Where is Bandar Bush when the world needs him?
In two current New York Times analyses, the think-for-yourself conservative David Brooks points out that Iraq is now in the pre-Darfur, pre-Rwanda, pre-Bosnia phase of the coming bloodbath.
Brooks writes, “Iraq already has the psychological conditions that have undergirded the great bloodbaths of recent years. Iraqi minds, according to the most sensitive reporting, have already been rewired by the experiences of trauma and extreme stress.
"Some people become hyperaggressive and turn into perfect killers. Others endure a phased mental shutdown that looks like severe depression. They lose their memory and become passive and fatalistic. They become perfect victims.” (http://select.nytimes.com/2007/01/25/opinion/25brooks.html?th&emc=th)
The solution is a “soft partition” of Iraq.
Brooks outlines a 4-step plan including (1) modify the Iraq Constitution, which already decentralizes power, to equitably share oil and gas revenue; (2) get implicit consent from all sects that separation and federalism are in their interest; (3) relocate people into Shia, Sunni and Kurdish districts as was done successfully in Bosnia; (4) get Iraq’s neighbors – who have everything to lose in the coming transnational bloodbath – to buy into the arrangement. (http://select.nytimes.com/2007/01/28/opinion/28brooks.html?hp)
Brooks concludes: "In short, logic, circumstances and politics are leading inexorably toward soft partition. The Bush administration has been slow to recognize its virtues because it is too dependent on the Green Zone Iraqis. The Iraqis talk about national unity but their behavior suggests they want decentralization. Sooner or later, everybody will settle on this sensible policy, having exhausted all the alternatives."
But does anyone think Bush-Cheney will actually plan this or just pretend it isn't happening and screw this up, too? And where are Iraq's neighbors in all this? If a transnational bloodbath is a possibility; if “failure is unthinkable” as Bush said in his State of the Union; then why aren't Iraq’s neighbors, many of them our allies, stepping up and offering to help? Where is Bandar Bush when the world – and George W – need him most?
Labels: bloodbath, Bush, Iran, Iraq, Jordan, partition, Saudi
A plan to fail, following a failure to plan
President George W. Bush is sending 17,500 more people to Baghdad. I agree that now that Bush has our tit in their wringer, we should do what we can to overcome the myriad disasters there. But Bush's half-measure, hell, quarter-measure, will fail. Period. After failing to plan, Bush now offers a plan to fail. The only potentially winning MILITARY strategy is the Powell Doctrine, and now that Bush and Clinton have reduced the size of the standing army, that would require an FDR-like mobilization of the full resources of the United States of America and its people. Not gonna happen? Right. Because George W. Bush correctly says that the stakes are huge, Western civilization hangs in the balance, and then Bush antes only enough to lose. The best alternative is a POLITICAL strategy like the one advocated by the Iraq Study Group with emphasis on engaging regional neighbors, forcing political compromises within Iraq, phased troop withdrawals and an serious, renewed effort to achieve an Israeli-Palestinian peace.
We will have to wait till 2009 for what we hope will be a strong, intelligent (A-student), inspiring leader to reassess the whole Mideast mess and devise a long-term, full-throated strategy involving the entire country.
Labels: Bush, Iraq, Mideast, Powell, surge
Irony Redeux: Carney heads Iraq reconstruction
The State Department announced on January 10, 2007, that Timothy Carney, a retired Foreign Service officer who served as a senior civilian American authority in Iraq for three months in 2003, is the new coordinator for Iraq reconstruction.
Carney is no stranger to working amid political instability and conflict. After graduating from MIT in 1966 and joining the State Department, Carney, who speaks Cambodian, Thai and French, was posted to Vietnam and Cambodia during the Indochina War, and Lesotho and South Africa before the end of apartheid.
As part of a number of United Nations missions, he was the senior American on UNTAC in Cambodia from March 1992-August 1993; then in Somalia for UNOSOM II from December 1993-February 1994 (just after U.S. military's 1993 campaign to capture Somali warlord Mohamed Farrah Aidid – a period captured in Ridley Scott’s movie Black Hawk Down); and in South Africa with UNOMSA from March-June 1994 for Nelson Mandela's election.
Most significantly, Carney was Ambassador to Sudan from 1995-97 and is the last accredited U.S. Ambassador there. Why? Because, in Carney’s words, “In early 1996, CIA director John Deutch convinced Secretary of State Warren Christopher to pull U.S. diplomats out of Sudan out of fear for their safety. His anxiety was based on intelligence that implicated the Sudanese government.”
“Soon afterward,” Carney wrote in the Washington Post in June, 2002, “the CIA figured out that its analysis was wrong. A key source had either embellished or wholly fabricated information, and in early 1996 the agency scrapped more than 100 of its reports on Sudan. Did the State Department then send its diplomats back? No. The bad intelligence had taken on a life of its own.”
In the Post article Carney concludes, “Whether hunting terrorists in Afghanistan, judging the integrity of Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat, mediating a dispute between India and Pakistan, or contemplating the virtue of an attack on Iraq, the Bush administration has given great weight to the content of U.S. (and sometimes foreign) intelligence reports. As the United States wages war on terrorism and Congress reorganizes and bolsters U.S. intelligence agencies, the influence of intelligence on foreign and military policy will only grow.
"But American policymakers have to be intelligent about using intelligence. The story of U.S. policy in Sudan shows how bad intelligence -- or good intelligence badly used -- can damage U.S. interests. In Sudan, it confused us about political Islam, hurt our ability to intervene in the 47-year-old Sudanese civil war, and in 1996 undermined our best chance ever to capture Osama bin Laden and strangle his organization, before he was expelled from Sudan and found his way to Afghanistan.
We write from experience.”
Pity George Bush was not listening to Carney before invading Iraq and creating the mess Carney now hopes to help unwind.
Labels: Carney, Iraq, Irony, Sudan
