What one hand giveth....

Iran has offered to cooperate with the United States in Iraq, and hosted a conference with Iraqi and Syrian leaders to discuss ways to stabilize the country. Iran's president has also written a letter to the American people urging peace and cooperation.

Meanwhile, the other hand has been busy:

U.S. officials say they have found smoking-gun evidence of Iranian support for terrorists in Iraq: brand-new weapons fresh from Iranian factories. According to a senior defense official, coalition forces have recently seized Iranian-made weapons and munitions that bear manufacturing dates in 2006.

This suggests, say the sources, that the material is going directly from Iranian factories to Shia militias, rather than taking a roundabout path through the black market. "There is no way this could be done without (Iranian) government approval," says a senior official.

This goes along with previous reports that Shiite militiamen have traveled to Lebanon to receive training from Hezbollah, the Iranian-backed militia that recently fought a short war with Israel.

These actions are not necessarily contradictory, nor even evidence that Iran is lying or is acting in bad faith. Helping an adversary dig themselves into a hole before offering to help them out of it makes perfect sense; it increases your leverage and raises the price you can exact for your help.

What they do point out is the urgency with which we must address the problem. Through confrontation or cooperation or some combination, the Iranian role in fomenting instability in Iraq must be dealt with. Because their ability to stir trouble far exceeds our ability to tamp it down.

Our options are few. There's no real way to stop the flow of arms or training without widening the war to include Iran -- a prospect that enjoys roughly zero support here at home. Never mind that such a move would by no means be a sure thing; Iran has three times the population of Iraq, a military that hasn't been sapped by years of sanctions, and some truly rugged terrain to fight in.

Galling as it may be, I predict we eventually will have no choice but to play ball with Iran. Unless we simply leave, in which case Iran also wins, because it is in the best position to pick up the pieces and expand its influence in the region.

Either way, it looks like we'll be witness to an ultimate irony: that our invasion of Iraq ended up strengthening one of the regimes we identified as part of the "Axis of Evil" when this whole thing started. That may turn out to be the ultimate legacy of Bush's foreign policy.

terrorism, Iraq, Iran, politics, midtopia

China's global reach

China, obviously, will be our strongest long-term competitor in the world, both economically and militarily. But the form that competition will take isn't always clear.

A lot of alarmists like to point to China's growing military muscle. They're modernizing their army and air force, expanding their navy and improving their missile technology.

But while the numbers can be impressive, most people overestimate China's military strength because they underestimate the effects of technology and the more prosaic arts of transport and logistics, both of which fall under the heading of "force projection."

Let's look at technology. China's air force, for example, contains about 2,000 fighters, bombers and attack planes, and is being modernized. But as you may notice from the link, that's largely because obsolete planes are being dropped from the inventory, not because large numbers of advanced planes are being added. And the technology of those "advanced" planes still trails ours by a generation or more. The backbone of its fighter fleet, for instance, remains the MiG-21, a design that is more than 50 years old.

Similarly, the Chinese navy is trying to build the first Chinese aircraft carrier. Sounds impressive until you realize it's based on the never-finished hull of an old Soviet carrier, the 67,500-ton Varyag. Meanwhile, we've got 12 carrier battle groups, built around 100,000-ton Nimitz-class and CVN-21 ships. That doesn't even count the various minicarriers we've got, like our amphibious assault ships.

And while the Chinese Army musters an impressive 2 million or so, it's mostly infantry, without decent transportation options. And their heavy units are armed with largely obsolete tanks and artillery.

Where does force projection come in? Well, in order to fight a war in the Middle East, for example, a military needs to be able to get the troops there and then supply them with food, ammunition and equipment. That takes a staggering number of ships, airplanes and trucks, not to mention the warships, fighter planes and security troops needed to protect the supply routes.

It's such a staggering job that there is currently only one country with the ability to fight a war anywhere in the world: the United States. China may be growing powerful, but they simply are unable to invade, say, Canada. And they will remain unable to project serious force for a long, long time.

So militarily, China poses only a regional threat. Fight in the Mideast? We win. Fight in countries neighboring China? More of an even match, with quality and long supply lines squaring off against quantity and short supply lines. Invade China? We lose. The initial fighting aside, there's simply no plausible way to occupy and pacify 1.3 billion people.

But if China isn't a serious military threat, it still poses an interesting economic and diplomatic challenge.

There is no way that China can provide a U.S.-style standard of living to all of its people. 300 million Americans consume a quarter of global GDP doing so; lifting 1.3 billion Chinese to that level would take more than the global economy currently provides.

But the Chinese leadership is sitting on a powder keg of divisions: ethnic, regional, rich/poor, rural/urban, coastal/interior. China may look solid, but it's really more of an unstable empire than a unified nation.

That empire is held together with a promise: As long as nobody challenges the ascendancy of the Communist Party, they will provide improved standards of living. The populace has essentially agreed to trade political freedom for economic freedom.

But if the Party cannot keep holding up its end of the bargain -- and it can't, as I explained above -- that agreement will come into question.

So even though it's impossible to keep raising living standards, the Party will try for as long as possible. And that will take resources -- a staggering amount of it.

We've already seen some of the effect of this policy: bottomless Chinese demand has driven up prices for a range of commodities, from oil to steel to shipping. We can expect that to continue into the future, raising the prospect of regional conflicts over scarce resources.

Beyond that, though, Chinese diplomacy is shaping up as a tool China uses to secure the resources it needs to fuel its growth. And that is posing challenges to our interests that go beyond economics.

For instance, China appears to be well on its way to supplanting the West as the biggest aid provider to Africa. How is it doing it? By being cheerfully amoral about how and with who it does business. The West tends to tie aid to structural reform, like transparency, rule of law, elimination of corruption. There are many cogent criticisms of this approach -- not least that it sometimes hurts more than it helps, at least in the short term -- but at least it is attempting to reform broken systems.

China, by contrast, simply doesn't care. They've signed aid and construction agreements with a range of corrupt African governments, pouring billions into the continent, all for two things: business for Chinese companies, and building relationships with countries that have resources China will need in the future.

So China is rebalancing the world. Countries rich in natural resources suddenly find themselves with more negotiating power, as they can play China and the West off against each other while enjoying high prices for their exports thanks to the increased demand.

It can be viewed as a positive thing to see power shift from the developed countries to the Third World. But it can also be viewed less benignly, as power shifting from generally transparent and democratic economies to generally corrupt ones, overseen by tyrants, with very few of the benefits trickling down to the general populace.

That's how the world operated for much of human history, of course. But whatever damage China's rise may do to our own interests, the greatest loss may be the bungled opportunity to reshape the world in a way that increases justice and human happiness.

It may be inevitable. That "opportunity" might have been ephemeral, judged against the long march of history. But as the world plunges back into a modern version of the Great Game -- where the United States and China, along with Europe and possibly India, vie for economic and military supremacy around the globe -- it pays to reflect on how we need to adjust our goals and tactics. Not simply to survive and remain relevant, but also to see if we can achieve some part of that vision even as we compete, bare-knuckled, with a country that doesn't seem to share it.

