President Johnson declared, 'If I've lost Cronkite, I've lost middle America,' and withdrew from the 1968 presidential campaign.

Another highly partisan Republican Internet commentator argued that Peter Braestrup's 1977 book "Big Story" should be "required reading in every journalism school. Braestrup's long subtitle is a little dry: 'How the American Press and Television Reported and Interpreted the Crisis of Tet 1968 in Vietnam and Washington.' But his analysis was memorable. Braestrup showed that the press blew the story of the Tet offensive, portraying a major American battlefield victory as a disaster. In the introduction to the 1994 edition of his book, Braestrup characterized the coverage as

an unusual media malfunction . . . on a scale that helped shaped Tet's repercussions in Washington and the Administration's response.

The commentator went on to quote an approving review of Braestrup's book:

'A politicized press speaking the language of news is an instrument of propaganda, and such an institution does not foster democracy, but erodes it.'

It is an observation that bears on the media's treatment of President Bush's comment itself.
That brings us to the nub of the message Bush and his supporters are trying to deliver to the American press, as it brings its readers and viewers news of Iraq, where the American death toll is rocketing inexorably toward 3,000. That message is a warning: The U.S. media are being used by the insurgents and their allies among the jihadis. Pipe down or risk being held responsible for undercutting support for our troops, giving aid and comfort to our country's enemies and assistance to the administration's political opponents.

Baloney.

The Bush administration's problems in Iraq have nothing to do with public relations and everything to do with the facts.

American voters — a substantial majority of whom now recognize the war in Iraq as a mistake — will make their own decisions in November, but the real lesson concerning the American failure in Southeast Asia that the news media ought to hold in mind over and against all criticism — no matter how adroitly it's spun — can be summed up in one word:

Quagmire.

Remember how vociferously and for how long every member of this administration bristled at any reporter who dared to connect that word to Iraq in their presence? Any journalist who raised the possibility of any analogy to Vietnam in any of the administration's briefings received a contemptuous reply.

If a truly just Providence presides over our moral universe, then Donald Rumsfeld's private purgatory will require him to write that word on a cosmic blackboard until the smirk drops from Dick Cheney's face.

Q-U-A-G-M-I-R-E.

Rummy's Got a Plan

He may not know how to get our troops out of Iraq, but he's got a personal escape plan: he'll just escapegoat out! Just like Paul Wolfowitz.

Sally Quinn (Washington Post):
Thursday, October 19, 2006

Don Rumsfeld is the shrewdest person in Washington. He understands better than anyone that somebody has to be in line to take the blame when things go wrong. So far he has been willing to do so. But not much longer.

The drumbeat to get him out of the Pentagon has reached deafening proportions. Republicans and Democrats, the generals, the media, Colin Powell, Condi Rice, Andy Card, the first President Bush, and even Laura Bush all want him gone. Until now George W. Bush has resisted all of the pressure to get rid of his defense secretary. But those in the know say that the president may have reached the point where he realizes that Rumsfeld has outlived his usefulness.

Still, the president must be aware on some level that once the pugnacious, outspoken and flak-attracting Rumsfeld leaves the stage, the focus will be on the president. Whether Bush realizes it or not, this is about a scapegoat.

In the Bible, the high priest would transfer the sins of the people onto a goat, and, as it was written,

the goat shall carry all the sins of the people into a land where no one lives, and the man shall let it loose in the wilderness.

(The word for scapegoat in Hebrew means, literally, "into hell.")

. . . . It is hard for the American people to turn completely against the president. It seems tantamount to patricide. We're much more comfortable being able to blame someone else for the president's mistakes. Laura Bush will never be the scapegoat. For now, it's Rumsfeld.

Vice President Cheney is not eager to replace him. And he would never fire Rumsfeld, who was his mentor and who hired him for three government jobs during the Ford administration, including as his deputy when Rumsfeld was chief of staff. (In fact, Cheney's Secret Service code name was "Back Seat.") In any event, Cheney is low-profile, secretive, nonconfrontational -- and presumably too experienced to allow himself to be easily made the scapegoat. But if Rumsfeld goes, the attention and criticism can be directed only to Cheney, or to Bush.

And it's improbable that Rumsfeld can last. He may not have an exit strategy for Iraq, but, old Washington hand that he is, he undoubtedly has one for himself.

I suspect that he has already told the president and Cheney that he will leave after the midterm elections, saying that the country needs new leadership to wind down the war. And he will resign to take a job in some sort of humanitarian venture, thereby creating the perception that he is a caring person who left of his own accord to devote the rest of his life to good works.

Bush and Cheney, who don't want him gone, will then have to contend with the reality of the new situation: One goat must be sent off into the wilderness. Who will it be?

Do The Sunnis Want to Negotiate? (Part II)

Iraq rebels say they will only negotiate with US

Iraqi calling himself Abdel Rahman Abu Khula said his movement, a group of former Baath party officials and army officers known as the Islamic Army, would not meet the Iraqi government.

In reality, we only negotiate with the ruling power in
Iraq and that is the occupier," he said. "Today it is us and the Americans who are controlling the situation in Iraq.

The Americans have now decided to talk with us due to the escalation of our heroic deeds and the development of our explosives technology for use against their vehicles and bases.

