What September Won’t Settle – George Will, Washington Post
Come September, America might slip closer toward a Weimar moment. It would be milder than the original but significantly disagreeable. After the First World War, politics in Germany's new Weimar Republic were poisoned by the belief that the army had been poised for victory in 1918 and that one more surge could have turned the tide. Many Germans bitterly concluded that the political class, having lost its nerve and will to win, capitulated. The fact that fanciful analysis fed this rancor did not diminish its power. The Weimar Republic was fragile; America's domestic tranquility is not. Still, remember the bitterness stirred by the accusatory question "Who lost China?" and corrosive suspicions that the fruits of victory in Europe had been squandered by Americans of bad character or bad motives at Yalta. So, consider this: When Gen. David Petraeus delivers his report on the war, his Washington audience will include two militant factions. Perhaps nothing he can responsibly say will sway either, so September will reinforce animosities.
A Surge of War Support – Washington Times editorial
With positive military news continuing from Iraq, President Bush yesterday seized the moment. In a speech to the national convention of the Veterans of Foreign Wars in Kansas City, Mr. Bush recalled the naysayers of the previous century who questioned Japan's suitability for democracy. He recalled others who regarded the setbacks in the fight against Communist aggression in Korea as evidence that that the war was a blunder. The first dissenters were wrong. The second were myopic. Many who oppose the war now see progress in Iraq after the "surge" of new troops. Sens. Carl Levin and Hillary Clinton have lent their voices to that chorus, and this poses difficult questions for their friends on the left. "We've begun to change tactics in Iraq, and in some areas, particularly in Anbar province, it's working," Mrs. Clinton said. Just about everyone today applauds the foreign-policy goals and ideals that undergirded the commitment to Japan and Korea more than a half-century ago. If the good news of the surge continues from Iraq, the president's critics will no doubt ask why he didn't send enough troops in the first place. It's a fair question. But if the good news continues there won't be a logical basis to continue the clamor for withdrawal.
Who Lost Iraq? - James Dobbins, Foreign Affairs / Real Clear Politics
In the aftermath of national catastrophes, people have a natural tendency to look for an explanation based on a single point of failure. Such explanations are often unhelpful in devising subsequent policy. Simplistic lessons drawn from World War I persuaded the United States to embrace isolationism and Europe appeasement, both of which contributed to World War II. The lesson many Americans drew from not opposing Hitler sooner -- "no more Munichs" -- became a powerful rationale for the United States' entanglement in Vietnam in the 1960s. The subsequent national rejection of counterinsurgency missions -- "no more Vietnams" -- greatly hampered U.S. military performance in Iraq. If the current debate over the United States' failure in Iraq is to yield constructive results, it will have to go beyond bumper-sticker conclusions -- no more preemption, no more democracy promotion, no more nation building. Individuals have been the first target of criticism: President George W. Bush, of course, but also Vice President Dick Cheney; Donald Rumsfeld, the former secretary of defense; General Tommy Franks, the former commander of U.S. Central Command; Paul Wolfowitz, the former deputy secretary of defense; Douglas Feith, the former undersecretary of defense for policy; L. Paul Bremer, the former head of the Coalition Provisional Authority; and George Tenet, the former CIA director. All except two of these individuals have been out of office for some time: the Bush administration is already on its second defense secretary, third CIA director, third commanding general in Iraq, and fourth top diplomat there -- and thus far, none of these changes has reversed a worsening situation. This suggests that the source of at least some of the United States' difficulties in Iraq transcends particular personalities. Meanwhile, the White House, Congress, the State Department, the Defense Department, and the CIA have engaged in continuous blame shifting over Iraq.
