Iraq – Page 5 – Hank Kalet

The right question about Iraq

Juan Cole sums up the real issues in Iraq and calls into question the myth that things are getting better and that the surge is working:

I review the news below and don’t somehow conclude that the US occupation of Iraq is a success story. I know we are paying a lot for our presence in Iraq. I can’t figure out what the average American is receiving for the money. It isn’t increased security, since Iraq is a training ground for terrorists who will likely hit the US or US interests in future. It isn’t extra petroleum, at least not for us ordinary folks. Maybe the US oil majors will do well out of it. But even they say they can’t do business in Iraq without oil legislations. And petroleum prices held above $98 a barrel on Friday. The Turkish invasion of Iraq was cited as one reason for the price increase. Instead of asking “are things hopeful in Iraq?” or “is there progress in Iraq?”, the American media and public should be asking, “What are we getting out of all this?” That is the question the US Right fears most of all, which is why they ask the ‘progress’ question all the time. They only have two settings, “slow progress” and “progress.” A burned out hulk of a city like Falluja? A sign of “slow progress.”

South Brunswick Post, The Cranbury Press
The Blog of South Brunswick

E-mail me by clicking here.

McCain, Iraq and the question of judgment

John McCain is running on Iraq as success story and his supposed expertise in military affairs.

OK. So what does that mean? Let’s consider some recent statements from the Arizona senator and place them within a larger context.

First, this from Think Progress (which has the video):

“Anyone who worries about how long we’re in Iraq does not understand the military and does not understand war,” said McCain.

He then added that it is “really almost insulting to one’s intelligence” to question “how long we’re in Iraq” because he believes the current “strategy” is “succeeding.”

But, as Think Progress points out, McCain’s statements contradict what the Pentagon’s top brass has been saying:

By dismissing as naïve those concerned with how long the U.S. military is mired in Iraq, McCain is claiming that top officials in the Pentagon don’t understand “the military” or “war” as well as he does. In a recent GOP presidential debate, McCain argued, “I’m the expert” on Iraq.

Top military brass, such as Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Adm. Mike Mullen and Army Chief of Staff Gen. George Casey, have worried in the past year that “a protracted deployment of U.S. troops”in Iraq would not be a wise move for the military

I don’t want to make too much of what the generals are saying, especially because of the political role that Gen. Petraeus has played in the debate in recent months. But it is interesting to hear someone who has served on the legislative side for more than two decades claim for himself the kind of authority that conservatives said the Johnson administration took for itself during Vietnam — you know, the argument being that the politicians didn’t let the generals do their job.

That said, McCain also goes out of his way to paint a rosy picture of the progress of the surge:

“We are winning this. Let’s pursue it to the end together and stop this bitter partisanship.” (Huffington Post)

On Sunday, McCain told ABC’s George Stephanopoulos that “we’ve succeeded militarily” in Iraq. (Think Progress)

And then on Jan. 13, “McCain added ‘political reconciliation’ to his victory list,” according to a Jan. 14 post on Think Progress:

At a campaign stop today, McCain said that the new law is evidence that “we’re succeeding politically”:

Now, six months ago, the Democrats were saying we’ve lost the war militarily. […]
My friends, you would have to suspend disbelief to believe that it’s not. So then they said, after we succeeded militarily, Well, you can’t succeed politically. You’re not moving forward politically. Well, now we’re succeeding politically.

McClatchy, however, disputed the notion in a story yesterday:

Violence is increasing in Iraq, raising questions about whether the security improvements credited to the increase in U.S. troops may be short-lived.

He’s also likened a withdrawal to surrender:

“If we surrender and wave a white flag, like Senator Clinton wants to do, and withdraw, as Governor Romney wanted to do, then there will be chaos, genocide, and the cost of American blood and treasure would be dramatically higher.”

Higher than what? We’ve already witnessed everything McCain says will follow our withdrawal and, even with our presence there, it appears to come in waves.

Basically, McCain has been too much of a cheerleader on Iraq and is way too committed not only to maintaining a deadly policy, but potentially to escalating it and making it even more deadly and further damaging our already tarnished international reputation.

The question is whether the press will ask the tough questions or work from their prepared script. I guess we have nine months in which to find out.

South Brunswick Post, The Cranbury Press
The Blog of South Brunswick

E-mail me by clicking here.

The surge is working?

The new conventional wisdom is that the surge has worked, that Iraq is entering a period of calm and that voters are less concerned about the war than they have been — which would then make John McCain a strong candidate in the fall.

