150,000 Iraqi deaths?

Hot on the heels of the National Journal's critique of the Lancet study (which said as many as 650,000 Iraqis had died since we invaded), we have a new, apparently sterling study which indicates that 150,000 Iraqis died between the invasion and the end of 2006.

I'll accept that. When the Lancet study first came out, I counseled taking it with a grain of salt. Plus, it matches an Iraqi government estimate from November 2006.

Back in March, on a discussion board I frequent, I suggested a reasonable number was between 200,000 and 400,000. That appears to have overshot the total -- but not by much at the lower end. Indeed, my number overlaps the study's numbers, since it actually says the death toll could be as low as 104,000 or as high as 223,000.

Anyway, if we accept the 150,000 figure, we then have to add the 2007 death toll, which included some of the bloodiest months of the entire war. Say another 30,000 or 40,000 people. Now we're bumping up against 200,000.

In a nation of 26 million people, that's a lot. It's the equivalent of 2.3 million Americans dying -- something not even World War II accomplished. And it means people are still dying at a rate far higher than they did under Saddam -- two or three times higher. It remains to be seen if the security gains made at the end of the year can be sustained, and if 2008 will see a dramatic drop in deaths. Let's hope so.

Iraq, politics, midtopia

Deconstructing the Lancet Iraq death toll study

The National Journal, ideologically motivated though it may be, has a thoughtful compilation of criticisms leveled at the October 2006 Lancet study that estimated as many as 650,000 Iraqis had died in the war.

They don't actually claim to debunk the study; instead, they raise specific methodological questions, and identify what they see as the weakest link: a heavy reliance on a single Iraqi researcher, who trained and oversaw the work of the surveyors who carried out the study.

As I said at the time, the specific number -- 650,000 -- needed to be taken with a grain of salt. Even if you think the researchers were totally on the up and up, the inherent difficulties of conducting statistical surveys in a war zone give reason for pause.

But given that even conservative estimates placed the number of dead at 50,000 (it's up to 80,000 now), and a month later the Iraqi health minister gave an estimate of 150,000, we're still talking about a lot of dead Iraqis. Even a total debunking of the Lancet study wouldn't alter the fact that the war is killing people faster than Saddam ever did.

Such a death toll, though, says nothing about the relative justness of this war. War kills people. The human toll needs to be part of the equation both when deciding to go to war and when considering how to prosecute it, but intent and execution matter.

The Russians in Chechnya, for example, were roundly and justly criticized for their indiscriminate use of heavy firepower. For the most part they didn't care at all how many civilians they killed.

The U.S. military, by contrast, generally takes pains to minimize civilian casualties. And one thing the Lancet study doesn't do is make a distinction between true civilian deaths and the deaths of insurgents. It's hard to feel sorry for a guy who gets dead because he opened fire on U.S. troops.

We can be held responsible in a general way for people killed by car bombings, on the theory that our invasion set off the chain of events that led to the instability in which car bombings occur. But that's a different sort of critique than "the U.S. is killing Iraqis in huge numbers." And it ignores the counterargument that the war is (hopefully) temporary, so that even if the short-run is horrific, Iraqis will be better off in the long run.

Strong antiwar types are in the uncomfortable position of wanting the 650,000 figure to be true, because it would support their argument that the war is a human catastrophe that can only be put right by immediate withdrawal. Strong prowar types are in the equally untenable position of arguing that the war has "only" killed 150,000 (or 100,000, or 80,000). That comes uncomfortably close to the logic of some Holocaust deniers, who try to minimize Hitler's crimes by arguing that the common estimate of 6 million dead Jews is exaggerated -- the true number was "only" a million or so.

The truth is, a lot of Iraqis have died because we invaded Iraq. We must bear that responsibility, not shrug it off. Whether it was worth it will only be known with certainty 10 or 20 years from now, when the outcome of our intervention is discernable. For now, the death rate is high enough to derail one late-arriving justification for the war -- that Saddam was killing his own people -- but not high enough to justify a withdrawal now that we're knee-deep in the mess and maybe -- just maybe -- starting to see a glimmer of hope on the horizon.

But let this serve as a reminder that war, while sometimes necessary or the best choice out of a set of bad options, is always a catastrophe. This one was entered into far too lightly; let's hope it ensures that the next one won't be.

Iraq, politics, midtopia

Iraqi oil production hits prewar levels

Put increased oil output down as yet another benefit of the improving security situation in Iraq.

The IEA said Iraqi crude production is now running at 2.3 million barrels per day, compared with 1.9 million barrels at the start of this year.

This could be a biggie, for two reasons.

1. Oil infrastructure -- consisting as it does of a lot of pipelines running through the middle of nowhere -- are particularly susceptible to sabotage. Security measures help, but a sustained decline in such sabotage only comes about when fewer people feel like sabotaging the equipment. So it's an indicator of changing attitudes among Iraqis, not just tighter security measures.

2. Increased production means increased oil revenue, which means increased revenue-sharing between Sunni, Shiite and Kurds. A sustained increase and equitable sharing would give all sides a big financial incentive to seek peace in order to keep the largesse flowing. And payments to Sunnis and Kurds help buy goodwill and give the minority groups -- particularly the Sunnis, who have few oil deposits in their territory -- incentive to remain a part of Iraq rather than attempt to go their own way.