Africa, China, politics, midtopia

Anyone want Syrian help?

It comes down to who you believe, and what you think their motives are.

Syria yesterday offered to help stem the violence in Iraq, a move that Iran supported by inviting Syrian and Iraqi leaders to a conference in Tehran.
Good news, right? Well, it depends on how you view those two countries.

There's no doubt that Syria and Iran could be influential in quelling the violence in Iraq, since they both have bases of support in the country and their borders contain the infiltration routes that insurgents use for supplies and recruits.

It also seems logical that both have an interest in stabilizing the situation before the violence spills over their borders.

But the United States has accused both Syria and Iran of helping to stir up the violence in the first place, and both are major supporters of Hezbollah, which besides vowing the destruction of Israel has proven to be a major destabilizing force in Lebanon.

In addition, we have WMD-related concerns with both countries -- and you can be certain that Syria and Iran will seek slack on those matters in return for cooperation.

And while both countries may be interested in a stable Iraq, they're not particularly keen on a powerful or democratic Iraq, either of which could end up working against their long-term interests.

So when weighing their offer, a lot of variables get factored in: How sincere are they? Should they be rewarded for stirring up trouble in the first place? How much slack are we willing to give them on WMDs and Hezbollah? What final result are they really working for? How badly do we need their help? How do we judge whether they're fulfilling their end of the bargain?

However it turns out, we should certainly be talking to them. Anything that might reduce outside support for the violence should be pursued. But this is just another example of the complexity of diplomacy in the Middle East, where everyone shares a link or an interest with everyone else, even mortal enemies, and sifting out the reality from the blandishments can be maddeningly difficult.

And perhaps it will serve as one more reminder of the deadly naivete with which the war in Iraq was planned and pursued, where "they'll welcome us with flowers" constituted almost the entirety of postwar planning, revealing a shocking ignorance of the many forces at work in the region.

While I disagreed with the premise for Iraq, I don't have a fundamental problem with the idea of taking down really bad rulers simply because they are really bad. But next time -- if there is a next time -- I hope that at least we go in with our eyes open. If so, then maybe learning that lesson is one silver lining of the Iraq debacle.

Syria, Iran, Iraq, politics, midtopia

Back to Iran

All the election excitement has taken some of the spotlight off of Iran in recent weeks. But things are heating up over there. A recap:

Both Iran and Syria have said they're willing to enter into talks with the United States over Iraq, though their sincerity is open to question.

Democrats support direct talks with the two. But the administration's response was curt: Talk is cheap. It insists Syria must first stop harboring militant Palestinians and meddling in Iraq and Lebanon, while Iran must freeze its nuclear activities.

Speaking of which, UN inspectors found traces of plutonium and enriched uranium in an Iranian waste facility, yet more evidence of Iranian ambitions in that area.

So where does it all leave us? The preconditions on Syria are a bit silly, seeing as how achieving those actions would be the whole point of talks. Just talk already. If they go nowhere, we're no worse off than we were before. Removing Syrian support for Hezbollah would be worth the sort of concessions they're likely to demand, notably security guarantees, warmer diplomatic ties and the launch of a peace process with Israel that could lead to the return of captured Syrian territory.

An excellent article on the subject is in the current issue of Foreign Affairs, though you need a subscription to read the whole thing.

Iran's a bit of a different case, because they've stalled long enough over demands they either abandon their nuclear program or make it far less proliferation-friendly. A harder line, with screws applied, is appropriate there. But a lot depends on how badly we want Iranian help in Iraq. Iran wields its regional influence as a bargaining chip, and if we bleed enough in Iraq, it may be a chip we need to buy.

Our best bet there is to maintain a hard line on the nuclear issue: Iran must not get the impression they can wear us down on that, or stall for an appreciable length of time. Meanwhile, dangle a few carrots -- not just direct tit-for-tat arrangements in return for nuclear pliancy, but signaling our willingness to deal favorably on a range of issues if Iran abandons its nuclear ambitions and helps out in Iraq.

What sort of issues? Improved diplomatic and political ties, technological exchanges, an affirmation of Iran's role in the region, economic agreements -- the list of possible inducements is a long one.

By combining an unwavering opposition to a nuclear-armed Iran with a reasonable deadline for compliance, we ensure the nuclear question will be resolved, one way or the other, before Iran gets the bomb. By offering fair and generous carrots as well as the unsmiling stick, we give Iran all sorts of positive inducements to cooperate. The key is to make continuing to pursue a bomb an unattractive option, while providing them a face-saving way to abandon that pursuit.

Iraq, nuclear, Syria, Iran, politics, midtopia

American credibility eroding

I can't say I'm surprised at this, but this report says America's image problem is getting worse.

In increasing numbers, people around the globe resent American power and wealth and reject specific actions like the occupation of Iraq and the campaign against democratically elected Palestinian leaders, in-depth international polling shows.

America's image problem is pervasive, deep and perhaps permanent, analysts say -- an inevitable outcome of being the world's only superpower.

But there is worse news. In the past, while Europeans and Asians and Arabs might have disliked American policies or specific U.S. leaders, they liked and admired Americans themselves.

Polls now show an ominous turn. Majorities around the world think Americans are greedy, violent and rude, and fewer than half in countries like Poland, Spain, Canada, China and Russia think Americans are honest.

"We found a rising antipathy toward Americans," said Bruce Stokes of the Pew Global Attitudes Project, which interviewed 93,000 people in 50 countries over a four-year time span.

Lots of people, myself included, have pointed to this as one of the main drawbacks to the Bush administration's go-it-alone foreign policy. Fighting an enemy as amorphous as terrorism requires international cooperation. Bush's first term was marked by constant and at times deliberate snubbing of both proven and potential allies, with the invasion of Iraq marking a pinnacle of sorts. That not only squandered good will; it damaged our ability to track terrorists and deny them safe havens.

Keeping the peace, winning the war on terrorism and other critical goals are achievable "only if people like you and trust you," said Andrew Kohut, director of the Pew Research Center.

Kind of a "duh" moment, you'd think. But this administration has only belatedly realized it. Now even our allies aren't thrilled with us.

Almost half of those polled in Britain, France and Germany dispute the whole concept of a global war on terrorism, and a majority of Europeans believe the invasion of Iraq was a mistake. More than two-thirds of Germans, French and Turks believe American leaders lied about the reasons for war and believe the United States is less trustworthy than it once was.

What bothers me is that the study says the problem isn't just Bush; many foreigners have come to believe that the problem is Americans themselves. So it will take more than one election to overcome that.