The conventional wisdom, as usual, has some flaws, as Juan Cole points out. Here are a couple of excerpts from today’s post on his blog:

Ambassador Marc Ginsburg is astonished that John McCain could win in Florida on a platform of a Hundred Years War in Iraq and phony slogans about “victory” that McCain is careful never to define. In my view, McCain’s mantra about “victory” in Iraq is the 2008 equivalent of Nixon having a “secret plan” to end the Vietnam War in 1968. Somebody should please ask McCain what “victory” would look like exactly and how he would get there. Intensively patrolling some neighborhoods and cutting them off from traffic with blast walls are not measures that can be kept up for very long. Then what? Besides, someone please do me a favor and actually read the list of bombings and killings appended at the end of this post, occuring in downtown Baghdad and elsewhere, and tell me why John McCain thinks things are just hunky dory there. Is it a racist thing where it doesn’t matter how many Iraqis are killed as long as US troops aren’t? Even then, 5 US troops were blown up on Monday. Yeah, that’s real calm.

….

A new poll finds that the percentage of Americans who think the war to overthrow Saddam Hussein was worth it to the US declined from 35% to only 32% between December and January. The percentage who thought it was not worth it rose from 56% to 59% according to the same poll. It turns out that the American public is not impressed with a mere reduction in violence nowadays from apocalyptic levels last year this time. They want to know why we went there in the first place, and why their sacrifice of blood and treasure was worthwhile. No one, including McCain really has an answer for that.

Iraq, however, is just not that important. Go figure.

South Brunswick Post, The Cranbury Press
The Blog of South Brunswick

E-mail me by clicking here.

Whither Iraq? The missing issueis the 800-pound gorilla

The biggest issue facing the nation right now is Iraq, plain and simple. The simmering war continues to cost us lives and money, continues to kill Iraqis and continues to erode our credibility in the Muslim world.

It makes it nearly impossible to deal with Iran or the crisis in Pakistan. And it is bankrupting the budget, making it difficult to meet other priorities.

And yet, the chattering class has consigned Iraq to the second tier — at best.

But, as Tom Hayden points out, “the number of Iraqis in prison doubled in 2007, the number of US air strikes increased seven-fold, and the segregation of Iraqis into sectarian fiefs increased” and the “number of Americans killed last year was nearly 1,000, but that news went largely unreported.”

“Someone needs to restore Iraq to the center of the Democratic debate,” he writes, rather than leaving it up to prowar Republicans to bring it back to the table on their terms.

As I wrote nearly one year ago, the military surge in Iraq would bolster the possibilities of a McCain (and Joe Lieberman) ticket in 2008; and it has. Gen. Petraeus has succeeded in his strategic goal of “setting back the clock” in Washington and buying time for the US occupation to survive the political debates of 2008.

If Obama wants to win, he needs to sharpen his differences with Clinton immediately, going beyond style to substance, especially on Iraq. He needs to point out the differences that everyone in the political and media worlds, and therefore the voters, are missing. Under the five-year Clinton plan, while the good news is that US combat troops would be withdrawn gradually, tens of thousands of “advisers” and counter-terrorism forces would stay in Iraq to fight a counterinsurgency war like Central America in the 1970s. That is a plan to lessen American casualties and wind down the war on television, while still authorizing a nasty low-visibility one. It is impossible to criticize the CIA’s secret torture methods and turn a blind eye to what happens every day in Iraq’s detention centers complete with their US trainers and funding. With the Clinton plan, American advisers and special forces are likely to be filling those detention centers through 2013. As one expert says, “Detain thousands more Iraqis as security threats, and the potential for violence inevitably declines.”

Obama could, if he wished, say that a plan to have Americans fighting in Iraq through the next President’s first term is not a peace plan but a five-year war plan filled with risk for American soldiers. He could make the comparisons to Central America. He could point out the impossibility of funding Iraq, Afghanistan and national health care.

The argument could be a winner, tying together all the issues that Americans have told pollsters they care about while undercutting the foolish arguments being offered by Mitt Romney, John McCain and the rest of the crew.

And, perhaps most importantly, it would keep the pressure on policy makers to actually end the deadly debacle.

South Brunswick Post, The Cranbury Press
The Blog of South Brunswick

E-mail me by clicking here.

Iraq: The face-off over funding

I have to agree with Juan Cole’s analysis of the battle between Republicans and Democrats over funding of the war:

My analysis of this NYT piece is that Bush and the Republicans are betting that they can portray as irresponsible and unpatriotic the Democrats in Congress who decline to give Bush all the war funding he wants. The Democrats are betting that the public desperately wants them to stop the Iraq War, which is hemorrhaging money and costing American lives, all for goals that are unclear. If I were a betting man, I’d put a big bet on the Democrats in this regard, and even without a bet I predict that the Republicans are going to suffer an earthquake-like reversal next November.

Basically, Americans voted for Democrats for Congress in 2006 because they expected them to lead American soldiers out of the desert, knowing full well the Republicans would continue to walk in lock-step behind the president. Democrats, unfortunately, have been too timid. Time for them to stand up and make it clear that the war continues only because President Bush wants it to.

South Brunswick Post, The Cranbury Press
The Blog of South Brunswick

E-mail me by clicking here.