As I've noted before, the improved security is only as strong as the allegiance of key Sunni tribal leaders. Recently discovered mass graves in former Al-Qaeda strongholds graphically demonstrate why those tribal leaders switched sides -- AQ is as self-destructively deadly as Ebola. But there's nothing keeping them from resuming their own insurgency if they are not satisfied with the benefits of cooperation. Keeping them on board remains the key task in Iraq.

oil, Iraq, politics, midtopia

Improvement in Iraq? You be the judge

Two members of the liberal Brookings Institute, Michael O'Hanlon and Kenneth Pollack, are just back from a trip to Iraq -- and they are pumped.

Here is the most important thing Americans need to understand: We are finally getting somewhere in Iraq, at least in military terms. As two analysts who have harshly criticized the Bush administration’s miserable handling of Iraq, we were surprised by the gains we saw and the potential to produce not necessarily “victory” but a sustainable stability that both we and the Iraqis could live with.

Wow! That's pretty cool.

But who are these guys, who say they have harshly criticized the Bush administration? As Glenn Greenwald points out, they've been war supporters since 2003. And that "harsh criticism"? They don't like the way Bush has executed things. In retrospect, that is; they tended to praise it as it went along.

This doesn't mean that they're wrong, and it would be very nice to think that they're right. But a war supporter claiming things are turning around is hardly surprising -- indeed, it's a mantra we've heard repeatedly at various points in the fighting. And the deceptive way in which they described their history with the war doesn't enhance their credibility.

I'd examine the specific points they make and decide whether they're significant, and take their overview comments with a grain of salt -- while waiting for September to come so we can make judgements based on fact, not biased opinion.

Update: Greenwald has yet another go at the pair, citing yet more writings showing that their support for the war has been pretty much constant -- including advocating a "surge" of troops before Bush ever proposed one.

Iraq, politics, midtopia

Iraq and the GOP

Speaking of Iraq, a group of moderate House Republicans have warned President Bush that the Iraq war is deeply damaging the Republican Party, and he cannot count on support from that quarter for too much longer.

The meeting between 11 House Republicans, Bush, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates, White House political adviser Karl Rove and presidential press secretary Tony Snow was perhaps the clearest sign yet that patience in the party is running out. The meeting, organized by Rep. Charlie Dent (Pa.), one of the co-chairs of the moderate "Tuesday Group," included Reps. Thomas M. Davis III (Va.), Michael N. Castle (Del.), Todd R. Platts (Pa.), Jim Ramstad (Minn.) and Jo Ann Emerson (Mo.)....

Davis, a former chairman of the National Republican Congressional Committee, also presented Bush dismal polling figures to dramatize just how perilous the party's position is, participants said. Davis would not disclose details, saying the exchange was private. Others warned Bush that his personal credibility on the war is all but gone.

Ya think?

The one thing everyone seems united on -- including Senate Democrats and me -- is that the House war-funding bill, which only provides money through July, is a bad idea, doomed to yet another sustainable presidential veto. Let's hope the House and Senate versions pass quickly, and they toss out the bad stuff in conference committee. That would leave a bill that funds the war through September -- giving us time to assess the "surge" -- while providing timetables that the Iraqi government must meet. Get it passed and to the president's desk in the next two weeks. If he vetoes that, the blame is entirely on his head. Bush seems to recognize that, publicly agreeing to "negotiate" on benchmarks.

Iraq, politics, midtopia

Iranian weapons in Iraq update

Pajamas Media has a 12-minute video from Iraq, interviewing an ordnance disposal officer on the origin of various weapons discovered in Iraq. The point of the video: they're Iranian.

But PM then goes on to misrepresent its own video, calling it proof of Iranian involvement in Iraq.

I like the video, although the reporter asks some (to me) cringingly ignorant questions. The EOD officer is polite, informative and clear. But he doesn't shed any new light on the subject of Iranian involvement.

The mere presence of Iranian-made weaponry in Iraq does not say anything about how it got there. It could have been bought on the black market, for instance. (And if it were, that would, conversely, not be evidence that Iran wasn't involved: countries routinely use the black market to disguise what are essentially arms transfers).

Nor does it get at how much weaponry is Iranian. As the major noted, Iraq is awash in unfathomably huge amounts of leftover ordnance. At a minimum, it's highly unlikely that Shiite Iran is arming Sunni insurgents. So even if Iran stopped sending weapons tomorrow, it wouldn't seriously hamper the ongoing violence.

I will be vastly unsurprised if it turns out Iran is arming Shiite groups in Iraq. But proving Iranian involvement is going to be very tough indeed, unless they're caught in the act of delivering it.
(h/t: Central Sanity)

Iran, Iraq, politics, midtopia

Iraq: politics and reality

President Bush says he would veto the House version of a war-funding bill if it comes to his desk. No surprise there: July is simply too short a timeframe. What will be interesting is if the Senate bill passes, with some of the same restrictions but a longer funding period. He will have a harder time vetoing that one.

Meanwhile, Dick Cheney states the obvious (while drawing no actual lessons from doing so) and the U.S. Embassy deals with the current reality. The last item, in particular, is a bit of bad news for the surge, although arguably it's easier to lob mortar rounds during a still-unfolding crackdown than it is to mount more direct and bloody attacks. Once again, the verdict on the surge is still out.

Update: This isn't good news for the surge, either:

Christians are fleeing in droves from the southern Baghdad district of Dora after Sunni insurgents told them they would be killed unless they converted to Islam or left, according to Christian leaders and families who fled.

Similar episodes of what has become known as sectarian cleansing raged through Baghdad neighborhoods last year as Sunnis drove Shiites from Sunni areas and Shiites drove Sunnis from Shiite ones, but this marks the first apparent attempt to empty an entire Baghdad neighborhood of Christians, the Christians say.