Obviously, we shouldn't focus solely on winning popularity contests. Sometimes the right thing or the necessary thing isn't the popular thing. But we also shouldn't go out of our way to antagonize other countries, as we have done; we shouldn't appear to be hypocrites, as we have done; and we should listen with an open mind to what other countries have to say, even if we don't always heed their advice. That's what builds bridges and creates allies instead of enemies.

Bush, diplomacy, foreign policy, politics, midtopia

Allies? Who needs allies?

EU investigators have uncovered more than 1,000 secret CIA flights in Europe, and accused several governments -- notably Italy, Bosnia and Sweden -- of knowing about the flights and doing nothing, in violation of European human rights treaties.

The flights were part of the practice of "extraordinary rendition", in which terror suspects are transferred to countries where they are likely to be tortured.

This doesn't answer the question of whether the CIA secret prisons exist:

The investigation began in January after news reports that U.S. agents had interrogated al-Qaida suspects at secret prisons in eastern Europe. But the focus shifted after people gave detailed accounts of being abducted by U.S. agents in Europe and whisked away to jails in the Middle East, Asia and North Africa.

Few of those who testified at the committee hearings touched on the alleged secret prisons in eastern Europe first reported by The Washington Post in November. Italian lawmaker Giovanni Fava, who wrote the report, said the committee would look into those allegations later.

So as part of our war on terror, we (and possibly a few European countries) ignored European law and the niceties of sovereignity. With the result that now we have a freshly cheesed-off Europe. And all for what? So we could torture some terrorists.

Scratch that. Some suspected terrorists:

The officials, who agreed to discuss the operations only if not quoted by name, said the action was reserved for people considered by the CIA to be the most serious terror suspects. But they conceded mistakes had been made and were being investigated by the CIA's inspector general.

"Gee, we're sorry we mistakenly rendered you for torture. Please accept our apologies for the pain, suffering and lifelong disabilities. You can take comfort in the fact that some of the people responsible might be secretly reprimanded."

When will the administration learn that successfully fighting terror involves courting allies instead of alienating them? And that winning the "war of ideas" means living our ideals and values, instead of violating them in secret and hoping we never get caught?

CIA, rendition, terrorism, politics, midtopia

Hamas muffs its chance

From an editorial in the Toronto Globe and Mail:

The Hamas-led government issued no such condemnation. To the contrary, Khaled Abu Helal, spokesman for the Interior Ministry, said the Israelis had brought the attack on themselves, calling it the "direct result of the policy of the occupation and the brutal aggression and siege committed against our people." Sami Abu Zuhri, a Hamas spokesman, said "the resistance is a legal and natural reaction to the Israeli crimes, and the Palestinian people have the right to defend themselves."

The attack was carried out by Islamic Jihad, not Hamas, which has declared a moratorium on suicide bombings. This was the time for Hamas to show that it understood its newfound responsibilities to the Palestinian people, and that the cutoff of aid from the West was a mistake.

They blew it.

A point of detail is in order. There is nothing inherently wrong with suicide bombing as a tactic. During World War II the Russians trained dogs to run under German tanks carrying antitank mines. The Japanese had kamikaze pilots and suicide torpedo pilots. In a conflict between two totally unmatched opponents, the weaker side will always resort to unorthodox tactics in an attempt to even the contest.

What is completely unacceptable, however, is suicide attacks against civilian targets.

I understand why they do it: to inflict enough pain on Israel to force Israel to make concessions. I understand why they don't limit themselves to attacking military targets: military targets are too well defended. I understand how they justify it: they consider all Israelis their enemy. Morality aside, suicide bombings of civilians are a pragmatic and rational response to the Palestinians' military situation.

But I won't support it.

Hamas could have defended the use of suicide bombers while condemning their use against civilians. But they didn't. So screw 'em.

I disagree with the Globe on one point: the early withdrawal of Western aid was a mistake. We should have given Hamas a chance to show that it would behave responsibly.

But now that they have been given that chance, and blown it, I would be calling for aid to be withdrawn if it hadn't been already.

We should not close the door completely, though. Unless we plan to wash our hands of the entire region -- and on days like this, it can be hard to see the downside to that -- we need to make a distinction between Hamas and the Palestinian people. Hamas did not win a majority of the popular vote; Mahmoud Abbas and Fatah condemned the bombing. So suspend the aid -- but stick to the conditions we have laid out for resuming it: namely, recognition of Israel's right to exist.

In the meantime we must prepare for a new reality, where Hamas survives on Russian, Iranian and perhaps Arab aid. Will it decide it has no need or use for the West or Israel? Will the Palestinian people agree and vote to keep them in office? Will it mark a new upsurge in violence? Will Hamas look into the abyss and blink?

Time will tell.

Palestine, suicide bombing, Abbas, Hamas, politics, midtopia

U.S. seeks sanctions against Iran

The United States will ask its allies to freeze Iranian assets, impose visa restrictions and perhaps apply some trade sanctions if Iran does not abandon its nuclear program.

And why not? Iran is enriching uranium (though its claims are overblown and it's years away from acquiring strategic amounts of weapons-grade material), and their president is a nutcase. A basic rule of thumb: don't let nutcases have nukes, especially when they've been caught redhanded violating the treaties they say give them the right to have nukes.

Wouldn't it be nice if sanctions caused the Iranians to capitulate? Yep. Unfortunately, even setting aside the question of Iranian psychology, the U.S. will have trouble getting sanctions approved by the U.N. Security Council, what with Russia and China opposing the idea. We should still try; it will at least get that debate over with so we can consider other options. But it's a long shot.

Why? Well, the best way to make Iran pay attention without unduly harming Iranian civilians is to cut off military sales and aid. That -- and Iranian oil and trade -- is why Russia and China oppose sanctions: they're Iran's major arms suppliers, and they'd be the ones taking the big economic hit.

Might the West agree to compensate them for the lost trade in exchange for not opposing sanctions? That might work with Russia, which has plentiful oil of its own, but not China: China's economy is thirsty, and Iran's oil is not easily replaced. As well, both see their relationship with Iran as a key one for the future, giving them an oil-rich ally in a volatile region. They're not going to jeopardize that if they can help it. And both would prefer to make their money on trade rather than take handouts from the West.

Maybe careful diplomacy can persuade Russia that Iran getting nukes is just a short step away from a nuclear Beslan. But there's very little we can offer China that will speak louder than Iran's oil.

If either Russia or China refuses to budge, there's not much we can do other than use the IAEA to build the case against Iran and try to build a sanctions regime that bypasses the U.N.

Which is why a military strike must remain an option. An option of last resort, to be sure -- let's exhaust every other avenue first -- but an option nonetheless. Because it may well be that the threat of force -- and, if it comes to that, the use of force -- is the only thing that can make Iran pay attention.

sanctions, nuclear, Iran, politics, midtopia

Democracy retreats in the Mideast

Even as women gain voting rights in Kuwait, democracy elsewhere in the Middle East appears to be backsliding.

