A moderate Republican on Iraq

It's getting harder and harder to paint all Iraq war opponents as far-left crazies.

Frankly, it was impossible from the beginning; many, many reasonable people have opposed the mess from the start, even while hoping things would somehow turn out okay. But the drumbeat of rhetoric labeling such questioners as enemy sympathizers, or demanding that we rally behind the president in this time of crisis, helped delay serious discussion of the war for years.

Now, another Republican is breaking ranks.

At the close of the Senate’s lame-duck session, in between formulaic tributes to senators departing voluntarily or otherwise, a Republican backbencher suddenly rose to give one of the most passionate and surprising speeches about the war in Iraq yet delivered in Congress.

For a solid Republican who had originally voted for the war, the words spoken by the senator, Gordon H. Smith of Oregon, on the evening of Dec. 7 were incendiary and marked a stunning break with the president.

“I, for one, am at the end of my rope when it comes to supporting a policy that has our soldiers patrolling the same streets in the same way, being blown up by the same bombs day after day,” Mr. Smith said. “That is absurd. It may even be criminal.”

Smith cited two books as influential in changing his thinking: Thomas Ricks' "Fiasco" and a World War I book by John Keegan. In explaining the latter, Smith said:

Mr. Smith said that his use of the word “criminal” in his speech to describe the war in Iraq came from his reading of that book, which he said explained to him the “practice of British generals, sending a whole generation of British men running into machine guns, despite memos back to London saying, in effect, machine guns work.”

Much like the British in World War I, he added, “I have concluded that we are employing strategies that are needlessly getting kids killed.”

It's come to this: a Republican senator is now comparing Iraq to the senseless and indiscrimate slaughter of World War I. Not in scale, of course, but in the stubborn and heedless mindset that let politicians continue to send young men to their pointless deaths.

He might also have consulted "Imperial Life in the Emerald City" by Rajiv Chandrasekaran, which describes the detached reality inhabited by Paul Bremer and his postwar transitional government and the incredible decisions made by the Bush administration on its behalf. Chandrasekaran was a guest on MPR this morning, and he gave multiple examples of Bush's fantasyland at work. Bremer's staff, for instance, was chosen for political loyalty rather than any actual qualifications, with screeners that questioned applicants on their voting record and stance on abortion.

So you had the spectacle of a 24-year-old with no practical experience trying to restart the Baghdad stock exchange; A 21-year-old, not yet out of college, given sole responsibility for reforming the Interior Ministry; and an experienced post-conflict public-health official replaced by a more politically acceptable community-health official from Michigan, whose first order of business upon arriving in Iraq was to start planning an anti-smoking campaign.

Given such startling incompetence from our politicians, it's hardly surprising that we have arrived at the point we have. The question is what to do about it now.

Smith's point in that regard -- that we are pursuing a strategy that is not working and, in the process, is getting people killed needlessly -- is echoed by many soldiers currently serving in Iraq, who were asked if a troop "surge" of up to 30,000 soldiers would help pacify Baghdad.

Spc. Don Roberts, who was stationed in Baghdad in 2004, said the situation had gotten worse because of increasing violence between Shiites and Sunnis. "I don't know what could help at this point," said Roberts, 22, of Paonia, Colo. "What would more guys do? We can't pick sides. It's almost like we have to watch them kill each other, then ask questions." ...

"Nothing's going to help. It's a religious war, and we're caught in the middle of it," said Sgt. Josh Keim, a native of Canton, Ohio, who is on his second tour in Iraq. "It's hard to be somewhere where there's no mission and we just drive around." ...

Pfc. Richard Grieco said it's hard to see how daily missions in Baghdad make a difference. "If there's a plan to sweep through Baghdad and clear it, (more troops) could make a difference," said the 19-year-old from Slidell, La. "But if we just dump troops in here like we've been doing, it's just going to make for more targets."

Translation: We're not making headway; we're just sort of keeping the lid on things, and losing ground as the violence escalates daily. Which is a recipe for still being there 10 years from now, doing the same thing, and watching more of our soldiers die -- not in pursuit of victory, but in denial of failure. And 30,000 troops just isn't enough to make a difference in that equation.

President Bush says he'll announce his brilliant new Iraq strategy in early January. At that point we'll be able to judge whether he actually intends to materially alter the strategic situation. If not, there is little point to our continued presence in Iraq.

terrorism, Iraq, politics, midtopia

Ewwwww....

The United States turned over Najaf province to the Iraqi government today, marking the third such turnover since we invaded. It's not a huge deal -- Najaf is one of the most peaceful provinces, in part thanks to the heavy presence of Shiite militias -- but this detail from the handover ceremony caught my attention.

At one point, a small group of elite Iraqi special forces officers wearing dark green T-shirts stepped forward with a live rabbit and ripped it apart with their teeth.

The leader chomped out the animal's heart with a yell, then passed around the blood-soaked carcass to his comrades, each of whom took a bite. The group also bit the heads off frogs.