The article goes on to note that more than half of Iraq's prewar Christian population now lives outside the country.

What makes this particularly hard to fathom is that Dora is a known insurgent stronghold. So why have we ignored it thus far? One possible explanation is that we're securing the easy stuff first, so that the insurgents will have no place to go when we finally crack down on the hard cases. Still, I'd like to see an explanation of that.

Another thing to note is that Iraqi Christian groups blame Al-Qaeda-affiliated jihadists for such cleansings. They're there because we're there, and they're only tolerated by Iraqis because we're there. So mark this down to another little piece of joy our presence has brought to the country. The expulsions themselves are not our fault, but they are at least partly our responsibility.

Iraq, politics, midtopia

House develops short-term war-funding bill

The House is trying to solidify support behind a bill that would fund the Iraq and Afghanistan wars through July, then require another vote to keep the money flowing.

The Senate favors a slightly longer leash, providing funding through September.

I go with the Senate on this one, because the House version makes no practical sense. Does anyone claim the surge will show conclusive effects by the end of July? No. So what's the point of drawing an arbitrary deadline there? The Senate version sets the deadline at a logical place: by September we should know if the surge is working and whether it's sustainable.

Politically it's silly, too. There we'll be in July, and the Democrats will be saying "should we continue funding?" and the answer will be "nothing has changed, so if you provided funding before, you need to provide it now." It simply makes the Democrats look dumb.

I know Pelosi needs to placate her antiwar members, but a bill that draws an arbitrary line at a meaningless date on the calendar is no way to do it. Make the date meaningful; go with the Senate version.

Speaking of the surge, the Pentagon today notified 35,000 troops that they could be going to Iraq this fall in order to sustain the higher troop levels through the end of the year. That gives an indication of why sustaining the effort will be the most difficult part. For one thing, the troops include 10 brigade combat teams -- a sizable chunk of the 43 or so teams in the entire Army. Add that to the troops already on the ground, and what you come up with is that the only way to sustain the surge is to stop or greatly curtail rotations home -- in other words, just leave the troops in Iraq.

A plan like that is bad for readiness and morale, especially in a volunteer military. The Army brass won't go for it. Which leads to the inevitable question of whether it's physically possible to put enough troops into Iraq to secure it. The answer generally seems to be "no." Which leads us back to the inescapable conclusion that the only way to secure the place is if Iraqi units take the lead. Problem is, they're far from ready to do that, and there is skepticism in many quarters that they ever will be ready, given their political divisions and rampant corruption.

September will be make or break time. Not just for the surge, but for the Iraqi military and the Iraqi government.

Fund the war until then.

The units affected by the callup are:

• 2nd Stryker Cavalry Regiment in Germany;
• 4th Brigade, 3rd Infantry Division from Fort Stewart, Ga.;
• 1st, 2nd and 3rd Brigades of 101st Airborne Division from Fort Campbell, Ky.;
• 3rd Armored Calvary Regiment from Fort Hood, Texas;
• 2nd Brigade, 1st Armored from Germany;
• 4th Brigade, 10th Mountain Division from Fort Polk, La.;
• 2nd Brigade, 25th Infantry Division from Hawaii;
• 1st Brigade, 4th Infantry Division from Fort Hood, Tx.

Iraq, politics, midtopia

Administration departures continue, with no czar in sight

Back in April, the White House announced it was looking for a war czar -- someone to coordinate the government's efforts in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The main goal was to find someone to replace deputy national security adviser Meghan O'Sullivan, who was stepping down.

They still haven't found anyone. And meanwhile the exodus of national security officials is increasing.

The most recent departure? Another deputy national security adviser, J.D. Crouch. He joins O'Sullivan and the administration's top policy people for Russia and Asia, among 20 top officials who have left in recent months.

Things like this are signs of an administration in neutral. However capable their replacements -- and highly capable people rarely sign on to join an administration in its last two years -- it's going to be hard to put any kind of energy or creativity into foreign policy. Beyond the normal "get up to speed" delays, other countries increasingly have an incentive to simply do nothing, and instead hope that Bush's successor will be more amenable to their specific concerns.

For all those reasons, it's normal for a president's foreign policy influence to decline near the end of his term -- and for ambitious people to start looking for new work as a result. But it's unusual for the process to start happening this soon.

Turnover is normal as an administration nears its end, but "this is a high number," said Paul Light, a professor of public service at New York University and an expert on government.

"You would expect to see vacancies arise as things wind down, but it's about six months early for this kind of a mass exodus," he said.

All of which is one more reason Bush remains invested in Iraq: It's one of the few places in foreign policy where he still exerts sizable influence. Pulling out would leave him pretty much done as far as large-bore foreign policy initiatives, without the time, popularity or political capital to launch anything new. Iraq is more than a mission for him: It's a way to remain relevant.

The cost, of course, is measured in forgone opportunities, blood and Republican 2008 hopes.

Iraq, politics, midtopia

... and it's botched execution

In the post before this one, I discuss George Tenet's book outlining the administration's rush to invade Iraq.

As a companion piece, an Army light colonel, Paul Yingling, has an article in Armed Forces Journal that essentially accuses our generals as a group of committing incompetence in Iraq.

As far as describing history and current conditions, there's not a whole lot in the article that hasn't been said elsewhere. What makes it powerful is the person saying it and the venue he's saying it in (Go here for a military interview with him on his experiences in Iraq. The link takes you to an abstract; click "access item" to read the pdf of the interview).