The Misleading Vietnam Analogy - Los Angeles Times editorial
With rhetoric that would stir any patriot but logic that should persuade few, President Bush on Wednesday waded into the historical quagmire of the Vietnam War. Then, as now, Bush said, "people argued the real problem was America's presence and that if we would just withdraw, the killing would end." He then listed the tragedies that followed the U.S. withdrawal from Southeast Asia -- the Khmer Rouge slaughter in Cambodia, the harsh communist rule in Vietnam. "The price of America's withdrawal was paid by millions of innocent citizens whose agonies would add to our vocabulary new terms like 'boat people,' 're-education camps' and 'killing fields.' " Likewise, he argued, innocents will pay if a U.S. withdrawal from Iraq empowers Al Qaeda. The president's Vietnam-Iraq analogy begins with a large kernel of truth, but goes astray. First, no serious Iraq expert believes U.S. withdrawal would end the killing. The debate today centers on whether the civil war that has been only partly suppressed by the surge of 30,000 U.S. troops will inevitably rage until the Sunnis and Shiites reach a rough equilibrium on the battlefield. It's true that millions of Iraqi civilians have already paid a terrible price and may suffer even more as fighting may well worsen after a U.S. withdrawal -- whenever that occurs. But it seems equally clear that the civil war cannot be suppressed indefinitelyunless the U.S. plans to occupy the country for decades. Killing fields? Iraq's already got them: A dozen or two corpses are found dumped in the streets each morning, and bombs go off daily. Boat people? Two million Iraqis have already fled the country, and perhaps 50,000 more leave each month. Could it get worse? Absolutely. But can we stop it?
Iraq and Vietnam - London Times leader
For months American critics of the war have been muttering about “another Vietnam”. President Bush’s decision yesterday to make lessons from Vietnam the core of his argument for greater American patience in Iraq was politically audacious. Politicians do not raise that ghost lightly. But he did so because it was public opinion at home that accelerated, with fateful consequences, the US withdrawal from Vietnam; and public opinion could play the same forcing role in Iraq. American opposition to the Vietnam War peaked with 1968 Tet Offensive. Militarily, it was a great defeat for Hanoi, as it immediately admitted; but politically, nothing could shake the American public’s determination to get out. The key question is how public opinion will respond to the better news out of Iraq. No day passes without explosions and more deaths, and in the British sector, the situation in Basra is perilous. But in central Iraq, America’s military “surge”, combined with a counter-insurgency strategy that gives priority to the protection of Iraqi neighbourhoods, has begun to pay off. As General David Petraeus and his commanders underline repeatedly, it is too soon to say whether local and tactical successes point to an enduring trend. Yet in areas of Iraq such as Anbar province, until recently rootedly hostile, there is now a semblance of order based on cooperation with US forces. The flow of local intelligence has improved, support for al-Qaeda is down and so is the number, though not the ferocity, of suicide and mortar bomb attacks. In Baghdad itself, where the rate of sectarian murders has halved, the annual Shia mass pilgrimage to the Kadhimiya shrine, marred by terrible carnage in previous years, passed this month without incident.
An Imprudent Comparison that Undermines the American Case - Bronwen Maddox, London Times
It is a desperate move for President Bush to invoke Vietnam as justification for staying longer in Iraq. But his speech yesterday was the first of two in which he called on Americans to take a long view of the Iraq conflict and argued that the lesson of history was that some wars took a long time to win. His history lecture is disputable, not least in his elision of Vietnam and Cambodia. However, he is beyond controversy at the banal core of his main point: that Iraq has not yet come right but could in the future, although he skirted around the US’s almost complete lack of control over that course of events. But the oddity of Bush’s comparison between Iraq and Vietnam, the twin peaks of contemporary US foreign misjudgment, is that it reveals the absence of the US’s vision of its role in the region. There has been a wisp of a sense, in the Administration’s arguments for sitting tight in Iraq, that it believes that the US cannot afford to leave for fear of the regional turmoil that might follow, a case that Bush expanded yesterday. But although this is his best argument, it is pursued with none of the tenacity of the Vietnam-era visions of communist dominoes toppling on to one another, exaggerated as they turned out to be.
Fighting for Hearts, Minds, and Souls - Clifford May, National Review
The first concept to grasp is that the global conflict now underway involves both a clash of arms and a clash of ideas. To succeed in this war will require effective combat on both fronts. The second concept is this: The clash of arms and the clash of ideas influence one other, often in peculiar and even counterintuitive ways. One example: Al Qaeda in Iraq could not challenge American troops directly. Their solution has been to target innocent Iraqis instead, to slaughter innocent Muslim men, women, and children by the hundreds. Why wouldn’t this cause outrage around the world? It did — but al Qaeda calculated that in much of the West, the outrage would be directed less at them than at Americans for “stirring up a hornet’s nest.” And, as they also expected, images of death and destruction, coupled with reports of soldiers killed by roadside bombs, soon would erode the will of many Americans to continue the fight. Now, however, a new phase in the clash of arms may be having an unanticipated impact on a different audience. A shift in strategy initiated by the new U.S. commander in Iraq, Gen. David Petraeus, is changing ideas about both al Qaeda and the U.S. in Muslim societies — and on the theological plane.