Analysts and officials say the political rise of Islamists, the chaos in Iraq, the newfound Shiite power in Iraq with its implication for growing Iranian influence, and the sense among some rulers that they can wait out the end of the Bush administration have put the brakes on democratization.

"It feels like everything is going back to the bad old days, as if we never went through any changes at all," said Sulaiman al-Hattlan, editor in chief of Forbes Arabia and a prominent Saudi columnist and advocate. "Everyone is convinced now that there was no serious or genuine belief in change from the governments. It was just a reaction to pressure by the international media and the U.S."

Follow-through has never been this administration's strong suit, but we can't even muster rhetorical outrage when Egypt delayed municipal elections for two years after a violent attempt to keep opposition supporters from voting. Apparently our committment to democracy doesn't apply when the opposition is the Muslim Brotherhood.

Encouraging democracy in the Middle East is a generation-long project. There will be bumps in the road, but what is discouraging about these bumps is that they come not because of resistance to U.S. pressure but because of inconsistent application of that pressure. We talked the talk, but we've been reluctant to walk the walk.

Further, Bush should have realized that the long-term nature of such a policy requires bipartisan buy-in. That means working with Democrats to agree on a strategy and establish a strong and united front, so that we and the world could be reasonably sure that the pressure for reform won't end once Bush leaves power. Instead the rabid partisanship in our domestic politics have encouraged despots to simply wait for 2008.

Iraq, far from being a demonstration of our resolve and a wake-up call for the Middle East, is increasingly being seen as weak spot, with the assumption that once we withdraw we will not be eager to re-engage in the Middle East for a while. In short, the poorly reasoned and incompetently executed occupation has weakened the push for democracy, not strengthened it.

Regardless of what happens in Iraq, we need to keep up the push for democratization in the region. At a minimum it's simply the right thing to do: supporting some dictators while overthrowing others is simply untenable, both morally and politically. But unless we're willing to invade countries that we consider allies, it's also the only way to see democracy succeed on the regionwide scale necessary to tamp down the flames if Islamic extremism.

Arab, Middle East, Mideast, democracy, Bush, politics, midtopia

Iran: the nuclear option

Seymour Hersh reports that the Bush administration is making plans for a massive bombing campaign in Iran.

That in itself is not particularly surprising. Such contingency plans are standard fare in military circles, and as I've said before, a bombing campaign may well be necessary to keep Iran from getting nuclear weapons.

And before getting too excited, we should note that all the sources are anonymous. Hersh is a solid investigative journalist, so he gets the benefit of the doubt from me. But don't jump on this as proven fact just yet.

That said, the report contains two remarkable and worrisome details:

There is a growing conviction among members of the United States military, and in the international community, that President Bush’s ultimate goal in the nuclear confrontation with Iran is regime change. Iran’s President, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, has challenged the reality of the Holocaust and said that Israel must be “wiped off the map.” Bush and others in the White House view him as a potential Adolf Hitler, a former senior intelligence official said. “That’s the name they’re using. They say, ‘Will Iran get a strategic weapon and threaten another world war?’ ”

Adolf Hitler? Even if Ahmadinejad had aspirations to be a new Hitler, he wields little actual power withint Iran -- and Iran is no Germany in terms of military strength. Bandying that term about so readily indicates a moralistic drive behind the planning, and calls up two bad associations I had hoped were dead and buried. It's very neocon language, and in the runup to the invasion of Iraq the administration repeatedly invoked Hitler in relation to Saddam Hussein. They can't seriously be contemplating the same thing with Iran.

And regime change through bombing? Has that ever worked? Apparently the administration thinks it will this time:

One former defense official, who still deals with sensitive issues for the Bush Administration, told me that the military planning was premised on a belief that “a sustained bombing campaign in Iran will humiliate the religious leadership and lead the public to rise up and overthrow the government.” He added, “I was shocked when I heard it, and asked myself, ‘What are they smoking?’ ”

Every conflict I can think of teaches the opposite lesson: that bombing rallies a population behind the government, however despised it may be otherwise. Iranians may dislike the mullahs, but they will dislike American bombs even more. It may be necessary to send in bombers to disrupt their nuclear capacity; but sending in bombers in hopes of toppling the mullahs is pure fantasy.

If this report is true, it means the same strain of naivety and wishful thinking that led to the botched Iraqi occupation is still in control of administration thinking -- which means besides being naive they're also incapable of learning from experience.

The second notable thing is that the administration is reportedly considering using tactical nuclear bunker busters to get at deeply buried facilities. On one level this is simply practical: If the facility is buried deeply enough, like the main Iranian centrifuge plant at Natanz, a nuke may be the only way to destroy it. But the political fallout from America using nuclear weapons again, as well as the irony of using nuclear weapons to keep Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons, should give planners serious pause. But apparently it's not.

The attention given to the nuclear option has created serious misgivings inside the offices of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, he added, and some officers have talked about resigning. Late this winter, the Joint Chiefs of Staff sought to remove the nuclear option from the evolving war plans for Iran—without success, the former intelligence official said. “The White House said, ‘Why are you challenging this? The option came from you.’ ”

We should avoid nukes if at all possible. Maybe we can simply deny use of deeply buried facilities by destroying the entrances, ventilation shafts and the like. Maybe we can simply target and destroy any vehicles moving in and out of it, so that whatever is in the facility stays there. It may take more work, and be less certain of success. But that is probably preferable to the huge downsides of using nukes.

Here's what I worry about:

Speaking of President Bush, the House member said, “The most worrisome thing is that this guy has a messianic vision.”

That's what got us in trouble the first time. And it's impervious to reason.

A bombing campaign to eliminate Iran's nuclear capability is one thing, and something I will support once it's clear the diplomacy is going nowhere -- as I think it is. And if the preparations are part of a campaign to put pressure on Iran and show them that we're serious about using force if necessary, so much the better. Diplomacy based on the threat of force requires that the threat be credible.

But the principles underlying the reported planning go far beyond that -- and are a huge mistake.

nuclear, Bush, bombing, Iran, politics, midtopia

I'm shocked; shocked!

Another British memo makes even more clear that Bush was determined to invade Iraq regardless.

During a private two-hour meeting in the Oval Office on Jan. 31, 2003, he made clear to Prime Minister Tony Blair of Britain that he was determined to invade Iraq without the second resolution, or even if international arms inspectors failed to find unconventional weapons, said a confidential memo about the meeting written by Mr. Blair's top foreign policy adviser and reviewed by The New York Times.

"Our diplomatic strategy had to be arranged around the military planning," David Manning, Mr. Blair's chief foreign policy adviser at the time, wrote in the memo that summarized the discussion between Mr. Bush, Mr. Blair and six of their top aides.

"The start date for the military campaign was now penciled in for 10 March," Mr. Manning wrote, paraphrasing the president. "This was when the bombing would begin."

Assuming the memo is genuine -- and it appears to be -- this would seem to be the "smoking gun" indicating that Bush was hellbent to invade Iraq, and all of his publicly stated reasons and rationales were so much window dressing. Having decided to invade, he then proceeded to develop rationales to justify the decision.