Who knew the Iraqis were such Ozzy Osbourne fans? Or maybe they were auditioning for "Fear Factor: Baghdad."

I guess if the insurgents ever resort to sending in small herbivores or suicide amphibians, these guys will be all over it.

This is supposed to demonstrate their toughness, but really -- how tough do you have to be to tear apart a bunny? Here, big guy, here's a wild boar. See how you manage with that.

humor, Iraq, politics, midtopia

Bush to expand military

The lead of this story is all about how Bush has finally admitted that we're not winning in Iraq, after being roundly criticized for such weird circumlocutions as saying he was "disappointed by the pace of success."

But the meat of the story is that Bush has finally decided that making the military large enough to sustain commitments like Iraq is a good idea.

This would be the same plan that Republicans shot down in 2004 and 2005 -- when it might have made a difference in Iraq -- and as recently as this summer, when it was obvious to everyone else that the military was being stretched too thin.

It's yet another example of Bush's "too little, too late" weakness, where he avoids making hard decisions until it's too late for them to be relevant.

A substantial military expansion will take years and would not be meaningful in the near term in Iraq. But it would begin to address the growing alarm among commanders about the state of the armed forces. Although the president offered no specifics, other U.S. officials said the administration is preparing plans to bolster the nation's permanent active-duty military with as many as 70,000 additional troops.

Too late though it may be for Iraq, the expansion is a good long-term idea, and 70,000 troops -- the equivalent of three Army divisions -- is a serious force boost. It exceeds the 40,000-soldier increase that John Kerry called for during his 2004 campaign.

But don't expect a dramatic difference even when all the soldiers are trained and on duty. The Army is already 30,000 soldiers above authorized strength; the proposal would make those additions permanent and add up to 40,000 more troops on top of it. So while the 70,000 figure is bandied about, the proposal represents a 40,000-soldier increase over current levels. Still good, but not eye-poppingly so.

Separately, reports that Bush is leaning toward a short-term "surge" in Iraq -- sending in up to 30,000 additional troops for half a year or more -- has met with unanimous opposition from the Joint Chiefs, who fear the mission is vague, the surge too small, the time frame too short and the downsides too large.


politics, midtopia

Iran's Shiite ministate

To round out Colin Powell's "civil war" judgement, consider this report. It's from the Washington Times, which requires a big grain of salt; and it cites an undistributed Saudi report, which requires a doubly big grain of salt. But it asserts some interesting and specific things:

1. Iran has established a ministate inside of Iraq and actively supporting it.

2. The Sunni insurgency has an estimated 77,000 fighters -- with millions of supporters.

3. Shiite militias have about 35,000 fighters -- with millions of supporters.

4. The Saudis view the conflict as between Sunni and Shiites (and between Iranian agents and the remnants of Saddam's secret police), and so are helping fund Sunni insurgents -- not so they can fight the United States, but so they can fight Shiites.

Again, take all this with a very large dose of skepticism. The Saudis are biased, the Times is biased and there's no way to independently verify their claims. But it makes interesting reading, if nothing else because it provides some specifics about insurgent strength and frames a different way of viewing what's happening in Iraq -- and an illustration of the lethal complexity of the conflict.

terrorism, Iran, Iraq, politics, midtopia

Powell does the Iraq Study Group one better

The ISG wants us out of Iraq by the end of 2007.

Colin Powell says we are losing a civil war and should be gone by mid-2007.

"I agree with the assessment of Mr. Baker and Mr. Hamilton," Powell said, referring to the study group's leaders, former secretary of state James A. Baker III and former Indiana congressman Lee H. Hamilton (D). The situation in Iraq is "grave and deteriorating, and we're not winning, we are losing. We haven't lost. And this is the time, now, to start to put in place the kinds of strategies that will turn this situation around."

Speaking on CBS's "Face the Nation," Powell seemed to draw as much from his 35-year Army career, including four years as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, as from his more recent and difficult tenure as Bush's chief diplomat.

Among his other observations:

1. The active Army is "about broken", and the military needs to be enlarged to meet our increased committments.

2. He thinks we should talk to Iran and Syria. "Are Iran and Syria regimes that I look down upon? I certainly do. But at the same time, I've looked down on many people over the years, in the course of my military and diplomatic career, and I still had to talk to them."

3. Asked whether he agreed with Cheney that his long-time rival, Donald Rumsfeld, was "the finest defense secretary this nation has ever had", he said: "Well, that's the vice president's judgment. I've known many fine secretaries of defense. . . . But it's history that will judge the performance of all of us in this troubling time . . . and it is a history that I think will ultimately be written as a result of what happens in Iraq."

In less diplomatic words, "you've got to be kidding!"

Powell, terrorism, Iraq, politics, midtopia

Showdown in Palestine

I haven't written about Palestine for a while. Just to catch up:

Hamas and Fatah are drifting toward open civil war, with kids getting killed and senior officials getting targeted, including the kidnapping of a top Fatah official.