For the second time in a generation, the United States faces the prospect of defeat at the hands of an insurgency. In April 1975, the U.S. fled the Republic of Vietnam, abandoning our allies to their fate at the hands of North Vietnamese communists. In 2007, Iraq's grave and deteriorating condition offers diminishing hope for an American victory and portends risk of an even wider and more destructive regional war.

These debacles are not attributable to individual failures, but rather to a crisis in an entire institution: America's general officer corps. America's generals have failed to prepare our armed forces for war and advise civilian authorities on the application of force to achieve the aims of policy. The argument that follows consists of three elements. First, generals have a responsibility to society to provide policymakers with a correct estimate of strategic probabilities. Second, America's generals in Vietnam and Iraq failed to perform this responsibility. Third, remedying the crisis in American generalship requires the intervention of Congress.

On Iraq specifically, he argues that the generals failed to "transform" the military in the 1990s, as they said they would, continuing to pursue a Cold War model of interstate warfare even as they were increasingly embroiled in counterinsurgency and stability operations.

Then, having built the wrong military, they used it badly. Here Yingling echos (and actually cites) Gen. Eric Shinseki, in noting that we committed far fewer troops to the occupation than we knew were needed based on prior experience. He castigates the generals for expressing reservations about those troop levels privately but not publicly.

They then made it worse.

inept planning for postwar Iraq took the crisis caused by a lack of troops and quickly transformed it into a debacle. In 1997, the U.S. Central Command exercise "Desert Crossing" demonstrated that many postwar stabilization tasks would fall to the military. The other branches of the U.S. government lacked sufficient capability to do such work on the scale required in Iraq. Despite these results, CENTCOM accepted the assumption that the State Department would administer postwar Iraq. The military never explained to the president the magnitude of the challenges inherent in stabilizing postwar Iraq.

After failing to visualize the conditions of combat in Iraq, America's generals failed to adapt to the demands of counterinsurgency. Counterinsurgency theory prescribes providing continuous security to the population. However, for most of the war American forces in Iraq have been concentrated on large forward-operating bases, isolated from the Iraqi people and focused on capturing or killing insurgents. Counterinsurgency theory requires strengthening the capability of host-nation institutions to provide security and other essential services to the population. America's generals treated efforts to create transition teams to develop local security forces and provincial reconstruction teams to improve essential services as afterthoughts, never providing the quantity or quality of personnel necessary for success.

After going into Iraq with too few troops and no coherent plan for postwar stabilization, America's general officer corps did not accurately portray the intensity of the insurgency to the American public. The Iraq Study Group concluded that "there is significant underreporting of the violence in Iraq."

There's more, including outlining a process to find and promote the generals we need, not the generals we have. Read the article, and then go to the second link above to add some context. For instance, Yingling's article is merely a public example of a sharp split between younger and older officers in the military:

Many majors and lieutenant colonels have privately expressed anger and frustration with the performance of Gen. Tommy R. Franks, Lt. Gen. Ricardo S. Sanchez, Lt. Gen. Raymond T. Odierno and other top commanders in the war, calling them slow to grasp the realities of the war and overly optimistic in their assessments.

Some younger officers have stated privately that more generals should have been taken to task for their handling of the abuses at Abu Ghraib prison, news of which broke in 2004. The young officers also note that the Army's elaborate "lessons learned" process does not criticize generals and that no generals in Iraq have been replaced for poor battlefield performance, a contrast to other U.S. wars.

Top Army officials are also worried by the number of captains and majors choosing to leave the service. "We do have attrition in those grade slots above our average," acting Army Secretary Pete Geren noted in congressional testimony this week. In order to curtail the number of captains leaving, he said, the Army is planning a $20,000 bonus for those who agree to stay in, plus choices of where to be posted and other incentives.

This is why the military cannot afford to protect generals that don't deserve it: because doing so will prompt many of their most competent officers to leave, the military equivalent of eating your seed corn.

An interesting question is whether Iraq should be blamed or thanked for exposing this schism. On the one hand, if Yingling's viewpoint is the accurate one, the war has been disastrously mismanaged. On the other hand, if the problem is structural we can be glad that we found out about it through a relatively minor entanglement like Iraq and not something more serious, giving us a chance to fix the problem before we face a truly existential test.

Me, I tend to take a sanguine view of such things. We had the same problem in World War II: an officer corps that had evolved for success in peacetime, which usually demands different skills (like, say, a talent for bureaucratic infighting) than those needed for success in wartime. In World War II, the problem was handled through a combination of cashiering incompetents and the simple math of ballooning the military from a few hundred thousand souls to multiple millions, thus diluting the influence of the desktop warriors.

While I think the modern military is more professional and combat-oriented than the pre-World War II version, it still suffers from many of the same problems. On top of that, with Iraq there was no massive expansion, so we fought the war with the existing officer corps; and it was overseen by the Bush administration, so there was no serious accountability. Plus there was no sense of urgency, as I've noted in previous screeds here and here.

Yingling's article is part of the standard learning curve for the military. We prepare for the last war, get surprised by the next one, muddle through in denial for a while, and then partway through start hammering the new reality home. It may be too late to apply the lessons to Iraq itself, but they should be heeded in order to prepare us for the war after that.

military, Yingling, Iraq, politics, midtopia

Will nobody blink?

I realize that escalating rhetoric often has little to do with what will finally happen, but the bellicosity displayed in the Bush/Congress set-to over Iraq funding is pretty remarkable.