That's an indefensible way to conduct foreign policy. At the very least, he was required to level with the American people about his reasons for invading. Even better would have been to develop general criteria for pre-emptive war, then see if those criteria applied to Iraq. That way we could at least claim to be following a set of rules that other people could examine so as to know which side of the "eligible for invasion" line they fall on.

I often describe myself as something of a "baby neocon." I support the idea of America being a force for good in the world. I cheered the first Gulf War and the intervention in Kosovo. Why? Because I thought (and still think) that it's high time the world got off its butt and did something about the bad guys. Sure, the Gulf War was probably about oil, but I was able to support it because it was opposing aggression. And this was while many of my friends were active duty military and in harm's way.

I would support a doctrine that called for taking out bad guys like Saddam. However, such a doctrine requires a few key things:

1. An actual doctrine. We asserted our right to do as we wanted and not wait for U.N. approval. I have no problem with that. BUT: you have to lay down the ground rules, make it clear that *this* might get you invaded while *this* will not. Otherwise we're just throwing our weight around, knocking over whomever we feel like, and the rest of the world is justified in wondering if we're just being self-interested bullies. I think most of the world would support us taking out bad guys, as long as we had a clear and compelling definition of "bad guy".

2. At least the appearance of listening to the rest of the world. We went out of our way to anger the rest of the world in the run-up to Iraq. Sometimes that's necessary. More often, it comes back to bite us in the keister, as it did this time.

3. Capabilities that match our doctrine. The reason we haven't tried to overthrow every bad actor in the world is because we can't. Afghanistan and Iraq already have us overstretched. We either add more capability (and accept the attendant cost), or we accept that we have limits and set our doctrine accordingly. Not overstretching is another reason to have a doctrine; that way, you think about what you're going to do ahead of time.

4. The support of the American people. You can have any doctrine you want, but if the voters won't support it, it's a non-starter. The thing that most irks me about the neo-cons is they *knew* that the voters wouldn't support an attack on Iraq simply because he was a repressive dictator. So they tried to link him to terrorism and breathe life into old reports about WMDs. It's only *after* the war that they've switched mostly to talking about what a bad guy Saddam was, as if that alone were reason enough to have taken him out. I happen to agree that that should be reason enough, but that's for the voters to decide. They had no right to lie about it in the beginning. The American people had a right to decide whether this was how they wanted to spend their blood and treasure.

So without a doctrine , the Bush administration unnecessarily angered the world and misled the American public in order to prosecute a war they wanted to prosecute. They didn't have the guts to make their true case to the public; they didn't trust the public to support them. That's unforgivable.

If Bush had made a forthright case for invading Iraq as part of a new "get the bad guys" doctrine, I would have supported that case. I might still have argued that the invasion was ill-advised for several reasons, starting with "it has nothing to do with the war on terror" and seguing to the incredible cost and the fact that we had not yet built the military needed to support such a doctrine, and finishing with the fact that Saddam wasn't at the top of the bad-guy list. But I would have applauded his effort to engage the American people in a grand and worthy endeavor to make the world a better and freer place.

Instead, it increasingly appears that he misled America and the world because he didn't trust them or didn't think they had a right to weigh in on what he was doing. But laudable goals aren't good enough, especially when incompetently executed for crass reasons under cover of lies and half-truths. Because the lack of matching capability pretty much ensures the venture will flounder, and once people figure out the truth the rug gets yanked out from under the effort, leaving the soldiers hanging high and dry.

Nice work, Mr. President.

British memo, Bush, Iraq, politics, midtopia

Rumsfeld revisited

Retired Gen. Paul Eaton, who supports our venture in Iraq and was in charge of training Iraqi forces in 2003 and 2004, agrees with me that Rumsfeld must go.

Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld is not competent to lead America's armed forces. First, his failure to build coalitions with U.S. allies from what he dismissively called "old Europe" has imposed far greater demands and risks on American soldiers in Iraq than necessary. Second, he alienated his allies in the U.S. military, ignoring the advice of seasoned officers and denying subordinates any chance for input.

In sum, he has shown himself incompetent strategically, operationally and tactically and is far more than anyone else responsible for what has happened to America's mission in Iraq. ... Rumsfeld has put the Pentagon at the mercy of his ego, his Cold Warrior's view of the world and his unrealistic confidence in technology to replace manpower. As a result the U.S. Army finds itself severely undermanned -- cut to 10 active divisions but asked by the administration to support a foreign policy that requires at least 12 or 14.

Rumsfeld made a rookie mistake: thinking that what helps in one type of military situation is effective in *all* military situations. His idea that technology will mean we need fewer soldiers is a classic example.

In force-on-force combat, technology offers *huge* multipliers. My Abrams tank could hit targets more than 2,000 meters away. We had great commo to coordinate our movements, and satellite technology allowed us to pinpoint and anticipate enemy movements and locations within a few meters.

A tank battle was like a live-action video game, moving the targeting reticle from target to target, firing, reloading, doing it again.

But the closer you get to your enemy, and the more you have to discriminate between friend and foe, the less technology helps. I can nuke a whole city from the continental U.S.; if I want to capture the city, I have to send in troops. If I want to minimize civilian casualties, I have to be very careful in my target selection, and send in far more troops per target. And the closer you get, and the more wind or rain or dust there is, the less difference there is between the U.S. soldier and his ragtag opponent.

That's one reason the Army *hates* urban combat. The close quarters neutralize many of our advantages; it gets down to the infantry digging people out of holes, one hole at a time. It's bloody, nasty, exhausting work that has destroyed more than one elite military force.

The U.S. military is unparalleled in its ability to destroy an enemy armored brigade. But it's effectiveness in pacification comes down to training, unit cohesion, discipline, leadership and numbers -- not technology. You don't build local support by dropping bombs from space; you do it by walking the streets every day, meeting people, shaking hands, establishing relationships. A U.S. soldier's technology is no help in that regard. They are no more effective at that -- and, due to language and cultural barriers, perhaps even *less* effective -- than Pakistanis or Bangladeshis.

Rumsfeld ignored this, and the Bush administration let him. Living in an alternate reality may be comforting, but it makes for real bloody messes when such fantasies are used as the basis for real-world policies.

Eaton, Rumsfeld, Iraq, politics, midtopia

Putting Iraq's WMDs to rest

For the people who still cling to the belief that Iraq had WMDs, today's New York Times will not be welcome.

In an article about Iraq during the runup to to the war, based on a secret military history derived from captured documents and interrogations of high-level officials, we learn that Iraq didn't have WMDs, gave full access to inspectors and did its best to destroy any remnants of old programs that might exist.

In other words, "muscular inspections" -- coercing intrusive inspections backed by the credible threat of force -- worked. Or would have, if we would have let it.