Meanwhile, weapons smuggling goes on unabated, threatening peace talks with Israel and heightening the danger of civil war.

Amid it all, President Mahmoud Abbas vows to push ahead with early elections in a continuing showdown with Hamas.

Oddly, none of this has me despairing. The Hamas-Fatah split has needed resolving for a long, long time, and the papering over of their differences has been one of the biggest obstacles to a long-term peace deal. The militants in Hamas are being forced to confront the fact that their Israel policy is not the one most Palestinians prefer, which is why Abbas can threaten them with elections: they know they will lose. This confrontation will force Hamas to decide whether they will bow to the will of their electorate and moderate, or become an outlaw faction. The split could degenerate into rampant bloodshed, but it had to be addressed one way or the other.

As for the weapons smuggling, I don't understand the outrage. Why should only one side in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict be armed? I recognize the destabilizing effect that pouring weapons into a burgeoning civil war can have, and so I oppose it on those practical grounds. And of course I oppose barbaric practices like firing unguided rockets into civilian areas. But as far as the mere act of acquiring weapons is concerned, this is a war: both sides can be expected to arm themselves as best they can.

I hope the Palestinians can avert a bloody spiral into internecine warfare. But more than that, I hope the current confrontation resolves the issue and lets the Palestinians negotiate for peace seriously and with a unified voice.

Hamas, Fatah, Israel, Palestine, politics, midtopia

Iraq, iraq, iraq....

Lots of stuff happening today.

Condoleeza Rice rejected the idea of talking to Iran and Syria, as suggested by the Iraq Study Group, saying the cost of a deal would be too high and that if Iran and Syria really want a stable Iraq they'll see that it happens anyway.

Heck, what do we need diplomacy for at all, then?

Meanwhile, President Bush is reportedly considering the "Go big" option, despite the unpopularity of that option with the public and the strain it would put on the military that he has steadfastly refused to expand.

While some key decisions haven't been made yet, the senior officials said the emerging strategy includes:

1. A shift in the primary U.S. military mission in Iraq from combat to training an expanded Iraqi army, generally in line with the Iraq Study Group's recommendations.

2. A possible short-term surge of as many as 40,000 more American troops to try to secure Baghdad, along with a permanent increase in the size of the U.S. Army and the Marine Corps, which are badly strained by deployments in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Military commanders look warily at a surge, saying that even 20,000 more soldiers and Marines may not be available and wouldn't necessarily help reduce Iraq's violence.

"We would not surge without a purpose," Gen. Peter Schoomaker, the Army's chief of staff, said Thursday. "And that purpose should be measurable."

3. A revised Iraq political strategy aimed at forging a "moderate center" of Shiite Muslim, Sunni Muslim Arab and Kurdish politicians that would bolster embattled Prime Minister Nouri al Maliki. The goal would be to marginalize radical Shiite militias and Sunni insurgents.

4. More money to combat rampant unemployment among Iraqi youths and to advance reconstruction, much of it funneled to groups, areas and leaders who support Maliki and oppose the radicals.

5. Rejection of the study group's call for an urgent, broad new diplomatic initiative in the Middle East to address the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and reach out to Iran and Syria.

Instead, the administration is considering convening a conference of Iraq and neighboring countries - excluding Iran and Syria - as part of an effort to pressure the two countries to stop interfering in Iraq.

Those plans dovetail nicely with a proposal put forth by Fred Kagan at the American Enterprise Institute, which calls for sending seven more brigades into Iraq to begin clear-and-hold operations, then pouring reconstruction aid into the cleared areas.

The plan got a withering response from E.J. Dionne, who ties it to tax cuts and a willingness to put other people's kids in harm's way.

My criticism is more prosaic: The plan reads like a do-over, what we should have done in 2003. I find it difficult to believe that such an approach will make a difference at this late date. Kagan is right that if we decide Iraq is important enough, we'll send the troops over and leave them there instead of rotating them out, allowing us to sustain a large troop presence for a long time.

But besides the damage that will do to the strategic readiness of our military, as well as recruiting and retention rates, what will 40,000 more troops accomplish? Most credible sources said we'd need 300,000 to 500,000 troops to adequately pacify the country in 2003. In 2006 Iraq is a far more unstable place, and even 40,000 more soldiers would only bring our strength up to about 180,000. That might be close to enough, considering most of the trouble occurs in the Sunni and ethnically mixed regions, accounting for about 40 percent of Iraq's population. But given the established nature of the insurgency, I find that doubtful.

Further, the Iraqi government opposes it.

Sigh. I asked for "get serious." But this isn't a big enough troop boost to qualify.

terrorism, Iraq, politics, midtopia

Whither Iraq

We've heard the Iraq Study Group's opinion, and President Bush's response.

Now we get an elaboration of the latter: Bush will not be rushed into a decision.

Although the White House had initially suggested that Bush would deliver his speech on Iraq strategy before Christmas, he has decided to delay it until early next year.