Defying a fresh veto threat, the Democratic-controlled Congress will pass legislation within days requiring the withdrawal of U.S. combat troops from Iraq beginning Oct. 1, with a goal of completing the pullout six months later, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid said Monday.

Reid said the legislation "immediately transitions the U.S. military away from policing a civil war." He said that troops that remain in Iraq after next April 1 could only train Iraqi security units, protect U.S forces and conduct "targeted counter-terror operations."

The Nevada Democrat outlined the elements of the legislation in a speech a few hours after Bush said he will reject any legislation along the lines of what Democrats intend to pass. "I will strongly reject an artificial timetable (for) withdrawal and/or Washington politicians trying to tell those who wear the uniform how to do their job," the president said.

So what's emerging from the conference committee is, remarkably, harder-line than either the House or Senate versions. The House version had hard deadlines but an 18-month timeframe; the Senate version had a shorter timeframe but no deadlines, only "goals." This hybrid version appears to combine the Senate's timetable with at least some of the House deadlines.

As such I think it's a bad idea. I didn't mind either individual version, because they were either very soft limits or the timeline was sufficiently long not to have an immediate effect. But the new version simply moves too fast.

If you truly believe that what's going on in Iraq is an intractable civil war, the bill makes sense: we have no business being there in that case. But if you believe, as I do, that Bush deserves one last chance to show he can win this thing, then an Oct. 1 deadline is simply too soon at this point.

All this may simply be attempts at blame-placing for the veto everyone knows will be coming by the end of this week. What happens after that will depend, in part, on who is more successful in the framing effort. Most likely result, I think, will be a "clean" spending bill that only runs through, say, Sept. 30. That means Bush will have to make another funding request in late summer -- right about when we should be starting to get a verdict on the surge.

But what if they're both serious? What if neither backs down? If no bill is passed, no more money is appropriated, and the war ends unless Bush can find ways to fund it out of discretionary monies -- which just isn't going to happen.

One would think that Bush would rather sign a bill with timetables than accept that. But there are other factors at work here. Neither side really wants an immediate, precipitous pullout, so each is hoping the other will blink first. Beyond that, Bush might see such a pullout as politically advantageous, because the effects would be more calamitous than a gradual pullout over the next year. He could then blame Congress for all the attendant trouble, instead of accepting that blame himself.

But much as I dislike Bush, I'm not cynical enough to believe he would do that to the Iraqis. I think he truly believes we need to stay in Iraq and can win in Iraq. So he's not going to abandon the war just to make political points at home.

So if it comes to pure stubborn, expect Congress to blink first. And then expect a short-term funding bill that will see this debate renewed -- with firmer Congressional resolve if the surge is going badly -- in the fall.

Iraq, politics, midtopia

Baghdad's Green Line?

Amid worsening violence in Baghdad, the U.S. military is resorting to an age-old tactic: lots of concrete.

U.S. soldiers are building a three-mile wall to protect a Sunni Arab enclave surrounded by Shiite neighborhoods in a Baghdad area "trapped in a spiral of sectarian violence and retaliation," the military said.

When the wall is finished, the minority Sunni community of Azamiyah, on the eastern side of the Tigris River, will be gated, and traffic control points manned by Iraqi soldiers will be the only entries, the military said.

This is an urban version of a tactic used in western Iraq, where troublesome cities have been surrounded by sand berms. It's had mixed success there -- reducing U.S. casualties, but not doing a whole lot to tamp down sectarian passions inside the town.

While this isn't exactly good news, in the end it's just another tool. The goal all along has been to tamp down the violence so that lasting security and infrastructure has a chance to establish itself. If a (temporary) wall makes that job easier, okay.

Still, can anyone say "Green Line"? That was the name of the unofficial dividing line between Muslim and Christian sections of Beirut during the Lebanese civil war. Initially a makeshift and informal line marking a "no-man's land" between rival militias, in places it developed into a fortified barrier that lasted for 15 years and became a symbol of the war and the city, and continues to affect the development of Beirut and the psyche of its residents.

The lesson, I think, is that temporary barriers have a way of becoming permanent if the underlying reason for the separation is not addressed. In addition, the line itself can become a focus, reason and justification for the separation. And the longer the separation goes on, the harder it is to reconnect the two halves when the wall finally comes down.

So let's hope this is truly a temporary measure, and not a sign that we're settling into a 15-year war.

Green Line, Iraq, politics, midtopia

Delegating disaster

The White House is looking for someone to take over responsibility for Iraq and Afghanistan.

The White House wants to appoint a high-powered czar to oversee the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan with authority to issue directions to the Pentagon, the State Department and other agencies, but it has had trouble finding anyone able and willing to take the job, according to people close to the situation.

The snark in me is asking "isn't that Bush's job?" But I realize that's unfair. We're talking day-to-day management of the war, which isn't a presidential duty.

No, the real telling thing is that nobody wants the job.

At least three retired four-star generals approached by the White House in recent weeks have declined to be considered for the position, the sources said, underscoring the administration's difficulty in enlisting its top recruits to join the team after five years of warfare that have taxed the United States and its military.

"The very fundamental issue is, they don't know where the hell they're going," said retired Marine Gen. John J. "Jack" Sheehan, a former top NATO commander who was among those rejecting the job. Sheehan said he believes that Vice President Cheney and his hawkish allies remain more powerful within the administration than pragmatists looking for a way out of Iraq. "So rather than go over there, develop an ulcer and eventually leave, I said, 'No, thanks,'" he said.