The relevant bits:

In December 2002, he told his top commanders that Iraq did not possess unconventional arms, like nuclear, biological or chemical weapons, according to the Iraq Survey Group, a task force established by the C.I.A. to investigate what happened to Iraq's weapons programs. Mr. Hussein wanted his officers to know they could not rely on poison gas or germ weapons if war broke out. The disclosure that the cupboard was bare, Mr. Aziz said, sent morale plummeting.

To ensure that Iraq would pass scrutiny by United Nations arms inspectors, Mr. Hussein ordered that they be given the access that they wanted. And he ordered a crash effort to scrub the country so the inspectors would not discover any vestiges of old unconventional weapons, no small concern in a nation that had once amassed an arsenal of chemical weapons, biological agents and Scud missiles, the Iraq survey group report said.

The inspectors reported that they were getting unprecedented access, and finding nothing. All we had to do was wait a couple of months for them to finish their work, and war could have been avoided.

Instead, we ordered the inspectors out so we could invade.

Perhaps toppling Saddam was a worthwhile objective in its own right. But the cost/benefit ratio of such a move was highly questionable. In any event that should have been its own discussion, not something now used to retroactively justify an unwarranted mistake.


Saddam, WMD, iraq, politics, midtopia

What to do about Iran

After several years of fixating on Iraq, the Bush administration is finally waking up to the nuclear ambition of Iran.

Some observers argue that a confrontation with Iran may be politically helpful to Bush, giving him a chance to demonstrate leadership and regain some of the lost luster on his security credentials. But there are a lot of little things that will probably prevent it from rescuing his reputation.

Any confrontation with Iran will point up:

1. How much of our military capability is tied up in Iraq, leaving us unable to do much more than saber-rattle against real threats;

2. How much Bush ignored Iran in the last several years;

3. How passive Bush has been even in recent months, letting the Europeans take the lead in dealing with the problem.

So what can we do?

Our policy begins with an unwavering bottom line: Iran must not be allowed to acquire nuclear weapons. It's not just that they've signed the nonproliferation treaty; treaty or not, we would be foolish to let unstable states get nukes, and Iran grows more unstable every year.

However, we have to recognize Iran's legitimate interest in civilian nuclear power. A lot of people scoff at the idea of an oil-rich state needing nuclear energy, but they miss three points:

1. When the oil runs out it will run out for everyone, including suppliers;

2. As the price of oil climbs, every barrel of oil not used domestically is another barrel that can be sold for hard currency;

3. There may be remote places where it's more efficient to build a nuclear plant than run a pipeline or transmission towers.

As far as options, we begin with negotiations, of course. The basic outline of the Russian offer -- providing closely-accounted-for nuclear fuel to Iran, so that Iran does not enrich any of its own -- is a good solution. Iran has some legitimate complaints about sovereignity, but they mostly lost the right to complain about that when they were caught redhanded with an illegal enrichment program. If they want civilian nuclear energy, there will be serious strings attached.

What happens if we fail to reach a diplomatic solution?

Invading Iran just isn't going to happen; it would be plain stupid. Iran doesn't pose much offensive threat, but they could shut down shipping in the Persian Gulf at least temporarily, and I wouldn't want to dig a few hundred thousand infantry out of those mountains. Never mind what China or Russia might do, or how much further we'd inflame the Middle East by knocking over yet *another* Muslim country -- this one full of Shiites, our erstwhile allies in Iraq.

Besides, we don't have enough troops to provide security in Iraq, population 27 million. How are we going to occupy Iran and its 70 million?

We can try sanctions, but sanctions alone are unlikely to solve the problem. And our experience in Iraq was that strict sanctions hurt the populace far more than it damaged Saddam.

If it comes to the last resort, the best way to deal with nuclear ambitions is through coercive, muscular inspections, backed by the *credible* threat of force:

Step 1: Establish a credible independent inspection regime under international auspices (not necessarily UN, but something that makes it clear this is not a U.S. operation).

Step 2: Get the inspectors in the country, with free access and the right to conduct unannounced surprise inspections. Part of the negotiations may well include "Let the inspectors in and give them free access or we will destroy anything we think is a nuclear facility." Then do so if they try to call our bluff.

Step 3: Once they're in, be consistent and deadly serious about enforcing their access. "Let the inspectors into this facility *right now* or we will bomb it" may be one tactic. Then do so if they try to call our bluff.

We won't necessarily find everything, and some facilities may be both hidden or buried so deeply that bombs can't reach. But that's okay. A nuclear weapon isn't something you can build in your basement. You need enrichment facilities, fabrication facilities, testing facilities... all of which leave a reasonably large footprint. Sufficiently intrusive inspections will make building a bomb prohibitively difficult and expensive.

bush, nuclear, Iran, politics, midtopia

Bush is channeling John Kerry

I was wondering if anyone else had noticed that Bush's current policy on Iran -- provide them with closely monitored nuclear fuel so they don't enrich it themselves -- is pretty much exactly what John Kerry suggested we do back in 2004. A suggestion, by the way, that was roundly panned by Republicans, who labeled it "appeasement."

Then I found this article in the New York Sun.

President Bush's endorsement of a plan to end the nuclear standoff with Iran by giving the Islamic republic nuclear fuel for civilian use under close monitoring has left some of his supporters baffled.

One cause for the chagrin is that the proposal, which is backed by Russia, essentially adopts a strategy advocated by Mr. Bush's Democratic opponent in the 2004 election, Senator Kerry of Massachusetts.

(snip)

Republican commentators accused the senator of favoring "appeasement" and warned that the Iranians could divert nuclear fuel to make bombs.

A Pentagon official under President Reagan, Frank Gaffney Jr., skewered the plan in a column entitled, "Kerry's Nuclear Nonsense." Mr. Gaffney, who did not return a call seeking comment for this story, declared, "Mr. Bush understands the folly of going that route."

Writing in National Review, a Defense Department official under President George H.W. Bush, Jed Babbin, called Mr. Kerry's proposal "ignorant" and "dangerously wrong."

Of course, now that Bush supports it, I'm sure these fine folks think it's a dandy idea.

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bush, kerry, iran, politics, midtopia

Is terror a military or a criminal problem?

Is terror a military or a criminal problem?

Therein lies the conundrum at the heart of the ongoing debate over how best to fight terror while protecting civil liberties.

Terror, at base, is a criminal offense. It is nothing more than a crime with political motivation. Terrorists represent no country, have no fixed geographical boundaries. They are a collection of individuals bound only by their beliefs. The metaphorical "war" on terror is just that -- a metaphor, like the "war" on drugs or poverty.

But the military has a role, too. First and simplest is when a terror group receives state support, as in Afghanistan; then fighting terror shades over into conventional war until such time as the state support ceases. If terrorists resort to a guerrilla war, that too is a military responsibility -- although with limitations peculiar to antiinsurgent operations. The rest of what I would call the "hard" side of fighting terror -- Striking known terrorist training sites, killing terrorist leaders and the like -- also are more properly a military task than a police task.