Defending that decision, Bush said, "I will not be rushed into making a difficult decision ... a necessary decision."

Given Bush's stubborness and perceived inability to acknowledge his mistakes in Iraq, I can understand why such a statement would raise alarm bells that Bush will attempt to ignore reality and simply keep doing what he's been doing.

But those concerns are misplaced. First, Bush is right: important decisions should be made deliberately, not rushed. After all, it was a desire to act quickly while looking tough and decisive that led Congress to rush through the Patriot Act without proper deliberation, for instance.

More importantly, though, is that Republicans would probably string Bush up themselves if "deliberation" turned into foot-dragging and inaction. Change must come: it is up to Bush to decide if he wants to lead the charge or get run over by it.

Meanwhile, the Pentagon is preparing to weigh in on Iraq, and the LA Times reports that it increasingly favors "Go big."

Strong support has coalesced in the Pentagon behind a military plan to "double down" in the country with a substantial buildup in American troops, an increase in industrial aid and a major combat offensive against Muqtada Sadr, the radical Shiite leader impeding development of the Iraqi government.

Of course, troop constraints mean "go big" would really be "go sort of large", with something south of 40,000 new troops. And even that would only be sustainable for a year or so. The plan also calls for increasing the size of the military by 20,000 soldiers, but recruiting and training timetables mean that wouldn't help much in the short term, and it wouldn't make a gigantic difference in the ability to sustain force levels.

And never mind the near-complete lack of public support for such a move. Even the military is sharply divided over the idea.

I also can't help asking: if more troops were the answer (and IMO, they were), why is this plan only being put forward now? Shouldn't we have sent in more troops long ago, when they still could have made a serious difference?

Given the risky nature of going big or doubling down or whatever it will eventually be called, any such plan must also include yardsticks for success, with a plan to call it off if the objectives are not being met. Otherwise we risk an open-ended, ever-growing commitment like we had in Vietnam, where we kept sending more and more troops because nobody wanted to be the one who "lost" Vietnam. The result, beyond the additional lives and money lost, was a shattered military and the emergence of a risk-averse national psyche.

But at least we've now got the debate bookended by what I've long called for: "get serious or get out." At this point in the war I favor the latter, but if we choose the former and go about it intelligently, I'll cross my fingers and hope for the best.

Iraq, politics, midtopia

The nature of civil war

James Traub, one of my favorite writers, has a piece in this Sunday's New York Times on Iraq and civil wars in general. He quotes James Fearon, a Stanford University expert on civil conflicts, who ticks off the death toll, the massive refugee flows, the major players, and says "by any reasonable definition, Iraq is in the midst of a civil war."

But that's not really the point of this post, which is to delve into what we might expect in the future as Iraq is consumed by sectarian conflict.

Scholars and diplomats who have closely studied civil wars describe them almost as forces of nature, grinding on until the parties exhaust themselves, shredding bonds that cannot be stitched back together even long years after the killing stops.

Wars that do not end quickly -- as the Rwanda civil war did, for instance -- tend to drag on for years. Take Northern Ireland, for example, or (as the article does) Bosnia and Lebanon. All three continued until everyone finally recognized that they were not going to win by force alone and decided that just about any alternative, including compromise with hated enemies, was better than continuing to fight.

In Lebanon -- perhaps the best parallel for Iraq -- that came only after 5 percent of the population was killed or wounded and half had become refugees. Translated to Iraq, those numbers would mean a war that caused 1.3 million casualties and uprooted 13 million people.

The good news, I suppose, is that we're already making excellent headway on those numbers, with death estimates in the 100,000-plus range and 3.4 million refugees.

Given that civil wars are driven by grievances rooted in tribal, religous and ethnic divisions, it's possible to view an Iraq civil war as inevitable. In this instance we were the catalyst, knocking over the dictator that kept the lid on the bubbling pot. But Saddam wasn't going to live forever, and when he finally shuffled off the scene the suppressed tensions were likely to explode anyway. And one could argue that it's better for that to happen sooner rather than later -- otherwise the grievances keep piling up and make the subsequent spasm of violence that much more gruesome.

So what happens if civil war is indeed in Iraq's future? Assuming the Kurds don't simply secede and the Shiites don't overrun the Sunni, this:

When the sectarian combatants finally do exhaust themselves, Iraq will need a great deal of outside help, though not the kind it has received so far. Civil wars liquidate the trust among parties that makes settlements possible; outsiders must act as guarantors and, usually, peacekeepers. And they have to be prepared to make a major commitment: NATO put 60,000 troops in Bosnia, with a population less than one-sixth that of Iraq, to police the Dayton Accords that ended the war. Today 1,900 soldiers from the European Union are sufficient to do the job.

For Iraq, that means returning in several years as peacekeepers, 400,000 strong -- the same number, not coincidentally, that we should have gone in with in the first place. And it probably won't be us doing it, but a coalition of non-Western forces, perhaps under UN flag, that won't rekindle the anti-Western resistance our presence has provoked.