You don't make general in the military without being able to smell a fiasco from miles away. Not that you really needed a special Spidey sense in this case. Not when the Pentagon is extending the tours of all Army soldiers in Iraq to 15 months, administration supporters like Bob Novak are saying the "surge" isn't working and Bush is preparing to sit down with Democrats to discuss ways to get continued funding for the wars.

What's more interesting is the view expressed by Sheehan, who retired after a 35-year career in the Marines.

"I've never agreed on the basis of the war, and I'm still skeptical," Sheehan said. "Not only did we not plan properly for the war, we grossly underestimated the effect of sanctions and Saddam Hussein on the Iraqi people."

In the course of the discussions, Sheehan said, he called around to get a better feel for the administration landscape.

"There's the residue of the Cheney view -- 'We're going to win, al-Qaeda's there' -- that justifies anything we did," he said. "And then there's the pragmatist view -- how the hell do we get out of Dodge and survive? Unfortunately, the people with the former view are still in the positions of most influence."

That, folks, is a Marine saying the war was a mistake, Cheney is a problem and we should be looking to withdraw, not get drawn in further.

Maybe Cheney can take the job.

Iraq, politics, midtopia

Iraq impasse

As a daylong battle raged in Baghdad's Sunni neighborhoods, President Bush invited Democrats to discuss war funding -- even while he was being pressured by a consortium of Republican legislators to reach a compromise.

For Bush, invitations to negotiate have historically been invitations to capitulate. And this time appears to be no different:

"We can discuss the way forward on a bill that is a clean bill — a bill that funds our troops without artificial timetables for withdrawal, and without handcuffing our generals on the ground," Bush said in a speech to an American Legion audience in nearby Fairfax, Va.

On the one hand, Bush extended an offer to meet with lawmakers Tuesday. On the other, the White House bluntly said it would not be a negotiating session.

What exactly is there to discuss, if the precondition is meeting all of the president's demands?

It bears an eery similarity to his diplomatic approach to Syria, Iran and North Korea, where he also demanded that the other side essentially surrender before talks could begin. That produced exactly zero results in those cases -- progress with North Korea was achieved only after the administration relented -- and isn't likely to go over big with Congress, so one is led to conclude that it is an approach carved into Bush's DNA, not one based on real-world experiences.

Indeed, Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid quickly rejected the terms.

"What the president invited us to do was come to his office so that we could accept without any discussion the bill that he wants," Pelosi said at a news conference in San Francisco. "That's not worthy of the concerns of the American people, and I join with Senator Reid in rejecting an invitation of that kind."

The Republican delegation, meanwhile, throws an interesting wrench into the works by suggesting that Bush's Congressional support is not as strong as he thinks.

The group includes five Republicans, diverse in geography and ideology: Reps. Pete Hoekstra of Michigan, Charles Boustany of Louisiana, Jeff Fortenberry of Nebraska, Mac Thornberry of Texas and Wayne Gilchrest of Maryland. Of the five, only Gilchrest broke with his party to support a timeline for withdrawing U.S. troops from Iraq.

Now, Gilchrest says the group will encourage the White House to compromise on negotiations with Syria and Iran and on setting a date for withdrawal from Iraq. And the group has national security bona fides that will help it be taken seriously....

The GOP negotiating team's argument will start with Gen. David Petraeus' public assertion that the war in Iraq cannot be won militarily but requires a comprehensive political solution. Part of that includes letting Iraq know the American commitment isn't open-ended, Gilchrest said.

It's unclear how much support the five GOPers have from the rest of their caucus. Other than Gilchrest -- who, if you believe the National Journal rankings, is the fifth most liberal Republican in the House -- the group is moderately to solidly conservative, though they're notably more moderate on foreign policy.

Consider this simple analysis: Thornberry is ranked as more conservative on foreign policy than 73 percent of the House. If the group crafts a compromise that is acceptable to him, it could conceivably be acceptable to those of the same rank or lower -- meaning a veto-proof majority. That's a really simple analysis, of course. Support for timetables is lower than opposition to the war in general, and that doesn't even count the effect of party discipline on voting behavior. But if the group can show it has support among rank-and-file Republicans, Bush will be forced to listen if he doesn't want to suffer a humiliating foreign-policy defeat.

Iraq, Bush, politics, midtopia

House passes Iraq timetable

By a razor-thin margin -- 218-212 -- the House of Representatives passed a war funding bill that includes a hard deadline to end combat operations in Iraq: September 2008.

I've already opined that the timetable is reasonable, giving Bush a year and a half to show progress. And even if the deadlines were enforced, it's not like we would abandon Iraq as of then. We would simply shift from doing front-line work ourselves to providing aid and training for the Iraqi military. And if Bush does manage to show progress, I'm sure he would find that the deadline, to quote Captain Barbossa, "is more of what you might call guidelines than actual rules." What Congress passeth, Congress can changeth.

Bush, however, exploded.

Just over an hour later, an angry Bush accused Democrats of staging nothing more than political theater and said that if the spending bill is not approved and signed into law by April 15, troops and their families "will face significant disruptions."...

"A narrow majority in the House of Representatives abdicated its responsibility by passing a war spending bill that has no chance of becoming law and brings us no closer to getting the troops the resources they need to do their job.

"These Democrats believe that the longer they can delay funding for our troops, the more likely they are to force me to accept restrictions on our commanders, an artificial timetable for withdrawal and their pet spending projects. This is not going to happen."