The Battle of Basra - London Daily Telegraph leader
What began as unattributable sniping from anonymous Pentagon sources has turned into a full-throated, on-the-record whinge. Washington does not like what the British military is doing in Basra and doesn't care who knows it. Retired General Jack Keane, the architect of the American "surge" in Baghdad, broke cover last weekend when he voiced his disappointment that the situation in Basra was "coming apart". Lest Downing Street hadn't noticed the outburst, he returned to the theme in an interview yesterday with BBC Radio 4's Today programme, when his language was even fruitier. Accusing the British military of a "general disengagement" from Basra, he complained there was now "almost gangland warfare" in Iraq's second city and a deteriorating situation that would only get worse. Such disobliging remarks from our closest ally cannot be ignored. General Keane at least had the grace to concede that, just like the American forces in central Iraq, Britain has never had enough manpower to protect the civilian population in its sector adequately. And that brought him to the nub of his argument. He said the United States had accepted that it needed to increase troop numbers on the ground - the British had to do the same.
The U.N.’s Role in Iraq - Carlos Pascual and Brian Cullin, Washington Post
When Gen. David Petraeus and Ambassador Ryan Crocker report next month on the results of our "surge" in Iraq, the most important category, political progress, should receive an F. Even if our military forces have made real progress of late, their sacrifices will have been for naught because our diplomatic strategy has been disconnected, anemic and ineffective. The importance of diplomacy is rooted in Iraq's sectarian civil war. The war in Iraq is not the United States against a single enemy but the United States interjecting itself among many enemies fighting each other. That war cannot be solved by military means. Even if the United States were to quell the violence in the short term, fighting would erupt again with an American withdrawal. Until there is a political compact among Iraqi parties, endorsed by neighbors and the international community, there will be no prospect for peace in Iraq. Yet thus far there has been no serious effort in this direction. Regional meetings in Baghdad and Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt, did not produce action agendas. Regional visits by the secretaries of state and defense will produce little concrete action as long as "support" is seen as bolstering Shiite dominance. President Bush's remarks yesterday on promoting democracy only reaffirm his administration's lack of realism about the complexity of political reconciliation and what's needed to achieve it. The passage of U.N. Security Council Resolution 1770 this month may offer the chance for a radical departure. The resolution renewed the mandate for the U.N. Assistance Mission for Iraq and called for the United Nations to promote reconciliation -- a daunting task but one crucial to any lasting settlement.
Easy Scapegoat – Washington Post editorial
As the clock ticks toward a September evaluation of progress in Iraq, President Bush and congressional Democrats opposed to the war appear close to agreement on at least one key point: disappointment with the government of Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki. Returning from a trip to Iraq, Sen. Carl M. Levin (D-Mich.), the chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, on Monday called Mr. Maliki's government "non-functional" and urged the Iraqi parliament to vote it out of office. The next day Mr. Bush acknowledged "a certain level of frustration" and added that if the government didn't meet the demands of Iraqis, "they will replace the government." Mr. Bush retreated a little yesterday, saying Mr. Maliki was "a good guy" whom he supported, but the message was clear. Washington finds the Iraqi government's performance "extremely disappointing," as Ryan C. Crocker, the U.S. ambassador to Iraq, put it. The frustration is understandable enough. As American soldiers have fought and died to stabilize Baghdad and other key areas in recent months, the parallel progress toward political reconciliation expected by the White House -- and promised by Mr. Maliki -- has been virtually nonexistent. It's more likely than not that none of the major steps the administration hoped for by Sept. 15 -- a new oil law, constitutional changes, the curtailment of a ban on former Baathists -- will be completed. On the contrary, the divide between Mr. Maliki's Shiite alliance and Sunni parties seems to have grown, and the government's policies, whether in the distribution of reconstruction funds or the management of the police and army, continue to be tinged with sectarianism.