Perhaps from the perspective of history our invasion of Iraq, flawed as it was, will not be viewed as a horrible catastrophe that caused all sorts of problems in the Mideast. Instead, it will be viewed as the event that merely triggered a catastrophe that was coming anyway. It's a measure of our attenuated ambitions that such a historical verdict might be something for us to hope for.

civil war, Iraq, politics, midtopia

The second battle of Pearl Harbor

The New York Times came up with the best Dec. 7 story, hands down -- a never-published article by their wartime correspondent on the astonishing salvage work after the Japanese attack.

The discussion of how they refloated the battleship West Virginia is incredible -- filling the gaping holes in her hull with concrete, attaching cofferdams to slowly raise her, gingerly moving her into drydock, then blasting the concrete out with dynamite so they could get to work on repairs. It was more of rebuilding than a repair, and came with its own hazards -- like the discovery of an unexploded 1,750-pound bomb deep in the ship's guts.

It's a classic story of the unheralded side of warfare, which is as moving and dramatic as any story of battlefield heroism.

Pearl Harbor, war, history, politics, midtopia

War? What war?

I was listening to a radio interview today with a retired Marine, Col. Thomas X. Hammes, a noted authority on modern warfare. He's on a promotion tour for his new book, "The Sling and the Stone", a treatise on the (poor) U.S. response to modern guerrilla warfare.

The interview was interesting enough; but what struck me was a point he made at the outset. He said that the "Pentagon had never gone to war" in Iraq. When asked what that meant, he used the example of the Future Tactical Truck.

The FTT is intended, in part, to be a replacement for the Hummer, which has proven poorly suited for counterinsurgency operations. It's underarmored, underpowered and ill-equipped, and a disproportionate share of U.S. casualties are incurred by troops using them.

Faced with these harsh realities, the Pentagon is moving to have the replacement ready by.... 2012.

As Hammes notes, that's a peacetime development cycle. In a time when people are fighting and dying daily in underarmored Hummers, it's a pace so leisurely it verges on criminal. If the same course had been followed in World War II, we would have fought the entire war with 37mm antitank guns and Grant light tanks. And lost.

Yet another sign, IMO, of how Donald Rumsfeld's Pentagon, three years in, never has taken the war in Iraq seriously.

Future Tactical Truck, Hummer, Iraq, Pentagon, politics, midtopia

Noting the obvious

When the Marines throw in the towel, you know things are really out of hand.

The U.S. military is no longer able to defeat a bloody insurgency in western Iraq or counter al-Qaeda's rising popularity there, according to newly disclosed details from a classified Marine Corps intelligence report that set off debate in recent months about the military's mission in Anbar province.

The Marines recently filed an updated version of that assessment that stood by its conclusions and stated that, as of mid-November, the problems in troubled Anbar province have not improved, a senior U.S. intelligence official said yesterday. "The fundamental questions of lack of control, growth of the insurgency and criminality" remain the same, the official said.

This a fuller version of a report I first wrote about back in September. What's stunning is that the update is even bleaker than first thought, and shows that things are getting worse, not better.

But never mind all that. Remember, Bush says everything is going fine, and we'll win unless we quit.

The Baker report can't come too soon. Not because we expect great pearls of unexpected wisdom from them, but because the administration is apparently content to wait for the report before making any changes to its Iraq "strategy."

terrorism, Iraq, politics, midtopia

The media-military relationship

I came across this article in the Naval War College Review today. It's from 2002, but it's still a good exploration of why the media and the military so often find themselves at odds.

The author, Douglas Porch, is a professor of national security affairs at the Naval Postgraduate School.

A choice and perhaps surprising quote:

the strained relationship between the media and the U.S. military has nothing to do with censorship—for the simple reason that media-military relations have always been rocky, never more than in World War II. The difference between World War II and Vietnam was not the presence of censorship but the absence of victory. In other conflicts, victory has erased memories of a troubled relationship; after Vietnam, the media was caught up in the quest for a scapegoat. Furthermore, the nebulous goals of the War on Terrorism, the fact that it is likely to be a prolonged operation, and the inherent difficulties from a media perspective of covering a war fought from the air and in the shadows virtually guarantee a degeneration of the relationship between two institutions with an inherent distrust of each other.

Indeed. Contrary to popular myth, the press during World War II was every bit as contentious as it is now.

And what about Vietnam? The canonical story is that it was the first "TV war", in which the press had nearly unrestricted and real-time access to soldiers, units and battlefields -- and then used that access to turn the public against the war. We didn't lose Vietnam on the battlefield, goes the mantra -- we lost it at home, our will to win sapped by defeatist media coverage.

This explanation, however, has been discredited by numerous studies. In fact, press coverage was generally favorable until the Tet offensive of 1968. As later became clear, that dramatic campaign was a military disaster for the North Vietnamese and Viet Cong; nonetheless, it blasted the credibility of claims by the White House and Westmoreland that the United States and South Vietnam were on the threshold of victory. The critical tone adopted by the press thereafter “confirm[ed] the widespread public view held well before Tet, that the people had been victims of a massive deception” and that the prospects for success were in fact doubtful.