But this leads to confusion about what, if any, rules apply. There are laws that govern warfare and there are laws that govern crime and they are very different, both in what they allow and in their scope and purpose.

Laws that govern crime are geared toward the long term -- minimizing, catching and deterring criminals instead of trying to eliminate them. They assume that the problem will be with us always, and come up with ways to keep it under control while still respecting the rights that are important to a free society. Call it a "chronic condition" approach.

Laws that govern warfare envision certain fixed and rigid limitations -- that there is a front line, that there is a conflict between nations wielding uniformed armies, that there will be an easily defined point of victory. War is a temporary national emergency, with a clearly defined battlefield within which rights do not exist: laws of war spring from agreements between nations, not the text of the Constitution. Call it an "emergency surgery" approach.

The problem with the assumptions behind "emergency surgery" is that none of them are true when it comes to fighting terror. There is no front line, no nation, no uniformed armies, no easily recognized victory, no clearly defined battlefield, and the conflict is expected to last a very long time.

Precisely because it is ill-fitted to the task, there are tremendous dangers in treating terrorism entirely as a military concern:

• Erosion of civil liberties;
• Incarcerating minor "combatants" for years or even decades regardless of the severity of their actions;
• A heavy cost in lives and treasure;
• Erosion of popular support at home and creation of more enemies abroad;
• An overreliance on force that, in the long-term, will be less effective than legal, diplomatic and intelligence efforts.

Criminal law, then, is better suited to the problem that terrorism poses. Accepting that, the question becomes how to define the respective roles of the military and law enforcement.

I'll go through them from easiest to hardest.

1. In a clear civilian situation, such as breaking up a terror cell in Chicago, law enforcement rules apply. That means warrants, probable cause and due process.

2. In a clear battlefield situation, such as someone captured during a firefight, military rules apply. However, prisoners captured in such cases must be dealt with in specific ways (see below).

3. U.S. citizens deserve due process and access to the courts in nearly all cases.

4. Civilians caught in the middle of an insurgency, a la Iraq, should be accorded as many rights as possible. They can be detained by the military for short periods for security reasons, but within a reasonable time (a week, say) must either be charged as an "enemy combatant", turned over to civilian police for nonmilitary charges, or released.

5. Anyone defined as an "enemy combatant" should have the right to challenge that designation. Most such cases would be a slam dunk ("suspect was caught during a firefight"), but they should get a hearing. This is not "normal" wartime practice, but this is not a normal "war".

6. "Enemy combatants" can only be held until the end of the specific war they were involved in. To be held longer, they must be charged and convicted of actual crimes. Insurgents captured in Iraq, for example, must be released when the fighting in Iraq ends unless they can be linked directly to terrorism.

7. Because some insurgencies may last a very long time, we should make an effort to categorize insurgents by the threat they pose. The truly dangerous would be locked up until the insurgency ends; minor players would be released after serving shorter sentences. That way you're not locking up a halfhearted foot soldier for decades. Like with any offense, recapture would result in a much harsher sentence.

8. In areas where we are not in charge, we will strive to work with the ruling government. But if the rule of law is weak or nonexistent -- Think Yemen, for example -- or the ruler is not a reliable foe of terror, we reserve the right to kill or capture proven terrorists whenever we can. This is less a military/civilian issue than a diplomatic one; I include it here for completeness.

There are a few specific steps we should take to make this happen:

1. Congress should make clear that we are not in a war in a conventional sense, so the President cannot claim extraordinary inherent authority. If they wish to grant him specific authority in specific places, they can do that, giving him broad powers to operate in Iraq or other places abroad. But we should not fall into the "war" trap a second time.

2. Congress should clearly state law enforcement's pre-eminence, and outline which laws apply in which situations.

3. We should clarify the warrant rules to ensure that showing a reasonable suspicion of terror links will allow eavesdropping -- but that such a link *must* be shown.

4. We should stop trying to keep certain prisons or prisoners outside of any law, be it U.S., international or the Geneva Conventions. All prisons and all prisoners should be protected by one of those sets of law.

5. We should allow open inspections of our prisons by accredited organizations such as the Red Cross.

6. We should ensure adequate funding for antiterrorism investigations, and if necessary create specific terror-related charges that guarantee lengthy prison terms for true terrorists -- whether their planned attack is successful or not.

Saying terrorism is primarily a law-enforcement issue is not "going soft" on terror -- it is recognizing that the nature of terrorism is more effectively addressed by criminal law than military law. A vigorous enforcement effort -- backed by a limited but vigorous military role -- will defeat terrorism more surely, and at less cost in both money and civil liberties, than if we allow the "war" metaphor to rule our thoughts and actions.

Technorati tags
terrorism, civil rights, Iraq, civil liberties, politics, midtopia

Why Iraq is a hideously expensive distraction, Part II

Today, for better or worse, Iraq is the central front of the war on terror.

Should it be? This is the second of two articles looking at the terror threat and the Iraq experience through a cost/benefit lens.

Part II: How big is the terror threat, and what should we do about it?

How much would you pay to avoid a 0.0000008% chance of dying?

It's not an idle question. When allocating limited resources, the first step has to be defining the risk. We spend a lot of money researching cancer cures because cancer kills millions of people every year. We spend almost no money researching a cure for mucopolysaccharidosis, which usually kills its victims by age 25 but only affects about 200 people nationwide. That stinks if you're one of the 200, but it makes perfect sense to spend more money on the biggest threats.

Such analytical methods were developed because, quite frankly, people suck at assessing risk. We tend to overemphasize the danger of rare but spectacular events and minimize the danger of common incremental events. That's why more people fear flying than fear driving, even though driving is many times more dangerous.

What happens if we apply the same logic to terrorism?

One way to measure the danger posed by terrorism is to compare the risk of dying in a terror attack to other causes of death in the United States.

Since 1990, there have been four major terrorist attacks in the United States: Oklahoma City, the first Trade Center attack, the Olympic bombing in Atlanta and 9/11.

That's four attacks in 14 years; hardly a crisis. Further, half of those attacks were the work of disgruntled individuals, unrelated to any broader terror movement. And they come against the background of a steady 20-year decline in the number of terror attacks worldwide. Attacks have increased in lethality and spectacle, but there are fewer of them.

Now let's look at casualties. Those four attacks caused roughly 3,175 deaths over 14 years, in a population of about 300 million. That's an average of 230 deaths a year -- far closer to mucopolysaccarhidosis than cancer. Put another way, the average American has a 0.0000008% chance of dying in a terror attack in any given year.

If you look at causes of death in the United States you'll find that terrorism is right up there with such national crises as falling from a ladder (406 deaths in 2002), drowning in your bathtub (352 deaths), riding a "special agricultural vehicle" (149 deaths) and "overexertion, travel and privation" (128 deaths). Heck, on average more people accidentally shoot themselves to death (243) than die at the hands of terrorists.