Bush's rhetoric is self-serving, of course: Whatever you think of the wisdom of its chosen course, this is Congress asserting its responsibility, not abdicating it. Abdication is what the Republican-led Congress engaged in for three years.

And if funding the war is so important, he can simply sign the bill. The money is there, and the restrictions don't kick in for quite a while. Apparently the funding isn't critical enough to keep him from vetoing it.

As political theater, this cannot be beat. As a practical matter, though, the deadline is probably a goner. The first hurdle is the Senate, where it will have trouble passing. If the Senate passes a bill lacking the timetable, that will have to be resolved in conference committee. If the deadline survives that (and the conference version passes the Senate), it faces a likely Bush veto, which will almost certainly be sustained.

At that point -- or, more likely, much earlier -- Bush and Congress will have to sit down and hammer out what sort of funding bill both sides will accept. The politics are uncertain, because both sides can accuse the other of holding our troops hostage to politics. My gut says Bush will win that battle of perception by claiming the timetable provision does not belong in the funding bill. But Congress can argue that the timetable is directly relevant to the funding.

Further, they could make the point that the timetable is a limitation on Bush, so how much sense does it make to pass it as a standalone measure that Bush will simply veto? Attaching it to the funding bill is the only way Congress can exert meaningful pressure on the president.

Problem is, that would mean Congress is using a tactical argument to try to counter a moral and strategic one. And critics could plausibly point out that if Congress cannot muster enough votes to force the timetable on Bush straight up, perhaps it is still too early to be doing such forcing.

I don't buy that particular logic but I'm still somewhat in the latter camp, mostly because I believe we need to give the "surge" time to show results before we start imposing withdrawal deadlines. More on that in my next post.

Iraq, politics, midtopia

Walter Reed claims more victims

The Army surgeon general, Kevin Kiley, is the latest casualty of the Walter Reed scandal, choosing to retire under pressure from lawmakers and the acting secretary of the Army, Pete Geren.

The move comes the same day the Army inspector general released a report criticizing the Army's system for evaluating and caring for wounded soldiers, calling it understaffed, undertrained and overwhelmed by the number of wounded. Some of the examples given were surreal -- such as a care facility that lacked wheelchair access.

It's worth noting that the report was ordered back in April 2006, an indication that the Army was aware of and addressing some problems nearly a year before the current scandal broke. On the other hand, it makes the reaction of senior Army brass even more inexplicable. How could they downplay problems when they already knew about many of them? And the fact that the report took a year to produce indicates the military bureaucracy still does not have a wartime sense of urgency.

Walter Reed, Kiley, military, politics, midtopia

Hey! Iran! Maybe we should, like, talk

Rather surprising, the administration has reversed itself and agreed to talk to Syria and Iran about the situation in Iraq.

The move was announced by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice in testimony on Capitol Hill, after Iraq said it had invited neighboring states, the United States and other nations to a pair of regional conferences.

Okay, it was grudgingly. And they were boxed in by the Iraqi government, which doesn't share Washington's aversion to actual diplomacy and is scrapping for survival. But better late than never.

Rice says the U.S. doesn't want to be subjected to extortion. But it's silly to think Syria or Iran will lift a finger to help if we don't actually talk to them. Yeah, they're going to want something. But it sure doesn't hurt to listen to what it is -- and make a few demands of our own.

As in the past, the administration's knee-jerk reaction to ideas it doesn't like is to stonewall. But unlike in the past, the administration is showing new willingness to reconsider that reaction in the cold light of morning. A willingness to talk brought a deal in North Korea; an acknowledgement that more troops are needed appears to be bringing some success with the surge. We shouldn't get our hopes up too high over the decision to talk to Iran, but it sure can't hurt.

terrorism, Iraq, Iran, politics, midtopia

U.S. says it found more Iranian weapons

An arms trove buried in a palm grove in Iraq contains items linked to Iran, the U.S. military says.

The cache included what Maj. Marty Weber, a master explosives ordnance technician, said was C-4 explosive, a white substance, in clear plastic bags with red labels that he said contained serial numbers and other information that clearly marked it as Iranian.

It also contained large numbers of formed copper liners, of the sort needed to make explosively formed projectiles (EFPs), although the origin of those items appeared unknown.

The article makes a big deal about also finding a large amount of clearly non-Iranian material, like PVC pipe made in Iraq and the United Arab Emirates. But that's hardly surprising; innocuous stuff like that would be bought on the open market, then married up with the speciality components needed to make an EFP. In this case, the copper liners appear to have been made specifically to match the size of the PVC. So what you have is an anti-vehicle pipe bomb: Fill a length of PVC with C-4, attach a liner to the top, and you've got an antitank mine.

If the C-4 is clearly linked to Iran, that's another piece of evidence showing Iranian involvement. But it still isn't conclusive -- C-4 is a very common explosive, just like the area is awash in AK-47s and RPGs -- and it still doesn't address the fact that our main opponents in Iraq, the Sunni insurgents, are probably not being supplied by Shiite Iran. Unless the point is that it's the Shiite militias, and not Sunni insurgents, who are now our real enemy.

Meanwhile, still no further word on the Steyr sniper rifles. That story is beginning to look bogus, considering that the provenance of the captured weapons should be easy to check.


politics, midtopia

Congress' next steps on Iraq

In preparation for the next confrontation over Iraq, Congressional Democrats are honing two different proposals that would start scaling back our activities there.

In the House, the plan is to require the military to meet established readiness and training standards that would essentially make a continued large-scale presence in Iraq impossible.