In fact, then, the press did not so much create public opposition as reflect it. And the government had no one to blame for that but itself. By routinely lying to the press (and thus the public) and painting a rosy picture of the war, their credibility vanished when Tet and subsequent actions exposed their deception.

And what about the media glamorizing war protesters? That's mostly myth, too. Press coverage of violent antiwar protests tended to increase support for the war by showing protesters in an unflattering light.

So what drives the poor relationship between the media and the military? Culture and mission, mostly. Setting aside hard-to-prove issues like "media bias", you just have two groups with different yet important goals.

Journalists want to shine light into dark places, to expose abuses of power, and to force public debate over issues that might otherwise never receive democratic scrutiny.

The military, like any bureaucracy, prefers to conduct it's business in private. Moreover, it's business is war -- the professional management and application of violence. This is inherently an awful thing that rarely looks good on camera. Moreover, the military necessarily breeds a culture of "team players" who adhere to strict discipline and often display a near-obsession with loyalty and security. Throw in operational security concerns, and one can understand why they're leery of, suspicious of or just plain disgusted by reporters.

So you end up with the classic standoff:

Military people typically believe that reporters, untutored in the fundamentals of the military profession, are psychologically unprepared to deal with the realities of combat. They fear that reporters, in quests for sensationalism rather than truth, may publish stories or images that breach security, cost lives, or undermine public support. For their part, reporters insist upon their professional obligation and constitutional duty to report the news. They consider the military’s culture closed, its insistence on operational secrecy exaggerated, and its “command climate” a barrier to outside scrutiny.

Both are right, to a degree; each reflect different facets of what it means to live in and defend a free society. Soldiers defend society from outside threats; journalists defend it from internal threats and the government itself. As with many such things, this comes down to an exercise in line-drawing; and the biggest problems arise when one side or the other tries to swing the pendulum too far in one direction.

But in the end, warfare in a democracy requires approval of the people. And that means the military needs the press.

Warfare is a political act. Political leaders, in democracies at least, must inform the public about foreign policy goals; the military must convince the public that it can achieve those goals at an acceptable cost; and both must do so largely through the press. Press reports of success and progress strengthen and extend public support. The media also familiarize the public with the military and with the complexity of its tasks. In short, the media offers the military a means to tell its story.

Familiarizing the public with the military is a crucial strategic need in this day of volunteer soldiers, when the share of the population that knows somebody in uniform has shrunk to tiny proportions.

The press needs the military, too: military connections are often the only way to gain access to the battlefield and to military deliberations -- the kind of access that lets a democracy know what is being done in its name. A press that cannot intelligently and fully cover the military in peacetime also cannot competently cover it in wartime -- and such a press is useless as a foundation of democracy.

The media-military relationship will always be a contentious one. But ultimately, that's a good thing. As long as a reasonable balance can be struck, their competing interests form a smaller version of the checks-and-balances that make our governmental structure so durable. The press provides public oversight -- and understanding -- of the military; the military uses the press to get its side of the story out. And that helps ensure that our military is used in support of democracy instead of to its detriment.

war reporting, media, military, politics, midtopia

Where's the truth in Iraq?

One of the ongoing themes in the Iraq debate is the argument that the "true" picture of life in Iraq is not reaching Americans. Either it's better than portrayed (the prowar argument) or worse (the antiwar argument). Any report one way or another is dismissed either as biased in its own right, or simply "missing the bigger picture."

Some examples of the whiplash of conflicting reports:

Bush's recent trip to Iraq. On the one hand you have people hailing Bush's recent trip to Iraq as a sign of the improving security situation, since he was able to fly by helicopter over Baghdad to reach the Green Zone. The last time he visited, he landed and stayed at a military base.

Critics point out that we are in the midst of an offensive to "retake" Baghdad, 3 years after the end of the invasion, which certainly doesn't imply progress. And Bush didn't even tell the Iraqi prime minister he was coming, which certainly doesn't imply trust.

But then we get reports of coalition forces handing control of parts of Iraq over to Iraqi forces, which indicates that the security situation is improving.

Ignoring the good news. Reporters are criticized for not covering "good news", while others counter by pointing to the high death toll among journalists in Iraq, and note that if Iraq is so dangerous reporters can't leave the Green Zone, that says all we need to know about the security situation.

There's probably some truth to the "not reporting good news" argument, for a couple of mundane reasons: the inability of reporters to get out and witness such occurrences, and the fact that a school opening simply isn't as interesting or important as the ongoing violence. Reconstruction statistics tend to get reported as roundups, with such things as "3,000 schools have been renovated in the last year", rather than as 3,000 separate stories. It's fair to say that that lessens the impact of the good news.

But such complaints need to be taken with a grain of salt as well; a raw number like "3,000 schools renovated" or "100 playgrounds have been built" doesn't say much about what is meant by "renovated", doesn't say whether a playground is actually used, and doesn't mean anything unless we have some context: how many schools are there?