Put into perspective, terrorism isn't even close to a national threat. It does not threaten our national survival, and it does not threaten the life of average Americans in any meaningful way. One could plausibly argue that our response to terrorism has done more damage to Americans than terrorism itself. 9/11 killed 3,000 people and caused several billion dollars in economic damage. Our response has killed even more people and cost $400 billion, all of it borrowed. The terrorists could only dream of inflicting as much harm on us as we have inflicted upon ourselves.

Of course we still have to combat terrorism, and of course our response should be outsized; we don't just passively accept the murder of American citizens. And there are psychological and economic aftershocks from spectacular stunts like 9/11. But by any measure our response has been way out of proportion to the risk.

So how much effort should we put into fighting terrorism? That requires an honest national debate, but I think critics of the Iraq campaign had it right: terror is better handled as a law enforcement and intelligence matter than as a military one. Not only would that be more effective, it would be far cheaper.

When clear targets are identified, military force can be beneficial: the campaign in Afghanistan is a prime example of that. But the military clearly should play a supporting role, not a starring one. We are better served keeping our soldiers available as a credible deterrent and to fend off true threats to national survival.

So what works? In Part I, I explained why the "war on terror" justifications for Iraq are nonsense. Instead, I think four broad strategies offer the most chance of success:

Go after the terrorists directly. Continue the ongoing effort to boost our intelligence-gathering abilities, so we can root out terrorist cells and choke off terrorist financing. This includes the less noxious parts of the Patriot Act, allowing law enforcement and intelligence communities to share information. We also need to hone our strike and raid capabilities so that we can effectively act on the intelligence we receive.

A homeland focus. If they can't get in, they can't attack us, so the bulk of our anti-terror money should go to domestic security - ports, airports, borders, etc. Such spending pays other dividends as well, tightening the defenses against smuggling and illegal immigration. This category includes investing in alternative energies, mass transit and conservation, because reducing our reliance on oil (and especially foreign oil) will reduce our need to become enmeshed in volatile regions of the world, as well as reduce the political influence of oil-rich countries.

International cooperation. Work with foreign intelligence and law-enforcement agencies to infilitrate and destroy terrorist cells. Work with foreign militaries to spread the burden of military operations. Isolate and destroy regimes that are active supporters of terrorism, using a clearly-drawn definition so that every nation is aware which side of the line they are on.

Foreign aid. It does no good to kill terrorists if we don't change the conditions that generate them: oppression, poverty, hopelessness, lack of education, lack of opportunity. We spend a paltry $18 billion a year on foreign aid; we should double or triple that number and target it on areas and issues related to terror. This means ending support for repressive regimes in the Middle East and devoting money to promoting education, democracy and opportunity in the region. Even if we spend $50 billion a year on foreign aid, it would be cheaper than the staggeringly expensive war we're currently pursuing. And you get a lot more PR benefit out of building schools than you do from dropping bombs.

Technorati tags
terrorism, Iraq, politics, midtopia

Why Iraq is a hideously expensive distraction, Part I

Today, for better or worse, Iraq is the central front of the war on terror.

Should it be? Is Iraq the best way to spend our anti-terrorism resources? Is it making the situation better, or worse?

There is no question that we have a responsibility to the people of Iraq. Having destroyed the previous regime, we must establish a (preferably democratic and secular) government capable of ruling the country. But fixing Iraq and fighting terror are two separate objectives.

This is the first of two articles looking at the terror threat and the Iraq experience through a cost/benefit lens.

Part I: Fighting them over there instead of over here, or "What is a terrorist, anyway?"

As it relates to the war on terror, our invasion of Iraq has often been billed as "fighting terrorists over there instead of over here." But is this true?

To answer this question, we need to first define "terrorist." That word is grossly overused, confusing the issue of who we're fighting and why.

In Iraq and globally, I see three kinds of opponents:

Terrorists: These are the people behind 9/11 and other actual terror attacks -- Al Qaeda and its ilk. They are the relatively few people with the skills, money, patience, imagination and access to pull off attacks inside the United States.

Jihadists: These are people who dislike us but have limited opportunities to act on that dislike. Our invasion of Iraq has both swelled their ranks (thanks to outrage over Western/Christian occupation of a Muslim country) and provided ample opportunities to do something about it: It's far easier to slip across the porous Iraqi border and take potshots at U.S. troops than it is to get into the United States itself to launch an attack.

Insurgents: These are native Iraqis who are fighting us as occupiers, for whatever motive. They were not terrorists before we invaded, and most of them weren't jihadists, either; Saddam Hussein did not take kindly to freelancers.

Having defined our opponents, how does that apply to Iraq?

The U.S. military says 90 percent of the insurgency is native Iraqis. Right off the bat that tells us that most of the people we're fighting and killing in Iraq were not serious opponents until we invaded.

How about the remaining 10 percent that are foreign fighters? Are they terrorists?

Few people think so, and logic suggests why. Would a true terrorist -- the kind who can plan and pull off spectacular attacks inside the United States -- drop everything and head to Iraq to fight well-armed, well-prepared soldiers? Of course not. To think so you have to assume terrorists are stupid, and they're not. True terrorists will just keep on doing what they're good at: planning new and bigger terror attacks.

On the other hand, if you're a jihadist angered by the invasion of Iraq, would this be your golden opportunity to act on your feelings? Of course.

So that's whom we're killing in Iraq: native insurgents and low-level foreign jihadists, most of whom would never have shown up on our threat radar if we hadn't invaded Iraq. And in exchange for the opportunity to create enemies that need killing, we're helping to train and radicalize an entire generation of Middle Eastern men.

Meanwhile our military is overstretched. By being tied down in Iraq it is unavailable to deal with real threats, or to serve as a credible threat of force. Iran isn't exactly quaking in its shoes at the prospect of U.S. intervention, for example. What would we invade them with -- a Reserve public affairs battalion?

As far as the war on terror is concerned, then, Iraq is worse than a distraction: it is actively making things worse.

Then there's the cost. Thus far Iraq has cost more than $200 billion. So it's not just a distraction, it's a hugely expensive one.

Some people argue that Iraq isn't about terror, it's about spreading democracy. Fine; I can support the idea that we should knock down dictators and free oppressed peoples. But that raises a requirement and a question:

You have to be up-front about it. The invasion of Iraq was sold under the banner of the war on terror. If the administration had said "hey, let's spend $200 billion to knock over Saddam because he's a bad guy and we need to free the Iraqi people", they would have been laughed out of town.

How much are we willing to spend to do so? There are 27 million Iraqis. That means we've spent $7,500 per head so far bringing them democracy, never mind the cost in lives and damage to Iraqi infrastructure. The final total will be far, far higher. Democracy is valuable, but not infinitely so given limited resources. How much are we willing to spend? How many more Iraqs can we afford?

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terrorism, Iraq, politics, midtopia