There have been repeated rumours about contacts between the Iraqi government or US forces and the more nationalist elements of the insurgency, but no US official has ever confirmed talks with armed Baathists.

Abu Khula was at pains to distance his group, which is made up of largely secular former regime elements, from Islamist insurgent outfits such as Al-Qaeda and Ansar al-Sunna, which are known for attacks targeting civilians. claiming that Baathists and Saddamists are often wrongfully blamed for atrocities, he said,

The brothers in Al-Qaeda and Ansar al-Sunna use explosions as part of their strategies.

We do not target Iraqis, even their animals. We only target those with links to the foreigners and against Iraqis. We chop off their heads.

The leaders of many of the Sunni Arab tribes which met on Sunday also criticized Al-Qaeda and other religious groups for provoking divisions in the resistance and attacking members of their tribes.

In the past three years of insurgency against US-led forces, rifts have often appeared between elements of the resistance made up of the regime's former security apparatus and religiously-minded groups linked to Al-Qaeda. These disputes have occasionally broken out into open conflict between the two arms of the insurgency -- something US military commanders are privately encouraged by.

In the western province of Al-Anbar, the hostility to Al-Qaeda linked groups erupted into a full scale tribal onslaught called the Anbar Awakening, which was hailed by the government.

A meeting of 500 tribal chiefs and representatives featured self-declared former Baath leaders who were less concerned with fighting Al-Qaeda than restoring their deposed president. Abu Bassem, who said he was a Baath leader, said:

This gathering is to unify the Arab tribes in the face of the occupation and its agents and to struggle against those who would divide the Iraqi people.

Supporters waved portraits of Saddam and called for his release, calling him the "legitimate" president. Saddam himself appealed for the insurgency to be "just and fair" to the Iraqi people, in a note delivered by his lawyer Khalil al-Dulaimi revealed on Monday:

Resistance against the invaders is a right and a duty. Do not forget that your goal is to liberate your country from the invaders and their followers and is not a settling of accounts outside this goal.

AFP

Do The Sunnis Want to Negotiate?

Ibrahim al-Shimmari, a purported spokesman for a Sunni insurgent group, the Islamic Army in Iraq, offered to open negotiations with the Americans in an audiotape aired by Al-Jazeera television on Thursday.

A translation of Dr. Al-Shammari's response follows:

As for the issue of negotiating with the enemies, the issue of armistice, and the issue of peace, all of these issues are legitimately permissible; while the case as in the current state of war with the Crusaders and sectarians, it is a legitimate duty to defend the religion, people, and the land. In principle, we are not against negotiating with enemies if the other party is serious. In my previous interview with Al-Jazirah channel, I mentioned the conditions as viewed by the Islamic Army in Iraq group so that the negotiations may be fruitful. These views are:

1. The US Congress should issue a bill obligating the US administration to pull the US forces out of Iraq. While many question the wisdom behind this particular condition, we mentioned it in the context that there is no one among the international powers capable of forcing the US government to pull out of Iraq but its constitutional agencies, at the time when the international institutions like the UN Security Council and the UN have turned into a servicing agency attached to the US Department of State. Give the US what is desired of pre-fabricated resolutions to use as a pretext for launching its preemptive wars, or provide a facade for its ugly wars that have no legal grounds approved by the international community, such as the invasion of Iraq. We should not forget that it was the US Congress that issued the bill for liberating Iraq in 1998. It should also be mentioned that the continuous interest on the part of some elements in the Congress working to issue such a bill was a right step in the right direction. There are some efforts to prevent President Bush from establishing permanent bases in Iraq, which is another right step in the right direction.

2. The US government should recognize the Iraqi resistance as the sole legitimate representative of the Iraqi people, because right after the war, all of the Iraqi state's institutions crumbled and the legitimate government was ended. It is natural that the Iraqi resistance is the best to represent the Iraqi people, as it is the case in the whole world when a country falls under occupation. Why should Iraq be an exception to that rule, which the whole world adheres to when dealing with states falling under occupation.

These two items are the principle conditions upon which any successful negotiations depend, and under which other conditions could be subservient, like apologizing to the Iraqi people about the occupation, indemnifying for private and public properties, and setting free all prisoners and others. The peace process needs long and sound steps in the direction of the desired objective. If the US is serious about negotiations, we will be more serious, and ready to conduct any kind of negotiations overt or covert, the only exception is credibility. We do not object to intermediaries with international credibility in this regard. We also may exchange official memos and we do not object to secrecy.

More Troops?

Quotes from the Baltimore Sun

Anthony H. Cordesman:

We keep confusing troop levels with the fact that there was no plan for stability operations, no commitment in terms of aid, no understanding of the political challenges.

The critical mistake wasn't one of troop levels, although I think if there had been a plan it would have called for significantly more troops and a longer troop presence.

Besides the question of the number of deployed troops is the question as to whether their presence

is buying the time for reconciliation and effective governance and building the kind of Iraqi security forces that can take over the job - or not. This is a very high-risk operation where the odds of success are even at best.

Michael O'Hanlon, military analyst at the Brookings Institution in Washington, says arguing over troop levels in Iraq

is a nice debate to have, but it doesn't have a bearing on the real world. . . we don't have that option.

because The military is already under such strain.

Thomas E. Ricks, author of Fiasco, a best-selling history of the war.

The time for more American troops is clearly over. . . There aren't any more troops available.