Last year a reporter (CNN, I think; the story has aged off the Web) traveled to several of these "renovated" schools and found that many of them had been superficially repaired but lacked supplies or electricity or functioning toilets or many of the other things one needs to have a working school.

Also last year, the New York Times did a short piece on a playground in Baghdad. U.S. troops spent $1.5 million in 2004 building it in a nice spot along the banks of the Tigris. A year later the playground was abandoned, the grass dead, because it was simply too dangerous to go there. But I'll bet that playground is still listed among successfully completed reconstruction projects.

We have undoubtedly renovated a substantial number of schools, and repaired a substantial number of sewer lines, and rebuilt a substantial number of electrical systems. But what that number is, and what it actually means as far as the quality of life in Iraq, is far more complicated than the bland "renovated schools" count suggests.

And here's another thought: you may think the media underreports the good news, but they also underreport the bad news. There's only so much space in any given newspaper or so much airtime on TV. The vast majority of photos never get seen by the vast majority of people, who also are not confronted with the vast majority of daily outrages. They, too, get aggregated into statistics. If you want a taste of just how much bad news you're not bombarded with each day, check out this site.

Economic measures. These are things like electricity and oil production, both of which have struggled to reach prewar levels. That may sound like we're not doing well, despite pouring billions into reconstruction. But the insurgency has diverted much of that spending to security, and it's difficult to increase electricity production when insurgents keep blowing up power lines and distribution stations. On the other hand, our inability to establish a secure environment is the reason the insurgency is able to do so much damage.

The fact is that Iraq is not one place, but multiple places. Outside of the Sunni Triangle, there is not much of an insurgency. What you do have, though, is sectarian violence, including Shiite death squads and security forces infiltrated by militia members. And in all places violence and corruption make rebuilding difficult.

Within the Sunni Triangle, the insurgency makes meaningful reconstruction especially difficult. But that just highlights one of the main criticisms of the occupation -- that it was poorly planned, and we've never had enough troops to do the job properly. Which is why we find ourselves retaking the same cities again and again, and spending more on providing security for construction projects than we do on the actual construction.

Is Iraq getting better? In places. Is it getting worse? In places. Is it safe and secure? Not even close, unless you're a Shiite in a predominately Shiite area or a Sunni in a predominately Sunni area. And that will remain the case until we have enough boots on the ground -- coalition or Iraqi -- to reestablish the governmental monopoly on violence that is essential to a secure state.

terrorism, reconstruction, security, Iraq, politics, midtopia

The human price of war

Both the Star Tribune and the New York Times Magazine had good pieces this weekend about the hurdles reservists face when they return home from Iraq.

From the Star Tribune:

More than 15,000 Minnesota soldiers -- National Guard, Reserve and active duty -- have been deployed to global hot spots since 9/11.

For most of them, as was true for their fathers and grandfathers coming home from earlier wars, the euphoric family reunions were the sweet, easy part of their homecomings.

What follows is tougher: First, a kind of emotional decompression from combat to civilian life. Then the challenge of getting on with work and making a living.

It can be a difficult and sometimes lonely undertaking.

Employers worry about hiring them, knowing the military could call them away again. Some return with injuries that make it impossible to return to their former jobs.

And many come to realize that even the best of re-entries to the work-a-day world require serious attitude -- and adrenaline -- adjustments.

The Strib's web site has been screwed up for months, and here's an example. Accompanying that intro text in the paper was four profiles of reservists who faced different struggles reintegrating into the workplace. But just try to find it online.

It's worth reading, because it describes the economic costs of deployment: the injured man who may never work again; the self-employed soldier who had to sell his trucking business and is now trying to rebuild it; the difficulties he encounters from banks, who are reluctant to loan him money because he might get deployed again and qualify for an interest-rate cap; the difficulties others encounter from employers, who are wary of hiring someone who could be deployed at any time. It really captures how disruptive deployments can be economically.

The New York Times story is largely a portrait of one man's struggle with post-traumatic stress, but it captures some larger issues, too: how boring and meaningless civilian life can seem after the intensity of combat, the difficulty in shedding the hypervigilance and constant stress that kept them alive in Iraq, how hard it can be coming to terms with what they saw and did overseas. As one quote from the story puts it:

"I didn't really know what to expect," Norris said. At first, he recalled, "it all seemed kind of mellow. Nothing happened on our drive up from Kuwait, and from what I'd seen on the news about Iraq, I figured everything was pretty much under control." That assessment changed a few days after his arrival, when Norris and the rest of his eight-man recovery team were led into the back room of a maintenance shed on the base by the team they had come to replace. One veteran had a laptop on which he had stored images of the missions his unit had gone out on. "You're going to see things out there no one should ever have to see," the departing team leader told the new arrivals. "You need to tow a vehicle — you'd better be prepared to reach through a man's intestines to put it in neutral."