The Senate proposal is more direct, specifically restricting the allowable actions of U.S. troops in Iraq, limiting them to work related to a withdrawal of U.S. forces: direct attacks on Al-Qaeda, training Iraqi units and the like.

Of the two, the Senate has the better plan. The House approach is clever, as it neatly points up the unsustainability of our current troops levels. But it's a somewhat cowardly, back-door way to force a troop withdrawal, and seems to hold plenty of potential for unintended consequences by not forthrightly calling for -- and providing the resources for -- such a withdrawal.

The Senate approach, by contrast, simply commands an orderly end to our mission there. It's simple, direct and clear.

The chance of either plan actually taking effect is minimal. Democrats must overcome Republican opposition in Congress -- including a 60-vote margin in the Senate -- in order to pass them, and then they would face an almost certain veto from President Bush -- even if they are attached to some other piece of "must pass" legislation.

There's another risk for Democrats as well: loss of the Senate. Joe Lieberman is quietly suggesting that he might switch parties if they start pushing an Iraq policy he doesn't like. A lot of that might just be Joe posturing, taking advantage of his swing position to maximize his influence on both sides of the aisle. But he's enough of a true believer in the war that he could be serious. You can be sure any Democratic moves in the Senate will be weighed against the Joe Factor first.

Political machinations aside, are the Democrats doing the right thing by tying the President's hands?

In a general sense, there's nothing wrong with it. Congress has the sole power to declare war, the sole power to fund it and the sole power to truly end it. The President, as commander-in-chief, prosecutes the wars that Congress declares. There has been much blurring of that line over the centuries, but the thing to remember is that Congress, not the President, ultimately decides when and how long to fight. If the people (through Congress) decide they don't want to fight anymore, we should stop fighting.

But is it the right thing to do in Iraq?

Again, in a general sense, yes. The Iraq war was a mistake from the get-go, and incompetently managed besides. It has increased polarization, radicalization and terrorism in the Mideast and worldwide. It has cost a staggering amount of money, political capital, global influence and blood. It has tied up resources better used elsewhere, and divided the American electorate at a time when we needed unity to ensure continued support for the long struggle with terror. Correcting such a blunder is a good thing, and necessary.

"But that means the terrorists win!" I hear war supporters say. Nonsense. Iraq is one battle in a much larger war, and a smart general knows when to cut his losses. Leaving Iraq does not mean abandoning the fight against terror; it means redeploying our resources to more effective fronts, while removing our inflammatory presence from Iraqi soil.

Had war-supporter logic prevailed in World War I, they would have insisted we keep pouring troops into the Dardanelles campaign, lest we "let the Turks win" and show we can be beaten. In reality, of course, the Allies recognized the campaign as a disaster and pulled the plug -- and went on to win the war anyway.

So in a general sense, Congress needs to be prepared to bring our involvement in Iraq to an end. But in specific, their timing is a little premature. Bush's "surge" is just getting under way. He deserves a chance to show it can work, because all things being equal winning in Iraq is preferable to not winning. After all, the logic for withdrawal is not that we don't want to win; it's that winning in any sense meaningful to our national security appears unlikely and reinforcing failure is stupid.

So prepare the bills. But stay the hand until we see the results of the surge. And if it fails (as, alas, it probably will), then report out the Senate version. If we're going to pull the plug, do it responsibly, directly and openly.

terrorism, Iraq, politics, midtopia

Republicans come out against "surge"

The debate over a resolution opposing Bush's "surge" in Iraq has exposed some interesting and deep Republican divisions over the war.

On the second day of a four-day showdown over the nonbinding resolution, Democrats looked on as Republican dissidents denounced what they called Bush's ill-conceived plan to put 21,500 more combat troops in the middle of a sectarian civil war.

Some of the 11 Republicans who publicly broke with Bush were long-time opponents of the war, such as Reps. Walter B. Jones (N.C.) and Ron Paul (Tex.). But others, such as Reps. Fred Upton (Mich.) and Jim Ramstad (Minn.), had never sought the limelight and were almost apologetic in their speeches....

Those 11 could be just the tip of the iceberg. One Republican lawmaker close to the leadership, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said GOP leaders have 50 to 60 Republicans on their watch list, with between 40 and 60 expected to break with the White House tomorrow.

Wow.

The article goes on to say that while the resolution exposed deep divisions among Republicans, GOP leaders expect a debate over funding Iraq would rally their members while similarly exposing deep divisions among Democrats, some of whom want to shut down all funding for Iraq.

It also mentions Democratic plans to shut down the military prisons at Gitmo and Abu Ghraib. Whether this is a good idea or not depends on what steps are actually taken. Given the notoriety of the two sites, Shutting them down is a smart PR move. But why are they notorious? Mostly because of how they have been used, not their mere existence.

So on the one hand, I'd be satisfied with simple reform: Treat it as a secure holding pen for dangerous people awaiting trial, rather than a legal black hole, and I'm fine with it.

On the other hand, shutting them down doesn't take away the need to put dangerous bad guys somewhere. So some of their functions will simply be transferred elsewhere. Thus unless the legal abuses that led to the notoriety are also remedied, closing them will simply move the same bad behavior elsewhere -- and possibly hide it from sight until, inevitably, it is discovered again in another spasm of bad press.

Should be an interesting month.

Update: The Senate has shelved its troubled version of the resolution and adopted the simpler House version, scheduling a vote for Saturday.

Abu Ghraib, Gitmo, surge, Iraq, politics, midtopia