A New Sheriff’s in Town - Ilya Shapiro, Weekly Standard
Just across the Tigris from the Green Zone, the surge has established what may be its most important non-military beachhead: the Rule of Law Complex (ROLC). Based in Baghdad's Rusafa District, the traditional home of the Baghdad Police, the ROLC brings together the three legs of the criminal justice stool: courts, police, and corrections. Inside a heavily fortified compound not far from Sadr City, the ROLC houses a branch of the Central Criminal Court of Iraq (CCCI), the Baghdad Police College, and a detention facility for 5,000 detainees (soon to be expanded to 7,000), as well as secure accommodations for key judicial personnel and their families. The project has moved quickly from PowerPoint slides in February to the start of operations in April and its first trial in June, all of which required significant cooperation among the Ministries of Interior, Justice, and Finance, as well as the Higher Judicial Council. Last month the Iraqi government approved $49 million for the effort and, as of August 1, ROLC's full operating budget--including security expenses--comes out of state funds. What Coalition forces have provided, meanwhile--in addition to advice on the ROLC's design, construction, and implementation--is the Law and Order Task Force (LAOTF). LAOTF is a key part of Multi-National Force-Iraq's (MNFI) renewed emphasis on building up the rule of law and combines the expertise of attorneys and investigators, both military and civilian.
Drama of a Tough Marine “Shoot or Don’t Shoot” Call – Ralph Peters, New York Post
What if al Qaeda were setting the entire thing up to get us to attack a home where women and children were present? What if they were playing all of our technical advantages against us and springing a political trap? Contrary to the myths of the left, no Americans leaders want to harm the innocent. And the local repercussions of bad targeting could set back reconciliation efforts by months. Still, everybody in that room wanted to shoot. Hitting back is the natural impulse for Marines or soldiers - get the enemy, any time you can. Nail that mortar team while we've got them.
The CIA Report – New York Times editorial
The C.I.A. inspector general’s report on the agency’s failures before Sept. 11 was devastating — but not because it showed that America’s spies missed the rise of Al Qaeda. George Tenet, then the director of central intelligence, rang the Qaeda alarm. He sent a memo to the entire intelligence community saying that he wanted no effort spared in the “war” with Osama bin Laden. He took on the president’s closest advisers to agitate for a strike on a Qaeda base in Afghanistan. The disturbing thing was that this all happened under President Bill Clinton. When George W. Bush won the White House, Mr. Tenet seems to have shifted his priorities. The C.I.A. chief suddenly seemed consumed with hanging on to his job (through such innovative antiterrorism measures as naming the C.I.A.’s Langley, Va., headquarters for Mr. Bush’s father). The Bush team was so busy in 2001 trying to upend America’s global relationships according to a neo-conservative agenda that the then national security adviser, Condoleezza Rice, did not see any urgency in reports that Al Qaeda was determined to strike in the United States. Mr. Tenet later helped hype the “slam dunk” intelligence that Mr. Bush used to justify diverting the military from the war of necessity against Al Qaeda in Afghanistan to the war of choice in Iraq.
A Nuclear-armed Iran Would Not be Good - Greg Sheridan, The Australian
A few weeks ago US President George W. Bush issued an unusual request to the Australian Government. He wanted to see the Australian ambassador to Iran, Greg Moriarty. The Americans don't have an ambassador in Tehran and it is no news to anybody that the Australian and British ambassadors brief their US colleagues on goings-on there. But I believe a US president requesting a meeting with our ambassador is a first. The episode demonstrates the absolute intensity of White House attention to Iran right now. Make no mistake, the world is building to a crisis in Iran. The technical detail is endlessly fascinating and the manoeuvres by all the players gothic in their complexity. But the basic story is simple enough. Iran is pursuing nuclear weapons. It has two programs for this: a highly enriched uranium program and a heavy-water reactor that will produce plutonium. These facilities were constructed in secret and in contravention of the nuclear non-proliferation treaty to which Iran is a signatory but has consistently flouted. Iran is the leader of the Shia version of fundamentalist and extremist Islam. It sponsors terrorism promiscuously. Its most important terrorist client is Hezbollah, a Shia group that de facto rules southern Lebanon. It is also the most important foreign sponsor of Hamas, a Sunni terrorist organisation that rules the Gaza Strip. Islamic Jihad, which has been responsible for much Palestinian terrorism, is effectively a branch of the Iranian intelligence services.
U.S. and China: Which Way? - Alvin Rabushka, Washington Times
Current U.S. headlines about China trumpet dubious dog food and lead paint in toys. Too bad all that is burying another important story. China's emergence as an economic power has set off alarms among national security and military experts in Washington, D.C., about China's rapidly rising military expenditures, including the acquisition of world-class submarines, development of a blue-water navy, modern aircraft, satellite-launch and -destruction capability, a broad range of missiles, and a more professional army. An immediate concern is Taiwan's security, but the longer-term threat resides in China's growing influence throughout Asia and its forays into Africa and Latin America in quest of natural resources. What, then, should U.S. policy be toward China?
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