This is what war does to the participants. That alone is not a reason to eschew war -- combat, terrible as it is, can be a necessary evil. But it is a reason not to start wars lightly, or carelessly, or without full and careful deliberation and planning. And that is why the invasion of Iraq makes me mad. Because it was poorly planned, and because it was not a last resort, and because it was pursued relentlessly, almost eagerly, by those who thought it would mark the beginning of the American Empire. The planners, in their fantastical ignorance, embraced war far too readily. And this is the result.

If you want peace, prepare for war. But do not pull the trigger until you are certain that the cost is worth it, and there is no acceptable alternative.


Memorial Day, PTSD, veterans, Iraq, politics, midtopia

Courage or treason?

Donklephant has a great post reflecting on the results of this year's Pulitzer Prizes, notably the prize that went to the New York Times reporters who broke the story about the administration's double super-secret warrantless wiretap program. The right side of the blogosphere has been going nuts about it, repeating claims that the reporters have committed "treason" in "time of war."

Justin Gardner calls bullsh*t. And he's right. This is not a war in any conventional sense, and cases like this illustrate why viewing the fight against terror in that light is dangerous, self-defeating and downright Orwellian.

eavesdropping, Pulitzer, politics, midtopia

Bob Woodruff goes home

Bob Woodruff, the ABC anchorman seriously injured in a roadside bomb blast in Iraq, appears to be well on the way to recovery. He sent a note to his ABC colleagues thanking them for all the support they've shown.

I am moving on to outpatient treatment and I can’t tell you what a blessing it is. Though I know there is still a long road ahead, it’s nice to be feeling more like myself again – laughing with family, reading bedtime stories and reminding my kids to do their homework.

The photo of Woodruff was taken today, and he looks very well.

His cameraman, Doug Vogt, was released from the hospital in February.

Woodruff, midtopia

John Dean on impeachment

Nixon's White House counsel, John Dean, told the Senate Judiciary Committee that Bush's warrantless eavesdropping program >deserved censure and possibly impeachment.

"Had the Senate or House, or both, censured or somehow warned Richard Nixon, the tragedy of Watergate might have been prevented," Dean told the Senate Judiciary Committee. "Hopefully the Senate will not sit by while even more serious abuses unfold before it."

Testifying to a Senate committee on Wisconsin Democratic Sen. Russell Feingold's resolution to censure Bush, Dean said the president "needs to be told he cannot simply ignore a law with no consequences."

Strong stuff. And coming from a former White House counsel that witnessed another impeachment process firsthand -- and a Republican to boot -- it's powerful.

That said, it doesn't really move the ball any. Feingold's resolution serves a purpose: it keeps the eavesdropping alive and in front of voters and Congress. But I agree with the Democratic leadership that the resolution is otherwise premature. Keep the pressure on to make sure the investigation goes forward; but wait for the investigation to finish before discussing possible sanctions.

Not to let the Republicans off the hook:

But Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, said that passing a censure resolution would do more harm than good. "Wartime is not a time to weaken the commander-in-chief," he said.

That's a weak argument. Does the "it's a war" excuse mean the president can do anything he wants and the nation should do nothing? Arguably wartime is a time for closer monitoring of presidential actions, because a president's wartime powers are so extensive and abuse so much easier.

Hatch is essentially arguing for abandoning Congress' oversight responsibility. Not a good idea.

His comment is also yet another example of why viewing the "war on terror" as a traditional war is a big mistake.

Feingold, Bush, eavesdropping, John Dean, politics, midtopia

What occupation requires

Want an idea of how many troops and police it takes to provide security in Iraq?

By any measure the current troop presence is far, far too low. Most rational estimates -- rejected as inconvenient by the Bush administration prior to the war -- calculate that at least 400,000 troops are needed -- roughly what we'll have once the Iraqi Army is fully trained and effective, which will take years. And that assumes that we never pull out our troops.

But here's a real example of an attempt to pacify an Iraqi city, Tall Afar.

To prevent more violence, the streets have been blanketed with troops. Four thousand U.S. troops and 8,000 Iraqi troops as well as about 1,700 police officers are in the city of 200,000 residents, said Col. Sean MacFarland, commander of the 1st Brigade Combat Team, 1st Armored Division.

If you do the math, that works out to one soldier or police officer for every 14.6 residents.

Apply that to the entire country of 27 million, and you could plausibly argue that we need 1.8 million troops to properly secure Iraq.

And even with that many troops, Tall Afar is not peaceful.

"Violence has increased, mortar attacks have increased, roadside bombs have increased," said Mohammed Taqi, a national legislator from the city who recently wrote to Iraq's interim president and prime minister, requesting that Tall Afar's administrative affairs be handled in Baghdad rather than the provincial capital, Mosul. The roads to that city — as well as two neighborhoods in Tall Afar — are controlled by insurgents, he said.

Let's hope we keep Tall Afar in mind when we're planning future campaigns.

security, Tall Afar, Iraq, 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